Climate Science
All Stories
-
![]()
![]()
Border fence is bad for bears
Ever since America decided the best way to keep the teh-rur-ists and immigrants out was to build a fence along the southern border, environmentalists have worried about the impact of a gigantic, impenetrable fence on the local wildlife. And while we know that it's hard for most people to get their hackles up about the […]
-
Critical List: The shortest day of the year; some grey wolves to come off endangered species list
Today marks the solstice: the shortest day of the year and the beginning of winter. Things will only get better from here on out, as long as by “things” you mean “the amount of daylight available in the Northern hemisphere.” Grey wolves in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin will be taken off the endangered species list. […]
-
![]()
![]()
Markets and climate change: A case of cognitive dissonance
Earlier this month, Nicholas Stern — respected U.K. economist and author of the famed Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change — cast a spotlight on what he calls a “profound contradiction at the heart of climate change policy.” On one side, the world’s governments have pledged to hold temperature rise to 2 degrees […]
-
![]()
![]()
Don’t call the Antarctic ice shelf; it’ll call you
Back when I was in middle school, the internet was still something of a novelty, but we did have email. So when I was assigned a report on Antarctica, my mom dug up the email address of a real, live scientist living at the research station there. We emailed him a few report-related questions, and […]
-
Critical List: Keystone XL decision should come in two months; NIH stops chimp research
The president will most likely have to make a final decision on Keystone XL within two months. Brace for the imminent lobbying fight. Democrats are already pointing out that issuing permits two months from now is impossible, because that timeline wouldn't leave room for required environmental reviews. Germany got a fifth of its power from […]
-
![]()
![]()
Endangered lemurs becoming ‘bar snacks’
For who knows how many generations, the natives of Madagascar did not eat lemurs because they thought their ancestors forbade it. Now, and I am not making this up, they are praying to their ancestors to lift the ban, reports Sara Reardon at Science Now. Mostly because their kids, who are not big on ancestor […]
-
![]()
![]()
New approach to climate deniers: Launch them into space!
Sir Richard Branson in his WhiteKnightTwo aircraft.Photo: Dave Malkoff This story has been corrected and updated since its original publication. See below for details. Here’s a new idea for how to deal with climate deniers: Blast them into space. The proposal came yesterday during a freewheeling panel discussion among California Gov. Jerry Brown, Virgin Group […]
-
![]()
![]()
‘Brutal logic’ and climate communications
In a couple of posts last week — here and here — I laid out the brutal logic implied by the latest climate science (with credit to scientist Kevin Anderson for stripping away the rosy assumptions hiding in many of today’s common climate scenarios). To sum up: a rise in temperature of 2 degrees C […]
-
![]()
![]()
Sucking carbon out of the air: Probably not an option
With all this talk of the impossibility of averting catastrophic levels of future climate change, it's tempting to daydream of using technology to clean up the bed we just shat. Economists, especially, love this kind of thinking — if we just hoard enough precious gold today, maybe we can transmute it into a livable planet […]
-
![]()
![]()
Arctic methane turns out to be a huge problem after all
While the nerd herd was busy declaring the threat posed by gigantic new plumes of methane from the Arctic Ocean to be a non-starter, we all managed to miss the real methane menace, highlighted by climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe: surprise. Surprise and fear. The two real methane menaces are fear and surprise. The bottom line: […]
