Climate Science
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The New Yorker slams oil-focused Obama for letting the planet burn
We’re screwed.Check out Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker: When Obama took office, he appointed some of the country’s most knowledgeable climate scientists to his Administration, and it seemed for a time as if he might take his responsibility to lead on this issue seriously. That hope has faded. The President sat on the sidelines […]
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How climate change is starving the world
It was supposed to take until 2080 for food prices to double. Sure, climate change can make arable land into irrigation-hungry desert, and increase the likelihood of crop-destroying severe weather (and wildfires). But ironically, increased carbon dioxide also helps plants grow, so this was all supposed to be under control for the foreseeable future. Turns […]
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What’s the relationship between climate change and Arizona’s forest fires?
A crazy-big forest fire is raging through Arizona, battled by 2,300 firefighters and covering 287 square miles. It's the third largest forest fire in the state's history. But is it a product of climate change? The short answer is that we have no idea until someone digs in to the specifics of this particular event. But […]
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Take a look at what we’ve done to fish populations
This image from Information is Beautiful (click to embiggen) shows the biomass of popularly-eaten fish (bluefin tuna, striped bass, all the ones you normally see in restaurants) in the northern Atlantic. On the left is 1900 — look at all that blue! Blue means 11 or more tons of fish in a given area. On […]
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Mitt Romney loves climate science, hates winning
Oh, Mitt Romney. You have such electable hair. So why do you want to waste it by doing things like believing in global warming? That's not how people become the Republican presidential nominee. Yes, Mitt is apparently not participating in the traditional quadrennial GOP candidate 5K Fun Run Away From Anything That Sounds Mildly Liberal. […]
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Mitt Romney: Reducing global-warming pollution is 'important'
Breaking with Tea Party Republicans, Mitt Romney said that "it's important for us to reduce our emissions" that cause climate change.
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The ‘hellish’ 7.2F warmer World of Tomorrow
Humanity is pumping out record amounts of greenhouse gases, and people are probably in more of a lather about the American Idol results than the fact that we’re well on our way to turning the planet into something not seen since the age of the dinosaurs. Sounds like the future is a whole bunch of […]
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Starry-eyed U.N. chief says we need to limit climate change to 2.7F of warming, not 3.6F
This week in the annals of wishful thinking, the executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change declared that the world's nations — you know, the ones with the record carbon emissions last year — should commit themselves to warming of no more than 2.7 degrees F, not the previously agreed-upon 3.6 degrees […]
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Carbon President: Why does Obama keep OK’ing big fossil-fuel projects?
The future’s looking hot.Photo: The White HouseThis essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom’s kind permission. In our globalized world, old-fashioned geography is not supposed to count for much: mountain ranges, deep-water ports, railroad grades — those seem so 19th century. The Earth is flat, or so I remember somebody […]
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MyConservationPark is a Facebook game that’s actually good for something
MyConservationPark is a Farmville-style Facebook game that lets you administer a nature preserve, juggling animals, plants, structures, and people to protect the habitat of endangered wildlife. But this isn't just a whole new way to annoy your Facebook friends with environmentalism; it also makes a difference in the real world. Fifteen percent of any in-game […]