Panel Tells City to Brace for Heat Waves, High Water
As the giant climate classroom in Copenhagen moves toward its closure, some will come away frustrated and even angry, while others may be satisfied or at the very least relieved. Whatever documents may be signed at the end of the meeting, these two weeks of December will have a lasting impact. The stresses on our…
Difficult as it is to discuss global warming in the midst of a snowstorm (such as Copenhagen is experiencing right now), discussions proceed on multiple tracks, though “tracks” implies more linearity and parallelism than actually exists. The hidden elephant (or polar bear) in many of the rooms is the U.S. Senate. Virtually every other […]
There are many shows taking place in Copenhagen right now. Where the real action is, however, is another question entirely. Over the weekend a mass demonstration — estimates of the number of participants range from 30,000 to 100,000 — took over parts of the city, leading to nearly 1,000 arrests. When I arrived at the…
With Copenhagen heading for an apparent impasse, the world faces an uncertain and potentially dire climate future. Of particular concern is the inability to predict how rainfall across the globe may change in intensity, frequency and seasonality. If there are droughts in some places and floods in others, there will be direct impacts on agriculture,…
Using Climate and Weather Forecasts to Improve Humanitarian Decision Making
As the Copenhagen talks enter their second week, you may be wondering: how does this work? This is not a dumb question. The UN climate treaty (the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC) lays out a set of fundamental principles to guide the development of an international set of rules for the governance…
Peter deMenocal is a marine geologist who studies sea-bottom sediments for clues to past climates. Among other things, he has found evidence that previous civilizations suffered and fell during sudden climate swings. He also teaches an undergraduate class in basic earth sciences at Columbia University. As the Copenhagen summit headed for its second week, journalist…
In the movie 2012, the world’s governments must respond to the ultimate global change: overheating of the earth’s core, with attendant giant mega- earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis. The effective international cooperation it inspires is proportional to the impacts. As the prospects for anything remotely appears to shrink in Copenhagen , this flight of political fancy…