In America’s low-carbon future, most cars will run on electricity, carbon dioxide will be stored underground, and homes and buildings will be hyper-efficient, guzzling less energy even as the population grows. This is the vision of a new analysis that Read more…
A global temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius could unleash more than 1,000 gigatons of carbon and methane currently trapped beneath Siberian permafrost and accelerate global climate change, a new study says. In a study conducted in a frozen cave Read more…
I come across several articles each day that cause me to adjust my position on where we’re going as a civilization. Here’s one on BP, peak oil, and climate change that offers an interesting nuance, concluding with the following: As Read more…
The UN climate talks failed to deliver increased cuts to carbon pollution, nor did they provide any credible pathway to $100 billion per year in finance by 2020 to help the poorest countries deal with climate change, according to the Read more…
There is more urgency to combat climate change than before, but how are the big economies – China, the US, India – getting on together? Each country has its own agenda and is experiencing its own growing pains of one Read more…
The earth’s oceans and lands continue to absorb more than half of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activity, suggesting that the planet has not yet reached its carbon storage capacity even as emissions continue to rise, a new study Read more…
The carbon cycle is a complex thing. There is carbon in the air (carbon dioxide), carbon in plants and animals, dissolved carbon in the sea and carbon in the soil that is constantly circulating to and from. Elevated levels of Read more…
The vast majority of our scientists tell us that climate change is already manifest, evidenced by the startling increase in extreme weather events, the melting of the glaciers, the measurable rises in the sea levels, etc. The pH of the Read more…
The planet’s seagrass meadows store more than twice as much carbon per square kilometer as forests, demonstrating that coastal vegetation can play an important role in mitigating climate change, a new study says. Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, a Read more…
A new analysis calculates that vegetation in the world’s tropical regions stores about 229 billion tons of carbon, which is about 21 percent more carbon than previously believed. Using remote sensing satellite data — including cloud-penetrating LiDAR — and field Read more…
More than half of the states in the nation have created programs to increase the energy efficiency of homes through a comprehensive approach that looks at all opportunities to save energy, from insulation to upgrading heating and cooling systems. When Read more…
While deforestation is considered a critical factor in global warming since it causes the release of carbon, scientists say that in northern latitudes tree loss may actually have a net cooling effect. In an analysis of temperature data collected from Read more…
A family trip recently brought me back to China for a few weeks. I was in a small provincial capital — quieter than Beijing or Shanghai and the kind of place that has seen explosive population growth in the past Read more…