While you are driving to work, plume of carbon drifting lazily into the sky, do you ever wonder where all of your carbon will end up?  Now, work by Simon Lewis and a large team of collaborators (Lewis et al 2009) have shown that about 1/6th of the carbon emitted annually to the atmosphere ... [More]

It will not be possible to solve global warming without dealing with the dramatic global and local inequalities in carbon emissions and the wealth created from them.  Since the Industrial Revolution began, some people and some nations have been pumping a lot more carbon into the atmosphere than... [More]

Are pristine rainforests the only ones that matter?  We know that forests do change as they age, developing some unique characteristics when mature, and that some species cannot live outside of large swaths of ancient tropical forests. But what about the rest of tropical forests- the... [More]

What is the best way to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere?   We all know that reducing global warming will require reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.  But there are so many ways to do this- by reducing our energy use (driving a fuel efficient&... [More]

Diseases introduced by Europeans after 1492 are now known to have caused massive population declines in the Americas, and the failure of ancient agricultural systems across huge regions, many of which depended on the regular burning of forests.  Now, researchers, led by Richard Nevle and ... [More]

The Early Anthropocene Hypothesis holds that human alteration of climate began with forest clearing and rice production more than 6 thousand years ago.  Here are my personal impressions of recent work supporting this hypothesis, from last week's annual meeting ... [More]