Mason Inman - science journalist

20 November 2008, for Nature Reviews Climate Change

After our fossil fuel blow-out, how long will the CO₂ hangover last? And what about the global fever that comes along with it?

These sound like simple questions, but the answers are complex — and not well understood or appreciated outside a small group of climate scientists. Popular books on climate change — even those written by scientists — if they mention the lifetime of CO₂ at all, typically say it lasts "a century or more"¹ or "more than a hundred years".

7 October 2008, for National Geographic News

Three researchers from the U.S. and Japan will share the 2008 Nobel Prize in physics for their contributions to work that helps explain why the universe exists.

Yoichiro Nambu of the University of Chicago won half the 10-million-Swedish-kronor (1.4-million-U.S.-dollar) prize for being the first to predict spontaneous symmetry breaking.

17 September 2008, for National Geographic News

The Arctic Ocean's sea ice has shrunk to its second smallest area on record, close to 2007's record-shattering low, scientists report.

The ice is in a "death spiral" and may disappear in the summers within a couple of decades, according to Mark Serreze, an Arctic climate expert at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.

10 September 2008, for National Geographic News

The world's largest atom smasher's first experiment went off today without a hitch, paving the way toward the recreation of post-big bang conditions.

The Large Hadron Collider fired a beam of protons inside a circular, 17-mile (27-kilometer) long tunnel underneath villages and cow pastures at the French-Swiss border.

4 September 2008, for National Geographic News

Sea levels will rise a bit higher—but not catastrophically high—in the coming century, according to a new study.

The oceans will likely rise between 2.5 and 6.5 feet (0.8 and 2 meters) by 2100, researchers say.

2 September 2008, for National Geographic News

The planet is hotter now than it has been for nearly the past 2,000 years, researchers report.

The new study is led by Michael Mann, a climatologist who helped develop the famous 1998 "hockey stick" graph—a reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere temperatures over the past thousand years showing a sharp uptick beginning around 1900.

19 August 2008, for National Geographic News

Grazing musk-oxen and caribou may help protect the fragile Arctic ecosystem from the effects of global warming, according to a new study.

Large grazers could help the region by feasting on woody shrubs and plants that would otherwise take over as temperatures rise and change the way the Arctic looks and functions.

18 August 2008, for Technology Review

Pakistani scientists have a way to boost download speeds.

Internet access is growing steadily in developing nations, but limited infrastructure means that at times connections can still be painfully slow. A major bottleneck for these countries is the need to force a lot of traffic through international links, which typically have relatively low bandwidth.

7 August 2008, for National Geographic News

Global warming could make extreme rains stronger and more frequent than previously forecast, a new study suggests.

Such a scenario could make floods fiercer, damage more crops, and worsen the spread of diseases such as malaria, scientists say.

17 July 2008, for National Geographic News

People should help species threatened by climate change move to new habitats, researchers argue in a new paper.

Warming temperatures have already sent animals and plants inching toward the poles or climbing up mountains to seek out tolerable habitats.