Author: David Funkhouser12

I’m a writer and former content manager and science writer for the Earth Institute and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. I worked for 35 years at newspapers around New England, including The MetroWest News in Framingham, Mass.; The New Haven Register and The Hartford Courant in Connecticut. Visit website »

Making Sense of Climate’s Impact on Food Security

From warmer temperatures to natural disasters such as flooding and drought, changing patterns of climate are having billion-dollar impacts on our food-growing systems. But scientists are struggling to find ways to measure and predict what may happen in the future—and to translate that into policies to help feed a bulging world population.
Extreme Weather Adds Up to Troubling Future

Extreme weather and climate-related events already have cost the United States billions of dollars. A recent symposium focused on what we know about the causes and how changing climate affects agriculture, water supplies, wildlife and our economy.
Rosario’s Farm: Rising Tides, Shrimp from the Forest

Rosario Costa-Cabral and her brothers harvest hundreds of fruits, oils and wood products from the stream-laced forest of the Amazon River delta. But the climate here is changing: Tides rise higher, and seasonal floods are growing worse.
Glenn Denning’s Road to Bali, and the Earth Institute

Glenn Denning grew up in Brisbane, Australia, loved the outdoors and hated the idea of working in an office. And, he really didn’t have any urge to go to other countries. Then he happened to overhear a conversation in a hallway between two students. That bit of serendipity sent him on a road to a…
‘This is a wake-up call – don’t hit the snooze button’

For years before Hurricane Sandy charged ashore on Monday, researchers from the Earth Institute knew what was coming. As the region struggles to recover from this “superstorm,” we asked some of them to consider the lessons we can learn as we move forward.
The Science and the Lessons of Hurricane Sandy

Reports and studies have been imagining events like Sandy for years now; so why were so few people ready to listen? And will this lead to a serious conversation about climate change in the halls of power?
Health Systems Expert Wins Young Leader Award

Dr. Prabhjot Singh, an international health systems expert at the Earth Institute who helped design community health worker systems for the Millennium Villages Project across 10 African countries, has won a $40,000 Young Leader Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Cities Are Where the Action Is, Post-Rio

Representatives of the worlds’ cities came to Rio in June for a series of events focused on the problems pressing in on the burgeoning urban population. Mayors around the world already are working on solutions and came out of Rio with concrete commitments for the future.
The New Climate Dice: The Odds Have Shifted to Hot

This year’s Midwest heat wave and some other recent extreme weather events are no fluke of nature, but a consequence of a warming planet, according to an analysis of climate data by NASA scientists.

Making Sense of Climate’s Impact on Food Security

From warmer temperatures to natural disasters such as flooding and drought, changing patterns of climate are having billion-dollar impacts on our food-growing systems. But scientists are struggling to find ways to measure and predict what may happen in the future—and to translate that into policies to help feed a bulging world population.
Extreme Weather Adds Up to Troubling Future

Extreme weather and climate-related events already have cost the United States billions of dollars. A recent symposium focused on what we know about the causes and how changing climate affects agriculture, water supplies, wildlife and our economy.
Rosario’s Farm: Rising Tides, Shrimp from the Forest

Rosario Costa-Cabral and her brothers harvest hundreds of fruits, oils and wood products from the stream-laced forest of the Amazon River delta. But the climate here is changing: Tides rise higher, and seasonal floods are growing worse.
Glenn Denning’s Road to Bali, and the Earth Institute

Glenn Denning grew up in Brisbane, Australia, loved the outdoors and hated the idea of working in an office. And, he really didn’t have any urge to go to other countries. Then he happened to overhear a conversation in a hallway between two students. That bit of serendipity sent him on a road to a…
‘This is a wake-up call – don’t hit the snooze button’

For years before Hurricane Sandy charged ashore on Monday, researchers from the Earth Institute knew what was coming. As the region struggles to recover from this “superstorm,” we asked some of them to consider the lessons we can learn as we move forward.
The Science and the Lessons of Hurricane Sandy

Reports and studies have been imagining events like Sandy for years now; so why were so few people ready to listen? And will this lead to a serious conversation about climate change in the halls of power?
Health Systems Expert Wins Young Leader Award

Dr. Prabhjot Singh, an international health systems expert at the Earth Institute who helped design community health worker systems for the Millennium Villages Project across 10 African countries, has won a $40,000 Young Leader Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Cities Are Where the Action Is, Post-Rio

Representatives of the worlds’ cities came to Rio in June for a series of events focused on the problems pressing in on the burgeoning urban population. Mayors around the world already are working on solutions and came out of Rio with concrete commitments for the future.
The New Climate Dice: The Odds Have Shifted to Hot

This year’s Midwest heat wave and some other recent extreme weather events are no fluke of nature, but a consequence of a warming planet, according to an analysis of climate data by NASA scientists.