Global warming skeptics are not less educated about science but rather use their knowledge to affirm their predetermined beliefs. The new research says that deniers hold their skeptical views due to “opposing sets of cultural values” that help them make a decision on the hot-button environmental issue. “The aim of the study was to test…
Adapted from The Fate of the Species: Why the Human Race May Cause Its Own Extinction and How We Can Stop It, by Fred Guterl (Bloomsbury USA, 2012) NASA climate scientist James Hanson has warned of a “Venus effect,” in which runaway warming turns Earth into an uninhabitable desert, with a surface temperature high enough to melt…
Less than six months after the world agreed to craft a new climate pact by 2015, negotiations stumbled at a crucial preparatory phase as rich and poor countries butted heads. The concluding session of an already troubled 11-day haggle in Bonn ran into delays as countries clashed over who will chair the long negotiations, which…
Four decades ago, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer model called World3 warned of a possible catastrophic course for human civilization in the 21st century – a collapse of socioeconomic order and massive drop in human population. In Limits to Growth, a bitterly disputed 1972 book that explicated these findings, researchers argued that the global…
Throughout the world, climate change is causing age-old ecological partners to miss their cues as seasons shift. The trend may be so strong at higher latitudes that researchers now propose that some species’ ranges could actually shrink away from the poles. This idea comes from studying broad-tailed hummingbirds that migrate north from Central America each…
Both atmospheric forces and the flow of circumpolar rivers carry mercury, a toxic element, north into the Arctic Ocean new research indicates. While the atmospheric source was previously recognized, it now appears that twice as much mercury actually comes from the rivers. The revelation implies that concentrations of the toxin may further increase as climate…
New research has shown that exposure to commonly used chemicals causes changes in rats that are passed down through multiple generations. The researchers exposed gestating female rats to vinclozolin, a popular fruit and vegetable fungicide. They then put the rats’ third generation of offspring through a variety of behavioral tests. They found that the rats…
Scientists have identified thousands of sites in the Arctic where methane that has been stored for many millennia is bubbling into the atmosphere. The methane has been trapped by ice, but is able to escape as the ice melts. Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this ancient gas could have a significant…
Pollution is leading thunderstorm clouds to capture heat, increasing global warming in a way that climate models have failed to take into account. It strengthens them, causing their anvil-shaped tops to spread out high in the atmosphere and capture heat, especially at night, says Jiwen Fan of the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory….
Douglas McCauley and Paul DeSalles did not set out to discover one of the longest ecological interaction chains ever documented. But that’s exactly what they and a team of researchers – all current or former Stanford students and faculty – did in a new study published in Scientific Reports. Their findings shed light on how…