[DIALOGnews] DIALOG and DISCCRS Newsletter 02/18/2005
Weiler, C. Susan
weilercs at whitman.edu
Fri Feb 18 20:23:15 CST 2005
DIALOG and Disccrs News
02/18/2005
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Table of Contents
RESOURCES
Environmental Resource Web (erWEB) Indexes News and Information on
Earth System Science and Environmental Topics http://www.erweb.org
Research Projects and Research Proposals: A Guide for Scientists
Seeking Funding http://www.researchproposals.info/
Visions for an Ecologically Sustainable Future Available On Line
http:// www.frontiersinecology.org/specialissue.html
SCIENCE NEWS
It's Much Too Late to Sweat Global Warming
FETED AND HATED, KYOTO GLOBAL WARMING PACT STARTS
http://snipurl.com/ctnd
US States Take Leadership Role in Addressing Climate
Change http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2005-02-16-voa77.cfm
Ocean Warming, Fossil Fuel Gases Linked http://snipurl.com/cvp6
FORUM
JOIN Team ESSN/DISCCRS in the ClimatePrediction.net project
www.earthsystemscholars.org
SUMMER PROGRAMS, COURSES, INTERNSHIPS, MEETINGS
Workshop, How to Provide an Effective Education Workshop for Scientists
http://www.spacescience.org/
JOBS
Two job openings at IIASA: Greenhouse Gas Initiative and Population &
Climate Change Programs
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/docs/IIASA_Employment.html
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Resources
Environmental Resource Web (erWEB) Indexes News and Information on
Earth System Science and Environmental Topics http://www.erweb.org
Environmental Resource Web (erWEB) is a comprehensive web utility
that conveys current information about environmental topics to
scientists, industry professionals, policy makers, and the general
public. In addition to providing the Earth System Science community
with information, erWEB may be used as an education and outreach
portal. ErWEB accept news feeds, press releases, and television-style
documentaries covering relevant scientific research.
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Research Projects and Research Proposals: A Guide for Scientists
Seeking Funding
There are several guides available, some of which are available in
the resources section of the http:/aslo.org/phd.html website, This one
was written by a former NSF program officer. It was published in July
2004
You can view it at: http://www.researchproposals.info/
Cambridge University Press is offering a 20% discount on orders
through March 31, 2005. With the discount, the paperback edition would
cost $17.59 plus shipping and handling; the hardback would be $48.00.
*****************
Visions for an Ecologically Sustainable Future Available On Line
Due to the high volume of interest in the February Special Issue of
Frontiers, "Visions for an ecologically sustainable future", ESA has
decided to make the entire issue available online to the public. It is
available at http:// www.frontiersinecology.org/specialissue.html
***************************************************
Science News
Check out this section both for news tidbits, and for
examples of how to communicate science to a non-scientist audience
It's Much Too Late to Sweat Global Warming
By Mark Hertsgaard
The San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday 13 February 2005
Time to prepare for inevitable effects of our ill-fated future.
At the core of the global warming dilemma is a fact neither side of
the debate likes to talk about: It is already too late to prevent
global warming and the climate change it sets off.
Environmentalists won't say this for fear of sounding alarmist or
defeatist. Politicians won't say it because then they'd have to do
something about it. The world's top climate scientists have been
sending this message, however, with increasing urgency for many years.
Since 1988, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, comprised of more than 2,000 scientific and technical experts
from around the world, has conducted the most extensive peer-reviewed
scientific inquiry in history.
In its 2001 report, the panel said that human-caused global warming
had already begun, and much sooner than expected. What's more, the
problem is bound to get worse, perhaps a lot worse, before it gets
better.
Last month, the climate change panel's chairman, Rajendra Pachauri,
upped the ante. Although Pachauri was installed after the Bush
administration forced out his predecessor, Robert Watson, for pushing
too hard for action, the accumulation of evidence led Pachauri to
embrace apocalyptic language: "We are risking the ability of the human
race to survive," he said.
Until now, most public discussion about global warming has focused
on how to prevent it - for example, by implementing the Kyoto Protocol,
which comes into force internationally (but without U.S. participation)
on Wednesday. But prevention is no longer a sufficient option. No
matter how many "green" cars and solar panels Kyoto eventually calls
into existence, the hard fact is that a certain amount of global
warming is inevitable.
The world community therefore must make a strategic shift. It must
expand its response to global warming to emphasize both long-term and
short-term protection. Rising sea levels and more weather-related
disasters will be a fact of life on this planet for decades to come,
and we have to get ready for them.
Among the steps needed to defend ourselves is quick action to
fortify emergency response capabilities worldwide, to shield or
relocate vulnerable coastal communities and to prepare for increased
migration flows by environmental refugees.
We must also play offense. We must retroactively shrink the amount
of warming facing us by redoubling efforts to remove existing
greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and sequester them where they are
no longer dangerous. One way is to plant trees, which absorb carbon
dioxide via photosynthesis.
Researchers are exploring many other methods as well, some of them
supported by the Bush administration. And Norway is burying carbon
dioxide in abandoned oil wells beneath the North Sea.
The problem with the Kyoto Protocol is not that the 5 percent
greenhouse gas emission reductions it mandates don't go far enough,
though they don't. (The climate change panel urges 50 to 70 percent
reductions.)
The problem is that Kyoto governs only future emissions. No matter
how well the protocol works, it will have no effect on past emissions,
which are what have made global warming unavoidable.
Contrary to the impression given by some news reports, global
warming is not like a light switch that can be turned off if we simply
stop burning so much oil, coal and gas.
There is a lag effect of about 50 to 100 years. That's how long
carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas, remains in the atmosphere
after it is emitted from auto tailpipes, home furnaces and industrial
smokestacks.
So even if humanity stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, the
planet would continue warming for decades.
So far, the greenhouse gases released during two-plus centuries of
industrialization have increased global temperatures by about 1 degree
Fahrenheit and raised sea levels by 4 to 7 inches.
They have also given rise to the larger phenomenon of climate
change. The climate change panel scientists predict that because of
global warming, the future will bring more and deadlier weather of all
kinds - more hurricanes, tornadoes, downpours, heat waves, droughts and
blizzards - and all that comes in their aftermath: flooding,
landslides, power outages, crop failures, property damage, disease,
hunger, poverty and loss of life.
In California, torrential rains induced a mudslide on Jan. 11 that
killed 10 people, buried children alive and crushed dozens of houses.
In 2003, a record summer heat wave killed 35,000 people, most of them
elderly, in Western Europe. And this is just the beginning.
Scientists are careful to say that no single weather event can be
definitively linked to global warming, but the trend is unmistakable to
the insurance companies that end up paying the bill.
"Man-made climate change will bring us increasingly extreme natural
events and, consequently, increasingly large catastrophe losses," an
official of Munich Re, the world's large reinsurance company, said
recently. Swiss Re expects losses to reach $150 billion a year within
this decade.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair regards climate change as "the
single biggest long-term problem" of any kind facing his country. His
government's top scientist, Sir David King, goes further, calling
climate change "the biggest danger humanity has faced in 5,000 years of
civilization."
Although the Bush White House continues to downplay the urgency of
global warming, some parts of the Bush administration have recognized
the gravity of the situation. A report released last year by the
Pentagon's Office of Net Assessments said that by 2020, climate change
could unleash a series of interlocking catastrophes including
mega-droughts, mass starvation and even nuclear war as countries like
China and India battle over river valleys and other sources of scarce
food and water.
All of this underlines the urgency of revising the world's response
to climate change. To be sure, it remains essential to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions by strengthening the Kyoto Protocol and
augmenting it with other measures. Otherwise, the amount of warming
that civilization eventually will have to endure will prove too great
to survive.
In the meantime, it is imperative to prepare against the climate
change already on its way.
The need for such a two-track strategy of prevention and protection
is gaining acceptance from most of the world's governments. In Britain,
the Department of the Environment promises to publish its strategy for
adapting to global warming by the end of 2005.
At the most recent international meeting on global warming, held in
Buenos Aires in December, a majority of the delegates supported the
establishment of a fund to aid countries already suffering from the
early effects of global warming.
A leading candidate for such aid is Tuvalu. A Pacific atoll whose
highest point is 12 feet above sea level, Tuvalu was largely submerged
last year by 10- foot seasonal high tides. But the United States
opposed the adaptation assistance, arguing that there is no "certainty
what constitutes a dangerous level of warming..."
Preparing to live through the global climate change bearing down on
our civilization will be an enormous undertaking. It will require
immense financial resources, technical expertise and organizational
skill. But perhaps what's needed most of all, especially in the United
States, is fresh thinking and political leadership - an acceptance that
climate change is inescapable and requires immediate counter-measures.
The unspeakable death and destruction wrought by the Indian Ocean
tsunami showed what can happen when people are unprepared for disaster,
but there is no reason global warming should take us by surprise.
Our civilization's early warning system - the scientists of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - have been telling us for
years that great danger is approaching. The question is, will we act
quickly and decisively enough to protect ourselves against the coming
storm? Or will we simply stand and face our fate naked, proud and
unafraid?
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FETED AND HATED, KYOTO GLOBAL WARMING PACT STARTS
from Reuters via Sigma Xi Science in the News
OSLO (Reuters) - A world plan to fight global warming went into
force on Wednesday, feted by its backers as a lifeline for the planet
amid sniping at the United States for staying out.
After years of delays, the U.N. Kyoto Protocol on curbing human
emissions of heat-trapping gases blamed for disrupting the climate took
effect at midnight with muted celebrations of a deal Washington
dismisses as an economic straitjacket.
Green groups marked Kyoto with protests outside U.S. embassies and
consulates, street parades in Japan and by carving fast-melting ice
sculptures of kangaroos in Australia. http://snipurl.com/ctnd
*****************
US States Take Leadership Role in Addressing Climate Change
From Voice of America
http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2005-02-16-voa77.cfm
*****************
Ocean Warming, Fossil Fuel Gases Linked
from The San Deigo Union-Tribune via Sigma Xi Science in the News
WASHINGTON – For the first time, scientists have linked the world's
warming oceans to a rise in greenhouse gases produced by the burning of
fossil fuels and other industry.
The research was conducted by scientists at the Scripps Institution
of Oceanography in La Jolla and the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory in Northern California. It showed that temperature readings
in the oceans during the past 40 years matched computer models
simulating how higher
levels of human-generated greenhouse gases were expected to heat the
oceans.
"We were stunned by the degree of similarity between the
observations and the models," said Tim Barnett, a marine physicist who
wrote the study with fellow Scripps scientist David Pierce.
http://snipurl.com/cvp6
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Forum
JOIN Team ESSN/DISCCRS in the ClimatePrediction.net project
Submitted by V. B. Spikes [vbs at earthscienceagency.com]
Many of you may already be aware of the www.ClimatePrediction.net
experiment, which aims to "improve methods to quantify uncertainties of
climate projections and scenarios, including long-term ensemble
simulations using complex models". The results from the
ClimatePrediction.Net experiment will be fed into the work of the
Quantifying Uncertainty in Model Predictions (QUMP) team at the Met
Office and will form part of the UK contribution to the Fourth
Assessment Report of the IPCC. The first results were recently
published in Nature www.climateprediction.net/newsb.php?id=0.
Although this is a UK-based initiative, each of us can contribute by
allowing their model to run on our computers. This type of peer-to-peer
computing network provides unparalleled computing power at minimal
cost, and it has been used successfully in support of other research
programs including SETI. ClimatePrediction.net uses cutting-edge
firewalls to protect their system and there has never been a hacker
problem with SETI or other BOINC-based peer-to-peer computing networks.
For those of you who plan to participate, I urge you to join Team
ESSN/DISCCRS. In doing so you will be helping to establish a linkage
between these two organizations (for more information on the ESSN go to
www.earthsystemscholars.org). To join, simply click on this link and
follow the instructions on the page:
http://climateapps2.oucs.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/create_account_form.php?
teamid=1787.
Once you download the climate model it will run automatically as a
background process on your computer whenever you switch your computer
on. It should not affect any other tasks you use your computer for. As
the model runs, you can watch the weather patterns evolve on your
unique version of the world. The results are sent back to the PI's via
the internet, and you will be able to see a summary of your results on
their web site.
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Summer Programs, Courses, Internships, Meetings
Workshop, How to Provide an Effective Education Workshop for Scientists
With funding from NSF and NASA, the Space Science Institute (SSI)
will be hosting a leadership course this spring:
How to Provide an Effective Education Workshop for Scientists
15-17 April 2005 in Boulder, CO
**Early Bird Deadline: 28 February 2005**
Course Description:
This leadership course will offer participants the techniques and
resources necessary to design and implement their own ½-day or full-day
education workshop for scientists. The course content is based on 10
years of experience in providing successful workshops, seminars, and
conference sessions for scientists in education.
Who Should Attend:
Education and Public Outreach (EPO) leads and EPO managers who are
tasked with providing scientists (e.g. at their home institutions or on
research science teams) with meaningful ways to contribute to EPO
efforts.
Registration and Information:
Go to www.spacescience.org and click on "Workshops", or contact
Christy Edwards (edwards at spacescience.org) for more information.
Cherilynn A. Morrow, PhD
Director of Education & Public Outreach
SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE
4750 Walnut St, Suite 205
Boulder, CO 80301
<http://www.spacescience.org/> Phone:720-974-5828
Email: camorrow at colorado.edu
***************************************************
Jobs for PhDs
http://www.higheredjobs.com/about/
Two job openings at IIASA: Greenhouse Gas Initiative and Population &
Climate Change Programs
The first is for a research scholar who will also serve as the
Program Officer for the Institute's Greenhouse Gas Initiative (GGI);
the second is for a research scholar to work with the new Population
and Climate Change (PCC) Program. Please circulate these announcements
widely among possible applicants. The postings, along with information
about the Institute, can also be viewed at IIASA's Website:
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/docs/IIASA_Employment.html
**************************************************
This newsletter has been developed by C. Susan Weiler to distribute
information of potential interest to recent PhDs engaged in
interdisciplinary aquatic science or climate-change research, and to
build an international sense of community among recent grads. It
provides an international forum for the exchange of information and
opinions regarding research, professional and social issues. The views
and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the funding
agencies or sponsoring societies. Dr. Weiler reserves the right to edit
or reject material submitted to the list.
Please submit announcements of interest to recent PhDs to
phd at whitman.edu. Send a short message in the body of an e-mail
message, and link to any appropriate websites. Do not send attachments.
Moving? Send address changes to dialog at whitman.edu or
disccrs at whitman.edu
**********
C. Susan Weiler, Ph.D.
Office of Earth System Studies Tel: 509-527-5948
Whitman College Fax: 509-527-5961
Walla Walla, WA 99362
weiler at whitman.edu
Programs for Recent PhDs http://aslo.org/phd.html
DIALOG poster http://www.aslo.org/phd/dialogposter.pdf
DISCCRS poster http://www.aslo.org/phd/disccrsposter.pdf
Workshop Report, Meeting the Needs of Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Graduates
in a Changing Global Environment
http://marcus.whitman.edu/~weilercs/biocomplexity/
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