Climate186
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Viewing Melting Glaciers, Via Microscope and Moving Images
Two women investigating climate change from different perspectives—Christine McCarthy, a geophysicist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and Denise Iris, a multimedia artist from Brooklyn—had a chance to spend several days together recently. In the Rock Mechanics Lab at Lamont, where McCarthy works, and a nearby “cold room” chilled to the climate of an industrial freezer, they…
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Students Learn About a Plan to Rehabilitate the Jordan River Valley
Nine Columbia graduate students landed in Amman, Jordan last Friday night, after over 20 hours of travel, to begin the field study component of their course in Regional Environmental Sustainability in the Middle East. Though exhausted, they were eager to get to the hotel to meet students from Tel Aviv University – who had crossed…
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From the Nile to the Sundarbans: the Undergraduate Capstones
This spring, students in the Undergraduate Program in Sustainable Development presented innovative solutions to sustainability issues as part of their Capstone Workshop. Their clients ranged from the United States Military Academy at West Point to the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.
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Under Pressure, a (Simulated) Climate Agreement
Coming up with an international climate agreement is hard work. But the students at the Make It Work simulated negotiations in Paris managed to find a way, though they left disagreeing over just how effective the pact would be.
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Hurricane Histories and Carbon Mysteries
The Bahamas might be a vacation destination for most people. But for us, they represent an excellent site to study several different questions about past, present and future climates.
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Learning to Compromise
After countless hours of workshopping, brainstorming, writing, and rewriting, I thought that a consensus between parties would not be so far off. However, with 220 opinions boiled down into 42 delegations, it was painfully difficult.
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Behind the Expected Quiet 2015 Hurricane Season
On May 27, 2015, NOAA officially announced a likely below-normal Atlantic Hurricane season is coming up. The range for the possible numbers of major hurricanes is 0-2. What are the reasons behind it? How precise are these numbers?
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Tapping into Earth’s Secret History
In a study published last week, Lamont post-doctoral scholar Heather Ford and coauthors used 4 million-year-old fossils from the Pliocene to reconstruct the physical features of the Pacific Ocean that would have shaped the environment during a critical juncture in Earth history.
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Sustainable Shipping and EPA’s Truck Mileage Standards
The huge vertically integrated companies and large factory complexes of the 20th century have been replaced by the networked organization of the 21st. This enables more specialized and efficient production because the cost of shipping is low enough to be easily covered by the reduced costs of production. Shipping of finished products is also increasing…
By studying thousands of buildings and analyzing their electricity use, Columbia Climate School Dean Alexis Abramson has been able to uncover ways to significantly cut energy consumption and emissions. Watch the Video: “Engineering a Cooler Future Through Smarter Buildings“
