Earth
- Earth
For coots, hatching order is crucial ID
When birds sneak eggs into others' nest, mom and dad can learn to find their own.
- Earth
Seismology in your backyard (and on your Twitter feed)
With two USGS programs, Twitter, inexpensive seismic equipment transform citizens into scientists.
By Sid Perkins - Earth
Earth’s magnetic field … updated
Three most used models of Earth's magnetic field are revised to reflect small changes in the field.
By Sid Perkins - Climate
IPCC to offer climate science scholarships
The Nobel Peace Prize will pay dividends in the developing world by funding scholarships for climate-science studies. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which received the 2007 Nobel Prize, announced today that it is investing its winnings as seed money for these scholarships. They’d go to residents of nations expected to experience dramatic impacts of climate change.
By Janet Raloff - Climate
Climate chief channels Truman, but …
On Monday, long chaotic lines kept several thousand accredited conference attendees – some standing in the freezing cold for up to 11 hours -- from being allowed to register for the United Nations climate change meeting. “Who’s to blame? Me,” said de Boer, head of the United Nations climate change office. “Part of the problem that we’re facing here is that you can’t fit size 12 feet into size 6 shoes.”
By Janet Raloff - Climate
Climate: Negotiating the brackets
Representatives of 193 nations are posturing and challenging, threatening and bluffing, as they wrestle to draft a successor climate treaty to the Kyoto Protocol. The chief objective is to lower global emissions of greenhouse gases. How to do it, who will pay for it, how high to strive – all of these are up in the air. Still. Three days before the negotiators are to sign onto a statement of shared goals and intentions.
By Janet Raloff - Earth
Irrigation draining California groundwater at ‘unsustainable’ pace
The GRACE satellites have tracked water movement from the Central Valley since 2003.
By Sid Perkins - Climate
U.N effectively locks out reporters, others in Copenhagen
For a year, the United Nations and national leaders have stumped around the world, championing the importance of the Copenhagen climate negotiations. It made this international conclave a must-see destination. And the UN responded by granting accreditation to huge numbers of government officials, UN officials, public-interest groups and journalists. In fact, to almost twice as many individuals as the conference center could hold. And that led to pandemonium today as the UN confronted literally thousands of people waiting to pick up their security badges – people this organization couldn’t or wouldn’t accommodate.
By Janet Raloff - Climate
‘Climate-gate’: Beyond the embarrassment
The United Nations Climate Change meeting, which I arrive at tomorrow in Copenhagen, is currently deadlocked on more important issues than who said what impolitic thing about somebody else in a private email to a colleague.
By Janet Raloff - Life
Dinosaurs broiled, not grilled
Debris from K-T impact could have been heat source and heat shield.
- Paleontology
New fossil helps solidify dino origins
The dog-sized creature bolsters the notion that early dinosaurs first appeared in what is now South America.
By Sid Perkins - Earth
Earth’s atmosphere may be extraterrestrial in origin
Analyses of krypton, xenon hint that air didn’t fizz from within the planet.
By Sid Perkins