Climate Climate & Energy

Run-Run-Run-Run Runaway

Scientists puzzled by accelerating CO2 buildup in atmosphere A sharp acceleration in the rate of increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has climate scientists puzzled and sounding a bit nervous. Mauna Loa Observatory, perched on a mountain in Hawaii, has been taking atmospheric CO2 measurements for almost 50 years. In recent decades, the rate […]

Climate change in the mainstream press

National Geographic last month became the latest national magazine to place climate change on its cover, publishing one of the strongest series of pieces on the topic yet to appear in a mainstream publication. You can view free excerpts here, but will have to pay a visit to your trusty library to read the whole issue. Be sure to check out the note from the magazine's editor in chief, Bill Allen, in which he explains why he felt compelled to run the stories even though he anticipates a lot of angry reaction to them. "Some readers will even terminate their memberships," Allen predicts.  

Consider sending a letter to the editor commending the fella for his stiff spine. (The instructions say to include your name, address, and daytime phone.) Skeptic types like Patrick Michaels have been quick to lash back at Allen and the magazine.

When I first received notice of the 74-page series, I wondered whether National Geographic would lead with the term global warming or with climate change, the phrase now in vogue in many political and scientific circles. The magazine has it both ways. Allen goes with global climate change, but Tim Appenzeller, the publication's senior editor for science, and Dennis R. Dimick, its senior editor for environment and technology, begin their introduction to the series with the very words global warming. The magazine fronts the headline "Global Warning:  Bulletins from a Warmer World" over a fiery picture of an Alaskan forest aflame.

Cheese-Eating Efficiency Monkeys

France has made big strides in energy efficiency After the global oil crises of the 1970s, both the U.S. and France took steps to increase energy efficiency and reduce their vulnerability to oil price fluctuations. Unlike the U.S., however, France stuck with them. Since 1973, U.S. oil use has risen by 16 percent, while France’s […]

Little Red Tibet

Tibet suffers melting glaciers and nuclear dumpage As if living under the heel of a repressive communist neighbor wasn’t bad enough, Tibet now has to contend with a coming ecological catastrophe and nuclear waste it didn’t produce. According to a survey conducted by some 20 U.S. and Chinese scientists, Tibet’s glaciers — which have been […]

Da!

Russian government approves Kyoto; treaty now likely to go into effect After years of mixed messages, coy feints, and internal drama, the Russian government at last approved the Kyoto Protocol today, virtually ensuring that the treaty will go into force worldwide by the end of the year. After the U.S. (responsible for 25 percent of […]

An excerpt from Feeling the Heat sizes up the ominous Asian Cloud

The Indian city of Mumbai, formerly Bombay, is home to one of Asia's largest slums and endures among the worst air quality on earth. Half the city's population lacks running water or electricity, and the smoke from countless wood-burning cooking fires joins with the acrid haze from two-stroke auto rickshaws, diesel buses, and coal-fired power plants to all but choke the city. Breathing Mumbai's air, reports the Lonely Planet travel guide, is equivalent to smoking 20 cigarettes a day. Comparable air quality wraps New Delhi, Bangalore, and 69 of India's 70 principal cities year-round, according to a 1997 study by India's Central Pollution Control Board.

Baked Alaskans

Global warming is destroying Eskimo villages While debates over the “precautionary principle” and economic tradeoffs take place down in the cozy lower 48, global warming is entirely less abstract to Inupiaq Eskimos on the coast of Alaska. They’re not so much worried about losing jobs as losing, well, their villages. The annual mean air temperature […]

Go West, Young Pollutocrat!

Bush administration makes big push for oil and gas drilling in West With unprecedented speed, the Bush administration has opened vast swaths of environmentally sensitive land in the West to oil and gas drilling — this by-now-familiar story is told comprehensively in articles in The Washington Post and The Seattle Times. The situation is summed […]

Like a Tundra of Bricks

Arctic tundra may produce rather than absorb CO2, accelerating warming It’s not often that drama emerges from the Arctic tundra, but there seems to be genuine excitement around revelations from a 20-year study just completed and published in the journal Nature. Researchers have long assumed that Arctic tundra would be a carbon dioxide “sink,” absorbing […]

Global dimming? Global warming? What’s with the globe, anyway?

Raise a toast to solar radiation. The director of the Zurich-based World Radiation Monitoring Center, the organization that measures the amount of solar radiation hitting the ground around the globe, has a strange talent. Give Atsumu Ohmura a glass of white wine and tell him only its vintage, and he’ll swish a mouthful and — […]