Story Archives of 'global warming'

A new project is underway to help estuaries and surrounding coastal communities adapt to climate change.

The low-lying areas are most at risk for damage caused by more severe storms, flooding and sea level rise.

The Environmental Protection Agency selected six estuaries to participate and serve as case studies for the rest of the nation.

New Hampshire’s Great Bay is one of them.

NHPR’s Amy Quinton reports.

Researchers from Dartmouth College have been traveling between the North and South Poles to study the effects of global warming. They dig down deep into the polar snow to collect samples they hope will answer questions about the polar ice caps, the atmosphere and more. We’ll talk to these scientists and others in the Granite State who are helping us understand global warming.

Guests

• Zoe Courville, a Research Mechanical Engineer at the US Army’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover
• Mary Albert, Senior Research Engineer at CRREL and Adjunct Professor at Dartmouth College’s Thayer School of Engineering
• Barry Rock, professor of Natural Resources at the UNH Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space

350 stands for the number of parts per million of carbon dioxide we can have in our atmosphere without causing irreversible damage - and our atmosphere is already at 385. But Vermont-based environmentalist and author Bill McKibben says not all is doomed if a large grassroots effort starts now to reduce carbon emissions.

Guest

• Bill McKibben, Vermont based environmentalist, author and educator, scholar in residence at Middlebury College, and creator of the nonprofit 350.org

The Environmental Protection Agency has already issued four alerts for poor air quality in New Hampshire this spring and summer. We can expect more as the season drags on.

When ground level ozone mixes with heat and sunlight, the air becomes unhealthy to breathe. These conditions can get amplified in cities like Boston, where heavy traffic creates even more smog.

One Cambridge-based company is doing its part to cut down on the auto emissions that make the air so dirty. The New Amsterdam Project is a delivery company that ships hundreds of pounds of products around greater Boston using modified bicycles with cargo loads on the back. Reporter Shannon Mullen produced a story about the souped-up bicycles for our Next Green Thing series.

(Photo by Shannon Mullen)

For our regular series "The Next Green Thing," we're taking a look at what cities are doing to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

While cities accommodate half of the world's population, they consume 75 percent of its resources. But policy makers from New York, Toronto, London, and the not-so-urban Cape Cod gathered for a conference Monday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge to share ideas on how cities can reduce their energy use and improve transportation.

Andrew Blum, a contributing editor for WIRED and Metropolis magazines, moderated one of the panel discussions. We called him Tuesday morning to find out what projects cities are taking on to reduce their carbon footprint.

(Photo by Jacob Bøtter)