Mostly Cloudy
ClimateChange
As the clock ticks down on the 2012 presidential campaign, neither President Obama nor challenger Mitt Romney is hitting the stump to discuss climate change. What's more, the issue wasn't raised by moderators in any of three presidential debates. So what gives? According to The New York Times, there's little for either politician to gain by raising the issue: Any serious effort to address climate change will require a transformation of the nation's system for producing and consuming energy and will, at least in the medium term, mean higher prices for fuel and electricity. Powerful incumbent industries - coal, oil, utilities - are threatened by such changes and have mounted a ...
Richard Muller, left, and his daughter, Elizabeth Muller, hold a globe as they talk about their study on climate at their home in Berkeley, Calif. Photo taken in 2011. (AP) A prominent scientist who was skeptical of the evidence that climate change was real, let alone that it was caused by humans, now says he has made a "total turnaround." Richard Muller, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, says he has become convinced that "the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct," and that humans are "almost entirely the cause" of that warming. Muller co-founded the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) team two years ago in order to independently assess ...
Ice floes float in Baffin Bay above the arctic circle. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jonathan Hayward) At least 70 percent, and as much as 95 percent, of sea ice loss in the Arctic is the result of human activities such as the burning of greenhouse gases, according to a new study. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), summer sea ice extent in the Arctic is declining by approximately 12 percent per decade; 2007 and 2011 experienced the lowest summer sea ice levels on record, and NSIDC director Mark Serreze has said that this year's ice is in a "sorry state", at the extreme low end of the satellite record for this time of year and on track to be similar to 2007. But ...
