Our trip’s timing to Bermuda this week couldn’t have been much more fortuitous. We arrived just as Hurricane Danielle was running out of steam after whipping Bermuda with high waves, and Hurricane Earle to the east is likely to make conditions rough by the end of the week. But right now, as we depart on the Explorer—myself, the …
Oceans: Saving Our Coral Reefs
Over on the Time.com mainpage, I have a piece on the worrying bleaching events ocurring to coral reefs around the world, thanks largely to warming ocean temperatures. Though the sudden bleachings we’re seeing in places like Indonesia immediately have to do with unusually warm water temperatures caused in part by this year’s El Nino, …
Oceans: On Bermuda
I’m on the road again—or in this case, the high seas. I’ll be spending this week in and around the Atlantic island of Bermuda with Her Deepness, Sylvia Earle—the famed American oceanographer I can best describe as America’s Jacques Cousteau. As I’ve written before, the 75-year-old Earle—who has spent her career exploring the …
Bjorn Lomborg, Climate Skeptic, Calls for Massive Global Warming Investment
Yesterday the Guardian reported that Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish scientist with the shock of blond hair who made a name for himself decrying the world’s hysteria about climate change, makes a surprising claim in his upcoming book – that confronting climate change should be a global priority, and that a $100 billion per year …
Time for a Change at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? [Update]
Update [11:11 PM EDT]: It’s worth taking a look at some of the recommendations made by the IAC report:
The IAC report makes several recommendations to fortify IPCC’s management structure, including establishing an executive committee to act on the Panel’s behalf and ensure that an ongoing decision-making capability is maintained. To
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Paving the Way to Save the Serengeti Migration
One of the unwritten rules of the industrialized age is that the more humans get to move around, the less animals do. Humanity’s unprecedented migrations – to look for jobs, escape from wars, mine for natural resources and visit new places – are, in fact, creating more and more roadblocks for the animals with which we share …
Bangladesh Cracks Down on Shipbreaking
Bangladesh’s courts put their foot down (again) this week on shipbreaking, one of the world’s dirtiest and most dangerous industries. The Supreme Court in the capital city Dhaka re-asserted that all ships coming into the nation to be dismantled for scrap metal will now be required to carry proof that they have been …
Of Cheap Couches, Swedish Meatballs, and Geothermal Heat
Oh, IKEA. Always going that extra kilometer. As if the affordable bedside tables and mid-store meatballs just when we are getting hungry (you always know!) weren’t enough, the world’s favorite Swedish home furnisher is now trying to give America a gentle shove into the age of renewable energy. IKEA is working with U.S. Department of …
Energy: Bill Gates’s Climate Heresy
Bill Gates—through his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—revolutionized the health world by focusing vast amounts of money on diseases of the developing world that hadn’t responded to traditional philanthropy. (That’s why TIME put Gates, his wife Melinda and U2 frontman Bono on the cover as People of the Year in 2005.) Lately, …
Invasive Species: Asian Carp Get Their Day In Court
The dreaded Asian carp are back in the news today. The five Great Lakes states—Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Ohio—suing to beef up anti-carp defenses scored a legal victory yesterday:
On Monday, a federal judge held an initial hearing and scheduled more hearings for expert testimony in early September. The
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