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Wildlife heaven or nuclear hell: Chernobyl future up for grabs
Posted by New Scientist: Fred Pearce on March 11th, 2016
New Scientist: A white-tailed eagle soars in the clear winter air. It is hunting for fish in one of the most radioactive bodies of open water on the planet: the 12-kilometre-long cooling pond whose waters doused the burning Chernobyl nuclear power station after it exploded 30 years ago.
The pond is radioactive – as are the fish. But they are also abundant. Wildlife is booming in the exclusion zone that stretches for some 30 kilometres from the corroding plant.
Grey wolves, lynx, wild boar, rabbits, moose...
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Sri Lanka first nation promise full protection of mangroves
Posted by New Scientist: Fred Pearce on May 12th, 2015
New Scientist: Sri Lanka has become the first nation to promise the comprehensive protection of all of its mangroves, as it launches a major replanting programme.
Hundreds of Sri Lankan coastal communities have been recruited for their conservation by the Small Fishers Federation - a local non-governmental organisation - with money from an NGO in California called Seacology.
The Sri Lankan government has promised to give all mangroves legal protection and provide rangers for coastal patrols, says Seacology's...
Optical trick made Amazon seem to grow more when dry
Posted by New Scientist: Fred Pearce on February 5th, 2014
New Scientist: It always seemed odd. A decade ago, NASA satellite data suggested that the canopy of the Amazon rainforest grew faster during a drought. Apparently, this was just an optical illusion.
In 2003, remote sensors showed that the forest canopy reflects more near-infrared light during a drought. Because young leaves are greener - and reflect more infrared light - than old foliage, analysts assumed this was evidence that rainforests grew better during dry years.
A new study suggests otherwise. Douglas...
2014 preview: The key to surviving climate change
Posted by New Scientist: Fred Pearce on December 27th, 2013
New Scientist: Be prepared – for anything. That will be the message of the next report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), its first attempt in seven years to forecast the impact of climate change on specific geographical regions. Due out in March, it will emphasise versatility over any fine-tuned mitigation measures. Building on the IPCC's October report on the latest climate science, the Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability report is designed to predict how those global trends will change...
What are the prospects for the polar regions?
Posted by New Scientist: Fred Pearce on September 27th, 2013
New Scientist: Pretty dire. We now know that the rapid retreat of the Arctic sea ice over the summer months - which reached its lowest point since records began in 2012 - is unprecedented in at least the last 1450 years.
The new report forecasts that the Arctic is likely to continue warming faster than the rest of the planet. This means that the sea ice could almost entirely disappear in September by mid-century, and that up to 81 per cent of Arctic permafrost could thaw by then.
Meanwhile, glaciologists...
Gimme swelter: we explain the UK and US heatwaves
Posted by New Scientist: Fred Pearce on July 20th, 2013
New Scientist: After the cold, the heat. High pressure spreading across the UK from Siberia last spring brought record cold temperatures. Now more high pressure, this time from the tropical Atlantic, is bringing a sweltering heatwave. These high-pressure zones are blocking the jet stream which usually brings the country's normal changeable weather. "Blocking highs" are an increasing theme of North American weather reports too, bringing concern of a long-term shift. New Scientist looks at the issues.
What's going...
We can save Iraq’s ‘Garden of Eden’
Posted by New Scientist: Fred Pearce on April 23rd, 2013
New Scientist: Engineer Azzam Alwash is intent on restoring the fabled Mesopotamian marshes in southern Iraq that Saddam Hussein tried to wreck
Some say the marshes of southern Iraq are the origin of the Garden of Eden story. Why did Saddam Hussein drain them?
He said it was to make dry land for agriculture. He dug canals and diverted the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, causing 90 per cent of the marshes to dry out. But really, he saw the Marsh Arabs who lived there, fishing, cutting reeds and tending water...
Costing the Earth
Posted by New Scientist: Fred Pearce on November 1st, 2012
New Scientist: IN A rainforest in Guyana, two men are trying to sell rain. If you want, they will also sell you soil, biodiversity, nitrogen-fixing bacteria and all kinds of other things. Tempted? Thought not. But these men are not con artists. They are engaged in a serious experiment to save the planet: to see whether hard-nosed self-interest can succeed where altruism and politics are failing. The experiment, run by zoologist Andrew Mitchell of the University of Oxford and banker Hylton Murray-Philipson, takes...
Peak planet: Are we starting to consume less?
Posted by New Scientist: Fred Pearce on June 13th, 2012
New Scientist: HUMANITY is doomed. Or it was in 1798, when English scholar Robert Malthus published his influential An Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthus predicted that unchecked growth in human numbers would condemn our species to a "perpetual struggle for room and food" and an unbreakable cycle of squalor, famine and disease. Nearly two centuries later, biologist Paul Ehrlich was no less pessimistic. We had exceeded the planet's "carrying capacity", he declared in his 1968 bestseller The Population...
Smart Guide to 2012: The Rio Earth Summit
Posted by New Scientist: Fred Pearce on December 25th, 2011
New Scientist: Spaceship Earth needs a pilot. It's time we stepped into the cockpit and took over the controls. That will be the theme of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June. Natural disasters, food and water shortages and biodiversity loss show that humanity is crossing planetary boundaries, making our world more dangerous. At Rio we will have to push for a global system of "environmental governance".
Earth has nine critical life-support systems vital to our survival. They have some resilience...