all Daniel P. Schrag stories

Policy can empower technological climate change solution

404132862 — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:12:00 -0400

The chair of the U.S. House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming struck an optimistic tone about the planet’s climate crisis last night, saying that an energy revolution is in the offing if government can just get the policy right.

Sulfur dioxide may have helped maintain a warm early Mars

404132862 — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 12:56:35 -0500

Sulfur dioxide (SO2) may have played a key role in the climate and geochemistry of early Mars, geoscientists at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) suggest in the Dec. 21 issue of the journal Science. Their hypothesis may resolve longstanding questions about evidence that the climate of the Red Planet was once much warmer than it is today.

Engineered weathering process might mitigate climate change

404132862 — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:34:16 -0500

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 weathering, permanently transferring CO2 from the atmosphere to the ocean. Unlike other ocean sequestration processes, the new technology does not further acidify the ocean and may be beneficial to coral reefs.

Biologists remember landmark theory

404132862 — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:12:41 -0400

Forty years ago, Edward O. Wilson and Robert H. MacArthur described how size and isolation determine how many species an island can support. Last week, biologists gathered to mark the theory’s anniversary, calling it a “pivotal point” in ecology’s relatively short history.

Professor Lord Robert May of Oxford University said the word “ecology” — which describes the interaction between an organism and its environment — was coined just a little more than a century ago. By the 1960s, he said, the science of ecology was still mainly a descriptive one, lacking theories to tie together the observations by scientists in the field.

Current U.S. renewable energy goal too low, says head of national lab

50443248 — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 10:34:55 -0400

The head of the U.S. government's renewable energy lab said Monday (Feb. 5) that the federal government is doing "embarrassingly few things" to foster renewable energy, leaving leadership to the states at a time of opportunity to change the nation's energy future.

Dan Arvizu, director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Colorado-based National Renewable Energy Laboratory, said a brief opening exists to dramatically increase the energy generated from renewable sources in the coming decades, but said more resources and a national policy promoting renewable energy will be needed to make it come true.

Deep-sea sediments could safely store man-made carbon dioxide

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:13:59 -0400

An innovative solution for the man-made carbon dioxide fouling our skies could rest far beneath the surface of the ocean, say scientists at Harvard University. They've found that deep-sea sediments could provide a virtually unlimited and permanent reservoir for this gas that has been a primary driver of global climate change in recent decades, and estimate that seafloor sediments within U.S. territory are vast enough to store the nation's carbon dioxide emissions for thousands of years to come.

End of the fossil fuel era?

50443248 — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 12:24:00 -0400

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 a rude shock.

Matthew Simmons, chairman of Simmons & Co. International and author of "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy," used the fuel-gauge analogy to illustrate his concerns about world energy supplies during a Feb. 8 talk in the Science Center.

Climate choices: Grim and grimmer

50443248 — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 13:01:26 -0400

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 Museum of Natural History (HMNH).
"We're fated to have climate change, no matter what we do," Schrag said. "We're going to have climate change. We're going to have a lot of climate change. The question is whether we're going to have catastrophic climate change."

Zoning the Atlantic

50443248 — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 10:26:56 -0400

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 event co-sponsored by the Kennedy School's Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston and by the Harvard University Center for the Environment. Rappaport Institute Executive Director David Luberoff moderated the event.

Warming called a global 'experiment'

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:37:00 -0400

Climate scientist Daniel Schrag says that human-caused climate change is inevitable, though scientists don't know exactly how severe or even exactly what its effects will be. Schrag said the public health effects related to climate change would probably be most severe in poorer nations. Though climate effects will be experienced in richer nations, those countries have the resources to adapt and protect the health of their citizens. Schrag pointed to Hurricane Mitch, which devastated Honduras in 1998, compared with 2004's series of hurricanes that slammed into Florida, with relatively low loss of life. Though some researchers expect that a warmer environment will mean a spread of infectious tropical diseases, like malaria, into cooler latitudes, Schrag said he thought developed nations' public health systems are up to the challenge. Though poorer nations may be hardest hit by climate change, Schrag said it would be a mistake to divert attention from global warming to pour resources into developing those nations. Though there is much uncertainty about global warming, Schrag said, it appears clear that the effects will be dramatic and widespread. "We are performing an experiment on a planetary scale that hasn't been done for millions of years," Schrag said. "Nobody knows what's going to happen and there will be surprises."

El Nino found to be 124,000 years old

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:11:27 -0400

Records preserved in corals from Indonesia reveal that El Niño was causing severe weather even before the last ice age began, when the climate apparently was like it was for most of the 20th century. "No question about it; there were El Niños that long ago," says Daniel Schrag, professor of earth and planetary sciences. "The finding suggests that El Niños are much more stable than we ever thought." Evidence of droughts and unusually wet weather, chemically etched into ancient reefs, show changes every three to seven years, a pattern that Schrag finds "remarkably similar" to those of El Niños from 1856 to 1976. After that, a sudden change occurred. Since 1976, the pattern looks completely different, with El Niño events appearing faster and stronger.