By Douglas Fischer
23 August 2010
Daily Climate's weekly compilation of news tidbits. This week: Lost love - er, carbon - on the Brazos; $120 million for weatherization efforts; and two books look why consensus on climate policy is so elusive.
more
By Douglas Fischer
17 August 2010
Quick – what's the most effective way for you to save energy?
If you're like many Americans, you'd say turn out the lights or turn up the AC's thermostat. And, like many Americans, you'd miss the mark.
Improving the efficiency of our cars, appliances and home would take the biggest chunk out of our energy footprint.
more
16 August 2010
Daily Climate's weekly compilation of climate snippets: Disappearing ice in the tropics; power from water and air; a battery break-through; and an invisible, immaterial chair.
more
By Douglas Fischer
9 August 2010
Daily Climate's weekly compilation of climate tidbits: Spreading climate news in rural countries, a new approach to large-scale ag investments, and Hawaii's offshore power potential.
more
By Douglas Fischer
3 August 2010
Today TDC launches weekly feature offering snippets of new and noteworthy developments. This week: A truly "emerging" field, a dispute over El Niño data, and an attempt to marry solar energy and haute couture.
more
By Douglas Fischer
27 July 2010
A deadly infectious disease once thought to be exclusively tropical has gained a toehold in the Pacific Northwest, and health experts suspect climate change is partially to blame.
Last week the CDC issued a report warning U.S. doctors to be alert for patients showing signs of a cryptoccocal infection.
The infection is spread by a fungus, Cryptococcus gattii, that attacks the nasal cavity and spreads to other body sites, causing pneumonia, meningitis and other lung, brain or muscle ailments.
more
By Douglas Fischer
20 July 2010
Stanford climate scientist Stephen Schneider, one of the pre-eminent voices in the climate debate, who argued with wit and passion about the limits of climate science and the need for an aggressive response, died Monday of an apparent heart attack while en route to London from a scientific conference in Stockholm. He was 65.
Over the course of his 40-year career, Schneider built the case that the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has dire consequences for the globe.
Scientists, reporters and others from around the world reacted to the news. Here is a collection of remembrances and tributes.
more
By Ben Santer
20 July 2010
We honor Steve Schneider by caring about the strange and beautiful planet on which we live, by protecting its climate, and by ensuring that our policymakers do not fall asleep at the wheel.
Steve Schneider epitomized scientific courage. He was fearless. The pathway he chose - to be a scientific leader, to be a leader in science communication, and to fully embrace the interdisciplinary nature of the climate change problem - was not an easy pathway.
more
By Christopher Pala
19 July 2010
(c) Christopher Pala
|
An unprecedented drive to protect Canada's northern forests, tundra and bogs is changing how land managers view their stewardship, civic leaders approach economic growth and companies view their bottom line. And for the first time, some of the protections have a climate component.
Preserving wildlife, notably migratory birds and the iconic woodland caribou, is the paramount purpose. But climate change mitigation is part of the equation: Canada's peat bogs and forests, if left undisturbed, store a tremendous amount of carbon - 233 billion tons, according to some estimates, or almost one third of the carbon stored in the Earth's atmosphere. More than 80 percent of that is stored within the country's boreal region, and politicians are beginning to write protections for that carbon into the law.
more
By Douglas Fischer
17 July 2010
Welcome to the Anthropocene. Decisions made today about planet-warming emissions will influence climate impacts not just for decades but for centuries and perhaps even millennia, a panel from the National Academy of Sciences warned Friday.
Given the longevity of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, these scientists said, these decisions effectively lock humanity in for a range of impacts, some of which can be "very severe."
more
By Doug Struck
14 July 2010
Regulators have traditionally reacted to falling fish stocks by putting additional curbs on fishing. That approach may not work as larger changes such as global warming alter the seas and their inhabitants.
The debate over how to manage depleted stocks has been hotly contested in New England ever since the Georges Banks fishery collapsed in the mid-90s.
Now the arguments are changing as scientists see more evidence of climate change on the Atlantic fisheries. Both the Gulf of Maine and the Georges Bank sit at the southern edge of the cod's preferred range. Fishermen have adapted to stock changes over the years, but their options may be dwindling.
more
By Douglas Fischer
13 July 2010
From heat stress to sewage overflows, climate change promises to bring extreme weather that can throw our nation's ill-prepared public health infrastructure 'back to the 1890s,' according to experts.
The United States - to say nothing of the developed world - is unprepared for such conditions predicted by myriad climate models and already being seen today, warn climate researchers and public health officials.
"We know - and we have ample evidence - that heat waves are a public health disaster. That in fact they kill, and they kill the most vulnerable members of our society."
more
By Douglas Fischer
2 July 2010
Penn State
|
A Penn State investigation has found no substance behind allegations of academic misconduct by climate researcher Michael Mann, one of the central figures in the so-called 'Climategate' e-mail scandal.
It is the third formal inquiry to clear scientists involved in the scandal. The Penn State findings, released Thursday by a unanimous panel of five senior faculty, concluded Mann never participated in research or other scholarly activity that "deviated from accepted practices within the academic community."
"The scientists have been exonerated," Mann said. "The science behind human-caused climate change is solid."
more
By Nathan Rice
29 June 2010
(c) Nathan Rice
|
The nation's first uranium mill in 25 years promises to bring good jobs and a stable economy – amid a history of health impacts, environmental harm and unstable prices – to a region still struggling in the wake of the industry's last bust.
Both sides recognize that the proposed Piñon Ridge mill - fed by ore from up to 41 nearby mines - could transform this quiet corner of Colorado into the fountainhead of the nuclear fuel industry.
more
By Nathan Rice
29 June 2010
(c) Nathan Rice
|
Reporter Nathan Rice explores the hopes and fears of the West's nuclear renaissance in this two-minute slideshow.
He finds that local residents are mostly hopeful that the revival could bring good jobs and a stable economic base. But some are wary of uranium's legacy of health problems, environmental impacts and unstable prices.
more
By Nathan Rice
28 June 2010
Nathan Rice/DailyClimate.org
|
The days of unregulated production and government secrecy are gone. But as the uranium industry revives in the West, health problems from the last boom still plague communities, and victims are still fighting for recognition.
To date, the federal government has spent more than $7 billion compensating people made sick by the government-run nuclear program that fueled the Manhattan Project and the Cold War arms race.
But many past uranium workers and residents in the American West have fallen through the cracks of federal compensation programs designed to help those affected by uranium.
more
By Doug Struck
22 June 2010
Spring did not come for the oaks of Martha's Vineyard. In the denuded branches, scientists see a fingerprint of climate change - and a pattern of things to come.
Farther north and west, scientists are studying the devastation of regal hemlocks. In both cases, bugs may have delivered the deadly blow, but they were fostered by a warming and changing climate.
more
By Douglas Fischer
7 June 2010
The gold standard for certifying "green" buildings fails to place enough emphasis on human health and needs to be upgraded, according to a new report that argues LEED standards are weighted too heavily toward energy conservation.
"They have to be given great credit for work on energy conservation. And there clearly are environmental quality and health benefits that will accrue from conservation efforts," said John Wargo, professor of risk analysis and environmental policy at Yale University and a lead author of the report, released in May.
"But (LEED) has got some serious problems with respect to environmental quality and human health."
more
By Douglas Fischer
24 May 2010
Local efforts to trim emissions, change economies and alter behavior are serving as idea labs where mistakes can be made and novel approaches honed in preparation for setting national climate and energy policy. And they can have a powerful influence in the climate debate, policy experts say.
Within the recently released climate bill are many lessons learned in these local laboratories.
more
24 May 2010
Here are five ideas coming out of local governments that promise to shape the national debate on climate change and energy reform.
more
By Douglas Fischer
3 May 2010
A full-page ad in Friday's New York Times was the latest example of diverse groups rallying together on climate policy. Organizations from across the political spectrum, from hunters to retirees to evangelical Hispanics, are finding common ground on an issue that has polarized the Capitol.
Those building these coalitions say that climate and energy policy is an easy sell once they connect the dots from climate change or energy reform to self-interest for different constituents.
more
By Jennifer Weeks
28 April 2010
Utilities are spending billions to make the grid more reliable, efficient, and green. In the process, they will drastically change how they do business.
To shrink the electricity sector's carbon footprint, the nation needs to build thousands of miles of new transmission lines over the next 20 years. A 21st-century "smart grid" will also have to balance fluctuating power flows from alternative and distributed sources. And it must be interactive.
more
By Jennifer Weeks
28 April 2010
The utility of the future has two contrasting business models: One focused on selling power, the other aimed at selling high-value "energy services."
They will either focus on operating the grid and delivering electricity, or they will find a way to make money by helping customers maximize energy use at the lowest possible cost.
more
By Daily Climate staff
24 April 2010
The Blue Man Group, famous for building shows around themes such as information overload and innocence, has taken on climate change with a two-minute YouTube clip warning against inaction. As of Saturday 3.5 million viewers have watched.
The group has long colored shows with various themes.
This two-minute video is quieter.
more
By Douglas Fischer
22 April 2010
Green investments are spurring significant growth across the U.S economy while decreasing industry's overall emissions per dollar of goods and services, according to two reports released Wednesday by the federal government.
Meanwhile households have replaced industry as the country's largest source of carbon dioxide emissions, according to government data.
The first report defines and measures the size of the domestic green economy; the other assesses how America's greenhouse gas emissions have changed over the past decade.
Together they provide "valuable analytic tools" necessary to understand the emerging green economy and guide future policy, said Rebecca Blank, undersecretary for economic affairs at the U.S. Commerce Department.
more
By Stacy Clark
19 April 2010
NOAA
|
Our planet is under unsustainable stress and its recovery can only begin when public attitudes toward energy generation, consumption, and conservation advance. So why is the media missing this story?
I see in this the results of a carefully executed campaign by fossil fuel executives to dissuade the public appetite for energy reform. By shrewdly peddling deceptive information to confound and confuse the public's understanding of what is already a complicated subject, the intellectual exchange of ideas has been compromised, and Americans' tentativeness toward climate action has, regrettably, increased.
more
By Heather King
30 March 2010
Danish Wind Industry Assoc.
|
The green economy continues to show almost remarkable signs of vitality, business leaders say, despite the near-total collapse of global talks, stalemate in Washington, D.C., and polls showing decreased urgency to tackle global warming.
Driving the industry, investors say, are consumer interest in the environmental and economic benefits of energy efficiency, corporate sustainability mandates and essentially a bet that at some point there will be a price on carbon emissions.
more
By Jane Kay
23 March 2010
Jared Blumenfeld
|
The season of migration has come again to the warm waters of the Baja Sea. But 6,000 miles away, gray whales' Arctic feeding grounds are being transformed as the planet warms, and scientists are scrambling to understand the impacts on creatures in the region.
Little is known of the Arctic food chain. Even less is known of how it will shift as the climate changes. And that represents a worrisome gap in basic science, say scientists.
more
By Ferris Jabr
23 March 2010
gregor_y/flickr
|
A coalition of hunting and fishing groups outlined Monday more than 50 conservation projects to help game and fish adapt to climate change, warning that billions of dollars are needed to prevent 'catastrophic' environmental and economic loss.
The document targets fishers and hunters, but everyone should be concerned, said Steven Williams, President of Wildlife Management Institute.
"What happens to game species like pheasants, duck, elk, and trout will happen to non-game species, too," he said. "As go fish and wildlife, so go human health and quality of life."
more
By Douglas Fischer
22 March 2010
Global warming has neither stopped nor slowed in the past decade, according to a draft analysis of temperature data by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
The analysis, led by senior scientist Jim Hansen, attempts to debunk popular belief that the planet is cooling. It finds that global temperatures over the past decade have "continued to rise rapidly," despite large year-to-year fluctuations associated with the tropical El Niño-La Niña cycles.
more
By Douglas Fischer
18 March 2010
slworking2/flickr
|
By now everyone knows that forests sequester carbon and that forest fires pump enormous amounts of that stored carbon skyward.
But researchers are now coming to a somewhat contrary conclusion: Carefully controlled burns can help reduce forest carbon emissions.
The most recent study, from the National Center of Atmospheric Research and Northern Arizona University, looked at dry forests of the western United States and discovered that prescribed burns can reduce carbon fire emissions by nearly a quarter throughout the West – and by as much as 60 percent in some forests.
"It appears that prescribed burns can be an important piece of a climate change strategy," said NCAR scientist and lead author Christine Wiedinmyer in a statement. "If we reintroduce fires into our ecosystems, we may be able to protect larger trees and significantly reduce the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere by major wildfires."
The study was published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.
more
By William R. Freudenburg
15 March 2010
Chris Lim/flickr
|
Do researchers have an obligation to help the general public understand the relevance of their work? One academic thinks so – despite sporting scars from his effort.
I've had threats, and I've had police escorts. I've dealt with people who were trembling with rage and with others who took swings at me.
But in all my years, I have NEVER seen the kinds of attacks that have been aimed at climate scientists in recent years.
more
By Douglas Fischer
1 March 2010
Bullying UK
|
The e-mails come thick and fast every time NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt appears in the press.
Rude and crass e-mails. E-mails calling him a fraud, a cheat, a scumbag and much worse.
To Schmidt and other researchers purging their inboxes daily of such correspondence, the barrage is simply part of the job of being a climate scientist. But others see the messages as threats and intimidation – cyber-bullying meant to shut down debate and cow scientists into limiting their participation in the public discourse.
more
By Douglas Fischer
12 February 2010
PXLated/flickr
|
The federal government last week concluded corn-based biofuels help reduce emissions; California regulators say they don't. Who's right? Oddly enough, both may be.
Regulators and policy experts insist there's no conflict: Both rules match the science; it's simply a matter of what year you start counting emissions.
California looked at current emissions and concluded they were too steep; the White House looked at 2022 and saw a rosier picture.
more
By Andrew McGlashen
25 January 2010
Great Lakes Home Performance
|
Despite EPA gains with its Energy Star program, some 99 percent of American houses remain "sick" – damp, drafty, expensive to heat and cool – and could be made at least 30 percent more energy-efficient with "highly cost-effective, tried-and-true" improvements, according to experts.
Those experts add that economics and regulations are the root of the problem: Mortgages are structured in ways that fail to recognize efficiency's benefits, while a patchwork of inconsistent and ill-enforced energy codes provides conflicting signals to industry.
Meanwhile consumers remain largely unaware of efficiency's advantages, advocates say, thereby bypassing an easy target for considerable cuts in national carbon emissions.
more
By Douglas Fischer
15 January 2010
Demark Foreign Ministry
|
Lead U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern said Thursday the Copenhagen Accord represents the best way forward for a binding global climate deal but that success likely rests with a smaller group of countries working outside the unwieldy, multi-national United Nations process.
In his first public remarks since the conclusion of the United Nations climate talks in December, Stern said the Copenhagen Accord – despite its shortcomings – included "significant breakthroughs in a number of respects."
"It is a very important step forward," he said at an investor forum on climate risk hosted jointly by the UN Foundation and CERES.
more
By Douglas Fischer
12 January 2010
Denmark Foreign Ministry
|
Climate policy has a tipping point. Failure to set and meet strict emissions targets over the next 40 years puts long-term goals – such as limiting planetary warming to 2ºC by 2100 – permanently out of reach, according to a study published Monday.
The study establishes the notion of "feasibility frontiers," the point at which end-of-century goals become unobtainable or increasingly unlikely unless specific mid-century benchmarks are met.
These so-called "mid-century" benchmarks must be hit, in other words, to preserve options for future generations.
more
By Marla Cone
11 January 2010
In 2009, the team at Environmental Health News hand-selected and posted 71,143 stories that were published in the worldwide media. Here's a list of those we consider the year's most important.
more
By Douglas Fischer
11 January 2010
D.Fischer/Daily Climate
|
Journalists worldwide produced more than 32,000 stories on climate change last year, but the coverage failed to garner a spot on a map showing major news events of 2009.
Those articles were written by some 11,000 different reporters, columnists and editorial boards, based on an analysis of DailyClimate.org's archives. Reuters led the pack, publishing at least 2,550 different articles on the topic last year – the equivalent of seven stories a day. The Associated Press had 1,600.
The total is a 17 percent increase from 2008, though direct comparisons are difficult given changes in posting criteria by the Daily Climate and its sister site, EnvironmentalHealthNews.org.
more
By Douglas Fischer
19 December 2009
Denmark Foreign Ministry
|
All eyes in Copenhagen were on China and President Barack Obama Friday night, but nothing captured the discord, distrust and distance separating all sides at these climate talks better than a pair of press conferences held simultaneously at the Bella Center earlier in the afternoon.
In the main room, refusing to cede the stage to other dignitaries, Venezuela' Hugo Chavez and Bolivia's Juan Evo Morales railed against the developed world's inability to accept responsibility for previous emissions obligations and the role it has played in warming the atmosphere.
Across the hall, five Republican members of the U.S. House denounced the notion that humans could change the climate and expressed relief at the prospect of failure here.
more
By Douglas Fischer
17 December 2009
Steve Oldham/flickr
|
Mayors of some of the world's largest cities flexed their muscle at the United Nations climate talks Wednesday, warning that "billions of people" are prepared to cut emissions far beyond whatever agreement world leaders may ink this week.
"We at the local level have too much to lose," said Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels.
more
By Douglas Fischer
14 December 2009
(c) Frosina Pandurska Drmikanin
|
Steve Chu and a host of foreign energy ministers announced Monday a $350 million initiative to boost renewable technologies worldwide. But out here on windswept Samsø, a remote rural island in Denmark, residents have already transited to the carbon-free world these ministers envision.
They did so without the new technology or fancy investments envisioned by the ministers. Their secret? The residents themselves. And their desire to make a buck.
more
By Douglas Fischer
7 December 2009
Pew Environment Group
|
No one at the Copenhagen climate talks is filling the role of the late Phil Clapp, director of the former National Environmental Trust and considered by some to be the most influential campaigner the United States offered.
Clapp – Harvard-educated chain-smoker, fluent in French, an expert on British royalty and an accomplished pianist – died of pneumonia in September 2008 while vacationing in Amsterdam. He was 54.
He had spent 32 years in Washington, D.C., fighting for the environment. Policy experts and government officials rarely agree on one thing. But in a series of interviews, they all agreed on this: Climate change had no more effective advocate.
more
By Jennifer Weeks
3 December 2009
(c) Jennifer Weeks
|
England has placed a big bet on offshore wind power to cut emissions radically by 2050 and is driving hard to get projects built. The government has shown a willingness to intervene heavily in energy markets and overrule local concerns.
"Offshore wind is going to be the greatest special use of the seas around the U.K. in a short period of time, which can be scary," said Victoria Copley, a senior energy specialist with the advocacy group Natural England. "But a lot of research has been done, and we're in a much better place than we were three years ago."
more
By Douglas Fischer
13 November 2009
Douglas Fischer/Daily Climate
|
The low-carbon economy has arrived on the prairie north of Denver. Vestas is building the West's largest turbine factory, a $700 million investment in what Gov. Ritter calls a "new energy economy." Some say these efforts – not the Copenhagen talks – provide the most promising solutions to climate change.
Vestas isn't the only company spending millions of its capital. Several utilities are investing some $1 billion on an industrial-scale carbon capture and storage tests at coal plants in Wisconsin, West Virginia and Oklahoma. The race to perfect the batteries that will power the next generation of automobiles and buses has manufacturers in Europe, the United States and China scurrying to build plants and research centers.
"The vast majority of the utility industry (has) pretty much accepted the reality that CO2 is something they have to cope with," said Revis James, director of the energy technology assessment center for the Electric Power Research Institute. Part four of four.
more
By Douglas Fischer
12 November 2009
jasmic/flickr
|
Failure to confront hard decisions about emissions puts humanity in a box. But we have a way out. Call in the geoengineers.
The idea of tinkering with planetary controls is not for the faint of heart. Even advocates acknowledge that any attempt to set the Earth's thermostat is full of hubris and laden with risk.
But the concept is gaining traction as politicians, unable to wean economies off fossil fuels, cast about for a strategy that will work if climate changes quickly or in nasty ways. Part three of four.
more
By Douglas Fischer
11 November 2009
350.org/flickr
|
Amid increasing gloom that the Copenhagen talks will produce a global climate accord, state and local leaders pushing their own reductions efforts in the United States see only one choice: Proceed.
The number of cities and regional governments undertaking this transition to a low-carbon economy is growing. These efforts, leaders vow, will continue whatever the outcome of political debates in Copenhagen, Brussels or Washington, D.C.
There are, in other words, two trains heading out of the station: Those driving local change are confident their programs will continue to accelerate even if global discussions get waylaid in Copenhagen next month. Second of four parts.
more
By Douglas Fischer
10 November 2009
Lucas Janin/flickr
|
This is the consequence of failure at Copenhagen: A marked shift in scientific effort from solving global warming to adapting to its consequences, a hodge-podge of uncoordinated local efforts to trim emissions – none of which deliver the necessary cuts – and an altered climate.
Climate experts, scientists and negotiators say that, absent international agreement, the children and grandchildren of those living today will negotiate a world where planetary geo-engineering is a part of daily life, sea-walls defend coastal cities, the world's poor are hammered by drought, floods and famine and our planet is heading toward conditions unseen for the last 100 million years.
The December talks are, in other words, the last, best chance to change course before chaos descends. First of four parts.
more
By Douglas Fischer
5 November 2009
Medecins Sans Frontieres
|
Rapid changes already underway to the Earth's climate, ecosystems and land cover threaten the health of billions, undermining key human life-support systems and threatening the core foundations of healthy communities worldwide, according to a new report released Wednesday.
The disruption represents the greatest public health challenge of the 21st century and leaves poor populations mostly in developing nations most vulnerable – even though they contribute the least to many of the problems.
more
By Douglas Fischer
22 October 2009
350.org
|
Organizers of 350 Day aim to stabilize the climate and prevent disaster. Turns out many more are paying attention than they expected.
Organizers credit the increasing inter-connectedness of Web, cellular and social networks for the spread, saying such random and organic growth would have been impossible even two years ago.
more
By Scott Streater
21 October 2009
(c) Carlye Calvin/NCAR
|
Forests of dead beetle-kill pine could be speeding regional climate change, increasing temperatures and decreasing rainfalls across the American West.
"The local impacts where the forest has been destroyed will be fairly dramatic," said Peter Harley, an associate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "The big question is how much of an impact will this have?"
more
By Dan Glick
9 October 2009
(c) Ecoflight
|
From his Cessna, Bruce Gordon provides politicians, reporters and others with an eye-opening view of an American West increasingly fractured by energy and resource development.
That awareness of scale, over both time and vast distances, is what gives Gordon - and his many passengers – the ability to piece together a startling and disturbing picture. Whether it's clear-cut forests in the Pacific Northwest, coal bed methane development in Wyoming, pine beetle blight across the Western Slope of Colorado, giant open pit gold mines in Nevada, scars from a decades-long natural gas boom in New Mexico or melting Montana glaciers, his vantage point connects the disparate dots that reveal a tattered Western tapestry. With video.
more
By Scott Streater
8 October 2009
Courtesy First Wind
|
Uncle Sam looks to eliminate the biggest hurdle to expanding renewable energy – the need for suitable sites to place commercial-scale wind and solar farms – by reusing hundreds of old mines, landfills and industrial sites.
Using already disturbed lands would help avoid conflicts between renewable energy developers and environmental groups concerned about impacts to wildlife habitat. These conflicts have stalled some high-profile projects despite the fact that renewable energy sources do not produce heat-trapping emissions of carbon dioxides, the primary greenhouse gas driving global warming.
more
By Dianne Dumanoski
6 October 2009
Mary Harrsch/flickr
|
Forget about protecting the Earth. It's the underpinnings of our civilization that climate change most endangers.
If I had one thing to impart to our leaders and opinionmakers, it would be this: Start worrying instead about the fate of human civilization. The Earth will survive the assault of the modern era. The urgent question is whether the Earth will remain a place that can support a complex, interconnected global civilization like our own.
more
By Barbara Fraser
5 October 2009
(c) Walter Hupiú
|
For ages Qoyllur Rit'i pilgrims have hauled themselves ever upward to celebrate the glaciers' life-giving waters. As that world rapidly melts, the Andes' Quechua-speaking farmers face a profound change in their relationship with their environment.
While governments seek technical solutions to climate-related problems, farmers in the Andes are struggling to understand events that are altering their livelihood. Drip irrigation and water reservoirs are only a partial response.
Farmers are being squeezed by warmer temperatures that shift crops up mountainsides, vanishing glaciers and the expansion of mountaintop mining that destroys high wetland pastures.
more
By Dianne Dumanoski
14 September 2009
NASA
|
Our continued focus on economic growth makes clear that we remain seriously mistaken about the geography of the future. This radical experiment with the Earth's metabolism is our predicament, the unifying force of our planetary era.
The greatest challenges of the 21st century will not be those of the space age, but rather urgent earthly ones in a new planetary era that arrived in the second half of the 20th century. If any single event marked this profound watershed in the human journey, it was the sudden appearance of a yawning hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica first reported in May 1985. With the explosive, exponential expansion of modern industrial civilization following World War II, human activity reached a scale great enough to disrupt essential, but invisible planetary systems, in this case, the ozone layer which shields the Earth from deadly ultraviolet radiation. The human enterprise had become agent of risky global change.
more
By Douglas Fischer
5 September 2009
joiseyshowa/flickr
|
Frustrated by society's inability to tackle pressing environmental dilemmas, Stanford ecologist Paul Ehrlich has launched a new endeavor aimed at changing human behavior.
Called the Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior, or MAHB (pronounced "mob"), the venture seeks to change human activities to better confront issues threatening humanity's future – among them climate change, declining food security, loss of biological diversity, water shortages, pollution, land use changes.
"I and my colleagues believe humanity must take rapid steps," Ehrlich said in an email announcing the launch. "But, in essence, nothing serious is being done – as exemplified by the 'much talk and no action' on climate change."
more
By Douglas Fischer
20 August 2009
Corey Arnold/flickr
|
New research suggests Alaska's marine waters are particularly susceptible to acidification, with potentially dire consequences to the state's rich crab and salmon fisheries.
"Everything is acting in unison on the environment – it's not just the ice loss or the warming or the acidification," said UAF chemical oceanographer Jeremy Mathis. "The Arctic is taking a multilateral hit."
Mathis' newest data from the Gulf of Alaska show that acidity levels far higher than expected might already be impacting the food web. In several sites the increasing acidity has changed ocean chemistry so significantly that organisms are unable to pull crucial minerals out of the water to build shells, he said.
more
By Paul R. Ehrlich, Anne H. Ehrlich
14 July 2009
No driver of environmental deterioration is more obvious than population growth, and none has been more taboo to talk about. A collapse of civilization now seems ever more likely than it did back in 1968, when the Population Bomb was written.
The role of population growth and related issues (especially patterns of rising consumption) as drivers of some of our most serious problems has been largely ignored. That makes a collapse of civilization now seem ever more likely than it did back in 1968, when the Population Bomb was written.
more
By Douglas Fischer
7 July 2009
Adreina Lairet Morreo/flickr
|
A new framework for reducing carbon emissions takes a crack at the knottiest dilemma confronting a global climate solution: how to divvy cuts between rich and poor nations.
The study, published Monday, attempts to sidestep the rancor, finding that virtually every country has a class of individuals – the so-called "high emitters" - enjoying a rich, carbon-intensive lifestyle. If those individuals, no matter their locale, are forced to take responsibility for their emissions, a great swath of countries become participants in the climate effort, the study claims.
more
By Douglas Fischer
17 June 2009
chascar/flickr
|
A report showing that climate disruption is already leaving deep imprints on every sector of the environment and that the consequences of these changes will grow steadily worse in coming decades was released Tuesday by the Obama Administration.
The 196-page report crisscrosses the United States and finds that global warming has touched every corner: Heavier downpours, strengthened heat waves, altered river flows and extended growing seasons.
more
By Douglas Fischer
29 May 2009
GreenAction
|
Climate change is disproportionately affecting the poor and minorities in the United States – a "climate gap" that will grow in coming decades unless policymakers intervene.
Everyone, the researchers say, is already starting to feel the effects of a warming planet, via heat waves, increased air pollution, drought, or more intense storms. But the impacts – on health, economics, and overall quality of life – are far more acute on society's disadvantaged, the researchers found.
more
By Barbara Fraser
19 May 2009
Icelight/flickr
|
Rapid disappearance of Andean glaciers is already producing conflicts in the region and is likely to force major human migrations in the relatively near future.
With cities growing and agriculture expanding throughout South America, experts predict that climate change will exacerbate water scarcity, increasing conflicts between competing users, pitting city dwellers against rural residents, people in dry lands against those in areas with abundant rainfall, Andean mining companies against neighboring farm communities, and eucalyptus plantation operators on the Argentinian and Uruguayan plains against farmers who say the trees are sucking the water table dry.
more
By Barbara J. Fraser
11 May 2009
(c) Walter Hupiú
|
Climate change is hitting South America with a triple whammy: More water stress, more migration, more disease.
Rising temperatures can change the way diseases behave, while collateral effects — from the retreat of glaciers that provide vital drinking and irrigation water to more frequent, intense storms and flooding — increase the burden on developing economies.
As diseases like dengue, bartonellosis and malaria spread, pressures mount on already understaffed, underfunded health services. As crops dry up and farmers migrate to urban shantytowns lacking clean water and basic sanitation, the burden is amplified.
more
By Walter Hupiú and Barbara J. Fraser
11 May 2009
Walter Hupiú
|
Climate change is further straining Peru's already stressed public health system. Two minute slideshow.
more
By Andrew McGlashen
6 May 2009
Andrew McFarlane/absolutemichigan.com
|
A novel interdisciplinary effort strives - and struggles - to give Michigan's $44 million tart cherry industry a roadmap for a warmer future.
Their work provides insight on the promises and pitfalls of what researchers and policy makers agree is an urgent task of climate science: translating the global problem to backyard consequences.
more
By Doug Struck
23 April 2009
(c) Doug Struck
|
Some of the first workers on energy efficiency programs are now hitting the streets with salaries paid by proceeds of the cap-and-trade program started by 10 Northeast States. The initiative may or may not be a good model for the Obama Administration, but it already has raised millions for efficiency programs.
And there is little dispute the program is achieving one main goal, to finance an aggressive expansion of energy efficiency programs. The first reductions of carbon dioxide allowances raised $262 million for the programs, just the beginning of a steady stream of funds being funneled to the 10 participating states.
more
By Matthew Cimitile
20 April 2009
fafou, flickr
|
California regulators, trying to assess the true environmental cost of corn ethanol, are poised to declare that the biofuel cannot help the state reduce global warming.
As they see it, corn is no better – and might be worse – than petroleum when total greenhouse gas emissions are considered.
Such a declaration, to be considered later this week by the California Air Resources Board, would be a considerable blow to the corn-ethanol industry in the United States.
more
By Janice Arenofsky
15 April 2009
Christopher Taggart, flickr
|
Harsher weather conditions – hotter temperatures and more intense dust storms fueled by global warming – are spreading the transmission of valley fever, a fungal disease endemic to the southwestern United States.
Forecasts of rising temperatures and moisture levels and alternating hot-dry and wet periods create a hospitable environment for the disease, and researchers believe climate change may impact it more than other infectious ailments.
more
By Douglas Fischer
14 April 2009
NCAR
|
Drastic, economy-changing cuts to greenhouse gas emissions will spare the planet only half the trauma expected over the next century as the Earth warms.
And that’s the good news.
Because a failure to significantly curb these planet-warming gases will truly transform our world in less than 100 years.
more
By David Biello
6 April 2009
(c) David Biello
|
All farming depends on the weather, but few foods are more dependent on a specific climate than maple syrup. And change underway in New England suggests the region's sugar country faces a bitter future.
After all, for the sugar maple's sap to run at all requires cooperative weather — freezing nights followed by warmer days.
But with the buildup of invisible greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, those temperature swings don't happen as reliably. At risk is an American tradition that stretches back even before Europeans discovered the "New World."
more
By Douglas Fischer
26 March 2009
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
|
Shifting the United States to clean-burning renewable fuels has the potential to solve long-standing social ills across the entire spectrum of American life, from manufacturing to national security to clean water, the country’s top environmental cop said on Wednesday.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said weaning the country from fossil fuels remains a top priority of the Obama administration because it offers such a broad suite of solutions across all aspects of American life: rewarding innovation, discouraging pollution, investing in jobs and encouraging energy independence.
more
By Jennifer Weeks
23 March 2009
Darien Library/flickr
|
A standard gardening reference – the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Plant Hardiness Zone Map – is about to make very clear how much rising temperatures have shifted planting zones northward.
By injecting climate change into one of America’s favorite pastimes, the revised USDA map could become an important public education tool, experts say. “Hopefully the new map will clear up a lot of confusion about what’s happening to the climate,” said Charlie Nardozzi, a National Gardening Association horticulturist.
more
By Crystal Gammon
20 March 2009
ikkoskinen/flickr
|
The higher temperatures, humidity and rainfall associated with climate change have led to increased outbreaks of West Nile Virus infections across the United States in recent years, according to a study published this week.
One of the largest surveys of West Nile Virus cases to date links warming weather patterns and increasing rainfall – both projected to accelerate with global warming – to outbreaks of the mosquito-borne disease across 17 states from 2001 to 2005.
The authors predict the pattern will only get worse.
more
By Todd Neff
17 March 2009
Peter Rejcek/NSF
Byrd Polar Research Center, Antarctica
|
Researchers question whether our scientific institutions can solve the climate dilemma, arguing that daunting pressures require a new degree of political cooperation - from the county commission up to the United Nations.
Without a fundamental shift in emphasis, they caution, the scientific infrastructure so painstakingly erected to identify the problem will find itself impotent to ensure that global warming will be mitigated and civilization will adapt.
more