Wacky Winter Seen As Sign of Climate Change

Spring comes about 10 days earlier now in Concord, Massachusetts: Study

(NEWSER) - Henry David Thoreau has come to to the rescue of scientists seeking valuable climate data. The Walden author kept meticulous notes of flowering patterns in Concord, Massachusetts, between 1851 and 1858. After crunching Thoreau's numbers, researchers have found the average temperature in Concord has risen an estimated 4.3 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 155 years, reports the Guardian . (The full report is in the journal BioScience .) More»

Miami, New Orleans among most endangered

(NEWSER) - By the end of the century, 180 coastal US cities could be partially submerged thanks to rising seas, finds a new study that looked at cities in the Lower 48 with populations of at least 50,000. The climbing sea poses a risk to, on average, 9% of the land in these cities. Those most in jeopardy? Cities that hug the Atlantic coast and Gulf of Mexico: Miami, Tampa, New Orleans, and Virginia Beach. New York City, Washington, DC, and the San Francisco Bay area could face more minor damage, Reuters reports. More»

But climate scientists say it's almost evidence for global warming

(NEWSER) - Climate change skeptics are having a chilly field day with the snow strewn across the East Coast, even as climate scientists say it is, if anything, evidence of global warming. James Inhofe’s family built a 6-foot-tall igloo on Capitol Hill adorned with a sign reading “Al Gore’s New Home,” while Virginia’s Republican Party put up a web ad reading “12 inches of Global Warming,” telling voters to ask Virginia Democratic reps to help them shovel. More»

Temps, up 2.2 F Since 1900, Would Be 2.5 Degrees Cooler Without Greenhouse Gases

(NEWSER) - Summer temperatures in the Arctic have climbed 2.2°F since 1900 despite an 8,000-year cooling trend, the Guardian reports. For the past few thousand years, the orbit of the Earth and the changing tilt of its axis has put the Arctic 630,000 miles further from the sun than in the year 0, which would have left the region 2.5°F cooler than it is today without human intervention, scientists say. They blame greenhouse gases for the cranked-up heat. More»

(NEWSER) - Train riders might not actually have that much to lord over their jet-setting rivals as far as pollution goes, Scientific American reports. A new study shows that although planes emit three times more greenhouse gasses per passenger per mile than trains, the industrial emissions necessary to rail infrastructure makes the environmental damage equal. More»