environment

It wouldn't be surprising to discover if the world's energy consumption significantly spiked this year due to the abrupt change in lifestyles and working conditions. At the same time, restrictions in movement and travel may have made traditional energy sources like diesel and fossil fuel more difficult to process, maintain, and even transport. The need for accessible sustainable energy is becoming even more important and Microsoft has just tested one such solution on one of the world's biggest consumers of power: datacenter servers.

Continue Reading

KFC is no stranger to technology but most of the time you see its name in tech news is mostly in relation to some tongue-in-cheek promotion or gimmick. That said, the company best known for its chicken-based menu has also been dipping its fingers in more serious and actually more practical technologies, one that could save its business should there be a severe chicken shortage. Its backup plan goes beyond just Beyond Meat and involves practically 3D printing your next serving of chicken nuggets.

Continue Reading

Fast-food company Burger King is back with another environmentally-friendly Whopper -- and unlike the Impossible Whopper, this new burger features real beef, not a plant-based product. What makes it unique? The beef is sourced from cows that were fed a unique diet intended to reduce methane emissions, one of the multiple concerns associated with raising cattle for meat.

Continue Reading

Ride-hailing company Lyft has vowed an ambitious goal: it will transition to 100-percent electric vehicles by 2030. The commitment was announced on June 17, with Lyft explaining that it is collaborating with the Environmental Defense Fund on this effort. The news comes amid reports that transportation is driving greenhouse gas pollution in the US and is a big source of pollution elsewhere in the world.

Continue Reading

Utah State University Assistant Professor Janice Brahney and her team recently published a study looking at microplastics emitted into the atmosphere. The team used high-resolution atmospheric deposition data and identified samples of microplastics and other particles collected over 14 months from 11 national parks and wilderness areas. In the samples, the researchers identified plastic and polymers composition to identify the sources of plastic committed to the atmosphere and track its movement fallout.

Continue Reading

A new study out of Columbia University warns that North America -- primarily the western US and northern Mexico -- is cruising toward a new potentially record-breaking megadrought fueled by climate change. The findings come amid a long series of drought years in these regions, building upon a body of evidence that North America may face an extreme long-term drought akin to those of the prehistoric period.

Continue Reading

You'd think it would be straightforward: a new car gets launched, it gets a set of official economy figures from the EPA, and then you can make a measured comparison before you head to the dealerships. In reality, though, economy testing from the US Environmental Protection Agency isn't quite what most people shopping for a new car might expect it to be.

Continue Reading

An announcement from the EPA* effectively suspended environmental rules for organizations in the USA for an indefinite amount of time. The EPA's document claims that because the COVID-19 pandemic is constraining the abilities of groups normally regulated by the EPA, that those groups will not be subject to the same rules as normal. This "temporary policy" is in effect until the EPA says it's done.

Continue Reading

NASA is currently operating 11 satellite missions that are monitoring the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. NASA says that those missions show that the ice sheets are melting six times faster than they were in the 1990s. The space agency also notes that if the melting trend continues, the regions are on track to match worst-case scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for sea-level rise by 2100.

Continue Reading

Human activity involving fossil fuels has been a much bigger contributor to climate change than previously thought, a new study from the University of Rochester has found. Methane is a greenhouse gas that, compared to carbon dioxide, doesn't last very long in the atmosphere. However, and as with other greenhouse gases, it does trap heat, contributing to the harmful warming of our planet.

Continue Reading

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and the world's richest person, has committed $10 billion under his newly announced Bezos Earth Fund. In an announcement on Instagram today, Bezos stated that he wants 'to work alongside others both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change on this planet we all share.' Bezos indicates that the $10 billion is just the start of his financial investment into the planet.

Continue Reading

A new study out of the Yale School of Public Health has found that air pollution may be able to trigger non-fatal heart attacks, making the ultrafine particles found in this pollution a ‘serious public health concern.’ The research was recently published in Environmental Health Perspectives; it warns that the heart attack risk is particularly high in the first few hours after exposure.

Continue Reading