Commentary in 2011

Resettlement of people living on islands in anticipation of climate impacts risks maladaptation, but some forms of population movement carry fewer risks and larger rewards in terms of adapting to climate change.

Methods for assessing the carbon footprints of products can favour low- over high-yielding agricultural systems when carbon removals are included.

Temporary carbon-sequestration and carbon-storage projects help offset fossil-fuel carbon emissions, but how effective are they?

Policies to protect the global climate offer an effective entry point for achieving society's multiple objectives for energy sustainability.

As the United Nations climate negotiations flounder, businesses are forging ahead with their own low-carbon standards. Have we passed a political tipping point for momentum on carbon action?

Feeding a growing population in a hotter world will require exploiting a far broader range of crop diversity than now — and that means valuing wild genes.

Do films such as Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth really make any difference to how we think and feel about climate change?

As the emerging field of geoengineering gains momentum, researchers must question the motivations behind their experiments and maintain an open dialogue with the public.

Humans rely on the social tool of reputation in many of their relationships; now its power should be deployed at the intergovernment level to help provoke action on climate change.

Arguments for action on climate change that appeal to social values, rather than individual wealth, are more likely to succeed in the long term.

The German decision to abandon its nuclear energy ambitions was driven by local politics not the wider emissions agenda.

As another Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report is mired in controversy, it's time for the influential body to uphold its own neutrality standards.

The accusation that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has produced a report that is biased by a conflict of interest is unfounded.

An introduction needs to be made between the rich cultural knowledge of social studies and the natural sciences.

Estimates of how much food we can grow in a warmer world are out of date. Researchers need to switch to more rigorous multi-model ensembles.

A global private carbon-labelling scheme for consumer products could fill the climate-policy gap by influencing the behaviour of consumers and corporate supply chains.

The biological world is responding rapidly to a changing climate, but attempts to attribute individual impacts to rising greenhouse gases are ill-advised.