The world community should abandon efforts to sign a climate change treaty and instead focus on combating global warming by imposing carbon taxes to fund renewable energy breakthroughs and to deliver clean electricity to the world’s poor, according to a report by 14 academics and scientists.

The group recommends pursuing a “politically attractive and relentlessly pragmatic” climate and energy strategy that combines a huge research effort into renewable energy with pragmatic, near-term solutions, such as reducing heat-absorbing “black carbon” produced by wood fires and industries.

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“Wetlands are wastelands” was the explanation the chair of a local trust in my city gave for opposing a grant to a wetlands restoration project. He’s a rabid climate change denier and hence unlikely to read Melanie Lenart’s book Life in the Hothouse: How a Living Planet Survives Climate Change.

If he did he would discover how wrong he was. Not that he needed wait for her book: it has been evident for many years that wetlands are vital to ecological health. So are forests, which play an equal part in Lenart’s explanation of how Gaia, or, if you don’t like metaphor, the complex interacting system of the biosphere, responds to maintain a temperature within a range suitable for life.

A scientist with a background in journalism, Lenart is well placed to provide a coherent account for the general reader of the work of a host of researchers who have explored some of the intricacies of response to warming in Earth’s ecosystems. (more…)

The effects of climate change and sea-level rise on coastal cities present a new challenge to urban planners, one that inspires the exhibition, Rising Currents, now at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art.

Five teams of architects and landscape designers were asked to envision projects for New York City’s future coastline. The plans all create what they call “soft” infrastructures — landscapes that will allow rising sea levels to flow within and around the building sites where power, water, sewer, and gas lines are encased in waterproof vaults beneath the sidewalks.

The plans imagine the open spaces surrounding these building sites becoming estuarine habitats that will provide cost-effective storm-water management and revitalize the harbor’s biodiversity. (more…)

The CO2 reduction pledges made by 76 nations following last December’s Copenhagen climate conference will likely lead to a global temperature rise of at least 3 degrees Centigrade (5.4 Fahrenheit) by 2100, according to an analysis by scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

In an article in Nature, the researchers described the current reduction commitments as “paltry” and said the goal of holding temperature increases to 2 degrees C is in “dire peril.”

Researcher Malte Meinshausen told the BBC, “There’s a big mismatch between the ambitious goal, which is 2 C, and the emissions reductions. The pledged emissions reductions are in most cases very unambitious.” (more…)

The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledges it has been a rough few months for his organization. But, he argues, no amount of obfuscation and attacks by conspiracy theorists will alter the basic facts — global warming is real and intensifying.

Science thrives on debate. Only by challenging scientific findings do we expose weak arguments and substantiate strong ones. But the process relies on the debate being devoid of political taint and grounded in sound scientific knowledge. Sadly, that has not been the case in the recent barrage of criticism leveled against climate science.

The readers of Yale Environment 360 are by now familiar with recent questioning by some of the validity of the widely accepted science of climate change. The release of emails stolen from the University of East Anglia was used just prior to the Copenhagen Climate Summit to project an unflattering portrayal of climate scientists in general and to voice allegations that climate science was deeply flawed. (more…)

One of the benefits we noted when humanity first was able observe the earth from above our atmosphere, from outer space, is that it enabled us to gain a new perspective on how very special our planet is. Viewed from a distance, it is obvious that we are all living in one global environment. And from a distance, this environment doesn’t look as vast as it does from our vantage point on earth.

The land looks more precious, the seas less like unlimited places to discharge our wastes, and the atmosphere, less like a place to emit air pollution at night so no one sees it, to the fragile envelope which, more than anything, makes earth the special place it is.

Indeed, it is the atmosphere that permits life as we know it to flourish on earth. And we owe most of this new knowledge to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration!

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Have we outsourced global warming? Critics of cap and trade systems or carbon offsetting have argued that buying a carbon credit is like a medieval indulgence. Rather than saving the planet, it allows me to buy a clean conscience. I’ll give two examples of how this might be true.

Lets say I want to have no carbon emissions. The average American produces 20 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year. Rather than reduce by 20 tons I just buy 20 credits.

Those 20 credits might represent 20 tons of carbon that have been sucked out of the air by fast growing trees. Or do they? What if those trees would have been planted anyway? Then I’m just spending some money to keep polluting — and the world keeps warming.

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The Asilomar conference on geoengineering had been touted as a potentially historic event. What emerged, however, were some unexpected lessons about the possibilities and pitfalls of manipulating the Earth’s climate to offset global warming.

In the beginning, I had my doubts. The Asilomar International Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies, held last week at the Asilomar conference grounds near Monterey, Calif., was touted as an “unprecedented” gathering of 175 scientists, environmental groups, philosophers, and public policy wonks to discuss the governance of geoengineering — that is, large-scale, intentional manipulation of the Earth’s climate to offset rising temperatures.

The meeting was obviously set up to channel the spirit of the first Asilomar conference in 1975, during which biologists drew up voluntary guidelines to help reassure the public that genetically modified organisms would not be released into the world. Asilomar 1.0 is remembered as a landmark event in the evolution of scientific ethics and a turning point in the public acceptance of biotechnology.

Asilomar 2.0 seemed to pale in comparison. For one thing, geoengineering may be a scary idea, but the dangers were nowhere near as immediate as the unintentional release of genetically modified organisms. (more…)

Once upon a time a trip around the world made major headlines. Now it is a commonplace and a convenient way to measure air quality around the world by plane. A plane outfitted to measure greenhouse gases has taken off from Colorado on the first leg of a 24 day mission that will take it back and forth across the Pacific Ocean from the Arctic to the Antarctic.

The mission is part of a three year project designed to determine when and where the gases enter and leave the atmosphere. That in turn could help policymakers as well as scientists on how to handle and measure climate change.

The scientific questions that this study is focused on are (1) understanding the global sources and sinks for CO2, CH4, and other carbon cycle gases, and more broadly (2) determining large scale rates of tracer transport in the atmosphere. In other words what are the seasonal ups and downs of these gases and where do they increase (sources) and where do they decrease (sinks). (more…)

According to a poll conducted by the Gallup Organization in early March , Americans are less concerned about eight specific environmental issues than they were one year ago.  Fewer than half of those surveyed–32 percent–said they felt that that climate change will have an impact on their way of life as compared to a high of 40 percent in 2008.

Close to 50 percent of Americans believe the threat of global warming is exaggerated. Fifty-three percent believe that economic growth, especially with regard to jobs and unemployment, is more important even if it has a negative impact on the environment, according to Frank Newport, Gallup’s editor in chief, as quoted in an article in USA Today .

Surprisingly, many Americans perceive that environmental woes in the US are improving; those polled were less concerned about other environmental problems than at any other time in the past 20 years.  According to Gallup, in 1989, 72 percent of Americans were worried about pollution of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs.

By 2004, only 54 percent were concerned, and 46 percent are worried about water pollution today.  Concern about pollution of drinking water is at the top of the list. (more…)