• Presenting facts as “consensus” bridges political divide over climate change

    New evidence shows that “social fact” highlighting expert consensus shifts perceptions across the U.S. political spectrum – particularly among highly educated conservatives. Facts that encourage agreement are a promising way of cutting through today’s “post-truth” bluster, say psychologists. The researchers found that by presenting a fact in the form of a consensus — “97 percent of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused global warming is happening” – climate change skeptics shift their perceptions significantly towards the scientific “norm.”

  • Explaining differences in climate change views among college graduates

    The average American college student has just a 17 percent chance of learning about climate change before graduation through required core courses. The finding may help explain why having a bachelor’s degree doesn’t always lead to increased acceptance of human-caused global warming, according to new research.

  • More-severe climate model predictions likely the most accurate

    The climate models that project greater amounts of warming this century are the ones that best align with observations of the current climate, according to a new paper. The findings suggest that the models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, on average, may be underestimating future warming.

  • A turn to the worst in climate change debate

    In July, New York magazine published its most-read article ever, surpassing a photo spread of Lindsay Lohan. The topic? Doom. While defying the belief among author David Wallace-Wells’s editors that climate change would be “traffic kryptonite,” the story, titled “The Uninhabitable Earth,” presented an apocalyptic vision in which rising seas flood Miami and Bangladesh, heat and drought cut grain yields in half, diseases spread, and wars rage. Unfortunately, that vision isn’t fiction, but rather Wallace-Wells’s summation of climate change’s little-discussed worst-case scenario for the year 2100.

  • Disaster zones could soon be salvaged by teams of smart devices – here’s how

    We will remember 2017 as an appalling year for natural disasters. It comes months after the UN’s head of disaster planning warned that the world is not adequately preparing for disasters. This, he said, risks “inconceivably bad” consequences as climate change makes disasters more frequent and severe. In such circumstances, modern technologies like smartphones, sensors and drones could help enormously, particularly if we can get them to act like an intelligent network. We recently outlined how these three strands from political theory, social science, and biology could be brought together to develop a new paradigm for complex device networks. We see encouraging signs that such thinking is starting to catch on among researchers. These ideas should enable us to develop new approaches that will underpin and enhance a wide variety of human activities – not least when the next disaster strikes. It might even mitigate the effects of climate change, making us better at foreseeing catastrophes and taking steps to avert them.

  • Economic damage of carbon emissions costlier than earlier thought

    The data used to calculate the damage that an additional ton of carbon dioxide has on the global economy has long relied on outdated science. Recent updates modeled raise the calculations of those costs significantly and change the outlook on climate change from a positive for agriculture to a negative. When the most recent science is brought to bear, one of the major models used to calculate the social cost of carbon (SCC) moves the figure to $19.70, an increase of 129 percent.

  • Climate change could increase volcanic eruptions

    Shrinking glacier cover could lead to increased volcanic activity in Iceland, scientists have warned. A new study found there was less volcanic activity in Iceland when glacier cover was more extensive. As the glaciers melted, volcanic eruptions increased due to subsequent changes in surface pressure.

  • Climate changes triggered immigration to America in the nineteenth century

    From Trump to Heinz, some of America’s most famous family names and brands trace their origins back to Germans who emigrated to the country in the nineteenth century. Researchers have now found that climate was a major factor in driving migration from Southwest Germany to North America during the nineteenth century.

  • Inaction on climate change has “jeopardized human life”: Report

    A major new report into climate change shows that the human symptoms of climate change are unequivocal and that the delayed response to climate change over the past twenty-five years has jeopardized human life and livelihoods. The human symptoms of climate change are unequivocal and potentially irreversible – affecting the health of populations around the world today.

  • What evolutionary biology tells us about how aliens could look

    Hollywood films and science fiction literature fuel the belief that aliens are monster-like beings, who are very different to humans. But new research suggests that we could have more in common with our extra-terrestrial neighbors, than initially thought. In a new study, scientists show for the first time how evolutionary theory can be used to support alien predictions and better understand their behavior. They show that aliens are potentially shaped by the same processes and mechanisms that shaped humans, such as natural selection.

  • Identifying sources of coastal resiliency

    As extreme weather events become more commonplace, regions of the world that get hit the hardest are often left scrambling to put the pieces of their homeland back together. ASU’s Sian Mooney, an economist, recently returned from a trip to Cuba, where the economist attended a tri-national workshop on the theme: “Enhancing Resilience of Coastal Caribbean Communities.” The workshop’s participants have been charged with defining and identifying sources of coastal resiliency and then working to implement them in the region over the next few years. 

  • Record high CO2 emissions – after 3-year hiatus

    Global emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels have risen again after a three-year hiatus, according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project (GCP). The GCP report reveals that global emissions from all human activities will reach 41 billion tons in 2017, following a projected 2 percent rise in burning fossil fuels.

  • Artificially cooling the planet could have devastating effects

    Geoengineering — the intentional manipulation of the climate to counter the effect of global warming by injecting aerosols artificially into the atmosphere — has been mooted as a potential way to deal with climate change. Proposals to reduce the effects of global warming by imitating volcanic eruptions could have a devastating effect on global regions prone to either tumultuous storms or prolonged drought, new research has shown.

  • U.S. had 3rd warmest and 2nd wettest year to date

    October typically ushers in those crisp, sunny days of fall. But last month was no ordinary October, as warm and wet conditions dampened peak leaf viewing across many parts of the Midwest and New England and fires devastated parts of Northern California and the West.

  • Human-caused warming increasing rate of heat record-breaking around world

    A new study finds human-caused global warming is significantly increasing the rate at which hot temperature records are being broken around the world. Global annual temperature records show there were 17 record hot years from 1861 to 2005. The new study examines whether these temperature records are being broken more often and if so, whether human-caused global warming is to blame.