Study: Which Countries Will Best Survive a Collapse?

Will civilization as we know it end in the next 100 years? Will there be any functioning places left? These questions might sound like the stuff of dystopian fiction. But if recent headlines about extreme weather, climate change, the ongoing…

See Mira the Wonderful at its brightest

Catch elusive wonderful Mira, a famous variable star in the constellation Cetus, at its maximum brightness in August 2021. Now you see it … now you don’t!

The post See Mira the Wonderful at its brightest first appeared on EarthSky.

Heads up! Close asteroid pass August 21

Close asteroid pass August 21, 2021. This fast-moving asteroid is designed 2016 AJ193. It’s currently rushing inward toward the sun. It will not strike Earth.

The post Heads up! Close asteroid pass August 21 first appeared on EarthSky.

UNESCO Revises Its Climate Policy – Union of Concerned Scientists

Today at the 44th UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting, the World Heritage Convention’s governing body and its States Parties adopted a new climate policy—the first time they have done so in over a decade. States Parties will have until September…

Transits of Jupiter’s moons ahead: A triple!

Observers using a good pair of binoculars or a small telescope can see events called transits on Jupiter, when a moon or its shadow passes in front of the giant planet.

The post Transits of Jupiter’s moons ahead: A triple! first appeared on EarthSky.

Capturing Climate Change – IEEE Spectrum

This is part of IEEE Spectrum’s special report: Critical Challenges 2002: Technology Takes On The government of Tuvalu, a Pacific Island nation, made a plea last summer for countries to take in Tuvalu evacuees, fearing a rising sea level will…

Let’s Hope The Third World Prevails At COP26

On Tuesday, I chaired a session at Policy Exchange addressed by Tony Abbott, the eloquent former prime minister of Australia, now an adviser to the British Board of Trade. Although he acknowledged severe recent difficulties, he declared himself optimistic that…

Ten Unusual Places Where Researchers Have Found Microplastics

Any plastic piece that’s less than five millimeters in length is known as microplastic. To better understand how tiny these pieces are, a grain of rice is a little larger. It’s about the size of a pencil eraser.Microplastics come from plastic that’s not recycled and breaks down. Small fragments chip or flake off as the […]

Australian wildfires had bigger influence on climate than lockdowns: Study – Axios

The COVID-19 pandemic-related lockdowns exerted a slight net warming effect on the planet, but Australian wildfires had a much bigger and faster climate impact, cooling the planet from December 2019 through mid-2020, a new study finds. Why it matters: The…

Great Barrier Reef Escapes ‘Endangered’ Listing By World Heritage Committee

The Great Barrier Reef escaped being listed as an “endangered” UNESCO World Heritage Site during a meeting Friday to determine the reef’s environmental status, despite [some] experts’ insistence that it should be on it. The decision not to add the…