Climate Change
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America’s First Great Global Warming Debate
Thomas Jefferson and Noah Webster argue over conventional wisdom that lasted thousands of years
July 15, 2011 |
By Joshua Kendall
There’s a Drought—Is It Climate Change?
Despite the heat waves across the country, no one is screaming "climate change is real" because of them. Why?
July 14, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Top Ten Kids’ Movies With a Green Theme
Loggers, hunters, developers, fishers, polluters and whalers are the evil villains in this movie genre
June 24, 2011 |
By Julie Mianecki
Rocky Mountains Losing Their Snow
A new study finds an unprecedented decline in snowpack in the West
June 10, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Ocean Acidification and the Battle Between Coral and Seaweed
Ocean acidification creates plenty of potential problems for life in the oceans, but corals might have it the worst
May 17, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
An Arctic Ozone Hole?
When you hear the term "ozone hole" you think about the ozone depletion over Antarctica, and how people in the far south of the Southern Hemisphere have to protect themselves from the Sun. It's why my friends have to buy hats for their little girl and slather her with sunblock every time she goes o...
April 06, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Five Reasons Anti-Evolution Measures are a Bad Idea
In 1925, John Scopes, a high school biology teacher, was put on trial in Tennessee for having the audacity to teach evolution to his students. In the 21st century, teachers don't have to worry about being arrested for teaching this fundamental topic in science, and the Supreme Court declared teachi...
April 04, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
It's Getting Hot in Here
The year 2010 may have had a La Niña and little solar activity—two factors that help to cool the planet—but it was record breaker for heat, tying 2005 as the hottest year on record. Record-setting or near-record-setting years are now common; after 2010 and 2005 comes 2009, virtually tied with 1998,...
February 18, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Climate Change and Winter Storms
If only global warming were as simple as that term implies. Temperatures would increase at a steady rate around the globe, winters would become milder, snow less common. The only victims would be ski slopes and polar bears.But climate change—the preferred term for our global phenomenon—is messier. ...
February 03, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Climate and the Fall of the Roman Empire
Even in our modern age, humans are incredibly vulnerable to changes in weather and climate. And earlier in human history, we were even more so. Even the Romans, who managed to build monuments, roads and aqueducts that still stand today, weren't immune, according to a new study published last week b...
January 18, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Ten Science Stories You Should Have Read
Is your office rather empty this week? Looking for something to read to fill the time? How about some great science and nature stories from Smithsonian? Here are my ten favorites from the past year:The Truth About Lions (January): Staff writer Abigail Tucker visits Craig Packer, who has been runnin...
December 28, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
It's Not Too Late to Save the Polar Bear
In 2007, scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey said that if humans didn't do anything to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, two-thirds of the world's polar bears could be gone by the middle of this century. Now a new study has addressed the next question: Is there still time to help the bears? T...
December 17, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Biodiversity Losses Could Be Bad for Your Health
We're losing species at an alarming pace. The current rate of loss has been estimated to be 100 to 1,000 times the background extinction rate, and that's expected to rise by a factor of 10 to 100 over the next 50 years. But if simple disappearance isn't enough to get you worried, a new study in Nat...
December 06, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Looking for New Discoveries in Old Data
What happens to old lab notebooks and other records of scientific data? It's still useful, though not so much so when it's molding away in a box at the bottom of a closet. But now a group of scientists who recently met at the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) conference is start...
November 08, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
It's Easy to Ignore Climate Change
It's easy to ignore climate change, to say it's not a problem. Or, at least, it's not my problem.That’s not because climate change isn’t happening or because humans aren’t responsible for it—the excuses for non-action given by many people. In truth, Americans can ignore climate change because, for ...
October 27, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Why Climate Change Brings Both More and Less Water
Among the more perplexing bits of climate change research are the predictions for both more droughts and more floods. How could that be? Well, when I was reporting the recently published story on the Colorado River, geoscientist Bradley Udall, director of the University of Colorado's Western Water ...
October 05, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Colorado River One of Many Imperiled Waterways
First, check out my story on the Colorado River in the October issue of Smithsonian:From its source high in the Rocky Mountains, the Colorado River channels water south nearly 1,500 miles, over falls, through deserts and canyons, to the lush wetlands of a vast delta in Mexico and into the Gulf of C...
September 30, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Time to Stop Measuring Fuel Economy in MPG?
Today, if you go to buy a new car, you'll find a sticker like the one on the right giving you a bunch of data on fuel economy: the miles per gallon you'll get on the highway and in the city and the estimated annual fuel cost (based on 15,000 miles driven over a year and gas costing $2.80 per gallon...
September 01, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Hurricanes and the Color of the Oceans
Little kids draw the ocean as blue, but the seas are more complex in color than that. They can be a rich turquoise, like the shallow waters of the Bahamas, or a dark greeny blue, nearly black, out in the middle of the deep oceans. Depth and life, specifically phytoplankton, both influence the ocean...
August 16, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Flowers May Adapt Faster than Thought to Climate Change
One of the big worries about climate change is that organisms will be unable to migrate or adapt quickly enough to deal with all the coming changes to their environments, which could lead to a lot of extinctions. But a new study led by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, which appears in Molecular Biol...
August 13, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
