Scientists Agree Human-Caused Climate Change is Real: But Wait, We’ve Known That for Decades!

An important peer-reviewed study was published today by John Cook et al. in the journal Environmental Research Letters. John Cook runs the well-known Skeptical Science website that rebuts global warming misinformation. His new research once again confirms there is overwhelming agreement amongst climate scientists – over 97 percent agree – and in the scientific literature – over 97 percent of papers confirm – that global warming is real and largely caused by humans. However, current surveys of the U.S. public, such as those done by the Pew Center and Yale, show that less than half the population believe scientists are in agreement on the issue of human-caused climate change. Read More

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10 Places President Obama Should Visit to See Climate Change In Action

In November, President Obama suggested that we needed a wide-ranging national discussion about climate change. But where to have that conversation? There are so many stories from communities that are on the front lines of climate change, grappling with ways to cope and looking for options. Here are ten places especially deserving of a visit from the President because they are dealing with consequences of climate change that affect many other parts of the country, indeed the world. Read More

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We’ve Never Been Here Before: 400ppm of CO2 Measured in the Atmosphere at Mauna Loa

We’ve just crossed a sobering milestone. For the first time since humans have walked the planet, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at Mauna Loa Observatory has reached 400 parts per million. On May 9, scientists from both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography measured the daily average concentration of carbon dioxide in air above this value. I don’t know about you, but when I heard this I wanted to cry. Let me put this in context for you. Read More

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Climate Change Is Disrupting Nature’s Calendar. Thoreau’s Notebooks Are Helping Show Us How.

Spring is not what it used to be. The seasonal cycles that generations of naturalists, including Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold, documented so meticulously in their field notes are being thrown badly off kilter by climate change. Read More

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UCS Vision for Healthy Farms in the 21st Century: Agroecology has the Answers

Agriculture is at a crossroads. While highly productive in the U.S., it is also destructive of the environment, vulnerable to climate change, and highly resource intensive. In short, it is unsustainable. Read More

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Ted Smith: A Visionary Conservation Leader and Climate Pioneer Remembered

Friends and family gathered last weekend at a memorial in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to celebrate the remarkable conservation legacy of Theodore McRoberts Smith, known to one and all as Ted. It was an inspiring, warm, and wonderful commemoration of a visionary leader — and Ted would have hated it. Read More

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Wildfire Season Has Arrived in the West

While some locations in the West, such as Boulder CO, received a foot of snow this past Wednesday others are now in the grips of conditions ripe for wildfire and indeed facing outbreaks already.  California is currently bearing the brunt of early-season activity with wildfires in areas in the northern part of the state and around Los Angeles. Read More

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Extending the Success Against Illegal Logging to Palm Oil and Other Drivers of Deforestation

The week before last I had the opportunity to go to London to participate in a workshop at Chatham House, on an idea that may turn out to be very important in ending tropical deforestation. Over the past several years there has been important progress in reducing forest degradation, based on a simple principle: if it’s against the law to cut down trees in one country, then it should also be illegal to import the cut timber from those trees into other countries. In other words, we should respect and help enforce the laws that protect forests in the countries that we import from.

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Impacts After the Flood: As Midwest Waters Recede, Health Threats Remain

It’s seems the Midwest can’t catch a break on the weather. Widespread drought has hit the region hard and now areas along the Mississippi and farther east have seen heavy rain and flooding, bringing back unwanted memories of the historic floods just two years ago. Chicago had its wettest April on record and Grand Rapids was transformed into an aquariumRead More

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Talking About Sea Level Rise: Leading Scientists Meet in Galveston, Texas

What better place to talk about the impacts of sea level rise than a coastal city on a barrier island on the Gulf Coast? That’s where I was two weeks ago – in Galveston, Texas, with 80 other Earth scientists at a conference sponsored by the Geological Society of America and the American Geophysical Union. Galveston was the site of the worst natural disaster in U.S. history, more than a century ago. Read More

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