Featured series 
Tag: Climate
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Nation & World
Weather warning
A report co-authored by Professor Michael McElroy and D. James Baker, a former administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, connects global climate change, extreme weather, and national security.
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Nation & World
Cautious geohacking
By tailoring geoengineering efforts by region and by need, a new model promises to maximize the effectiveness of solar radiation management while mitigating its potential side effects and risks.
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Nation & World
Concerns about climate change, health
A team of researchers led by James G. Anderson, the Philip S. Weld Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry, warns that a newly discovered connection between climate change and depletion of the ozone layer over the U.S. could allow more damaging ultraviolet (UV) radiation to reach the Earth’s surface, leading to increased incidence of skin cancer.
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Nation & World
Carbon counter
Atmospheric scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Nanjing University have produced the first “bottom-up” estimates of China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, for 2005 to 2009, and the first statistically rigorous estimates of the uncertainties surrounding China’s CO2 emissions.
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Nation & World
‘Warming hole’ delayed climate change
Climate scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have discovered that particulate pollution in the late 20th century created a “warming hole” over the eastern United States — that is, a cold patch where the effects of global warming were temporarily obscured.
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Nation & World
Ambitious undertaking
U.S. Undersecretary of Energy Kristina Johnson said the United States plans to have 80 percent of its energy come from alternative and unconventional fossil fuels by 2050. She spoke as part of the “Future of Energy” discussion series sponsored by the Harvard University Center for the Environment.
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Nation & World
Prepping for Copenhagen
Harvard Kennedy School professor Robert Stavins will work behind the scenes at the 2009 U.N. summit on climate change with his Harvard-led initiative on global warming.
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Nation & World
Around the Schools: Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Green ’13 is a new initiative from the class of 2013 that aims to change the culture of personal behavior, starting with being more sustainable.
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Nation & World
HKS presents Roy Family Environmental Award
Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (HKS) will present the 2009 Roy Family Award for Environmental Partnership to the Mexico City Metrobus, a bus rapid transit system that reduces air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions while improving the quality of life and transportation options in one of the largest cities in the world.
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Nation & World
Designs for enduring structures
As the hurricane bears down on the village, the people do what many all over the world do: head to the local school for shelter. A place of learning in normal times becomes a place of refuge during disasters.
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Nation & World
Green reunions: Groundwork set
As of June 4, Harvard has celebrated 358 commencements. Add to that the simultaneous celebration of untold thousands of reunions.
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Nation & World
Energy
ENERGY: Daniel P. Schrag, Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology and Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
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Nation & World
Mining exec: Coal vital to energy mix
The leader of one of the nation’s largest coal mining companies said Tuesday (Feb. 3) that coal is a vital part of the nation’s energy mix and that clean coal technology must be developed if the atmosphere is to stop warming.
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Nation & World
Global temp analysis clarifies warming details
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.
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Nation & World
Idle computing power may ID candidate molecules for efficient solar panels
The world today uses enough power to illuminate 150 billion light bulbs for a year. According to some estimates, by 2050, demand will double, creating irreversible climate change without reductions in humanity’s carbon output.
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Nation & World
Climate options must include ‘all of the above’
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 Dec. 11.
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Nation & World
Shai Agassi dreams of a gas-free future
Electric cars with zero emissions. Powered by renewable energy. All over the world. That is Shai Agassi’s dream. The 40-year-old Israeli entrepreneur left a lucrative corporate software track last year to found Better Place, a transportation company based on sustainability and independence from oil.
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Nation & World
Lovins: Protecting the environment is ‘a highly profitable enterprise’
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, an energy expert said Wednesday (Dec. 3).
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Nation & World
FAS plan will slash greenhouse gas emissions
Without action to slow the release of greenhouse gases, Harvard biologist and oceanographer James McCarthy said last week, current projections indicate that Massachusetts in 2080 could resemble South Carolina in 2008: The Bay State would experience an average of 24 days over 100 degrees each summer and two solid months of temperatures above 90.
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Nation & World
Harvard College Library is going green
The changes may not be immediately evident, but little by little, Harvard College Library (HCL) has been “going green” for years, even before the University’s newest commitment to sustainable practices.
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Nation & World
Humanity may hold key for next Earth evolution
Human degradation of the environment has the potential to stall an ongoing process of planetary evolution, and even rewind the evolutionary clock to leave the planet habitable only by the bacteria that dominated billions of years of Earth’s history, Harvard geochemist Charles Langmuir said Thursday (Nov. 13).
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Nation & World
Global warming predicted to hasten carbon release from peat bogs
Billions of tons of carbon sequestered in the world’s peat bogs could be released into the atmosphere in the coming decades as a result of global warming, according to a new analysis of the interplay between peat bogs, water tables, and climate change.
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Nation & World
Paul Zofnass ’69, M.B.A. ’73 establishes GSD sustainability initiative
Paul Zofnass ’69, M.B.A. ’73 has established a sustainability initiative at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) with a $500,000 gift.
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Nation & World
Effects of climate change vary greatly across plant families
Drawing on records dating back to the journals of Henry David Thoreau, scientists at Harvard University have found that different plant families near Walden Pond in Concord, Mass., have borne the effects of climate change in strikingly different ways. Some of the plant families hit hardest by global warming have included beloved species like lilies,…
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Nation & World
10 ways to help
1. Drive less: Walk, bike, and take public transportation instead. Check out the Harvard Commuter Choice Program for information on ridesharing, discounts for MBTA passes, and more.
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Nation & World
Green politics at IOP
An environmental call to action issued by Harvard President Drew Faust accelerated this year, with a pledge to reduce campus-wide greenhouse gas emissions and with an October celebration of sustainability efforts.
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Nation & World
New Guinea forest expands ‘observatory’
Just getting there takes hours of hot, sweaty hiking through lowland Papua New Guinea forests: three hours from the road to the base camp, then another seven to the site. That’s when the real work begins: tagging, measuring, and identifying 250,000 trees scattered over 50 hectares.
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Nation & World
Gore: Universities have important role in sustainability
Former vice president Al Gore ’69 addressed a crowd of 15,000 in chilly, leaf-strewn Tercentenary Theatre Oct. 22, 2008, delivering the keynote address in a multi-day celebration of the University’s commitment to sustainability.
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Nation & World
Ban calls for international efforts
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on the United States to combat the “imminent threat” of climate change, both by reducing its own greenhouse gas emissions and by leading the effort to craft a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
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Nation & World
Students watch ‘An Inconvenient Truth’
It’s “an inconvenient truth,” but only about 25 people showed up for a Harvard screening Sunday (Oct. 19) of a film by the same name, which earned former Vice President Al Gore ’69 both an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize.