Tag Archives: Climate change

Woods Hole Research Center responds to misleading NY Times op-ed on climate change

Climate scientists everywhere reacted with stunned outrage  as word spread about an op-ed piece in the New York Times on Sept. 20, 2014 under the headline: “To Save The Planet, Don’t Plant Trees.” Operating on kernals of truth that distort and misinterpret far larger facts and realities about the role of forests — tropical and otherwise — in mitigating the damage of climate change, Nadine Unger, an atmospheric chemist at Yale, wrote, somewhat incredulously, “It is a myth that photosynthesis controls the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. Even if all photosynthesis on the planet were shut down, the atmosphere’s oxygen content would change less than 1 percent.” Not so, climate scientists say. Not even close.

The full story is here at National Geographic NewsWatch.

Photo by Justin Catanoso

Fixing Climate Change May Add No Costs, Report Says

A wind turbine being installed in northern France. Research says the benefits of such efforts may offset the cost of subsidies. Benoit Tessier/Reuters
Justin Gillis, the New York Times climate change reporter, breaks a story that sounds like science fiction, but is plausible with enough political will in countries such as the U.S., China and India — the world’s leading emitters of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
The story, published Sept. 16, is here, and it follows a trend of more optimistic, solution-based reporting on the issue of climate change.

Sun and Wind Alter Global Landscape, Leaving Utilities Behind

 New wind turbines in the North Sea off Germany. Renewable resources account for 30 perent of Germany’s power generation, more than twice what the U.S. produces. Photo: NY Times.

Justin Gillis, the New York Times’ climate change reporter, writes: “Of all the developed nations, few have pushed harder than Germany to find a solution to global warming. And towering symbols of that drive are appearing in the middle of the North Sea.” The Sept. 13, 2014 story is here.

Excerpt: Electric utility executives all over the world are watching nervously as technologies they once dismissed as irrelevant begin to threaten their long-established business plans. Fights are erupting across the United States over the future rules for renewable power. Many poor countries, once intent on building coal-fired power plants to bring electricity to their people, are discussing whether they might leapfrog the fossil age and build clean grids from the outset.

 

Climate change policy: Can green replace gold when it comes to REDD?

Tropical forests, like this one in Manu National Park in southern Peru, harbor most of the world’s biodiversity and provide an array of vital ecological services. (Photograph by Justin Catanoso)

I wrote this story for National Geographic NewsWatch following the UN climate change negotiations in Warsaw, Poland, which took place in December 2013. Chris Meyer, a policy expert at the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington, D.C., proved an excellent source. The story focuses on the slow-moving, much-criticized policy called REDD — “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation” — and my best explanation of how it could work (and also why it’s not working yet).

Excerpt: “I think we’re hitting a tipping point with REDD,” Chris Meyer told me. “A lot of countries are committing millions of dollars a year to REDD — the U.K, the United States, Germany, Norway. To invest all this money and then not link it to something bigger in the future, where an international climate structure is built, is very unlikely.”

WUNC: How Is Climate Change Affecting Tropical Forests?

The view from 13,000 feet in Manu National Park, Andes Mountains, southeastern Peru.

This radio report (7:17 minutes) for WUNC-North Carolina Public Radio overviews my climate change reporting in summer 2013 from the Amazon basin of Peru. It discusses the implications of upslope tree migration in the Amazon jungles as a result of warming temperatures.

The second recording (12 minutes) is of Wake Forest biologist MIles Silman and me on the afternoon news program at WUNC, The State of Things, with Frank Stasio, discussing the same topic.

Wake Forest biologist Miles Silman in the Peruvian cloud forest.

Photos by Justin Catanoso

Rain forest plants race to outrun global warming

Tagged trees in the Amazon rainforest.

Tropical plants are migrating due to climate change, but can they move fast enough?

Tropical biologists are coming to understand the impact of of global warming on our warmest climates.  Given the enormous importance of tropical forests in places such as the Amazon basin of Peru, where I spent more than two weeks in July 2013, to influence weather patterns, the water cycle and carbon storage from greenhouse-gas emissions, there is much at stake. My story here on National Geographic News explains.

Photo by Justin Catanoso