Climate Change

Fellow Story

Hsu in Reuters on the unbearable lightness of Chinese emissions data

"The Chinese government likes to hold authority over data for fear that different numbers than those from official sources could lead to social unrest," says Angel Hsu, a professor with the Yale School of Forestry And Environmental Studies, who has researched the poor quality of Chinese data. "China claims they don't have the human capacity to maintain and run the monitors," she says. "But they were monitoring air quality for over a decade; they just didn't release it because they were worried that it would lead to social unrest."
January 13, 2016
Fellow Story

Aldy on how US seeks a plan to 'trust but verify' at climate talks

The United States, like many other countries, has been participating in negotiations in the lead-up to the United Nations' conference on climate change in Paris. The goal is to craft a policy framework that is going to engage all countries in combating global warming and establish institutions that can continue to spur more ambitious efforts over time. ...
January 13, 2016
Fellow Story

Aldy quoted in The New Yorker on why Republicans can't support a carbon tax

“It’s fascinating to me to look at the partisan evolution of this issue over the past decade,” Joseph Aldy, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, who previously worked on carbon pricing for the Obama Administration, told me. “In 2003, the leader in the Senate on climate change was John McCain.
January 12, 2016
Fellow Story

Coleman on how climate change threatens to make more people poor

Without policies to protect the world’s most vulnerable from crop failure, natural disasters, waterborne diseases and other impacts of climate change, 100 million more people could sink into poverty by 2030, the World Bank said. The report unveiled yesterday is one of a growing number of high-level studies linking poverty to climate change. This one, World Bank officials said, goes further by combining findings from household surveys in 90 nations with modeling results on the impact of rising global temperatures on food prices, heat waves, floods, droughts and diseases.
January 12, 2016
Fellow Story

Bacon receives multi-year NSF grant to study food and water security in Nicaragua

Chris Bacon and his colleagues have received a $300,000 mult-year National Science Foundation research grant to study food and water security under climate change for smallholders in Nicaragua.
January 12, 2016
Fellow Story

Hansen quoted on Clinton plan to save coal communities

Clinton’s plan calls for $30 billion towards infrastructure improvements, mine land remediation, training and education programs, and incentives for business investment in Appalachia, the Illinois Basin, and the Western coal areas. “What I like about this plan is that it’s multi-faceted,” Evan Hansen, president of Downstream Strategies, a West Virginia-based environmental consulting firm, told ThinkProgress. “There is no one solution.”
January 11, 2016
Fellow Story

Eldering on how NASA is targeting 'other half' of carbon, climate equation

During a media teleconference on Thursday [November 2015], NASA and university scientists were able to discuss new insights, tools and agency research into key carbon and climate change questions, as the agency ramps up its efforts to understand how Earth's ocean, forest, and land ecosystems absorb nearly half of emitted carbon dioxide today. ...
January 8, 2016
Fellow Story

Johnson quoted on safety threat of oil-hauling trains

The Heinz Endowments' Philip Johnson alerted more than 100 people attending an oil train safety conference Friday in Oakland that a five-car train hauling crude oil had derailed in suburban Philadelphia. Although no one was hurt and no oil spilled in the early morning accident, Johnson, Heinz's program director for science and environment, said: “It's important that we continue to push hard for ways to prevent incidents like this.” Read more
January 8, 2016
Fellow Story

Sims Gallagher Q&A on how U.S. and China can handle existential threat of climate change

In the lead-up to the United Nations climate change conference US-China Today spoke with Kelly Sims Gallagher, Director of the Center for International Environment & Resource Policy at Tufts University, to see how the U.S. and China can best handle this existential threat.
January 7, 2016
Fellow Story

Mulvaney writes op-ed: To help slow climate change, preserve desert habitats

Climate change is the keystone environmental problem of our times. While most proposed solutions emphasize reducing carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion, measures that protect our remaining wildlands are also a means to combat and adapt to climate change. The designation of Mojave Trails, Castle Mountains, and Sand to Snow National Monuments in the California desert is an important mechanism for the United States to help fulfill its promise as a global leader on climate change.
January 3, 2016