Posts
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Switchyard Project: It’s all about the weather
One can only imagine what kind of a pilot one has to be to fly in the arctic regions and land on sea-ice under weather conditions as we have experienced already – fog above the ice and clouds covering the area with very low visibility.
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Reusing Dirty Water
Columbia Water Center guest lecturer Raymond Farinato talks about increasing water supply by reusing wastewater in industrial applications.
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Here Comes the Flood: The Army Corps Prepares to Blow the Levees to Save Cairo, Illinois
The US Army corps of Engineers is preparing to blow up levees on the Ohio River near Bird’s Point Missouri in order to save the town of Cairo, Illinois.
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Making Peace: New Book Provides Tools for Solving Intractable Conflicts
Five percent of all difficult conflicts end in a destructive quagmire. Think of the current debate over global warming or the Israel-Palestine conflict. How can we overcome these? An Earth Institute psychologist, Peter T. Coleman, offers tactics in his new book, The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts. Coleman, who also heads Columbia’s…
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A chorus of bloggers passes the 1,000 mark on the Earth Institute’s State of the Planet
As the State of the Planet blog surpassed 1,000 entries, we decided to take a look at the numbers and compile a list of the 10 most visited pages. Some are individual postings; others are pages that highlight our coverage of conferences, expeditions or programs. Since our launch, we’ve brought you posts from expeditions in…
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How to reduce weather risk (and make a little green)
People understand that weather can affect certain markets — especially energy prices and other commodities — but its impact on portfolios more broadly might surprise. Just last week, a new study was released that estimated $485 billion of annual weather-related economic impact in the United States alone. Another calculated the effect at nearly 10 times that amount…
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Petermann Glacier: At a glacial pace?
We are beginning our focus on the land based ice of northern Greenland. Flying out of Thule places us close to Petermann Glacier situated in Greenland’s northwest corner. The focus of our first flight of this phase of the project (the overall 29th flight of the season!) is Petermann Glacier. Perhaps Greenland’s most newsworthy glacier…
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What You Can Do to Protect Biodiversity
What can we as individuals do to help slow the loss of biodiversity? Since consumption of resources is a root cause of biodiversity loss, we can consume less and be more mindful about what we consume.
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Climate News Roundup: Week of 4/24
Carbon emissions ‘hidden’ in imported goods revealed, BBC, Apr. 25 Two recent studies present that the amount of carbon dioxide emissions “hidden” in imported goods is increasing. These emissions are not currently included in national estimates. “There is a degree of delusion about emissions cuts in developed nations. They are not really cuts at all…
