Atmospheric

In geological history, 90,000 of every 100,000 years has been ice ages, and it has been 12,000 years since the last one. In a 'glass half full' optimistic take on emissions, the Industrial Age put a halt to a 6,500 year cooling trend and the ice age for which we are overdue, but just like salt, sugar, or Avengers movies, there can be too much of a good thing and now there are worries that climate is going out of control the other way. A new paper suggests millennial-scale global cooling began approximately 6,500 years ago, after the long-term average global temperature topped out at around 0.…

When called on to explain why he lives in a gigantic mansion with its resulting environmental cost, Academy Award winner, Nobel laureate, and U.S. Vice-President Al Gore said he bought carbon offsets from a company he owned that sold carbon offsets. Paying himself to emit greenhouse gases sounded ridiculous but a new analysis shows that buying offsets - paying a company to plant trees - can be just plain risky.  Forests absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but if they are managed by a group that doesn't believe in logging or clearing brush. If a forest goes bust in a fire all that…

A few years ago China agreed to discuss its runaway greenhouse gas emissions - in 2030. The Obama administration had to try and frame that as a win, noting that China had never even agreed to mention a date before. The worldwide concessions to China on emissions, and the toothless Paris Agreement, where everyone gets to pick their own way to pretend they are helping, have meant nothing is going to change. Western countries will still strive for no emissions, celebrities will buy carbon offsets they think make up for flying their private jets to environmental meetings, and it won't make any…

In 2014, the world's top polluter, China, told the United States president they unequivocally  would not even discuss emissions caps or targets until 2030 and American speechwriters quickly tried to spin that into a positive. China had never even agreed on a future date before, they rationalized, so that was progress. Well, not really, but it was as much as almost everyone else was going to do under the Paris Climate Agreement. Despite any real commitments from exempt countries, like the world's largest polluter, China, that will cause a 48 percent increase in energy consumption by 2040…

The jet-setting habits of Bill Gates and Paris Hilton mean that they produce an astonishing 10,000 times more carbon emissions from flying than the average person. This was the conclusion of my research mining their social media accounts (tweets, Instagram and Facebook posts) as well as those of a number of other celebrities for clues as to where they were in the world over the course of 2017 and how they got there. As such, this estimate is conservative – they may well have taken more flights and not volunteered the information to their millions of followers. This highlights the insane…

Biogenic volatile organic compounds produced by the cannabis plants during growth and reproduction, the same chemicals responsible for the pungent smell of a cannabis plant, also contribute to air pollution on a much larger scale, according to new research. In a new pilot study, Desert Research Institute scientists visited four cannabis growing facilities in Nevada and California to learn about the chemicals that are emitted during the cultivation and processing of cannabis plants, and to evaluate the potential for larger-scale impacts to urban air quality. They found high levels of…

What is old hype is new again, which is to say population bombs, starvation in Africa, nuclear plant meltdowns, and atomic destruction because an aggressive American president makes a wholesome dictator in Russia nervous and nuclear bombs start going off. These recurring doomsday narratives follow a predictable cycle: 1) Hysterical activist with a credible title engages in crisis inflation2) It gets New York Times coverage and a whole bunch of other people talk about it3) A few questionable academics jump on the bandwagon4) Serious scientists debunk it, to little public acclaim5) The original…

The colorful Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) occur when charged particles from the sun interact with gases in Earth’s during darker winter months in high-latitude regions like Alaska, Scandinavia, and Iceland but a geomagnetic storm predicted for this weekend could result in aurora sightings even in Montana. When particles from the sun interact with Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere and gases like oxygen and nitrogen, they gain energy and later release it, creating the light shows. if you don't have clouds and are in much of the northern US this weekend, you may get lucky and get an…

If you believe in medieval accounts of wine harvest dates, Burgundy grapes are in crisis. A new look at dates of grape harvest from the last 664 years says wine grapes in Burgundy, eastern France, have been picked 13 days earlier on average since 1988 than they were in the previous six centuries, and that is due to the region's hotter and drier climate in recent years.  How accurate that is beyond the last 30 years is unclear. Thomas Labbé, a researcher at the universities of Burgundy and Leipzig and lead-author of the study, used written accounts and even proxies, such as the date…

Fires in the Amazon rainforest have captured attention worldwide in recent days. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who took office in 2019, pledged in his campaign to reduce environmental protection and increase agricultural development in the Amazon, and he appears to have followed through on that promise. The resurgence of forest clearing in the Amazon, which had decreased more than 80% following a peak in 2004, is alarming for many reasons. Tropical forests harbor many species of plants and animals found nowhere else. They are important refuges for indigenous people, and contain enormous…