Saturn’s largest moon Titan is the only known planetary object in the solar system that has, like Earth, stable liquid on its surface. A new study, based on data gathered by Nasa’s Cassini spacecraft, reveals that Titan has Earth-like sea levels. The new findings showcase how “eerily similar” the two worlds are, despite being located nearly a billion miles away from each other.

Are bees endangered because of the use of insecticides, and in particular the class of chemicals known as neonicotinoids, which are used on many crops?

It’s a debate that’s played out in research laboratories and in the media over the past decade since the phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder roiled the bee industry in California and elsewhere in North American and Europe beginning in 2006-7.

Nagoya, Japan, is the place where the international “Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity” was negotiated (in 2010) and signed onto by many countries.

It became a binding international treaty (to the countries which ratified it) in 2015. Let’s just call the arrangement the Nagoya Protocol, or NP for short.

New study by Australian geophysicist shows astonishing tie-in between official UN global climate data and planetary alignments. Climate scientists have never before noticed this undeniable link.

Official measurements of global levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperatures show a first order correlation with movements of the Sun, Earth and Moon over a 42-month planetary cycle (synodic period), suggesting a new and previously overlooked (non-human) driver of climate change.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Paul Ehrlich’s eco-doom bestseller The Population Bomb. Maybe we should all stage a mass die-in to spare the distinguished Stanford biology professor his embarrassment.

Well if Ehrlich is not embarrassed, he should be. His book sold over three million copies – presumably making him a very decent amount of money.

When Lawrence Livermore scientist Tadashi Ogitsu leased a hydrogen fuel-cell car in 2017, he knew that his daily commute would change forever. There are no greenhouse gases that come out of the tailpipe, just a bit of water vapor.

A new study by a team of climatologists “all but rules out” the worst-case “doomsday” U.N. climate change scenarios, significantly narrowing the range of the possible temperature increases, while also eliminating the low-end predictions.

Given the title, this obviously is a personal essay.  Although, if the shoe fits, put it on. I have had a lot of stupidities, but this one started when I began to teach general chemistry at Hibbing Community College, Hibbing, MN in 1973.

For a topic that quickly became apparent was that I needed to teach the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide.  Which obviously could have something to do with the physical properties of carbon dioxide, but this was a topic which I had never studied during my formal education to become a physical chemist.

Image copyright: EPA

December set the record for the least amount of sunshine seen in Moscow, Russian weather experts say.

“The sun didn’t come out even once for the entire month,” said the weather website Meteonovosti.

According to Russia’s main weather centre, the sun did shine for six minutes. But normally Muscovites get dozens of hours of December sunshine. Russian winters are famously freezing, but this week the cold in Yakutia, in the far east, dipped below -60C (-76F).

It is about -7C in Moscow.

Image copyright: ANASTASIAGAV/INSTAGRAM

Yakutia – a remote region also known as the Sakha Republic – is historically the coldest part of Russia.

“Even for the Sakha Republic, famous for its harsh cold, this temperature is abnormal,” Meteonovosti said. On Tuesday, the temperature remained below -50C across the vast region, whose capital Yakutsk lies 4,900km (3,045 miles) east of Moscow. Russian children are usually kept indoors and schools are shut when the cold plunges below -50C.

Image copyright: GETTY IMAGES

Roman Vilfand, head of the Russian Meteorological Centre, attributed Moscow’s exceptionally overcast weather in December to big cyclonic air masses, which had moved in from the Atlantic.

Moscow’s previous record for December darkness was in 2000, when the capital got just three hours with the sun breaking through the cloud.

Russia’s hot tips for cold weather:

• Don’t drink spirits – drunkenness causes great heat loss
• Wear loose clothing to keep blood circulation normal
• If you feel frost-bitten on a walk, find any warm place – a shop, cafe, doorway – and warm up
• Don’t remove your boots if your feet are frozen – they’ll swell up and you won’t be able to get your boots on again. Get to a warm place as quickly as possible. You could shove your frozen hands in your armpits to warm them up
• If your car breaks down far away from habitation, you should stay in your car and phone for help or wait for another vehicle to come along the road
• Avoid the wind, as it increases the risk of freezing
• When children are outdoors they should return to the warmth every 15-20 minutes.

Source: Russian Emergencies Ministry

Read more at www.bbc.co.uk

Paper Reviewed:  Almén, A.-K., Brutemark, A., Jutfelt, F., Riebesell, U. and Engström-Öst, J. 2017. Ocean acidification causes no detectable effect on swimming activity and body size in a common copepod. Hydrobiologia 802: 235-243.

Ocean acidification (defined as a decline in oceanic pH caused by the dissolution of atmospheric CO2 into the surface waters of the world’s oceans) has been projected to impact marine life in a number of different ways, including growth, survival, fertility, calcification and organism behavior.

Humans – and not rats – could have been the cause for the spread of plague during the Black Death, a new study suggests. The Black Death was one of the worst pandemics in human history. It devastated European populations from 1346 to 1353 and resulted in the deaths of an estimated 75 to 200 million people.

There are quite a number of Climate Sages, who say they are skeptical, adding almost sotto voce that the heating by Greenhouse Gases is exaggerated. I met one this evening, an engineer retired and a most avid reader of science fiction.  He has over 350,000 books and reads something like 2,000 books a month.

Few people are aware of the relatively new science of geoengineering. Some scientists who are aware (like me) consider it a genuine threat to our planet’s climatic stability and ecosystems. Moreover, geoengineering, if left unconstrained, could pose a real danger to human health through the choice and toxicity of the materials used.

The Cloud Mystery Duration: 52 minutes. Language: English: “Our clouds take their orders from the stars,” says the Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark. That’s the amazing and provocative discovery reported here.

Optimism in conservation science — which the Smithsonian says we desperately need (Earth Optimism Summit 21-23 April 2017, apparently a huge success) — means it’s time to acknowledge and celebrate real conservation success stories.

The Smithsonian folks probably won’t say it but I will — one of those successes is the recovery of polar bears.

In Yakutia — a region of 1 million people about 3,300 miles (5,300 kilometers) east of Moscow — students routinely go to school even in minus 40 degrees. But school was canceled Tuesday throughout the region and police ordered parents to keep their children inside.