Archive for February, 2007

Possibilities in Problems: The Good Side of Global Warming

dnorris10 February 21st, 2007

The great global warming debate will heat up at The College of Wooster on Tuesday, Feb. 20, when Richard Alley, professor of geosciences and associate of the EMS Environment Institute at Penn State University, presents “Possibilities in Problems: The Good Side of Global Warming” at the 26th annual Richard G. Osgood, Jr., Memorial Lecture. The event, which is free and open to the public, begins at 7 p.m. in McGaw Chapel (525 E. University St.). A dessert reception will follow the lecture.

Alley’s research and teaching focuses on the paleoclimatic records, dynamics, and sedimentary deposits of large ice sheets with an aim toward understanding the climate system and its history. He is an author for the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which released a major report earlier this month that contained grim predictions about global warming for the coming decades. His research is ultimately directed toward projecting future changes in climate and sea level.

Alley, who received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his M.S. and his B.S. from The Ohio State University, has worked to bring clarity and honesty to the climate debate in public and governmental arenas. His popular book on abrupt climate change, The Two-Mile Time Machine, won the national Phi Beta Kappa Science Award for 2001. He has also participated in many lively public debates on global climate change and on the anthropogenic influences on climate.

Alley has been on many national advisory panels on climate change, including serving as chair of the study group on Abrupt Climate Change for the National Research Council. He has also testified before the Senate and discussed climate change in a private meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney. In addition, he has received numerous awards that recognize his excellence in teaching and his fundamental contributions to the understanding of the Earth’s climate system.

The Richard G. Osgood, Jr., Memorial Lectureship in Geology was endowed in 1981 by his three sons in memory of their father, a paleontologist with an international reputation who taught at Wooster from 1967 until 1981. Funds from this endowment are used to bring a well-known scientist interested in paleontology and/or stratigraphy to campus each year to lecture and meet with students. The lecture is sponsored by the Department of Geology and the Richard G. Osgood, Jr., Memorial Lecture Endowed Fund in conjunction with The Environmental Action and Analysis Program (funded by the Henry R. Luce Foundation). For additional information, please call 330-263-2380.

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Is Extreme Global Inequality our Destiny?

dnorris10 February 21st, 2007

Branko Milanovic of The World Bank, discusses the question, “Is Extreme Global Inequality our Destiny?” at the fifth lecture in the Great Decisions Lecture Series on Feb. 20.

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Farmers First Altered Climate Thousands of Years Ago

dnorris10 February 21st, 2007

William F. Ruddiman, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and author of Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate, will present “Farmers First Altered Climate Thousands of Years Ago” on Wednesday, Feb. 7, at The College of Wooster. The lecture, which is part of the Global Climate Change Symposium, begins at 7:30 p.m. in Lean Lecture room of Wishart Hall (303 E. University). A dessert reception will precede the lecture. Admission is free and open to the public.

Ruddiman, who won the 2006 Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science and the Phi Beta Kappa Book Award, will discuss his assertion that humans have actually been changing the climate for some 8,000 years, primarily as a result of the earlier discovery of agriculture. He will address the impact of farming on greenhouse-gas levels - thousands of years before the industrial revolution - which kept our planet notably warmer than if natural climate cycles had prevailed, quite possibly forestalling a new ice age. His book, which is the first to address the full historical sweep of human interaction with Earth’s climate, focuses on three broad stages of human history: (1) when nature was in control; (2) when humans began to take control, discovering agriculture and affecting climate through carbon dioxide and methane emissions; and, (3) the more recent human impact on climate change. The book concludes by looking to the future and critiquing the impact of special interest money on the global warming debate.

Ruddiman is a marine geologist who received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. Before joining the faculty at the University of Virginia, he was a senior research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York, a program associate with the National Science Foundation, and a senior scientist/oceanographer with the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office in Maryland. He is also the author of Earth’s Climate: Past & Future, and has published articles in Scientific American, Nature, Science and other scientific journals.

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Can Latin America Foresee a Finer Future?

dnorris10 February 7th, 2007

Nicole Spencer, associate to the president of The InterAmerican Dialogue, will address “Can Latin America Foresee a Finer Future?”. There is a nice article in the Daily Record about Ms. Spencer.

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Can Immigration Dilemmas be Resolved?

dnorris10 February 2nd, 2007

Pawan Dhingra, professor of sociology at Oberlin College, and Pablo Mitchell, professor of history at Oberlin, present “Can Immigration Dilemmas be Resolved?”.

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