News & Comment

The Census of Marine Life has succeeded in raising awareness about marine biodiversity, and contributed much to our understanding of what lives where. But the project has fallen short of its goal to estimate species abundance.

John S. Pallister and Wendy A. McCausland rushed to the aid of their Saudi Arabian colleagues to advise on an emerging earthquake emergency.

The foundation of the marine food web is faltering, according to a century-long data set.

Mining could provide a steady stream of income for Afghanistan. But the mere promise of a stable economy does not justify all sacrifices.

Nardy Kip, Julia F. van Winden, Huub J. M. Op den Camp and an array of colleagues braved hostile acidic peat bogs around the world in a feat of truly collaborative research.

The 2009 L'Aquila earthquake illustrates catastrophic shortcomings in the flow of information between scientists and the public.

Climate science at the University of East Anglia is sound but lacking in transparency, according to the three official reports. But making data accessible will not be sufficient to guard against future attacks.

Short-lived greenhouse gases and black-carbon aerosols have contributed to past climate warming. Curbing their emissions and quantifying the forcing by all short-lived components could both mitigate climate change in the short term and help to refine projections of global warming.

Accusations by sceptics have steered climate researchers into an unproductive battle. They should now rise above the debate and help develop models of the coupled climate–socioeconomic system to advise policymakers.

Science has successfully established the discussion of climate change in the global arena. Following the Copenhagen crisis in climate policy, attention needs to be shifted from global goals to societally relevant, local and pragmatic countermeasures.

Veerabhadran Ramanathan, James Schauer, Hung Nguyen and colleagues found the Beijing Olympics to be conducive to international collaboration in science, as well as sport, as they attempted to assess the effect of emission restrictions on climate forcing.

Thomson Reuters has released its 2009 journal impact factors. We thank all our authors, referees and readers for their continuing trust and support.