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Environment
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Environment
By: Alvin Powell /
November 18, 2009
The head of the Natural Resources Defense Council examines the implications of climate change and the best ways forward for the passage of congressional legislation to combat it.
Activist and author Bill McKibben ’82 takes to the pulpit in a plea for climate change action.
Harvard science historian and physicist Peter Galison is using part of his Radcliffe year to explore the intersections of forbidden wilderness and nuclear wasteland.
Expert: Lift taboo on Earth engineering
University of Calgary Professor David Keith calls for investment in geoengineering research as part of the search for solutions to climate change.
Environment Articles
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China could meet its energy needs by wind alone
A team of environmental scientists from Harvard and Tsinghua University has demonstrated the enormous potential for wind-generated electricity in China.
Green reunions: Groundwork set
As of June 4, Harvard has celebrated 358 commencements. Add to that the simultaneous celebration of untold thousands of reunions.
Trading energy for safety, bees extend legs to stay stable in wind
New research shows some bees brace themselves against wind and turbulence by extending their sturdy hind legs while flying. But this approach comes at a steep cost, increasing aerodynamic drag and the power required for flight by roughly 30 percent, and cutting into the bees’ flight performance.
Class of 1984 takes giant step in reducing carbon footprint
For its fifth reunion, the Class of 1984 added community service to the celebration — a novel feature that other reuniting classes have since copied.
Looking at ‘spoiled’ Americans through an energy lens
In 1968, the United States was exporting oil. A decade later, given massive increases in domestic demand, it was importing half of this coveted fuel.
Climate Collaborative’s report suggests culture change
Last year, Harvard University pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2016. That ambitious goal raised a single big question: How?
Nectar nurtures pitcher plant’s eating habits
New research from the Harvard Forest shows that carnivorous pitcher plants use sweet nectar to attract ants and flies to their water-filled traps, not color, as earlier research had indicated.
Cyclones spurt water into the stratosphere, feeding global warming
Scientists at Harvard University have found that tropical cyclones readily inject ice far into the stratosphere, possibly feeding global warming.
Earth Week emphasizes notion of human stewardship
Earth is shielded by a film of air barely 6 miles high. About 10 million species of plants and animals, including 6 billion humans, reside within this thin skin of gases.
GPM tells you more than MPG, say management professors
“Miles per gallon” (mpg) is the most common measure of a car’s fuel efficiency. The typical U.S. consumer, in shopping for a car, uses mpg as a way of calculating gas consumption and carbon emissions.
Florida: The far side of paradise
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
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.
Energy policies: ‘Forty-year failure’
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.
International conference thinks about sustainable cities
What will the cities of the future look like? Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) offered some ideas last week at a three-day international conference, “Ecological Urbanism: Alternative and Sustainable Cities of the Future,” April 3-5.
Climate change an ‘opportunity’ as well as a threat
Conservation pioneer Russell A. Mittermeier started this year’s Roger Tory Peterson Memorial Lecture (April 5) with a quiz. In front of several hundred listeners at Harvard’s Science Center he turned on a small recorder.
Planning to save a changing world
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.
Disasters, and how to cope with them
Nine out of 10 disasters in the world are related to climate change — the consequence of “a new normal of extreme weather,” said Sir John Holmes. He talked about an accelerating pace of floods, drought, heat waves, and catastrophic storms.
HMS presents award to Queen Noor, actor Edward Norton
The Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School (HMS) will present Queen Noor of Jordan and actor Edward Norton with the 2009 Global Environmental Citizen Award. The award, given annually, was developed to recognize those individuals who have been world leaders in protecting the global environment. The award will be presented to Noor and Norton on Sunday (March 15) in New York City.
The key to energy independence: Go fly a kite!
Earlier this year, Big Coal got its say in “The Future of Energy” lecture series sponsored by the Harvard University Center for the Environment. Now it’s time to hear from Big Wind.
Watch your footing on those slippery winter sidewalks in Cambridge. But if you’re at the corner of Dunster and Mt. Auburn streets, take a minute to look up.
Multimedia Features
Harvard Stem Cell Institute - First 5 years
What has the Harvard Stem Cell Institute accomplished in its first 5 years?
Video
3:05 run time
February 5, 2009
Stem cells: Mending a broken heart?
Video / Oct 15, '09
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