Tag Archives: earthsciences

Turning up the heat: windfarms lead to local night-time warming

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Relative to most other forms of energy, windfarms have a pretty minimal environmental impact, with the deaths of birds and bats generally capturing the most attention. But as a new study of their effects points out, various studies have found that turbines can modify the “transfer of energy, momentum, mass, and moisture within the atmosphere.” After looking at satellite temperature data, the authors of the study conclude that all this transferring has a notable impact: areas containing wind turbines have been seeing their night-time temperatures warm up.

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Climate change alarmist realizes he was wrong, but for the wrong reasons

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James Lovelock is an interesting character. He has a medical degree and has successfully designed a number of scientific instruments, but he’s probably most famous for some of his big ideas, which range from specific geoengineering proposals to the Gaia concept, which proposes that the planet’s geology, biology, and atmosphere interact in a complex, self-regulating system.   

In recent years, his attention has turned to climate change and, unfortunately, he’s largely decided to skip brushing up on science before making grandiose predictions. After having suggested that the human population on Earth would be whittled down to a handful of survivors this century, he’s now backed away from these claims—and has gotten nearly as many things wrong in the process of doing so.

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Fossil raindrops tell us a fair bit about ancient atmosphere

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When you hear about geologists studying records of Earth’s distant past, you probably picture something substantial—layers of rock or mineralized fossils. Raindrops are unlikely to come to mind. But that’s exactly what the authors of a new paper in Nature studied—2.7 billion year old imprints of raindrops.

There’s a long-standing mystery about the climate of the early Earth known as the “faint young Sun paradox.” The Sun burned about 20 percent less brightly in its youth, which should have put the Earth below the freezing point of water. The rock record begs to differ, however. There’s plenty of evidence for liquid oceans on the Earth, and indicators point to a planet even warmer than the present day. So what explains the disparity?

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The rock record got a bad rap. Fossil diversity accurately reflects history

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Say an EKG machine is monitoring your heart, when it suddenly flatlines. You’d be keenly interested to know whether your heart had stopped or the machine had simply gone on the fritz. Paleontologists have faced a similar (if slightly less urgent) puzzle when it comes to the geologic record of life: does the fossil record we see reflect the state of ancient ecosystems, or is it just the readout from a defective instrument? A recent paper in Science gives reassuring support to the fidelity of the rock record.

It’s fascinating to study how species diversity has changed through time, since we can see the effects of major events in Earth’s past and watch evolution play out. It’s literally reading the history of life on Earth. That’s a story we naturally want to know and tell. But fossils are difficult to come by—after all, less than one percent of extinct species are represented in the fossil record. As an imperfect recorder, we have to worry how much the evidence in the rocks is telling us about the organisms, and how much we’re just seeing changes in the rocks themselves.

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Feature: How the EPA linked "fracking" to contaminated well water

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Hydraulic fracturing (more commonly referred to as “fracking”) involves the injection of fluid at high pressure into a well, opening or widening fractures in the rock below that free up the flow of natural gas. Domestic natural gas production has been booming as a result, but opponents claim the technique contaminates drinking water, causing serious health effects.

Rigorous studies on fracking have been sparse, and the impassioned debate has raged on. A new investigation by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at a site in Wyoming is one of the first to look thoroughly at the potential link between fracking operations and groundwater contamination. The agency’s report was released yesterday—and it provides a clear link between fracking and water supply problems.

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Migrating herds of sauropods once travelled the American West

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Sauropods (such as the iconic Apatosaurus) are among the very biggest creatures that ever lived. Their fossils have been found in the American West, preserved in the famous Jurassic-aged Morrison Formation and uncovered at places like Dinosaur National Monument. The geologic record tells us that this region was a seasonally dry floodplain at the time when sauropods roamed across it.

Many paleontologists have suggested that they would have had to migrate elsewhere to find food and water during the dry summer months. This week, a paper published in Nature presents geochemical evidence indicating that this migration did, indeed, take place.

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