Climate280
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Climate News Roundup – Week of 10/25
Obama Putting $3.4 Bn Toward a ‘Smart’ Power Grid, Associated Press President Obama pledges $3.4 bn in government support for 100 different research projects in “smart” grid engineering, ranging in size from $400,00 to $200 million. Speaking Tuesday at the DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center in west Florida, Obama likened the search for power…
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Shifting Perceptions on Global Warming
Last week the Pew Center released a new poll regarding the “Changing Opinions About Global Warming.” The polls are certainly telling, if not alarming: in April 2008 71% of Americans believed there was solid evidence that the earth was warming. That’s down to 57% this month. Perhaps more importantly, the percentage of those people who…
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At Home Floating Over Antarctica
Nick Frearson, Gravimeter Instrument Team, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory: PUNTA ARENAS, Chile–Skimming across the Weddell Sea at 250 miles per hour I am finally on the way to Antarctica. Even though my visit to the white continent will be at a height of 1500 ft I still feel a sense of ‘homecoming’, as if I am…
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Over Pine Island Glacier, West Antarctica
PUNTA ARENAS, Chile–After flying for several hours over a windswept Southern Ocean, the mission director announces that we will be slowly descending towards Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier. Just below are the Hudson Mountains, a small group of extinct volcanoes poking through the ice. As we approach our survey area, John Sonntag from NASA’s flight facility…
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Climate News Roundup – Week of 10/18
WWF: We Have Until 2014 to Stop Global Warming, Popular Science The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) publishes a new report concluding that by 2014 the world must fully embrace low-carbon technologies. By “embrace” they mean a minimum growth of 22% in green industries, which they estimate could translate into a 63% reduction in emissions by…
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Risks Cloud Financing for Curbing Climate Change
Policies Uncertain and May Not Stop Warming, Says Study
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Scientists Visit Carbon Capture and Sequestration Site in Iceland
Reducing carbon dioxide emissions while meeting the world’s ever increasing energy needs is one of the greatest challenges of this century. Scientists, researchers and students at the Earth Institute, Columbia University, with the enduring support of donors like Gerry and Marguerite Lenfest, who helped establish the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy, are developing novel approaches…
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Potential El Nino Impacts
The International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) has recently released a series of documents designed to walk policymakers through the potential impacts of the current El Niño. In addition to the health-related report featured earlier, two new papers highlight weather and socioeconomic concerns associated with current climatic conditions. As readers of this blog…
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Assessing Global Metrics for Agriculture
On October 1, I attended a symposium entitled “Going Beyond Rhetoric: Metrics for Assessing Global Agriculture,” hosted by the Earth Institute and convened at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Fifteen stories in the air, we were surrounded by miles of urban landscape — Queens to the east, Manhattan to the west, and no…
