Alicia Newton

Kudzu vines have become a wide-spread but unwelcome sight throughout much of the southeastern United States. The noxious weed – native to Asia and once planted to prevent soil erosion – has spread rapidly, smothering native species in its wake. But the vine may be wreaking atmospheric havoc as well.

In a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Jonathan Hickman of Stony Brook University and colleagues find that invasion of the vine more than doubles nitric oxide emissions and increases ozone pollution.

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Alicia Newton

According to New Scientist, South Dakota has now joined Louisiana and Texas in requiring ‘debate’ over various scientific tenets in schools. In 2008, Louisiana led the way in requiring a critical discussion of climate, evolution and human cloning as part of the state’s science curriculum.

Superficially, any educational standard that promotes critical thinking might be a welcome change from the focus on passing standardized tests ushered in by No Child Left Behind Act. But, at least in terms of the discussion of evolution, these bills seem to be more a measure to slip non-science based ideas into science classrooms. And given the widespread prevalence of anti-global warming myths and urban legends, it’s worth taking a closer look at just who will be leading the climate debate.

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Alicia Newton

Skeptical Science has entered the entered the iPhone app fray with a handy guide to answering common questions about climate change. It’s reviewed in the UK Guardian , and also, a bit less enthusiastically, in The Telegraph.

The app lists common arguments put forward by those skeptical of climate change, and gives the counter-arguments based on sound science. Filed under headings such as ’It’s not that bad’, the app answers questions on topics ranging from the stability of ice sheets to errors in the IPCC’s fourth assessment report. You can check out RealClimate’s take, too. Free from iTunes, it’s at the very least a guaranteed conversation piece.

Although the Inuit people of the North American Arctic are generally thought to be vulnerable to climate change, particularly in the wake of record sea ice loss, it can be difficult to quantify all of the risks to their way of life. In a new paper in Climatic Change, a group of researchers led by Gita Laidler of Carleton University assessed the ability of the residents of Igloolik, a coastal community north of the Arctic Circle, to adapt to changing conditions. The team reports that although the hunters have so far adapted to thinning ice and changing seasons, societal changes among the younger generations may leave the community increasingly at risk.

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In the 70s and 80s, scientists from around the world worked to reconstruct Last Glacial Maximum (19,000 to 23,000 years ago) sea surface temperatures across the globe under the auspices of the Climate: Long Range Investigation, Mapping and Prediction (CLIMAP) project. Since then, a number of new proxies and seafloor coring and drilling projects have produced a wealth of additional data. In a new paper online this week in Nature Geoscience (subscription required), the MARGO (Multiproxy Approach for the Reconstruction of the Glacial Ocean surface) team members have updated this reconstruction using all the newly available data.

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With a new year comes a new version of the Bible. Well not exactly new, but fairly recent. This past summer, Harper Bibles published an eco-friendly version of the Bible known as The Green Bible . In addition to being printed on recycled paper using soy-based ink, The Green Bible highlights all the passages that encourage people to care for the Earth in, of course, green ink. While the verses themselves are not new (the text comes from the New Standard Revised Bible), the focus on the Earth is. And this version also includes an introduction from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, as well as essays by prominent theologians and information on how to get involved.

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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.

Topping the list in terms of energy this year is a pair of industry-friendly regulations that critics say would increase pollution from coal-fired power plants. In this week’s edition of Nature, we take a quick look at these and a few others that are moving through the system as the Bush administration prepares to hand the reigns to Barack Obama in January.

The regulations in question are technical in nature, which means the overall result is not always obvious. One of the rules being proposed would change the way power plant pollution is measured in national parks and wilderness areas. By shifting from an annual emissions calculation to a short-term maximum measured over the course of hours, for instance, power plant managers can increase their energy output and effectively put more emissions into the air over the course of a year.

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The AGU Chapman Conference on water vapour and its role in climate has come to a close, and I have headed back to not so sunny London. In addition to getting scientists out of the lab, the meeting afforded great opportunities for normally independent communities to interact. Pupu platters and Longboard Ales led to a very interesting discussion about the meaning of terms such as mean global precipitation and temperature rise. Are statistics such as these preventing scientists from meaningfully communicating results about climate change? This of course comes back to old faithful argument “if the Earth is getting warmer, why did it snow last week?” Definitely something to think about when preparing press releases or giving interviews.

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“In the 1970s, all the scientists were saying an ice age was coming.” This seems to be a popular sentiment echoed in blogs and novels aimed at challenging the consensus views regarding future climate change. It was even a key theme in Michael Crichton’s State of Fear , when a character suggests that scientists only jumped on the global warming bandwagon in a bid to secure funding.

But a new article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society challenges the idea of a ‘global cooling ’ consensus. Thomas Peterson of NOAA teamed with William Connolley of the British Antarctic survey and science reporter John Fleck to create a survey of peer-reviewed climate literature from the 1970s. Looking at every paper that dealt with climate change projections or an aspect of climate forcing from 1965 to 1979, they were able to assess the ‘trends’ in the literature. They found that only 7 of the 71 total papers surveyed predicted global cooling. The vast majority (44) actually predicted that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide could lead to global warming.

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