Energy Innovation

Blowing in the Wind

Recent investments in offshore wind projects off the East Coast put wind in the sails of a nascent regional innovation ecosystem.

Science Communication

A Climate Change by Any Other Name

Despite Fox News’s attempts to stir up controversy over the terminology of global warming, academics have been touting the more accurate term “global climate disruption” for years.

OCEANS

New “Ice Island” a Sign of Things to Come

Scientists at a congressional briefing conclude that recent glacial calving of a giant ice island off the Greenland ice shelf is a clear symptom of a warming world.

Distorting Science While Invoking Science

From Secondhand smoke to “Star Wars” to climate change, the cast of characters peddling pseudo-science is stunningly consistent.

CLIMATE CHANGE

The Weathermen Know Which Way the Wind Blows

A recent survey demonstrates that many forecasters embrace their role as informal science educators. Ed Maibach says it’s an opportunity to boost public understanding of global warming.

Domes of Carbon Over U.S. Cities Damage Urban Health

A new study from a Stanford scientist looks closely at how carbon dioxide accumulates over urban areas, exacerbating air pollution and increasing local mortality. The study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology estimates that local carbon dioxide emissions [...]

FDA Rules for Cigarettes Are a Victory for Public Health, for Science (and for the Earth’s Climate?)

The tobacco industry pioneered the art of attacking scientific research that undermined corporate interests. Strong evidence linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer appeared in multiple 1950 studies. Just a few years later, the industry began manufacturing a new product: doubt. [...]

CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate Change Preps for Its Scopes Trial

Legislators in South Dakota seem bent on becoming anti-science pioneers. After a century of anti-evolution policies and legislation across the United States, the South Dakota legislature is set to become the only one in the nation to micromanage what teachers say about global warming.

Certainty on the Science of Climate Change

“A wait-and-see policy,” on climate change, observed Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Dr. Joseph Romm on Wednesday, “may mean waiting until it’s too late.” Romm was speaking at a CAP event on “The Science of Climate Change,” and was [...]

Video: Climate Change Is a Clear and Present Danger

Christopher Field, Ph.D., is the director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, professor of biology and environmental earth system science at Stanford University, and the Working Group II Co-Chair for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

INNOVATION

A First-Place Budget for Science

The budget request for fiscal year 2011 that the Obama administration released on Monday includes foundational investments that will help the United States remain the leader among innovative nations.

The Top Science Progress Features of 2009

In 2009, we saw a renewed engagement with ethical questions about how we regulate biotechnology, watched the conservative war on science continue on new fronts, and witnessed renewed commitments to grow U.S. prosperity with investments in science and technology. Timeline: [...]

Why Spies Should Team Up With Environmental Scientists

From 1992 until 2001, a special group of scientists collaborated with the U.S. intelligence community to use reconnaissance satellite imagery to study environmental change around the planet. Known as Medea, Measurements of Earth Data for Environmental Analysis, the project came [...]

SCIENCE, CULTURED

The Year in Science, 2009

It was a banner year for scientific progress and progressive science policy. But sadly, it was also the year for the rebirth of what is now a wide-ranging war on science.

BLOGGING COPENHAGEN

Can Copenhagen Succeed?

An analysis of the warming in store, and the warming we can hope to prevent, shows that proposed policies will have to stretch to put us in a climate “safe zone”— especially for developing nations.

How the Global Warming Story Changed—Disastrously

By Chris Mooney Back in 2006, the year of the release of An Inconvenient Truth, it felt as though serious and irreversible progress had finally been made on the climate issue. The feeling continued in 2007, when Al Gore won [...]

Reason is a Casualty in the Ongoing War on Climate Science

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal editorial section, Daniel Henninger took exaggeration of the scandal over emails stolen from scientists at the University of East Anglia to new heights, arguing that the incident undermines the entire centuries-old scientific enterprise. But the [...]

Not so Swift, Hackers: Why the scandal sometimes called “ClimateGate” is overblown

Chris Mooney contributes this post. And now, the climate change deniers will claim a scalp. Yesterday, climate researcher Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in the UK—which is responsible for one [...]

CLIMATE CHANGE

Uncivil Engineering

A “plan B” focused on planetary control through geoengineering might turn out to be nothing but a mistaken notion.

ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

You Say “Solution,” I Say “Pollution”

There are compelling scientific arguments both for and against geoengineering our climate via ocean fertilization. But even if our best science indicates that ocean fertilization will succeed, there are clear ethical reasons to rule it out, as it can never meet with the scrutiny that most of us take to be emblematic of justified, right action.