Global warming will wreak havoc with Malaysia’s ecosystems. It will decimate wildlife, destroy coral reefs and cause crops to fail. And it will also cause the country to lose as much as a tenth of its current land area. That’s because rising sea levels will inundate plenty of islands and…

We are prone to an illusion of permanence. As the world it is, so it will always be, more or less, we tend to believe. When it comes to climate change, however, that assumption is seriously flawed. Man-caused climate change is already wreaking havoc with the planet’s environments from pole…

Climate change is bound to usher in a world beset with calamities. Rising sea levels will inundate low-lying areas, displacing millions of people. Weather patterns will become more extreme and unpredictable, causing widespread devastation. Even turbulence, that dreaded foe of frequent fliers, may well get worse. But that’s not even half of it. Here’s…

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is one of the world’s natural wonders and its largest living structure. Now brace yourself: it’s in a “terminal” state of decline. Shocking news? Yes. But not all that unexpected, sadly. Two successive mass bleaching events last year and this year across much of the reef have pushed…

If you want to see the future of fragile marine environments being battered by climate change, look no further than Australia’s world-famous Great Barrier Reef. Last year the corals at the reef underwent an unprecedented mass bleaching episode, which killed off or visibly damaged huge swathes of coral for hundreds of miles….

The planet is warming. The polar ice caps are melting. Sea levels are rising. We are in for an impending environmental meltdown (literally). But there is not much we can do. Or is there? What if we could refreeze the ice at the Arctic artificially? Say, we could do that by building…

Turning carbon dioxide to baking soda. That’s what a chemical plant in India does. Sound like a swell idea? It should because it is. The Tuticorin Alkali Chemicals plant, located in the industrial port city of Tuticorin, plans to convert some 60,000 tons of its own CO2 emissions into baking…

One of the ironies of climate change is that the better we live, the worse the world’s prospects become. That is because our modern lifestyles in industrialized societies still require the burning of plenty of fossil fuels. Here’s another irony: the more poorer nations become prosperous, the worse it will get for…

Despite all the dire warnings about the impending environmental impacts of global warming, climate change remains an abstract concept for many people around the world, Malaysians included. That is because the effects of climate change still remain largely unnoticeable in many parts of the world. The days may feel a…

Take a deep breath because you won’t like this. Scientists from the US and Germany say the long-term effects of global warming could be even worse than we’ve thought. In fact, we could be in for an apocalyptic world where global temperatures are set to rise to extremes within a lifetime….

When it comes to the effects of climate change, myriad species will end up suffering its consequences. Polar bears, for instance, are already facing the prospects of losing their icy habitat as a result of ever-shrinking ice cover in the Arctic. Some other species, though, will benefit from the effects…

We sure love our refrigerators and air-conditioners. Without them, life in a tropical country like Malaysia would be a whole lot harder. The trouble, though, is that these appliances currently use harmful hydrofluorocrabon gases (HFCs), which have been proven to contribute to climate change. In other words, just as we…

We’ve set another record on climate change. But there is nothing to celebrate about that. In late September, levels of atmospheric carbon surpassed 400 parts per million (ppm) – well above 350ppm, which is still considered safe by scientists. Worse: the increased level of atmospheric carbon is here to stay permanently….

Ask Prime Minister Najib Razak and his ministers, and Malaysia is among the world’s leading nations when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. By 2020, the date when an international action plan on carbon reductions comes into effect, Malaysia will have reduced its emissions by 40% compared to 2005…

Even with the parlous state of wildlife preservation, it is rare to witness the slow but seemingly inexorable death of entire ecosystems in real time right before your eyes. Yet that’s what’s happening to the region’s coral reefs far and wide. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, a wonder of the planet’s…

Coral bleaching. The very term evokes something ominous – and an ominous development it indeed is. As water temperatures rise, often as a result of climate change-triggered heat waves, corals (fragile creatures as they are) begin to turn white. That’s because warmer water temperatures cause corals to shed the zooxanthellae…