Lack of basic research hiding behind 'clean meat' hype

Despite tens of millions of dollars pouring into new technologies, a 'clean' burger remains elusive.

  • Tens of millions of dollars are funding projects to create a consumer-ready lab-grown burger.
  • Despite the hype, experts warn that a lot more research needs to be conducted.
  • Mainstream adoption of plant-based foods, however, is making lab-grown meat a welcome possibility.
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anthropocene agriculture animals environment health conservation

Psychologically and physically, traffic is terrible for our health

Between the noise and frustration, we're suffering more than ever.

Photo credit: Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash
  • Traffic has been implicated in measurable exhaustion, an increase in blood pressure, negative attitudinal shifts, and a constant release of stress hormones.
  • In 2009, 3.9 billion gallons of fuel and 4.8 billion hours of time were wasted by Americans sitting in traffic.
  • Traffic is costing the US economy $100 billion every year.
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anthropocene physiology psychology enviornment sound health

Scientists plan to spray the sky with light-reflecting particles to dim the sun

A trio of scientists from Harvard hopes to do this in 2019.

Image: Shutterstock/Big Think
  • Scientists hope to launch the world's first solar geoengineering project next year.
  • The project involves spraying calcium carbonate into the stratosphere.
  • The team hopes to get people thinking more seriously about bioengineering.
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biosphere environment engineering anthropocene weather science climate change

Whale earwax reveals 146 years of humanity’s impact

Thanks to museum curators, there's no shortage of the stuff.

Photo credit: Miguel Medina
  • It's just been discovered that whale earwax contains a record of a whale's sub-lethal stressors.
  • It's generally agreed that cortisol is a reliable indicator of a mammal's response to stress.
  • We now have a detailed 146-year impact study of human activity on whales.
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We are heading for a New Cretaceous, not for a new normal

The climate change we're witnessing is more dramatic than we might think.

Image credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from Greenbelt, MD, USA

A lazy buzz phrase – 'Is this the new normal?' – has been doing the rounds as extreme climate events have been piling up over the past year. To which the riposte should be: it's worse than that – we're on the road to even more frequent, more extreme events than we saw this year.

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environment ecology glacier geology sustainability anthropocene climate change