State of the Planet

News from the Columbia Climate School

species

  • Notes from an Increasingly Lonely Planet:  Humongous Killer Viruses and the New Life Form

    Notes from an Increasingly Lonely Planet: Humongous Killer Viruses and the New Life Form

    In Nature|News (18 July 2013), where one can check out the latest happenings in science, we learned that when Jean-Michel Claverie and Chantal Aberget from Aix-Marseille University in France discovered their new species of humongous killer virus, they experienced one of the most exciting things that could ever happen to any of us – they…

  • Birds, Ballasts, and the Fate of the Biosphere

    Birds, Ballasts, and the Fate of the Biosphere

    The Biosphere really needs its own newspaper. Yes, there are lots of newspapers out there, but when it comes to the Biosphere, important stories just don’t get the top billing they deserve. Take discoveries of new species, for example. Just in the last month, a new spoon worm, white toothed shrew, corpse flower, and tailorbird…

  • The Shock of the New

    The Shock of the New

    During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a host of naturalist-explorers traveled around the globe in a quest to identify new species. We interview science writer Richard Conniff, who evokes this grand age of discovery in The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth, just released in paperback.

  • Notes from an Increasingly Lonely Planet:  Humongous Killer Viruses and the New Life Form

    Notes from an Increasingly Lonely Planet: Humongous Killer Viruses and the New Life Form

    In Nature|News (18 July 2013), where one can check out the latest happenings in science, we learned that when Jean-Michel Claverie and Chantal Aberget from Aix-Marseille University in France discovered their new species of humongous killer virus, they experienced one of the most exciting things that could ever happen to any of us – they…

  • Birds, Ballasts, and the Fate of the Biosphere

    Birds, Ballasts, and the Fate of the Biosphere

    The Biosphere really needs its own newspaper. Yes, there are lots of newspapers out there, but when it comes to the Biosphere, important stories just don’t get the top billing they deserve. Take discoveries of new species, for example. Just in the last month, a new spoon worm, white toothed shrew, corpse flower, and tailorbird…

  • The Shock of the New

    The Shock of the New

    During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a host of naturalist-explorers traveled around the globe in a quest to identify new species. We interview science writer Richard Conniff, who evokes this grand age of discovery in The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth, just released in paperback.