16 January 2015 (Associated Press) – Federal science officials say that for the third time in a decade, the globe sizzled to the hottest year on record. Both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA calculated that 2014 was the hottest year in 135 years of record-keeping. Earlier, the Japanese weather agency and an […]
By Jonathan Amos18 December 2014 (BBC News) – NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) has returned its first global maps of the greenhouse gas CO2. The satellite was sent up in July to help pinpoint the key locations on the Earth’s surface where carbon dioxide is being emitted and absorbed. This should help scientists better understand […]
By Michael E. Mann5 December 2014 As the mercury rose in 2014, so did reasons to be thankful. Climate change is the kind of thing that makes you feel plenty of emotions, but usually gratitude is not one of them. This year, though, something is different. Though there have been plenty of record-hot months this […]
(UNDP) – Over the years there has been much debate about what sustainability means and about what measures can track sustainable progress— or the lack of it. In 2012 the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio took a broad view that sustainable progress must cover all three dimensions that affect people’s life chances—social, […]
WASHINGTON, 2 December 2014 (AP) – In the more than two decades since world leaders first got together to try to solve global warming, life on Earth has changed, not just the climate. It’s gotten hotter, more polluted with heat-trapping gases, more crowded and just downright wilder. The numbers are stark. Carbon dioxide emissions: up […]
By CORAL DAVENPORT30 November 2014 WASHINGTON (The New York Times) – After more than two decades trying but failing to forge a global pact to halt climate change, United Nations negotiators gathering in South America this week are expressing a new optimism that they may finally achieve the elusive deal. But underlying that optimism is […]
By Ross Koningstein & David Fork 18 November 2014 (IEEE Spectrum) – Google cofounder Larry Page is fond of saying that if you choose a harder problem to tackle, you’ll have less competition. This business philosophy has clearly worked out well for the company and led to some remarkably successful “moon shot” projects: a translation […]
By Doyle Rice10 November 2014 (USA TODAY) – In the battle to combat global warming, the world isn’t moving fast enough to stay in the fight. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — which releases a new report every few years — again gave grim news last week as emissions rose 2.3% […]
By John Vidal15 November 2014 (The Observer) – When Botswana’s president, Ian Khama, opened a giant $4.9bn diamond mine in the heart of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in September, there were some notable absentees among the invited guests: the 700 bushmen whose hunter-gatherer families had been the traditional inhabitants of the desert, but who […]
By Patrick Lynch17 November 2014 (NASA) – An ultra-high-resolution NASA computer model has given scientists a stunning new look at how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere travels around the globe. Plumes of carbon dioxide in the simulation swirl and shift as winds disperse the greenhouse gas away from its sources. The simulation also illustrates differences […]
