If there’s a single lesson for early 21st century life on the planet Earth, it’s this: everything connects. That’s true whether we’re looking at the global economic system, in which sickness is now spreading from the euro zone to …
global warming
Ocean History Lessons: How Corals Can Protect Themselves From Warming
History is a valuable teacher—to natural systems as well as humans, apparently. In a study that could critically shape marine conservation efforts for years to come, scientists have found that sea life can learn from the past …
Little People: Will Climate Change Shrink the Species?
If you think there are no new reasons to get freaked out by climate change, try this: there’s at least a theoretical possibility that a warmer and warmer world could lead to tinier and tinier humans. That’s the inevitable …
Natural Gas Can Save the Climate? Not Exactly
I’m beginning to think solving this global warming thing is going to be really, really hard. We all know that the burning of carbon-intensive coal is just about the single biggest source of manmade greenhouse gas emissions. That’s why groups like the Sierra Club are fighting so hard to get America off coal—whether or not we burn …
Why We Need to Test Geoengineering—Soon
The writer and activist Bill McKibben has a saying: “You can’t negotiate with the planet.” What he means is that climate change will continue to unfold based on the amount of carbon we spew into the atmosphere—along with other physical factors—whether we chose to believe in it or not.
That’s worth remembering as we enter this …
Welcome to the Era of the Everyday Billion-Dollar Disaster
2010 was a pretty serious year for Atlantic hurricanes. The season tied with 1995 and 1887 for the third largest number of named storm, with 19, and tied with 1969 for the second largest number of hurricanes, with 12. One of those hurricanes—Earl—reached Category 4 status, with winds hitting a maximum of 145 mph, stronger than …
Does El Nino—and Climate Change—Really Cause Civil Wars?
For several years now, a few academics have been fighting a civil war over the possible effects of climate and global warming on, well, civil war. In 2009 Marshall Burke, an economist at the University of California-Berkeley, co-authored a paper arguing that higher temperatures increased the risk of civil conflict—and that the warming …
How Climate Change Is Turning Plants and Animals into Refugees
Regardless of what Rick Perry and the rest of Republican presidential candidate field believe (except for you, Jon Huntsman), climate change is real and it’s happening. The questions for the 98% of climate researchers who accept the consensus on man-made global warming is how fast the climate is changing, and what impact it will have …
Al Gore Wants You to Join the Climate Reality
Though he’s the single person most associated with climate change, over the last couple of years Al Gore had kept a somewhat lower public profile on the issue. It’s not that the former Vice President disappeared entirely—he continued advocacy work through his Alliance for Climate Protection, testified on climate science at Congress and …