Scientists at NASA have created a stunning high-resolution 3D visualization showing the complex ebbs and flows of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere over the course of an entire year. It’s a unique perspective that’s sure to change the way you think about this problematic greenhouse gas.
In what’s being seen as a huge step forward in the effort to curb climate-warming emissions, the United States and China have ratified the Paris global climate agreement. Other countries are now expected to follow suit.
This may look like just another rock, but its so much more than that. It’s also a storage unit for carbon emissions—and it could finally give us a way to backtrack a bit on what we’ve done to our climate.
Whether you’re counting by calories, pounds, or dollars, the world is wasting a huge amount of food. But there’s also another way to measure it: The quantity of resources we burn up for nothing at all.
The final climate agreement draft won’t come until this weekend but a group of activists have found a way to mark the end of the COP21 summit on a somewhat hopeful note.
Let’s face it, if we’re going to save the planet from ourselves, we’re going to have to develop cleaner technologies. Here’s what the future has in store once we make the transition to a high-tech, low-carbon world.
There might not be any better news as 196 countries head into a second week of climate negotiations in Paris. A Stanford-led study claims that we might have hit global peak emissions in 2014. But that’s not a call for complacency: There is still much work to be done.
Infectious diseases like polio and malaria might be gone in 15 years because the founder of Microsoft devoted a foundation to eradicating them. Now Bill Gates has turned his attention towards our global energy crisis, which he thinks can also be fixed with better R&D. And, yes, he’s going to fund it.
Geoengineering — hacking Earth’s climate system to reverse global warming — often sounds a bit preposterous, whether we’re talking about deploying giant space mirrors or dumping a bunch of iron filings into the ocean. The latest proposal? Dusting the stratosphere with billions of dollars worth of powdered diamond.
Need to get from New York to Paris? Or San Diego? Chances are, you’re hopping on a plane. But commercial flights aren’t just annoying and expensive — they also input a ton of carbon into the environment, contributing to climate change. So what if we stopped flights to save the planet? What would happen next?
At a UNESCO climate conference last week, scientists declared (once again) that climate change is already happening. The evidence is our wacky weather—even Paris, where the conference was held, was broiling in a historic heatwave. But the biggest red flag is the rise in peak global mean temperatures: Which means…
In its starkest warning yet, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change declared that we need to drop carbon emissions down to zero by the end of this century if we're to have a decent chance of keeping global temperatures below dangerous levels.
As our leaders gather in New York for a UN meeting on climate change, it's fair to ask which measures to date have contributed the most to slow global warming. Because no one has really thought to ask this question, The Economist recently tried to find out.
The Environmental Protection Agency will present a draft rule Monday that seeks to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants 30% over 2005 levels by the year 2030, according to anonymous sources briefed on the plan.
Just how does the carbon dioxide pollution of today compare with that of the past? Not very well, as this animated map of where and when carbon emissions have increased across the globe since 1850 reveals.
Even though Americans increased their use of renewable sources of energy in 2013, the annual level of carbon dioxide emissions increased for the first time since 2010.
Our climate is changing, no doubt about it. The festering controversy we're in has been about whether humans have anything to do with it. A comprehensive report by a UN-sponsored climate panel may now finally put the issue to rest — and we're most certainly to blame.
By genetically altering a microorganism that hangs around the blazingly hot waters near geothermal vents, researchers from the University of Georgia have shown that carbon dioxide can be pulled from the atmosphere and converted into useful organic chemicals — including biofuels.
For many years now, scientists have used satellites to chronicle "ship tracks" — bright and easily visible atmosphere-bound emissions similar to the vapor trails produced by airplanes. But ships also emit a less obvious signature, one that's not so easy to see. As data from the Dutch and Finnish-built Ozone…
Global fossil fuel emissions skyrocketed last year to the highest levels ever recorded, undermining the widespread belief that the global financial crisis would cut carbon emissions. Though there was a brief, two-year decline in emissions, a new scientific report published this week offers compelling evidence that…
