Expects lots of forthcoming post-mortems on comprehensive climate and energy legislation, which effectively died (for now) last week when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decided not to include a carbon cap or renewable energy standard on the stripped-down bill he intends to introduce this week. I’ve already had my say—today in the …
Climate Science
Cap and Trade is Dead (Really, Truly, I’m Not Kidding). Who’s to Blame?
The headline has been written countless times, but this time it is true: carbon cap-and-trade of any sort will not come out of this Congress—and perhaps it never will. Instead of comprehensive economy-wide carbon cap that Senator John Kerry had urged—and that the House had already passed a year ago—or even the compromise …
Climate Science: How Marmots Are Getting Fat on Global Warming
Burn carbon—it’s good for the marmots. Not a slogan you’re likely to see at the next climate change rally, but according to a new study published in the July 21 Nature, it might just be true—at least for a little while.
Scientists led by Arpat Ozgul, an ecologist at University Imperial College London, examined more than three …
A Great Climate Scientist Passes On
When TIME managing editor Henry Muller decided to boost the magazine’s environment coverage, he took the bold and highly visible step of naming Earth Planet of the Year in the January 2, 1989 issue. In order to generate a rich package of stories for that issue, Muller had Washington science correspondent Dick Thompson set up a …
Glacier Loses Nearly 3 Miles of Ice — Overnight
Okay, I know it’s weird to keep writing about Greenland from Hong Kong, but what can I say. Greenland’s constantly shifting landscape is a busy place.
The latest spasm of geography on the world’s largest island was recorded last week, when between July 6 and 7, scientists monitoring satellite images of Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier in …
Climate Scientists: They’re Just Like Us!
Well, not really—unless you spent a decade studying some of the most complex science in the world in college, graduate school and postdoctoral training, and know the ins and outs of a General Circulation Model. But as climate researchers struggle to cope with a changing media landscape, persistent skepticism and hostile attacks …
How Half a Billion Trees Died in 48 Hours
People who live in the Amazon basin are not likely to forget the great storm of January, 2005. Over the course of two days, a squall line measuring 620 miles (1,000 km) long and 124 miles (200 km) wide raged across the region from southwest to northeast, with buzzsaw-like winds of 90 mph (146 km/hr) causing widespread damage to property …
The IPCC’s Media Problem
Over at Dot Earth, Andrew Revkin has gotten his hands on a couple of documents being sent to the 831 researchers who will be contributing to the fifth assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—the report that sums up the state of research on global warming, and which is set to be finalized in 2014. Both have to do …
More Heat to Come—Eventually
The current heat wave is about to moderate here on the U.S. east coast. Temperatures will “only” be in the 90’s for the next week or so, compared with the 100-plus we’ve been sweating profusely under .
For those of us who write about climate, extreme weather events—not only heat waves, but also floods, droughts, …
“Climategate” Researchers Cleared—But Don’t Expect the Controversy to End
In what I really hope is the final word on “climategate”—the controversy over thousands of emails stolen from the archives of climate researchers at Britain’s East Anglia University and published on the Internet last year—an independent British inquiry into the matter largely cleared the scientists involved. Muir Russell, a senior …