The year in climate change

In 2013, evidence that humans are altering Earth’s climate for the worse became even clearer than it had already been, and official action to slow climate change was, in a charitable analysis, insufficient to the task. I asked Bulletin columnist and environmental journalist Dawn Stover to look back over the year and highlight five articles that stood out as the Bulletin made the point for citizens and policy makers alike: Climate change is an existential threat the world must deal with expeditiously. As in now.  

• Closing the consensus gap: Public support for climate policy by John Cook. Despite what the public thinks, climate scientists are overwhelmingly in agreement that human activity is changing Earth’s climate. 

• Existential threats, fast and slow by Kennette Benedict. Why climate change and nuclear weapons both belong on the Doomsday Clock.

• Climate change: Is seeing believing? by Gary Braasch. Associated multimedia interview: Gary Braasch on the visualization of climate change. Images of climate change and global warming have spread across the media, but these depictions have not been particularly effective in educating people about the dangers of climate change or encouraging civic action. Why a new framing of climate impacts may encourage more people to take action.

• A new plan B: Relocate American cities by Alex Slaymaker. Erosion, sea level rise, and other climate impacts threaten many coastal cities. It’s time to start talking about a gradual retreat to safer ground.

• Preaching climate to the unconverted. An interview with atmospheric scientist and evangelical Christian Katharine Hayhoe.