Climate Science

Happy warrior: Fighting coal where it’s hardest

Grist is proud to present the Change Gang — profiles of people who are leading change on the ground toward a more sustainable society and a greener planet. Some we’ve […]

Dangerous levels of warming could happen in your lifetime

It's easy for a lot of people to ignore climate change, because it's not going to affect them, it'll only affect their children. If they don't have children, all the […]

It is shockingly easy to own exotic animals in the U.S.

The depressing news from Ohio -- where the owner of a large and mismanaged personal exotic animal park let the animals loose to be shot by police, then killed himself -- has led a number of people, such as me, to wonder, "where do you even get 18 endangered Bengal tigers in this day and age?" Turns out it's easier than you might think.

New Scientist has rounded up info on U.S. exotic animal laws, from their comfortable position outside the U.S. where they can freely be appalled.

Underwater homes: A visual guide to NYC's future floods

A New York City artist brings climate change home by mapping the coming floods and drawing them on the actual cityscape.

Scientists are underplaying climate effects

So, talking about global warming is "alarmism"? Hardly. In many cases, it now turns out, climate reality has been much worse than climate scientists predicted. The Arctic now has ice-free summers, […]

This exotic animals story just keeps getting more depressing

We noted yesterday that 48 exotic animals had escaped from an Ohio farm, and that authorities were handling the problem by shooting them. That's enough of a downer, but the more details we hear the worse it gets.

There ended up being more than 50 animals running amok, and 49 of them were killed, including 18 endangered Bengal tigers and 17 lions. Local police say they did try to sedate the animals instead of killing them, but they didn't really have tranquilizers suited to 300-pound wildcats. And, as if that's not enough, the reason they were loose in the first place is that owner Terry Thompson released them before committing suicide. Maybe because he heard a story about 18 Bengal tigers getting shot to death.

Climate change didn’t ‘go,’ it was pushed

"Where did global warming go?" It's not "America" that has lost its belief in climate change and its will to take action. It's the Republican Party.

Heat from cities barely affects global warming

One of the many arguments that deniers rely on to pooh-pooh climate change is the prevalence of the “urban heat island” effect, i.e. the tendency for cities to absorb and retain heat. The problem’s not gas-belching cars and factories, it’s all those city-dwelling lefties! But according to a new study from Stanford University, there's just no possible way that cities are causing global warming, at least not on the same scale that greenhouse-gas emissions are.

At most 4 percent of "gross global warming since the Industrial Revolution" can be traced back to urban heat island, the study found. Greenhouse gases are responsible for 79 percent. So, if you live in a city, don't sweat it! If you've commuted for 1.5 hours in a car for the past two decades, maybe sweat it.

The study also contained some bad news about white roofs.

Australians to kill camels for carbon credits

Australians really don't like the hundreds of thousands of feral camels that run around the continent, so every once in a while the government decides to spend money on sending guys with guns up in helicopters to cull their numbers. But now they have a utilitarian justification for the culls: They're fighting climate change.

Like cows, camels spew methane from their digestives systems. By cutting their lives short, one company argues, Australia would be preventing the release of the methane the camels would emit over their remaining years. The company, Northwest Carbon, also says it'll be able to offer carbon credits for the reduction in emissions.

Shark massacre reported off of Colombian coast

Off the coast of Colombia, as many as 2,000 sharks in a wildlife sanctuary have been massacred, says the Colombian government. A team of divers first alerted the government to the killings, according to the Guardian:

[The divers] saw a large number of fishing trawlers entering the zone illegally," [environmental minister Sandra] Bessudo said. The divers counted a total of 10 fishing boats, which all were flying the Costa Rican flag.