Researchers working in the Barents Sea have discovered hundreds of craters on the Arctic Sea floor, some measuring over a kilometer in width. These craters, which date back to the end of the last Ice Age, were formed when large reserves of methane exploded in the wake of retreating ice sheets. Because methane is a…
After years of being missing and presumably dead, the ole maverick McCain poked his head out today to give his fellow Republicans a big middle finger. A vote to kill Obama-era environmental regulations failed to pass the Senate because of McCain, and many believe he did it because his senator colleagues aren’t…
I walk a lonely road, the only one that I have ever known. Don’t know where it goes, but it’s fucking littered with red Skittles that fell off of a truck en route to feed some cows.
Napoleon Dynamite takes a sip from a tall jar of milk, then sets it down next to two other jars. He points. “The defect in that one is bleach.” “That’s correct,” says a judge from FFA, the agricultural education organization. He sips another. “This tastes like the cow got into an onion patch.”
From British Columbia to Northern California, planet Earth’s got a case of the toots. A recent deep ocean mapping survey has learned that a geologically-active strip of seafloor called the Cascadia Subduction Zone is bubbling methane like mad. It could be one of the most active methane seeps on the planet.
When it comes to planet-warming gases we need to worry about, carbon dioxide is at the top of the list. But the runner-up in the climate hall of infamy—methane—is turning out to be a bigger problem than we realized. A study published in Nature today estimates that global methane emissions from the oil and gas…
File this under bad news for humanity’s climate ambitions: The dams and reservoirs we use to harness ‘clean’ hydroelectric power and irrigate our crops apparently emit carbon. A lot of it. All told, man-made reservoirs release roughly a gigaton of heat-trapping greenhouse gases each year. That’s more than the entire…
These soft patches of grass in Siberia look like a cool trampoline, but are actually concealing dangerous bubbles of methane. It’s probably a good thing the guy didn’t shoot the bubble at the end.
The natural gas leak at Aliso Canyon earlier this year was already one of the worst environmental disasters in US history. Several months later, however, it has now gained the additional distinction of being the first industrial methane point-source visible from outer space.
We’ve heard a lot about how stuffing cows full of antibiotics is accelerating the superbug apocalypse. That alone should convince us to stop, but if you needed more evidence, here’s another dirty secret: antibiotics could be making cows gassier and boosting their contribution to global warming.
Most of us consider farts to be little more than a mild embarrassment. But cow farts (and burps) are a scourge upon the Earth, releasing heat-trapping methane that wreaks havoc on our climate. Now, heroic scientists want to put an end to global warming-by-flatulence once and for all.
As tiny-handed man-children command the lion’s share of our nation’s attention, the still-acting leader of the United States—President Obama—is quietly doubling down on climate change. The latest part of Captain Planet’s scheme? Getting Canada on board.
Even though New Horizons swept past Pluto last year, more than half the data that it gleaned from the planet during its flyby is still on the spacecraft, which means that there’s still much that we’ll be learning about the dwarf planet. Case in point: methane snow-covered peaks.
The LA gas leak may be a climate disaster, but a similar problem is playing out all over the world. Now, thanks to infrared technology, we’re starting to see just how much methane the oil and gas industry is hemorrhaging—mostly, out of laziness.
Engineers don’t know exactly what caused the gigantic natural gas leak outside LA that’s the atmospheric equivalent of the BP oil spill. But they suspected it might be aging infrastructure since the pipes are over 50 years old. Turns out that the well hasn’t had a working safety valve since 1979.
Setting fire to things isn’t in and of itself science. But if you record it using schlieren photography at 10,000 frames per second—as in this video of laser-ignited methane—then it’s getting closer.
With less than two weeks to go before its historic flyby, the Ralph instrument aboard the New Horizons spacecraft has confirmed the presence of frozen methane on Pluto—something scientists first detected as far back as 1976.
There's a patch of desert in the American southwest where something odd is happening. What is it — and what's causing it?
The more we learn about Mars, the more we learn it's a deceptively active planet. Most recently, the Curiosity rover sniffed out a sharp spike in methane levels that dropped back down just as quickly, suggesting some yet-to-be-determined process is currently happening to trigger the aberration.
Lake Abraham, in Canada, is filled with beautiful bubbles that, if they pop, will ruin your day on the ice at least two different ways. First, they'll displace oxygen. Second, if they pop anywhere near sparks or fire, they'll explode.
