Credit: Edwin Remsberg

Climate change skeptics have an arsenal of arguments for why humans need not cut their carbon emissions. Some assert rising CO2 levels benefit plants, so global warming is not as bad as scientists proclaim. “A higher concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere would aid photosynthesis, which in turn contributes to increased plant growth,” Rep. Lamar Smith (R–Texas) wrote in an op-ed last year. “This correlates to a greater volume of food production and better quality food.” Scientists and others calling for emission cuts are being hysterical, he contends.

So is it true rising atmospheric CO2 will help plants, including food crops? Scientific American asked several experts to talk about the science behind this question.

There is a kernel of truth in this argument, experts say, based on what scientists call the CO2 fertilization effect. “CO2 is essential for photosynthesis,” says Richard Norby, a corporate research fellow in the Environmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “If you isolate a leaf [in a laboratory] and you increase the level of CO2, photosynthesis will increase. That’s […]

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Rearview shot of two young friends spending time together in nature Credit: Time

You may have more in common with your friends than you think, according to a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Your genes may be similar, too.

Past research has suggested that people tend to be somewhat genetically similar to their spouses and adult friends, likely because humans naturally gravitate toward people with whom they have something in common. But how and why does this subconscious sorting happen? Researchers from Stanford, Duke and the University of Wisconsin—Madison studied 5,000 pairs of adolescent friends using data from Add Health, a long-term study of people who were in grades seven through 12 during the 1994-1995 school year. They ran a number of genetic comparisons, seeking to learn more about pairs of friends and schoolmates.

Overall, the researchers found that friends were more genetically similar than random pairs of people, and about two-thirds as similar as the average married […]

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In the wake of the 2016 election, a group of despairing Democrats in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, formed a new political group to ensure that they would never be out-organized locally again. Faith leaders, small-business owners, social workers, nonprofit leaders, teachers, and students joined together as part of the historic dusting-off that was taking place all across the country. The group, which came to call itself Lancaster Stands Up, put its energy toward defending the Affordable Care Act from its multiple assaults in Washington and fending off the tea party-dominated state legislature in Harrisburg.

The group’s town halls and protests began to draw eye-popping numbers of people and even attracted national attention. With their newfound confidence, Lancaster progressives looked toward local and federal elections. The national press was captivated by the upsets across the state of Virginia in November, but that same night in Pennsylvania, Democrats across the state in local elections knocked Republicans out of seats they’d owned forever. The surge suggested that capturing the congressional seat covering Lancaster and Reading, which Democrats lost by 11 points in 2016, was well […]

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It has become increasingly clear that the Tennessee Valley Authority is taking a hostile position towards renewable energy. (emphasis added) TVA’s recent decision to ignore, or flat out reject, renewable energy from the Plains and Eastern Clean Line project is the latest in a string of anti-renewable energy positions taken by the nation’s largest public utility. TVA is woefully behind peer utilities in procuring significant solar energy resources (Duke Energy North Carolina, Georgia Power, FPL in Florida to name just a few). Newly proposed 2018 solar rate structures would undermine distributed energy resources by taking the buy back rate below retail for TVA’s customer owned solar systems, effectively making TVA an “anti net-metering utility.” In 2016, TVA quietly let a 300 megawatt wind farm power purchase agreement lapse – a nearly 20% drop in renewable energy purchases. These are all examples of TVA’s movement away from clean, renewable energy.

The Plains and Eastern Clean Line project was the largest renewable energy project proposed for the Southeast. The project would have delivered 3,500 megawatts of exceptionally low-cost, high capacity factor wind […]

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