Science & the Public

Climate

U.S. backs $100-billion-a-year plan for climate adaptation

Blog from Copenhagen: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived at the climate talks December 17, and debate continued over how much 'transparency' countries are willing to accept.

Climate

IPCC to offer climate science scholarships

The Nobel Peace Prize will pay dividends in the developing world by funding scholarships for climate-science studies. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which received the 2007 Nobel Prize, announced today that it is investing its winnings as seed money for these scholarships. They’d go to residents of nations expected to experience dramatic impacts of climate change.

Climate

Climate: Negotiating the brackets

Representatives of 193 nations are posturing and challenging, threatening and bluffing, as they wrestle to draft a successor climate treaty to the Kyoto Protocol. The chief objective is to lower global emissions of greenhouse gases. How to do it, who will pay for it, how high to strive – all of these are up in the air. Still. Three days before the negotiators are to sign onto a statement of shared goals and intentions.

Climate

‘Climate-gate’: Beyond the embarrassment

The United Nations Climate Change meeting, which I arrive at tomorrow in Copenhagen, is currently deadlocked on more important issues than who said what impolitic thing about somebody else in a private email to a colleague.

Climate

EPA: Greenhouse gases still endanger health

In April, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that based on its reading of the science, greenhouse gases threaten public health. Since then, the public and legions of interest groups have weighed in on the subject, shooting EPA some 380,000 separate comments. “After a thorough examination of the scientific evidence and careful consideration of public comments on the ruling,” EPA today reiterated its so-called “endangerment” assessment of greenhouse gases

Climate

Newspapers issue strong warning on climate

SN senior editor Janet Raloff blogs from Hamburg, Germany, before going to Copenhagen to attend the climate talks.

Earth

Countering Copenhagen’s Carbon Footprint

The United Nations’ Climate Change Conference, beginning Monday (Dec. 7), will draw legions of people to Copenhagen from 192 countries. Traveling to Denmark — sometimes from the far corners of the Earth — will expend huge amounts of energy. And spew plenty of the very carbon dioxide that the meeting negotiators are trying to rein in. So several bodies will be offsetting the carbon footprint of this gathering — with bricks. Or brick ovens, anyway.

Chemistry

Pollutants: Up in flames

Forest fires have the potential to release toxic industrial and agricultural pollutants previously trapped on soil. After glomming onto smoke particles, these chemicals can hitch long-distance rides — sometimes across oceans — before they’re grounded and contaminate some new region, scientists report.

Humans

Beefy hormones: New routes of exposure

On any given day, some 750,000 U.S feedlots are beefing up between 11 million and 14 million head of cattle. The vast majority of these animals will receive muscle-building steroids — hormones they will eventually excrete into the environment. But traditional notions about where those biologically active pollutants end up may need substantial revising, several new studies find.

Earth

Toxic playgrounds

No kid should ever play in arsenic. Especially at school. Yet many probably do, according to findings of a study presented today.

Chemistry

PCBs: When green paint isn’t ‘green’

It seems we're literally painting the air -- from the Great Lakes to Antarctica -- with persistent pollutants. Including at least one whose safety has never been studied.

Chemistry

Case of the toxic gingerbread man

Featured blog: A search for the source of some indoor-air anomalies turns up a surprising culprit.