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 …
Oil Spill Containment Update: The Pressure’s On
Greetings from New Orleans, where I’m about 1200 miles closer to BP’s complex containment procedures above the site of the Deepwater Hozion sinking—yet I’m pretty much still dependent on subsea camera web feeds like the rest of you. I’m here to check out how the spill—and the cleanup—are progressing, and how the community is …
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 …
A Virus Threatens Farmed Salmon
The future of fish—at least the sort that end up on our dinner plates—is not in the ocean. As we’ve steadily overfished the seas, the stock of wild fish have been declining fast. Only around 25% of commercial stocks are in a reasonably healthy state, and some 30% of fish stocks are already considered collapsed. A famous study that …
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 …
Could BP Cap the Well Early?
Of course, when we say “early,” it is important to remember that we’ve now passed Day 80 of the oil spill, and up to 150 million gallons of crude have already leaked into the Gulf of Mexico, if not more. But BP may be close to finally ending the leak. On Saturday, the company began a complex multi-day operation that involves removing the …
Good News—Kind of—on the Oil Spill
Well it only took about 80 days. On Thursday the Gulf coast woke up to some good news—the relief wells seen as the final tool to end the oil leak are proceeding faster than projected, and BP has raised the possibility that they may even be completed by July 27, far earlier than expected. Speaking to NBC and the Wall Street Journal in …
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, …
Cleaning Up on the Oil Spill
We keep hearing about the economic devastation that the oil spill will cause—and for Gulf fishermen and BP shareholders, that’s certainly true. But there are some companies specializing in oil spill cleanup that will be making a mint off the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history. In this week’s TIME paper edition—oh, and …
Is a Deepwater Drilling Moratorium Smart?
Government lawyers will be in a federal appeals court in New Orleans today, fighting to reinstate a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling. The temporary ban—put in place by President Obama after the BP spill to give a presidential commission time to reevaluate the safety of deepwater drilling—was overturned last month by a …