By Robert Sanders20 January 2015 BERKELEY – Historical California vegetation data that more than once dodged the dumpster have now proved their true value, documenting that a changing forest structure seen in the Sierra Nevada has actually happened statewide over the past 90 years. A team of scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, UC […]
By Raymond T. Pierrehumbert10 February 2015 (Slate) – Some years ago, in the question-and-answer session after a lecture at the American Geophysical Union, I described certain geoengineering proposals as “barking mad.” The remark went rather viral in the geoengineering community. The climate-hacking proposals I was referring to were schemes that attempt to cancel out some […]
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 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 […]
21 September 2014 (Science Daily) – Carbon dioxide emissions continue to track the high end of emission scenarios, eroding the chances to keep global warming below 2°C, and placing increased pressure on world leaders ahead of the United Nations Climate Summit on the 23rd September. Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement […]
By Steven Siceloff2 July 2014 Kennedy Space Center, Florida (NASA) – A Delta II rocket blazed off the launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California early Wednesday morning to begin a landmark mission to survey carbon dioxide gas in Earth’s atmosphere. NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, or OCO-2, is expected to provide insight into […]
By Keith Cowing 12 June 2014 (SpaceRef) – NASA’s first spacecraft dedicated to measuring carbon dioxide levels in Earth’s atmosphere is in final preparations for a July 1 launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) mission will provide a more complete, global picture of the human and natural sources of […]
There is a great difference between being still and doing nothing. ~Chinese proverb~ By Carolyn Baker16 April, 2014 (Carolynbaker.net) – When I speak about catastrophic climate change and the likelihood of near-term human extinction, I am often accused to “giving up” or choosing to “do nothing” about climate change. Even more charged for some is […]
By Rhett A. Butler10 April 2014 (mongabay.com) – Forest clearing within areas zoned for timber, logging, oil palm, and mining accounted for nearly 45 percent of deforestation in Indonesia between 2000 and 2010, finds a new study that examined forest loss within industrial concessions. The research, published in the journal Conservation Letters, used a combination […]
21 March 2014 (mongabay.com) – A group of prominent scientists chose to mark the second International Day of Forests by urging the world to support an initiative that aims keep wild areas free of roads. Roadfree, an initiative led by Member of the European Parliament Kriton Arsenis, has been growing in prominence over the past […]
