January 31, 2011 - Columbia News - Columbia University

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MISS CRAWFORD
EDMUND
vol. 36, no. 07 NEWS and ideas FOR THE COLUMBIA COMMUNITY
January 31, 2011
Looking for clues
to global warming
in the polar ice
By Record Staff
changing
Climate
Trend map: Global average temperature in July 2010 was 0.55°C warmer than average July temperatures between 1951 and 1980.
By Record Staff
It’s not a talking point but a scientific fact:
global temperatures in 2010 were the warmest
on record, in a dead heat with 2005.
That’s the finding of the Columbia-affiliated
NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space
Studies, located above Tom’s Restaurant of
Seinfeld fame on 112th Street and Broadway.
As reported in the Dec. 14 issue of Reviews
of Geophysics, global temperature is rising as
fast in the past decade as it did in the prior
two, according to records that go back to
1880. The analysis is compiled from weather
data from more than 1,000 meteorological
stations world-wide, satellite observations
of sea surface temperature and Antarctic research
station measurements. Says James E.
Hansen, Goddard director and adjunct professor
of earth and environmental sciences
at Columbia, “If the warming trend continues,
as is expected, and if greenhouse gases
Researchers ID Specific Bacteria Implicated in Atherosclerosis
By Record Staff
Ateam of researchers from Columbia’s
College of Dental Medicine have identified
bacteria normally associated
with pneumonia and sepsis as a possible culprit
in the development of atherosclerosis,
or narrowing of the arteries.
Dr. Emil Kozarov, an associate professor
of oral biology, isolated the bacillus Enterobacter
hormaechei from the tissues of a 78-
year-old man who had previously suffered a
heart attack, then grew the bacteria in cell
cultures. The team was then able to identify
the microbe in diseased arterial tissues, data
that suggests that a chronic infection underlies
atherosclerosis, the process in which
fatty deposits build up in the inner lining of
arteries.
The findings are explained in the Jan. 5
edition of the Journal of Atherosclerosis and
Thrombosis.
The long-term goal of identifying suchpathogens
is to develop diagnostic techniques
and drugs that can fight the atherosclerotic
inflammation that leads to clogging of the arteries,
a potentially fatal condition.
Cardiovascular disease is the leading
cause of death in the United States for both
men and women, responsible for more than
752,000 deaths annually, according to the
most recent available figures from the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention.
Fully understanding the role of infections
in cardiovascular disease has been challenging
because researchers have previously
been unable to isolate live bacteria from atherosclerotic
tissue.
“In order to test the idea that bacteria are
continued on page 8
continue to increase, the 2010 record will
not stand for long.”
Across Columbia, an array of climate science
research reflects that conclusion and its
implications. Scientists from the Earth Institute
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory have long
played a pioneering role in climate change,
from measuring its effect on polar ice (see story
at right) to creating computer models that predict
the Earth’s temperature trend (see story on
page 5). Others at the Earth Institute, including
social scientists, economists and professors
of business and law assess how to measure,
mitigate and adapt the effects of global warming.
Researchers at the engineering school are
working on a range of clean energy and sustainable
technologies.
Yet as a new Republican-majority House of
Representatives begins work with an agenda
to limit government regulation of all kinds,
it has raised new challenges to the broad scientific
consensus on the man-made causes of
global warming. But the difficult politics of climate
change have been bipartisan; even when
Democrats controlled both houses of Congress
and the White House in 2009–2010, it proved
impossible to enact a new energy bill. On the
international front, progress on a new climate
treaty has also stalled.
In this issue of The Record we feature several
bulletins from the climate change front
at Columbia. Law professor Michael Gerrard,
who directs the Center for Climate Change
Law, discusses the dim current prospects for
climate legislation. Economist Scott Barrett
suggests a a new approach to getting countries
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Lamont-
Doherty researchers document centuries of
climate change, from the Dead Sea to America’s
desert Southwest. Climate scientist with
the Goddard Institute for Space Studies Gavin
Schmidt, and adjunct senior research scientist
with the Center for Climate Systems Research,
explains why scholars cannot stand on the
sidelines in the contentious political battle
over climate science.
Dr. Emil Kozarov in his lab
Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Diane Bondareff Columbia Technology Ventures
“Their work is concerned with
understanding and documenting
climate change in the past.”
At the bottom of the world, scientists
are camping near the Transantarctic
Mountains, studying
exposed rocks at the edge of a vast ice
sheet and looking for clues to its past.
They hope the geological record will explain
how the planet is warming today,
and point to what may happen in the
future.
One of those scientists is Michael Kaplan,
a Lamont assistant research professor
at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
He and his colleague, Gisela Winckler, a
Lamont associate research professor and
adjunct associate professor at Columbia’s
Department of Earth and Environmental
Sciences, who remains at Lamont’s campus
in Palisades, N.Y., will analyze rock
and sediment samples that they hope will
show how the Eastern Antarctic ice sheet
developed over time.
“Their work is concerned with understanding
and documenting climate
change in the past,” said G. Michael Purdy,
director of Lamont-Doherty. “It is exploration
at the cutting edge.” (As of Feb. 1,
Purdy will become the University’s executive
vice president for research.)
The project, funded by the National
Science Foundation, combines field work,
geochemical analyses and advanced,
isotope-based dating tools to develop
a record of fluctuations in the East Antarctic
ice sheet and identify past changes
in both ice sheet flow direction and bedrock
composition. The Lamont scientists
are working with climate scientists from
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.
Understanding the historical context
and dynamics of Antarctica’s two massive
ice sheets is critical for climate scientists if
they are to create accurate computer models.
“If your model isn’t able to reproduce
what happened in the past it obviously
isn’t good at predicting what will happen
in the future,” Winckler said. “This is where
the geological records will really help.”
The scientists have been documenting
their preparations and efforts with a series
of blog posts from the field camp. Here
are excerpts:
Dec. 25–After months of waiting, we
leave Los Angeles on a nonstop 12-hour
flight to New Zealand. We are Mike Kaplan
at Lamont Doherty, Kathy Licht, a professor
at Indiana University-Purdue University
Indianapolis, and Nicole Bader, a student
from St. Norbert College in Wisconsin.
Dec. 28–We get off the plane in Antarctica
and—it is beautiful, in the 30s
(Fahrenheit) sunny and dry. When it is this
dry and sunny, it is light-jacket weather.
continued on page 8
www.columbia.edu/news

2 January 31, 2011
TheRecord
on campUs
MILESTONES
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
director G. Michael Purdy
was named Columbia’s executive
vice president for research.
Purdy, a marine geophysicist,
has been Lamont’s director for
10 years. Taking over as interim
director of the observatory will
be associate director Arthur
Lerner-Lam, an expert in earthquakes who runs Lamont’s
division of Seismology, Geology and Tectonophysics.
Their appointments will be effective Feb. 1
nicoletta barolini
Morningside Joe
Upstairs, researchers may be pioneering new discoveries across academic disciplines. But the big news for campus coffee lovers is that Columbia has a new café.
Located on the mezzanine level of the recently opened Northwest Corner Building, Joe will be a 60-seat artisanal coffee shop that serves a full menu of espressobased
drinks, drip coffee and teas. This will be the sixth Joe branch in Manhattan, but unlike its other locations near New York University and The New School, this Joe
will have prepared breakfasts, lunches and snacks. And befitting its location on a university campus, Joe will offer coffee classes, including lessons on home brewing
techniques and milk steaming. Joe is open to the public Monday through Friday, 8:00 am. to 8:00 p.m., and on weekends from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
USPS 090-710 ISSN 0747-4504
Vol. 36, No. 07, January 31, 2011
Published by the
Office of Communications and
Public Affairs
David M. Stone
Executive Vice President
for Communications
TheRecord Staff:
Editor: Bridget O’Brian
Designer: Nicoletta Barolini
Senior Writer: Melanie A. Farmer
University Photographer: Eileen Barroso
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Happening at
Columbia
For the latest on upcoming Columbia events,
performances, seminars and lectures, go to
calendar.columbia.edu
Space Oddity
Dear Alma,
Virtually every story about the NASA
Goddard Institute of Space Studies, including
ours, mentions that its office is
above Tom’s Restaurant, the iconic diner
featured prominently in Seinfeld. Why is
a unit of NASA there
—Goddard Fan
Dear Fan
The Institute was founded in 1961 as
a laboratory of the Goddard Space Flight
Center’s Earth Sciences Division. It was
established by Robert Jastrow, (CC’44,
GSAS’45, PhD’48), a NASA scientist whose
many years at Columbia probably factored
into in the institute’s location here.
Jastrow was Goddard’s first director and
a professor of geophysics at Columbia.
(Graduates of the College and of Barnard
may recall taking “Astro-Jastrow” for their
undergraduate science requirement.)
In its earliest days, the Goddard Institute
was located in the Interchurch
Tom’s Restaurant is located on the corner of 112th
Street and Broadway.
Center on Riverside Drive. But in 1965,
as the University expanded its real estate
holdings in Morningside Heights, Columbia
bought the building on the corner of
112th Street and Broadway.
The seven-story apartment building
was built in 1900 as speculative real estate
development swept the Upper West
Side with the new IRT subway line. It was
converted into a 197-unit single room
occupancy hotel in 1946. When Columbia
bought the building, it renovated it
ASK ALMA’S OWL
into offices and renamed it Armstrong
Hall for Edwin H. Armstrong (ENG’13,
HON’29), the Columbia professor of
electrical engineering whose work made
FM radio possible. Goddard moved thre
when it opened.
Much of Goddard’s early work involved
study of planetary atmospheres
using data collected by telescopes and
space probes, its website says. It naturally
followed, then, that Goddard became a
center of atmospheric modeling and climate
change.
The affiliation between the institute
and the University started informally in
1961, as “an arrangement in which it was
envisioned that many of the research
staff would be Columbia researchers,”
said Larry Travis, Goddard’s current deputy
director.
Since then, more ties were added.
Some also are Columbia adjunct professors,
and all Goddard researchers can act
as advisers to graduate students in such
disciplines as applied physics, math and
astronomy. In 1994, in order to enhance
interdisciplinary research work on climate
and earth systems, Columbia and
Goddard jointly established the Center
for Climate Systems Research. It is a unit
of the Earth Institute.
— Bridget O’Brian
Send your questions for Alma’s Owl to
curecord@columbia.edu.
Fred Van Sickle has been
named executive vice president
for university development and
alumni relations, effective Jan. 1.
Van Sickle, who joined Columbia
in 2002, formerly served as vice
president for university development
under his predecessor, Susan
Feagin (GS’74). Feagin will
remain at the University as a special advisor to President
Lee C. Bollinger and plans to work on projects related
to alumni relations and development. Feagin and Van
Sickle spearheaded The Columbia Campaign, which is
expected to exceed its original $4 billion goal for new
gifts and pledges nearly a year ahead of schedule. Building
on this momentum, the University recently raised
its goal to $5 billion by the end of 2013.
Assaf Zeevi, the Henry Kravis
Professor of Business at the
Graduate School of Business,
has been named vice dean for
research, effective July 1. Zeevi,
who specializes in decision,
risk and operations, joined the
school as an assistant professor
in 2001 and was awarded the Dean’s Prize for Teaching
Excellence in 2003. He succeeds Gita Johar, the Meyer
Feldberg Professor of Business, who will become senior
vice dean in charge of faculty recruitment, retention
and development.
John S. Micgiel, associate director of the Harriman Institute
and director of the East Central European Center,
was awarded a medal by the Institute of National
Remembrance in Warsaw, Poland, last month. Micgiel
was honored for his contributions toward a greater understanding
of the history of modern Poland.
grants & gifts
WHO GAVE IT: Thomas Cornacchia (CC’85) and
Goldman Sachs Gives
HOW MUCH: $1 million
WHO GOT IT: Department of Athletics
WHAT FOR: To establish an endowment in support
of the men’s heavyweight, men’s lightweight and
women’s rowing programs.
WHO GAVE IT: OneMarketData LLC
HOW MUCH: $800,000 (in kind)
WHO GOT IT: Columbia Business School
WHAT FOR: The company’s donation of OneTick
software, a proprietary data management tool,
will be used to process market data and streamline
research in structure, trading and market
making.
WHO GAVE IT: Estate of Louis Lowenstein Jr.
(CC’47, L’53)
HOW MUCH: $500,000
WHO GOT IT: Columbia Law School
WHAT FOR: Before his death in 2009, Lowenstein,
a professor of law for nearly three decades, established
the Lou and Helen Lowenstein Loan
Repayment Assistance Fellowship, which helps
selected graduates who pursue a career in public
interest law. This gift will further support that
fellowship.
WHO GAVE IT: Peter Klein ’77GSAS, ’87GSAS, and
Catherine Klein
HOW MUCH: $100,000
WHO GOT IT: Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
WHAT FOR: This gift in support of student fellowships
in mathematics will be doubled under the
terms of the GSAS Fellowship Match.

TheRecord January 31, 2011 3
Social Networking in the Age of Austen, Trollope and Dickens
By Nick Obourn
Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet on Facebook With
social networking the hot topic of the day, a computer
science grad student, his advisor and a literature
professor teamed up to analyze social interactions in
19th century British novels.
David Elson, a Ph.D. candidate in computational linguistics
and a longtime film buff, has long been interested in the intersection
of narrative and computers.
“I started thinking about how storytelling works as a language,
with a syntax that we pick up as children and that differs
from culture to culture,” says Elson. “We are starting to be
able to write programs that can learn a language by reading
a lot of it—why can’t a program learn the meanings of stories
the same way”
This line of thinking led Elson, who is part of the Natural
Language Processing Group in the computer science department
at the engineering school, to create a computer program
in 2009 that could “read” for dialogue in digitally scanned
novels and create social networking maps.
Diagrams of the social networks resemble connected
thought bubbles, where the size of the bubble denotes the
amount of dialogue spoken by a particular character. “Work
in this field—digital humanities—focused on the word level—how
often a single word appears over the centuries, for
example,” says Elson. “I wanted to look more broadly at social
interaction that takes place through quoted speech.”
Elson and his advisor, Kathleen McKeown, the Henry and
Gertrude Rothschild Professor of Computer Science, knew they
needed help from a literature professor to see if the program
worked. With a little social networking of their own, they enlisted
Nicholas Dames, Theodore Kahan Associate Professor in
the Humanities, an expert in the Victorian era.
Luckily, 19th century literature proved to be perfect for the
project since large numbers of books from the period are out
of copyright and have been digitized. “For a literary scholar,
it’s like a room full of new toys to play with, and no one ‘owns’
those toys,” says Dames. “Then the question is: What are we
going to do with these things”
The answer was to use Elson’s program to try to analyze a
longstanding literary theory that Victorian
novels set in the city have more characters,
looser social networks and less dialogue
than those with country settings.
Dames cites the work of Raymond Williams,
a Welsh-born Cambridge University literature
professor who pioneered the idea. “He developed
a series of extremely persuasive arguments
about how, in the 19th century, novelists began
to imagine urban social interaction as fundamentally
different—more dispersed, accidental and
fleeting—than the kinds of social interactions
found in village or rural settings,” says Dames.
“His arguments were based on very elegant readings
of a select few authors—most notably Austen
and Dickens—and they quickly became fairly
standard, canonical theories.”
In contrast, the team worked with 60 19th
century novels, totaling more than 10 million
words. The list included books by Charles Dickens,
Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Brontë,
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, George Eliot, Anthony
Trollope and Thomas Hardy.
Contrary to Williams’ hypothesis, the
analysis found that social networks in rural
and urban setting were about the
same size and had the same levels
of interaction. This past summer,
MR.
RUSHWORTH
the team presented their findings
at the annual conference of the
Association for Computational
Linguistics in Uppsala, Sweden,
where it received the award for
best student paper.
Heartened by the positive response,
they have decided to expand their efforts and graph how social
networks change in novels as the plot unfolds. This would
be “a way of thinking about how plot generates or retards or
shapes social connections,” says Dames.
Elson, who has a job lined up at Google after he graduates
in May, is very interested in the potential of bridging literature
and technology.
SUSAN
WILLIAM
DR.GRANT
MRS.
GRANT
MRS.
RUSHWORTH
MISS CRAWFORD
SIR THOMAS
FANNY
EDMUND
MRS.
NORRIS
MARIA
JULIA
TOM
MR.YATES
A diagram of
social networking
in Jane Austen’s
Mansfield Park created
by software developed by David
Elson, a Ph.D. candidate in computational linguistics who is
interested in using technology to shed light on narrative.
“We’ll soon be able to trace the spread of ideas from culture
to culture and put common assumptions about our heritage to
the test,” he says. “We’re not losing the close read—we’re gaining
the power to instantly get a sense of where a text or an idea
fits in the big picture. We’re just starting to peek at what will be
a new expanse of scholarship possibilities.”
On Exhibit :
Barnard Hosts First Women’s Film Festival
Bloomberg Visits Campus to Launch New Center
Devoted to Green Building Technology
Twelve features and documentaries by
and about women will be screened at
the first Athena Film Festival on the Barnard
campus Feb. 10-13. The lineup includes
Miss Representation, a film that explores
the media’s disparaging portrayals of
women; Desert Flower, the best-selling story
of a Somali refugee-turned-model; and
Mo, a portrait of the charismatic Northern
Ireland political figure Mo Mowlam.
Kathryn Kolbert, director of Barnard’s
Athena Center for Leadership Studies,
launched the festival with Melissa Silverstein,
founder of Women and Hollywood,
to showcase women’s contributions to
the industry. The festival will honor leading
industry figures in a ceremony Feb. 10.
Recipients of the Athena Awards include
Delia Ephron (BC’66) (You’ve Got Mail),
Chris Hegedus (The War Room) and Debra
Granik and Anne Rosellini, director and cowriters
of Winter’s Bone.
One short may be of particular interest
to the Barnard community: Growing Up Barnard,
directed by Daniella Kahane (BC’05),
who counts four generations of Barnard
alums in her family. The film explores the
relevance of women’s colleges today and
features interviews with Anna Quindlen
(BC’74) and Suzanne Vega (BC’81).
—Ann Levin
Pictured from left, University senior executive vice president Robert Kasdin; Economic Development Corp. president Seth W. Pinsky; Trinity Real Estate president Jason Pizer; IBM
researcher Jane Snowdon; Bloomberg; CUNY vice chancellor for research Gillian Small; and SEAS dean Feniosky Peña-Mora.
By Record Staff
Just weeks after Columbia officially opened the
Northwest Corner Building, Mayor Michael R.
Bloomberg used the building’s dramatic atrium
as the backdrop for announcing a new center devoted
to green building technology—part of his plan
to create a sustainable future for the city.
The NYC Urban Technology Innovation Center
was established to promote the development and
commercialization of green building technologies
in New York City. It was developed through a partnership
between the Fu Foundation
School of Engineering and
Applied Science; Polytechnic Institute
of New York University;
the city’s Economic Development
Corporation and City University of
New York (CUNY).
“By bringing together New
York City’s business innovators,
academics and building owners, the NYC Urban
Technology Innovation Center will capitalize on
some of our city’s greatest strengths, creating jobs
and helping realize our vision of a greener, greater
New York,” Bloomberg said at the Jan. 20 event.
On Earth Day 2007, Bloomberg announced
PlaNYC 2030, his comprehensive sustainability plan
that seeks to reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions
while accommodating a population growth of
For video of the center’s launch event, go to
news.columbia.edu/urbantechcenter
nearly 1 million over the next quarter century.
The center has the potential to help the city
achieve its goals by funneling the latest scientific
research into sustainable building technology to
companies that are making green products and
real estate developers who are willing to use them.
In addition, it will serve as a clearinghouse for information
about the costs and benefits of the new
technology.
The center “will promote building efficiency,” said
Senior Associate Dean Jack McGourty, executive director
of the center, which will be managed by the
Engineering School’s Center for
Technology, Innovation and Community
Engagement. “This not only
will be vital in reducing the city’s
overall carbon footprint, but also
will promote economic growth.”
Speaking at the event, Robert
Kasdin, senior executive vice
president of the University, said
the Bloomberg administration recognized the importance
of scientific knowledge and technological
innovation in creating a vibrant urban economy.
“New York always has been a place of big ideas,
many of them fueled by our great colleges and universities,”
he said. “Columbia always has taken its
identity from being both in and of the city of New
York. Today is a day to celebrate that bond and
what it will mean for New York’s future.”

4 january 31, 2011
TheRecord january 31, 2011
TheRecord
Climate research
Scientists Drill For Insights Under the Salty Dead Sea
By David Funkhouser
Scientists are drilling deep into the bed of the fast-shrinking
Dead Sea, searching for clues to past climate changes
and other events that may have affected human history
even earlier than biblical times. They have found that the sea
has come and gone in the past—a revelation with powerful
implications for the current Mideast.
Bordering Israel and Jordan, the inland Dead Sea is Earth’s
lowest-lying spot on land, with shores some 1,400 feet below
ocean level and hyper-salty waters going down another 1,200
feet or more. Beneath it lie deep deposits of salts and sediments
fed mainly by Jordan River drainage.
The drilling is being conducted
by investigators from Israel, the
United States, Germany, Japan,
Norway and Switzerland.
Steven L. Goldstein, professor
of Earth and Environmental
Sciences and a geochemist at
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory,
one of the project leaders,
says that drill cores show that
the Dead Sea has dried up at least
twice without human intervention
over hundreds of thousands of years. “Climate models predict a
greater aridity with a warmer climate,” he noted. “Just imagine
what this means if a warming climate results in the present day
fresh water supply becoming scarcer and scarcer.”
Scarce fresh water is an explosive issue in this part of the
world; the Dead Sea has been shrinking rapidly as Syria, Israel,
Jordan and the Palestinian Authority pull virtually all the
water from the Jordan River for agriculture and other uses. At
its southern end also lie huge evaporation ponds, where Israel
and Jordan mine salt. If changing climate further dries
the region, pressure on the fresh water supply will increase.
Previous research along the Dead Sea’s shores determined
that water levels fluctuated with the coming and going of ice
ages over the last several hundred thousand years. Surrounding
bluffs show higher shorelines; the current sea is more than
800 feet lower than it was during the height of the last glaciation
some 20,000 years ago.
The main drill site is the deepest part of the sea, in about
1,000 feet of water 5 miles off the Israeli shore. Drilling began
Nov. 21 and continued through mid-January when it was suspended
for maintenance and repair. It is scheduled to resume
in March. The International Continental Scientific Drilling
Program is sponsoring the project and covering roughly 40
“This is looking at climate
at a very important place
in human history.”
percent of the $2.5 million cost. The remaining funds come
from funding agencies in Israel and the other participating
countries, including the National Science Foundation in the
United States.
Minerals that settle to the bottom of the Dead Sea during
annual dry seasons contain uranium that allows researchers to
date the sediment layers; dry season minerals alternate with layers
of mud formed during the wet seasons. From these deposits,
researchers can find evidence of water chemistry, prevailing
winds and changing climate, not only year by year, but season
by season. At two points, the researchers have already come
across levels composed of pebbles, indicating that the middle
of the Dead Sea was once a beach. These events could coincide
with the end of the last glacial
period around 13,000 to 14,000
years ago, and an earlier interglacial
period 125,000 years ago.
Other levels show evidence
of earthquakes, as layers of sediment
that normally lie flat are
twisted into convoluted shapes.
With precise dating, these should
form a detailed picture of the ancient
history of earthquakes in
the region. “An earthquake was
almost certainly the source of
the biblical story of Jericho, when the walls came tumbling
down,” Goldstein says.
Information from the sediments could form valuable context
for that and other ancient stories. The region is thought
to have been the corridor for various human migrations, and
is the primary route by which early people spread out from
Africa. “This is looking at climate at a very important place in
human history,” Goldstein said.
The chief Israeli scientists on the project are Mordechai
Stein of the Geological Survey of Israel and Zvi Ben-Avraham
of Tel Aviv University; others come from the German Research
Center for Geosciences (GFZ), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in
Zurich, the University of Geneva, the International Research
Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto and the University of
Minnesota. The group is hoping to involve scientists from the
Palestinian territories and Jordan as well.
The team hopes to recover cores of sediment going as far
back in time as possible, up to several hundred thousand
years ago.
David Funkhouser is a science writer at Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory
Above: Sediment cores taken from the Dead Sea indicate the area has dried up at least twice
without human intervention. The lake faces new stress now from humans pulling fresh water
from the Jordan River, which flows into the sea.
Geology Professor Steven Goldstein stands on a drilling rig in the Dead Sea last November
with a core sample taken from deep below the salty sea between Jordan and Israel.
Goldstein is part of a team of researchers drilling to discover clues to past climate change
and natural disasters in the region.
Adi Torfstein
Adi Torfstein
Law School’s Gerrard Sees Little Hope for Climate Bill This Year
By Bridget O’Brian
Now that Republicans have taken control of the
House of Representatives, a leading expert on climate
change law is not optimistic about the
prospects for meaningful climate legislation in the next
two years.
“The best we can hope for from this Congress is some
energy legislation that would encourage renewable energy
and efficiency”—and even that isn’t a sure thing, says Michael
Gerrard (CC’72), director of Columbia Law School’s
Center for Climate Change Law.
The center, which was started in 2009, develops legal
techniques to fight climate change, trains law students and
lawyers in their use, and serves as a clearinghouse for information
about the issue. Gerrard was an environmental
lawyer for 30 years, most recently at the law firm Arnold
& Porter, before becoming the Andrew Sabin Professor of
1
Professional Practice at the law school; he also holds an appointment
at the Earth Institute.
He sees the fight over climate change focusing on the
regulatory authority of the Environmental Protection Agency,
with Congress attempting to suspend or revoke it or
simply to freeze the agency’s funding. Republicans have
already introduced legislation to block the E.P.A.’s ability to
regulate greenhouse gases.
The U.S. Supreme Court held in 2007 that the Clean Air
Act grants the agency the authority to regulate heat-trapping
auto emissions. It was, at the time, a big win for environmentalists.
This year, Gerrard and other climate change
advocates are awaiting the outcome of a case the Supreme
Court recently agreed to hear, Connecticut vs. American
Electric Power.
It was brought by eight states seeking to force five utilities
to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions on the theory
3
20
10
10
21
3
2
1 2 4
1
4 7
1 1 1 2 1 2 1 0
Source: Arnold & Porter and Columbia Center for Climate Change Law
Number of Cases
130
120
110
100
Climate Litigation: Filings
Other
Common Law
National Environmental Policy Act
Coal
Industry
Environmentalist
12 9
4 6
1989 1992 1993 1996 1997 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
A chart shows how lawsuits related to climate change have skyrocketed in recent
years, with the majority filed by industry seeking to overturn EPA rules
1
3
10
22
Year Filed
3
1
14
32
4
22
15
4 9
8
9
13
96
( 372 c a s e s a s o f
J a n . 5 , 2011 )
that they are a public nuisance. In 2009, the 2nd U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals court ruled in favor of the states. This theory
could open up liability claims against not only electric
utilities, but also a broad swath of industries.
It could be the Court’s most important environmental
decision since the 2007 case, Massachusetts v. EPA.
“This will be very big,” Gerrard says. “We know the
four justices who dissented in that case would want to
reverse this current case.” He was referring to Chief Justice
John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence
Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
The outcome of the Connecticut case is uncertain in part
because Justice Sonia Sotomayor has recused herself due to
her involvement in the case at the appellate level, and a 4-4
tie is possible.
Gerrard notes that in addition to the Supreme Court action,
lawsuits related to climate change have skyrocketed.
According to the database of the Center for Climate Change
Law, 132 lawsuits were filed in U.S. courts in 2010 compared
to 54 in 2009. The majority, 96, were filed by industry firms
seeking to overturn the E.P.A.’s regulations concerning
greenhouse gas emissions. Just a handful were filed by environmentalists.
“Coal-fired plants are the largest single source of greenhouse
gases in the United States so the environmental community
has launched a campaign to stop the construction
of any new coal plants, and it’s been very successful so far,”
Gerrard says.
Unlike tax or bankruptcy law, there isn’t one statute governing
climate change, nor are there specific laws on the
books as yet to address climate change.
Those difficulties stem from the very nature of climate
change. “It involves a broad range of human activities that
have a cumulative impact over time and over space all over
the world,” says Gerrard.
“Reducing greenhouse gas emissions in any one location
will not have a local or immediate effect, but it will contribute
overall to the eventual solution of the problem.”
Advocates for climate change legislation have their work
cut out for them over the next couple years as they contend
with a new crop of lawmakers hostile to the idea of regulating
emissions. In addition to introducing anti-regulatory
bills, House climate change skeptics are expected to launch
investigations challenging scientific research on the topic.
“The 2012 election could bring a whole new ball game,”
says Gerrard. “It could get better, it could get worse.”

Climate research
Using Game Theory to Forecast Climate Trends
By Melanie A. Farmer
Economist Scott Barrett is no fan
of the Kyoto Protocol, the international
agreement to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions and get climate
change under control. Barrett proposes
a different approach: tackle the gigantic
problem, one piece at a time.
“If we break up the problem into
smaller pieces we’re more likely to have a
dramatic impact in the end,” he says.
Lamont-Doherty Researcher: Southwest
Headed for Permanent Drought
By David Funkhouser
The American Southwest has seen naturally induced dry
spells throughout the past, but now human-induced
global warming could push the region into a permanent
drought in the coming decades, according to Lamont-Doherty
scientist Richard Seager and others who have been studying the
area’s climate.
Seager, who focuses on climate variability and climate
change, began his work studying
droughts by looking into
the past using sea surface
temperature records gathered
by ships plying the oceans in
the 19th century. He and colleagues
used computer models
to recreate a climate history
that showed periodic droughts.
Focusing on North America,
they also used tree rings to
look back as far as the Middle
Ages, when the Southwest experienced
a drought lasting
hundreds of years.
“You begin to see that there’s
a natural cycle of droughts,
large and small,” says Seager,
the Palisades Geophysical Institute/Lamont research professor
at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “But when you add
in the human effects from rising greenhouse gases, we could
be pushing subtropical regions like the American Southwest
into a permanent state of aridity. There are signs it’s already
underway.”
In a 2007 paper, Seager and colleagues used computer
models to show the Southwest is on the verge of a transition
to a more arid climate. And in the December 2010 issue of
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Seager and
Gabriel Vecchi of NOAA pinned the drying to a drop in winter
Barrett, the Lenfest-Earth Institute
Professor of Natural Resource Economics
with a joint appointment in the School of
International and Public Affairs and the
Earth Institute, is an expert in complex
international negotiations.
He uses game theory, which analyzes
how people make decisions when the
desired outcome depends on the choices
of other people, to understand how
treaties such as Kyoto can get countries
to behave differently. He has advised a
number of international organizations,
including the United Nations and the
World Bank, on health, climate and other
global issues.
The Kyoto Protocol sets binding targets
for 37 industrialized countries to reduce
six greenhouse gases; those targets
are set to expire next year. The United
States is not a party. Barrett suggests it
would be more productive if more agreements
were negotiated focusing on individual
gases and sectors—and in fact,
such proposals are already on the table.
For example, the United States,
Mexico and Canada have expressed
their willingness to reduce hydrofluorocarbons
or HFCs, which are used as
refrigerants in air conditioners and
cooling systems, under an existing
treaty, the Montreal Protocol. HFCs are
one of the six greenhouse gases in the
Kyoto agreement.
The Montreal Protocol was adopted
“If we break up the problem into smaller
pieces we’re more likely to have a
dramatic impact in the end.”
in 1987 to phase out chemicals like chlorofluorocarbons
found in aerosol cans
that were destroying the ozone layer. It
is considered one of the most
successful international
agreements.
Barrett credits its success
to its ingenious design,
which incorporates
carrot-and-stick incentives.
The main “carrot”
or reward is a payment
to compensate developing
countries for the additional
costs of phasing out CFCs. The
main “stick” is the threat to restrict
trade to punish countries
that are not party to the treaty.
Barrett says these incentives
could control HFCs effectively,
but would not work if applied
across the board to reductions
TheRecord January january 31, 2011 31, 2011 5
in the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide
(CO2), because they might spark
a trade war. For instance, there would
be a political uproar, and possible trade
retaliation, if countries in the European
Union and Japan restricted trade against
the U.S. for not ratifying Kyoto.
Rather, he believes CO2 emissions are
best limited by focusing on individual
sectors such as steel, aluminum, automobiles
or electricity.
“The logic is partly that you can use
the leverage you have for each piece
to bring about the greatest amount of
change,” Barrett says. “When you throw
everything together—like what’s being
done in the Kyoto Protocol—you lose
that leverage.”
Barrett notes that the key problem
with the Kyoto Protocol is that it has no
meaningful enforcement mechanism.
“This whole approach can only succeed
if you can enforce what countries agree
to do,” he says. “We’ve been unable to
figure out how to do that.”
As far as he’s concerned, it’s
time for a new approach. “There
are no silver bullets,” he says
about his piecemeal strategy,
“but this approach is better
than Kyoto. Fortunately, the
failure of the Copenhagen
negotiations is causing people
to be open to new proposals.
I think we’re there
now.” In 2009, international
delegates to
a climate summit
in the Danish
capital failed to
agree on binding
Scott Barrett is an expert in complex
international negotiations.
action to curb
greenhouse gas
emissions.
precipitation and showed how this is caused by changes in
atmospheric circulation and water vapor transports induced
by warming temperatures.
The warming also shortens the snow season, reduces
the snow mass that serves as natural storage for water, and
forces an earlier spring melt, disrupting the supply system
that waters much of the Southwest—the region from the
western Great Plains to the Pacific, and the Oregon border
to southern Mexico.
That is ominous news for a region that has seen explosive
growth in population, land use
and water demands in recent
decades. A reduction in the flow
of important water resources
such as the Colorado River will
have serious consequences.
“I’m curious how the Southwest
is going to handle this,”
Seager says.
He says the natural variations
between wet and dry periods
are driven mostly by the
El Niño/La Niña cycle of sea
surface warming and cooling
in the Pacific. “The anthropo-
Aerial view of Lake Powell in Arizona. The prominent white rings surrounding the edges genic signal is currently small
of the cliffs are due to steadily receding water levels.
compared to the natural variability,”
Seager says. “But you
can see it, and it’s consistent with the climate models. It
works across the whole subtropics. Right now the human
effect is small, but it will become a serious problem in the
decades down the road.”
Local water system managers want to know how much
water will be available in coming years, but Seager can’t offer
information that detailed. Still, almost all of the climate
models point to a much drier region by around 2050. “You
could wait to the middle of the century and say, well, did
this happen, or didn’t it happen” Seager says. “But that’s
not a very sensible thing to do.”
Columbia Ink
New Books by Faculty
Order and Chivalry
by Jesus D. Rodriguez-Velasco
University of Pennsylvania Press
Knighthood and chivalry are
commonly associated with the
aristocracy. However, Jesus D.
Rodriguez-Velasco, professor of
Latin American and Iberian studies
at Columbia, is interested in
how chivalric orders helped create
the urban middle class in
14th century Spain. Rodriguez-
Velasco, who teaches medieval
and early modern studies, relies
on original texts to document the
emergence of secular knighthood
organizations in the Spanish kingdom of Castile. These organizations
had rules that were different from those of military
and religious orders for the nobility, and drew their membership
from the ranks of city-dwelling commoners. Rodriguez-Velasco
argues that these institutions helped define the privileges and
political structures of modern Western society.
The Gipper
by Jack Cavanaugh
Skyhorse Publishing
Perhaps no sports legend is more
enduring than that of Notre Dame
football coach Knute Rockne and
his star athlete George “The Gipper”
Gipp, a former pool hustler and
poker player still regarded by some
as the best all-round player for the
Fighting Irish. Jack Cavanaugh, a
veteran sportswriter whose biography
Tunney was nominated for a Pulitzer
Prize, traces the lives of the two
men as they intertwine on the Notre
Dame football field in the years
leading up to and just after World War I. Cavanaugh, a professor
at the Columbia School of Journalism, details how Rockne and
Gipp helped transform an unknown college football program into
a national powerhouse and, in the process, cemented the phrase
“Win one for the Gipper” in the popular imagination.
The Chosen Peoples: America, Israel, and
the Ordeals of Divine Election
by Todd Gitlin and Liel Leibovitz
Simon & Schuster
Prolific author and Journalism Professor
Todd Gitlin takes on the special
relationship between the United
States and Israel in his latest book,
The Chosen Peoples: America, Israel,
and the Ordeals of Divine Election. With
co-author Liel Leibovitz, an editor of
the online Jewish affairs magazine
Tablet, Gitlin suggests that both nations
share the conviction they were
singled out by God to serve as a beacon
to the world. They argue that this
shared idea of divine destiny drove both the westward expansion of
the United States and the establishment of a modern Jewish state
in the biblical land of Israel. A belief in divine election doesn’t necessarily
lead to arrogance and bad behavior, they contend; instead,
the burden of “chosenness”—if shouldered properly—can offer a
path to moral excellence.
Importing Democracy
By Raymond a. Smith
Praeger
The United States has always taken
pride in being a model of democracy.
However, presidential systems
are more closely associated with
dictatorship and single-party rule in
other parts of the world like Latin
America and Africa. Raymond A.
Smith, adjunct professor of political
science, explores whether American
democracy might be strengthened
by incorporating features of parliamentary
systems. Each of the 21
chapters highlights a feature of a
foreign nation’s political system that is absent in the U.S. system.
Chapters also draw on brief case studies from countries such as
Australia, Brazil and South Africa.

6 january 31, 2011
New Mobile “App” Provides Earth Science Data
new mobile application
A created at Lamont-Doherty
Earth Observatory provides users
with simplified access to
vast libraries of images and
information that until now
were tapped mainly by earth
and environmental scientists.
The EarthObserver
App, for the iPhone, iPad or iPod
University Launches Updated Website
After months of public testing and
user feedback, the revised and redesigned
Columbia.edu home page was
launched on Jan. 13. Designed by the
Office of Communications and Public
Affairs, in partnership with Columbia
University Information Technology, it
Touch, displays natural features
and forces on land, undersea
and in the air. The application
draws on dozens of
frequently updated databases
from institutions throughout
the world. For a slideshow of
images available through the
application, visit: news.columbia.edu/earthapp.
contains a number of aesthetic, organizational
and technological improvements,
including simplified navigation; an enhanced
search function that includes
websites and contact information; and
social media tools. To see more go to:
news.columbia.edu/home/2266
eileen barroso
TheRecord
Four Professors Elected Fellows of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science
By Record Staff
Four Columbia University professors have been
elected fellows of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a prestigious
scientific society
established in 1848.
The new fellows,
selected from across a
range of fields including
political science,
biology and epidemiology,
are among 503 inductees
from across the
nation. Last year the
AAAS recognized seven
Columbia professors as new fellows.
Here are this year’s fellows:
Wallace S. Broecker
Wallace S. Broecker, Newberry Professor of
Geology in the Department of Earth and Environmental
Science, for pioneering contributions to the
fields of climate science
and oceanography.
Broecker, who is
also a researcher at
the Lamont-Doherty
Earth Observatory, was
recognized for his understanding
of glacial
ages, circulation of the
ocean and ocean biogeochemistry.
Shih-Fu Chang
Shih-Fu Chang, professor and department chair
of Electrical Engineering at the School of Engineering
and Applied Science (SEAS), for distinguished
contributions to multimedia content analysis and
Bruce Gilbert
Dr. Cheryl Hutt
search. Since the early 1990s, his research group
has developed numerous popular visual search engines
and intelligent multimedia communication
systems.
Peter Schlosser, Vinton
Professor of Earth and Environmental
Engineering
at SEAS, for his important
scientific accomplishments
in ocean and hydrological
sciences. Schlosser, who is
also the director of the Columbia
Climate Center, was
recognized for his contributions
to sustainable development
and his significant
services to national and international scientific
communities.
Saul J. Silverstein, professor of microbiology
and immunology at Columbia’s College of Physicians
and Surgeons, for
Saul J. Silverstein
Peter Schlosser
distinguished contributions
to the field of biology
and medical sciences.
In particular, Silverstein
was recognized for development
of the process
of cotransformation of
mammalian cells, which
allows foreign DNA to be
inserted into a host cell to
produce certain proteins.
New fellows will be
presented with an official certificate and a gold and
blue (representing science and engineering, respectively)
rosette pin on Feb. 19 during the 2011 AAAS
annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
Bruce Gilbert
Columbia Staffer and Veteran Invited to President’s DADT Signing
eileen barroso
Domi in her office in Low Library.
By Melanie Farmer
Former U. S. Army Captain Tanya
Domi could not believe her good
fortune when she was invited to attend
President Barack Obama’s signing of
legislation to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t
tell” policy banning gays and lesbians from
serving openly in the military. For Domi,
one of just 500 guests at the Dec. 22 ceremony
in Washington, D.C., it struck very
close to home.
Domi, a senior public affairs officer in
the Office of Communications and Public
Affairs as well as an adjunct assistant professor
of International and Public Affairs, had
been investigated for her sexual orientation
soon after enlisting in the Army.
“It was surreal,” Domi says about the bill
signing. “It’s amazing to go from being in
the Army and being read my rights to standing
in the Department of Interior listening
to the president say, ‘We are not a don’t ask,
don’t tell country.’”
Domi, 56, enlisted in the Army in 1974,
when she was 19. Six months after enlisting,
she was accused of being a lesbian after going
to a gay bar with other women from her company;
all were privates stationed at Fort Devens,
Mass. After an 18-month investigation,
some women who had revealed they were gay
were discharged from the Army.
Domi retained counsel from the American
Civil Liberties Union and refused to reveal her
sexual orientation. She fought the charges,
which were ultimately dropped, but the Army
downgraded Domi’s top secret clearance and
she was not permitted to participate in her
graduation from military intelligence training.
While she is now openly gay, she wasn’t at
the time, and she was investigated twice more
and, she says, sexually harassed by a colleague.
Domi ultimately achieved the rank of captain
before resigning her commission in 1990.
“It was really dangerous for me to remain in
the Army even though I loved the Army,” says
Domi. When the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy
became law in 1993, she worked to repeal
it, testifying before Congress and speaking
against it in 25 states.
“The repeal legitimizes those who want
to serve, who happen to be gay and lesbian,
and want to be treated like everyone else in
America. These values are quintessentially
American,” Domi says.
Born and raised in Indianapolis in a politically
minded family, Domi was introduced to
politics by her mother, who often volunteered
as a judge at polling stations. At 13, she canvassed
door-to-door for Robert F. Kennedy’s
1968 presidential bid.
Following her military service, working
in politics seemed like a natural move. She
worked in a series of political public relations
and communications jobs, including for the
House Armed Services Committee, the Clinton-Gore
1996 re-election campaign and the
Organization for Cooperation and Security
in Europe in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where she
helped implement the Dayton Peace Accords.
In 2000, after a decade of working on issues
such as sex trafficking, human rights and media
freedom, often in the international arena,
she moved to New York City to get a master’s
degree in human rights at Columbia. Eventually
she joined the public affairs office. After
earning her degree in 2007, she also began
teaching human rights as an adjunct professor
of international affairs.
Domi’s job includes promoting Columbia’s
expertise in international affairs, politics and
economics, including the School of International
and Public Affairs and the University’s
six regional institutes. She also serves as the
primary press contact for all World Leaders
Forum events, which have brought prominent
political and global figures to campus.
Domi says she never imagined a career in
education but now she’s hooked. “I enjoy the
intellectual stimulus of talking to all these brilliant
people and listening to how they view
the world,” she says. “I absolutely love it. I’m
always learning something new.”
Col. Harold Floody nominated Domi, then 35, for the Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award in 1989 as the top junior officer in the U.S.
Army Support Command, Hawaii.

TheRecord January 31, 2011 7
FACULTY Q&A
Gavin
Schmidt
Q.
By Record Staff
We’re at a moment where the politics of climate change
have been changing in ways that are worrisome to
those who value the role of science in public policy. Why do
you think that is
If you take any political issue where there is some scientific
component, one often finds that the depth of
A.
feeling in the public doesn’t correlate with how well understood
that topic is. We saw the same thing with health care,
genetically modified foods, vaccines. Most people who have an
opinion about these things actually haven’t looked into it and
don’t have a deep understanding of what’s going on. So when
it comes to climate science, it’s not surprising that most people
don’t actually know the difference between the ozone hole and
climate change, and don’t have good sources for getting comprehensive
information.
How harmful is it to the research mission when
Q. you have people in a public role attacking climate
science
A.
POSITION:
Adjunct Senior Research Scientist at the Center for
Climate Systems Research at the Earth Institute
Climatologist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
JOINED FACULTY:
1996
HISTORY:
Contributing Editor, RealClimate.org
Co-Chair, the CLIVAR/PAGES (Past Global Changes)
Intersection Panel
Associate Research Scientist/Research Scientist
with Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Columbia’s
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and the
Center for Climate Systems Research, 1998-2004
Postdoctoral Fellow, National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, 1996-1998
It’s dangerous when politicians start to use scientific
themes to further their political goals. Real
science takes the information that is out there and tries to
come up with the best explanation for what’s going on. The
politicized science that people like Cuccinelli in Virginia
are engaging in is completely different; they’ve already
made up their mind and they just look for things that support
it. That kind of picking and choosing what science
you want to believe, depending on what political goal you
want to achieve, is the antithesis of what science really is. It
sends a chilling effect across the whole of the academy. The
University of Virginia is very aware of the ramifications of
this and is fighting this all the way to the Supreme Court in
Virginia, and I wish them all the luck.
Does the current polarized debate, much of it “antielitist”
in tone, make it harder for scientists to win
Q.
public arguments outside the academy
It takes a long time to become a scientist, and one of
A. the reasons is because it’s hard. It’s hard to set aside
prejudice and wishful thinking in order to see the world as
it really is and to examine that world more critically. Science
is always about nuance, it’s always about trying to step forward
in a provisional way, one step at a time. It’s the collective
information that science has produced that allows us to
improve technology, to understand environmental threats,
to understand the universe. The debates within science are
always about small issues revolving around stuff that’s really
cutting-edge. So when there’s a new paper in Nature or Science
that is deemed to be of public interest, the real issue is
not the subject—it’s a subtle point that has been worked out
in the literature for years and years, and this may not even be
a final accounting. Can that kind of approach survive when
thrown into a political mosh pit Of course not. You’re not
going to educate the public in the middle of a highly partisan
political dog fight. We saw that with health care. The
amount of misinformation and deliberate disinformation
about health care reform was stunning to behold, and people
were getting very, very angry about things that they didn’t
understand. Climate change is like that and worse, because
it’s less immediate.
Q.
A.
Do you see the current challenges to climate science as
a temporary conflict or something more long lasting
The day-to-day attacks on scientific integrity, the accusations
of misconduct and malfeasance, these must be
dealt with. People need access to real information. There needs
to be pushback when people are abusing their authority, as in
the Virginia case. Just because there’s a growing awareness of
the problem doesn’t mean that you can expect everything to
work out nicely in the end. It will work out, I hope, because lots
of work has been done to combat misinformation and put good
information out there and help educate the public. But I don’t
think there’s any guarantee that society will do the right thing
in the long term unless in the short term we keep pointing out
exactly what can be done and how that might help.
Q.
Give us some examples of things that scientists believe
might work to solve the problem of climate change that
are both good policy and good politics.
A lot of the problem we have in developing climate
A. policy is that it’s perceived to be different from other
kinds of policy. The key to moving forward is to actually focus
on things that can be done and how they might be done. Science
says, okay, let’s talk about carbon dioxide—what effect is
carbon dioxide having on the atmosphere But that isn’t necessarily
the science that’s very useful for policymakers. One of
the things our group has been working on in the last couple of
years is trying to assess the net impact of a policy—not just for
climate but also for air pollution, public health, water resources.
We’re not talking about pie-in-the-sky targets; we’re talking
about policy options that are on the table now, like increasing
the CAFE standards for mileage [federal regulations to improve
fuel efficiency]. They decrease carbon dioxide, but they also
decrease nitrous oxides and black carbon. And what’s the net
effect on the climate going to be once you take into account
all those other things What you find is that there are a lot of
policy options that are positive across a number of different
criteria that policymakers care about. Policymakers don’t only
care about the climate; they care about the health of the population,
congestion, clean water and clean air. And so often times
I think that the climate sciences have been perceived to be saying,
“CO2, CO2, CO2, CO2,” which is right, but lacks nuance.
Does a long-term problem like climate change—where
Q. both the risks and the benefits may appear distant in
time—present a special risk to a society that tends to address
issues in response to an immediate crisis
A.
Historically we’ve dealt with environmental issues on
a piecemeal basis. We’ve dealt with acid rain, dirty rivers,
oil spills, but we haven’t really thought about it in a holistic
way. It’s only been in the last five years that the big modeling
groups have started to put these things together coherently so
that you can ask good questions like, “If I change this, what impact
is it going to have on climate, air pollution, public health,
ecosystems and water” Since the science has moved forward,
we can ask more interesting questions. And it turns out that
those questions are the questions that policymakers have probably
been asking all along, and we’ve been only giving them
partial answers. I’d like to think that if we can give them more
complete answers, then the people who actually have to make
decisions are going to pay more attention.
When you look at the overall climate change
Q. debate in 2011—the long-term scientific consensus
on one side, the skeptics and the politics of the moment
on the other—where do you see it going
A.
It’s tempting to just focus on the loudest voices but it’s
fundamentally distorting. There is real information
that we can supply as an academic institution, and we should
be doing that. We can’t cut ourselves off from that to pursue
our academic pursuits. Wherever I go, whether I’m on a bus
or at a party or just walking down the street, and people find
out that I study climate change, they have questions. They’re
not getting the answers from TV, from talk radio or any of the
other mainstream ways that information is being transmitted
in this society.
How should academic researchers get the facts out
Q.
A.
We have to find new ways to get information out there.
That involves writing books, blogging, trying to be on
TV, talking to local high schools, making yourself available for
interviews and panels. The number of people who are trying
to muddy the waters is actually very small. The number of scientists
and people who know much better is very large. And if
every one of those people went and did one public thing, we’d
completely swamp the forces of confusion.
Q.
A.
Do we have some successful models of collective
action on environmental issues
I see very positive lessons for the climate change issue
in the international agreement to ban ozone-depleting
substances [the 1987 Montreal Protocol]. Science noticed a
problem, saw that CFCs [chlorofluorocarbons] were building up
in the atmosphere, were going to get into the stratosphere and
were going to start to deplete the ozone when certain chemical
reactions started to happen, and the scientists mobilized. The
first approaches were pretty ineffectual—let’s stop using spray
cans. That was great but it didn’t really change very much. I
think it took them five go’s at it to get to the point where they
said, “Oh, you know what We can actually ban these chemicals
and move forward in reducing the number of ozone-depleting
substances.” Climate change is more complicated. There are
many more emitters, there are many more causes, but then
there are a lot of things that we can do including energy efficiency
and improved mileage standards.
Q.
Does it worry you that it has become impossible to
enact a clean energy bill or agree on an international
climate treaty
A.
I think there are grounds for optimism because the
governments of every major country in the world are
talking about this as if it’s a serious problem. If I go to brief
[Congressional] staffers, people who work for the state or the
city, people at the EPA, I don’t need to explain to them why
carbon dioxide is a problem. Nobody calls me up anymore and
says, “Hey, is that global warming thing a real problem or not”
They’re asking me questions like, “If we’re going to incorporate
black carbon into a regulatory mechanism associated with
carbon dioxide, how might we do that” And that’s where the
science that brings all these things together can actually be useful
to policymakers. People are asking us much, much more
nuanced questions than they were five years ago.
To see more of the Gavin Schmidt interview, go to
news.columbia.edu/schmidt
office of public affairs video production still

columbia pictures January 31, 2011 8
Diane Bondareff
Thirteen winners were honored at the annual Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards for excellence in broadcast
journalism, which was held in Low Library on Jan. 20. Above left, CBS News correspondent Scott Pelley accepts a silver
baton for “The Blowout,” an investigation into the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. At
right, Brian Ross of ABC News, standing with his 20/20 producers, speaks after accepting the award for their investigation
into USA Swimming’s failure to protect young female swimmers from abusive coaches. Five local television stations
were also honored. And for the first time, a duPont award went to a print-based news organization, The Las Vegas Sun,
for its multimedia story on gambling addiction. CNN anchor and special correspondent Soledad O’Brien and NBC anchor
Lester Holt hosted the ceremony.
Diane Bondareff
Gene Boyars
Opening with a sweep: On the first weekend of Ivy League play Jan. 15, Columbia’s men’s and women’s basketball
teams beat Cornell in a Levien Gym double-header that featured a pre-game festival for University faculty and staff
families to promote community attendance at women’s basketball. Two first-year players helped lead the Lions to
victory. Brianna Orlich (above, left) scored a career-high 21 points in the women’s 61-54 win. Freshman guard Steve
Frankowski (above, right) scored 11, including two clutch foul shots in the final minute of the men’s 79-75 conquest of
last year’s Ivy champion Big Red. It was Columbia’s first win in 5 years against a Cornell program that went all the way
to last year’s NCAA “Sweet Sixteen.” On January 22 in Ithaca, the men made it a sweep of their own when sophomore
guard Brian Barbour (not pictured) scored a career-high 23 to lead the Lions to a 70-66 victory. The Lions’ record
improved to 11-5 and 2-0 in the Ivy League; they remain on the road until meeting rivals Princeton and Penn in Levien
Gym on February 11 and 12.
Gene Boyars
Researchers ID Bacteria
continued from page 1
Antarctica
continued from page 1
involved in vascular pathogenesis, we must be able
not only to detect bacterial DNA, but first of all to
isolate the bacterial strains from the vascular wall of
the patient,” Kozarov said.
The research team looked at five pairs of diseased
and healthy arterial tissue, and found that Enterobacter
hormaechei appeared in very high numbers
in diseased but not in healthy arterial tissues. These
bacteria, which are resistant to many antibiotics, are
more often associated with the bloodstream infection
sepsis as well as pneumonia.
It is widely known that chronic inflammation leads
to atherosclerosis. The new research suggests that the
infection may start with the dissemination of bacteria
though different “gates” in the vascular walls.
The data also support Kozarov’s previous studies,
which found periodontal bacteria in the carotid artery
and implicated tissue-destroying periodontal infections
in diseases of the circulatory system.
According to the researchers, bacteria gain access
to circulation through different avenues and then
penetrate the vascular walls where they can create
secondary infections that lead to atherosclerotic
plaque formation.
Once in circulation, Kozarov said, bacteria using
this “Trojan horse” approach can persist in the organism
for extended periods of time while traveling
to and colonizing distant sites. This can lead to a
multitude of problems including the development of
atherosclerosis, which ultimately can lead to a heart
attack or stroke.
Dr. Jingyue Ju, director of the Center for Genome
Technology & Biomolecular Engineering, and Dr. Roman
Nowygrod, Department of Surgery, College of
Physicians and Surgeons, also contributed to the research,
which was supported in part by a grant from
the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the
National Institutes of Health and by the Columbia
University Section of Oral and Diagnostic Sciences.
what are you looking at
Hint: Some people think it’s a game; sometimes it’s found near troubled water. At
Columbia University, doctors and medical students use it every day. What is this and on
what Columbia University campus is it located Send answers to curecord@columbia.
edu. The first person to email the right answer wins a Record mug.
ANSWER TO LAST CHALLENGE: Ceiling relief of 3rd floor balcony in Low Library
WINNER: No Winner
The next 10 days are for packing, coordinating, and
most important, taking safety classes of all types including
the most important–a two-day/one-night class
where we camp outside, learn about all the camping
equipment, and show we can deal with the elements before
they send us out into the unknown. We also need
snowmobile school, helicopter safety school, environmental
safety and awareness, crevasse training, and on
and on …With all the gear and packing to put together,
including food, this will take well over a week.
We need to make sure we have two of many things,
such as stoves, for safety. Just planning our food for
when we are working takes all afternoon and half the
evening.
Jan. 20–We survived Happy Camper survival school!
This is essential training for anyone who goes into the
field on the coldest, most remote continent on Earth
… We learn to build snow trenches for survival and all
things related to camping in the cold, although we still
appreciate that it is warmer here than back home. Also,
everyone goes through snowmobile basic repair and
use, rock climbing 101 and crevasse rescue training.
Tomorrow is the last day before flying out to the remote
CTAM (central Transantarctic Mountains) camp
that we will use as a base for getting to Mount Howe
and Mount Achernar. Mike Roberts, our mountaineering
guide, uses the last day to give one more crevasserescue
training course.
We learned how to stop a fall down a steep slope,
set up rescue systems and traversed around an ice fall
to learn to recognize and avoid crevasses. Upon our return,
we found out that our flight will be delayed a day.
Very typical for Antarctica!
Since the last post, the team has been at its campsite
near the Transantarctic Mountains and has no access to
the Internet. As of Jan. 26, they were expected to return
to base camp any day. Blog posts will resume and can be
found on Lamont’s website at www.ldeo.columbia.edu.