Environment

Palm Oil Is Causing Deforestation And Other Myths Environmentalists Want To Dispel

Palm oil is being blamed for a lot but two academic conservationists note that those who ask to boycott all palm oil due to its contribution to deforestation should also consider boycotting coffee, chocolate and coconut if they wish to be consistent. Are y ...

Article - News Staff - May 28 2019 - 2:19pm

Nomads Helped Spread Agriculture Across Eurasia

When we think of agriculture, we don't think of nomadic hunter-gatherers who simply followed nature rather than harnessing it.  But they engaged in trade also. Millet, originally domesticated in China, was likely consumed at low levels by pastoralists ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 10 2019 - 4:51pm

600 Plant Species Extinct (0.15%) NOT 'Bad News For All Species'- Scary And Clickbait BBC News- Annotated

This article is scaring people, with the usual “all going to be extinct soon ” hype that we have had so many stories about this year. It is running in many news sources. I am not singling out the BBC as such but many people have come to rely on the BBC as ...

Article - Robert Walker - Jun 11 2019 - 4:43pm

OOPS- Puerto Rican Insects In Forest Canopy Increase With Warmth- Not Decline- And Frogs Like The Warmth Too

This is about that much publicized insect collapse in Puerto Rico, which the authors blamed on climate change. It turns out that they made a natural but rather big mistake, not correcting for the effects of Hurricane Hugo, which increased the numbers of b ...

Article - Robert Walker - Aug 3 2019 - 2:24am

The Steep Climb Of Vertical Farms And Where Urban Ag Might Be Revolutionary

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Article - Marc Brazeau - Jun 14 2019 - 8:55am

Genetically Engineered American Chestnut Will Help Restore The Decimated, Iconic Tree

American chestnut trees were once among the most majestic hardwood trees in the eastern deciduous forests, many reaching 80 to 120 feet in height and eight feet or more in diameter.    The “then boundless chestnut woods” Thoreau wrote about in Walden once ...

Article - The Conversation - Jun 17 2019 - 12:57pm

Acceleration Of Himalayan Glacier Loss Is Due To Warming- Billion Need Climate Resilience On Rivers Like Yangte, Ganges & Indus

This has lead to some clickbait headlines such as “Glacier melting doubled since 2000, spy satellites show”. However, that’ not what is new about this study; its figures just confirmed earlier results. Increased glacier loss is one of the more robust pred ...

Article - Robert Walker - Aug 3 2019 - 2:26am

Oceans Raised 0.5 Mm By July From Near Record Greenland Ice Melt- But Last Year It Gained Ice- What Is Long Term Prospect?

Short summary: This is another climate change story hitting the news which is not the scary thing it seems to be. Yes it is likely to be due to global warming and yes it adds to sea level rise. Yes, the early melt this summer is likely to mean a significa ...

Article - Robert Walker - Aug 3 2019 - 10:08am

Food Is Too Sweet, Finds Big Data Analysis Of 400,000 Reviews

Throughout human history, humans have artificially selected food. The sweeter, the better. When agriculture came into being, such genetic engineering became commonplace. A banana we eat today has nothing in common with one of a few hundred years ago. At on ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 25 2019 - 6:00am

Yes, With Climate Change, Our Children Can Grow Up In A World Of Nature, Wonder- And Prosperity

It's so sad when people think they can't have children because of climate change. Two years ago most of these parents weren't despairing; they didn’t even give it thought. Climate change was not an election issue in the US elections in 2016 ...

Article - Robert Walker - Jun 30 2019 - 1:46pm