The author of today’s post, Lisa Moore, Ph.D., is a scientist in the Climate and Air program.
This week I came across several interesting articles related to climate, but two in particular caught my eye. In the first, scientists found that excess carbon dioxide (CO2) may be what’s leaving livestock with less food to eat. The other study explores the role of greenhouse gases on the record-breaking heat Americans experienced in 2006.
The author of today’s post, Lisa Moore, Ph.D., is a scientist in the Climate and Air program.
On Wednesday, the DailyTech Blog said that an update to a 2004 survey shows that the scientific community is moving away from a consensus that humans are causing global warming. The survey was submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, but is as yet unpublished.
So is it true? In a word, no, because scientific consensus cannot be surmised from subjective surveys.
This is Part 1 of a three-part series on Food and Farming.
1. Increased CO2 and Food Quality
2. Farm Animals and Methane
3. “Food Mile” Complexities
The author of today’s post, Lisa Moore, Ph.D., is a scientist in the Climate and Air program.
When people talk about the harmful effects of fossil fuels, they usually focus on global warming. But as I explained in my post about nitrogen pollution, and Bill discussed in his post about ocean acidification, fossil fuel use has other unintended consequences.
Here is yet another example: increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) can affect the food chain. There’s a lot to be concerned about, but today I’ll focus on livestock.
The author of today’s post, Lisa Moore, Ph.D., is a scientist in the Climate and Air program.
Last weekend’s Mercury News ran a news story about vehicle emissions harming native species in California. The excess nitrogen from vehicle emissions caused invasive species to displace the plants that feed the bay checkerspot butterfly, which is threatened with extinction. My friend and colleague Dr. Stuart Weiss, the scientist who uncovered the link, calls this "drive-by extinction".
Nitrogen pollution has profound effects on life, health, and climate, yet these go mostly unnoticed by policymakers and the public.
The author of today’s post, Lisa Moore, Ph.D., is a scientist in the Climate and Air program.
This past week there’s been a lot of buzz about a small correction that NASA made to U.S. temperature data. Some have said, incorrectly, that the new data show that 1934 edges out 1998 as the warmest year on record, rather than 1998 as previously thought. Actually, 1934 edged out 1998 in the old U.S. record, too, although the difference was not statistically significant. My favorite quote on all this is from Tim Lambert, who said in his coverage of the issue that "1998 and 1934 went from being in a virtual tie, to being in a virtual tie".
Climate change deniers have been all over the NASA correction, saying it proves that global warming isn’t happening. Of course, that’s ridiculous. For one thing, U.S. temperature isn’t global temperature. Globally, the warmest year on record is 2005, and the second warmest is 1998. But what should we make of those high U.S. temperatures in the 1930s?
The author of today"s post, Lisa Moore, Ph.D., is a scientist in the Climate and Air Program.
Climate models are usually run far into the future, projecting temperature changes to the end of the century. Over the long term, the effects of greenhouse gases overwhelm all other factors. But climate can have substantial "short-term internal variability" – for example, temperature shifts due to El Niño and La Niña. Climate models have never been able to predict this internal variability – until now.