"We Have Never Seen a Year Like This Before": Meteorologist Jeff MastersThe devastating tornadoes and rampant flooding that's rocked the nation this year has often left the public with more questions than answers when it naturally sought out 'big pictu...

Wind Power is Still a Maturing TechnologyUniversity of Adelaide acoustics researchers are investigating the causes of wind turbine noise with the aim of making them quieter. "Wind turbine noise is controversial but there's no doubt that there is noise....

A twist on the tale of Arctic development opened up by warming temperatures and melting ice: We know that oil companies are itching to explore in newly ice-free waters and that nations are already staking claims, but a new report in Nature Climate Chan...

It's an icon that has been part of our lives forever... The electricity pylon was invented, in this design, in the '20's and since then it has been marching across the fields and highways of our mind and world.Now the Royal Institute for British Archit...

Barcoding seems to be the conservation concept of the day, and that goes for sparing trees from illegal logging. The latest country to use the technology is Liberia, and at least one expert thinks that barcoding trees to protect timber production could...

The building of the massive 5.6-square mile Ivanpah solar project in the Mojave Desert by BrightSource Energy has been suspended in the midst of construction while the U.S. Bureau of Land Management assesses whether more than 3,000 acres of tortoise ha...

The Washington Post has a story today, Floods along the Mississippi River lead to renewed calls for a change in strategy, detailing the various ways that governments are coping with increased flooding. But the discussion shouldn't just be limited to te...

It may seem like stupidity embodied on the face of it, but six Scottish wind farms have been paid the equivalent of $1.46 million to not operate last month, EarthTimes reports. The reason is only going to become more important as renewable energy sourc...

Of all the thirsty countries in the arid Middle East, perhaps the worst off is Yemen, where the mountainous capital city of Sana'a is rapidly running out of water altogether. What water there is in the country's cities is often heavily polluted, causin...

I was blown away by this video of the Milky Way, and it's on my "watch this when your brain is fried" list. I think it might be one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen -- on par with the video at Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium of the Kiroshio ...

Researchers are usually figuring out how to get rid of viruses, but in an interesting twist they have figured out how to harness viruses to boost the efficiency of solar cells. Scientists at MIT have figured out how to make a genetically engineered vir...

The Dutch are well known for their ubiquitous bike lanes, to the point where Amsterdam is neck and neck with Copenhagen for the title of most bike-loving capital in Europe. Now, Denmark will have to come up with something big to match the latest plan f...

A vivid picture of our climate's future can be found in our past. Currently, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels have reached 390 parts per million (ppm). The last time CO2 was that high was around 3 million years ago, in the early Pliocene. Back t...

All manner of wonderful graphics are being created from the newly-available 2010 US Census data. A new sort of nuclear family, for example, is portrayed with this mouse-over map showing the population density inside 10 and 50 mile evacuation radii arou...

Multi-meter sea level rise is now pretty much a certainty, even if the timescale is still very much up for debate and influenced by how much and how quickly we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Another wrinkle in the scenario is how some places at s...

/>Terraces, buffers, and conservation tillage at work on a farm in Iowa. Image credit: Wikimedia CommonsThe Fifteen Percent Factor: Who knew that Iowa led the nation in percent of electrical generation capacity from wind? The State's 15% reliance on...

Starting in January 2012The prime minister of Québec, Jean Charest, has unveiled his incentive plan for electric vehicles yesterday. Rebates of up to C$8000 will be offered on a sliding scale, with the biggest ones offered to the EVs with the biggest ...

Image: 8 year old Kenzie Brown with her Science Project, photo from Josh Brown, Kenzie's Father We Affect Weather? Do you ever have the feeling it always seems to rain on the weekends but not on the weekdays? So did 8 year old Kenzie Brown, of Phoeni...

Image: Sunengy You've no doubt heard of offshore wind power, how about offshore solar power? Well, Australian solar power company Sunengy would like you to, or at least floating solar power--announcing that it has partnered with India's Tata Power to...

From our friends at Fast Company, "bridging the fuzzy border between design and business." The 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan on March 11 shortened Earth's day by 1.8 millionths of a second, according to NASA scientists. Earth still tilts on its...

Data that scientists have extracted from ice cores in places like Greenland have provided some of the most compelling evidence that the climate is rapidly warming. But it's not a widely understood concept, simple as the fundamentals of the process ar...

Photo by mrpbps We know that a significant portion of ocean pollution comes from particles in the air released by fossil fuel combustion, power plants and the like, and that rainfall is a primary way it moves from air to ocean. But just how much of t...

The A-Train series of satellites collecting aerosol information; Image via NASA Last month, we reported on the Glory Satellite from NASA. Intended to measure airborn grit from volcanoes, forest fires, smokestacks and tailpipes, the satellite, named G...

Photo by Ladycliff via Flickr Creative Commons While rainwater collection is a contentious issue in some areas, California is looking to make it a little easier to use your rain barrels as a water source. This week, AB 275, the Rainwater Capture Act ...

Photo by eutrophication&hypoxia via Flickr Creative Commons We've been hearing about the intense flooding in Australia for weeks now, but a lesser known side effect is the impact those floods are having on the Great Barrier Reef. From the cyclone its...

Photo: Heat USA We're already well aware that the American Southwest, which is naturally hot and dry, is seriously strapped for water. And the situation is getting worse every day, with populations in California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico conti...

Image credit: Geophysical Research Letters Questions such as how much fresh water we have left on Earth, where it is located, and how we can access it are all nearly impossible to answer. However, scientists working on understanding and revealing the...

photo: Boris Johnson/Creative Commons Some more on the both simple and complex situation of Himalayan glaciers in a warming world: A new piece in Reuters fits in well with what TreeHugger has reported on a number of occasions, while the overall t... ...

Photo: Craig/Make No Back-Breaking Shovelling, No Pollution Make reader Craig submitted his DIY bike-based snow plow project: "The custom 3-wheel bike with sidecar was made years ago, a replica of a bike my childhood friend had. Last winter I added a...

Images via Exploration Architecture - original visualisation of Sahara Forest Project There's great news for sustainable design innovation this week as the Sahara Forest Project gets backing from a development deal between Norway and Jordan. We wrote...