Climate News and Resources

A sheen of oil coated the Mississippi River for nearly 100 miles from the center of this city to the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday following the worst oil spill here in nearly a decade. The fuel-laden barge that collided with a heavy tanker on Wednesday was still leaking.
By Adam Nossiter, courtesy of the New York Times

The state of Alaska will sue to challenge the recent listing of polar bears as a threatened species, Gov. Sarah Palin announced Wednesday.

From the AP, courtesy of the New York Times

Arresting global warming won’t come cheap. Europe and Japan are already spending billions to meet the modest carbon emission cuts that they agreed to in Kyoto 10 years ago. And according to a recent United Nations report, switching to cleaner energy sources would require investments of up to $20 trillion over the next two decades. Add to that other economic costs, such as the rise in food prices attributable to the world’s embrace of renewable fuels.

By Eduardo Porter, courtesy of the New York Times

Thou shall not pollute the Earth. Thou shall beware genetic manipulation. Modern times bring with them modern sins. So the Vatican has told the faithful that they should be aware of "new" sins such as causing environmental blight.

From Reuters, courtesy of the New York Times

Relatively barren stretches of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans around the tropics have expanded about 15 percent since 1998, according to a new satellite study.

No one doubts that human-induced climate change has been killing corals across the globe. The question is whether humans can help save them before the devastation is complete.

By Juliet Eilperin, courtesy of the Washington Post

If two scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory are correct, people will still be driving gasoline-powered cars 50 years from now, churning out heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — and yet that carbon dioxide will not contribute to global warming.

By Kenneth Chang, courtesy of the New York Times

Lake Mead, the vast reservoir for the Colorado River water that sustains the fast-growing cities of Phoenix and Las Vegas, could lose water faster than previously thought and run dry within 13 years, according to a new study by scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

By Felicity Barringer, courtesy of the New York Times

The persistent and dramatic decline in the snowpack of many mountains in the West is caused primarily by human-induced global warming and is not the result of natural variability in weather patterns, researchers reported yesterday.

By Marc Kaufman, courtesy of the Washington Post

Sheets Melting in an Area Once Thought to Be Unaffected by Global Warming

Climatic changes appear to be destabilizing vast ice sheets of western Antarctica that had previously seemed relatively protected from global warming, researchers reported yesterday, raising the prospect of faster sea-level rise than current estimates.

By Marc Kaufman, courtesy of the Washington Post