Planetary temperatures warmed up naturally thousands of years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age. Some Antarctic penguin populations flourished under the changes. 11,000 years later, however, some Adélie and chinstrap colonies are turning from winners into losers: As temperatures around the western Antarctic Peninsula increase at some of the fastest rates on Earth, their population numbers are falling quickly, while gentoo penguins appear to holding their own.
Dan Bloom of The Wrap writes that he is organizing new annual film award: the “Cliffies,” given for excellence in “cli-fi” movies, as in climate fiction.
Global warming is remaking the Arctic, with changes like ice-free sea lanes across the Arctic Ocean in summer, or no-longer-so-eternal permafrost on land, unprecedented in human history. How much one laments or celebrates these changes probably depends on where one's values fall across a scale extending from “untouched wilderness” at one end to “lucrative oil field” at the other. But it's indisputable that they're creating new opportunities for scientists to learn more about the region than they've been able to in the past--and a new sense of urgency.
There's one issue that's more politically divisive than gun control or abortion. That's the question of whether human activity is the primary driver of climate change. In a new poll, there was only one question pollsters asked that Democrats and Republicans were more likely to disagree about than the climate one: whether President Barack Obama is doing a good job.
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