The Power of Nothing
Could studying the placebo effect change the way we think about medicine?
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The Politics of Famine
A common misconception is that hunger crises are about a lack of food. In Northern Kenya, where an estimated half a million Kenyan children and pregnant or breast-feeding women suffer acute malnutrition, there is food but the real issue is poverty. In April the World Bank reported that 44 million people worldwide were pushed over…
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Three-Quarters of Climate Change is Man-Made
Natural climate variability is extremely unlikely to have contributed more than about one-quarter of the temperature rise observed in the past 60 years, according to a pair of Swiss climate modellers who conclude that most of the observed warming — at least 74 % — is almost certainly due to human activity.
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Earth in Balmy 2080
We cannot say for sure what kind of a home Earth will offer in 2080, but averages made across thousands of model runs help paint a picture of what a 2 degrees Celsius warmer world would look like.
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Warmer World Is the Challenge of a Generation
In the last few weeks major reports by the International Energy Agency and the UN Environment Programme have concluded that we can still meet the UN’s target of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. But climate scientists are far less optimistic. Many say the chance to avoid a 2 degrees Celsius rise…
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Pushing Past the Taboo of Climate Adaptation
Climate adaptation: reconfiguring our world’s economies and policies to work under a more extreme climate. While that might seem like an old conversation, it’s not; mitigation—reducing greenhouse gases—has been the main topic of climate discussion in the past 20 years. But attention is shifting to the once taboo topic of adaptation.
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What Is the Future of Knowledge in the Internet Age?
David Weinberger is one of our most incisive thinkers about the digital age, a senior researcher at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the author of books such as Small Pieces Loosely Joined, Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, and the upcoming Too Big to Know. Technology editor Michael…
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It’s Time Scientists Set an Example by Reducing Their Carbon Footprint
The carbon footprint of the science community is tiny by comparison with the rest of society. Yet changes will not happen if nobody takes the lead. And people who have benefited from a great education and earn by comparison a very good income should surely be well positioned to take on some ethical leadership. Perhaps…
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How Much Will the Earth Warm Up?
Scientists say the Earth will warm in response to increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, but since the 1970s, they have not made much headway in narrowing down exactly how much it will warm.
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“Earliest” Evidence of Human Violence
A healed fracture discovered on an ancient skull from China may be the oldest documented evidence of violence between humans, a study has shown. The individual, who lived 150,000 to 200,000 years ago, suffered blunt force trauma to the right temple—possibly from being hit with a projectile.