Tag Archives: environment

After tense and protracted negotiations, delegates at the United Nations climate conference COP28 have agreed on a deal that calls on countries to transition away from fossil fuels. It is the first time that nations have agreed to such a transition, and marks a major step forward in climate ambitions. …

In a cavernous theater lit up with the green shapes of camels and palms at COP28 in Dubai, ecologist Thomas Crowther, former chief scientific adviser for the United Nations’ Trillion Trees Campaign, was doing something he never would have expected a few years ago: begging environmental ministers to stop planting …

Don’t let their fluff fool you: Your cat was built for murder. Felines, no matter how chonky, eepy, or boopable, are remarkably adaptable obligate carnivores, down to eat just about anything that fits in their mouth. Well-intentioned (or … threatening?) gifts of dead birds, rats, and lizards are familiar to …

This story originally appeared in Hakai and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The ocean has a way of upending expectations. Four-story-high rogue waves peak and collapse without warning. Light bends across the surface to conjure chimeric cities that hover at the horizon. And watery wastelands reveal themselves to …

Fifteen years ago, Richard Davies of Newcastle University got hold of 3D images of the underwater sedimentary strata in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Mauritania. “I'm a geologist, so it's my equivalent of the medic’s CAT scan,” Davies says. “I had this data set, and I've had many, …

This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Kitchen Arts & Letters, a legendary cookbook store on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, is tiny—just 750 square feet—but not an inch of space is wasted. With roughly 12,000 different cookbooks and a staff of former chefs …

In the mornings in Varanasi, the air on the banks of the Ganges fills with the scent of burning bodies. On the steps of the Manikarnika ghat—the holiest of the city’s stepped riverbanks, upon which Hindu dead are cremated—the fires are already lit, and mourners assemble by the hundred to …

One of the world’s most peculiar test beds stretches above Princeton, New Jersey. It’s a fiber optic cable strung between three utility poles that then runs underground before feeding into an “interrogator.” This device fires a laser through the cable and analyzes the light that bounces back. It can pick …

If you had lived some 50 million years ago and taken a trip to the poles, you would have found lush forests and creatures like crocodiles instead of miles-thick ice sheets. That’s because during the Eocene, greenhouse gas concentrations were much higher than they are today, leading to a natural …

The entire country of Portugal ran on renewable energy for six days in a row.Between Oct. 31 and Nov. 6, the state’s National Electric system ran entirely on energy from wind, hydropower, and the sun – for 149 hours straight. Portugal produced 1102 GWh of renewable energy, surpassing its demand …