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 Tom Miles; editing by Stephanie Nebehay9 September 2014 GENEVA (Reuters) – Atmospheric volumes of greenhouse hit a record in 2013 as carbon dioxide concentrations grew at the fastest rate since reliable global records began, the World Meteorological Organization said on Tuesday. “We know without any doubt that our climate is changing and our weather […]
By Evan Halper and Ralph Vartabedian 25 October 2014 (Los Angeles Times) – California’s pioneering climate-change law has a long reach, but that doesn’t mean all its mandates will help stave off global warming. To meet the requirement that it cut carbon emissions, for example, Southern California Edison recently sold its stake in one of […]
By Alister Doyle; Editing by Rosalind Russell14 September 2014 OSLO (Reuters) – Tiny marine algae can evolve fast enough to cope with climate change in a sign that some ocean life may be more resilient than thought to rising temperatures and acidification, a study showed. Evolution is usually omitted in scientific projections of how […]
[For background, see 2 bold proposals emerge to change climate negotiations.] By Stefan Rahmstorf1 October 2014 (RealClimate) – In a comment in Nature titled “Ditch the 2°C warming goal”, political scientist David Victor and retired astrophysicist Charles Kennel advocate just that. But their arguments don’t hold water. It is clear that the opinion article by […]
By Paul Krugman18 September 2014 (The New York Times) – This just in: Saving the planet would be cheap; it might even be free. But will anyone believe the good news? I’ve just been reading two new reports on the economics of fighting climate change: a big study by a blue-ribbon international group, the New […]
By James West10 September 2014 (Mother Jones) – With every year that passes, we’re getting further away from averting a human-caused climate disaster. That’s the key message in this year’s “Low Carbon Economy Index,” a report released by the accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers. The report highlights an “unmistakable trend”: The world’s major economies are increasingly failing […]
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 Martha Baskin and Mary Bruno16 June 2014 (Crosscut) – What happens when phytoplankton, the (mostly) single-celled organisms that constitute the very foundation of the marine food web, turn toxic? Their toxins often concentrate in the shellfish and many other marine species (from zooplankton to baleen whales) that feed on phytoplankton. Recent trailblazing research by […]
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 […]
