Posts
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Climate and Meningitis in Africa
A new Google Earth tour explores the link between climate and meningitis outbreaks in Africa.
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You Can Ignore Polar Bears, But Not People
As the Copenhagen summit prepared to open, we asked geophysicist and social scientist John Mutter to talk about the prospects. While at sea, Mutter investigates the workings of deep ocean floors; on land, he directs the Earth Institute’s Ph.D. in Sustainable Development and works to focus science on humanitarian causes. Among other things, he pinpointed…
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There Must Be a Way to Weatherize New York City
With the Copenhagen Climate Conference about to begin, the issue of New York’s carbon footprint has taken center stage here—just as the city government has been forced to trim back its plans to require large buildings to reduce their use of energy. On Earth Day, 2009, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and city council speaker…
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Can Science Explain Religion?
The concluding seminar of the CSSR’s fall semester will take place Thursday, December 10th from 6:00 – 7:30 pm in the Davis Auditorium on Columbia University’s main campus. Come one, come all, this seminar is free and open to the public. John Horgan, the Director of the Center for Science Writings at The Stevens Institute…
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We Can’t Separate Climate and Biodiversity
In 1940, after Copenhagen was occupied by Nazi Germany, many of its Jews were saved when Danes and Swedes cooperated to spirit them at night across the narrow strait from the Danish town of Helsingør to the Swedish town of Helsinborg. On the Danish side of the strait, there is now a monument, lit at…
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Why Copenhagen Will, and Should, Fail
One of the main scientists who convinced world leaders to take note of climate change says that the Copenhagen talks are so flawed, it would be better if they collapse so the process can resume from scratch. James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (an Earth Institute affiliate) told The Guardian newspaper,…
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Water Human Rights: Pollution
In my previous blogs, I have been discussing different ways in which the human right to clean water is violated. I have already discussed how economic scarcity occurs, and this week I will be discussing pollution of water. Pollution issues are largely leading to contamination of the water supplies around the world. There are countless…
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End the Politics. Let Scientists and Engineers Lead.
We can only marvel at the disarray. Here we are, 17 years after the signing of the UN framework convention on climate change, two years after the decision in Bali to agree a new climate policy, one year after Barack Obama’s election, and days out from the Copenhagen conference. Yet a real global strategy to…
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The Poor Need Climate Solutions Now
Two broad pieces must be part of any world climate agreement. The one you hear the most about so far is mitigation: cutting emissions of greenhouse gases. The other–perhaps more pressing–is adaptation: measures we must take to adjust agriculture, infrastructure and economies to changes already happening. We do not have to look to the distant…
