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Researchers at EurekAlert say that our efforts to protect the beaver from extinction have had eco-unfriendly side effects. Beaver’s numbers have rebounded thanks to efforts across the globe to protect them. The new research states that as their numbers rise they are contributing to climate change. Beavers create dams in shallow ponds, which then can host increasing levels of carbon as biological material accumulates on the pond floor. This accumulation results in methane, a greenhouse gas that does not dissolve in the pond, but instead enters the atmosphere. The study shows that today beaver ponds release 200 times more methane...

Some of the consequences of climate change are obvious -- shrinking polar ice caps, rising sea levels, more damaging floods -- and some are subtle. Among the latter, we can now add bad-tasting seafood. So concludes a team of researchers led by Sam Dupe of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, recently published in the Journal of Shellfish Research. They tested shrimp raised for three weeks in seawater of average pH versus shrimp raised in acidic waters, similar to conditions that may prevail as the continued emission of excess carbon dioxide turns the oceans more acidic. Seafood is an important source...

Out look for Christmas and January.

The Cimbrian flood (or Cymbrian flood) was a large-scale incursion of the North Sea in the region of the Jutland peninsula (Denmark) in the period 120 to 114 BC, resulting in a permanent change of coastline with much land lost. The flood was caused by one or several very strong storm(s). A high number of people living in the affected area of Jutland drowned, and the flooding apparently set off a migration of the Cimbri tribes previously settled there (Lamb 1991)... The Cimbri were a tribe from Northern Europe, who, together with the Proto-Germanic Teutones and the Ambrones threatened the...

The latest United Nations effort in Lima to draft a new global treaty on climate change proves Prime Minister Stephen Harper was right when he described its efforts as “a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.” Harper was pilloried by Canada’s opposition parties after his statement, contained in a 2002 fundraising letter for the now-defunct Canadian Alliance, was revealed in 2007, shortly after he won the 2006 federal election. But Harper was right. Indeed he was vindicated in 2011, when a senior UN climate official, German economist Ottmar Edenhofer, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,...

A thorough explanation of the origins of the rain storms hitting California. There is no tropical moisture involved. Systems coming in to west coast are all well north of Hawaii, which is dry. So the rain is a product of cold air off the Asian continent colliding with warm water off the west coast. Otherwise, Joe argues for a very snowy Christmas.

Climate talks in Lima ran into extra time amid rising frustration from developing countries at the “ridiculously low” commitments from rich countries to help pay for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. The talks were designed to draft a blueprint for a global deal to fight climate change, due to be adopted in Paris late next year. But developing countries argued that before signing on they needed to see greater commitments that the industrialised countries would keep to their end of a bargain to provide the money needed to fight climate change. Countries are also divided over the initial commitments countries...

LIMA, Peru — Wilfredo Saavedra, a former Marxist rebel, led a convoy of some 300 activists from Peru’s northern sierra, wearing an anti-mining T-shirt and Cuban baseball cap. Jim Chomicz, 70, from Birmingham, Alabama, flew here with a church group to learn more about melting glaciers. But for many of their Latin American counterparts, it is all about toppling capitalism, which they blame for the environmental degradation. “Capitalism is the creator of all of these changes to the climate,” said Mr. Saavedra. At a march this week, Ibis Fernández, a Peruvian union leader and organizer of the People’s Climate Summit,...

"In 1993, the [Volvo Environment] Prize went to Professor Paul R. Ehrlich of Stanford University and Professor John P. Holdren of the University of California in Berkeley, whose work laid the foundations of our understanding of how the dynamics of population growth, rising living standards and changing technology, as well as the relationships between them, interact in the context of environmental problems." List of past winners (and their work) from 1990 - 2014 Professor Paul R. Ehrlich, Professor John P. Holdren

It has become a mainstay on supermarket shelves across the UK: fresh green asparagus, flown in to satisfy culinary desires well beyond the brief domestic growing season. But Britain's love of year-round asparagus could now be at risk - due to climate change. Of the 14,000 tonnes of asparagus imported to the UK last year, the majority - some 8,000 tonnes - came from Peru, the world's biggest exporter of the crop. Experts warn that Peruvian production of the vegetable, which has soared in the past decade, is likely to be hit by extreme weather that scientists say will become...

Pulling a worn, yellowed copy of the 1992 U.N. climate change convention from her handbag, Farhana Yamin points to the paragraph that states its goal: To stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that would prevent dangerous warming. It doesn't provide any guidance on how to do that. But Yamin does. And, in a historic first, dozens of governments now embrace her prescription. The global climate pact set for adoption in Paris next year should phase out greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, says the London-based environmental lawyer. "In your lifetime, emissions have to go to zero. That's a message people...

The real part of the climate change negotiations started yesterday in Lima. Bolivian President Evo Morales took the spotlight at the United Nations summit as he pointed the finger at developed countries for their responsibility for climate change and suggested creating a world court to judge climate crimes. “Developing countries are the ones that struggle the most because of climate change even though they are the least responsible for it,” Evo Morales said, speaking alongside UN heads and several ministers. “After 30 years of negotiations, we haven’t reached any important climate change agreement. We have failed and now we are...

It used to strike me as impossible for global warming to cause cold weather. Then I realized that I could chill a soft drink in the oven if there were no room left in the refrigerator to bake a cake. Up until then I did not know that the same cause can have opposite effects. In my unenlightened state, it never occurred to me that carbon dioxide could cause both excessive heat and excessive cold, both drought and flood. I should have known. After all, we calm hyperactive children with stimulants and cure addiction to drugs with addicting drugs. When...

I do not believe that climate change deniers exist. I have heard the statistics and have seen the graphs, but I am not convinced. So I do what the supposed deniers do – I ignore them and move on. The next time you find yourself in a conversation with friends and colleagues about climate change, I would ask that you do one thing – skip over the discussion about the deniers. By talking about the deniers, the debate focuses on how to fix the problem of denial rather than climate change itself. Not everyone has to believe in it; what...

International climate talks in Lima, Peru, are entering their final week, with few hints of whether a newfound optimism that marked the start of negotiations will ultimately translate into an agreement that would rein in climate change. Poorer nations are struggling to nail down significant, steady funding from industrialized countries to help them cope with the damage from climate change and to develop their economies without relying on fuels such as coal. Over the years, participants at U.N. climate talks estimated that $75 billion to $100 billion annually in public and private funding was needed to help poor countries cope...

Antarctic sea ice reached a record high this year, topping 20 million square kilometers (nearly 8 million square miles) in September — a milestone it hadn't touched since 1979. It's a fact climate change deniers are fond of repeating. If the planet is warming, shouldn't sea ice be melting away rather than growing? It's true that the phenomenon is a confusing one — but it's no proof that climate change isn't happening. In fact, scientists believe that climate change is actually responsible for the strange events down in the Antarctic. The first thing to note is that sea ice and...

Long range weather forecast through Christmas.

The Baltic Sea is certainly not the only part of the world still suffering from when humanity didn't understand the consequences of its actions. However, compared to other parts of the world, it may be one of the most stark examples of how climate change can just perpetuate these problems. That's because the Baltic Sea is home to the Boknis Eck time series station. Based just off the coast of Schlong-Holstein at the exit of Peckernförde Bay, this station has been recording environmental parameters concerning the Baltic Sea since 1957, painting a particularly detailed picture of how human and natural...

The term Social Cost of Carbon is a figure that puts a dollar value on the climate damages per ton of CO2 released, and is used by, among others, policymakers to help determine the costs and benefits of climate policies. In the latest issue of the journal Science, a group of economists and lawyers urge several improvements to the government’s figure that would impose a regular, transparent and peer-reviewed process to ensure it is reliable and well-supported. “By providing an estimate of the damages from an extra ton of CO2 emissions, the Social Cost of Carbon tells us how much...