climate change

In a new experiment, scientists working at the Mass Maritime Academy in Bourne are finding that ocean acidification may have a profound effect on juvenile sea scallops.  

Nearly a dozen states, including Massachusetts, are collaborating on the Transportation & Climate Initiative, a regional program that would curb greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its annual Arctic report card last week, with data tracking seven vital signs of Arctic health, including air and water temperatures, sea ice and tundra greenness. The conclusion: “Arctic ecosystems and communities are increasingly at risk due to continued warming and declining sea ice.”

This year’s United Nations conference on climate change is underway in Madrid, Spain, with about 25,000 people from 200 countries attending.

The mood is one of urgency, according to participants.

In July of 2014, images of an enormous crater in the Siberian tundra captivated scientists and the public, alike. Others were soon found, and a cause proposed: climate change. Specifically, the finger was pointed at an underground build-up of methane released as permafrost thaws. But this was not a climate change impact that anyone had anticipated.

Before heading home for turkey, the Supreme Court this week declined to hear a case pitting a prominent climate scientist against a conservative news outlet and a free-market think tank. To be clear, this is considered a win for the climate scientist as it allows his defamation case to go forward.

Nearly 40 people gathered for a conversation about climate change from an indigenous perspective at the Native Land Conservancy’s annual meeting on Sunday.

The event, held at the Waquoit Bay Estuarine Research Reserve, offered a window into how personal climate change is for Wampanoag people.

We don’t tend to acknowledge this, but at the heart of Living Lab Radio lies the belief that science can provide factual information that can help us make better decisions as individuals, as communities, and as societies.

But why should we trust science? How can we be sure that what we hear today won’t be proved wrong in the future?

Naomi Oreskes addresses these questions in her new book Why Trust Science?

Climate change is complicated. Every part of our daily lives can play a role in causing it, from electricity, to transportation, the homes we live in, the food we eat, even the healthcare services we rely on. And all of those aspects of our lives are also affected by climate change.

The Trump administration has begun the formal process of withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement. It’s against that backdrop that more than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries have signed a letter declaring a climate emergency.

A new paper endorsed by 11,258 scientists and researchers from 153 countries describes climate change as a “climate emergency.” Published in the journal BioScience, it warns of "untold human suffering" if individuals, governments, and businesses don’t make deep and lasting changes.

As greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere, the planet gets hotter, land-based ice melts, and warming ocean water expands. The result is sea level rise. A lot of scientific effort has gone into projecting how quickly and how high ocean waters will rise. But the ocean is only half the equation when it comes to the threat of sea level rise, and an update to the land side of the equation has dramatically increased the estimated number of people at risk.

Stephanie Spera, University of Richmond

The Arctic is warming faster than any other part of the planet.

As the permafrost thaws and the tundra burns, it is releasing powerful greenhouse gases that further accelerate warming.

Since the permafrost holds three times as much carbon as all the world’s forests combined, what’s happening in the Arctic is one of the most important aspects of climate change. It’s also one of the least understood.   

The Army Corps of Engineers wants to replace the aging Bourne and Sagamore bridges. The proposed plan has received widespread support, but it leaves out any consideration to offset increased traffic with a commitment to public transportation. 

Faith leaders on Cape Cod are stepping into a new role. Over the weekend, the Faith Communities Environmental Network invited hundreds of people into a conversation about morality, spirituality, and climate change.

A carbon-neutral world by 2050: that’s what climate scientists have said is necessary to avert the worst impacts of climate change. That, of course, means dramatically reducing greenhouse emissions.

But people are beginning to acknowledge that hitting goals like those set in the Paris climate accord will also require pulling carbon out of the atmosphere that’s already there. In fact, such carbon capture technologies are a key part of many climate change scenarios.

Think climate change is too serious to joke about? Consider this.

With each new scientific report, the situation seems more dire. But the social and political will to address the issue has lagged.

Author Bina Venkataraman understands very well the temptation to keep doing what we’ve always done, even if we’re pretty sure it’s not the best approach. She’s done it herself.

A few years ago, she was hiking in the Hudson Valley in New York just north of New York City, a place she knew was loaded with Lyme disease. She didn’t wear tick repellent. And even when she found a rash on the back of her leg, she didn’t do anything about it.

“It didn't look like the telltale bulls eye you associate with a tick bite,” she said.

There are musicals about our founding fathers, cute orphans, the French Revolution... And now? There’s a musical about climate change. The Cape Cod Theater Company in Harwich is debuting the world premiere of “Crude: The Climate Change Musical.”  

A U.N. special report on the impacts of climate change on the ocean sparked dire headlines such as UN report on world’ oceans is damning: We’re all in big trouble. Or, from the New York Times: The World’s Oceans are in Danger.

While true, those headlines don’t tell the whole story.

Two-thirds of coves, inlets and similar water bodies known as embayments, and one-third of ponds on the Cape, have unacceptably low water quality, according to a new report from the Association to Preserve Cape Cod (APCC).