Climate Science

Cap-and-trade scheme for whaling to be almost as popular as the other kind

Scientists proposed in the journal Nature that one way to save whales is to allow people to hunt them.

The age-old battle of goats versus tortoises

Before reading further in this post, ask yourself a question (and answer honestly): Which do you care about more, guiltless (if hungry) goats or the Galápagos Islands' giant tortoises?

If you answered goats, this post will make you sad.

Here was the situation on the Galápagos Islands of Española: a population of hundreds of thousands of tortoises had dwindled to a few thousand. As the tortoises' population decreased, the population of goats, introduced to the islands by humans, grew to tens of thousands. The goats were eating all of the islands' vegetation. It was not a good situation for the tortoises.

And so conservationists decided the goats had to go.

Climate primer: Global warming made scintillating

Catch some of Grist's most riveting recent coverage of climate change -- perfect fodder for cocktail chatter, guaranteed to make you the life of the party.

Will Obama address climate threat in State of the Union speech?

Obama didn't mention climate change in last year's State of the Union speech. This time, will he seize the opportunity to stir the country to action?

Don’t believe the hype about the ‘molecule that could solve climate change’

Some chemists came up with a really clever way to observe the intermediate stage of an atmospheric chemical reaction, and then some PR flack got a hold of it and suddenly science has invented a brand-new molecule that will solve all our climate change woes! As usual, things that seem too good to be true probably are.

Scientists discover color of galaxy, can only describe it in poetry

We went back and forth on whether this would be relevant to your interests, but it's about the universe and the Earth is in the universe, right? I think that's a non-controversial scientific statement even Rick Santorum would agree with. (Maybe. Does Rick Santorum believe in the galaxy?) Anyway, astronomers have found the exact color the Milky Way galaxy would appear if you were standing outside it, and it turns out it is a color that can only be expressed in poetry.

Teeniest frog ever

Scientists thought they had found the world's smallest frog just a month ago, when a researcher announced he'd found coin-sized amphibians in New Guinea. But psych! Those weren't the smallest frogs. This is the smallest frog. In fact it's the smallest vertebrate known to man.

Climate change may have killed 4 out of 5 seal pups in 2011

North Atlantic sea ice in areas where harp seals breed has declined as much as 6 percent every 10 years since 1979, according to scientists from Duke University and the International Fund for Animal Welfare. As a result, in low-ice years, entire populations of brand-new seal pups die, reports Yale e360. According to Canada’s Fisheries […]

Baby sloths in a bath, just sayin’

A friend of mine just spent some time helping out at the Sloth Sanctuary in Costa Rica, and I am OVERWHELMINGLY jealous. And you will be too, after watching this video that is going around today for some reason even though it is only one of many cute baby sloth videos on YouTube. Seriously, this is NSFW, in the sense that you may fall down a rabbit hole of baby sloth videos that will wreck your productivity.

Critical List: Huge wind farm to rise in Wyoming; doomsday clock ticks forward

The Obama administration is speeding towards approval for a huge wind project, 1,000 turbines strong, in Wyoming.

GOP Senate candidate Linda McMahon cribbed text for her op-ed on Keystone XL from the website of pipeline builder Transcanada.

There's a second tar-sands pipeline, Northern Gateway, and that one faces strong opposition, as well.