The United States is offering to cut greenhouse gas emissions by up to 28 percent by 2025 as part of a global initiative to battle climate change. The plan isn’t new, but the White House is expected to deliver it to the United Nations in the form of itsIntended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris later this year. U.N.member countries first met in Lima, Peru, this past Decemberto discuss the initial steps...

From melting ice and snow to blooming trees and flowers, chances are you've probably seen subtle signs of spring taking shape in the last couple of weeks. Some of the changes we are seeing can also be viewed on a larger scale from satellites in space. In the South, increasingly warm tempartures and recent rains have given the landscape a much greener look. NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites show the subtle change from brown to green that has occurred in...

North Florida’s once-profitable oyster business faces a layered threat from water-flow issues, environmental concerns, health and safety regulations and economic realities. That decline shows in Apalachicola, which sits on the river of the same name, 75 miles southwest of Tallahassee. It is on the Florida Panhandle near the Big Bend - the juncture of where the west coast of the Florida peninsula makes its turn to the west. Apalachicola-based oyster houses have either stopped selling to restaurants on the wholesale...

As nearly 300,000 Japanese buildings were destroyed by a catastrophic tsunami in 2011, thousands of ozone-destroying chemicals , according to a new study released in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The magnitude-9 earthquake left little damage, but it was the subsequent tsunami that ravaged the coastline, , mostly by drowning, according to Live Science. When that tsunami began to wash away buildings, it damaged insulation, refrigerators, air conditioners and many more devices that contain atmosphere-harming chemicals known as halocarbons, the...

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio continues to expand his real-life role as an environmental crusader, a role you don't often see in his Hollywood blockbusters. DiCaprio told the New York Times this week , an unpopulated island off the coast of Belize. He is partnering with New York City-based developer Delos to build a luxury, environmentally friendly resort. The resort aims to restore the island by replanting mangrove trees, reducing invasive species and returning native animals to the land. (MORE: ) “This...

The Arctic holds more than a trillion tons of carbon, locked in the frozen soil known as permafrost. That’s more than twice as much carbon as there is in the atmosphere itself, according to from the National Academy of Sciences. And as the climate warms under its of human-generated greenhouse gases, thawing permafrost could release some of that carbon into the atmosphere. That could amplify the effect of global warming by boosting CO2 levels higher than they would otherwise be...

Experts say they've detected radiation on Vancouver Island that's definitely from the leaking Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor that polluted the water during an earthquake and tsunami that killed 16,000 people in 2011. It's the first time radiation has been found on the shores from the disaster, according to University of Victoria chemical oceanographer Jay Cullen. He said low levels of the isotope Cesium-134, which could've only come from Fukushima, were found in the water on Feb. 19 off a dock...

There's a place in China's autonomous region of Inner Mongolia where a lake of toxic sludge has been forming for years, and it's only there because of the technology boom. It's happening in Baotou, the , according to Mining.com. There's, USGS says, that are mined and then used in the production of smartphones, tablets and even "green" technology, like wind turbines. A massive complex known as Baogang Steel and Rare Earth mines and manufacturesthe minerals, but that creates millions of...

A worker, wearing a face mask to protect against dust particles, pauses while arranging freshly cut stones at a quarry in the desert of Minya, southern Egypt on Wednesday, March 18, 2015. (AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy) In a part of Egypt where , the landscape looks like a winter wonderland. But the photos above, taken by photographer Mosa'ab Elshamy for The Associated Press, aren't of snow. They're of limestone quarries in the Minya province of Egypt, about 180 miles south of...

Scientists are working to reveal the source of a methane mass half the size of Connecticut currently hovering over the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. Researchers with the University of Colorado, the University of Michigan, NASA, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are , the Associated Press reports. Last year, researchers with NASA and the University of Michigan released a studywas the largest concentration of the greenhouse gas in the U.S. (MORE: ) Now, these scientists are...

California's Firebaugh-Las Deltas United School District used solar panels to balance out budget cuts and save their music program. (Firebaugh-Las Deltas USD) It's difficult to think of in anything other than grim terms, but there is one bright side to the state's dilemma. With less rain and therefore less clouds, California is poised to use its well-established solar power infrastructure to capture an increasing bounty of sunlight. As a result of the drought, hydropower has taken a massive hit in...

The United States currently holds the top spot in the world when it comes to cumulative greenhouse gas emissions dating back to 1990. However, a says that two experts are projecting that China will takeover this undesired top spot in 2015 or 2016. According to the Wall Street Journal, the last couple of years. That economic growth has fueled the increasing cumulative greenhouse gas emissions since 1990, which according to Reuters is the benchmark year for U.N.-led action on climate...

From blooming flowers to twittering birds, the signs of spring are popping up and the miseries of winter are becoming a distant memory for many. But not for some climate scientists. The curiosity of a growing group of researchers has been piqued by the tenacious temperature divide that has separated East from West over the past two winters as a wild zigzag of the jet stream has brought repeated bouts of Arctic air and snow to the East and kept...