Scientific American Topic - Global Warming

Trumpeter Swans Rebound, with an Assist from Global Warming

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:55:00 EST

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Outside Alaska's largest city, where wildlife is more common than pigeons, locals bearing field glasses turn out every year to watch blazingly white trumpeter swans stop to feed on their way south for the winter.

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A Second Science Front: Evolution Champions Rise to Climate Science Defense

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:35:08 EST

Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education , long the nation's leading defender of evolution education, discusses the NCSE's new initiative for climate science education. [More]

Jet Lag: What's Causing One of the Driest, Warmest Winters in History?

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:15:00 EST

A little snow and rain are falling in a few states today, but the 2011–12 winter has been extremely warm and dry across the continental U.S. Meteorologists think they have figured out why.

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How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change: Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:01:00 EST

Humanity has done little to address climate change. Global emissions of carbon dioxide reached (another) all-time peak in 2010. The most recent international talks to craft a global treaty to address the problem pushed off major action until 2020. Fortunately, there's an alternative-- curbing the other greenhouse gases .

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Michael Mann Defends Climate Computer Models

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 10:27:08 EST

Fair warning: the following is more than 60 seconds, and it’s about climate change.

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Could Public Health Benefits Make Combating Climate Change Free?

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 14:21:00 EST

DURBAN, South Africa--Former entomologist Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum of the World Health Organization worries about nosebleeds more than the average person. That's because he's one of the estimated 12 million people worldwide afflicted with leishmaniasis --a potentially fatal parasitic disease characterized most often by lesions on the skin and/or mucus membranes--caused by the bite of a sandfly.

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Durban Deal May Bring Climate Change Action into 21st Century

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 11:25:08 EST

I am here in Durban, South Africa, to report on the just-finished climate-change negotiations. While an agreement was reached, negotiations were in doubt throughout the three final nights. The sticking point was Singapore.

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Durban Deal May Bring Climate Change Action into 21st Century

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 10:16:08 EST

I am here in Durban, South Africa to report on the just finished climate change negotiations. While an agreement was reached, negotiations were in doubt throughout the three final nights. The sticking point was Singapore.

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Climate Talks Prove Growing Need for Carbon Capture and Storage Globally

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 00:30:00 EST

DURBAN, South Africa--The roughly 3,000 fossil fuel–fired power plants in North America--Canada, Mexico and the U.S.--emit 6 percent of global greenhouse gases , or nearly as much as all of the European Union. In fact, coal-fired power plants around the globe are the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

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Fast Climate Change Moves Slow Species

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 20:55:08 EST

It’s hard to feel a sense of urgency about climate change--it feels so slow. Well, try telling that to the critters dealing with it. Because new data suggest that the climate will change more than 100 times faster than the rate at which species can adapt. That’s according to a study published in the journal Public Library of Science ONE . [A. Michelle Lawing and P. David Polly, " Pleistocene Climate, Phylogeny, and Climate Envelope Models: An Integrative Approach to Better Understand Species' Response to Climate Change" ]

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Climate Negotiations Fail to Keep Pace with Science

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 19:00:00 EST

DURBAN, South Africa--By 2020, human activity could produce some 55 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases per year, up from roughly 36 billion metric tons currently. All the accumulating gas is enough to raise the global average temperatures by more than 3 degrees Celsius by century's end--more than triple the amount of warming that has already occurred. Emission reductions pledged under the 2010 Cancun Agreements , which cover some 85 percent of all national greenhouse gas emissions in the world, are meant to slow that warming. "I think its safe to say the current commitment is scientifically sound," argued Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of China's National Development and Reform Commission and lead climate envoy, in a press briefing here on December 6.

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Three-Quarters of Climate Change Is Man-Made

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 04:30:00 EST

Natural climate variability is extremely unlikely to have contributed more than about one-quarter of the temperature rise observed in the past 60 years, reports a pair of Swiss climate modelers in a paper published online December 4. Most of the observed warming--at least 74 percent--is almost certainly due to human activity, they write in Nature Geoscience .

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Whales Win, Walruses Lose in Warmer Arctic

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 10:00:00 EST

(Reuters) - The Arctic zone has moved into a warmer, greener "new normal" phase, which means less habitat for polar bears and more access for development, an international scientific team reported on Thursday.

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Climate Change Boosts Lethal Hendra Virus

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:20:00 EST

It started with Vic Rail's horses, in September 1994. First one, then another, they died horrible deaths, 13 horses in all over the span of just two weeks, frothing from their noses and mouths, thrashing in agonizing pain. Then Rail died too. [More]

Historian Hunts for Motives Behind Climate Change Doubt-Mongering: A Q&A with Naomi Oreskes

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 10:25:00 EST

Naomi Oreskes is a science historian, professor at the University of California, San Diego, and co-author (with Erik Conway) of "Merchants of Doubt," a book that examined how a handful of scientists obscure the facts on a range of issues, including tobacco use and climate change. Her seminal paper in the journal Science, "Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change," challenged – back in 2004 – the notion that climate change science was uncertain. Her work has documented the spread of doubt-mongering from an industry practice to a political strategy.

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Wet Down: Warm, Wet Conditions on Ancient Mars May Have Been Confined to Subsurface

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 14:20:00 EST

When Mars orbiters decades ago spotted valleys and other fluvial landforms on the surface of the Red Planet, a tantalizing idea came to the fore. Perhaps, planetary scientists ventured, ancient Mars was blanketed by a thick atmosphere that kept the planet much warmer and wetter than it is now, with flowing water, lakes and maybe even an ocean covering at least part of its surface. And if Mars had water some three billion to four billion years ago, they wondered, why not life? [More]

Can Climate Science Predict Extreme Weather?

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 12:00:00 EST

DENVER, Colo. - 2011 may well be remembered as the year of extreme weather in the United States, with drought in Texas, floods along the Mississippi River, a freak October snowstorm on the East Coast. Tornadoes alone would make the year memorable, with some 1,270 twisters causing 544 deaths and $25 billion in damages. [More]

Yukon River Dumping More Mercury Thanks to Climate Change

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 14:35:00 EST

The Yukon River is delivering upwards of five tons of mercury a year to the Arctic environment, likely in response to a warming climate, scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey announced Tuesday.

The river is pumping three to 32 times more mercury into the environment than similarly sized river basins, based on limited data. And while scientists don't know the reason for the Yukon's big mercury load, they say evidence points strongly to two suspects: Melting permafrost, and the Yukon basin's unique placement as a catchment for pollution from Asia and Europe.

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Why Is the CIA Keeping Climate Change Secret?

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 09:00:08 EST

Climate change is hard to hide, but the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is trying anyway.

Back in 2009, the CIA established a Center on Climate Change and National Security dedicated to researching the implications of rising sea levels, declining agricultural yields and other climate change impacts.

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New Research Examines Role of Clouds in Climate Change

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 13:20:00 EST

New findings published Tuesday appear to undermine a controversial study - oft-cited by those who downplay the human impacts of climate change - that claimed variations in cloud cover are driving temperature changes across the globe.

The analysis confirms - as most atmospheric scientists have long held - that the reverse is true: Clouds change in response to temperature changes. There is no evidence clouds can cause meaningful climate change, concluded the report's author, Andrew Dessler, an atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M University. "Suggestions that significant revisions to mainstream climate science are required are therefore not supported," he wrote.

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