Author: Kevin Krajick28

Kevin Krajick is the Columbia Climate School’s senior editor for science news. He grew up in the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley of upstate New York, where he worked at his high-school newspaper. He started his professional career as a reporter covering crime, police and prisons across the United States. He has since reported from all 50 U.S. states and 30-some countries, writing about science, medicine, immigration and other subjects. His work has been featured in National Geographic, Newsweek, The New Yorker, Science, Smithsonian and many other publications. He was a 1981 finalist for the National Magazine Award for Public Service for his reporting on organized crime’s links to the toxic waste-disposal industry. He is two-time winner of the American Geophysical Union’s Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism, and his work has been featured repeatedly in the yearly book “Best American Science and Nature Writing.” His widely praised 2001 book “Barren Lands” is the true account of how two prospectors discovered diamonds in Canada’s remote far north. Krajick holds degrees in comparative literature and journalism from Columbia University. He lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with his wife and a tiny white dog.

The Southern Ocean Is Breathing in Carbon Dioxide at a Healthy Rate

“In the last 10 years, we were afraid that the Southern Ocean was going to quit giving us a break from climate change. This study shows that it’s recovered its ability to take up carbon dioxide, and that’s good news.”
Photo Essay: The Mystery of North American Diamonds

People have been finding loose diamonds across the United States and Canada since the early 1800s, but for the most part, no one knows where they came from. It was not until the 1990s that geologists tracked down the first commercial deposits, on the remote tundra of Canada’s Northwest Territories. Yaakov Weiss, a geochemist at…
Cracking Open Diamonds for Messages From the Deep Earth

“After a diamond captures something, from that moment until millions of years later in my lab, that material stays the same. We can look at diamonds as time capsules, as messengers from a place we have no other way of seeing.”
Warming Climate Is Deepening California Drought

Scientists Say Increasing Heat Drives Moisture from Ground
Dennis E. Hayes, Mapper of the World’s Ocean Beds

Dennis E. Hayes, a marine geophysicist who advanced mapping of the world’s ocean floors, died at his home in New York City on Aug. 6. He was 76.
The Disaster Profiteers

In his new book “The Disaster Profiteers,” Earth Institute professor John Mutter argues that natural disasters are bad for the poor–and can be great for the rich, who often seize resources meant for recovery, when no one is looking.
Has the Green Revolution Really Succeeded?

Over the past 50 years, human population has more than doubled, but cereal-crop production has grown even faster. Unfortunately, newer high-yield crops are less nutritious.
Hospitalizations Increase Near Fracking Sites, Study Shows

People living in areas of Pennsylvania where hydraulic fracturing is booming are suffering increasing rates of hospitalization, a new study says. The study is one of a small but growing number suggesting that the practice could be affecting human health.
How Genomics Can Help Famine-Prone Nations Weather Climate Change

A team of biologists and agronomists has identified genomic signatures in plants indicating they are resilient to stresses such as drought or toxic soils. The multi-year study, expected to help developing-world farmers, was done with sorghum, one of the world’s most common crops.

The Southern Ocean Is Breathing in Carbon Dioxide at a Healthy Rate

“In the last 10 years, we were afraid that the Southern Ocean was going to quit giving us a break from climate change. This study shows that it’s recovered its ability to take up carbon dioxide, and that’s good news.”
Photo Essay: The Mystery of North American Diamonds

People have been finding loose diamonds across the United States and Canada since the early 1800s, but for the most part, no one knows where they came from. It was not until the 1990s that geologists tracked down the first commercial deposits, on the remote tundra of Canada’s Northwest Territories. Yaakov Weiss, a geochemist at…
Cracking Open Diamonds for Messages From the Deep Earth

“After a diamond captures something, from that moment until millions of years later in my lab, that material stays the same. We can look at diamonds as time capsules, as messengers from a place we have no other way of seeing.”
Warming Climate Is Deepening California Drought

Scientists Say Increasing Heat Drives Moisture from Ground
Dennis E. Hayes, Mapper of the World’s Ocean Beds

Dennis E. Hayes, a marine geophysicist who advanced mapping of the world’s ocean floors, died at his home in New York City on Aug. 6. He was 76.
The Disaster Profiteers

In his new book “The Disaster Profiteers,” Earth Institute professor John Mutter argues that natural disasters are bad for the poor–and can be great for the rich, who often seize resources meant for recovery, when no one is looking.
Has the Green Revolution Really Succeeded?

Over the past 50 years, human population has more than doubled, but cereal-crop production has grown even faster. Unfortunately, newer high-yield crops are less nutritious.
Hospitalizations Increase Near Fracking Sites, Study Shows

People living in areas of Pennsylvania where hydraulic fracturing is booming are suffering increasing rates of hospitalization, a new study says. The study is one of a small but growing number suggesting that the practice could be affecting human health.
How Genomics Can Help Famine-Prone Nations Weather Climate Change

A team of biologists and agronomists has identified genomic signatures in plants indicating they are resilient to stresses such as drought or toxic soils. The multi-year study, expected to help developing-world farmers, was done with sorghum, one of the world’s most common crops.