Tag: climate change
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Whispers in the Cloud Forest: The Mysterious Life of the Spectacled Andean Bear
Andrés Acosta makes us fall in love with South America’s only bear species, the Andrean Bear. He teaches the reader about these understudied creatures and the threat of climate change on their habitat.
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The only way to save our natural world is by giving it rights
Imagine a world where nature itself is a political actor recognised in law. In this world, deforestation would be genocide, and the use of bee-killing pesticides a hate crime. It may seem like a radical approach to environmental law, but charging 5p for a plastic bag clearly isn’t going to stop us from hurtling towards…
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‘It is because of the brave women of the past that we can enjoy the freedoms that we have today’
Alice Drinkwater reflects on the story of Eunice Newton Foote, the unrecognised climate change pioneer who did not have the right to vote, let alone an equal voice to male scientists at the time of her discoveries in the 1850s.
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The Climate Crisis: Which animals will survive?
Alexandra Lesayova writes about the threespine stickleback fish; a promising model organism with respect to gaining a better understanding of the effects of climate change on living organisms, and how understanding the basis of natural selection in response to environmental stresses could be the key to accurate predictions of the effects of climate change. Climate…
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Coal, meat, and energy; John Kerry’s interview with Andrew Marr and what it means for the United States’ decarbonisation strategy.
Long read: Sami Cheqrouni-Espinar writes about John Kerry’s proposals on new climate change legislation and how these have raised eyebrows and attracted criticism. What are the technical hurdles of implementing Kerry’s proposed policy and how have scientific experts responded? In an interview with BBC journalist Andrew Marr on the Andrew Marr Show, John Kerry, first…
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Concern for the Climate Endures Through the COVID-19 Pandemic
COVD-19 may be cutting coverage on the climate crisis, but that doesn’t mean people have stopped caring about the climate. 2020 began with wildfires raging across Australia in an unusually intense bushfire season. Driven by drought, high temperatures and lightning, this was a stark reminder of how climate change contributes to the threat of natural…
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Can our oceans save us? The role of seaweed in large scale carbon capture
With governments such as the UK’s looking to rapidly accelerate investment into large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies that will target excessive carbon dioxide emitted found in the air, should policy-makers and ministers set their sights on the sea instead to find an effective solution to the mounting carbon emissions? Sami Cheqrouni-Espinar investigates. A…
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Scientists pinpoint how much time we have left before global warming reaches critical levels
Global warming is the most pressing environmental threat that humanity faces today. The harmful effects that it has brought about are visible, with glaciers melting, sea levels rising and wildfires ramping across the Earth. If global warming continues at its current rate, the Earth will soon be too hot to live on. Up until now,…
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Can the US reclaim global leadership on the climate crisis?
On the 4th of November, the US officially withdrew from the Paris Agreement. This came as no surprise, as president Trump announced his intention to leave back in 2017. Joe Biden promised to rejoin the deal on “on day one in office”. Can America, originally a key part of the deal, take back the lead…
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Sea otter decline accelerating effects of climate change
In a new study published by the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, researchers have found that the loss of key predators may be accelerating the effects of climate change in their habitats. The study focussed on the kelp forests of the Aleutian Archipelago off the western coast of Alaska, which have experienced a sharp decline…