An intriguing study from Yale University shows that large-scale forest losses over the last 150 years – largely through the conversion of forests to cropland – produced a net global cooling effect of about 0.1 degrees Celsius. During the same period, the global climate warmed by about 0.6 degrees Celsius, mostly due to increases in […]
Mesozoic methane emissions from dinosaurs could, according to new calculations, have produced more of the notorious greenhouse gas than all modern sources – both natural and man-made – put together. The research, published inCurrent Biology, suggests the emissions could have significantly heated the already wet and warm climate. Sauropod dinosaurs, say the researchers, were similar […]
The suggestion that plants may be a prodigious source of the greenhouse gas methane has finally been put to the sword by Dutch scientists. Reporting in New Phytologist, Tom Dueck and co-researchers concluded that methane emissions from plants are negligible and do not contribute to global climate change. The researchers executed a novel experiment that […]
A team of scientists have observed, for the first time, the bizarre deep-sea communities living around cold methane seeps off New Zealand’s east coast. The team, comprised of scientists from the United States and New Zealand, have spent the last two weeks exploring the cold water “chemosynthetic” ecosystems onboard New Zealand’s National Institute of Water […]
A Florida State University (FSU) scientist says that as the permafrost in Northern Siberia melts because of climate change, methane frozen there since the Pleistocene era will be released into the atmosphere, further fueling the greenhouse effect. FSU’s Jeff Chanton explained that methane’s contribution to the greenhouse effect is more than 20 times that of […]
The researchers who found that plants emit significant quantities of the greenhouse gas methane have come out swinging at what they believe is widespread “misinterpretation of the findings” by worldwide media. The original study in Nature, conducted by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics and the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development […]
Establishing a suitable model of how the Earth’s climate systems work is a necessary step in determining how much man contributes to climate change. But a recent study may prove that our current models of measuring climate change are dangerously inadequate. Despite the disparity of isolated climate studies, existing scientific consensus models on climate change […]
Scientists have known for some time that airborne volcanic particles (aerosols) can reflect the Sun’s rays back out into space and cool the planet for relatively short periods. But now, British scientists have discovered another cooling mechanism triggered by volcanic activity that has the potential to cool the Earth for much longer periods. Vincent Gauci, […]
