Climate change

ConserveOnline is a "one-stop" online, public library, created and maintained by The Nature Conservancy in partnership with other conservation organizations. The library makes conservation tools, techniques, and experience available to a broad community of conservation practitioners. This site is intended to foster learning and collaboration, and provide information and support to anyone making conservation-related decisions, from the staff of conservation organizations to land managers at government agencies to local land trusts to private landowners. Through discussion groups and information sharing, ConserveOnline is an open forum for sharing successes and failures, and for connecting scientific research with field-based conservation practice. We welcome anyone with documents, data, maps, or images relevant to the science and practice of conservation to make these resources publicly available through ConserveOnline, and to share their expertise through the discussion groups.

Climate science This interactive map shows some of the possible impacts of a global temperature rise of 4 degrees Celsius. It underlines why the UK Government and other countries believe we must keep global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, because beyond that the impacts will be increasingly disruptive to our global prosperity and security. Download the 4 Degrees Celsius Google Earth Layer to explore in Google Earth

Although the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has mobilised thousands of projects over the past years, the CDM has triggered serious concerns about the environmental integrity of its projects and its genuine contribution to sustainable development. As an initiative of international NGOs, CDM Watch was re-established in April 2009 to provide an independent perspective on CDM projects, methodologies and the work of the CDM Executive Board, which is supervising the CDM. The ultimate goal is to help assure that the current CDM, as well as a reformed mechanism post-2012, effectively results in emission reductions that are real, measurable, permanent, independently verified, and that contribute to sustainable development in CDM host countries.

What can Humans do about climate change ? Somehow our species has to answer this question. And you can help. Anyone—from experts to interested citizens—can use this site to develop plans for what we humans can do, select the most promising plans, and debate the plans and other issues.

Petroleum was formed by the compression and heating of biomass over millennia. Chemical engineers at the University of Michigan hope to do it in minutes.

They are applying heat and pressure on microalgae, exploring a method to create affordable biofuel that could replace fossil fuels. They also hope to use the byproducts of bio-oil production as feedstock for more biofuel.

“The vision is that nothing would leave the refinery except oil. Everything would get reused,” chemical engineering professor Phillip Savage said in a statement. “That’s one of the things that makes this project novel. It’s an integrated process. We’re combining hydrothermal, catalytic and biological approaches.”

Savage and his team, funded by a $2 million National Science Foundation grant, aren’t the only ones trying to make bio-petroleum. California startup Sapphire Energy says it could produce 1 billion gallons of algal fuel annually by 2025. Blue Marble Energy creates fuel using algae found in polluted waters. Chevron has joined San Francisco company Solazyme in developing algal jet fuel.

Our purpose is to foster the development of an international research community in knowledge federation. In addition to evolving theories, standards, tools and federation practices, we have undertaken to bootstrap knowledge federation by being the first academic community that will federate its knowledge.

At this time, the NCS Portal prototype only scratches the surface of the many climate datasets, products, and services available across NOAA. This effort will gradually transition from a prototype to an operational status over the next year. Our plan is to actively gather user feedback through focus groups, usability studies, and informal communications. Over the next several years, we will expand the NCS Portal's scope and functionality in a user-driven manner to greatly enhance the accessibility and usefulness of NOAA's climate resources. As this effort continues to expand in future years, partners from outside of NOAA will become involved in this effort. The NCS Portal will be a central component of NOAA's commitment to enhancing the access to and extensibility of climate data and services, timely articles and information, education resources, and tools for engagement and decision-making.

Programs do more and more scientific work - but you need to be able to check them as well as the original data, as the recent row over climate change documentation shows