Articles by Christopher Mims

Scientists build machine to suck carbon from the air

This machine sucks carbon out of the air like a Ghostbusters beam snarfing up ectoplasm. The idea is that if we can build millions of these babies, and find a good place to stick the carbon they capture, we can start to bring down Earth's already-dangerous levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

It's not just the U.S. — China is also eating Germany's solar lunch

Germany has more installed solar capacity than any other country on the planet, despite having a population of only 80 million people. You'd think that would be enough to drive a market for domestic solar production, but only if you lived under a globalization-proof rock and ate steaming bowls of naivete for breakfast.

Oceans kept the last decade from being even hotter

Occasionally, as in the past decade, greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere continue to increase, but the increase in average world air temperatures seems to "pause." (Not that the past decade wasn't the hottest on record -- it's just that climate scientists thought it could have been even hotter.)

Now, scientists are figuring out where that extra heat went: into the oceans. Specifically, into the deep oceans, below 1,000 feet beneath the surface. The world's oceans can hold vastly more heat energy than the atmosphere, so this isn't a big surprise, although it's nice to have some confirmation.

World population could just keep on expanding, says expert

"Leading demographers, including those at the United Nations and the U.S. Census Bureau, are projecting that world population will peak at 9.5 billion to 10 billion later this century and then gradually decline as poorer countries develop. But what if those projections are too optimistic?"