Climate Change

Scientists and environmental advocates are beginning to pay more attention to another area that is critical to protecting the climate: forests and other natural ecosystems, writes Fellow John J. Berger.

Editor's note: The Climate Science Alliance was founded and is led by Fellow Amber Pairis. The Switzer Foundation provided foundational funding to create CSA with a Leadership Grant.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is investing over $25 million in 26 projects to advance the cognitive and physical capabilities of workers in the context of human-technology interactions. These new awards will address critical social, technical, educational and economic needs in the workplace. The awards were issued under the Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier (FW-HTF), one of 10 Big Ideas for Future NSF Investments announced by NSF in 2016.

NCA4, Vol II, Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States, released November 2018, assesses a range of potential climate change-related impacts, with an aim to help decision makers better identify risks that could be avoided or reduced. The assessment follows Vol I, the Climate Science Special Report (CSSR), which was released in November 2017.

China is the world's biggest polluter -- and now one of its largest producers of clean energy. Which way will China go in the future, and how will it affect the global environment? Data scientist Angel Hsu describes how the most populous country on earth is creating a future based on alternative energy -- and facing up to the environmental catastrophe it created as it rapidly industrialized. Watch the talk

... All these patterns of energy consumption and production reinforce the divergence between red and blue America in their exposure to demographic and cultural change, and the transition more broadly to a knowledge-based information economy. Across all these divides, Democrats now rely on a "coalition of transformation" centered on the states and voters that are most directly experiencing these changes, while Republicans depend on a "coalition of restoration" revolving around the places that are least affected by them -- and often most hostile to them as well.

To assess the presence of organochlorine pollutants (OCP) in Alaskan sub-Arctic latitudes, Fellow Kimberley Miner analyzed ice core and meltwater samples from Jarvis Glacier, a polythermal glacier in Interior Alaska. Jarvis Glacier is...

Editor's note: The following opinion piece by Fellow John J. Berger first appeared in The Seattle Times. Hot, dry conditions linked to climate change parched California this summer, setting the stage for 17 simultaneous blazes that consumed more than 800,000 acres. The state’s largest inferno ever, the Mendocino Complex fire, alone burned more than 460,000 acres and is still not fully contained.

The Clean Energy Solutions Center, in partnership with United Nations Foundation’s Energy Access Practitioner Network, hosted a webinar on mini-grids and interconnection to highlight the challenges and possible options for mini-grids after the main grid arrives. Participants learned about various country-specific case studies from Asia and Africa, and panelists discussed the potential requirements—policy, technical, and commercial—needed to achieve a relatively seamless interconnection of mini-grids with the main grid.