The Bridge: Connecting Science and Policy

April 10, 2020

Moving Forward: A Guide for Health Professionals to Build Momentum on Climate Action

AGU has partnered with ecoAmerica and other scientific organizations on a new resource, Moving Forward: A Guide for Health Professionals to Build Momentum on Climate Action. AGU’s Net Zero Building Renovation is featured as a case study on how building design can help reduce energy use. MOVING FORWARD TOOLKIT Climate change is the greatest health threat of our time, and in response, health professionals across the …

November 27, 2019

Funding an Energy Transition

As appropriators are still trying to finalize the 2020 budget, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development sat down last week for a hearing about the DOE’s role in addressing climate change. The main thematic questions of the hearing were: What technologies will help move us into the future sustainably, and how can DOE facilitate the energy transition? This lively and lengthy hearing made a strong case for not …

November 4, 2019

Deep Carbon, Deep Insights into Research Funding

These days, most researchers know very well that in order to get funding, it’s helpful to already have funding. The solemn reality of the grant cycle is that solid preliminary results and immediate applications are what beget federally funded projects. Rarely can you get money for just a neat idea or mysterious question. Seed funding from the government in the form of high-risk grants from agencies like the Department …

June 5, 2019

The Ocean: A Sink for Carbon, Heat, and Now… Wealth

Dr. David Trossman earned a BA in mathematics and a BA/MA in physics from Washington University in St. Louis, a MA in public policy from the University of Chicago, and a PhD in physical oceanography from the University of Washington-Seattle before moving on to do postdocs, work at NASA, and land at the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas-Austin, where he currently works as a …

January 10, 2019

What is the Value of the Geosciences?

Today’s post is part of a series written by student bloggers from the AGU Fall Meeting 2018. By: Emilie Sinkler, a PhD candidate in Galciology at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Geoscientists study many different aspects of the world around us, under us, and above us. Knowledge about our world informs how and where we build our homes, streets, and other infrastructure. It also causes us to reconsider our actions and …

May 15, 2018

Can Supercomputers Do More for Future Human Resilience Than the Abacus?

Today’s post is written by David Trossman, Research Associate, University of Texas-Austin’s Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences Scientists like Joseph Fourier, John Tyndall, and Eunice Foot made discoveries that led Svante Arrhenius to calculate how doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would affect global temperatures. This was one of the first qualitatively accurate models of the Earth system. And this was in the 1800s. The additional …

January 17, 2018

A New Year….and Old Nominations?

*Update as of 1/18/2018: The nominations of Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) to be NASA Administrator and AccuWeather CEO Barry Myers to be NOAA Administrator, again cleared the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee on party line votes. The nominees will now be voted on by the entire Senate. 2017 was a whirlwind of a year. With a new President came new nominees to be the heads of our federal science agencies. As …

March 23, 2017

USEFUL STEPS FOR MARCHING (AND OTHER ACTIVE) SCIENTISTS

Editor’s Note: This blog post was cross-posted from the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund blog. By Climate Science Legal Defense Fund Yes, you know that the Science March’s mission is a simple call to support publicly communicated scientific research and evidence-based policies. But contrary to the March’s stated aims, some still believe that the March is a partisan statement that might alienate the very people whom you are calling. At CSLDF, we have seen well-meaning …

December 15, 2016

The Case for Communication: Speaking vs. Being Heard

Today’s post is part of a series written by student bloggers from the AGU Fall Meeting. By: Sarah Trimble, University of Mary Washington As a union of geophysical scientists, gathered in mass at our annual meeting of like minds, we presently face a tipping point in our mission of communication. All of the precision, accuracy, and controlled experiments in our world will amount to little if we do not also effectively …

December 14, 2016

One year after COP21: 3 things we learned

Today’s post is part of a series written by student bloggers from the AGU Fall Meeting. By: Adele Kuzmiakova, Graduate Student, University College London, London Exactly one year ago, December 2015, marked a historical turning point in Paris where around 200 countries adopted the first-ever, bottom-up climate deal. The agreement provides a backdrop for a global action plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to constrain the global warming rate to …