Science News - Environment - The New York Times

Now Cleared for Landing at Airports: Bees

By DANIELLE BEURTEAUX

Danielle Beurteaux

Bees cluster at the base of a hive located on an outlying field at Montréal-Mirabel International Airport in Mirabel, Québec.

Urban beekeepers need green space, and many airports have plenty of it — fields that legally cannot be built on. Chicago’s O’Hare now has the largest airport apiary project in the world.

A ruptured pipe at a Duke Energy power plant in Eden, N.C., last February leaked 35 million gallons of toxic coal-ash slurry into the Dan River. It took the company six days to plug the leak.

Duke Energy Is Charged in Huge Coal Ash Leak

By JONATHAN M. KATZ

Federal prosecutors accused the nation’s largest electric utility of violating the federal Clean Water Act in a spill last year in North Carolina.

By Degrees

Verbal Warming: Labels in the Climate Debate

By JUSTIN GILLIS

For those opposing the science surrounding the issue, are they “climate change deniers” or merely “skeptics”? And what about “warmistas” versus “lukewarmers”?

Observatory

An artist's rendering of two newly discovered Jurassic mammals.

Fossils Expand the Menagerie of Jurassic Mammals

By DOUGLAS QUENQUA

New discoveries point to a tree climber and a superb digger that lived between 145 million and 200 million years ago.

Observatory

A Moth’s Tail Can Deceive Bats

By DOUGLAS QUENQUA

With its tail, assuming it has one, the luna moth can frustrate a bat’s ability to use echolocation to hunt.

Opinion

Leaving Only Footsteps? Think Again

By CHRISTOPHER SOLOMON

When we visit the great outdoors, we do damage we don’t even notice.

Indian fishermen pushed their boat through plastic waste last month in Mumbai.

Study Finds Rising Levels of Plastics in Oceans

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

The amount of debris is likely to increase tenfold over the next decade unless nations start disposing of trash responsibly, new research suggests.

Afghan refugees pumped water by hand in a slum of Islamabad, Pakistan. An official warned that Pakistan could become “a water-starved country.”

Starved for Energy, Pakistan Braces for a Water Crisis

By SALMAN MASOOD

Climate change and local waste and mismanagement have led to an alarmingly rapid depletion of Pakistan’s water supply, the minister for water and energy said.

A chemical cloud rose over Igualada, Spain, northwest of Barcelona, after an explosion at a warehouse on Thursday. Two people were injured when nitric acid and ferric chloride mixed and exploded. Residents of five towns were kept indoors for two hours.

Chemical Blast in Spain Spreads Toxic Cloud

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

The Spanish authorities ordered residents of five northeastern towns to stay indoors Thursday after a chemical explosion at a warehouse spread a toxic cloud over the area.

Observatory

Unchanged for More Than Two Billion Years

By DOUGLAS QUENQUA

Scientists have discovered micro-organisms beneath the ocean floor that apparently have not evolved for a very long time.

Green Column

A Naga man, in northwest Myanmar, with a fish he caught after it was stunned by dynamite thrown into a creek.

The Horrors of Fishing With Dynamite

By KATE GALBRAITH

Some nations have clamped down on blast fishing, which is generally illegal, but it continues in areas where explosives are available and people are desperate.

Wrangling Deer From the Sky

To protect migration routes, wildlife biologists at the University of Wyoming are capturing mule deer by helicopter to learn exactly where they go, what they eat and how healthy they are.

Where Oil and Politics Mix

By DEBORAH SONTAG

After an unusual land deal, a giant spill and a tanker-train explosion, anxiety began to ripple across the North Dakota prairie.

Part I: The Downside of the BoomNYT Now

$An oil pad on North Dakota's Fort Berthold Indian Reservation flares natural gas produced in the hydrofracturing process. Over a quarter of all natural gas produced in North Dakota is burned off this way.$