It certainly took a while, but the US Environmental Protection Agency is finally doing the right thing and endorsing the science behind global warming. In doing so, the EPA will also be answering a simple question: Does EPA have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases? Read more
Massive economic collapse is by no means the preferred method for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but there’s no denying that shuttering plants, halting shipments and laying off workers gets the job done. Indeed, the crisis is poised to provide a reprieve, however temporary, from the alarmingly rapid growth in emissions witnessed in recent years. Read more
McKinsey & Company has mapped out a couple of conceivable scenarios that would put humanity on a pathway to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations well below 550 parts per million, an oft-cited and somewhat arbitrary target that increases the odds of avoiding a temperature increase of more than 2 degrees Celsius. Whether or not such action would actually guarantee said result is a different matter, but McKinsey suggests it’s possible to come in at 480 ppm, which leaves a little room for error. Read more
The argument for using a cap-and-trade system, or a carbon tax for that matter, to control greenhouse gases comes down to marshaling the troops. Everybody needs to play this game, and the surest way to make everybody play is to make winning profitable – and conversely to make losing costly. In other words, make the market work for you instead of against you. It’s a noble and likely necessary goal, but it’s not necessarily fast, nor perfect. Read more
Planting trees seems like a cheap and easy way to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere while improving land and soil stocks that have been degraded over the decades. The international community recognized as much when it included reforestation in the Kyoto Protocol more than a decade ago. Read more
Shortly after finishing up this week’s Nature story (subscription required) on the upcoming climate talks in Poland, I finally secured an interview with US Ambassador Harlan Watson, the United States’ chief climate negotiator. Read more
Cranking out 11th-hour regulations has become a tradition among exiting US presidents, and despite early hopes to the contrary it looks like this year will be no different. Read more
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. Read more
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 … Read more
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Climate Feedback is a blog hosted by Nature Publishing Group to facilitate lively and informative discussion on the science and wider implications of global warming. The blog aims to be a forum for debate and commentary on climate science in the Nature Climate Change journal and in the world at large.
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