Of all the projected impacts of climate change, the scariest one in a world is the effect warming could have on our ability to feed ourselves. Scientists have looked at the impact of major heat waves in the past, and have found that such abnormally hot weather tends to hurt agriculture, with maize productivity levels falling by more …
Climate Science
London Science Museum Launches Climate Gallery
There are few more exciting, gee-whiz experiences than visiting The Science Museum in London. Airplanes, huge space rockets, early medical instruments and a massive IMAX theater display the breadth of human understanding and technological advancement. So “Atmosphere,” the museum’s new $7 million gallery dedicated to the science of …
Oceans: From Climate Change to Overfishing, Bad News for the Deep Blue
For all the reports about overfishing, it can sometimes be hard to except that we really have a problem. After all, if we’re supposedly fishing out the seas, why is it easy—and cheap—to get salmon, crab, tuna and any other delicacy you want at the local sushi counter? Why have McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish sandwiches skyrocketed in …
Planet of the Apes…and Monkeys and Humans
There are a lot of perks that come with being a primate. You get to be smart. You get to be social. You get to have opposable thumbs — which are very handy things to have. Most of all, you get to keep living even during hard times. If the history of humans indicates anything, it’s that we’re survivors, and a new study is showing just …
Climate: Be Afraid of Global Warming. But Not Too Afraid
Over on the mainpage, I have a Going Green column on a forthcoming psychology study that found that news articles and other messages that emphasize the scariest, most catastrophic possible impacts of global warming actually increase climate change skepticism, not the other way around. You can read about it here, and for more detail check …
Can Condoms Curb Climate Change?
Family planning, an important but often overlooked idea in the expanding arsenal of policy needed to address global warming, is the subject of a new report released by the Worldwatch Institute this week. It’s not a new concept — the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change considers population growth to be one of …
Getting past “Climategate Syndrome”
This week* marks exactly one year since “Climategate” broke into the headlines, revealing, if nothing else, that at least some mainstream climate scientists were pretty fed up with what they saw as political attacks on the legitimate science they were trying to do.
But for critics of conventional climate research, it was much …
Is the Caribbean Heading for Another Record Year in Coral Loss?
Anybody who has been visiting coral reefs for the past 20 years or so will tell you that the scene underwater pales – quite literally – in comparison to what it used to be.
New research published in PLoS ONE yesterday shows that coral bleaching in the Atlantic and the Caribbean in 2005 was the worst bleaching event ever …
When Plants Become Refugees
Getting out of harm’s way isn’t easy when you’re a plant. If the water is rising or a fire is approaching, anything that can run, fly or slither can at least move to higher ground. But trees and other vegetation are pretty much stuck. That’s at least true with high-speed, real-time dangers like floods, but a slow motion disaster—global …
Bloomberg on Climate Change: “Most People Unfortunately Don’t Care”
New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was the belle of the ball this morning at a international climate change conference here in Hong Kong. He was here as the new chair of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, a group of 40 cities worldwide committed to tackling climate change. (Here’s a map of participating cities.)
Bloomberg shared
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