Climate 411

This post is by Michael Oppenheimer, Ph.D., the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School and the Department of Geosciences at Princeton University. He also serves as science advisor to Environmental Defense.

The award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an important milestone in the journey toward a global warming solution, and it got me thinking about how the IPCC came to be. To some extent, it was thanks to a miscalculation by the Reagan Administration!

Read More »

This post is by James Wang, Ph.D., a climate scientist at Environmental Defense.

A study by Weaver et al., published this month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, reports that "All emission targets considered with less than 60% global reduction by 2050 break the 2.0°C threshold warming this century…." (They mean 2.0°C above the pre-industrial temperature, equivalent to 2.3°F above today’s temperature. For more on threshold temperatures, see “How Warm is Too Warm?“) Even more disturbing, they say, "Even when emissions are stabilized at 90% below present levels at 2050, this threshold is eventually broken."

That makes all our efforts seem hopeless. But are they right? In a word, no. Here’s why.

Read More »

This post is by Lisa Moore, Ph.D., a scientist in the Climate and Air program at Environmental Defense.

Yesterday’s New York Times Magazine had an article aptly titled "The Future is Drying Up", about the threats that climate change and booming populations pose to precious water resources in western states. Usually when we think of water and climate change we think of rising sea levels, but climate change is also causing drops in drinking water supplies.

Read More »

This post is by Michael Oppenheimer, Ph.D., the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School and the Department of Geosciences at Princeton University. He also serves as science advisor to Environmental Defense.

We’re already seeing environmental changes from global warming, and some key ones are occurring more quickly than scientists expected. Consequently, many experts from diverse disciplines are uncomfortable with the slow pace of governments in addressing this issue. The growing sense of urgency arises from two concerns:

• Earth’s climate system may be rapidly approaching a point of no return where large, irreversible and destructive changes, like the gradual disintegration of an ice sheet, become inevitable.
• To achieve any given temperature goal, the longer we delay action, the steeper emissions reductions will need to be. It’s easier to cut emissions gradually than it is to slash them drastically.

Read More »

This post is by Sheryl Canter, an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense.

Today Senators Joe Lieberman and John Warner introduced America’s Climate Security Act (ACSA), a comprehensive climate change bill that would cap and then cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Capping emissions is a crucial step in the fight against global warming, and this bill may be the one that gets us there.

Read More »

This post is by Sheryl Canter, Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense.

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize went to people fighting global climate change. What does fighting climate change have to do with world peace? Here’s the answer that Michael Oppenheimer, Ph.D., one of the team of authors of the IPCC’s 2007 reports and science advisor to Environmental Defense, gave in an interview with PBS:

A stable climate helps keep the peace. We see situations all around the world where shortages of the sorts of resources that will shrivel under a changing climate, like water for food, water for agriculture, are contributory factors in places like Darfur, the Horn of Africa, where instability is rife, and governments just can’t hold it together, and people die. That’s ultimately why this is justifiably a prize for peace.