Environmental Science

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7 minutes

Inside Out: Why Iceland is a Rare Window into the Earth?

Geological understanding of the world’s continents and oceans was only just beginning to emerge when New Zealander Edmund Hillary with Nepali Tenzing Norgay scaled the six-mile-high Mount Everest in 1953 and US Navy lieutenant Don Walsh with Swiss...
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4 minutes

Time Is Pressing: Can We Be Good Ancestors?

This century dawned with a promising new perspective on the most recent stage of the Earth’s 4.6 billion-year history. The Anthropocene, named by Nobel chemist Paul Crutzen (1933-2021), focuses on human-induced transformations of the Earth System. Not yet...
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6 minutes

Sea Level Is Never Level: How Does Geology Inform Coastal Planning?

With his characteristic eloquence, a 1962 speech by President John F. Kennedy to America’s Cup crews in Rhode Island made a scientific fact relevant to everyone. Referring to the part humans play in the relentless motion of the Earth’s primordial water...
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5 minutes

Climates Have Always Changed: So What’s Different Now?

Boston Tourism describes the city’s weather as “a tale of uncertainty” and its TimeOut Guide issues 18 reminders of why “New England weather isn't for the weak”! Such commentary revives memories of my early years in England where talk about inclement...

The Earth Around Us

The Earth Around Us features topical context for our exhibition and program experiences about this changing planet. Written by Emlyn Koster, a leading activist in the nature and science museum sector. A geologist, museologist, and humanist with UK...
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4 minutes

Wicked Hot Boston

In the summer of 2019, the Museum of Science, Boston, (MOS) studied the impacts of extreme heat and the urban heat island effect through community-based participatory science, otherwise known as citizen science. Nicknamed “Wicked Hot Boston,” the summer’s...