Learning to live with microbes in a COVID-19 world
By Christian Elliott Medill Reports In early 2020, confusing public health guidance about personal safety during a pandemic caused a nationwide flurry of “hygiene theater” – cleaning that distracted from effective measures like masks and physical distancing. By May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidelines to say SARS-CoV-2 mainly spreads through […]
Climate conversations: How to talk with friends who repeat misinformation
By Christian Elliott Medill Reports Human greenhouse gas emissions have heated the Earth 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1900 – a rate unprecedented in the last 2,000 years. In October, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also announced that over the next 50 to 100 years, climate change will accelerate, with […]
Into the unknown: Exploring caves to uncover climate change records
By Christian Elliott and Brittany Edelmann Medill Reports Nearly 20 years ago, then Ph.D. student Gina Moseley walked into a bar in Bristol to meet fellow members of the University of Bristol Spelæological Society caving club. An older caver talked with her over drinks about some small caves in northeastern Greenland he’d always dreamed of […]
COLDEX: The search for Earth’s oldest ice and new climate solutions
By Christian Elliott Medill Reports Even summer days are cold in the Allan Hills Blue Ice Area, a meteorite-strewn expanse of glacier flanked by mountains at the eastern edge of the Antarctic ice sheet near the McMurdo Station research center. Jeff Severinghaus, a paleoclimatologist at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, and his colleagues at Princeton […]
