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Fresh Focus on Siberian Permafrost as Second Hole is Reported
Posted by New York Times: Andrew C. Revkin on July 25th, 2014
New York Times: I had a Skype chat Wednesday about Siberian permafrost in the context of climate change with Marina Leibman, a top Russian permafrost expert who had just returned from examining the unusual crater spotted on the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia late last week. We talked just before fresh reports circulated about reindeer herders finding another such hole in the region. I hope you’ll watch our chat, which I regret I have not yet had time to transcribe (if you are in the mood, I’d be grateful for help;...
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Exploring Academia’s Role Charting Good’ Anthropocene
Posted by New York Times: Andrew C. Revkin on June 16th, 2014
New York Times: I spent the tail end of last week at the annual conference of the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences, a young network of scholars and students aiming to foster collaborations among disciplines — from ecology to ethics — in studying, and improving, the human relationship to the environment. As the group explains on its website: [I]t is only through learning communities of the type proposed for A.E.S.S. that we can achieve ‘whole system’ environmental education and the creative...
Indian Point’s Tritium Problem and N.R.C.’s Regulatory Problem
Posted by New York Times: Andrew C. Revkin on June 12th, 2014
New York Times: The Indian Point nuclear power plant, 30 miles from New York City (and 8 miles from my house), has been run safely and reliably for the most part. But it’s at a critical juncture, with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo having vowed to shut it down and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission weighing relicensing for the two operating reactors. Now news that two monitoring wells detected a spike in levels of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, has raised important questions about the aging infrastructure...
Tracking Obama’s Climate Rules for Power Plants
Posted by New York Times: Andrew C. Revkin on June 1st, 2014
New York Times: I’m heading to Beijing to participate in a week of meetings related to the unfolding international science effort called Future Earth, so I won’t be able to weigh in in a timely fashion on President Obama’s planned Monday release of regulations restricting carbon dioxide emissions from existing American power plants. You can follow coverage and commentary on this White House move in The Times here. An important question that political and climate analysts will be examining is how much bite is in...
On World Fish Migration Day, Recalling When America’s Rivers Ran Silver
Posted by New York Times: Andrew C. Revkin on May 24th, 2014
New York Times: John Waldman is a Queens College biology professor and author focused on the bountiful past and potential restoration of the waters of the Northeast. I loved “Heartbeats in the Muck,” his history of the changing biology of the 1,500 square miles of New York Harbor, and am enjoying his new book, “Running Silver: Restoring Atlantic Rivers and Their Great Fish Migrations,” which achingly describes the bygone biological bounty of eastern waterways and lays out strategies for bringing back at least a...
Climate Panel Sees Global Warming Impacts on All Continents, Worse to Come
Posted by New York Times: Andrew C. Revkin on March 30th, 2014
New York Times: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released its latest report on the impacts of global warming, projected changes under various scenarios for greenhouse gas emissions and options for limiting related risks. Justin Gillis, reporting from the meeting in Yokohama, Japan, where government officials from around the world signed off on the summary document over the weekend, has summarized the prime conclusions and statements of panel leaders. You can watch video of officials’ and authors’...
Can California Avoid a ‘Shock to Trance’ Approach to Water Policy?
Posted by New York Times: Andrew C. Revkin on February 23rd, 2014
New York Times: Forecasters predict heavy rains will sweep in from the Pacific Ocean over much of California late next week. The state’s extreme drought will be far from over, but the shift from parched days to downpours illustrates on a short time scale one factor explaining why it’s hard to change deeply ingrained and wasteful approaches to water policy. The West is a region where droughts come and go, but development pressure is a constant. Years ago, President Obama spoke of the nation’s “shock to trance” approach...
From Philippines to Haiti, Disaster Recovery is a Way of Life
Posted by New York Times: Andrew C. Revkin on November 11th, 2013
New York Times: For many millions of people living in the planet’s poorest, most populous places, a state of recovery from what used to be called “natural” disasters has become the norm, not some exceptional circumstance. The central Philippines, now reeling from the impact of Typhoon Haiyan, a super storm if ever there was one, are just the latest place in which huge human losses follow a disaster that, in a rich country, would almost assuredly mainly exact a financial toll. See Keith Bradsher’s wrenching reports...
An Ecologist Explains His Contested View of Planetary Limits
Posted by New York Times: Andrew C. Revkin on September 16th, 2013
New York Times: It’s no surprise that Erle C. Ellis, an ecologist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, faced resistance when The Times published his Op-Ed article titled “Overpopulation is Not the Problem.” After all, his views clash with decades of assertions that we’re in “overshoot” as a species, sucking up far more resources than the planet can continue to offer. His answer to my enduring question here — “Which Comes First, Peak Everything or Peak us?” — is the latter. We are different than bacteria...
The Yosemite Inferno in the Context of Forest Policy, Ecology and Climate Change
Posted by New York Times: Andrew C. Revkin on August 29th, 2013
New York Times: Assessing the drivers of wildfire trends in the American West these days can be akin to Hercule Poirot’s task on the Orient Express, on which there was one murder with 12 final suspects — all of whom were guilty. For western [wild]fire (it’s hard to see how the wild part of that word applies any more, given how many human factors are involved), the suspects are a century of accumulated “fire debt” from fire suppression efforts, development and road construction, natural fluctuations in drought and...