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Earth and Environmental Science
Talking energy at Penn
Energy Week 2022, hosted by the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy and the Vagelos Institute for Energy Science and Technology, runs April 4-8. It includes student presentations, along with conversations about renewables, energy and the war in Ukraine, and much more.
Decoding a material’s ‘memory’
A new study details the relationship between particle structure and flow in disordered materials, insights that can be used to understand systems ranging from mudslides to biofilms.
Climate scientist Michael Mann to join Penn faculty
Mann is the first new faculty member to be recruited as part of the recently announced Energy and Sustainability Initiative as a Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science.
Newly identified softshell turtle lived alongside T. rex and Triceratops
Peter Dodson of the School of Veterinary Medicine and Steven Jasinski, who recently earned his doctorate from the School of Arts & Sciences, describe the find of a new softshell turtle from the end of the Cretaceous Period.
Four takeaways from the IPCC’s report on climate adaptation and vulnerability
The assessment gets explicit about the effect of climate change on people, places, and ecosystems. Experts from Penn weigh in on what it means.
Interaction with lung cells transforms asbestos particles
To better understand what happens once asbestos enters a human body, researchers in the School of Arts & Sciences took a nanoscale look at the mineral.
A call for tools to navigate the future of the Delaware River watershed
The Penn Program in Environmental Humanities is partnering with Philadelphia’s Independence Seaport Museum to solicit designs for tools to help Delaware River watershed residents adapt and respond to climate change and other ecological challenges.
After the shutdown, what comes next for the former Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery?
Creating a greener, more equitable future at the site means understanding its complex history, its long-running public health impacts, and working in partnership with communities.
Climate change and the problem with time
Episode 7 of “In These Times” brings together an oceanographer, a geophysicist, and a historian about the challenges to understanding the Earth’s 4.6 billion year history, and how our actions in the present impact a future we can only imagine.
On the Galápagos, an underwater exploration of marine life
In collaboration with a local dive instructor and the students he trained, researchers from Penn and Villanova are learning how human presence affects life on the seafloor around these islands.
In the News
Scientists struggle to explain ‘really weird’ spike in world temperatures
Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that tendencies to exaggerate climate science in favor of “doomist” narratives helps no one except the fossil fuel industry.
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Spring is here very early. That’s not good
Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that plant-flowering, tree-leafing, and egg-hatching are all markers associated with spring that are happening sooner.
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We don’t have time for climate misinformation
In a co-written Op-Ed, Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that meaningful decarbonization in the U.S. is in jeopardy of being blocked or slowed if a significant portion of the electorate does not accept the basic scientific facts and implications of climate change.
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A famous climate scientist is in court, with big stakes for attacks on science
Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences is suing a right-wing author and a policy analyst for defamation against the “hockey stick” climate change graph.
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‘Category 5’ was considered the worst hurricane. There’s something scarier, study says
Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that Earth is experiencing a new class of monster storms thanks to the effects of human-caused warming.
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The Doomsday Clock reveals how close we are to total annihilation
Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that the Doomsday Clock, while an imperfect metaphor, remains an important rhetorical device to remind people of the tenuousness of their current existence.
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