Set a lighter to an icy block of methane hydrate, a naturally frozen combo of methane gas and water, and flames spew forth at random. However unlikely this fluke of nature may appear — burning ice — it could hold the keys to a vast wealth of untapped, clean-burning methane gas thought to exist deep beneath the outer margins of most continental shelves. Its contribution may be peripheral to the immediate needs of Western Europe and North America, currently drowning in cheap natural gas, but it present a potential lifeline to resource-poor nations like Japan, which already imports more ... Read More
Prop Planes: The Future of Eco-Friendly Aviation?
February 9, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Since the days of Kitty Hawk, propeller-driven engines have been at aviation’s forefront — even today’s jet-powered turboprops are arguably mere extensions of this century-old technology. Now NASA and companies such as General Electric and Rolls-Royce are developing a new generation of fuel-efficient “open rotor” engines that are definitely not your granddaddy’s propeller. The goal is to introduce these new engines into a regional jet market with the promise of boosting airlines’ struggling bottom lines while meeting future international fuel-efficiency ... Read More
New Dirt on Climate Change
January 13, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
For decades, geologists have been drilling — literally — for clues that would help them understand ancient wholesale changes in Earth’s climate, clues that could shed light on current global warming. Usually, their efforts have been aimed at sea sediments taken from cores extracted hundreds of feet beneath the ocean floor. But in a more terrestrial project this past summer, an international geological team led by the University of New Hampshire began deep-core drilling at three sites in Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin east of Yellowstone National Park. These six new core samples from ... Read More
Long Slog for the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker
September 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Against all odds, the critically endangered ivory-billed woodpecker may still be hanging on in a desolate handful of bottomland swamps in the American Southeast. Depending on who's asked, the last putative sighting of the large black-and-white bird occurred in early 2007 in the Florida Panhandle or the spring of 2008 in a Louisiana bayou. And there hasn't been an undisputed report of ivory-bills for nearly 70 years, more than twice the bird's maximum lifespan. The putative rediscovery of the bird in 2005, announced with much fanfare at a Washington, D.C., press conference that included ... Read More
Crazy Weather and Climate: Do Dots Connect?
May 23, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
At the end of one of the Northern Hemisphere’s wildest winters in memory, we thought it would be a good time to ask a climatologist what’s up with such extreme weather. Even Australia’s normally calm summer has been anything but: First there was drought, then typhoons and then floods of biblical proportions. Granted, such extreme weather has been exacerbated both by recent El Niños (warmer-than-normal sea surface temperatures) and La Niñas (colder-than-normal sea surface temperatures) in the equatorial Pacific. But it does give pause to wonder: Is this global warming on steroids, or ... Read More