Guess what? U.S. carbon emissions popped back up in a big way" data-reactid="20" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em;">1. Guess what? U.S. carbon emissions popped back up in a big way
Carbon dioxide emissions from air travel rose in 2018.
Image: SHUTTERSTOCK / FRANK_PETERS
"It’s trending in the wrong direction — it’s not encouraging," said Robert McGrath, the director of the University of Colorado Boulder's Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute who had no role in the report but reviewed it.
Antarctica’s once sleepy ice sheets have awoken. That's bad." data-reactid="35" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em;">2. Antarctica’s once sleepy ice sheets have awoken. That's bad.
Antarctic icebergs.
Image: GETTY IMAGES/FOTOSEARCH RF
Antarctica — home to the greatest ice sheets on Earth — isn't just melting significantly faster than it was decades ago. Great masses of ice that scientists once presumed were largely immune to melting are losing ample ice into the sea.
"People are beginning to recognize that East Antarctica might be waking up," said Josh Willis, an oceanographer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that visits and measures Earth's melting glaciers.
"There’s growing evidence that eastern Antarctica is not just going to stay frozen and well-behaved in the next 50 to 100 years," he explained.
60% of the planet's wild coffee species face extinction. What that means for your morning caffeine kick." data-reactid="51" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em;">3. 60% of the planet's wild coffee species face extinction. What that means for your morning caffeine kick.
Coffee beans
Image: SHUTTERSTOCK / AFRICA STUDIO
"As farmers are increasingly exposed to new climate conditions and changing pest pressures, the genetic diversity of wild crop relatives may be essential to breeding new coffee varieties that can withstand these pressures," Nathan Mueller, an assistant professor of earth system science at the University of California, Irvine who researches global food security, said over email.
Extreme weather — not politicians — convinces Americans that climate change is real" data-reactid="68" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">4. Extreme weather — not politicians — convinces Americans that climate change is real
Reds, oranges, and yellows show 2017 global temperatures warmer than the average.
Image: nasa
The polar vortex will return, this time with the coldest temps of the year" data-reactid="83" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">5. The polar vortex will return, this time with the coldest temps of the year
Temperature forecast for early February 2019.
Image: UNIVERSITY OF MAINE/CLIMATE REANALYZER
The polar vortex has become a popular phenomenon for good reason: This weakening of the polar vortex and the subsequent spillover of frigid air has become more common over the last two decades.
"We are seeing these events occurring more frequently as of late," said Jeff Weber, a meteorologist with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.
It's damn cold, but heat records in the U.S. still dominate" data-reactid="99" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">6. It's damn cold, but heat records in the U.S. still dominate
Arctic air flowing south into the U.S. on January 31, 2019.
Image: CLIMATE REANALYZER/UNIVERSITY OF MAINE
While certain portions of the winter sure felt frigid, overall, the number of daily cold records set in the U.S. has been consistently dwarfed by the number of warm or high temperature records. The score isn't even close. High records over the last decade are outpacing low records by a rate of two to one.
In the past 10 years there have been 21,461 record daily highs and 11,466 lows.
"The trend is in exactly the direction we would expect as a result of a warming planet," said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University.
Don’t forget about the colossal Himalayan glaciers. They’re rapidly vanishing, too." data-reactid="115" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">7. Don’t forget about the colossal Himalayan glaciers. They’re rapidly vanishing, too.
A weather station in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region.
Image: JITENDRA BAJRACHARYA/ICIMOD
"Glacier-wise, it's not a great story," Joseph Shea, one of the report's lead authors and an assistant professor of environmental geomatics at the University of Northern British Columbia, said in an interview.
House lawmakers finally let climate scientists set the record straight" data-reactid="131" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">8. House lawmakers finally let climate scientists set the record straight
The U.S. Capitol Building in Washington D.C.
Image: SHUTTERSTOCK / NICOLAS AGUIAR
Trump fails to block NASA's carbon sleuth from going to space" data-reactid="147" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">9. Trump fails to block NASA's carbon sleuth from going to space
Half the Earth illuminated by the sun.
Image: esa
Again, the refrigerator-sized space machine persisted.
"Carbon dioxide is the most important gas humans are emitting into the atmosphere," said Annmarie Eldering, the project scientist for OCO-3 at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Understanding how it will play out in the future is critical."
Earth's coldest years on record all happened over 90 years ago" data-reactid="164" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">10. Earth's coldest years on record all happened over 90 years ago
In 2017 Earth's temperatures were significantly warmer than compared to the average.
Image: NASA
Here's a statistic: On Earth, 18 of the last 19 years have been the warmest in recorded history.
The coldest year on record occurred in 1904.
Earth is greener than it was 20 years ago, but not why you think" data-reactid="180" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">11. Earth is greener than it was 20 years ago, but not why you think
Green areas show increases in areas covered by green leaves.
Image: nasa
Two NASA satellites have watched Earth grow greener over the last 20 years — in large part because China is hellbent on planting millions of trees.
China kickstarted its tree-planting mobilizations in the 1990s to combat erosion, climate change, and air pollution. This dedicated planting — sometimes done by soldiers — equated to over 40 percent of China's greening, so far.
The Green New Deal: Historians weigh in on the immense scale required to pull it off" data-reactid="196" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">12. The Green New Deal: Historians weigh in on the immense scale required to pull it off
A New Deal project: the Chickamauga Dam.
Image: SHUTTERSTOCK / EVERETT HISTORICAL
The scope of a Green New Deal — if such a program ever truly comes to match the scale of the original New Deal — wouldn’t just put millions of Americans to work, but could very well transform the mood, culture, and spirit of the United States in the 21st century.
“Those men at the end of their lives would take their families back to show them what they had done — because they were quite proud of it,” said Gray Brechin, a historical geographer and New Deal scholar.
Trump's climate expert is wrong: The world's plants don't need more CO2" data-reactid="212" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">13. Trump's climate expert is wrong: The world's plants don't need more CO2
Higher CO2 concentrations swirling around Earth (shown by yellows and reds).
Image: nasa
The Washington Post[/a]. Happer maintains that the planet's atmosphere needs significantly more CO2, the potent greenhouse gas that U.S. government scientists — and a bevy of independent scientists — have repeatedly underscoredis stoking accelerating climate change.
Earth and plant scientists disagree.
"The idea that increased CO2 is universally beneficial [to plants] is very misguided," said Jill Anderson, an evolutionary ecologist specializing in plant populations at the University of Georgia.
A powerful atmospheric river pummeled California, and the pictures look unreal" data-reactid="229" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">14. A powerful atmospheric river pummeled California, and the pictures look unreal
Rich Willson paddles through the miniature golf course after the flooding in in Guerneville, California.
Image: KARL MONDON/MEDIANEWS GROUP/THE MERCURY NEWS VIA GETTY IMAGES
"We're likely to see rain in increasingly intense bursts," said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
The Bering Strait should be covered in ice, but it's nearly all gone" data-reactid="245" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">15. The Bering Strait should be covered in ice, but it's nearly all gone
Satellite imagery of the mostly ice-free Bering Strait on Feb. 28. 2019.
Image: SENTINEL HUB EO BROWSER/SENTINEL 3
During winter, the Bering Strait has historically been blanketed in ice. But this year, the ice has nearly vanished [by late February].
"The usually ice-covered Bering Strait is almost completely open water," said Zack Labe, a climate scientist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of California at Irvine.
"There should be ice here until May," added Lars Kaleschke, a climate scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research.
Geoengineering might not be as ludicrous if we gave Earth the right dose" data-reactid="261" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">16. Geoengineering might not be as ludicrous if we gave Earth the right dose
Sunlight reflecting off the Earth.
Image: nasa
Solar geoengineering is widely viewed as risky business.
Nature Climate Change, acknowledges these problems but finds a potential fix: only deploying enough reflective specks in the atmosphere to reduce about half of Earth's warming, rather than relying on geoengineering to completely return Earth to the cooler, milder climate of the 19th century. In other words, giving Earth a geoengineering dose that would reverse a significant portion of the warming, but not enough to stoke the problematic side effects.
"Solar engineering might not be a good choice in an emergency," said David Keith, a solar engineering researcher at Harvard University and study coauthor. "If it makes any sense at all, it makes sense to gradually ramp it up."
The ocean keeps gulping up a colossal amount of CO2 from the air, but will it last?" data-reactid="278" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">17. The ocean keeps gulping up a colossal amount of CO2 from the air, but will it last?
The ocean.
Image: Getty Images/WIN-Initiative RM
But a weighty question still looms: How much longer can we rely on the ocean to so effectively store away carbon dioxide, and stave off considerably more global warming?
"At some point the ability of the ocean to absorb carbon will start to diminish," said Jeremy Mathis, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) climate scientist who coauthored the study. "It means atmospheric CO2 levels could go up faster than they already are."
"That's a big deal," Mathis emphasized.
https://news.yahoo.com/apos-running-list-ways-climate-120000618.html
Carbon dioxide emissions from air travel rose in 2018.
Image: SHUTTERSTOCK / FRANK_PETERS
"It’s trending in the wrong direction — it’s not encouraging," said Robert McGrath, the director of the University of Colorado Boulder's Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute who had no role in the report but reviewed it.
Antarctica’s once sleepy ice sheets have awoken. That's bad." data-reactid="35" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em;">2. Antarctica’s once sleepy ice sheets have awoken. That's bad.
Antarctic icebergs.
Image: GETTY IMAGES/FOTOSEARCH RF
Antarctica — home to the greatest ice sheets on Earth — isn't just melting significantly faster than it was decades ago. Great masses of ice that scientists once presumed were largely immune to melting are losing ample ice into the sea.
"People are beginning to recognize that East Antarctica might be waking up," said Josh Willis, an oceanographer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that visits and measures Earth's melting glaciers.
"There’s growing evidence that eastern Antarctica is not just going to stay frozen and well-behaved in the next 50 to 100 years," he explained.
60% of the planet's wild coffee species face extinction. What that means for your morning caffeine kick." data-reactid="51" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em;">3. 60% of the planet's wild coffee species face extinction. What that means for your morning caffeine kick.
Coffee beans
Image: SHUTTERSTOCK / AFRICA STUDIO
"As farmers are increasingly exposed to new climate conditions and changing pest pressures, the genetic diversity of wild crop relatives may be essential to breeding new coffee varieties that can withstand these pressures," Nathan Mueller, an assistant professor of earth system science at the University of California, Irvine who researches global food security, said over email.
Extreme weather — not politicians — convinces Americans that climate change is real" data-reactid="68" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">4. Extreme weather — not politicians — convinces Americans that climate change is real
Reds, oranges, and yellows show 2017 global temperatures warmer than the average.
Image: nasa
The polar vortex will return, this time with the coldest temps of the year" data-reactid="83" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">5. The polar vortex will return, this time with the coldest temps of the year
Temperature forecast for early February 2019.
Image: UNIVERSITY OF MAINE/CLIMATE REANALYZER
The polar vortex has become a popular phenomenon for good reason: This weakening of the polar vortex and the subsequent spillover of frigid air has become more common over the last two decades.
"We are seeing these events occurring more frequently as of late," said Jeff Weber, a meteorologist with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.
It's damn cold, but heat records in the U.S. still dominate" data-reactid="99" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">6. It's damn cold, but heat records in the U.S. still dominate
Arctic air flowing south into the U.S. on January 31, 2019.
Image: CLIMATE REANALYZER/UNIVERSITY OF MAINE
While certain portions of the winter sure felt frigid, overall, the number of daily cold records set in the U.S. has been consistently dwarfed by the number of warm or high temperature records. The score isn't even close. High records over the last decade are outpacing low records by a rate of two to one.
In the past 10 years there have been 21,461 record daily highs and 11,466 lows.
"The trend is in exactly the direction we would expect as a result of a warming planet," said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University.
Don’t forget about the colossal Himalayan glaciers. They’re rapidly vanishing, too." data-reactid="115" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">7. Don’t forget about the colossal Himalayan glaciers. They’re rapidly vanishing, too.
A weather station in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region.
Image: JITENDRA BAJRACHARYA/ICIMOD
"Glacier-wise, it's not a great story," Joseph Shea, one of the report's lead authors and an assistant professor of environmental geomatics at the University of Northern British Columbia, said in an interview.
House lawmakers finally let climate scientists set the record straight" data-reactid="131" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">8. House lawmakers finally let climate scientists set the record straight
The U.S. Capitol Building in Washington D.C.
Image: SHUTTERSTOCK / NICOLAS AGUIAR
Trump fails to block NASA's carbon sleuth from going to space" data-reactid="147" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">9. Trump fails to block NASA's carbon sleuth from going to space
Half the Earth illuminated by the sun.
Image: esa
Again, the refrigerator-sized space machine persisted.
"Carbon dioxide is the most important gas humans are emitting into the atmosphere," said Annmarie Eldering, the project scientist for OCO-3 at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Understanding how it will play out in the future is critical."
Earth's coldest years on record all happened over 90 years ago" data-reactid="164" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">10. Earth's coldest years on record all happened over 90 years ago
In 2017 Earth's temperatures were significantly warmer than compared to the average.
Image: NASA
Here's a statistic: On Earth, 18 of the last 19 years have been the warmest in recorded history.
The coldest year on record occurred in 1904.
Earth is greener than it was 20 years ago, but not why you think" data-reactid="180" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">11. Earth is greener than it was 20 years ago, but not why you think
Green areas show increases in areas covered by green leaves.
Image: nasa
Two NASA satellites have watched Earth grow greener over the last 20 years — in large part because China is hellbent on planting millions of trees.
China kickstarted its tree-planting mobilizations in the 1990s to combat erosion, climate change, and air pollution. This dedicated planting — sometimes done by soldiers — equated to over 40 percent of China's greening, so far.
The Green New Deal: Historians weigh in on the immense scale required to pull it off" data-reactid="196" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">12. The Green New Deal: Historians weigh in on the immense scale required to pull it off
A New Deal project: the Chickamauga Dam.
Image: SHUTTERSTOCK / EVERETT HISTORICAL
The scope of a Green New Deal — if such a program ever truly comes to match the scale of the original New Deal — wouldn’t just put millions of Americans to work, but could very well transform the mood, culture, and spirit of the United States in the 21st century.
“Those men at the end of their lives would take their families back to show them what they had done — because they were quite proud of it,” said Gray Brechin, a historical geographer and New Deal scholar.
Trump's climate expert is wrong: The world's plants don't need more CO2" data-reactid="212" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">13. Trump's climate expert is wrong: The world's plants don't need more CO2
Higher CO2 concentrations swirling around Earth (shown by yellows and reds).
Image: nasa
The Washington Post[/a]. Happer maintains that the planet's atmosphere needs significantly more CO2, the potent greenhouse gas that U.S. government scientists — and a bevy of independent scientists — have repeatedly underscoredis stoking accelerating climate change.
Earth and plant scientists disagree.
"The idea that increased CO2 is universally beneficial [to plants] is very misguided," said Jill Anderson, an evolutionary ecologist specializing in plant populations at the University of Georgia.
A powerful atmospheric river pummeled California, and the pictures look unreal" data-reactid="229" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">14. A powerful atmospheric river pummeled California, and the pictures look unreal
Rich Willson paddles through the miniature golf course after the flooding in in Guerneville, California.
Image: KARL MONDON/MEDIANEWS GROUP/THE MERCURY NEWS VIA GETTY IMAGES
"We're likely to see rain in increasingly intense bursts," said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
The Bering Strait should be covered in ice, but it's nearly all gone" data-reactid="245" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">15. The Bering Strait should be covered in ice, but it's nearly all gone
Satellite imagery of the mostly ice-free Bering Strait on Feb. 28. 2019.
Image: SENTINEL HUB EO BROWSER/SENTINEL 3
During winter, the Bering Strait has historically been blanketed in ice. But this year, the ice has nearly vanished [by late February].
"The usually ice-covered Bering Strait is almost completely open water," said Zack Labe, a climate scientist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of California at Irvine.
"There should be ice here until May," added Lars Kaleschke, a climate scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research.
Geoengineering might not be as ludicrous if we gave Earth the right dose" data-reactid="261" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">16. Geoengineering might not be as ludicrous if we gave Earth the right dose
Sunlight reflecting off the Earth.
Image: nasa
Solar geoengineering is widely viewed as risky business.
Nature Climate Change, acknowledges these problems but finds a potential fix: only deploying enough reflective specks in the atmosphere to reduce about half of Earth's warming, rather than relying on geoengineering to completely return Earth to the cooler, milder climate of the 19th century. In other words, giving Earth a geoengineering dose that would reverse a significant portion of the warming, but not enough to stoke the problematic side effects.
"Solar engineering might not be a good choice in an emergency," said David Keith, a solar engineering researcher at Harvard University and study coauthor. "If it makes any sense at all, it makes sense to gradually ramp it up."
The ocean keeps gulping up a colossal amount of CO2 from the air, but will it last?" data-reactid="278" style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">17. The ocean keeps gulping up a colossal amount of CO2 from the air, but will it last?
The ocean.
Image: Getty Images/WIN-Initiative RM
But a weighty question still looms: How much longer can we rely on the ocean to so effectively store away carbon dioxide, and stave off considerably more global warming?
"At some point the ability of the ocean to absorb carbon will start to diminish," said Jeremy Mathis, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) climate scientist who coauthored the study. "It means atmospheric CO2 levels could go up faster than they already are."
"That's a big deal," Mathis emphasized.
https://news.yahoo.com/apos-running-list-ways-climate-120000618.html
