The United Nations is calling on world governments to step up action against climate change. Can China, the world’s biggest carbon emitter, fulfill its pledges?
The vast majority of climate scientists agree that rising CO₂ is driving climate change, yet barely 50% of the public agrees. Did scientists get the story wrong? No, as the fossil record makes clear.
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are at 414 parts per million. But thanks to a recalculation of methane’s warming power, the total amount of greenhouse gases is now equivalent to more than 500.
Don’t let stock markets reports convince you that when the markets are up, all is well in the world. When the market is up, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is up, and the global environment is down.
Droplets rising from the Champagne vent on the ocean floor in the Mariana Islands. Fluids venting from the site contain dissolved carbon dioxide.
NOAA Ocean Explorer
Lowell D. Stott, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Thousands of years ago, carbon gases trapped on the seafloor escaped, causing drastic warming that helped end the last ice age. A scientist says climate change could cause this process to repeat.
Phytoplankton under a microscope.
Rattiya Thongdumhyu/Shutterstock
The Earth’s past shows the key role of CO₂ on climate for 4.45 billion years, and how human industrial activity has disrupted its cycle at an unprecedented rate over the past 160 years.
A stand of Miscanthus x giganteus at the University of Illinois’s Energy Farm.
Brian Stauffer/University of Illinois
Charles Pignon, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
In the eastern reaches of Siberia, scientists discovered plants with exceptional cold tolerance that could be the key to sustainable bioenergy production.
The Drax biomass plant in Yorkshire is the first in the world to pioneer carbon capture and some specialists see it as it has a bright future. But hold the rosy headlines.
The Soybean Free Air Concentration Enrichment (SoyFACE) research facility at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Claire Benjamin/RIPE Project
Carl Bernacchi, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Ivan Baxter, University of Missouri-Columbia
Many researchers have studied the impact of carbon dioxide and heat on crop growth inside greenhouses. But what happens in the real world? One team has just done this and the results are surprising.