Abstract: Despite the importance of urban trees, their growth reaction to climate change and to the urban heat island effect has not yet been investigated with an international scope. While we are well informed about forest growth under recent conditions, it is unclear if this knowledge can be simply transferred to urban environments.

The COP23 climate conference in Bonn had originally been planned to take place in the Fiji Islands. But in order to comfortably accommodate the approximately 25,000 representatives(!) from every country in the world, it was decided to hold it in Bonn.

An energy researcher sues another over a critical paper. It’s the wrong way to resolve such disputes.

I’ve worked alongside climate researchers for decades. Almost all of them are ethical, dedicated to science and not particularly political. But some leading figures and organizations in this community are weakening the norms that make science robust. A lawsuit filed in September and recently made public is a case in point.

Image copyright: ESO/M. KORNMESSER

An asteroid that visited us from interstellar space is one of the most elongated cosmic objects known to science, a study has shown. Discovered on 19 October, the object’s speed and trajectory strongly suggested it originated in a planetary system around another star.

Last week the BBC proclaimed the Bonn Climate Talks (COP23) as ‘small steps forward’ in eliminating ‘fossil fuels’ in the push to cut emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2).

But the emerging science of geomicrobiology, along with revelations about the true environmental cost of electric batteries, are changing scientific opinion. Such fresh insights are overturning conventional ideas of what ‘clean and renewable’ really means for mass energy generation.

October Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs) are now available, and we see a slight upward response after a steep drop in September.  The rise was led by anomaly increases of about 0.06 in both the Tropics and the Southern Hemisphere (SH), compared to drops of about 0.2 the previous month.

Scientists are once again sounding the alarm that humans are destroying the planet and we’re heading towards a “mass extinction event.”

Researchers at Washington State University and 13 other institutions have found that the arc of prehistory bends towards economic inequality. In the largest study of its kind, the researchers saw disparities in wealth mount with the rise of agriculture, specifically the domestication of plants and large animals, and increased social organization.

There exists a particular science experiment that is done within primary, middle and secondary schools that purports to prove that there actually is a carbon dioxide and water vapor caused “greenhouse effect” in the greater atmosphere that is causing global warming.

So much for sea level rises! Another vanished beach has just appeared on Achill Island, reports Irish Central. Dooagh Beach’s re-emergence led to worldwide attention and now Ashleam Bay has a sandy strand too.

New peer -reviewed study in the European Journal of Agronomy  shows that lentils  experience significant boosts in plant yield when subjected to higher levels of airborne CO2, even under conditions of drought. The findings contradict consensus climate science claims that carbon dioxide is a pollutant.

Three weeks ago, the BBC was happy to apologize for a breach of its legal obligation to report only with “accuracy and impartiality”, after an interviewer on the Today programme had failed to challenge a point that the global warming skeptic Lord Lawson had got wrong.

I gained a dramatic insight into the practice and dangers of anthropomorphism when I was asked to give a talk prior to a presentation by Jane Goodall, of chimpanzee research fame. I realized why I was invited after I spoke about the importance of trees in the urban environment using Winnipeg, the location of the event, as an example.

As part of its woefully misleading and one-sided series attacking the oil and gas industry, NPR’s Marketplace  published a story on Wednesday suggesting fracking chemicals are harming public health. In an effort to support that narrative, reporter Scott Tong lists a dozen studies he (presumably) feels best support the argument, while also adding the following disclaimer:

Two new studies from The University of Texas at Austin have significantly improved scientists’ ability to predict the strength and duration of droughts caused by La Niña — a recurrent cooling pattern in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Their findings, which predict that the current La Niña is likely to stretch into a second year, could help scientists know years in advance how a particular La Niña event is expected to evolve.

This week, thousands of scientists issued a bleak and terrifying “second notice” to mankind about how we will destroy the planet unless we take “urgent” action. If this warning is as reliable as the first notice these scientists issued in 1992, we have nothing to worry about.