High concentrations of heavy metals, like copper and gold, are toxic for most living creatures. This is not the case for the bacterium C. metallidurans, which has found a way to extract valuable trace elements from a compound of heavy metals without poisoning itself. One interesting side-effect: the formation of tiny gold nuggets. A team…

Department of Defense says wild weather could endanger 1,700 sites in findings that run counter to White House views on climate. The Pentagon survey investigated the effects of “a changing climate” on all US military installations worldwide, which it said numbered more than 3,500. Assets most often damaged include airfields, energy infrastructure and water systems,…

Miami, battered last year by Hurricane Irma, was the least energy-efficient in a sample of 15 cities, with its monthly energy consumption 25 percent above the national average, the data showed. Such cities are “shooting themselves in the foot” because their immoderate energy consumption emits avoidable greenhouse gases that are heating up the planet and…

She argues that the lifting of the 1920 Jones Act (the Merchant Marine Act) — which requires all goods to enter Puerto Rico’s ports on US-made, US-staffed, and US-flag-carrying ships — for ten days after Hurricane María still choked hurricane relief efforts, as supplies sat waiting to be distributed or were sent back to their…

Research has found that changes in ocean currents in the Atlantic Ocean influence rainfall in the Western Hemisphere, and that these two systems have been linked for thousands of years. The findings, published on Jan. 26 in Nature Communications, are important because the detailed look into Earth’s past climate and the factors that influenced it…

Current levels of greenhouse gas emissions are putting nearly half of California’s natural vegetation at risk from climate stress, with transformative implications for the state’s landscape and the people and animals that depend on it, according to a study led by the University of California, Davis. However, cutting emissions so that global temperatures increase by…

The team also found that the Southwest Tributary of Pine Island Glacier, a deep ice channel between the two glaciers, could trigger or accelerate ice loss in Thwaites Glacier if the observed melting of Pine Island Glacier by warm ocean water continues down the ice channel. The results were published online in the Annals of…

While there is a growing market for organic solar cells ¬¬- they contain materials that are cheaper, more abundant, and more environmentally friendly than those used in typical solar panels – they also tend to be less efficient in converting sunlight to electricity than conventional solar cells. Now, scientists who are members of the Center…

In 1950, fewer than one-third of the world’s people lived in cities. Today more than half do. By 2050, urban areas will be home to some two-thirds of Earth’s human population. “This scale and pace of urbanization has never been seen in human history,” states a new report, Sustainable Urban Systems: Articulating a Long-Term Convergence…

A clear majority of mayors were prepared to confront President Donald Trump’s administration over climate change and felt their cities could be influential in counteracting the policies of the Republican president, who at times has called global warming a hoax and last year withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate accord. “A striking 68 percent…