Climate264
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Irrigation’s Cooling Effects May Mask Warming–For Now
If Water Runs Short, Some Regions May Suffer Significantly
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The Pearl of Africa
My cell phone rang in the middle of the night. “Are you in Kampala?” On the other line was my husband informing me that two bombs went off in Uganda’s capital city just several hours before, killing scores of people gathered at public spots to watch the final game of the World Cup. I was…
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Climate News Roundup – Week of 8/23
Last week: the Obama administration sides with utilities in a case about climate change, a climate change education center is set to be opened in New Orleans, New England trees are under attack by an invasive caterpillar, and under political pressure BP withdraws its application permits for drilling off of the coast of Greenland.
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Deutsche Bank and Columbia Climate Center Enhance Global Climate Change Policy Tracker
The Earth Institute, Columbia University is pleased to announce that Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisors (DBCCA) of Deutsche Asset Management will continue work with Columbia Climate Center (CCC) researchers to update and enhance their Global Climate Change Policy Tracker. The Policy Tracker is a computer model that estimates the impact of policies on greenhouse gas…
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A Beginner’s Guide to Climate Models
Climate models are an important tool for scientists to understand the complexities of Earth’s climate. These computer simulations incorporate both theory and direct observations of the past and present in order to project climate into the future. Because of this synthesizing role, and because their output takes the recognizable shape of maps, these models lay…
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Is There an Ethics of Climate Change? Missing Conversations, New Challenges
(A link to an MP3 audio recording of this event is located towards the middle of the article.) Last spring, the Columbia Climate Center and the M.A. in Climate and Society program co-hosted a discussion panel on climate change and ethics. Ethics is a field of philosophy that can help to resolve contradictory interests, and…
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Rolling a 13: Global Warming and Regional Water Management in Pakistan and Russia
On July 28th in Peshawar, Pakistan, it rained more in one day than it had ever previously rained for the entire month. In the face of that kind of event, it’s hard not to think that we are entering unprecedented times. (It is still raining, with forecasts of more to come, with 1,600 people dead—at…
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The Policy Buffet (Part 5): How the Oil Spill Killed the Climate Bill — and Why the Economy Didn’t Help, Either
The climate bill has come and gone. Just two months ago, it seemed as though the bill stood a fighting chance, given the buffet of options available to policymakers.
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The Policy Buffet (Part 4): Eulogizing the Climate Bill that Wasn’t
On July 22, just days before the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared that the last decade was the warmest on record, the United States Senate abandoned its effort to put a price on carbon. Comprehensive climate and energy legislation was on life-support for weeks until Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) announced that…
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