XIENCE

  • The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes our Brains by Clayton Page Aldern

    From the book review in Kirkus Reviews: “A lyrical and scientifically rigorous account of the emotional and physical toll climate change is taking on the human brain. This is your brain on climate change. In his second book, neuroscientist and environmental journalist Aldern examines the palpable effects of climate change on our brain chemistry, including…

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  • February 2024 was the hottest on record, with global temperatures surpassing critical climate threshold

    From an article by Li Cohen on the CBS News website: The world has marked yet another consecutive month of record-breaking heat. New data from Copernicus, the European Union's climate change monitoring service, shows that last month was the hottest February on record globally, with "exceptionally high" temperatures in both the air and sea.  The…

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  • Are we in a new geologic age?

    Scientists think the Holocene's over, and we're entering a new age of humans:  the Anthropocene Age. From the New York Times.

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  • Washington Post provides a century’s worth of temperature data for U.S. states and counties

    Sourced from NOAA data files. Find it here, with further analysis here.

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  • Climate change models have been consistently accurate, study finds

    From Vox.

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  • Past global warming led to mass extinction

    NYT article about how global warming caused the wipeout of most life on Earth, 252 million years ago

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  • Global climate talks begin in Poland

    Scientists from around the world are meeting to try to work out details for the fossil fuel emissions goals agreed to in 2015 Paris climate agreement. New York Times story.

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  • Arresting Climate Change Was Within Our Grasp….

     A very important report on a huge setback to efforts to stop climate change during the first Bush presidency.

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  • To Monitor Wildlife Poachers, Ecologists Poach Astronomers’ Tools

    Animals and stars both emit heat.  An exchange of ideas between two scientists in different fields has led to the recognition that software used to find stars and galaxies in space can be used to seek out thermal footprints and the animals that produce them.  A report on findings presented at the European Week of…

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  • EPA Director questions whether global warming is necessarily a bad thing

    In a TV interview, EPA Director Scott Pruitt says humans have flourished before in warm periods, and it's "arrogant for us to say that we know what [the ideal surface temperature] should be in 2100."  Washington Post story is here.

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  • Scientists find that direst climate change predictions are the most accurate ones

    The Washington Post reports on a new statistical study by Carnegie Institution for Science scientists, published in the journal Nature.

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  • Alaska’s permafrost is thawing

    Permafrost is ground that remains frozen year after year.  This article in the New York Times predicts that Alaska's permafrost could be gone by 2050. Bloomberg reports that he thawing permafrost has buckled segments of the Alaska Highway, the key artery connecting the state with Canada and the northwestern U.S.

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  • Scientists consider a radical solution to gobal warming

    Interesting New York Times article about solar geoengineering.

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  • Doomsday clock advances in response to Trump’s statements

    The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which operates a symbolic Doomsday clock, today moved its minute hand a half-minute closer to the final hour.  It had been at three minutes before the hour; now it is at two-and-a-half minutes before the hour.  In a New York Times op-ed article, two scientists involved in the decision…

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  • Images from GOES-16 satellite

    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) today released a beautiful new set of images of Earth, culled from its GOES-16 satellite. Although the images are gorgeous, the real achievement of GOES-16 satellite is its sophisticated forecasting, enabling scientist to better predict severe weather on Earth.

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  • Health hazards of improper recycling

    Here's a Washington Post article detailing the dangers posed to the environment by improperly recycled electronic devices.  The article notes that health concerns for communities near such burn/recycle areas include infertility, childhood development problems, impaired lung function, liver and kidney damage, inheritable genetic damage and mental health problems

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  • IUCN publishes latest update of threatened species list

    The IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) released a new update to its Red List of Threatened Species. The update includes the first assessments of various crops essential to food security, and includes the information that the global giraffe population has plummeted by 40% in the last 30 years. “Many species…

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  • Trump Could Put Climate Change on Course for ‘Danger Zone’ – NYT

    Can anyone doubt that Donald Trump's election will be disastrous for our planet's future? Here's a New York Times story on the threat to domestic regulations and to Paris climate agreement.

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  • Was threat level to endangered species understated?

    This article in Science online reports on a study finding that the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species has misclassified the threats to hundreds of animals.

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  • Gordon Hamilton

    The climate scientist Gordon Hamilton, who researched and publicized the consequences of glacier melt in Greenland, died on an Arctic expedition two days ago.  What a loss to science.

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