Posts
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From Development Practitioner to National Leader: Lessons from Garry Conille, Prime Minister of Haiti
Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille met with students and scientists of the Earth Institute to explore core issues of Haiti’s growth and development.
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High Hopes and Low Expectations for 17th UN Climate Change Conference
Numerous please for comprehensive action aimed at the 17th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa have been issued. However, many doubt that meaningful policies will be passed and have criticized the United States’ position in these talks.
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AGU Honors Scientists from Lamont-Doherty
A half-dozen Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory scientists were to be honored by the American Geophysical Union at its annual fall conference in San Francisco tonight.
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Where Continents Divide, and Rocks Rise from the Deep
Along the Woodlark Rift in eastern Papua New Guinea, continents are breaking apart, “like a snake opening its mouth.” Geologic processes that are still a mystery are actively stretching the crust and pushing huge masses of rock, formed under immense pressures as deep as 100 kilometers below, to the surface.
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Natural Disasters: The Upside
Floods, volcanoes, earthquakes–really, very little good news comes out of this sort of thing. Maybe the occasional feel-good story about, say, a child miraculously dug from the rubble days later, tired but unharmed and in good spirits, having survived on a cache of crackers and Coke. Actually, says John Mutter, an Earth Institute professor of sustainability studies, disasters can sometimes…
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Energy and emissions in a post-recession world
On November 29th Dr. Fatih Birol, Chief Economist of the International Energy Agency, gave a lecture at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) as part of the school’s “Leaders in Global Energy” lecture series. Dr. Birol presented the highlights of the IEA’s recently released “World Energy Outlook 2011”, an annual analysis of…
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A Lasting Impression: Kumasi Stakeholders Truly Committed to Bettering their City
My lasting impression of Kumasi, Ghana, is one of incredible warmth; traveling there with the MCI team for the Kumasi Stakeholder Workshop, which was held October 11-13, I was happy to discover that the much talked-about “Ghanaian friendliness” was a generalization that proved to be true. I was also inspired by the number of Kumasi…
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A Meeting of Science and Human Impact
A talk Monday by Cynthia Rosenzweig of the Center for Climate Systems Research serves as a good example of how some of the hard science being discussed at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting intersects directly with human welfare. She outlined the progress of a new global project that will help scientists produce more accurate…
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Rolling into Open Water in the Central Pacific
We nicknamed our project NoMelt because we seek to characterize a mature, pristine oceanic plate far from its volcanic origin at a Mid-Ocean Ridge, and away from areas of pronounced volcanism and melting that subsequently alter the structure of the plate. Our site in the central Pacific fits these scientific needs. However, one downside is…
