Less than a week into his presidency, Barack Obama is poised to take his first step on the long road to averting climate catastrophe. The Times reports that Obama will allow California to raise automobile emissions standards for greenhouse gases above the national level. (OK, technically Obama has only ordered the EPA to review California’s…
I couldn’t have been happier when, back in October, my local electricity company offered me the chance to switch to alternative energy. The colorful advertisement from Consolidated Edison was festooned with windmills and said the switch would lead to only a 10 percent increase in the average family’s electricity bill. Here was a chance to…
There’s an article in today’s New York Times about PepsiCo’s effort to calculate the carbon footprint of its products, starting with Tropicana orange juice. A half-gallon of Tropicana represents the equivalent of 3.75 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions. This is roughly the same amount of carbon dioxide emitted by a 5-mile drive to the grocery…
I’ve been meaning to blog about Lonnie Thompson’s visit to Lamont last week; I suppose it’s the frigid temperatures here in New York that have kept melting tropical glaciers on my own back burner. For those who don’t know, Lonnie Thompson runs the Ice Core Paleoclimatology Research Group at the Ohio State’s Byrd Polar Research…
There’s been a lot of buzz lately (for example, here and here) about President-Elect Obama’s picks for key science and environment positions, many of who are advocates for a robust response to climate change. Who are these people and what will each of them be responsible for in the new administration? In part one of…
First off, I apologize for the inexcusably long time between posts. From now on I hope to post at least once a week (still not good enough, I know). This is Part II of our look at the climate change reduction efforts (or lack thereof) of Canada, our fascinating yet sometimes forgotten neighbor to the…
Researchers have long recognized the Arctic as a region that shows early and amplified signals of anthropogenically-driven global climate change (e.g., IPCC 2001; Technical Basis, p. 807). Among the most dramatic and most widely watched changes in this region each summer is the retreat of the Arctic sea ice extent. Since it first became possible…
Earlier today it was announced that Wallace S. Broecker, Newberry Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, has received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Climate Change Research. In announcing the award, the jury cited Wally for his seminal research on ocean chemistry and for pioneering the development of Earth System…
This blog, Climate Matters @ Columbia, is brought to you by the Columbia Climate Center, created in 2007 by the Earth Institute, Columbia University. The mission of the Columbia Climate Center is to integrate climate related research throughout Columbia University and to build upon it to address the challenges of understanding, predicting, adapting to, and…