The ancient relatives of modern dung beetles and earthworms were reduced in size by as much as 50 percent during the Earth’s last warming period, creating new concerns for agricultural scientists already worried about climbing temperatures and dwindling rainfall. The new research into dwarfism in soil dwelling organisms during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) era […]
An abrupt change in climate in the past was associated with a shift of seasonal monsoons to the south, causing more rain to fall over the oceans than in the Earth’s tropical regions, leading to a dramatic drop in global vegetation growth. The researchers behind the new findings, from Oregon State University (OSU), the Scripps […]
Climate change dogma posits that the invention of the steam engine and the advent of the coal-fueled industrial age marked the beginning of human influence on global climate. But a radical new climate theory contends that the Earth would currently be experiencing an ice-age if it weren’t for the fact that humans began planting crops […]
The U.S. Department of Energy has just announced the launch of IMPACTS – Investigation of the Magnitudes and Probabilities of Abrupt Climate Transitions – a program bringing together six national laboratories to ponder the likelihood of abrupt climate change (ACC). Argonne, Los Alamos, Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, Oak Ridge, and Pacific Northwest are the participating […]
Unprecedented warm temperatures in the arctic this summer were so extreme that researchers have begun revising their climate forecasts. “Everything has changed dramatically in the watershed we observed,” reports Scott Lamoureux, leader of an International Polar Year project. “It’s something we’d envisioned for the future – but to see it happening now is quite remarkable.” […]
Species don’t evolve faster in warmer climes as had been thought; rather, it appears to be cooler, more temperate, regions that crank-up speciation rates (the process in which one species splits into two). This surprising conclusion has been drawn by University of British Columbia (UBC) researchers who have charted the genetic family tree of 618 […]
Trees and shrubs in parts of northern Canada are taking over what were once tundra landscapes at a much faster speed than scientists originally thought, according to a new University of Alberta (UA) study. The researchers involved say that the rapid northward advance of the treeline adds to the growing body of evidence supporting a […]
Scientists have for years theorized that high concentrations of greenhouse gases could have helped Earth avoid global freezing in its youth by allowing the atmosphere to retain more heat than it lost. Now, analysis of the world’s oldest sedimentary rocks has revealed the first preliminary field evidence supporting this theory. “Our study shows the greenhouse […]
NASA researchers have released worrying data concerning the rapidly diminishing sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. According to their figures, the perennial ice (which survives the summer melt season and remains year-round) shrank abruptly by 14 percent between 2004 and 2005. Putting the decrease in perspective, the loss represents an area the size of Texas. […]
European Alpine glacial cover will decrease by 80 percent if summer temperatures increase by 5 degrees Fahrenheit, say scientists from the University of Zurich, and will disappear completely by 2100 if temperatures reach 9 degrees Fahrenheit. These alarming predictions, based on numerical modeling experiments, are due to be published in the July 15th edition ofGeophysical […]
