Category Archives: Climate Change

The Terrain Part 4: Spending – on Adaptation or Mitigation?

If we agree that we have to start spending money now, in order to minimize future damage from climate change, where should we start: on adaptation or mitigation – or is it a false choice? Global mitigation seems to be … Continue reading

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The Terrain Part 3: Mayor Bloomberg’s Maginot.

My two previous blogs in this series (June 4 and June 11) focused on where and when to spend money so as to best combat climate change. Part 1 (June 4) delved into ExxonMobil CEO, Rex Tillerson’s widely publicized quote, … Continue reading

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The Terrain Part 2: Spending Now or Spending Later.

Throughout this blog, my emphasis has been on possible responses to the impacts of climate change. I divided the responses into three categories: mitigation, adaptation and doing nothing. ExxonMobil CEO, Rex Tillerson, recommends doing nothing, reasoning that if something bad … Continue reading

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The Terrain Part 1: Doing Nothing and Fixing Whatever Happens.

Some of the recent headlines illustrate the broad terrain of tradeoffs and consequences we must navigate in deciding the policies for Earth’s future, in which our children and grandchildren will have to live. This quote from ExxonMobil CEO, Rex Tillerson, … Continue reading

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Warning Signs and Tipping Points

Erica Goode’s recent article in the New York Times (NYT – March 15, 2013), “Focusing on Violence Before It Happens,” describes a growing effort to identify and prevent major catastrophic events such as school violence. Two paragraphs from the article … Continue reading

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Adaptive Rebuilding

Hurricane Sandy, which struck the East Coast of the United States more than six months ago (October 2012), was the second-costliest hurricane in the recorded history of the United States . While climate scientists said that the storm was not … Continue reading

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Bilingualism

The semester is almost over, so I needed some sort of challenging take-home message for my Climate Change course. The course is part of an upper-tier general education program, open to students of all disciplines.  One aspect that I have … Continue reading

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Lessons from Pompeii

A recent article in the New York Times by Rachel Donaldo and  Elisabetta Povoledo (NYT, April 21 2013) titled  “The Latest Threat to Pompeii’s Treasures: Italy’s Red Tape,” starts with the following: POMPEII, Italy — Destroyed by the eruption of … Continue reading

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Scaling up from the Hamptons to the World

Michael Schwartz’s New York Times article entitled “Dispute in the Hamptons Set Off by Effort to Hold Back Ocean” (NYT, April 18, 2013) starts with the following: Soon after Hurricane Sandy hit last fall, Joshua Harris, a billionaire hedge fund … Continue reading

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Earth Day

Earth Day is an annual day, observed on April 22, in which the World demonstrates its support of environmental protection. It also happens that it is my wife’s birthday and the one-year anniversary of this blog. 🙂 It is a … Continue reading

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