Author: Columbia Climate School50
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Columbia Student Advises Community on How to Cut Greenhouse Gases
by Jessie Stensland Global warming is a hot issue these days. Former Vice President Al Gore is getting rave reviews for his movie about climate change. President George Bush finally admitted last year that human activity “may” be causing global warming. While the federal government has been resistant toward taking substantial steps to curb the…
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Cosmic Dust in Ice Cores Sheds Light on Earth’s Past Climate
Each year nearly 40,000 tons of cosmic dust fall to Earth from outer space. Now, the first successful chronological study of extraterrestrial dust in Antarctic ice has shown that this amount has remained largely constant over the past 30,000 years, a finding that could help refine efforts to understand the timing and effects of changes…
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Report #3: I’m Not Here to Eat Your Birds!
By Justin Nobel, Columbia University Earth and Environmental Sciences Journalism Student My first impressions of Africa came from reading National Geographic articles like those in 2000 and 2001 chronicling ecologist Michael Fay’s African “megatransect.” His 2,000-mile, 456-day trek across the rainforests of the Republic of the Congo, Cameroon and Gabon described an impenetrable wilderness unspoiled…
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It’s 2025. Where Do Most People Live?
Researchers at the Center for Climate Systems Research (CCSR), a part of The Earth Institute, have developed a high-resolution map of projected population change for the year 2025. The innovative map shows a world with large areas of population loss in parts of Eastern Europe and Asia, but significant gains elsewhere. The work, Mapping the…
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Report #4: Lessons Learned, Locally
By Justin Nobel, Columbia University Earth and Environmental Sciences Journalism Student My time here is coming to an end and I still can’t determine if development will prove sustainable for Sauri’s bird population. The goal of the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) is to help Sauri, and several other villages in sub-Saharan Africa, develop economically. The…
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Study Shows Lack of National Consensus on Teaching K-12 Students about Human-Environmental Impacts
The destruction caused by natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and human activities such as mountaintop removal mining are powerful examples of how the environment and society are tightly interwoven. But to what extent do, or should, state science curricula in the U.S. seek to investigate or influence the nature of this interaction? That is…
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The Earth Institute and the University of Iceland Sign Agreement to Promote Research Cooperation and Academic Exchange
The Earth Institute at Columbia University and the University of Iceland signed an agreement on June 13, 2006 endorsing increased academic exchange, scholarly collaboration and research between the two institutions. The agreement sets the stage for future cooperation on global climate change, sustainable development and technological responses to climate change. The Memorandum of Understanding was…
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Report #2: The Enchanting Tale of the Whydah Bird Tail
By Justin Nobel, Columbia University Earth and Environmental Sciences Journalism Student Sending a postcard home from Sauri requires four cinnamon-chested bee-eaters and one African fish eagle. Birds are popular in Kenya and their images are ubiquitous. Different species are featured on ten- and five-shilling stamps, appear in cell-phone advertisements and grace tourism posters in Nairobi’s…
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New Study of Glacial Retreat Shows that Much of the World Emerged from Last Ice Age at Nearly the Same Time
The end of the recurring, 100,000-year glacial cycles is one of the most prominent and readily identifiable features in records of the Earth’s recent climate history. Yet one of the most puzzling questions in climate science has been why different parts of the world, most notably Greenland, appear to have warmed at different times and…