Environment

Sitting in still water like cryogenic alien brains, these slimy mysterious blobs aren’t something you’d expect to find outside of a special effects department, let alone in a city park. But even scientists who specialize in studying this bizarre life-form are surprised to learn they have found a home in the Stanley Park lagoon, in […]

Some two dozen minor tremors have hit Mount Rainier, the active volcano towering over the Seattle metro area, over the past week. The strongest of the quakes had a magnitude of 1.6, according to the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN) run by the University of Washington and the University of Oregon. Earthquakes with a magnitude of […]

Hurricanes tear apart buildings and destroy human lives, so naturally, people focus on the impact on populated areas. But there is an ecological toll to these devastating storms that sometimes gets overlooked. Hurricane Irma stripped the Caribbean of an entire color, turning lush green landscapes into dreary brown.        A series of before and […]

Biotech company Oxitec announced on Sept. 5 that it has started releasing genetically modified (GM) moths in Geneva, New York. Globally, only two types of GM insects have ever been released. GM mosquitoes have been released in Brazil, Panama, the Cayman Islands, and Malaysia. And a GM pink bollworm was briefly released about 10 years […]

The world faces water problems on a scale never before experienced in history. The global population is growing as water resources are shrinking. The world’s leading water experts and officials met in Stockholm from Aug. 27 to Sept. 1 for the annual World Water Week. The challenges—and solutions—they discussed included how to guarantee the human […]

Water flows through powerful hands before it trickles down to those least able to afford it. Multinational corporations are increasingly gaining control of water infrastructure and, essentially, of the vital resource itself. While these companies do provide much-needed infrastructure repair and develop water-saving technologies, some are accused of profiteering. Water investments are lucrative for companies, […]

Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, says it may dump as much as 770,000 cubic meters of water contaminated with the radioactive tritium into the Pacific Ocean, as part of its cleanup efforts following the 2011 tsunami. The announcement has stirred up controversy, yet other, lesser known nuclear facilities […]