News Updates

New United Nations reports find that concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached record highs in 2023, and countries are failing to make the emissions cuts needed to curb devastating global warming, according to CBS News. But Bruce Guile and Raj Pandya still see hope—in human ingenuity. “As first steps,” they write in Issues, “we need to be ingenious enough to develop more useful forecasts; invest in applied research for adaptation; plan for the costs and economic consequences of global warming; and strengthen policies for risk mitigation, crisis avoidance, and protection of vulnerable populations.”

In a first for California, a county in the heart of the oil industry has approved a plan for capturing carbon dioxide emissions from gas field operations and storing the climate-warming gas deep underground. But Roger D. Aines and George Peridas argue in Issues that the state will need to do more to reach its goal of “achieving a completely carbon-neutral economy by 2045, and becoming carbon negative after that.” In some good news, the authors cite their study showing that there are “a host of ways” for capturing and storing carbon dioxide, and that they will be “a lot less costly than previously imagined.”

In something of a coming-of-age story, this year’s Nobel prizes in physics and chemistry recognize pioneers in developing and applying artificial intelligence, with recipients remarking on both the rewards and risks that may flow. Also reflecting this revolutionary emergence, a series of essays in Issues examines how AI is reshaping society and how humans can shape AI. Getting governance wrong could mean narrowing cultural narratives, curtailing creativity, and exploiting workers. In the essays, social scientists and humanities experts explore how to harness the interaction between AI and society, revealing urgent avenues for research and policy.

Hurricane Helene’s damaging push into the mountains of North Carolina was accompanied by a storm of false or misleading claims across various social media outlets, the AP reports. But how can society stop or mitigate the flow of flawed information? In Issues, Claire Wardle proposes ways for researchers, in particular, to step up. One key is to stop focusing on classifying the accuracy of individual posts, she writes, and to concentrate on better understanding the larger social picture, including how information being spread fits into people’s personal narratives in support of their desire for connection, community, and affirmation.

California just enacted a comprehensive state ban on farming octopuses for human consumption and on selling any octopus raised as food. This action aligns with arguments presented in Issues by Jennifer Jacquet and three other international scholars. “We believe that octopuses are particularly ill-suited to a life in captivity and mass-production, for reasons both ethical and ecological,” they write. The authors call on “governments, private companies, and academic institutions to stop investing in octopus farming now and to instead focus their efforts on achieving a truly sustainable and compassionate future for food production.”