Author: Kevin Krajick35

Kevin Krajick is the Earth Institute’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.

Haiti: Physics of Quakes Past, and Future

The earthquake that struck Haiti took place along what is called a strike-slip fault—a place where tectonic plates on each side of a fault line are moving horizontally in opposite directions, like hands rubbing together. When these plates lock together, stress builds; eventually they slip; and this produces shaking. This quake was fairly shallow; it…
Witnessing the Desperation of the Poor

At the moment the Haiti earthquake struck, two Earth Institute staffers were in Port-au-Prince assessing how to make the country less poor, and less vulnerable to natural disasters. Marc Levy and Alexander Fischer of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network were working with the Haiti Regeneration Initiative, a nascent program to repair Haiti’s…
Why Copenhagen Will, and Should, Fail

One of the main scientists who convinced world leaders to take note of climate change says that the Copenhagen talks are so flawed, it would be better if they collapse so the process can resume from scratch. James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (an Earth Institute affiliate) told The Guardian newspaper,…
Shaking Out Some Money

That rumbling you feel is not necessarily a passing subway. New York City and the surrounding region gets a surprising number of small earthquakes, and a 2008 study from the region’s network of seismographs, run by Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, suggests that the risk of a damaging one is not negligible. This week, the federal government announced a major upgrade…
Down by the River, Running Out of Water

Too little water for too many people is a growing problem in poor countries–and in thriving suburban Rockland County, N.Y., just north of New York City. A new website, Water Resources in Rockland County, lays out the case, and neatly puts it into global context. The site is run by the Earth Institute’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network…
Cities at a Turning Point

Scientists warn that many cities around the world may soon face big climate-change challenges: rising seas; shrinking water supplies; killer summer heat waves; rises in water-borne diseases as temperatures go up and sewers are swamped. No one is predicting that, say, London or Miami will simply drop beneath the waves–but these and other cities will probably have to be redesigned if…
Picturing Climate Change

Intense public interest in changing climate has led to a wave of books. Among the entries, one upcoming standout is Climate Change: Picturing the Science, from W.W. Norton in April. The book is a journey around the globe via essays and images from top-flight scientists and photographers. The visuals and narration range from field research in remote polar regions to the giant gates now being erected in European…
Foot Forward

In 1968, 14-year-old Paul Olsen of suburban Livingston, N.J., and his friend Tony Lessa heard that dinosaur tracks had been found in a nearby quarry. They raced over on their bikes. “I went ballistic,” Olsen recalls. Over the next few years, the boys uncovered and studied thousands of tracks and other fossils there, often working into the night. It opened the…
What Was That Big Bang?

Iran seems to be moving toward an atomic bomb; North Korea reportedly could build a half dozen; and terrorist attacks have revived the specter of a faceoff between nuclear-armed Pakistan and India. Yet the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, forbidding nuclear testing, has failed to win ratification from the U.S. Senate and lawmakers of some other nations. Opponents say scientists cannot reliably detect clandestine tests: Why should…

Haiti: Physics of Quakes Past, and Future

The earthquake that struck Haiti took place along what is called a strike-slip fault—a place where tectonic plates on each side of a fault line are moving horizontally in opposite directions, like hands rubbing together. When these plates lock together, stress builds; eventually they slip; and this produces shaking. This quake was fairly shallow; it…
Witnessing the Desperation of the Poor

At the moment the Haiti earthquake struck, two Earth Institute staffers were in Port-au-Prince assessing how to make the country less poor, and less vulnerable to natural disasters. Marc Levy and Alexander Fischer of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network were working with the Haiti Regeneration Initiative, a nascent program to repair Haiti’s…
Why Copenhagen Will, and Should, Fail

One of the main scientists who convinced world leaders to take note of climate change says that the Copenhagen talks are so flawed, it would be better if they collapse so the process can resume from scratch. James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (an Earth Institute affiliate) told The Guardian newspaper,…
Shaking Out Some Money

That rumbling you feel is not necessarily a passing subway. New York City and the surrounding region gets a surprising number of small earthquakes, and a 2008 study from the region’s network of seismographs, run by Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, suggests that the risk of a damaging one is not negligible. This week, the federal government announced a major upgrade…
Down by the River, Running Out of Water

Too little water for too many people is a growing problem in poor countries–and in thriving suburban Rockland County, N.Y., just north of New York City. A new website, Water Resources in Rockland County, lays out the case, and neatly puts it into global context. The site is run by the Earth Institute’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network…
Cities at a Turning Point

Scientists warn that many cities around the world may soon face big climate-change challenges: rising seas; shrinking water supplies; killer summer heat waves; rises in water-borne diseases as temperatures go up and sewers are swamped. No one is predicting that, say, London or Miami will simply drop beneath the waves–but these and other cities will probably have to be redesigned if…
Picturing Climate Change

Intense public interest in changing climate has led to a wave of books. Among the entries, one upcoming standout is Climate Change: Picturing the Science, from W.W. Norton in April. The book is a journey around the globe via essays and images from top-flight scientists and photographers. The visuals and narration range from field research in remote polar regions to the giant gates now being erected in European…
Foot Forward

In 1968, 14-year-old Paul Olsen of suburban Livingston, N.J., and his friend Tony Lessa heard that dinosaur tracks had been found in a nearby quarry. They raced over on their bikes. “I went ballistic,” Olsen recalls. Over the next few years, the boys uncovered and studied thousands of tracks and other fossils there, often working into the night. It opened the…
What Was That Big Bang?

Iran seems to be moving toward an atomic bomb; North Korea reportedly could build a half dozen; and terrorist attacks have revived the specter of a faceoff between nuclear-armed Pakistan and India. Yet the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, forbidding nuclear testing, has failed to win ratification from the U.S. Senate and lawmakers of some other nations. Opponents say scientists cannot reliably detect clandestine tests: Why should…