News & Comment

For climate science, the year 2009 brought significant discoveries and startling controversies. Kurt Kleiner reports.

Controlling the climate with technology was once the stuff of science fiction. But with tests already underway, there's an urgent need for global governance of geoengineering. Mason Inman reports.

Hopes are fading that a strong treaty will emerge from next month's negotiations in Copenhagen. Researchers who study cooperation, though, aren't surprised. Mason Inman reports.

Emissions from cattle and sheep are significant contributors to planetary warming. But how close are we to creating low-emitting livestock? Kevin Morrison reports.

Protecting forests offers a quick and cost-effective way of reducing emissions, but agreeing a means to do so won't be easy. Mark Schrope reports.

Ice has become an unequalled resource for studying the Earth's climatic history. Anna Barnett rounds up several new features on our site that pay tribute to the field of paleoclimatology, from the initial discovery of climatic clues in ice through to current efforts to recover a core that stretches back over a million years.

Climate change is inherently a social problem — so why have sociologists been so slow to study it? Kerri Smith reports.

Enthusiasts say that biochar could go a long way towards mitigating climate change and bring with it a host of ancillary benefits. But others fear it could do more harm than good. Kurt Kleiner reports.

Gauging how the planet will respond to rising emissions remains one of the biggest questions in climate science. Mason Inman looks at how close we are to answering it.

As the planet warms, vast stores of methane — a potent greenhouse gas — could be released from frozen deposits on land and under the ocean. Amanda Leigh Mascarelli reports on the race to understand a ticking time bomb.

The notion that we're running out of fossil fuel is gaining support in some unexpected quarters. But is peak energy good or bad news for the climate? Kurt Kleiner reports.

Threatened with encroaching seas, dwindling water supplies and fiercer storms, Bangladesh is already suffering the ill effects of rising global greenhouse gas emissions. Mason Inman reports on how the region is coping with climate change.