New Research Examines Role of Clouds in Climate Change

New findings published Tuesday appear to undermine a controversial study - oft-cited by those who downplay the human impacts of climate change - that claimed variations in cloud cover are driving temperature changes across the globe.

The analysis confirms - as most atmospheric scientists have long held - that the reverse is true: Clouds change in response to temperature changes. There is no evidence clouds can cause meaningful climate change, concluded the report’s author, Andrew Dessler, an atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M University. “Suggestions that significant revisions to mainstream climate science are required are therefore not supported,” he wrote.

Dessler’s findings are the third blow in less than a week to the research of University of Alabama, Huntsville, climatologist Roy Spencer.

On Friday, the editor at the journal that published Spencer’s paper resigned, stating that the paper “should … not have been published.”

And on Thursday, a separate study led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher Benjamin Santer purported to disprove earlier Spencer claims that climate models overstate observed warming and thus are unreliable predictors of the future.

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(via myheadisweak)

theatlantic:

Is Your Cell Phone Fueling Civil War in Congo?

Pick up any household electronic — a phone, a remote, or a laptop — and it could contain minerals mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country where armed rebel groups connected with crimes of rape and murder profit from trade of these minerals.

Tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold mined in the eastern part of the DRC are said to finance the armed rebel groups that contribute to the ongoing violence in the country.

Congo’s second war officially ended in 2003 when a transitional government took over after the signing of peace agreements between African nations. But the fighting still persists. The DRC army has launched several attacks on the civilian population and armed rebel groups have risen up to fight against them. Tensions between the two factions are perpetuated by the profits to be made from the mining industry.

According to a study released by the International Rescue Committee in 2008, the war in the DRC and its aftermath is the deadliest conflict since World War II. An estimated 5.4 million people have been killed in the country since 1998 and 45,000 deaths occur each month—a loss equivalent to the entire population of Colorado.

Read more at The Atlantic

This post was produced in part thanks to funds from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Follow them on Twitter @PulitzerCenter or on Tumblr.

newsflick:

Libya:

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s forces have opened fire on mourners at the funeral for anti-government protesters in the city of Benghazi, where a doctor says at least 200 people have already been slain in days of demonstrations.

A man shot in the leg Sunday said…

(Source: newsflick)

motherjones:

This, and 10 more charts that help explain what’s wrong with America.

motherjones:

Map o’ the Day: The Great Sharia Panic.

(via theatlantic)

motherjones:

A Privately Owned Nuclear Weapons Plant? In KANSAS CITY?

Yeah, it’s happening. On an old soybean field on the edge of town.

But check out the activists who found an old-school way to fight the plan.

(Photo: James Rea)

(via theatlantic)

theweekmagazine:

Because broadcasting the Middle Eastern news network in the U.S. would dispel stereotypes and broaden our understanding of the region, says Frank Rich in The New York Times.

“Unable to watch Al Jazeera English, and ravenous for comprehensive and sophisticated 24/7 television coverage of the Middle East otherwise unavailable on television, millions of Americans last week tracked down the network’s Internet stream on their computers. Such was the work-around required by the censorship practiced by America’s corporate gatekeepers.”

More here.