Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a new, energy efficient electrochemical-based device that can capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the chief ingredient in anthropogenic-caused global warming. This new device operates much like a battery, in that it can absorb carbon dioxide from air that is pumpedread more
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued a dire warning that our current efforts at addressing the problem of climate change are not keeping pace with the increase of the rate of global warming, and that we need to act quickly if we are to avoid evoking the more immediate catastrophes that come with allowing the planet’s climate to rise past 1.5ºC (2.7ºF) above the pre-industrial average. This warning comes with the admission that we can indeed meet this seemingly impossible goal, but it comes at a cost: the human community needs to cut its carbon emissions by nearly half in the next 12 years.
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A new study has found that the temperature increases from global warming may be twice as bad over what previous climate studies have forecast. This study made use of historical data from previous geological periods when Earth’s climate was 0.5°C-2°C warmer than the 19th Century’s pre-industrial average, illustrating that the consequences of runaway global warming could spell the collapse of many ecosystems, ranging from the Sahara Desert becoming green, to tropical regions converting to a fire-prone savanna.
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Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory has reported that worldwide carbon dioxide levels reached a new record high in April, hitting 410.31 parts per million (ppm). This is the highest concentration of this greenhouse gas seen over the course of human history–and prehistory, for that matter–as the Earth’s atmosphere hasn’t seen CO2 levels this high in well over 800,000 years, and possibly as long as 20 million years.
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