[DIALOGnews] DIALOG and DISCCRS News 04/21/2006

[Susan Bennett]

DIALOG and DISCCRS News
04/21/2006
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
RESOURCES
“Real Climate" Discussion on Global Dimming & Climate Models
    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/04/global- 
dimming-and-climate-models/
Simon Donner's Blogspot: climate, science and energy issues
    http://simondonner.blogspot.com/
Climate change and forestry mailing list
    (see below)
New book edited by UGA anthropologist addresses societal impact of  
global warming
      (see below) http://www.eurekalert.org/bysubject/index.php?kw=89

SCIENCE NEWS
Global warming can spark mass species extinctions: A Conservation  
Biology study finds that global warming represents one of the most  
pervasive threats to our planet's biodiversity – in some areas  
rivaling and even surpassing deforestation as the main threat to  
biodiversity. The study expands on a much-debated 2004 paper  
published in the journal Nature...
    http://www.earthwire.org/redirect.cfm?aid=110292
The great diminishing reef - Warming of the oceans threatens the long- 
term survival of the Great Barrier Reef....an annual check-up.
    http://tinyurl.com/qc6j3
US reveals sins of emission - The EPA has published a round-up of  
greenhouse gas emissions in the United States from 1990 to 2004,  
showing record highs.
    http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060417/full/060417-9.html
Battle Over Cape Cod Wind Farm Blows Into Congress
    http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2006/2006-04-20-10.asp
China to Issue Emissions, Energy Use Report Card Every 6 Months
    http://tinyurl.com/etmfz
Scientists Focus on Warming Disasters
    (see below)
Globalization, vulnerability to climate change, and perceived injustice
    (see below)
New climate projections for 2100
    (see below)

FORUM
Blog on Climate Change by Simon Donner
    (see below)

SUMMER PROGRAMS, COURSES, INTERNSHIPS, MEETINGS, OPPORTUNITIES
Tutorial workshop: Simulation methods in the social sciences 25th  
Biennial meeting of the Society for Multivariate Analysis in the  
Behavioural Sciences (SMABS) and 2nd Conference of the European  
Association of Methodology (EAM)
    (see below)
NAGT/AMQUA Teaching Climate Change Workshop this Summer
    (see below)

JOBS
Tenure-track climate-change positions - University of Leads, UK
    (see below)
Postdocs (2), Social Scientists, Climate Change - The Oxford  
University Centre for the Environment, UK
    (see below)
Postdoctoral Investigator – Marine Ecosystem and Ocean Carbon Cycle  
Modeling. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
    (see below)
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Resources
Climate change and forestry mailing list
    The Forest Resources Division of FAO is running CLIM-FO-L, a  
mailing list for climate change and forestry now in its sixth year.  
It serves as a forum for sharing information and experiences about  
climate change and forestry including publications, web sites, events  
and job opportunities, project information and developments of  
climate change negotiations.
    The mailing list is open to everyone, to receive CLIM-FO-L on a  
monthly basis and to share your insights and information with the  
forestry and climate change community, you are kindly invited to  
subscribe at www.fao.org/forestry/site/17828/en.
    We highly appreciate your input and hope that our service proves  
to be useful for you.
    Heiner von Luepke, CLIM-FO-L List Editor, Forest Resources Division
    Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO)
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New book edited by UGA anthropologist addresses societal impact of  
global warming
    http://www.eurekalert.org/bysubject/index.php?kw=89
    "We are, for the most part, in denial about global warming's  
impact on humanity," said Robert Rhoades, editor of the new textbook  
Development with Identity: Culture, Community, and Development in the  
Andes. "Regardless of whose fault you believe it is, or if you think  
that this is just a natural state of progression for the planet, the  
real issue is how to deal with it."
    To develop a clearer picture of the societal and economic impact  
of global warming, Rhoades studied a specific indigenous population  
in the Andes Mountains. Cotacachi is the highest volcanic peak in  
northern Ecuador, and the Cotacacheños live on and around the base of  
the mountain, which has completely lost its glacier over the past 5  
years.
    "The Cotacacheños believe that they live on the mountain's  
'skirt' under the watchful eye of the goddess Cotacachi," Rhoades  
said. "She is a mother-figure that regulates and supports their  
society."
    As a result of the glacial melting high on Cotacachi's peaks, the  
agriculture-based local economy is suffering as rains become more  
sporadic and sources of irrigation dry up. Many older members of the  
community refer to the weather as "playing" with them and their  
livelihood, although younger members tend to cite global climate  
change and scientific factors as the cause.
    "What makes this community so interesting and this study so  
important is the way that local lore is influencing reaction to a  
major environmental issue," Rhoades said. "Because current cultural  
memory views the mountain – and its glacier – as a provider,  
reactions to the decrease in water availability and agricultural  
adaptations – for example, changing the types of crops planted on the  
mountain's slopes – has been sluggish. Societal memory dictates that  
the mountain is unchanged; when researchers requested local drawings  
of the mountain, even the most recent depictions display a non- 
existent snow-capped peak.
    "There is definitely a mental lag between what they [indigenous  
people] know about the past and what is now happening," Rhoades said,  
"and I think this case is a microcosm for all of humanity." This lag  
can slow the social changes that are imperative to the survival of  
these local communities, such as revamping outdated water concessions  
to achieve more equitable distribution and creating more efficient  
irrigation and potable water infrastructure.
***************************************************
Science News
Scientists Focus on Warming Disasters
    from the Associated Press
    WASHINGTON, (AP) -- A man stands on a railroad track as a train  
rumbles closer.
    "Global warming?" he says. "Some say irreversible consequences  
are 30 years away. Thirty years. That won't affect me." He steps off  
the tracks - just in time. But behind him is a little blonde-haired  
girl left in front of the roaring train. The screen goes black. A  
message appears: "There's still time."
    It's just an ad, part of a campaign from the advocacy group  
Environmental Defense, which hopes to convince Americans they can do  
something about global warming, that there's still time.
    But many scientists are not so sure that the oncoming train of  
global warming can be avoided. Temperatures are going to rise for  
decades to come because the chief gas that causes global warming  
lingers in the atmosphere for about a century. http://tinyurl.com/enxwf
********************
  Globalization, vulnerability to climate change, and perceived  
injustice
    Bradley C. Parks & J. Timmons Roberts
    IN:Society & natural resources 19 (4, 2006): 337-355
    As the earth's climate begins to shift into a hotter and less  
predictable period, there is a basic injustice in who will suffer  
worst and first. Nations facing rising oceans and drought are those  
least responsible for the problem, and they have the least resources  
to cope with them. To evaluate claims of environmental injustice, we  
examine three cases where the first signs of climate change are being  
felt worst and first: murderous flooding from Hurricane Mitch in  
Honduras, rising sea levels swamping entire Pacific Island atoll  
nations, and devastation from flooding among squatter settlements in  
Mozambique. In each case these nations are suffering not only because  
of bad geography or management. Rather, because of their colonial  
past and current positions in the world economy, they are brutally  
vulnerable to forces outside their control. We conclude by offering  
an explanation for generalized mistrust among Southern nations vis-à- 
vis Northern nations and the Kyoto treaty.
********************
New climate projections for 2100
    Science 21 April 2006:
    Vol. 312. no. 5772, p. 351
    Latest Forecast: Stand By for a Warmer, But Not Scorching, World  
Richard A. Kerr
    While newly climate-conscious news reporters seek signs of  
apocalyptic change in hungry polar bears and pumped-up hurricanes,  
evidence-oriented researchers are working to nail down some numbers.  
They are concerned with climate sensitivity: how much a given  
increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide will warm the world. If it's  
extremely high, continued emissions of greenhouse gases could ignite  
a climatic firestorm. If it's very low, they might merely raise the  
global thermostat a notch or two.
    Now two new studies that combine independent lines of evidence  
agree that climate sensitivity is at least moderately strong-- 
moderate enough so that a really scorching warming appears unlikely.  
Even with the most conservative assumptions, says climate researcher  
Chris E. Forest of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in  
Cambridge, the studies cool the maximum warming. And the reinforced  
low end of the range, he says, means continued emissions will fuel a  
substantial warming in this century.
    The new studies use a technique called Bayesian statistics to  
gauge how adding new information improves past estimates of climate  
sensitivity. Most previous estimates used only a single line of  
evidence, such as how climate warmed as greenhouse gases increased  
during the 20th century or how climate cooled right after the debris  
from a major volcanic eruption shaded the planet. Lately, such  
analyses have tended to support a 25-year-old guess about climate  
sensitivity: If the concentration of CO2 were to double, as is  
expected by late in the 21st century, the world would warm between a  
modest 1.5°C and a hefty 4.5°C (Science, 13 August 2004, p. 932  
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/305/5686/932. The low end  
of that range looked fairly firm; the negligible warming claimed by  
greenhouse contrarians looked very unlikely. But no one was sure  
about the high end. Some studies allowed a real chance that doubling  
CO2 could raise temperatures by 7°C, 9°C, or even 11°C (Science, 28  
January 2005, p. 497 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/ 
307/5709/497a.
    Figure 1 Sharpening the odds. Analyzing how climate forces  
changed temperature in the past yields a wide range for climate  
sensitivity (left), but combining independent data sets (right)  
narrows the range.
    CREDIT: ADAPTED FROM HEGERL ET AL., NATURE (2006)
    The two new studies rein in those soaring upper limits for  
climate sensitivity while reinforcing the substantial lower limit.  
Climate modeler Gabriele Hegerl of Duke University in Durham, North  
Carolina, and colleagues started with Northern Hemisphere  
temperatures between 1270 and 1850 extracted from records such as  
tree rings. In those preindustrial times, volcanoes, the waxing and  
waning of the sun, and natural variations in greenhouse gases were  
changing temperature. Hegerl and her colleagues then combined the  
preindustrial temperature response to those climate forcings with the  
global response in the 20th century to volcanoes, rising greenhouse  
gases, and thickening pollutant hazes. In this week's issue of  
Nature, they report a 5% probability that climate sensitivity is less  
than 1.5°C and a 95% chance that it's less than 6.2°C. That's still  
pretty high, but a far cry from 9°C or 11°C.
    In a similar study published on 18 March in Geophysical Research  
Letters, climate modelers James Annan and Julia Hargreaves of the  
Frontier Research Center for Global Change in Yokohama, Japan, found  
the same lower limit of 1.5°C and a 95% upper limit of 4.5°C. They  
combined published 20th century warming data with records of coolings  
after recent volcanic eruptions and estimates of chilling in the  
depths of the latest ice age.
"Combining multiple lines of evidence is certainly the way to go,"  
says Forest. An extremely high climate sensitivity "is probably less  
likely than we thought a year ago," agrees climate researcher Reto  
Knutti of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder,  
Colorado. More importantly, "we start to see a much better agreement  
on the lower bound," says Knutti. "We can be pretty sure the changes  
will be substantial" by the end of the century, he says.
  ***************************************************
Forum
Blog on Climate Change by Simon Donner
    Submited by Simon Donner, Princeton University
    People ask me all the time for a source of regular news or  
commentary on climate, science and energy issues. I decided to start  
a blog: http://simondonner.blogspot.com/
    It will include short notes about climate, environment + energy  
issues in the news, as well as links to other good sites and stories,  
aimed at a general audience. It will be updated every couple days. I  
encourage you to take a look, to tell friends, and tosend suggestions  
(especially all you scientists who want to write guest posts!). I  
hope that, in some small way, this will get a few more people  
thinking and talking about these issues.
    Simon Donner, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University,  
www.simondonner.com, 609-439-1227
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Summer Programs, Courses, Internships, Meetings, Opportunities
Tutorial workshop: Simulation methods in the social sciences 25th  
Biennial meeting of the Society for Multivariate Analysis in the  
Behavioural Sciences (SMABS) and 2nd Conference of the European  
Association of Methodology (EAM)
    SMABS - EAM Conference 2006, Budapest, 2-5th July 2006
    Pre-conference Workshop: Simulation methods in the social  
sciences 1 July 2006, Budapest
    Klaus G. Troitzsch, University of Koblenz-Landau
    Nigel Gilbert, University of Surrey
    This workshop will provide a rationale for using simulation in  
the social sciences and outline a number of approaches to social  
simulation.
    Programme:
    (1) An overview of and introduction to simulation for social  
scientists to give them an idea what they could do in general with  
the help of this method,
    (2) an overview of the very data-oriented method of  
microanalytical simulation (starting from a large sample of a  
nation's population from which future states of this population can  
be predicted in terms of demography, taxes, labour market, pension  
claims and so on) and of freely available software tools, with a  
number of practical examples with real data from Germany and New  
Zealand,
    (3) an overview of agent-based methods used in concept-based  
simulation
(computer-assisted theory building of processes of the emergence of  
norms, institutions and so on), with a number of practical examples  
with freely available software tools.
    Conference website: http://smabseam2006.tatk.elte.hu/[1] Workshop  
details: http://smabseam2006.tatk.elte.hu/tro-gil.htm[2]  
Registration: http://smabseam2006.tatk.elte.hu/regmet.htm[3]
    Professor Nigel Gilbert, ScD, FREng, AcSS, Professor of  
Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK. +44 (0)1483  
689173
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NAGT/AMQUA Teaching Climate Change Workshop this Summer
    Workshop on Teaching Climate Change:  Lessons From the Past.
    Montana State University, Bozeman, MT - August 14 (evening) and  
15, 2006.
    DEADLINE: May 1, 2006.
    This teaching workshop is co-sponsored by the NAGT On the Cutting  
Edge faculty professional development program and AMQUA/USNC-INQUA.   
The workshop will be held just prior to the 2006 AMQUA Meeting.  Dr.  
William Ruddiman and Dr. Mark Chandler are confirmed keynote  
speakers. Workshop activities will include large and small group  
discussions, demonstrations of instructional activities, and planning/ 
writing sessions. Instructional materials and other information will  
be organized and compiled as collections of digital resources for use  
by instructors of climate change throughout the world.
    More information about the teaching workshop can be found at:  
http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/climatechange06/index.html
    And information about the AMQUA 2006 Meeting can be found at:
http://bsi.montana.edu/web/amqua/
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Jobs
Planktonnet: Great listserv for aquatic-science jobs
To subscribe to the list, send an empty email to:
planktonnet-subscribe at yahoogroups.com
Or, visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/planktonnet/ and click on  
'Join this group'

Tenure-track climate-change positions - University of Leads, UK
    The School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds in the  
UK (www.see.leeds.asc.uk) is creating a series of tenured research  
positions in the area of climate and environmental change. These  
positions will be jointly appointed to various of the school’s  
research institutes, including the Sustainability Research Institute  
and the Institute for Atmospheric Science.
    The goal is to bring on board established researchers who will be  
able to develop innovative and inter-disciplinary research programmes  
across existing research strengths.
    Further particulars can be found off link at http:// 
www.see.leeds.ac.uk/vacancies/index.htm
    Evan Fraser, PhD, Sustainability Research Institute, University  
of Leeds
    evan at env.leeds.ac.uk
********************
Postdocs (2), Social Scientists, Climate Change - The Oxford  
University Centre for the Environment, UK
    The School of Geography and Environmental Change Institute is  
seeking two individuals for research positions associated with the  
new Oxford node of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.  
The positions are (1) Probabilistic Climate Change Impacts Assessment  
and Adaptation Planning (geographer, env. scientist, economist,  
statistician) and (2) Analysis of Options for International Action on  
Climate Change (geographer, env. sci. or related). Details can be  
found via the link at the top of this page: http:// 
darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jmarlon/disccrs/index.htm
********************
Postdoctoral Investigator – Marine Ecosystem and Ocean Carbon Cycle  
Modeling. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
    Applicants are sought for a postdoctoral research position for  
one year with the potential for extension to a second year in the  
areas of marine ecosystem and ocean carbon cycle modeling in Scott  
Doney's group at WHOI (http://www.whoi.edu/science/MCG/doneylab/ 
index.html).
    The position will involve the development, implementation and  
data-based evaluation of marine ecosystem and biogeochemical models  
within the framework of the global, three-dimensional ocean  
simulation in the NCAR Community Climate System Model (CCSM).  
Specific research foci include the role of multi-nutrient limitation,  
trace metals, and community structure on ocean carbon storage; the  
biogeochemical cycling of dimethylsulfide; and ocean climate-carbon  
cycle interactions under past, present and future conditions. A  
significant fraction of the applicant’s research will be devoted to  
model-data comparisons with in-situ observations and satellite remote  
sensing. This work is part of a long term scientific project focused  
on the interaction of global carbon cycle and the climate system.
    EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE
    Ph.D. is required. Applicants with an interest and experience in  
environmental numerical modeling and/or the analysis of large data  
sets and a background in a relevant field which could include but is  
not limited to biological, chemical or physical oceanography, marine  
or aquatic ecology, biogeochemistry, fluid dynamics, or ocean and  
environmental engineering are encouraged to apply.
    APPLICATION PROCESS
    Send curriculum vitae, including a list of publications,  
statement of research interests, and the names and addresses  
(including email addresses) of four references to the following address:
    Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Human Resources, MS 15  
BoxPR284, Woods Hole, MA 02543
    OR you may email your documents to the following email address:  
seayou at whoi.edu
    Please be sure to reference the announcement number 06-04-05.
http://jobs.whoi.edu/cgi-bin/user/funcer?eng&15&380
**************************************************
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 for 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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