President Obama, Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center Anchorage, Alaska – September 1, 2015: “…Our understanding of climate change advances each day. Human activity is disrupting the climate, in many ways faster than we previously thought. The science is stark. It is sharpening. It proves that this once-distant threat is now very much in the present. … Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Climate Change
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
The Weight of the World Can Christiana Figueres persuade humanity to save itself? By Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker: “…The Framework Convention on Climate Change is overseen by an organization known as the Secretariat, which is led by a Costa Rican named Christiana Figueres…of all the jobs in the world, Figueres’s may possess the very… Continue Reading
NOAA’s New Climate Science Strategy
NOAA: “As ocean conditions continue to change, putting ocean ecosystems and the communities that rely upon them at risk, today, NOAA took a first step in providing regional fisheries managers and stakeholders with information they need to reduce the effects of climate change and build resilience. “NOAA just announced that for the globe the month… Continue Reading
How will we fill 9 billion bowls by 2050?
Thomson Reuters Report July 2015- “The food chain is broken. On paper, we produce enough food to feed our current population of 7 billion. Yet an estimated 805 million people go to bed hungry each night, and hidden hunger – or micronutrient deficiency – affects an additional 2 billion. Poverty, political instability, income inequity and… Continue Reading
Contribution of anthropogenic warming to California drought during 2012–2014
“A suite of climate datasets and multiple representations of atmospheric moisture demand are used to calculate many estimates of the self-calibrated Palmer Drought Severity Index, a proxy for near-surface soil moisture, across California from 1901–2014 at high spatial resolution. Based on the ensemble of calculations, California drought conditions were record-breaking in 2014, but probably not… Continue Reading
July 2015 was warmest month ever recorded for the globe
The “warmest ever notices” are arriving with regular frequency – new heat records are recorded so quickly it is difficult to distinguish the impact – but the overall trend is clear – the weather is getting warmer – in the US and around the world (2015 may be the hottest year in recorded history). To… Continue Reading
Voice for science in climate change media coverage
“Climate Feedback brings the expertise of the scientific community into the world of online climate coverage to provide readers and authors with in-situ feedback about the content’s scientific credibility. Climate Feedback is a project born from the reality that we are at a critical moment in history, one in which important decisions about climate change… Continue Reading
Interior Department Releases National Seed Strategy for Landscape Scale Rehabilitation and Restoration
“As part of a comprehensive, science-based strategy to address the threat of wildfires that are damaging landscapes across the West, the Department of the Interior today announced the release of a National Seed Strategy for rehabilitation and restoration to help foster resilient and healthy landscapes. The Strategy, developed in partnership with the Plant Conservation Alliance… Continue Reading
Content Volatility of Scientific Topics in Wikipedia: A Cautionary Tale
Wilson AM, Likens GE (2015) Content Volatility of Scientific Topics in Wikipedia: A Cautionary Tale. PLoS ONE 10(8): e0134454. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0134454 “Wikipedia has quickly become one of the most frequently accessed encyclopedic references, despite the ease with which content can be changed and the potential for ‘edit wars’ surrounding controversial topics. Little is known about how… Continue Reading
Centre for Study of Existential Risk
“The Centre for Study of Existential Risk is an interdisciplinary research centre focused on the study of human extinction-level risks that may emerge from technological advances. We aim to combine key insights from the best minds across disciplines to tackle the greatest challenge of the coming century: safely harnessing our rapidly-developing technological power.” One of… Continue Reading
International report confirms: 2014 was Earth’s warmest year on record
“In 2014, the most essential indicators of Earth’s changing climate continued to reflect trends of a warming planet, with several markers such as rising land and ocean temperature, sea levels and greenhouse gases ─ setting new records. These key findings and others can be found in the State of the Climate in 2014 report released… Continue Reading
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources – The IUCN Global Species Programme working with the IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) has been assessing the conservation status of species, subspecies, varieties, and even selected subpopulations on a global scale for the past 50 years in order to highlight taxa threatened with extinction, and thereby promote their conservation.… Continue Reading
