Thanks to Joyce Tarnow for this article from Science Daily.
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City and Regional Planning Professor Brian Stone is publishing a paper in the December edition of Environmental Science and Technology that suggests policymakers need to address the influence of global deforestation and urbanization on climate change, in addition to greenhouse gas emissions.

According to Stone’s paper, as the international community meets in Copenhagen in December to develop a new framework for responding to climate change, policymakers need to give serious consideration to broadening the range of management strategies beyond greenhouse gas reductions alone.

For full article, visit:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009

The environmental impact of the lifecycle and supply chain of animals raised for food has been vastly underestimated, and in fact accounts for at least half of all human-caused greenhouse gases (GHGs), according to Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang, co-authors of “Livestock and Climate Change”.

A widely cited 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Livestock’s Long Shadow, estimates that 18 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions are attributable to cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, pigs, and poultry. But recent analysis by Goodland and Anhang finds that livestock and their byproducts actually account for at least 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions.

For full article, visit:
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6294

Thanks to Eric Rimmer for this article from the New York Times.
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It’s hard to believe that this is what’s melting the glaciers,” said Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, as he weaved through a warren of mud brick huts, each containing a mud cookstove pouring soot into the atmosphere.

As women in ragged saris of a thousand hues bake bread and stew lentils in the early evening over fires fueled by twigs and dung, children cough from the dense smoke that fills their homes. Black grime coats the undersides of thatched roofs. At dawn, a brown cloud stretches over the landscape like a diaphanous dirty blanket.

For full article, visit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/science

Golden, Colorado – On the night of Saturday, November 7th, the film The Great Squeeze won the coveted Best Feature Documentary at the Colorado Environmental Film Festival. It was filmmaker Christophe Fauchere’s second win at that festival. Two years earlier, in 2007, his film Energy Crossroads won the top prize.

Fauchere, grateful and energized by his second win, explains how The Great Squeeze began, “I realized that there weren’t really any movies out there that connected the dots between our most serious environmental problems.” He goes on to say, “The Great Squeeze is not a doom and gloom movie, but a call to action. We need a paradigm shift and not a quick fix or band-aid…we have lost touch with the environment and our place within it. Our environmental crises won’t be solved unless the public understands these issues and what we have done to cause them. The outcome of this realization can only be good for all of us.”
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The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth’s climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago – and could be even worse than that.

The study uses the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model, a detailed computer simulation of global economic activity and climate processes that has been developed and refined by the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change since the early 1990s. The new research involved 400 runs of the model with each run using slight variations in input parameters, selected so that each run has about an equal probability of being correct based on present observations and knowledge. Other research groups have estimated the probabilities of various outcomes, based on variations in the physical response of the climate system itself. But the MIT model is the only one that interactively includes detailed treatment of possible changes in human activities as well – such as the degree of economic growth, with its associated energy use, in different countries.

For full article, visit:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/roulette-0519.html

We speak to Chris Field, a leading member of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, about his warning that the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is rising more rapidly than expected in recent years. Field says the current trajectory of climate change is now much worse than the IPCC had originally projected. On Wednesday, Field told a Senate panel droughts caused by global warming could make parts of the American Southwest dangerous to live in.

Christopher Field, founding director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology and professor of biology and environmental earth system science at Stanford University.

For full article, visit:
http://www.democracynow.org

Thanks to Ed Levering for this New York Times editorial.
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In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its fourth assessment report, summarizing evidence collected and weighed by scientists around the world. At the time, it was the best estimate of where the planet was, climatically speaking, and where it was likely to be going, and the news the report offered was daunting.

There was unequivocal evidence of a warming climate, with human activity the dominant cause. The panel warned that further warming could have devastating consequences for societies around the world, including rising seas and widespread drought.

For full article, visit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21

Thanks to Edmund Levering for this article.
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The new overview of global warming research, aimed at marshaling political support for a new international climate pact by the end of the year, highlights the extent to which recent scientific assessments have outstripped the predictions issued by the Nobel Prize-winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007.

Robert Corell, who chairs the Climate Action Initiative and reviewed the UNEP report’s scientific findings, said the significant global temperature rise is likely to occur even if industrialized and developed countries enact every climate policy they have proposed at this point. The increase is nearly double what scientists and world policymakers have identified as the upper limit of warming the world can afford in order to avert catastrophic climate change.

For full article, visit:
http://www.washingtonpost.com

Thanks to Linn Harwell for this article from BBC News.
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A new historical record of carbon dioxide levels suggests current political targets on climate may be “playing with fire”, scientists say.

Researchers used ocean sediments to plot CO2 levels back 20 million years.

Levels similar to those now commonly regarded as adequate to tackle climate change were associated with sea levels 25-40m (80-130 ft) higher than today.

Scientists write in the journal Science that this extends knowledge of the link between CO2 and climate back in time.

For full article, visit:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299426.stm

Contraception is a “best buy” for development. This policy brief highlights five “next generation” contraceptives, each of which offers one or more advantages over similar earlier methods. These innovations are among those expected to enter the market within five years.

Contraceptive Choice (PDF, 275 KB)