Carnegie Mellon University Student Builds C02 Fence One of
Carnegie Mellon University's campus icons is the Fence — found
in the center of the "Cut" and used as a billboard for student
groups. CMU now has another fence that's getting some attention.
This one spans a stretch of real estate along Oakland's Forbes
Avenue and has recently been transformed into a timeline going
back hundreds of thousands of years into Earth's past. Sculpted
by chemistry graduate student Longzhu Shen (MCS'12), the latest
installation at CMU's ArtPark Lab uses environmentally friendly
lighting to illustrate the fluctuation of carbon dioxide levels
in Earth's atmosphere over the past 800,000 years. Shen hopes
that it draws attention to the unprecedented rise in carbon
dioxide levels since the Industrial Revolution and stimulates
public discussion about sustainability. "If you look back over
800,000 years, the carbon dioxide level fluctuated between 172
and 292 parts per million (ppm). It never passed 300ppm," Shen
said. "But the curr