News + Media
MIT News | Oct 24, 2011
Given the enormous scale of worldwide energy use, there are limited options for achieving significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
At any given moment, the world is consuming about 14 terawatts (trillions of watts) of energy — everything from the fuel for our cars and trucks, to wood...
Oct 10, 2011
With the U.S. backing away from a cap-and-trade system, the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) stands as a solitary, iconic, and often-criticized outpost for market-based approaches for limiting green house gas emissions. A. Denny Ellerman evaluates the performance and prospects of the EU ETS and...
MIT News | Oct 05, 2011
In collaboration with Tsinghua University, MIT launches a new research project to analyze the impact of China’s existing and proposed energy and climate policies.
Multiple forecasts suggest that rapidly developing nations such as China will be responsible for most of the growth in carbon dioxide...
MIT News | Oct 04, 2011
Anaerobic digesters provide a win-win opportunity for agriculture and energy.
When thinking about renewable energy sources, images of windmills and solar panels often come to mind. Now add to that picture livestock manure. Researchers from the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global...
MIT News | Sep 08, 2011
Competing demands for food, fuels, and forests
How do you value an ecosystem? Putting a dollar value on natural systems such as forests has long beset economists.
Forests provide “non-use values,” such as the pleasure of knowing that a natural system exists, and recreational values, such as hunting...
MIT News | Aug 29, 2011
MIT researchers improve upon methods to model atmospheric aerosols.
Allison Crimmins
Urban regions account for an ever increasing fraction of Earth’s population, and are consequently an ever increasing source of air pollutants. These pollutants include anthropogenic aerosols, which have important...
New York Times | Aug 27, 2011
By JUSTIN GILLIS
The scale of Hurricane Irene, which could cause more extensive damage along the Eastern Seaboard than any storm in decades, is reviving an old question: are hurricanes getting worse because of human-induced climate change?
The short answer from scientists is that they are still...
CNN | Aug 25, 2011
By Kerry Emanuel, Special to CNN
August 25, 2011 11:45 p.m. EDT
Editor's note: Kerry Emanuel is a professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
(CNN) -- At this moment, Hurricane Irene poses a risk to almost everyone living along the Eastern Seaboard, from Florida to the...
Environmental Research Letters News | Aug 01, 2011
Nadya Anscombe
If wind power is going to meet 20% of our predicted energy needs in 2100, millions of wind turbines must be installed around the globe. Modelling performed by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US, has shown that these vast wind farms, if installed in offshore...
The Mercury Game | Jul 20, 2011