As we pump billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we're doing more than warming the planet and scrambling the climate. We're also conducting what climatologist James Hansen has called a "vast uncontrolled experiment." In effect, we're on our way to engineering a world very different from the one we were handed. Belatedly, we're trying to turn off the carbon spigot, hoping that by incrementally reducing the emissions we've spent a couple of centuries pouring ...

In Western societies, disposing of a dead body has come down to two choices: there's burial, and there's cremation. Occasionally, a corpse is donated to science, but even those remains usually make their way to the crematorium in the end. But since climate change has piqued the world's environmental awareness, it has become clear that death, despite being the most natural of processes, is bad for the environment. Coffins, most of which are made from nonbiodegradable chipboard, ...

No one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Earth. Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us. It certainly looked that way last week as the atmospheric bomb that was Cyclone Larry--a Category 4 storm with wind bursts that reached 125 m.p.h.--exploded through northeastern Australia. It certainly looked ...

AN exclusive formal ball will mark Halloween in San Francisco this week. In couturier gowns and elaborately confected masquerades, the couples will whisk around the floor until 2 a.m., while judges award prizes for the best costumes and the participants elect an "Empress." By then the swirling belles will sound more and more deep-voiced, and in the early morning hours dark stubble will sprout irrepressibly through their Pan-Cake Make-Up. The celebrators are all homosexuals, and each year since 1962 the ...

These are dark days for the environmental movement. A year after being on the cusp of passing landmark legislation to cap greenhouse gases, greens are coming to accept the fact that the chance of national and international action on climate change has become more remote than ever. The Environmental Protection Agency is under attack by newly empowered Republicans in Congress who argue that the very idea of environmental protection is unaffordable for our debt-ridden country. Accustomed ...

I am an American, not by accident of birth but by choice. I voted with my feet and became an American because I love this country and think it is exceptional. But when I look at the world today and the strong winds of technological change and global competition, it makes me nervous. Perhaps most unsettling is the fact that while these forces gather strength, Americans seem unable to grasp the magnitude of the challenges that face ...

No one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Earth. Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us. It certainly looked that way last week as the atmospheric bomb that was Cyclone Larry--a Category 4 storm with wind bursts that reached 125 m.p.h.--exploded through northeastern Australia. It ...

The European Union has agreed a conditional deal on how to help developing nations combat the effects of climate change.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has long been known worldwide for its engineering programs, and a symposium at MIT this week will draw scientists from around the globe to focus on a hot facet of the field -- climate engineering.Creating an artificial cloud cover, or modifying clouds to reflect light back into space, is one of them. But probably the more popular climate engineering technology now involves pumping sulfates into the atmosphere to block the sun's rays and cool temperatures, ...

From seabeds to mountaintops, people around the world were staging a day of demonstrations Saturday to call for urgent action on climate change.The number of 350 ppm originally came from a NASA research team headed by American climate scientist James Hansen, which surveyed both real-time climate observations and emerging paleo-climatic data in January 2008, according to 350.org. It concluded that atmosphere containing carbon dioxide above 350 ppm couldn't support life on earth as we know it, the group said. "It's ...