all environment stories

Expert: Lift taboo on Earth engineering

404132862 — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:46:52 -0400

The effects of climate change are so uncertain and potentially long-lasting that policymakers should begin examining options that include geoengineering, an area that has so far been off-limits, according to a former Harvard researcher who is now a professor at the University of Calgary, Canada.

Huybers and Mahadevan named MacArthur Foundation Fellows

404132862 — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:36:02 -0400

Two Harvard faculty members who study present and past ice sheets and the science behind familiar objects and everyday events have been named recipients of prestigious MacArthur Foundation “genius” grants.

China could meet its energy needs by wind alone

404132862 — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 11:26:40 -0400

A team of environmental scientists from Harvard and Tsinghua University has demonstrated the enormous potential for wind-generated electricity in China. Using extensive meteorological data and incorporating the Chinese government’s energy-bidding and financial restrictions for delivering wind power, the researchers estimate that wind alone has the potential to meet the country’s electricity demands projected for 2030.

Scientists expect wildfires to increase as climate warms in the coming decades

404132862 — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:30:09 -0400

As the climate warms in the coming decades, atmospheric scientists at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and their colleagues expect that the frequency of wildfires will increase in many regions. The spike in the number of fires could also adversely affect air quality due to the greater presence of smoke.

Geology is destiny

404132862 — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 13:51:17 -0400

As a teenager in Toronto in the 1950s, Paul Hoffman would spend hours in the Royal Ontario Museum studying its collection of rocks and minerals. He became a passionate collector, trading rocks with friends and exploring abandoned mines in search of crystals.

During his freshman year at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Hoffman landed a summer job with the Ontario Department of Mines, which dispatched him on a four-month journey to map rocks in northern Ontario. It was 1961 and his first field season.

Planning to save a changing world

50443248 — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 10:41:55 -0400

Climate change is not only altering Alaska’s natural world, it’s also affecting how humans interact with it, particularly those whose culture and traditions have pointed the way for generations to survive in the sometimes inhospitable far north.

Terry Chapin, a professor of ecology at the University of Alaska’s Institute of Arctic Biology, said that climate change is already affecting Alaska in many ways. Sea ice is retreating, salmon are migrating farther north, forest fires are increasing, permafrost is melting, and forest pest outbreaks are becoming more frequent. While those changes are having a dramatic impact on the natural world, Chapin said they’re also affecting the people who live in remote villages around the state.

Energy policies: ‘Forty-year failure’

50443248 — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:44:02 -0400

In 1973, four weeks after the Arab oil embargo, President Richard Nixon went on national television to talk about an energy crisis that had been mounting for two years. He asked Americans to turn off their Christmas lights.

In a gesture of greater substance, Nixon also pledged that within seven years the United States would be independent of foreign oil.

Since then, eight presidents and 18 congresses have aimed to deliver on this 1973 promise. In the last four years alone, four ambitious energy bills were signed into law.

Yet Americans, more than ever, are still at the mercy of foreign oil. Nearly 70 percent of oil supplies are imported today, up from 30 percent in the Nixon era.

What happened?

Florida: The far side of paradise

50443248 — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:24:11 -0400

It was near midnight. Gnarly oak trees and sandy pines draped with Spanish moss encroached upon the narrow road. Warm air sweetened by the scent of orange blossoms wafted through the windows as the van lurched to a stop. The headlights illuminated a metal sign pinned to a gate that read “Archbold Research Station.” We had arrived.

Expedition: Blue Planet 2009 explores water

50443248 — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:14:19 -0400

When environmental advocate Alexandra Cousteau left in February on a nonstop, 100-day expedition to critical water sites across five continents, she brought with her a writer, a photographer, an editor, and a support team of more than 60 researchers, all Harvard Extension School students. But the students needed no airline tickets. From their desktops in Cambridge and its environs, these intrepid virtual explorers provide critical support for the expedition team’s field activities.

International conference thinks about sustainable cities

50443248 — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:39:24 -0400

What will the cities of the future look like?

Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) offered some ideas at a three-day international conference, “Ecological Urbanism: Alternative and Sustainable Cities of the Future,” April 3-5.

Hotter seasons coming earlier, research finds

404132862 — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 14:54:04 -0500

An analysis of global temperatures between 1850 and 2007 has illuminated some climate change details, showing that winter temperatures have risen more rapidly than summer temperatures and that the seasons are coming nearly two days earlier than they were 50 years ago.

Perhaps most worrisome, however, is that none of the dozens of computerized climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the globe-spanning collaboration of scientists that analyzes climate change scenarios – had predicted the earlier seasons.

Climate options must include ‘all of the above’

404132862 — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:06:21 -0500

Climate change has so much momentum behind it that “either/or” discussions about options are meaningless because it’ll take all we can do just to arrest carbon dioxide at levels double those in preindustrial times, a top climate scientist said in a talk last month.

Researchers study glaciers on Earth’s coldest desert

404132862 — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 08:46:18 -0500

It’s December, and undergraduate Jenny Middleton bundles up to face the cold. While all across campus, students, and faculty don their winter gear, Middleton is not preparing for the New England winter; she is preparing for an expedition through the Earth’s coldest desert: the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica.

John P. Holdren named President-elect Obama’s Science Advisor

404132862 — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:13:59 -0500

President-elect Barack Obama today announced that he has selected Harvard’s John P. Holdren to serve as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology in the new administration. The post, popularly known as “the President’s science advisor,” also includes directorship of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President and requires Senate confirmation.

U.S. energy answers there for the taking, says Amory Lovins

404132862 — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:02:11 -0500

As U.S. automakers plead for a government bailout, the next great automotive revolution is already under way, as Japanese automakers plan for a generation of lightweight cars that vastly increase mileage and whose advanced materials pay for themselves through dramatically streamlined assembly and smaller engines, a leading energy expert said yesterday.