In The News

Climate Change: Scientists Warn It May Be Too Late to Save the Ice Caps

David Adam February 20, 2007
New studies of ice in Greenland and Antarctica show that ice is melting faster than scientists had expected. Melting ice would raise sea levels by 6 meters and sharply reduce the world’s supply of fresh-water. Low-lying areas – from Bangladesh to London and New York – can expect major flooding. Scientists estimate a 50 percent chance that the planet’s ice caps will melt, regardless of what...

The New Cyprus Controversy: Oil

George Gilson February 15, 2007
Cyprus has at least several billion barrels of oil in offshore fields, although the exact amount is uncertain. The island has been divided into two parts since 1974, when Turkey intervened in a coup and Turkey protests attempts by Cyprus to make oil deals with neighboring nations such as Egypt or Lebanon or international oil firms. The United Nations maintains a buffer zone across Cyprus – one-...

A Radical Step to Preserve a Species: Assisted Migration

Carl Zimmer February 14, 2007
Species of life already threatened by human overdevelopment and disappearing habitats face a new danger, and traditional conservation techniques may not be enough to save them. Global warming is already altering ecosystems and threatening some species, like the Bay checkerspot butterfly, with extinction. In response, conservation biologists try a radical technique that has never been used for...

China Says Rich Countries Should Take Lead on Global Warming

Jim Yardley February 9, 2007
China is taking steps to fight global warming, but demands that developed countries take primary responsibility. Currently the world’s second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, China is set to bypass the US by 2009, but points out that Chinese per-capita emission rates are lower than those of many rich countries. Chinese officials argue that long-term industrial development in the West caused...

America’s China Worries – Part I

Joan Johnson-Freese February 6, 2007
For more than a decade, the US was a lone superpower in terms of economic, diplomatic and military might. But China has steadily stepped up to the challenge, demonstrating its intent to serve as a counterweight to US influence when it comes to global affairs. In the first of this series of articles about challenges to US-China relations, Joan Johnson-Freese, chair of the US Naval War College’s...

Once a Dream Fuel, Palm Oil May Be an Eco-Nightmare

Elisabeth Rosenthal February 5, 2007
In the race to find alternatives to traditional fossil fuels, an eager public often hails any new find as the solution to world energy shortages. Initial enthusiasm often fades as the reports of harmful complications emerge – and such is the case with biofuels derived from palm oil. Palm oil decreased carbon-dioxide emissions in the Netherlands, but environmental groups suggest that the emissions...

China’s Poison for the Planet

Andreas Lorenz February 2, 2007
Researchers around the globe are monitoring weather patterns that push the billowing smoke from China’s factories around the globe. The factories that lack state-of-the-art environmental protections produce huge clouds of pollution that know no borders. “Just as trade is global these days, so too is the threat against nature,” write Andreas Lorenz and Wieland Wagner in “Der Spiegel.” Japan,...