Global Warming or Climate Change

Despite broad consensus on the existence, origins and potentially catastrophic effects of global warming, a vocal minority continues to question the motives, methods and assumptions of climate scientists sounding the alarm. So when temperature data released by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), one of the leading monitors of climate change, showed an unusually warm October, climate change skeptics cried foul. As it turned out, the GISS data were flawed. The relatively minor glitch was fixed and the figures updated. End of story? Of course not. Climate change skeptic Anthony Watts called the mistake a "data train wreck" in his blog. Global warming denier Christopher Booker, in a column in the U.K.'s conservative Telegraph, called the error a "surreal scientific blunder." Reality check: GISS climate modeler Gavin Schmidt notes on the blog RealClimate.org that the problem occurred because a small but significant percentage of the hund...

Though it pours ominously out of chimneys, forest fires and the exhaust pipes of diesel-run vehicles ( right ), soot has received little attention from scientists studying global warming . Results published today in the journal Nature, however, suggest that soot, 90 percent of which comes from burning fossil fuels and biomass, may be a leading cause of rising world temperatures. "Soot�or black carbon�may be responsible for 15 to 30 percent of global warming," says Stanford University researcher Mark Z. Jacobson, the author of the report. "Yet it's not even considered in any of the discussions about controlling climate change." The conventional model of global heat balance holds that greenhouse gases warm the earth by trapping infrared radiation, while aerosol particles in the atmosphere reflect sunlight back into space, reducing the amount of heat the planet absorbs. The aerosols, in this view, cool the earth in the same way that light-colored clothing keeps...

Reseachers find that, no matter how much data they collect, they may not be able to get a good estimate of the highest temperature increases that global warming may bring. Karen Hopkin reports. Ben Franklin said that nothing’s certain but death and taxes. Today, scientists might add global warming to that list. But though most scientists are certain that more CO2 means a toastier globe, what they can’t pin down is how much warmer it’s going to get. If that sounds like a forecast only Heisenberg could love, well, too bad—that’s just the way it is. Or so say researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle in the October 26th issue of the journal Science. The researchers were working on equations to help climatologists get the most out of their climate models. The current models, run on decades worth of data, predict that we could be looking at a planet that’s 2 to 5 degrees warmer, although there’s a chance it could be closer to 10. What the researchers discovered is that no ma...

One of the first orders of business for newly sworn-in President Barack Obama will be to push through a gigantic stimulus package to revive the U.S. economy from its coma. Debate swirls around how to spend that money; we would like to offer support for certain uses that seem both economically and scientifically worthy. Obama has repeatedly emphasized, both on the campaign trail and in his postelection “fireside chats” on YouTube, that his economic recovery plan will steer massive funding toward America’s decaying and outmoded infrastructure. Multiple studies have documented how desperately U.S. bridges, highways, railways, dams, waterworks and other public resources need repair, modernization or replacement. In 2005 the American Society of Civil Engineers graded the state of U.S. infrastructure as “poor” and estimated that $1.6 trillion would be needed over five years to fix it. So the nation’s infrastructure could surely absorb abundant stimulus spending. Moreover, the money would be ...

The 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Robert Darwin falls on 12 February 2009. Darwin was arguably the most influential scientist of modern times. No single researcher has since matched his collective impact on the natural and social sciences; on politics, religions, and philosophy; on art and cultural relations, and in ways that the man himself would never have imagined. This Nature news special will provide continuously updated news, research and analysis on Darwin's life, his science and his legacy, as well as news from the Darwin200 consortium of organizations celebrating this landmark event.

If there was one word that resonated above all at this week’s Global Competitiveness Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, it was ‘trust’. Given the context of the meeting — a disastrous meltdown of the world financial system — the assembled chief executives of international companies and institutions might have found this something of a sick joke. But Saudi Arabia has set itself the goal of strong international competitiveness, and in the past year has climbed the rankings of competitiveness as measured by the World Economic Forum from 35th to 27th position. It also wants to promote a national climate and international perception of good corporate behaviour — a goal in which trust is essential. Like many emerging countries, Saudi Arabia measures itself by indices, and has developed its own index for ‘responsible competitiveness’, based on a number of metrics (see www.rci.org.sa). But fostering strong science-based innovation requires its own metrics of inputs and achievement. So here, for an...