The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is co-ordinating a new venture to tackle short-lived global warming agents such as black carbon. Should we be paying more attention to black carbon? Yes, indeed we should, because black carbon plays complicated and multi-faceted roles in global carbon dynamics. It also poses some deep research challenges and moral […] … learn more→

If you had asked me that question just a year ago, I probably would have expressed skepticism. I have covered climate change as a science journalist for more than two decades and care deeply about the issue. But I’ve always thought of it as problem to be solved on the national or international level. So, […] … learn more→

A project running almost 10,000 climate simulations on volunteers’ home computers has found that a global warming of 3 degrees Celsius by 2050 is ‘equally plausible’ as a rise of 1.4 degrees. The study, the first to run so many simulations using a complex atmosphere-ocean climate model, addresses some of the uncertainties that previous forecasts, […] … learn more→

If no-one argues against the proposition that it was capitalism that created the global warming problem, then no one can argue that it must therefore be capitalism that will solve the problem. But how can capitalism solve the problem of global warming? The answer: by financing the transition to a clean energy economy. This is […] … learn more→

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) released a report this month on the costs of California’s progress in generating more electricity from renewable power, and there was good news. Prices of new contract bids submitted to utilities last year were about 30 percent lower than in 2009, according to the report, signaling a more competitive […] … learn more→

You may have read about the Marshall Plan, which restarted the economy of Europe following World War II. With the threat of catastrophic climate change hovering over our heads, and with the economy still in tatters in many parts of the world, I\’d like to suggest a worldwide Marshall Plan-style initiative to stave off global […] … learn more→

The global average temperature in 2011 was 14.52 degrees Celsius (58.14 degrees Fahrenheit). According to NASA scientists, this was the ninth warmest year in 132 years of recordkeeping, despite the cooling influence of the La Niña atmospheric and oceanic circulation pattern and relatively low solar irradiance. Since the 1970s, each subsequent decade has gotten hotter […] … learn more→

When a hacker (or hackers) released a second batch of emails stolen from scientists last month, the immediate question that sprang to my mind was, “Why haven’t we found them yet?” And now, after months of apparent inactivity, it seems that British authorities are taking a renewed interest in tracking down the criminals who are […] … learn more→

Global warming is a hot-button issue, eliciting passionate reactions from both believers and non-believers. The phrase \”global warming\” itself might be one of the problems. The effects of the buildup of harmful chemicals in the atmosphere contribute to warming, but it also manifests in increasingly extreme weather, including blizzards and ice storms. A more appropriate […] … learn more→

Evidence is key to many topical debates such as global warming, evolution, the search for weapons of mass destruction, DNA profiling, and advances in science and medicine. A new book asks whether, considering the importance of evidence for so many disciplines, a general ‘science of evidence’ is possible – or even desirable. Evidence, Inference and […] … learn more→