Climate Decision Making Center Overview

Within this center, researchers apply social and natural science to solve global environmental problems. They study how people understand the world and make decisions. And then, they follow the patterns of those decisions and determine their global consequences.

Research Goals

There are four main goals:

1. To merge social and scientific knowledge so that we can better understand the patterns of human activity and environmental change.

2. To address key environmental problems.

3. To develop new methods for framing and analyzing environmental problems based on the needs of government and industry decision-makers.

4. To communicate our findings through educational materials, brochures and government briefings.

Projects

There are many projects underway in the center, two of which include:

• Ship Emissions Assessment (SEA) The Ship Emissions Assessment (SEA) produced the first geographically resolved, global inventory of emissions from commercial ship engines operating internationally. This inventory shows that ship engine combustion is an important source for several air pollutants, including oxides of nitrogen, and oxides of sulfur.
  

• Research on Environment, Energy & Risk in China With one-fifth of the world’s population, one-sixth of the world’s carbon emissions, and an economy likely to become the world’s largest within a decade or so, China is important to any study of contemporary global change. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon pursue collaborative research with Chinese colleagues in a number of domains central to China’s energy, environment, and risk transitions. These include studies of the health impacts of air pollution, the history and effectiveness of air pollution policy, the social dimensions of energy technology choice, and the public perception of environment and technological risk.