Greenhouse gas emissions, particularly those from carbon dioxide, are on the rise. They have been for a while, to the alarm of governments, activist groups, and just about anyone vaguely concerned with environmental issues around the world. Greenhouse gases get their name because they have properties that make them act like glass in a greenhouse, keeping energy from the sun concentrated in our atmosphere, causing temperatures to rise. But until now, that particular effect hadn't been observed and documented in the scientific literature. Now, it has.

You make contact with a lot of cyclic volatile methyl siloxanes every day, and you probably don't even know it. The mouthful of a name refers to groups of chemicals found in numerous human-made items including lotions and other personal care products.

On the morning of March 20, 2020, a solar eclipse will pass over all of Europe, visible from Turkey to Greenland. A decade ago, that probably wouldn't have mattered to anyone except people who love astronomy (and all the schoolchildren building pinhole cameras to observe the sun.) But now, three percent of Europe's electricity grid comes from solar power, making the March event a proving ground for this renewable energy technology.

Bubonic Plague. Just the sound of it is enough to send a twinge of worry through your mind, even though it has been quite a while since an outbreak caused massive amounts of death and devastation. Sure, traces of the bacteria (Yersinia Pestis) that cause the nasty disease were found in the New York City subway, but there's virtually no chance that New York will succumb to the disease in its current form. But back in the 14th century, these little bacteria caused the death of about 50 million people, earning it the nickname "the Black Death" and a reputation that would last centuries.

The Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project in Nevada is set to come online in March. Once completed, it will use thousands of mirrors to focus sunlight on a tower, melting millions of pounds of salt contained inside. The molten salt will heat water into steam, which then turns turbines and generates electricity without any carbon byproducts. There's just one little problem: During a test run on January 14, the intense heat from the mirrors reportedly incinerated and/or vaporized more than 100 birds.

Winter on the East Coast of the United States has been brutal, and it isn't over yet. Freezing temperatures are predicted to break even more frigid records over the next two days. Boston has been buried in stupid amounts of snow, and Washington DC ground to a halt under the devastating impact of four inches of snow.