News Archive:
ERG Professor Dan Kammen was recently featured on Al Jazeera article, discussing America’s progress towards building a greener economy. He emphasizes the impact political policies have against slowing climate change in the states.
“The 2020 election in the United States is absolutely critical, because we know on the climate side that we have very few years left to get on an innovative green energy path,” Kammen stated.
Read the full article here.
In a recent article for The Guardian, ERG Alumnus Zeke Hausfather speaks on climate predictions and adjusting forecasts for global warming, especially for the best and worst-case scenarios.
“It is moderately good news. It reduces the likelihood of some of the catastrophically high estimates. If we were planning for the worst, the worst has become less likely. But fundamentally, it means we must do more to limit climate change. We are not anywhere near on track to do that,” Hausfather states.
Read the full article here.
ERG Alumna Sasha Harris-Lovett was recently featured in a San Francisco Chronicle article reporting traces of COVID-19 being found in the Yosemite National Park’s sewage. As the pandemic continues to spread, the article states that more and more communities are keeping watch for the virus in the wastewater.
“Wastewater monitoring for SARS-CoV-2 is still in its infancy in the Bay Area, but there is a lot of interest in pursuing it,” Harris-Lovett states.
Read the full article here.
ERG Alumnus Christopher Jones was recently featured on a New York Times article depicting communities facing “double spikes of risk” from the Coronavirus and heat waves.
“Energy demand goes up during heat waves, and with so many people working from home that surge may be compounded by the rise in residential energy use… The extra stress on the system also raises the potential for outages that can shut down the economy even further,” Jones states.
Read the full article here.
ERG Alumnus Zeke Hausfather recently published “Explainer: How the rise and fall of CO2 levels influenced the ice ages”, explaining the powerful influence CO2 levels had on the ice ages as well as the present age.
“In this explainer, [Hausfather] explores how the last ice age provides strong evidence of the role CO2 plays as a “control knob” for the Earth’s climate. It also acts as a cautionary tale of how the climate can experience large changes from relatively small outside ‘forcings’,” Hausfather states.
Read the full article here.
ERG PhD student Seigi Karaski co-authored a recently published research paper on the discovery of novel fungal species and pathogens on bat carcasses. The research focuses on the scientific testing and analysis of the new fungus.
“One of the more alarming findings is that a number of infections related to Neocosmospora, previously associated with human and animal mycotoxicoses, are reported to be increasing, and here we present a new species from this genus, isolated from dead bats,” the paper states.
Read the full research paper here.
ERG PhD Student Adam Hanbury-Brown was recently awarded funding through NASA’s Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) program, which is designed to support graduate student-designed and performed research projects that advance NASA’s science, technology, and exploration goals.
“My FINESST project is relevant to their goal of advancing understanding of “Earth as a system”. I plan to use NASA’s satellite data to study how topography, climate, and fire characteristics predict post-fire forest regeneration outcomes, and then incorporate these insights into forest regeneration algorithms within Earth System Models (ESMs),” Hanbury-Brown stated.
To learn more about NASA’s FINNEST program, click here.
Following a recent UC Berkeley study showing how the United States can achieve 90% clean electricity by 2035, ERG Professor Lara Kueppers commented on the importance of reducing harmful emissions. This report, featured on The Daily Californian, found that by “prioritizing energy generated from wind, solar and battery storage, decarbonizing electricity at a rapid rate is possible.”
“Accelerating the decarbonization of our energy system is critical to avoiding the worst effects of a changing climate in the US, and globally,” Kueppers said in an email. “This will also pay huge environmental and human health dividends by reducing air and water pollution associated with coal and gas.”
Read the full article here.
ERG Professor Dan Kammen recently published an article titled “How electric vehicles can help advance social justice” on the San Francisco Chronicle. He praises Lyft’s recent promise of its transition to 100% electric vehicles (EV) on its platform by 2030. Kammen ties the climate victory in with California Public Utilities Commission’s move to protect the often vulnerable employees of the gig economy by considering drivers for ride-hailing companies to be employees in accordance with the state’s AB5 law.
“The climate and health win of all-electric driving is exciting, but like the New Deal, the social and racial equity opportunities are real, and will take coordinated public and private sector leadership,” Kammen states.
To read the full article, click the link here.
ERG PhD student Ian Bolliger, as part of a research team, recently published a study “The effect of large-scale anti-contagion policies on the COVID-19 pandemic”. Their research found that the emergency COVID-19 measures prevented more than 500 million infections around the globe.
“Shutdown orders prevented about 60 million novel coronavirus infections in the United States and 285 million in China, according to a research study that examined how stay-at-home orders and other restrictions limited the spread of the contagion,” the Washington Post states.
To read the full research article, click the link here. To read the Washington Post article that covers their research, click here.