Climate223
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Getting There = 0.5*fun
Hello from the land of the midnight sun! We have just arrived by way of the famous Dalton Highway at Toolik Field Station, a Long Term Ecological Research site of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. We pulled up to the station just in time for dinner, a quick trip to the field station’s wood-fired sauna,…
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A Major Legal Victory for Climate Science
Though most attention last week focused on the Supreme Court ruling upholding federal reform of the health-care system, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued the most important judicial decision on climate change in five years. That decision upholds the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate greenhouse gases, and it…
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Studying Cutting-Edge Carbon Storage Technologies
This past June, PhD candidates from Earth Institute’s Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy Miriam Okun and Yinghuang Ji traveled to Alabama to attend Research Experience in Carbon Sequestration (RECS), an intensive 10-day program hosted by Southern Company and sponsored by the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory. The program allowed participants to study cutting-edge…
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Mexico’s Climate Change Law
By Juan Carlos de Obeso Tuesday June 5th of 2012 will be remembered as a key date in the annals of climate change legislation. On this day Mr. Felipe Calderon, President of Mexico, signed a decree that enacted the General Climate Change Law, which had been previously approved by the Senate and the Deputy chamber.…
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Water Risks for Industry in India – New Report from Columbia Water Center
Companies globally are increasingly focused on the emerging risk of water scarcity, and so are their investors. The combination of rising populations, rapid economic growth in developing countries, and climate variability is triggering enormous water availability challenges around the world. We are at a critical juncture where the crises of food, energy and water, commodity…
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Women Making Waves
There are quite a few graduate students aboard the Langseth but that isn’t anything out of the ordinary. What is a little unusual is that we’re all women, which is remarkable given the demographics of our field. Read on to find out why we’re proud to be making waves in the South Pacific and in…
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Goals for Rio: A Path to Sustainability
In an article published in The Lancet, Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs outlines his own ideas for sustainable development goals, and how how these goals can build on the Millennium Development Goals, the UN’s set of targets that aim to reduce extreme poverty and boost social well-being in many other ways by 2015.
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For Rio+20, a Call to Preserve Biodiversity
An estimated 9 million species of living things inhabit the Earth. But those species are disappearing at an alarming rate, and this loss of biodiversity appears to be a major driver of environmental changes that can affect the biological and chemical processes that humans rely on.
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Photo Essay: In the Heart of Dryness
Explore the country of Niger in this visual essay while learning about the importance of seasonal forecasting to the Sahel, one of the poorest and most climate-vulnerable regions in the world.
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“
