Featured series 
Tag: Harvard University Center for the Environment
-
Science & Tech
Engineered weathering process might mitigate climate change
Researchers at Harvard University and Penn State University have invented a technology, inspired by nature, to reduce the accumulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) caused by human emissions. By electrochemically removing hydrochloric acid from the ocean and then neutralizing the acid by reaction with silicate (volcanic) rocks, the researchers say they can accelerate natural chemical…
-
Science & Tech
Foraging for forest frogs
In the dark of the Sri Lankan cloud forest, the researchers’ only guides were the headlamps they used to light up the night, illuminating the cold, gray mist that drifted through the trees. They looked carefully as they walked among the trunks, the beams from their headlamps casting left and right, up and down. They…
-
Campus & Community
Fossil fuels, conservation in energy future
The BP Group Executive Director Iain Conn forecasts an energy future where fossil fuels still make up the bulk of world energy production, but in which demand is far higher, conservation more widespread, and the release of carbon dioxide controlled by new technology. Conn, who delivered the March 8 talk – the second in “The…
-
Campus & Community
End of the fossil fuel era?
A car about to run out of gas can be traveling 70 mph until the moment the tank runs dry. Good thing cars have fuel gauges. While the world economy is humming right along, the fuel gauge for oil production is broken and at least one oil industry expert believes we may be in for…
-
Campus & Community
Climate choices: Grim and grimmer
Climate change from burning fossil fuels is probably already unavoidable, but it is still up to humans to decide just how bad it will be, Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Daniel Schrag said Thursday (Sept. 29) in a talk on global warming that kicked off a new exhibit on the subject at the Harvard…
-
Campus & Community
Zoning the Atlantic
Massachusetts Secretary of Environmental Affairs Ellen Roy Herzfelder outlined Monday (March 21) what state officials hope will become the nation’s first ocean management plan to provide guidance for development projects and help resolve conflicts over the use of the state’s seas. Herzfelder spoke at the John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Taubman building during an…
-
Science & Tech
McElroy says it’s time to stop seeing global warming as political issue
Michael B. McElroy, Gilbert Butler Professor of Environmental Studies and director of Harvard’s Center for the Environment, is among the scientists who since the 1970s have been using paleoclimatic data to chart changes in the earth’s atmosphere. To obtain these data, researchers drill several kilometers down into polar ice sheets and extract gases from the…
-
Science & Tech
Helping clear the air in China
Across China’s industrial areas, black soot settles into people’s lungs and bronchial tubes, producing an annual epidemic of respiratory disease. That’s the result of heating homes, schools, and offices with coal. In the past, Chinese policy-makers paid only a small amount of attention to the pollution issue, believing that to force companies to clean up…