Earth & Environment

Peru has announced a bidding round for new oil and gas concessions but, contrary to what was initially expected, none of them are in the Amazon rainforest. Nine concessions are to be auctioned, energy company Perupetro declared recently, but all of them are offshore along Peru's Pacific Ocean coast. However, campaigners fear contentious oil and gas development in Amazon will still go ahead.

After the Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon oil spill, crude oil toxicity continued to sicken a sentinel Gulf Coast fish species for at least a year or more, new research shows.

Call Al Gore's "Climate Change" hype for what it is, hype. Researchers have now shown how a molecule produced by trees combines with pollutants to create a potentially hazardous form of air pollution.

Using a new laboratory technique to analyze fossil snail shells, scientists have gained insights into an abrupt climate shift that transformed the planet nearly 34 million years ago.

Scientists have developed a new type of solar structure that could vastly improve the daylight cooling of buildings, cars, and other structures by reflecting sunlight back into the chilly vacuum of space.

Taking an approach similar to that used for discovering new therapeutic drugs, chemists have found several compounds cost-effectively that can boost oil production by green microscopic algae up to 85 percent, without decreasing growth. A potential source of biodiesel and other "green" fuels, marine algae species can be raised in saltwater ponds and do not compete with food crops for land or fresh water. After oils have been extracted from the algae, the remaining mass can be processed for animal feed or other uses.

Analysis of a new ice core from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide that goes back 2,000 years, along with a number of other ice core records going back about 200 years, suggests that rapid ice loss from Antarctica observed in the last few decades, particularly the 1990s were not greatly different from some other decades—such as the 1830s and 1940s—that also showed marked temperature spikes and not all that unusual. The same is not true for the Antarctic Peninsula, the part of the continent closer to South America, where rapid ice loss has been even more dramatic and where the changes are almost certainly a result of "human-caused global warming". The enlightened study showing regional climate looking a lot like it does today, and the glaciers retreating much as they are today officially debunks the hoax and scam concocted by the few self-serving Elites to usher new type of taxation called "carbon tax", imposing it to governments, businesses and blaming it on countries like China.

Conservation groups have raised concerns about London-based Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)’s certification process, calling into question the organization’s claim that its eco-labeling program is “the best environmental choice in seafood.” A joint project between World Wildlife Fund and Unilever, to create positive incentives that would improve the status and management of fisheries, its certification process is paid for by the fisheries that many times are not in compliance with domestic laws, with rates dependent on the size and complexity of the fishery. Thus, the MSC’s narrow definition of sustainability and double-standard “effective management” principle is out of step with the general public perception of what that term and standards it promote means and a consortium of researchers strongly proposes that it is now time that these be re-evaluated.

China's icebreaker "Xuelong," or "Snow Dragon," returned to its anchorage in Shanghai on Tuesday, concluding the country's 29th Antarctic expedition.

Dark lightning, flashes of gamma rays that occur at altitudes in which commercial aircraft fly, doesn’t produce much light, but it does produce radiation. New research pinpoints the amount of radiation that dark lightning produces -- and how much pilots and passengers might be getting exposed to as the doses are not super scary -- but it could be worse.

Scientists have long known that veins of gold are formed by mineral deposition from hot fluids flowing through cracks deep in Earth’s crust. But a study has found that the process can occur almost instantaneously — possibly within a few tenths of a second.

Venezuela has reduced its deforestation rate by 47.3% due to the government’s eco-socialist policies of the past 14 years.