In an exclusive interview published today on Nature Reports Climate Change, climate scientist James Hansen talks about his forthcoming book, Storms of My Grandchildren.
Arguably the world’s most famous climate scientist, and Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York, Hansen’s conviction [...]
Daniel Cressey; cross-posted from The Great Beyond
China has announced it will reduce its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by between 40 and 45% of 2005 levels by 2020.
“Appropriate handling of the climate change issue is of vital interest to [...]
The online publication of sensitive material from a British climate centre is brewing into one of the scientific controversies of the year, causing dismay among affected institutes and individuals, reports Quirin Schiermeier over on Nature News [subscription].
The disclosure of the contents of over 1,000 e-mails and documents obtained [...]
Keith Kloor
Less than three weeks before more than 60 world leaders will gather in Copenhagen for a historic climate change summit, the Obama Administration is saying don’t count them out. According to the Guardian, White House officials have told reporters that President Obama will soon announce a U.S. [...]
Daniel Cressey; cross-posted from The Great Beyond
The ice sheet covering east Antarctica may have been melting since 2006, according to new research, contradicting previous suggestions that it has remained stable or even grown in mass.
Everyone's talking about the CRU data hack. Quirin Schiermeier reports on Nature News:
One of Britain's leading climate-research centres has had more than 1,000 files stolen from its computers and republished on the Internet. The cyber-attack is apparently aimed at damaging the reputations of prominent climate scientists.
The full story is [...]
Keith Kloor
While many are feeling pessimistic about the prospects for a deal at Copenhagen, Geoffrey Lean at Grist believes the big climate summit still has a pulse. He reports that “environment ministers from 40 key countries—assembled this week for a two-day preparatory meeting in Copenhagen—made good progress towards [...]
Olive Heffernan
This week's Nature [subscription required] is the third in a series of special issues celebrating the life of Charles Darwin. It focuses on the dire challenges to Earth's biodiversity — and finds some reason for hope.
Among the numerous biodiversity-related contributions is an opinion [...]
Daniel Cressey; cross-posted from The Great Beyond
The world’s carbon dioxide ‘sinks’ are not able to keep up with the amount of the greenhouse gas being produced, according to a paper published in Nature Geoscience.
Reviewing the recent literature Corinne Le Quéré, of the University of East Anglia, and colleagues report [...]
Keith Kloor
After world leaders announced over the weekend that no legally binding global warming treaty would be reached at the upcoming Copenhagen summit, the post mortems have started coming in fast and furious. Christian Schwägerl in Der Spiegel writes:
“The U.S. is quite happy to see itself as [...]Olive Heffernan
I've just returned from a two-day visit to the UK Met Office, where scientists are gathered this week to present and discuss the results of a five-year research initiative known as Ensembles. An EU-funded project led by the Met Office Hadley Centre, Ensembles brought together 66 research international institutes' [...]
Keith Kloor
The U.S. Congressional climate bill will be tabled until next year, reports The Wall Street Journal. Says Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus:
"It's common understanding that climate-change legislation will not be brought up on the Senate floor and pass the Senate this year."Just how important is the U.S. [...]
Quirin Schiermeier
Rising temperatures cause melting and retreat of large ice sheets, sea ice, and mountain glaciers – that’s pretty much common knowledge by now, as are implications on sea level, ecosystems, water supply and natural hazard risk. But a couple of news stories this week may cause confusion.
That the Greenland [...]
Keith Kloor
Passing climate legislation through the US Senate may be tricky, but that hasn’t scared off the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from doing its part. As Stephen Power at the WSJ’s Environmental Capitol notes:
“Congress might be a long way from passing legislation to fight climate change, but the [...]
Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from The Great Beyond
International delegates to the Montreal Protocol wrapped up their meeting in Port Ghalib, Egypt, over the weekend without taking formal action to curb hydrofluorocarbons, modern refrigerants that are also poised to become a major contributor to global warming. [...]
Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), has denied claims that it prevents researchers from publishing work on politically-sensitive issues such as climate change, reports Nature News [subscription].
An ecological economist at the agency, Clive Spash, had a paper accepted for publication in the [...]
Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field
Things are winding down here in Barcelona. The latest negotiating text is out, and everybody is waiting for the final plenary session.
Negotiators seem to have coalesced on what needs to come out of Copenhagen, as opposed to what many would like to [...]
Keith Kloor
All hope for Copenhagen seems lost. According to The Times:
“A world treaty on climate change will be delayed by up to a year and is likely to be watered down because countries with the highest greenhouse gas emissions are refusing to commit to legally binding reductions.”So if [...]
Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field
The European Commission's chief negotiator, Artur Runge-Metzger, acknowledged this afternoon that Europe might have to settle for a political agreement rather than a binding legal treaty in Copenhagen (see my post this morning for a quick discussion of the issue). Everybody else has' [...]
Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field
And now I'll take a look at the major developing countries, as promised both yesterday and today. A new analysis of climate commitments by the six biggest emerging economies - Brazil, China, India, South Africa, Mexico and South Korea - suggests that their' [...]
Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field
I’m sitting in the plenary session of the Kyoto Protocol, listening to an old debate over the baseline year used to assess emissions. The protocol is currently tied to 1990 emissions, but Japan, Australia and Canada have all suggested that expressing emissions reductions [...]
Anjali Nayar, an International Development Research Centre fellow at Nature, recently visited a pioneering project in Madagascar that's aiming to protect one of the country's few remaining forests. About 90% of the species in Madagascar's rainforests are found nowhere else on Earth, but efforts to save the island nation's forests [...]
Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field
I arrived at the conference this morning only to encounter global leaders with unusually large heads pulling funny money out of one box labelled "aid" and putting it into another labelled "climate change." It was a short stunt by Oxfam [...]
Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field
And now back to the case of the missing 10-word phrase, which says that any payments for reduced deforestation should include "safeguards against the conversion of natural forests to forest plantations." Just for amusement, here's the gist in UN climate speak: It was [...]
Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field
This afternoon has been all about deforestation. Environmentalists are busy tracking the debate about an 10-word phrase - mysteriously deleted at the last talks in Bangkok - that is designed to prevent natural forests from being converted into plantations. But I'll deal with' [...]
Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field
Following up on yesterday's agreement, the leader of the African Group said during an afternoon press conference he is "guardedly optimistic" about the talks going forward.
But Sudan's Lumumba Di-Aping refused to give any ground on developing countries' demands that rich countries curb' [...]
Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field
I arrived at the United Nations climate conference today - late, on the second day, after a red-eye flight over the Atlantic and an all-too-brief nap at the hotel – and encountered drama much sooner than expected. I registered, oriented [...]
Stephanie Baudains
Al Gore was yesterday questioned on climate change policy by Katie Couric, anchor and managing editor of CBS Evening News, in an interview that coincided with the release of his latest book Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis' . In a polished delivery the erstwhile' [...]
Keith Kloor
Prospects for the U.S. congressional climate bill appear grim, writes Juliet Eilperin in the Washington Post:
“With Democrats deeply divided on the issue, unless some Republican lawmakers risk the backlash for signing on to the legislation, there is almost no hope for passage.”David Roberts at Grist offers a [...]
Nature reporter Jeff Tollefson will be at the United Nations climate summit from 2-6 November 2009 in Barcelona, Spain. It is the last negotiating period before the seminal climate summit in Copenhagen in December. He'll be blogging at Nature's In the Field blog and here on Climate Feedback. For more' [...]
Olive Heffernan
532,151,027,622: that’s the amount of carbon in tonnes that we’ve released into the atmosphere over the past 250 years from burning coal, making cement and chopping down forests, according to the calculations of Oxford University researchers.
You can watch this number climb rapidly on the newly launched website, [...]
Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond
Climate negotiators are in Barcelona, Spain, this week for the last bout of negotiating prior to the two-week Copenhagen meeting. In December this year, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will descend on [...]
![oct2009_1_3_orig[2].jpg](http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/oct2009_1_3_orig%5B2%5D.jpg)
Olive Heffernan
“Imagine farmers being able to determine what to plant and where based on drought forecasts three to five years out”, said Jane Lubchenco, head of NOAA, in Geneva last month.
Speaking to delegates at the World Climate Conference, Lubchenco was lending her voice to [...]
Hopes that the UN conference in Copenhagen will result in an ambitious climate treaty have faded, with UN climate chief Yvo de Boer now conceding that reaching a legally binding agreement will be impossible this year.
If December’s summit fails to [...]
Keith Kloor
The public battle starts anew on the U.S. congressional climate & energy bill, as senate hearings get underway today. Keith Johnson over at the WSJ’s Environmental Capital believes that three camps will shape the debate:
“Those that believe climate legislation will actually strengthen the economy, those that figure it [...]
Cross posted by Katharine Sanderson on The Great Beyond
Two papers in Science yesterday have poured cold water on the promise of second generation biofuels.
Biofuels derived from the cellulosic, woody parts of plants are not having their greenhouse gas emissions properly accounted for, says Jerry Melillo from [...]
Keith Kloor
If all the maneuvering in advance of Copenhagen is beginning to resemble a high-stakes poker game, then the European Union has thrown its cards down on the table this week. As the Guardian reported:
“The EU negotiating position offers to slash greenhouse gas emissions by between 80-95% by [...]Reaching a climate deal in Copenhagen will depend on rich nations’ proactive commitment to making mandatory emission cuts at home, prominent experts from India and China reiterate in a couple of opinion pieces in Nature [subscription] today. And it will require exceptional diplomatic skill, adds [...]
From undersea meetings by Maldives’ ministers to debates in the US Senate, talk of climate change is echoing around every corner of the globe. The message: needs are great and growing fast, while resources remain few and far between.
The task awaiting negotiators headed for Copenhagen this December - [...]
Quirin Schiermeier
The European Union’s environment ministers have reportedly agreed on a negotiation mandate for Sweden for the upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen. Sweden currently holds the EU presidency, which rotates every six months. (German).
The EU has previously said it will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least [...]
Keith Kloor
So if Copenhagen doesn’t produce a global warming treaty next month, which now seems likely, what about setting up a global environmental body? The environmental ministers for Italy and Kenya float this idea in a Guardian op-ed. They note that Chancellor Merkel of Germany and President [...]
Has continuing criticism of the controversial Superfreakonomics book taken an ugly turn? Co-author Stephen Dubner believes so and fires back at his NYT blog, asserting that critics have:
“given the impression that we are global-warming deniers of the worst sort, and that our analysis of the issue is ideological [...]Getting a climate deal agreed in December will require an ‘uphill battle’ said UK energy and climate change Secretary Ed Miliband in London yesterday, despite incremental progress from the world's largest economies on agreeing the way forward.
Miliband addressed the press following a two-day meeting of the [...]
As promised, here's the YouTube version of the Nature film on climate change:
[...]
The authors of the bestselling Freakonomics, which was largely an attempt to make sense and fun of economics for those who don’t think they care about such things, are now back with a title that sounds like a bigger and better version of the original: [...]
Mere exposure to green products can make people behave more altruistically, but purchasing those same products can have quite the opposite effect, suggests a new study in press at the journal Psychological Science.
Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong of the University of Toronto conducted three experiments [...]
Cross-posted from The Great Beyond
US billionaire George Soros, founder of the hedge fund Soros Fund Management, has announced plans to invest $1 billion in clean-energy technologies to help stave off global warming.
Speaking at a climate conference in Copenhagen on 12 October, Soros also said [...]
The Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology – an international body that traditionally has represented marine industry and more recently, scientists too – today released its position statement on climate change.
The institute has been somewhat slower than many scientific bodies to release such a [...]
International climate policy is largely focused on reducing emissions of carbon dioxide. But even if we reduce emissions now, a proportion of CO2 will stay in the atmosphere for millennia. A faster-acting strategy is needed if we’re to avoid dangerous climate change in the short term. That’s the message from [...]
As promised, Nature’s film on climate change went online last week on October 1. You can view the film in full on nature.com (it lasts about twenty minutes in total). It will also be on YouTube next week, at which stage I’ll embed it here.
The film [...]
In 2006, Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen suggested that we might need to start deliberately engineering the climate if no progress could be made on curbing our emissions. Since then, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have continued to rise. So it’s perhaps no surprise that what once seemed like a outlandish idea [...]
At the ongoing pre-Copenhagen climate talks in Bangkok, the US has made a step towards resolving the deal-breaker issue of funds to help developing countries respond to climate change. The Guardian’s all over it, perhaps thirsting for some good news to break up the drumbeat of doubt we’ve heard [...]
At the UN climate conference in Copenhagen this December, talk will turn to scientific, political and economic issues with a global reach and a long history — not easy to pick up from the daily news. We asked select experts on climate change what books we should be reading ahead [...]
Robert Corell, chairman of the Washington-based Climate Action Initiative, recently illustrated the appeal of a remarkably simple modelling tool by giving reporters a direct answer to a difficult question: What is the impact of the international climate commitments announced thus far? Citing results from C-ROADS (for Climate Rapid Overview and [...]
Despite decades of research, relationships between clouds, aerosols and precipitation are poorly understood, concludes a review article in Nature today.
Before a cloud can produce rain or snow, rain drops or ice particles must form. Atmospheric aerosols, tiny particles of mineral or organic origin, serve as the [...]
If we are trying to keep global warming to 2 degrees Celsius or less but 4 degrees is possible even within some of our lifetimes, which world do we prepare for? Talks at today's session on adaptation took on the problem of the multiple futures that decision-makers have to [...]
Immersing yourself in the impacts of extreme climate change can give rise to a certain amount of gallows humor. Conversation among my dinner companions last night turned to whether this week's 4 Degrees and Beyond conference or March's Copenhagen Climate Congress provided "more apocalypse for your conference fee". The far [...]
Unless major breakthroughs in policy, industry and individual behavior turn around our emissions trajectory pronto, this century could well see average global temperatures 4 degrees Celsius or more above their pre-industrial baseline. That's the starting point for the 4 Degrees and Beyond conference in Oxford this week. Here, 130 [...]
"There are two El Ninos."
The University of Miami's Ben Kirtman, co-author of a study published in this week's Nature, on a newcomer El Nino pattern that will get a boost from climate change.
Emissions of CO2 Set for Best Drop in 40 Years
The International Energy Agency [...]
A newly launched series of Google Earth tours will map out the projected impacts of climate change worldwide and look at mitigation and adaptation options. Here's a brief intro, narrated in the light Tennessee drawl of Al Gore:
After a banner week of international summits, a great leap forward on climate policy has yet to materialize, and some players are expressing a growing frustration.
US President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao both gave big speeches at a UN meeting in New York on Tuesday, but they didn’t [...]
Considered by some a silver bullet and by others a hopeless dream, the idea that we can simply capture our carbon dioxide emissions and store them safely away is nothing if not compelling. After all, it lends an air of practicality to the notion that human ingenuity [...]
Many glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica are speeding up their slide into the sea. But this type of ice loss - known as dynamic thinning - is so ill-understood and difficult to predict that the IPCC, in their 2007 assessment report, threw up their hands and [...]
Despite the apparent stress that humanity is causing to the Earth system, defining sustainable limits for our own existence has proved to be something of an intractable problem. But what if we could define global sustainability numerically?
In this issue of Nature, a group of [...]
Despite the apparent stress that humanity is causing to the Earth system, defining sustainable limits for our own existence has proved to be something of an intractable problem. But what if we could define global sustainability numerically?
In this issue of Nature, a group of [...]
One of this year's Heinz awards - a $100,000 prize for achievement in environmental science and leadership - is going to Chris Field, the Stanford ecologist and leading carbon-cycle expert who became co-chair of IPCC Working Group 2 in 2008.
"Chris Field receives a Heinz Award for his contributions" [...]
This week in Nature you can read the first (subscription) of four articles unpicking the business of biofuels. First up is jatropha – the shrub that promised to give drought-ridden countries boundless oil supplies. The reality has turned out to be somewhat different. After a period [...]
The Greenland ice sheet melted much more rapidly as a result of warmer temperatures in the recent past than previously estimated, a team of international scientists has revealed. They warn that future warming could have more dramatic effects on the ice than researchers have assumed. The research is from [...]
The United Nation’s upcoming climate summit in Copenhagen threatens to get caught in a trap between high expectations and the immense complexity of the task at hand, warns the author of an opinion piece in Nature today [subscription]. Since diplomats cannot possibly produce a useful [...]
Over on Nature News, Declan Butler has a detailed briefing on the new carbon tax unveiled in France last week:
France is set to become the first major European economy to implement a carbon tax — a levy on activities that emit substantial amounts of carbon dioxide.Nicolas Sarkozy, the French [...]
A new study in Geophysical Research Letters [subscription] adds to the evidence that glaciers in high mountain regions are under threat from climate change.
The research, by Ray Bradley at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and colleagues, looks at changes in the altitude at which [...]
A new study in Geophysical Research Letters [subscription] adds to the evidence that glaciers in high mountain regions are under threat from climate change.
The research, by Ray Bradley at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and colleagues, looks at changes in the altitude at which [...]
Global warming doesn’t just change the weather, it also affects the ozone layer. According to a detailed new modelling study, by 2095 the springtime UV index (UVI) could go up by as much as 20% on the southernmost section of the planet, as altered atmospheric circulation pushes [...]
Oxford economist Dieter Helm co-edits an upcoming book, The Economics and Politics of Climate Change, that he says takes "a colder and harder look at the challenge". In a Q&A on Nature Reports Climate Change this week, Helm gives his take on a long-term strategy [...]
Heads of state agreed yesterday in Geneva to establish a global framework to deliver climate services to society. “We agreed on the need for climate services across all nations”, says Martin Visbeck, chair of the committee of scientific experts to the World Climate Conference.
The global framework will oversee the [...]
"People are going to be scratching their heads and saying, 'Wow, that's really sensitive.'"
Ken Buesseler of Woods Hole on a new finding that if the ocean's main carbon-recycling zone sank just 24 metres, seas would soak up significantly more CO2.
Tipping points - those critical thresholds in a complex system where a small nudge can cause a catastrophic response - are perhaps the most fearsome threats to the Earth’s climate, but they also haunt ecosystems, financial markets, and even sufferers of medical conditions such as epilepsy [...]
Following the recent discussion here on access to climate data, it’s been interesting to see the theme emerge in Geneva this week at the third World Climate Conference.
Almost 2,000 climatologists, weather forecasters and policy makers have come together to discuss the need to develop climate services that will enable [...]
Cross-posted from Geoff Brumfiel on The Great Beyond
Yesterday the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific body, delivered its official view on geoengineering. Scientists analyzed a dozen different approaches and weighed their pros and cons. Then, being scientists, they plotted their results in a bizarre phase space that nobody [...]
Cross-posted from Geoff Brumfiel on The Great Beyond
Yesterday the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific body, delivered its official view on geoengineering. Scientists analyzed a dozen different approaches and weighed their pros and cons. Then, being scientists, they plotted their results in a bizarre phase space that nobody [...]
Climate scientists, weather forecasters and policy makers are gathered in Geneva this week to discuss the need for reliable climate predictions to help society adapt to climate change.
The third World Climate Conference of the World Meteorological Organization, which runs from 31 August to 4 September 2009, aims to [...]
Today The Guardian is unveiling their new 10:10 campaign, which pledges individuals, businesses and organizations to shrink their carbon footprints 10% in 2010. I'm heading down to Tate Modern to tweet the launch - follow @annabarnett, #1010.
Anna Barnett
' [...]I’ll be heading to Geneva this coming Sunday to attend the World Meteorological Organisation’s third World Climate Conference. The conference, which runs from August 31 until September 4, takes climate prediction as its theme, and aims to establish an international framework to guide the development of climate services, linking [...]
Adapting to climate change will cost many times more than the UN has estimated, according to a report by former IPCC working group co-chair Martin Parry and colleagues, published by the International Institute for Environment and Development and the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London.
In 2007 [...]
If the United States starts weaning off of oil and coal and onto homegrown biofuels, renewables, nuclear and other options, how much land will be gobbled up by new forms of energy production? This future "energy sprawl" is calculated in a PLoS ONE paper this week. [...]
The trailer for the Nature film series from Lindau has just been released. You can watch it here. The trailer introduces the Lindau Meetings and the six films that follow – we’ll be releasing the films one a week from Thursday. The climate film, ‘The Two Degree Target’ [...]
You may have heard already that cow farts are a climatic threat. Scientific American points out some research that turns the problem around: climate change can also affect cows and dry up dairy production.
In Climatic Change this month, Terry Mader of the University of Nebraska and [...]
A new reservoir of fossil fuel could be ready to tap much sooner than previously thought. R&Ders have been talking up natural gas extraction from methane hydrates - a solid form of the greenhouse gas, found tucked away beneath the sea floor where low temperature and high [...]
In this year’s series of UN climate talks - the latest of which took place last week in Bonn - one of the issues negotiators are sinking their teeth into is a source of greenhouse gases that has previously been sidestepped. Chopping and burning trees causes an [...]
Many of our readers will no doubt be aware of the long-standing dispute between Steve McIntyre and members of the climate science community whose data McIntyre is keen to get hold of.
For those of you less familiar with the story, here’s some background. McIntyre, who runs the Climate Audit [...]
Twenty years after the Montreal Protocol came into effect to regulate substances that deplete the ozone layer, the annual ozone hole above Antarctica shows no signs of recovery.
A feature article and editorial in Nature today explain why this is so, and why the Montreal [...]
Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond
Climate change may need a military response from America, according to a story from the New York times which is getting a lot of pick up in the world media.
While most policy discussions around climate change focus on [...]
Is geoengineering the best way to fight climate change? It all depends on whom you ask.
Geoengineering, of course, is any scheme to deliberately manipulate the climate to try to counteract global warming. You'll remember it mainly for the most outlandish ideas to cut down on the amount of sunlight reaching' [...]
“It’s incredibly important. We need a global deal on the climate.”
Bjorn Lomborg, who formerly put climate change last among the world's priorities, makes a U-turn.
“They stole our name. They stole our logo. They created a position title and made up the name of someone to fill [...]
I've always been fascinated with large-scale ecological manipulation experiments. This week, at the Ecological Society of America meeting in Albuquerque, I got perhaps more than I was looking for.
During a session on results from the recently-concluded International Polar Year, Walt Oechel and Donatella Zona of San Diego State University' [...]
Some of scientists’ gravest concerns about future climate change are rooted in the past. Records studied by paleoclimatologists reveal that the more extreme possibilities for this century and beyond — temperatures soaring, ice sheets vanishing, fertile lands withering into deserts — were realized previously on Earth when atmospheric greenhouse gas [...]
"We're slogging ahead...I'm not going to kid anybody; I don't think it's easy. But I do think that we will get there."
After two days of high-level talks in Washington, US climate envoy Todd Stern predicts an American-Chinese climate agreement will be forged before Copenhagen.
