Category: Uncategorized
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We’re meeting on front line of world’s climate challenge, in Louisiana
We want to welcome our fellow earth scientists to Louisiana for this week’s American Geophysical Union conference. As a trained oceanographer and a hydrologist, we have been to this meeting many times, particularly during its tenure in San Francisco. San Francisco seemed like an ideal place for an earth science conference. Earthquakes are a near…
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A Master Plan For Louisiana’s Climate Initiative
Alexander S. Kolker, PhD How should Louisiana’s Climate Initiative project changes in the state’s greenhouse gas emissions over the next 30 years? How should it evaluate the ways various actions and strategies impact Louisiana’s emissions in a world that is itself complex and uncertain? This seems challenging- a complex problem, filled with unknowns. A tool…
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A Storm For A New Climate?
Alexander S. Kolker, PhD. In the wake of Hurricane Ida, we will inevitably hear comparisons to Hurricane Katrina. I will start off by saying that I do not think this comparison fair on a personal level. For every family that lost a loved one, for every business that lost years of hard work, for everyone…
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Louisiana’s Large Facilities: A Deeper Dive Into Their Greenhouse Gas Emission
Alexander S. Kolker, PhD What else do we know about Louisiana’s greenhouse gases, where they come from, and how they are changing over time? Recently, this blog pointed out that many of the state’s largest greenhouse gas emitters come from just a few areas- a corridor along the Mississippi River, the Lake Charles region, and…
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Greenhouse Gas Emissions In Louisiana: Large Facilities And The Mississippi River
Alexander S. Kolker, PhD. Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium This year, many people in Louisiana are examining records of greenhouse gas emissions across the state. This examination is fueled in part by a state-led effort to develop a plan to reduce greenhouse gases emissions to net zero by 2050. It also dove-tails with long standing efforts…
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Welcome To Coastal Climates
Welcome to the Coastal Climates blog. This is a space where I will share my thoughts on our changing coastal world. It will include a view of the world’s coasts, the people that live on them, and the ways that these worlds change. Since I am based in Louisiana, the site will focus on issues…
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Gauging The Globe
This essay was published in the Houston Chronicle on February 5. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/To-combat-climate-change-tide-gauges-are-needed-15030015.php Alexander S. Kolker Earth scientists like me collect data in many ways: with rock hammer and compass, with sediment or ice cores, or with measurements from satellites. As a Gulf Coast scientist working abroad for the year, I have been using a tool…
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To combat climate change, tide gauges are needed all over the world
Earth scientists like me collect data in many ways: with rock hammer and compass, with sediment or ice cores, or with measurements from satellites. As a Gulf Coast scientist working abroad for the year, I have been using a tool called a tide gauge to study sea level dynamics in Morocco, North Africa and the…
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Vieux et Nouvelle
Leaving the train station in Benguerir I searched for a taxi. There were four or so vehicles lined up, most small blue cars and one donkey-drawn buggy. I caught one of the blue taxi cabs to Université King Mohammed VI Polytechnique a sleek, start-up institution. Paid for by largely by Morocco’s national phosphate mining company…
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The Sea and Our Story
Worlds come together, collide and cross at the coast. In few places is more the case than Morocco’s northernmost coast- which I visited in November. A millennium ago, Arabic scholarship made it to Europe through Morocco. Many stars have Arabic names, a mark of Arabian skill in Astronomy during. Important concepts in mathematics, including algebra…
ALEX KOLKER, PhD 