The headlines are filled with stories of polar ice caps melting, pollution choking our cities and the billions of microplastics in everything we own and eat. While it is important to stay informed about the problems in the environment, it is just as important to acknowledge what IS going well.
To flip the script for a minute, let’s look at some happy news in the world of the environment.
Hold onto your horses… there’s a new dinosaur
A skeleton previously thought to be a teenage Tyrannosaurus Rex has now been confirmed to be an entirely different species. It was discovered that the bones belong to an adult Nanotyrannus lancensis. The Nanotyrannus species has larger forelimbs, more teeth and structural differences in the teeth and skull. This incredible finding is helping fill gaps in evolutionary knowledge and may help clarify what we know about prehistoric predators.
If only animals could talk… oh wait!
A nonprofit organization known as the Earth Species Project is using artificial intelligence to decode animal language patterns. As of now, this technology can separate individual animal “voices” from large groups and can identify specific repeated sounds. For example, in zebra finches, audio recordings reveal that they use grammatical rules similar to those of humans.
This technology could be powerful in helping us understand the needs and behaviors of endangered animals. Whales, for example, could be studied to identify how nautical shipping noises disrupt their communication, which could equip us to fight their extinction.
Clean fuel is now comparable to fossil fuels
A California-based company called Prometheus Fuels has discovered a way to produce clean fuels that cost less than the production of fossil fuels. Most current fossil fuel productions, such as carbon capture, cost between $200-600 per ton of carbon dioxide; Prometheus Fuel’s new system has reduced that cost to under $50 a ton. Instead of the traditional process carbon capture, which includes gas purification and compression before storage, the company’s technology captures carbon dioxide directly into the water and immediately converts it to fuel. This eliminates several expensive steps and utilizes solar electricity technology along the way.
