• U.S. models underestimates costs of carbon pollution

    Model used by government all but ignores economic damages that climate change will inflict on future generations; two economists argue that when these costs are factored in, the real benefits of carbon reduction range from 2.6 to more than 12 times higher than the government’s estimate

  • Wildfires have both positive and negative economic impacts

    Wildfires disrupt the lives of workers, employers, and families, and lead to longer-term instability in local labor markets, but on the flip side of the coin, countywide employment and wages increase in some sectors during the wildfires, often mitigating the short-term employment disruptions wildfires cause

  • Verizon’s all-hazard approach to disaster preparation

    September is National Preparedness Month in the United States, but Verizon saysits Business Continuity and Emergency Management teams are busy every day of the year monitoring, preparing, and responding to weather-related and man-made events throughout the world; there are 193 member states in the UN, and the company’s BCEM teams are operating in 150 of them and in more than 2,700 cities

  • Thorium to play limited role in U.K. future power supply

    Worldwide, there has for a long time been a sustained interest in the thorium fuel cycle and presently there are several major research initiatives which are either focused specifically on the thorium fuel cycle or on systems which use thorium as the fertile seed instead of U-238; the U.K. National Nuclear Laboratory examined the topic and concluded that thorium has theoretical advantages but that these benefits are often overstated; as a result, thorium fuel cycle at best has only limited relevance to the United Kingdom as a possible alternative plutonium disposition strategy and as a possible strategic option

  • Regional, global food security effects of climate change to felt soon

    Research shows that within the next ten years large parts of Asia can expect increased risk of more severe droughts, which will impact regional and possibly even global food security; on average, across Asia, droughts lasting longer than three months will be more than twice as severe in terms of their soil moisture deficit compared to the 1990-2005 period; China, Pakistan, and Turkey as the most seriously affected major producers of wheat and maize

  • Himalayan glaciers retreating at an uneven rate, making South Asia water supply future unclear

    MI6, the U.K. intelligence service, four years ago predicted that the world’s first water war – that is, war between countries over access to water resources — will take place between India and Bangladesh sometime between 2015 and 2020; the reason for the war: intensifying conflicts over dwindling Himalayas water sources; glaciers in the eastern and central regions of the Himalayas appear to be retreating at accelerating rates, similar to those in other areas of the world, while glaciers in the western Himalayas are more stable and could be growing, a new report says

  • More accurate method for predicting hurricane activity devised

    Researchers have developed a new method for forecasting seasonal hurricane activity that is 15 percent more accurate than previous techniques; the new approach should give policymakers more reliable information than current state-of-the-art methods

  • At least 200,000 tons of oil, gas from Deepwater Horizon spill consumed by bacteria

    Researchers have found that, over a period of five months following the disastrous 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, naturally occurring bacteria which exist in the Gulf of Mexico consumed and removed at least 200,000 tons of oil and natural gas that spewed into the deep Gulf from the ruptured well head

  • The spring 2010 BP oil disaster could have been prevented: expert

    The BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico during the spring of 2010 could have been prevented if the experiences of earlier disasters had been put to use, an expert claims; the U.S. government is now accusing BP of gross negligence and deliberate misconduct, and taking the company to court

  • There is enough wind power to meet global energy demand

    There is enough energy available in winds to meet all of the world’s demand; atmospheric turbines that convert steadier and faster high-altitude winds into energy could generate even more power than ground- and ocean-based units

  • Predicting waves’ height, force could double marine-based energy

    In the search for alternative energy, scientists have focused on the sun and the wind; there is also tremendous potential in harnessing the power of the ocean’s waves, but marine energy presents specific challenges that have made it a less promising resource; one of these challenges is the fact that waves differ in terms of their size and force; forecasting wave height one second in advance optimizes energy collection

  • Next generation of advanced climate models needed

    From farmers deciding which crops to plant next season, to mayors preparing for possible heat waves, to insurance companies assessing future flood risks, to those responsible for infrastructure protection having to decide how best to use scarce resource to mitigate climate change-induced disasters, an array of stakeholders from the public and private sectors rely on and use climate information; the U.S. National Research Council says he U.S. collection of climate models should advance substantially to deliver more detailed, smaller scale climate projections

  • Urchin-loving otters can help fight global warming

    A thriving sea otter population that keeps sea urchins in check will in turn allow kelp forests to prosper; the spreading kelp can absorb as much as twelve times the amount of CO2 from the atmosphere than if it were subject to ravenous sea urchins

  • Scientists question earthquake prediction methods

    From 2008 to 2011, three earthquakes have significantly damaged different parts of the world. Those quakes were significantly underestimated by scientists and seismologists

  • Destroyed coastal habitats produce significant amounts of greenhouse gas

    Destruction of coastal habitats may release as much as one billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year, ten times higher than previously reported; a new analysis provides the most comprehensive estimate of global carbon emissions from the loss of these coastal habitats to date: 0.15 to 1.2 billion tons; it suggests there is a high value associated with keeping these coastal-marine ecosystems intact as the release of their stored carbon costs roughly $6-$42 billion annually