Dr. Bill Chameides is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the dean of Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment. He blogs at www.thegreengrok.com.

Think of your favorite place and you're likely to conjure a picture in your mind -- a landscape not a soundscape. That's...

Dr. Bill Chameides is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the dean of Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment. He blogs at www.thegreengrok.com.

Skeptics have been arguing that we should forget about global warming -- a new ice age is imminent. Maybe, some say, it's already...

Dr. Bill Chameides is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the dean of Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment. He blogs at www.thegreengrok.com.

Lester Brown, founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute, spoke at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina, this week....

Dear President-Elect Obama,

Congratulations on a historic victory. The economy and Iraq will no doubt be high on your agenda when you enter the Oval Office, but a number of environmental issues need attention too. Here are four initiatives for your consideration.

1. Use Economic Stimulus to Stimulate Low-Carbon Energies

How expensive will avoiding dangerous climate change be? The answer is intimately tied to the pace at which renewable energy technologies advance. And speaking of advancements, a major milestone was just passed in silicon solar cells.

Photovoltaic solar cells come in a variety of forms. The one that's been...

Where is the climate headed? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts continued warming [pdf]. But others proclaim that an ice age is just around the corner (like this editorial from the online paper the Australian). Who's right?

Predicting the future is a bear. Predicting climate change...

You don't have to search too hard to find a skeptic's blog proclaiming that global warming "stopped" in 1998. Oh happy day if it were true, but sadly it is not. Why do I say this? I've looked at the data.

In my third post in a series on the...

Back in July I posed a question to the presidential candidates: will our next president follow the Supreme Court's directive to regulate carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions through the authority of the Clean Air Act? At last, we have an answer from one candidate, which begs a response from his...

This is the first post in a series examining the sun-sunspot-climate connection

The skeptics are squawking again, their blogs achatter with talk about solar variability and sunspots. According to them, anybody who is anybody in climate science now knows the sun is to blame for global warming. Even the...

With the cost of gas still near record highs and crude oil prices rising and falling like a ride at Six Flags, drilling for oil has been capturing imaginations and grabbing headlines. But caveat emptor: misinformation abounds. In one case a recent graphic by a respected news service painted a...

In the 1970s, markets and environmentalists were like oil and water. But by the 1990s market-based solutions had proved effective in combating acid rain. Now financial markets are in a tailspin, begging the question, will today's economic turmoil spell the end of environmental market-based solutions?

For many, cap-and-trade is the...

One of the greatest worries about the current global warming is that it may trigger a rapid shift in the climate -- a move to a radically different one, perhaps even an ice age. How do we know if an abrupt change is approaching? A new study suggests...

Let's say you could choose where to get additional oil from. And let's say your choice was between three sources. Which would you choose? The option that got you more or less?

Here's a quick comparison of the amounts of oil Americans can expect to gain or save between...

Tom Friedman, the Pulitzer-Prize winning New York Times columnist, came to Duke this week to chat up his new book Hot, Flat, and Crowded. After his talk we discussed his thesis over dinner. His analysis is spot on, in my opinion, and yet I wonder if there's another top issue...

Scientists call it DAI -- "dangerous anthropogenic interference" with the climate system. The United States along with 191 other countries pledged to prevent DAI in 1994. However, little has happened to address the problem since, and now some scientists think it may be too late.

The...

A couple of new studies warrant serious consideration by the federal government. They support a growing body of research that shows risks to human health from bisphenol A (BPA), a common ingredient in many plastic bottles and tin cans.

Back in June, I

Did you know that both presidential candidates have weighed in on some of the key scientific issues facing our country today, including global warming? Check it out -- knowledge is power.

Imagine you had the opportunity to ask Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Barack...

The United States has an estimated 112 billion barrels of potentially recoverable oil. Sounds like a lot, doesn't it? Well, actually, it's not all that much.

In an earlier post, we showed that if we could access all of our recoverable oil,...

The climate system is replete with feedbacks -- some of them accelerate global warming and some slow it down. A new modeling study suggests that the melting of the Antarctic Ice Sheet may end up slowing global warming. Good news? Yes and no.

On a percentage basis, wind power is the fastest growing electricity source in the United States. This didn't happen in a vacuum. The federal renewable production tax credit has promoted the development of wind and other renewable energy. But this simple, effective idea -- invest in renewable energy and Uncle...