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As a scientist who’s spent the past decade helping natural-resource managers in federal, state and tribal governments prepare for climate change, I’ve become used to giving terrible news. I thus often find myself feeling like an oncologist delivering a stream of devastating prognoses. Also like an oncologist, I find myself and others scrutinizing my bedside manner: am I being too cold, clinical and detached as I describe an apocalyptic future? As scientists, we are trained to present information clearly and dispassionately to avoid the appearance of bias. Unfortunately, this communication style falls desperately flat when speaking to the public, making...

From low-emission cows to robotic soil management, the farming industry will have to explore new approaches in the wake of a UN warning that the world needs to cut meat consumption or face worsening climate chaos. Cow farts are a major source of greenhouse gas, but researchers – who collect the gases in bags fitted to cows – have found there is considerable natural variation from animal to animal. If the low-emission cows could be bred with each other, this could bring down these emissions, they say. Researchers in other countries are also looking at changing feed to make cattle...

The international panel charged with reining in climate change said this week that the world needs to take "unprecedented" steps to remake its energy, transportation and agriculture systems to avoid the worst effects of global warming. What the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change did not discuss was an even more radical potential response - one that would re-engineer Earth’s stratosphere to create a massive heat shield by effectively duplicating the fallout that follows a volcanic eruption. This kind of revolutionary “solar geoengineering” - known by some as the “Pinatubo Strategy,” after a volcano whose 1991 eruption shrouded the planet in...

Hurricane Michael isn't a truly "natural disaster." Neither was Harvey in Houston. Nor Maria in Puerto Rico. Yet we continue to use that term. Doing so -- especially in the era of climate change -- is misleading if not dangerous, according to several disaster experts and climate scientists I reached by phone and on Twitter. "The phrase 'natural disaster' is an attempt to lay blame where blame really doesn't rest," said Kerry A. Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at MIT and a global expert on hurricanes. It's not about semantics, said Ksenia Chmutina, a lecturer at Loughborough University in...

A report by the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food says beef consumption needs to fall by as much as 90% in western countries to combat climate change. The report's lead author, Dr Marco Springmann, told Today that individuals should aim to eat just one portion of beef, pork or lamb a week.

Climate change is bringing the heat for polar bears - and things are not looking good. The latest development? A shift in their diet, which may soon include regular gorging on blubbery whale carcasses, scientists say. And, as Craig Welch reports for National Geographic, humans are to blame. The planet’s rising temperatures are steadily melting northerly sea ice, which Arctic polar bears depend on to access their favorite seal-flavored suppers. During the warmer months, when the ice sheets shatter, some bears simply fast on land, waiting until hunting bridges freeze again. But with each passing year, the number of toasty...

Preventing an extra single degree of heat could make a life-or-death difference in the next few decades for multitudes of people and ecosystems on this fast-warming planet, an international panel of scientists reported Sunday. But they provide little hope the world will rise to the challenge. The Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its gloomy report at a meeting in Incheon, South Korea. In the 728-page document, the U.N. organization detailed how Earth's weather, health and ecosystems would be in better shape if the world's leaders could somehow limit future human-caused warming. Among other things: — Half as...

The UK’s obligations in response to this week’s warnings from the UN over global warming will be controversial and politically fraught, taking the country into “uncharted territory” and testing the political consensus on climate change, the its top climate adviser has warned. The government will have to regulate industry and intervene in the market in ways that will prove controversial in parliament, predicted Chris Stark, chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change (CCCP). He said reducing emissions by the amounts needed would “require answers that the market unfettered will not deliver”. Stark said the independence of the CCCP, which...

President Donald Trump cast doubt on a United Nations report that warned that we have just 12 years to curb climate change by suggesting the reports' authors weren't more credible than reports that say the environment is "fabulous." The UN report, which is based on more than 6,000 scientific references from 91 authors across 40 countries, outlines the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Trump, who has previously called climate change a "hoax", was speaking on the White House lawn on Tuesday when he said the report "was given to me." "And I want to...

Scientists say climate change is getting worse and there could be "life-or-death" consequences for our planet in the next 20 years. The new report from the U.N. predicts that at the current warming rate, millions more people will die from extreme heat by the year 2040. So are there practical ways we can help limit the warming? According to New York Times international climate reporter Somini Sengupta, the answer is yes: * Drive less, try to carpool or use public transit instead. * Buy less clothing, as apparel and footwear industries contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, or buy vintage and...

Human beings might have to cope with an increasing amount of venomous bites, stings, and other brush ups with poison due to climate change. That’s according to a new study, coming at the same time that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report warning that negative impacts from a warming world are coming faster than expected. According to a massive new analysis of poisonous or venomous aquatic animals, dangerous species might become increasingly common in new ranges. Species whose ranges might shift polewards due to warmer water include lionfish, sea snakes, crown-of-thorns starfish and a number of...

LONDON - Society would have to enact "unprecedented" changes to how it consumes energy, travels and builds to meet a lower global warming target or it risks increases in heat waves, flood-causing storms and the chances of drought in some regions as well as the loss of species, a U.N. report said on Monday. The report is seen as the main scientific guide for government policymakers on how to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement during the Katowice Climate Change Conference in Poland in December. To contain warming at 1.5C, man-made global net carbon dioxide emissions would need to fall by...

A stark new report from the global scientific authority on climate change calls on individuals, as well as governments, to take action to avoid disastrous levels of global warming. The IPCC's models emphasize the need for people to change their lifestyle and consumption patterns to more sustainable alternatives, specifically in areas they can control, like modes of transportation, the buildings they inhabit and their dietary preferences. Here's what consumers can do: Transportation: In order to meet the 1.5C goal, the IPCC envisages a future where people travel less, and that generally consumer preferences shift to more sustainable choices like car...

Saturday Night Live has lampooned Senate Republicans, imagining them chugging beer in the Senate 'locker room' after successfully confirming Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The new SNL episode on Saturday aired just hours after the Senate voted 50-48 nearly along party lines to confirm Kavanaugh, who was then sworn in to the Supreme Court. The cold opened imagined the party-hearty hi-jinks of ecstatic Republican senators, led by a beer-chugging Lindsey Graham, portrayed by Kate McKinnon. 'How amazing is this? We made a lot of women real worried today, but I'm not getting pregnant so I don't care,' said McKinnon's Graham,...

We deserve to Know that it is CHINA who is actively intruding into American life.

The warning signals of climate change that have hit people around the world in the last few months must be heeded by national governments at key meetings later this year, political leaders and policy experts are urging, as the disruption from record-breaking weather continues in many regions. This week, scientists are gathering in South Korea to draw together the last five years of advances in climate science to answer key questions for policymakers. What is expected to emerge will be the strongest warning yet that these unusual occurrences will add up to a pattern that can only be overcome with...

Wind power is booming in the United States. It’s expanded 35-fold since 2000 and now provides 8% of the nation’s electricity. The US Department of Energy expects wind turbine capacity to more than quadruple again by 2050. But a new study by a pair of Harvard researchers finds that a high amount of wind power could mean more climate warming, at least regionally and in the immediate decades ahead. The paper raises serious questions about just how much the United States or other nations should look to wind power to clean up electricity systems. Previous studies also pointed out the...

BIERE, Switzerland - Cows burp and fart more than they need to, according to a Swiss firm that says it has developed a feed that cuts methane emissions from livestock - helping to combat global warming into the bargain. A single cow produces the equivalent of about three tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, says Agolin, based in Biere, near Lausanne. Co-founder and managing director Kurt Schaller told Reuters its specialist feed can reduce that by 10 percent. "We sell our mixture for around 1 million cows per year... There are 25-28 million cows in the European Union, so it...

Researchers in Massachusetts say under the worst case scenario, climate change could reduce the scallop population by more than 50 percent in just a few decades, which could be bad news for New Bedford’s lucrative fishing port. In 2016, commercial fishermen landed more than $300 million worth of fish at the Port of New Bedford, and 85 percent of that value came from scallops. A new study from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution shows as carbon emissions in the atmosphere increase, so does the acidity in the ocean. Jennie Rheuban, lead author of the report, said that could affect how well...

Scientists believe Tangier Island, in the Virginia waters of the Chesapeake Bay, could vanish within the next 25 years. Two-thirds of Tangier's land mass has disappeared since the time of the Civil War, and in recent years sea-level rise caused by global warming took more acres from the island. Fewer than 500 people remain there. Many of them voted for Donald J. Trump, share his rejection of climate change as the reason for their existential challenge and insist that a seawall around the island would save it from further "wave erosion." The deeply religious islanders have frequently been in the...