Climate Feedback

This week on Nature Reports Climate Change, we have a news feature on a topic that has been considered something of a conservation taboo: assisted migration – in other words manually relocating species that are under threat of extinction from climate change.

There’s been a spate of coverage on assisted migration the last year, but as Emma Marris reports, experts are now starting to give serious consideration to how it might work in reality.

Meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin from August 1 to 3 ahead of this year’s Ecological Society of America was a group of scientists, lawyers, land managers, economists and ethicists, some of whom feel that relocating species would most likely be a disaster. But it looks like even those opposed to the idea are concerned enough to consider it an option.

Ok, so no-one is really suggesting we move polar bears to the Antarctic (I just liked the cartoon)! More likely is shifting the quino checkerspot butterfly several hundred kilometers north.

But with climate change impacting biological systems throughout the globe, the reality is that many species may have to adapt to climate change in situ or say sayonara as part of the Earth’s sixth mass extinction. And for those that could up and leave to a better place if they were not hemmed in by human barriers, giving them a helping hand could make all the difference.

But as Emma details in her news feature, proposals to relocate species are likely to meet some significant barriers - and not just of the physical kind.

Continue reading "It’s conservation – but not as we know it " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on August 29, 2008
Categories: Biodiversity and Ecology, Climate Policy, Features, In the News, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Arctic permafrost has been the subject of much global warming worry, but not so much detailed research. A new survey of North American Arctic permafrost published in Nature Geoscience this week (subscription required) breaks new ground, literally.

News accounts have focused on the paper’s bottom-line estimate: there is 60% more carbon frozen up there than previously thought. That’s a total of 98.2 billion tonnes of carbon, one-sixth of the amount currently circulating through the atmosphere.

Existing estimates already show more permafrost carbon around the globe than atmospheric carbon. If warming - which is happening faster in the Arctic than anywhere else - releases even a small portion of that store into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and methane, the results won’t be pretty, especially if the amount frozen in the Asian north is also more than expected. Permafrost has been called a “slow-motion time bomb”, and the effects of its melting are not included in most global climate models.

The new research is by Chien-Lu Ping of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and colleagues. How did they do it?

Continue reading "Permafrost study breaks ground" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on August 29, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Science, Cryosphere, In the News | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The US Climate Change Science Program will revise and reissue its latest report following widespread criticism and a mountain of comments during the official review period. The news has spurred talk of sinister motives from groups like the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, as well as some media attention (Greenwire, subscription required) suggesting undue influence from global warming skeptics.

In truth, it doesn’t sound like anything sinister is going on, although clearly the process could have been managed better.

Agencies within the climate science program have been putting out climate reports on various topics for the past year or so (10 down, 11 to go). The document in question, which is being ushered through the process by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was released last month for public comment and is a synthesis report that is supposed to tie everything together. That has some wondering: How can the summary document be completed before the documents it is supposed to be summarizing?

Fair question, although in defence the document is a high-level review of the entire body of global warming science, and most of the reports are fairly far along anyway. But still.

Groups like CEI and the Chamber of Commerce have made a larger splash, but criticism has come from other quarters as well. Officials with WWF in Washington raised concerns about the report being rushed through for no apparent reason, suggesting that the program has left itself open to criticism from groups like CEI.
And a while back University of Colorado climate policy expert Roger Pielke Jr. took a few shots at the document on his blog, questioning general content and accusing the authors of sloppiness.

Folks at WWF as well as Michael MacCracken at the Climate Institute in Washington, say problems with the actual document are typical of first drafts and easily resolvable. An official within the Climate Change Science Program confirmed that the document will be revised to deal with the sheer volume of comments and re-released. No time frame was given.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on August 24, 2008
Categories: Jeff Tollefson | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Carbon’s colourful rise to infamy has been something of an underreported story, at least until now. Swamped by innumerable accounts of its current status as public enemy number one, it’s easy to forget that this element has a rather glorious past and present.

Former Time magazine reporter Eric Roston chronicles the story of carbon and its significance in the wider universe in his first book ‘The Age of Carbon’, which Mark Lynas reviews over on Nature Reports Climate Change.

Lynas, who has just recently been awarded the 2008 Royal Society Prize for Science Books, calls Roston’s book “a welcome slew of context for the humdrum daily dose of ‘low-carbon this, high-carbon that’ now peppering the newspapers”.

From its origins as the ash of helium fusion, carbon takes on a starring role in the story of life on Earth, adopting a variety of forms both by itself and in combination with other elements. Roston details its role in the evolution of the most primitive life forms on Earth right through to the appearance of the (as Lynas writes) "hubristically self-named Homo sapiens, then the internal combustion engine and other paraphernalia of the Industrial Revolution, turning up the planetary thermostat in the blink of a geological eye".

As well as giving a chronological account of carbon, Roston also goes off on some rather specific tangents - such a whole discursive chapter on the gingko tree – at times in great detail and at the expense of holding the narrative, says Lynas, who also commends its "wide-ranging, interdisciplinary approach".

You can access the full review over here.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on August 21, 2008
Categories: Features, Olive Heffernan, Reviews | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I’m all for a website that distills climate science papers into something easily understood by the general public, especially if it avoids the hype and hysteria all too often employed by headline news.

Such is the claim of CO2 Science, a weekly newsletter published by the not for profit Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, with issues that include editorials, book and media reviews, and mini-reviews of the recent peer-reviewed literature.

But rather than its promise of “separating reality from rhetoric in the emotionally-charged debate that swirls around the subject of carbon dioxide and global change”, on the contrary CO2 Science twists the most recent science, ever so subtly, to suggest that there is no link between carbon dioxide levels and climate change.

For a case in point, check out the feature entitled “Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week”. This showcases records of temperature or environmental changes during the Medieval Warm Period (aka the Medieval Climate Anomaly). The conclusion is that if the MWP was warmer than present – still debated – obviously CO2 isn’t driving current warming. There is even a list of 576 scientists who have found evidence for the MWP – the thinly veiled conclusion being that they agree that an increase in CO2 isn’t behind the recent climate change.

FYI scientists – if you’ve ever compiled a climate record for the past 2,000 years, your name is probably there. These folks are thorough.

Continue reading "More for the annals of climate misinformation " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on August 19, 2008
Categories: Alicia Newton, Attribution, Climate Science, Communicating Climate Change | Permalink | Comments (38) | TrackBacks (0)

I was lucky enough to spend last weekend at this year's SciFoo, and took in a number of sessions on climate and energy. There was a lot of sometimes quite heated debate, but what was struck me most forcefully was the common ground that the optimists and pessimists share -- specifically, a belief that the challenge in front of us is utterly huge. I almost said mind-numbingly huge, but people like Dan Schrag and Saul Griffith and Chris Uhlik have minds too active and well-exercised to numb easily...

In Nature this week we had a look at that hugeness with a big feature on ways of generating electricity that involve no intrinsic fossil-fuel emissions. Though I say so myself, it's a pretty good look at the options, from those that are already significant (hydropower and nuclear) to those that people like Chris and Saul are trying to make significant (solar and wind). Here's what we came up with as take home verdicts:

Continue reading "Get your terawatts here" »

Posted by Oliver Morton on August 15, 2008
Categories: Energy, Mitigation, Oliver Morton | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

USA Today has staked out the environmental-news angle on the annual American Psychological Association conference, ongoing this weekend. The behemoth meeting has some 16,000 attendees flocking to talks on everything from Pharmacotherapy to Peace Psychology. Those are actual topic headings in the programme, whereas Green Psychology is not. But the paper’s reporter Sharon Jayson cleverly rounds up a few 'green' presentations - new, unpublished research about how sustainability messages filter through the brain of the poor media-besieged layperson.

For example, scolding doesn’t work - and may lead the scolded to quietly give up on greening up. Though this study surveyed undergraduates, there is preliminary evidence that its findings also apply to presidential administrations.

Continue reading "Undergraduates are rational, and other findings from Green Psychology" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on August 15, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Communicating Climate Change, In the News, Society | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In this week’s issue of Nature, we look into an ongoing debate about research priorities within the National Center for Atmospheric Research, one of the United States’ main climate research facilities in Boulder, Colorado.

Our story follows up on an earlier piece in the New York Times by Andrew Revkin, who initially broke the news that NCAR was laying off the well-respected political scientist Michael Glantz. Revkin also covered the story in his Dot Earth blog.

Such stories frequently peel apart like onions, and this one was no different. Glantz is not alone in his belief that NCAR is turning its back on the social sciences. NCAR management says it respects Glantz work but is in a budgetary bind. University of Colorado political scientist Roger Pielke Jr. questions NCAR’s numbers in his blog.

Meanwhile, other NCAR scientists who have worked in the social science program say they are comfortable with their positions. And some are worried that NCAR is falling behind on its basic sciences and climate modelling. Is this not the foundation for such a scientific institution?

Continue reading "Climate research funding slashed " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on August 13, 2008
Categories: Features, In the News, Jeff Tollefson, Society | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

For those of you in need of something meatier to chew on than Paris Hilton’s energy and climate policy, check out the latest issue of Climatic Change [subscription required for full access].

Not your average silly season read, the August issue takes as its theme the Stern review on the economics of climate change and features a series of invited editorial essays on the topic.

Published in 2006, the Stern Review is a whopping 700-page dossier written by former World Bank economist Sir Nicholas Stern for the UK government. In economic terms, its chief message is that taking strong, early action on climate change outweighs the costs of doing nothing, or delaying action.

Stern’s analysis showed that by reducing greenhouse gas emissions now, we could limit the cost to as little as around 1% of global GDP (through carbon taxes or emissions trading), whereas unabated climate change could cost the world at least 5% of GDP each year or, in worst-case scenarios, more than 20% of GDP.

Hailed as a landmark report for successfully framing climate change in monetary terms, the review has also received much criticism – chiefly from economists who question the validity of Stern's approach even if they believe ‘Stern is right for the wrong reasons’, as Gary Yohe and Richard Tol highlight in their essay.

Continue reading "Stern special in Climatic Change " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on August 12, 2008
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Protests at the climate camp in Kingsnorth, Kent, the site of a proposed new coal fired power plant, reached a climax this weekend, as reported by various news sources. Demonstrators, who promised to reach the site by air, land and sea, reached about 3,000 in number during the course of the week, but – met by some 1,500 police officers - failed to halt business at the site’s existing plant.

There was an excellent article in Saturday’s Guardian on how the outcome of Kingnorth will have implications for similar plants under development worldwide. In total, approx 100 similar plants are in the planning stage – more than half of these are in China, with the others split between the UK, Germany and the US – and governments are watching closely to see what decision is taken in the UK.

The main question is whether the UK government, which has argued for tough international regulations on climate change, will allow the power plant to go ahead without carbon capture and storage (CCS). UK energy minister Malcolm Wicks argues that new coal fired power plants such as the one being proposed in Kent are needed to demonstrate the feasibility of CCS technology, which remains unproven. This may be true, but if demonstrating CCS really is the priority, then why is it that there is no obligation for the owners of Kingsnorth to use CCS, should it be proven?

Continue reading "Debate on coal heats up as climate protests reach climax" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on August 10, 2008
Categories: Energy, In the News, Olive Heffernan, Politics, Society, Technology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Like it or lump it: coal is here for the long haul.

In the latest issue of Nature Reports Climate Change, I've written an editorial on how coal-fired power capacity is expanding rapidly, yet the rate of development of carbon sequestration to bury the emissions is laging far behind.

As my colleague Jeff Tollefson recently reported in Nature, in the past two years alone, China has developed a startling 170 gigawatts of coal-fired power capacity — more than twice Britain's entire electricity-generating capacity, installed over a century — and has overtaken the United States as the greatest global emitter of greenhouse gases.

India is also busily expanding it's coal-based energy supply, with Mumbai-based Tata Power putting US$4 billion into constructing one of the world's largest coal-fired power plants, intended to come online in 2012. And it's not just emerging economies hungry to develop quickly that are counting on coal for energy. Despite sizeable opposition, the UK government looks likely to approve development of the first new British coal-fired power plant for 30 years at Kingsnorth in Kent.

Continue reading "King coal still on the throne" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on August 06, 2008
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An elegant Reuters headline from the paleoclimate world:

Climate chill came exactly 12,679 years ago: study

I got a kick out of this story, having read Gavin Schmidt and Elisabeth Moyer’s NRCC op-ed last week on the chilly gap between paleoclimatologists and climate modellers (and the perhaps-even-chillier one between climate scientists and economists). Schmidt and Moyer point out that while the paleo crowd may “assume that modellers have a myopic view of climate history”, modellers “may assume that palaeo-science is too anecdotal, qualitative and localized to be of use for quantitative modelling.”

Per that headline, however, paleo researchers occasionally make delightfully precise statements - when they get their hands on a sample that yields data at the right timescale. But even then, connecting snapshots of the past with future climate scenarios is not straightforward.

Continue reading "The year the climate changed" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on August 04, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, In the News, Palaeoclimate | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)