carbon dioxide

3 ‘Most Important’ Greenhouse Gases Reached Record Highs Again Last Year: NOAA Scientists

3 ‘Most Important’ Greenhouse Gases Reached Record Highs Again Last Year: NOAA Scientists

Levels of the three “most important” greenhouse gases — methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide — in the atmosphere reached record highs again in 2023, according to research conducted by scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Global Monitoring Laboratory (GML). Air samples taken by GML indicated that levels of the heat-trapping gases […]

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    Scotland Restores Its Peatlands to Keep Carbon in the Ground

    Scotland Restores Its Peatlands to Keep Carbon in the Ground

    By Joe Lo The burning Amazon rainforests, with their jaguars, monkeys and colorful birds, have grabbed global attention in a way the destruction of the world’s mossy peatlands never has. Yet protecting the world’s peatlands, which store at least twice as much carbon as forests, is critical in the fight against climate change. Peatlands, also […]

    Human Ancestors Evolved in a Low-Carbon World

    Human Ancestors Evolved in a Low-Carbon World

    By Tim Radford For the entire 2.5 million years of the Ice Age epoch called the Pleistocene, it was a low-carbon world. Atmospheric carbon dioxide hovered around 230 parts per million. Not only did Homo sapiens evolve on a low-carbon planet, so did Homo erectus and most other human species now known only from fossil […]

    Can We Reach 100% Renewable Energy in Time to Avoid Climate Catastrophe?

    Can We Reach 100% Renewable Energy in Time to Avoid Climate Catastrophe?

    By Daniel Ross Ten years ago, two climate scientists, Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi, published a groundbreaking article in Scientific American outlining a road map for becoming 100 percent reliant on energy generated by water, wind and sun by 2030. This was something that needed to be done “if the world has any hope of […]

    ‘The Window of Opportunity for Action Is Almost Closed’: UN Report Shows Record Levels of Climate-Changing Gases

    ‘The Window of Opportunity for Action Is Almost Closed’: UN Report Shows Record Levels of Climate-Changing Gases

    The atmospheric concentrations of the three gases most responsible for climate change reached record highs in 2017, the most recent annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin released Thursday from the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) found. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now at 405.5 parts per million (ppm), or 146 percent of pre-1750 […]

    Energy-Hungry Bitcoin Would Be a Climate Disaster, Study Finds

    Energy-Hungry Bitcoin Would Be a Climate Disaster, Study Finds

    When new technologies like electricity or the dishwasher took off in the 20th century, most of the people racing to adapt them had no idea what trading candles for light bulbs would do to the Earth’s climate. Researchers at the University of Hawaii have set out to make sure that doesn’t happen again when it […]

    Trump EPA Takes Credit For Obama-Era CO2 Reductions

    Trump EPA Takes Credit For Obama-Era CO2 Reductions

    Total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 2.7 percent between 2016 and 2017, according to a report released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released on Wednesday. Andrew Wheeler, the acting administrator of the EPA, touted that the report shows that regulations are unnecessary to slash carbon emissions. “Thanks to President Trump’s regulatory reform […]