Planets & Transits
New Moon in Leo August 12, 2026
The New Moon arrives in Leo August 12 at 8:36 PM UTC, and with it comes a singular...
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- Written by: Neil Ormerod, Australian Catholic University
This week’s decision by four Australian Catholic orders to divest fully from fossil fuels can be interpreted as a direct response to the encyclical on the environment, issued by Pope Francis almost exactly a year ago.
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- Written by: John Cook, The University of Queensland
The fossil fuel industry has spent many millions of dollars on confusing the public about climate change. But the role of vested interests in climate science denial is only half the picture.
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- Written by: Nancy Averett, Boston University
The solar panels of about 40,000 Massachusetts households and community groups cut electricity prices for all of the approximately three million electricity ratepayers in the state, even those without the panels, also called photovoltaics (PV) systems.
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- Written by: Amy Pullan, University of Sheffield
Following record-high temperatures and melting records that affected northwest Greenland in summer 2015, a new study offers the first evidence linking melting in Greenland to the anticipated effects of a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification.
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- Written by: Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, UNSW Australia; Andrew King, University of Melbourne, and Geert Jan van Oldenborgh
On May 19, India’s all-time temperature record was smashed in the northern city of Phalodi in the state of Rajasthan. Temperatures soared to 51?, beating the previous record set in 1956 by 0.4?.
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- Written by: Alexander Arkhipkin, University of Aberdeen
Squid, octopus and cuttlefish populations are booming across the world. These fast-growing, adaptable creatures are perfectly equipped to exploit the gaps left by extreme climate changes and overfishing, according to a study colleagues and I published in the journal Current Biology.
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- Written by: Laura Diamond, Georgia Institute of Technology
The plan for Louisville includes tree-planting targets and cool roofing and paving goals for different neighborhoods. In all, an additional 450,000 trees are recommended.
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- Written by: Simon Albert, The University of Queensland; Alistair Grinham, The University of Queensland; Badin Gibbes, The University of Queensland; Javier Leon, University of the Sunshine Coast, and John Church, CSIRO
Sea-level rise, erosion and coastal flooding are some of the greatest challenges facing humanity from climate change.
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- Written by: Joe Romm, ThinkProgress
Battery costs are plummeting to levels that make EVs a truly disruptive technology, as we’ve explained. That’s why electric vehicle (EV) sales are exploding world-wide, and why Tesla broke every record for pre-sales with its affordable ($35,000), 200+ mile range Model 3 last month.
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- Written by: Steven Gorelick, Local Futures
Among climate change activists, solutions usually center on a transition to renewable energy. There may be differences over whether this would be best accomplished by a carbon tax, bigger subsidies for wind and solar power, divestment from fossil fuel companies
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- Written by: Tara P. Dhakal, Binghamton University, State University of New York
Global demand for energy is increasing by the hour as developing countries move toward industrialization. Experts estimate that by the year 2050, worldwide demand for electricity may reach 30 terawatts (TW). For perspective, one terawatt is roughly equal to the power of 1.3 billion horses.
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- Written by: Jason Maderer, Georgia Institute of Technology
A team of marine scientists has returned from nearly a month of scuba diving on coral reefs in the middle of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. What they saw will haunt them for a long time.
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- Written by: Tim Radford, Climate News Network
Marine life faces increased threats as researchers warn that warmer waters caused by climate change could seriously reduce the levels of oxygen in the world’s seas.
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- Written by: James Devitt, New York University
"Weather patterns in recent decades have been a poor source of motivation for Americans to demand policies to combat the climate change problem," says Megan Mullin. "But without serious efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, year-round climates ultimately will become much less pleasant."
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- Written by: Erin Biba, Ensia
One of the places machine learning is turning out to be the most beneficial is in the environmental sciences, which have generated huge amounts of information from monitoring Earth’s various systems — underground aquifers, the warming climate or animal migration, for example.
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- Written by: David Keith, Assistant Professor of System Dynamics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Few product launches in recent memory have captured as much attention as last week’s unveiling of the Tesla Model 3 electric vehicle (EV), Tesla’s first vehicle pitched at the mass market.
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- Written by: Aimée Slangen, Postdoctoral research fellow, Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research
Global average sea level has risen by about 17 cm between 1900 and 2005. This is a much faster rate than in the previous 3,000 years. The sea level changes for several reasons, including rising temperatures as fossil fuel
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- Written by: Jan Hofman, Professor of Water Science and Engineering
Every time you flush your toilet or drain the bath, you’re losing something surprisingly valuable: heat. It takes a lot of energy to warm up the water in the first place, and vast amounts of this energy simply disappear down and is lost in the environment.
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- Written by: Sybil Sharvelle, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Colorado State University
Many regions of the United States are struggling with water shortages. Large areas of the West are contending with moderate to severe drought, while California is now in the fifth year of one of the most extreme droughts in its history. Even non-arid regions, such as the Southeast, are not exempt from water shortages.
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- Written by: Andrew J. Hoffman, Holcim (US) Professor at the Ross School of Business and Education Director at the Graham Sustainability Institute, University of Michigan
Much of the U.S. was built around the automobile, with greater distances to be covered than in places like Europe, making Americans' daily lifestyles higher in energy than elsewhere.
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- Written by: Joshua D. Rhodes, Postdoctoral Researcher of Energy, University of Texas at Austin
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory this week said that rooftop solar panels have the potential to generate nearly 40 percent of electricity in the U.S. But what about the cost of going solar?
