Water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas, but its net effect in the atmosphere is to lower temperatures.  Proponents of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and most IPCC climate models assume the opposite: AGW hypothesis: Carbon dioxide, a weak greenhouse gas, begins warming the planet.  This warming evaporates water and so puts water vapor into the

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Like 2011 before it, 2012 is shaping up to be another year of economic volatility, political instability and environmental challenges for Australia. It is easy to be distracted by short-term issues but against this backdrop, climate change mega-trends are continuing. Evidence of climate change driven by our economic dependence on polluting technologies continues to grow.

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The idea of pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is a beguiling one. Could it ever become real? THOSE who worry about global warming have a simple answer to the problem. Simple in theory, that is: stop pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In practice that is rather hard to do. But there is

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Science campaigners find out today whether they have managed to get more attention paid to science and technology in negotiations leading up to the Rio+20 summit later this year (20-22 June). National delegations begin informal discussions in New York today (19–23 March) on the text that will form the outcome of the UN Conference on

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Researchers have posted carbon stock data for the world’s tropical forests on ArcGIS Online, a web-based mapping platform developed by ESRI. The data, based on satellite measurements from NASA including LiDAR and MoDIS data as well as on-the-ground field measurements, reveals the biomass of tropical forests at a 500-meter resolution, the highest resolution ever published

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Squatting in a dusty field in the village of Rataul, two hours north of Delhi in the state of Uttar Pradesh, a young woman, like uncounted generations of women before her, is shaping a small mountain of cow dung into Frisbee-size cakes that will fire the family’s cookstove. Perhaps she will make a couple of

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