I Spent My Life Saving the Whales. Now They Might Save Us
More than fifty years ago, my team and I first discovered that whales sing to each other. Recordings we captured of the beautiful, evocative songs of the humpback whale captivated people all over the world. Whale song became the soundtrack for the “Save the Whales” movement, one of the most successful conservation initiatives in history. It led to the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act, which marked the end of large-scale whaling in the United States and saved several whale populations from extinction.
In the decades since, I’ve often pondered what it would take to spark a new conservation movement uniquel...
Source: TIME: Science - June 5, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Roger Payne Tags: Uncategorized climate change healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
Companies Knew the Dangers of PFAS ‘ Forever Chemicals ’ —and Kept Them Secret
The female employees at the DuPont chemical company’s Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, W. Va., were not given much of an explanation in 1981 when they were all abruptly moved away from any part of the factory that produced a category of chemicals then known as C8. They certainly were not told about their eight recently pregnant coworkers who had worked with C8 and given birth that year—one of them to a baby with eye defects and just a single nostril; another to a baby who had eye and tear duct defects; and a third with C8 in its cord blood.
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For any employees w...
Source: TIME: Science - June 1, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Jeffrey Kluger Tags: Uncategorized embargoed study Environment Environmental Health healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
Scientists Just Got A Step Closer to The Sci-Fi Reality of Building Solar Power Stations in Space
On the night of May 22, a group of researchers and students gathered around a computer monitor on the roof of Caltech’s electrical engineering department. The monitors were connected to equipment designed to detect microwave radiation received from a satellite in space. And about 300 miles above them, far over the night’s thick cover of clouds, that satellite was about to pass overhead, equipped as a test bed for technologies they had developed to gather solar energy in space and project it down to Earth.
The researchers weren’t expecting much. They had already accomplished their primary objective back i...
Source: TIME: Science - June 1, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Alejandro de la Garza Tags: Uncategorized climate change energy healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
Investors See AI Chips as New Gold. Here ’s Why
SAN FRANCISCO — The hottest thing in technology is an unprepossessing sliver of silicon closely related to the chips that power video game graphics. It’s an artificial intelligence chip, designed specifically to make building AI systems such as ChatGPT faster and cheaper.
Such chips have suddenly taken center stage in what some experts consider an AI revolution that could reshape the technology sector — and possibly the world along with it. Shares of Nvidia, the leading designer of AI chips, rocketed up almost 25% last Thursday after the company forecast a huge jump in revenue that analysts said indicated...
Source: TIME: Science - June 1, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Hamilton / AP Tags: Uncategorized Artificial Intelligence Explainer wire Source Type: news
Climate Change Is Threatening Ketchup. AI Could Help Save It
Hold on to your Heinz. The latest looming food shortage is likely to include ketchup, coming hard on the heels of last year’s potato chip crisis and runs on mustard (in France, at least). Three summers’ worth of unprecedented high heat in the world’s key tomato-producing regions—Australia, Spain, and California’s central valley—have led to a precipitous decline in tomato paste stocks, the key ingredient for ketchup and other condiments. California, which produces a quarter of the world’s tomatoes, and 95% of the tomatoes used in U.S. canned goods, delivered nearly 5% less than the ...
Source: TIME: Science - May 31, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Aryn Baker Tags: Uncategorized climate climate change Climate Is Everything healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
Nearly All of Earth ’ s Ecological Vital Signs Are In The ‘ Danger Zone ’ Scientists Warn
Earth has pushed past seven out of eight scientifically established safety limits and into “the danger zone,” not just for an overheating planet that’s losing its natural areas, but for well-being of people living on it, according to a new study.
The study looks not just at guardrails for the planetary ecosystem but for the first time it includes measures of “justice,” which is mostly about preventing harm for countries, ethnicities and genders.
The study by the international scientist group Earth Commission published in Wednesday’s journal Nature looks at climate, air pollution, phospho...
Source: TIME: Science - May 31, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Seth Borenstein/AP Tags: Uncategorized climate change embargoed study Environmental Health healthscienceclimate wire Source Type: news
Chinese Leader Xi Jinping Warns of AI Risks to National Security
BEIJING — China’s ruling Communist Party is calling for beefed-up national security measures, highlighting the risks posed by advances in artificial intelligence.
A meeting headed by party leader and President Xi Jinping on Tuesday urged “dedicated efforts to safeguard political security and improve the security governance of internet data and artificial intelligence,” the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Xi, who is China’s head of state, commander of the military and chair of the party’s National Security Commission, called at the meeting for “staying keenly aware of the complica...
Source: TIME: Science - May 31, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Gabe Stern / AP Tags: Uncategorized China wire Source Type: news
What NASA Can Teach SpaceX About Environmentally Friendly Rocket Launches
Nobody knows how many birds were killed when SpaceX’s Starship rocket—the largest, most powerful rocket ever built—took off and blew up during its inaugural launch on April 20. And the odds are nobody will ever know.
“Birds are small,” says Mike Parr, president of the American Bird Conservancy. “Anything that gets burnt up like that will basically vaporize, so we can’t really assess it.”
Nobody will know what other animals were killed either—the jaguarundi wildcat that makes the wilds around SpaceX’s launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, its home; the endangered Kemp...
Source: TIME: Science - May 30, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Jeffrey Kluger Tags: Uncategorized climate change healthscienceclimate Space Source Type: news
China Launches New Manned Spacecraft in Race to Put Astronauts on Moon
BEIJING — China launched a new three-person crew for its orbiting space station on Tuesday, with an eye to putting astronauts on the moon before the end of the decade.
The Shenzhou 16 spacecraft lifted off from the Jiuquan launch center on the edge of the Gobi Desert in northwestern China atop a Long March 2-F rocket just after 9:30 a.m. (0130 GMT) Tuesday.
The crew, including China’s first civilian astronaut, will overlap briefly with three now aboard the Tiangong station, who will then return to Earth after completing their six-month mission.
A third module was added to the station in November, and space prog...
Source: TIME: Science - May 30, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Associated Press Tags: Uncategorized China wire Source Type: news
New York City Is Slowly Sinking Under Its Own Weight, Study Finds
(NEW YORK) — If rising oceans aren’t worry enough, add this to the risks New York City faces: The metropolis is slowly sinking under the weight of its skyscrapers, homes, asphalt and humanity itself.
New research estimates the city’s landmass is sinking at an average rate of 1 to 2 millimeters per year, something referred to as “subsidence.”
That natural process happens everywhere as ground is compressed, but the study published this month in the journal Earth’s Future sought to estimate how the massive weight of the city itself is hurrying things along.
More than 1 million buildings are...
Source: TIME: Science - May 29, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Bobby Caina Calvan / AP Tags: Uncategorized adaptation wire Source Type: news
The Ancient Roots of Psychotherapy
Our medical ancestors sought to heal the mind long before they could treat diseases of the brain. Magicians and priests tended the sick through suggestion, therapeutic bond, and tincture of time, not by science. This has changed. During the last century and a half, our progress in understanding and treating mental suffering has been remarkable by any standard, drawing importantly upon lessons from the asylum, advances in psychology and the science of the brain, and what had been learned by doctors and nurses who treated shell shock during the First World War.
Psychotherapy has been described as the oldest branch of medicin...
Source: TIME: Science - May 25, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Kay Redfield Jamison Tags: Uncategorized Excerpt freelance health Source Type: news
Biodiversity Is Nearing an ‘Extinction Crisis,’ Animal Researchers Say
Man has killed off much of the Earth’s existing wildlife, and some scientists argue that human activity has set off the world’s sixth mass extinction event. New research now shows global animal populations are declining more rapidly than earlier believed.
Authors of the study published in the journal Biological Reviews on May 15 analyzed more than 71,000 animal species—spanning mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes and insects—to assess their population growth over time. They found 49% of these species are stable, but 48% have shrinking populations, and only 3% have populations on the rise.
A...
Source: TIME: Science - May 23, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Chad de Guzman Tags: Uncategorized climate climate change Environment Source Type: news
Government Climate Rules Fail To Target Nearly 90% of Global Methane Emissions
Methane belched from livestock operations, bubbling from rice paddies, and seeping from landfills, coal mines, and leaking pipelines is about 25 times as powerful as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. The world urgently needs to begin to draw down those emissions in order to limit the worst effects of climate change. But, so far, governments around the world have only made miniscule efforts to address the methane problem, even as emissions of the potent greenhouse gas continue to increase.
That is the conclusion of the first comprehensive assessment of methane policies from around the world, p...
Source: TIME: Science - May 19, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Alejandro de la Garza Tags: Uncategorized climate change embargoed study healthscienceclimate policy Source Type: news
El Ni ño ’ s Lasting Impact Can Cost the Global Economy Trillions of Dollars
The natural burst of El Nino warming that changes weather worldwide is far costlier with longer-lasting expenses than experts had thought, averaging trillions of dollars in damage, a new study found.
An El Nino is brewing now and it might be a big — and therefore costly — one, scientists said. El Nino is a temporary and natural warming of parts of the equatorial Pacific, that causes droughts, floods and heat waves in different parts of the world. It also adds an extra boost to human-caused warming.
The study in Thursday’s journal Science totals global damage with an emphasis on lasting economic scars. It ...
Source: TIME: Science - May 18, 2023 Category: Science Authors: SETH BORENSTEIN / AP Tags: Uncategorized climate change embargoed study healthscienceclimate wire Source Type: news
World ’ s Biggest Polluters Responsible for a Third of Forests Burned in Western North America
It’s impossible to ignore the impact of climate change as early-season fires rage in western Canada right now. And scientists are getting better and better at calculating the likelihood of a specific event happening because of climate change—such as a drought or heat wave that can exacerbate fire conditions. Now, scientists are also able to pin-point just how responsible the top polluters are for the impact of these wildfires.
According to a new study published May 16 in Environmental Research Letters, 37% of the total area of forest burned in the western U.S. and Canada since 1986 can be linked to the emission...
Source: TIME: Science - May 18, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Kyla Mandel Tags: Uncategorized climate change Climate Is Everything embargoed study extreme weather healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
