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Older trees best at fighting climate change

by RobinLeflore Posted on January 16, 2014

Older trees best at fighting climate change

By

mindgrow

As humans age, we tend to pass more gas. As trees age, they tend to suck more of it up.

A new paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature has blown away old misconceptions about the roles that the most mature trees in forests play in combating climate change.

It has long been believed that younger trees are better than their older neighbors at absorbing carbon dioxide. But the new research suggests that the opposite is true. It turns out that big trees just keep on growing, at fast rates, and the growth depends on carbon that the trees draw from the air around them.

“In whatever forest you look at, be it old or new growth, it is the largest trees that are the greater carbon sinks,” William Morris, a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, told Grist. “Not the smaller, younger trees, as was previously thought.”

Morris and dozens of other scientists studied data related to 673,046 trees belonging to 403 tree species in managed and wild forests across the world. For 96.8 percent of species studied, they found that each tree drew more carbon dioxide out the air each year than it did the year before. The carbon is used to produce leaves, roots, and wood. From the paper:

In absolute terms, trees 100 cm in trunk diameter typically add from 10 kg to 200 kg of aboveground dry mass each year (depending on species), averaging 103 kg per year. This is nearly three times the rate for trees of the same species at 50 cm in diameter, and is the mass equivalent to adding an entirely new tree of 10–20 cm in diameter to the forest each year.

The findings don’t contradict the prevailing notion that young forests are better overall at sucking up CO2 than are old-growth forests. That’s because younger forests contain so many more trees.

That said, it’s still best for the climate that we leave those aging stands in place because cutting them down would unleash the carbon they spent their lifetimes absorbing. “One must take into account the amount of carbon the forests are storing as well as how much they are fixing,” Morris said.


Source
Rate of tree carbon accumulation increases continuously with tree size, Nature

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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How Bill Gates is Helping KFC Take Over Africa

by k8qxuani Posted on January 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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There are currently more than 750 KFCs in sub-Saharan Africa. Almost all are in South Africa, where they sell as much as 10 percent of the nation’s commercially grown chickens. Now the chain’s parent company, Yum Brands (“the defining global company that feeds the world”), is in the midst of a major expansion northward, with plans to sell drumsticks in Senegal, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

KFC’s target is Africa’s surging middle class, which is expanding both in numbers and weight. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, poultry consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa will increase 270 percent over its 2000 levels by 2030. Much of this growth is being fueled by urban, middle-class consumers who have embraced fast food, which often costs more than street food or other local fare, as a status symbol.

Yet the Colonel isn’t venturing into to Africa alone. He’s getting a boost from the US government and Gates Foundation—all in the name of food security and helping Africa’s small farmers.

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Cloud shortage will push temperatures higher as climate warms

by LorrineWomble Posted on January 3, 2014

Cloud shortage will push temperatures higher as climate warms

By

Shutterstock

Climate scientists have looked to the heavens for help with their latest decades-long weather forecast. Their conclusion? “Oh, my god.”

Science has long struggled to forecast how global temperatures will be affected by a doubling of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere compared with pre-industrial times, which looks likely to occur this century. Recent consensus suggests that temperatures will rise by between 1.5 and 5 degrees Celsius (2.7 to 5.4 F). With a rise in CO2 levels to 400 parts per million, up from 280 in the 19th century, the world has warmed by nearly 1 C so far.

By modeling how clouds will be affected by the rising temperatures, a team of Australian and French scientists reported Wednesday in Nature that they expect the temperature rise to be “more than 3 degrees” – at the upper end of the projected range.

“4C would likely be catastrophic rather than simply dangerous,” the report’s lead author, Australian climate scientist Steven Sherwood, told the Guardian. “For example, it would make life difficult, if not impossible, in much of the tropics, and would guarantee the eventual melting of the Greenland ice sheet and some of the Antarctic ice sheet.”

Using dozens of computer models, the researchers concluded that water vapor will circulate more extensively than previously anticipated between the different layers of the atmosphere as temperatures climb. That will mean fewer clouds will form, leaving more of the Earth exposed to the sun’s rays. And that means more warming.

“[S]uch mixing dehydrates the low-cloud layer at a rate that increases as the climate warms,” the scientists wrote in their paper. “[O]n the basis of the available data, the new understanding presented here pushes the likely long-term global warming towards the upper end of model ranges.”

The paper is one of several recent studies looking at feedback loops between climate change and clouds, according to Chris Bretherton, a professor of atmospheric science and applied mathematics at the University of Washington. “All of these studies suggest that cloud feedbacks may be at the more positive end of what climate models predict, which would be scary,” Bretherton wrote in an email to Grist. “None of them are without issues of interpretation that will require more research to delve into, so I would not rush to assume the case for strong positive cloud feedbacks and high climate sensitivity is settled.”

In the meantime, we’re all advised to pray for rain.


Source
Spread in model climate sensitivity traced to atmospheric convective mixing, Nature

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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"Community’s" Gillian Jacobs: TV’s Coolest Feminist?

by dig1iti43 Posted on December 31, 2013

Mother Jones

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Nowadays, Gillian Jacobs (pronounced with a hard G) is famous for her role on NBC’s acclaimed comedy Community, which returns for its fifth season on January 2. The series has brought her many fans and accolades, and she has since appeared in 2012’s Seeking a Friend for the End of the World and 2013’s Bad Milo! The Pittsburgh-born actress will also star in the 2014 comedy Walk of Shame (alongside one of her personal heroes, Elizabeth Banks), as well as the sequel to Hot Tub Time Machine, in which she plays the female lead.

But what if Jacobs had never gone into acting? What would she be doing instead? Well, if she had her way, she’d probably be sitting on the highest court in the land.

“I never pursued anything but acting,” Jacobs tells Mother Jones. “But as a kid, I was really interested in the Supreme Court. I wanted to to be a Supreme Court justice, but didn’t want to be a lawyer. I just wanted to go straight to being a justice.”

I ask her to name her all-time favorite justice—the one who might serve as the greatest influence on Associate Justice Gillian Jacobs.

“All the ladies,” she answers waggishly. “Like Ginsburg and Sotomayor. We need more of them, but I’m glad we have some.”

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2013 In Review: Obama Talks Climate Change–But Pushes Fracking

by ElkeCulpepper Posted on December 26, 2013

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the ClimateDesk collaboration.

This was the year when climate change came out of the closet.

Barack Obama elevated climate change to one of his top presidential priorities. White House and other officials brought up the topic in public after spending the previous four years scuttling away from any mention of climate change. Climate change became a factor in state elections and there were polls suggesting even Republicans in the most conservative states wanted to take measures to avoid a future of dangerous climate change.

But it was also a year when Obama claimed as a personal achievement the expansion of oil and gas production through hydraulic fracturing, and when the coal industry sent coal overseas to rescue the mines closing down at home.

Barack Obama used the January 21 inaugural address for his second term in the White House to renew his commitment to respond to the climate crisis “knowing that failure to do so would betray our children and future generations”.

He linked climate change to Hurricane Sandy and the other extreme weather events of 2012 and took a swipe at climate deniers.

He was even more forceful in his first State of the Union address on February 12, seizing the moment to put Republicans on notice: “If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will.”

He said he would direct government, including the Environmental Protection Agency, to use its authority to cut greenhouse gas emissions, promote renewable energy, and protect communities from future climate change.

Obama delivered on that promise on June 25 in another landmark speech in which he directed the Environmental Protection Agency to take measures to cut emissions from new and existing power plants.

Josh Lopez/Wikimedia Commons

The president also raised hopes that he would block the Keystone XL pipeline, which would open up new routes for crude from the Canadian tar sands, saying he would weigh the project’s climate impacts when making his decision.

Power plants account for about 40 percent of America’s carbon dioxide emissions, the largest source of carbon pollution. The directive put America back on track towards meeting its commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by the end of this decade.

“This is the year when they really started acting,” said Andrew Steer, president of the World Resources Institute. “I see a little more muscularity.”

It was also, possibly, the year when climate change ceased to be seen as political poison.

In the Virginia governor’s race, Democrat Terry McAuliffe ran television ads attacking his opponent, Ken Cuccinelli, as a climate change denier, and won. A number of polls suggested Republicans, even in conservative states, were growing concerned about climate change and wanted action.

“We see a political dynamic in motion that is headed in a good direction,” Peter Altman, the climate director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, told a conference call with reporters.

In the states, right-wing efforts to repeal regulations requiring power companies to use wind and solar power were defeated in Kansas, North Carolina, and Ohio.

Meanwhile, there was a steady beat of reminders of the dangers of climate change. The year did not repeat the extremes of 2012, which brought drought, Hurricane Sandy, and a string of extreme temperatures, producing America’s hottest year on record.

US Department of Agriculture/Wikimedia Commons

But there were still cases of the wild weather and wildfires that are expected to rise under climate change.

On June 30, 19 firefighters died fighting a wildfire near Yarnell, Arizona that had been fuelled by strong winds, 38°C temperatures, and a drought that has devastated the southwest. It was the biggest loss of life in a wild-land fire since 1933.

A 200-mile swathe of Colorado was left underwater after record rainfall in September. An early blizzard in October dumped 60 cm of snow in a single day on South Dakota, killing tens of thousands of cattle.

Meanwhile, Gina McCarthy, the EPA administrator, took a first step in September to cutting emissions from power plants, requiring stricter pollution controls for future construction. The EPA is expected to propose stricter standards for existing power plants in June 2014.

Obama was taking action on climate change in the international arena too. On June 8, Obama and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, agreed to work with other countries to reduce the use of HFCs, the coolants that are one of the most potent greenhouse gases. In November, US negotiators played a constructive role in coming to an agreement at the international climate talks in Warsaw.

“Does this all add up to solving the problem? No, we are nowhere near close,” Steer said. “We are still heading in the wrong direction. We are still heading towards a world where temperatures will go up by 3°C…But we are going in the wrong direction less quickly than we were.”

Beyond the political landscape, however, there were mixed signs. For the first time, there were more new solar, wind, and other renewable energy plants built than coal and oil combined. Warren Buffet’s utility ordered $1 billion worth of new wind turbines for Iowa, and 39 coal plants shut down or announced plans to retire. No new coal plants came on line.

Joshua Doubek/Wikimedia Commons

But there was no let-up in the fracking boom that has turned America into an energy superpower–and is burning up stores of carbon that the UN’s climate science panel said should be left in the ground to avoid a future climate disaster.

There were also few positive signs the EPA and other regulators were getting out ahead and putting stronger controls on the oil and gas industry. Campaigners urged the EPA to come out with strong controls on leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. They rued a decision by the EPA to walk away from three earlier investigations of water contamination linked to fracking.

“If you want to understand how people will remember the Obama climate legacy, a few facts tell the tale: By the time Obama leaves office, the US will pass Saudi Arabia as the planet’s biggest oil producer and Russia as the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas combined,” the climate campaigner Bill McKibben wrote in Rolling Stone.

“In the same years, even as we’ve begun to burn less coal at home, our coal exports have climbed to record highs. We are, despite slight declines in our domestic emissions, a global-warming machine: At the moment when physics tell us we should be jamming on the carbon brakes, America is revving the engine.”

In other areas too, there was retreat or uncertainty. The Food and Drug Administration continued to sit on a decision whether to allow the first genetically modified food animal–a fast growing salmon raised at an experimental research station in the hills of Panama.

Obama came out strongly for elephant conservation, ordering the public destruction of America’s cache of seized illegal ivory. But the US Fish and Wildlife Service on December 16 proposed stripping grey wolves of protections across the country. The federal government also indicated it would move ahead to remove protections for grizzlies in the Yellowstone area.

Retron/WIkimedia Commons

Conservationists said the decision could jeopardize the successful effort to bring grey wolves back from the point of extinction.

“They are essentially abandoning wolf recovery before the job is done,” said Noah Greenwald, the endangered species director at the Centre for Biological Diversity. “The numbers are just 1 percent of what they were historically. In the areas where wolves did recover, it is a small fraction of their former range, or even a small fraction of the available habitat.”

As the year drew to a close, however, there was a new note of optimism when the experienced operative John Podesta returned to the White House to guide its climate change efforts and other programs. Podesta has a strong environmental record and campaigners thought he would be able to pursue the climate change agenda more forcefully than previous White House advisors.

But Obama had yet to prove himself on one of the biggest environmental decisions of his presidency: the Keystone XL pipeline.

“Whether he likes it or not, whether he kicks it down the road, this decision on Keystone is his,” said Betsy Taylor, a climate strategist who has mobilized prominent Obama supporters to prevail on him to reject the project. “This is one of the biggest decisions he is going to make, and it is going to send a really strong signal to the world, especially because he chose to frame it as carbon.”

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2013 In Review: Obama Talks Climate Change–But Pushes Fracking

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Hooked on Speed: How Jazmine Fenlator Feeds Her "Bobsled Habit"

by EdwardJ21zffz Posted on December 26, 2013

Mother Jones

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A “controlled car crash.” That’s how US bobsled pilot Jazmine Fenlator, 29, remembers her first run. “I was sliding down a mile of ice with my head buried in the bottom of the bobsled,” she says. “I’m getting jostled around and I’m not understanding why I’m moving so much.” She ended the run drooling and shaking, but she was hooked.

Bobsledders, many of whom, like Fenlator, hail from track-and-field sports, have to be some level of crazy to send their bodies careening down steep ice passages at speeds up to 100 miles per hour. But it’s not just the risk of bodily harm that makes the experience intense. “It’s a grueling blue-collar sport,” Fenlator says. “We carry our sleds. There’s no caddy, there’s no pit crew.” And, like many Olympians in less-prominent sports, the athletes often have to dip into their own coffers to pay for their training. At one point, Fenlator and her teammate had to scrounge up $20,000 for a new sled—which meant a slew of side jobs.

Their dedication paid off in early December, when Fenlator joined five teammates on the podium for a World Cup sweep—the first ever for US women’s bobsledding, and a hopeful indicator of what may lie ahead for Team USA in Sochi.

Mother Jones: What kind of reactions do you get when you tell people what you do?

Jazmine Fenlator: A lot of people think I’m on the Jamaican bobsled team. It’s a question every black bobsledder gets, even if you’re wearing a USA shirt. Or a lot of times people don’t know what bobsled is, so they’ll reference luge or skeleton. It’s a hard sport because not many people can relate to it, and it’s a hard sport to spectate. You only see it every four years on TV, and it doesn’t have a lot of popularity, which we’re trying to change. So, you get a lot of naïve questions. But I welcome those. The more people I can teach and tell about bobsled, the more cheers we’ll have in Sochi.

MJ: How does one become a bobsledder?

JF: I was a senior in college in 2006-2007 at Roger University as a track and field athlete. I started to realize that I was a little bit behind the pace I needed to qualify for Beijing. I was really going to focus on revamping my training when my coach mentioned bobsled. I didn’t really take him too seriously, but he submitted my athletic resume and the team invited me to a tryout camp. I jumped on the opportunity. It’s not everyday a national team invites you, especially if you’ve never done the sport before.

MJ: Had you ever even imagined bobsledding?

JF: No. I’d seen Cool Runnings and watching the 2002 and 2006 winter games, but I did not actually know much about it.

MJ: What do you remember from the 2002 games, the inaugural year for women’s bobsled?

JF: For Team USA to bring home gold, as well as Vonetta Flowers winning the first medal in winter sports for an African-American, was huge. I remember watching her and Jill Bakken push that sled down the start ramp on the final run and the announcer saying, “This is where Olympians are made, this is where medalists can break or make it.” They kept their composure and they did just what they needed to do and came across the line screaming.

MJ: What was bobsledding like the first time you did it?

JF: I had no idea what is happening. I was a brakeman, so you don’t get to see where you are going. My helmet doesn’t even fit properly, I am getting jostled around in this sled. A lot can happen in your brain in a minute, I’ve learned.

One of the coaches stood at the bottom to make sure that the newbies weren’t getting motion sickness or about to run and call a taxi and head to the airport. I’m breathing heavy and have drool and snot probably everywhere. I can’t unbuckle my helmet. I’m shaking, and I feel like “Aaah, I don’t really know. How many times do we do this today?” He’s like, “Great, ’cause we have a couple more training trips to go! Head right on the truck and go back up.” It was a pretty incredible experience. Extremely humbling.

MJ: How do you shave seconds off your time?

JF: You’re searching for thousands of seconds that add up to equal hundredths. I’ve gotten third in a race by six-hundredths. You can’t even blink that fast. And you can be like, where did I lose that time? Was it a piece of tape flapping on the side that I forgot to take off when cleaning my sled? Was it this little mistake here or there? You can’t just be a great athlete. You can’t just be a great pilot. You can’t just have great equipment. You’re looking for a combination, because it’s not just one thing. That’s why you’re in the weight room, and sprinting every day—to shave off hundredths in your 30-meter time, and lift 5 or 10 more pounds in the squat. Because all of that adds up.

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Hooked on Speed: How Jazmine Fenlator Feeds Her "Bobsled Habit"

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Russia begins offshore drilling in Arctic

by MargaretteFAOC Posted on December 23, 2013

Russia begins offshore drilling in Arctic

By

Jiri Rezac / Greenpeace

The Greenpeace activists who scaled Russia’s first Arctic offshore oil rig during a September demonstration have been given amnesty, but Russia is extending no such courtesies to the Arctic environment or the climate.

The rig that the Arctic 30 helped bring to the world’s attention has begun pumping oil. From Agence France-Presse:

The landmark announcement marked the formal start of Russia’s long-planned effort to turn the vast oil and natural gas riches believed to be buried in the frozen waters into profits for its ambitious government-run firms. But it also outraged campaigners who see the Arctic as one of the world’s last pristine reserves whose damage by oil spills and other disasters would be enormously difficult to contain. [State-owned oil company] Gazprom made its announcement in a statement that stressed the company also had rights to 29 other fields it planned to exploit in Russia’s section of the Arctic seabed. …

[B]oth Gazprom and the Kremlin view [this drilling endeavor] as a stepping stone in a much broader effort to turn the Arctic into the focus of future exploration that makes up for Russia’s declining oil production at its Soviet-era Siberian fields.

Greenpeace reminds us that this is a dangerous gamble. From a press release:

The offshore Arctic is the most inhospitable operating environment imaginable. Freezing temperatures, thick ice, months of perpetual twilight, giant storms and hurricane-force winds pose a unique technical risk to any oil company. There is no proven way of cleaning oil spilled in ice and even a small accident would have devastating consequences on the Arctic’s fragile and little-understood environment.

To realise its goal of opening up more of the Arctic to oil exploration, which Russia aims to turn into its “resource base of the 21st century,” Gazprom has signed an exploration deal with Shell that will provide it with new capital and much-needed expertise in offshore drilling, even though Shell’s own attempts to drill in the Alaskan Arctic were hit by repeated accidents and embarrassing safety blunders.

Shell is providing “expertise”? Seriously? “Repeated accidents and embarrassing safety blunders” is putting it kindly.


Source
Russia pumping oil at Arctic rig, Agence France-Presse
Gazprom begins first production at Arctic 30 oil platform, Greenpeace

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Why the Next Major Hurricane Could Devastate Miami

by h0rt67bx11 Posted on December 23, 2013

Mother Jones

This story originally appeared on Grist, and is reproduced here as part of the ClimateDesk collaboration.

Note to self: The next time you take the Climate Change Tour of Miami with Nicole Hernandez Hammer, bring Dramamine.

I’m sitting in the back seat of a rental car as Hammer, the assistant director for research at the Florida Center for Environmental Studies, careens around the Magic City like Danica Patrick. One of her graduate students rides shotgun, navigating with her iPhone.

Our mission for the day is to survey parts of this city that will be flooded as climate change continues to drive up the level of the sea. Hammer, who studies the impacts of sea-level rise on infrastructure and communities, has kindly agreed to act as my tour guide and pilot. I’m just hoping I can keep my breakfast down.

Our first stop is Star Island, where celebs like Don Johnson, Gloria Estefan, and Shaquille O’Neal have owned homes over the years. For a cool $18-$35 million, the local realtors known as The Jills would be happy to set you up with your own walled-in villa where you can sit in your rooftop hot tub and listen to the waves lapping a little too close to your foundation.

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Here’s the Worst Part of the Target Data Breach

by yq7izr Posted on December 22, 2013

Mother Jones

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You know what the most infuriating part of the massive data breach at Target is? This:

Over the last decade, most countries have moved toward using credit cards that carry information on embeddable microchips rather than magnetic strips. The additional encryption on so-called smart cards has made the kind of brazen data thefts suffered by Target almost impossible to pull off in most other countries.

Because the U.S. is one of the few places yet to widely deploy such technology, the nation has increasingly become the focus of hackers seeking to steal such information. The stolen data can easily be turned into phony credit cards that are sold on black markets around the world.

There’s really no excuse for this. The technology to avoid this kind of hacking is available, and it’s been in real-world use for many years. Every bank and every merchant in American knows how to implement it. But it would cost a bit of money, so they don’t. And who pays the price? Not the banks:

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. Saturday told debit-card holders who shopped at Target during a 20-day data breach that the bank would be limiting cash withdrawals to $100 and putting on a $300 daily-purchasing cap, a move that shows how banks will try to limit exposure to potential fraud.

In a letter to debit card holders posted on its website, the bank said such limitations on spending would be temporary while it plans to reissue cards. The spending restrictions don’t affect credit card users, the bank said.

That’s right: it’s you who pays the price. Oh, these breaches are a pain in the ass for card-issuing banks and for Target itself, and it will end up costing them some money. But mainly it’s a pain in the ass for consumers. And if this breach causes you to be a victim of identity theft, you can be sure that neither Target nor your bank nor your credit rating agency will give you so much as the time of day. It’ll be up to you to reclaim your life even though it wasn’t your fault in any way. It’s a disgrace.

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Here’s the Worst Part of the Target Data Breach

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What These Climate Scientists Said About Earth’s Future Will Terrify You

by 0c4g78x Posted on December 17, 2013

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

I grew up planning for my future, wondering which college I would attend, what to study, and later on, where to work, which articles to write, what my next book might be, how to pay a mortgage, and which mountaineering trip I might like to take next.

Now, I wonder about the future of our planet. During a recent visit with my eight-year-old niece and 10- and 12-year-old nephews, I stopped myself from asking them what they wanted to do when they grew up, or any of the future-oriented questions I used to ask myself. I did so because the reality of their generation may be that questions like where they will work could be replaced by: Where will they get their fresh water? What food will be available? And what parts of their country and the rest of the world will still be habitable?


How much should you worry about an Arctic methane bomb? The Climate Desk interviewed leading experts skeptical of the threat.

The reason, of course, is climate change—and just how bad it might be came home to me in the summer of 2010. I was climbing Mount Rainier in Washington State, taking the same route I had used in a 1994 ascent. Instead of experiencing the metal tips of the crampons attached to my boots crunching into the ice of a glacier, I was aware that, at high altitudes, they were still scraping against exposed volcanic rock. In the pre-dawn night, sparks shot from my steps.

The route had changed dramatically enough to stun me. I paused at one point to glance down the steep cliffs at a glacier bathed in soft moonlight 100 meters below. It took my breath away when I realized that I was looking at what was left of the enormous glacier I’d climbed in 1994, the one that—right at this spot—had left those crampons crunching on ice. I stopped in my tracks, breathing the rarefied air of such altitudes, my mind working hard to grasp the climate-change-induced drama that had unfolded since I was last at that spot.

I haven’t returned to Mount Rainier to see just how much further that glacier has receded in the last few years, but recently I went on a search to find out just how bad it might turn out to be. I discovered a set of perfectly serious scientists—not the majority of all climate scientists by any means, but thoughtful outliers—who suggest that it isn’t just really, really bad; it’s catastrophic. Some of them even think that, if the record ongoing releases of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, thanks to the burning of fossil fuels, are aided and abetted by massive releases of methane, an even more powerful greenhouse gas, life as we humans have known it might be at an end on this planet. They fear that we may be at—and over—a climate change precipice hair-raisingly quickly.

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What These Climate Scientists Said About Earth’s Future Will Terrify You

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