On Friday, April 2, 2010, the Earth Institute hosted the Climate Change Adaptation Student Research Showcase on Columbia University’s Morningside campus. Here, 14 students presented their groundbreaking work to identify, understand and reduce the effects of climate change in New York City. The event was the culmination of the Climate Change Adaptation Initiative where student…
The International Research Institute for Climate and Society is starting to get serious about the use of climate information to inform disaster preparedness and management. This includes efforts growing from the IRI’s Partnership to Save Lives with the International Federation of Red Cross/Red Crescent Socieities, as well as those related to the upcoming Climate and…
Nature is keeping us in check at every turn. With weather and volcanic ash clouds limiting visibility we have to regularly rearrange plans, but most days we are able to capture a fairly complete set of data.The flight over Russell Glacier in Southwest Greenland (just inland from Kanger) was a redirect from a mission aborted…
Senators Kerry and Lieberman unveiled their comprehensive energy and climate change legislation, the American Power Act, at a press conference today. Kerry claims the bill will set achievable reduction targets while creating huge benefits for American consumers. Though a more comprehensive analysis is certainly warranted, for now we’ll just stick to highlights of the 987-page…
A test site for a process called ‘Deep Green’ will be built off the coast of Northern Ireland in 2011, according to Minesto, a Saab spinoff. Sea kites will fly deep under water, using ocean currents to lift them, while an attached turbine harvests the the kinetic energy and turns it into electricity.
Today’s flight had to be carefully planned in order to avoid the volcanic ash plume still drifting from Iceland, so we flew to the east coast of Greenland to survey the Helheim glacier first. Glaciologists refer to Helheim glacier as one of ‘The big three’ in Greenland. The ‘big three’ (Helheim, Jakobshavn/Ilulissat and Kangerdlussuaq) are among…
Pastoralists are people who live mostly in dry, remote areas, whose livelihoods depend on their intimate knowledge of the surrounding ecosystem and on the wellbeing of their livestock (IFAD). Most pastoralists raise livestock and practice animal husbandry consisting usually of camels, goats, cattle, yaks, sheep, horses, llamas, alpacas, reindeer and vicunas. Pastoralists tend to be…
As I walk with Community Health Workers in the Millennium Villages throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, I notice the long distances, endless demand for services and the individual hardship they endure to reach every member of the community. In the past few years, the nature of their work has profoundly changed as cell-phones become a nearly ubiquitous…
Big Wind Farm Off Cape Cod Gets Approval, New York Times In a press conference on Wednesday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced — after nine years of regulatory review – that plans for the nation’s first offshore wind farm were approved for construction. The controversial decision faced resistance from both Democrats and Republicans, including the…