The Earth is still getting hotter, but those terms have nearly disappeared from political vocabulary. Instead, they have been replaced by less charged and more consumer-friendly expressions for the warming planet.
President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday was a prime example of this shift. The president said “climate change” just once — compared with zero mentions in the 2011 address and two in 2010. When he did utter the phrase, it was merely to acknowledge the polarized atmosphere in Washington, saying, “The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change.” By contrast, Obama used the terms “energy” and “clean energy” nearly two dozen times.
Read the rest of the story at The Washington Post.
NEWS SOURCE: The Washington Post
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There’s much to explore about the challenges in teaching about the evolving relationship between people and their climate.
This subject was once pretty straightforward. After all, it was a relationship that was largely a one-way phenomenon. Climate changed. People adapted or moved. (The extraordinary books of Brian Fagan are an ideal guide.) ...
One such experiment is a new course at the University of Colorado, “Inside the Greenhouse,” that’s focused on the second area — the interface of climate and society. The course melds the arts and environmental studies. Here’s more on the course from one of its creators, Maxwell Boykoff, an assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado (and author of a valuable new book on climate in the press):
This week, at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Professor Beth Osnes from the Department of Theater and Dance and I begin teaching a new interdisciplinary course called ‘Inside the Greenhouse.’ (We are embarking on this interdisciplinary effort thanks to funding from local residents Grace and Gordon Gamm.)
Read the complete full article here.
NEWS SOURCE: The Opinion Pages, New York Times
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This spring, the University of Colorado's Theater and Dance department is joining forces with Environmental Science to offer an upper-division course, Inside the Greenhouse: Using Media to Communicate Positive Solutions for Climate Change.
The interdisciplinary course will combine assistant professor Beth Osnes's narrative theory with the science, politics and policy of climate change, taught by assistant professor Max Boykoff.
NEWS SOURCE: Boulder Daily Camera
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The U.S. government is deploying Colorado scientists to lead a $5.4 million effort to gauge the impact of shrinking Himalayan glaciers on water supplies across Asia.
The question: Are rivers that sustain more than 2 billion people fed primarily by water from rainfall, by seasonal snowmelt or by the glaciers that are vulnerable to climate change?
A significant drop in water supply could lead to food shortages and, according to U.S. Agency for International Development officials, create new conflicts in already volatile areas.
NEWS SOURCE: Denver Post
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To many of the hundreds of thousands of visitors who travel each year to the red rock country of the West and to national parks like Arches and Bryce Canyon, the landscape can feel timeless. The strange wind- and water-carved formations speak of ages past, presented to the modern tourist as a finished work, often cast quite literally in stone.
Yet in interviewing researchers in fields like climatology and geology for an article about the growing body of scientific study on dust in the Western skies, I found that one thing resonated over and over. The Colorado Plateau, the high arid region that stretches through parts of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado, is anything but static.
The scars of the recent past, including disruptions to fragile soils from cattle grazing and ranching, and the looming forces of what is expected to be a drier and even more arid future have combined to create a place in motion, with more dust up and swirling.
“You know the air quality has changed,” said Jason C. Neff, an associate professor of geology and environmental studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “But it’s an emerging problem in the West that we haven’t gotten a handle on yet.”
NEWS SOURCE: New York Times
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Oh say, can you see across the Grand Canyon? Not as well as you used to on some days.
The question of how clean the air is in the American West has never been an easy one to answer, strange to say. And now scientists say it is getting harder, with implications that ripple out in surprising ways, from the kitchen faucets of Los Angeles to public health clinics in canyon-land Utah to the economics of tourism.
NEWS SOURCE: New York Times
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A University of Colorado Boulder team is partnering with the United States Agency for International Development to assess snow and glacier contributions to water resources originating in the high mountains of Asia that straddle 10 countries.
Richard Armstrong and Mark Williams, the two faculty members leading the four-year study, said the aim is to provide a comprehensive and systematic assessment of freshwater resources in the so-called "High Asia" region, which encompasses five mountain ranges and watersheds totaling roughly 1 million square miles. The area under study is roughly equal to one-third of the contiguous United States.
This assessment will be crucial in helping to forecast the future availability and vulnerability of water resources in the region, beginning with accurate assessments of the distinct, separate contributions to river discharge from melting glacier ice and seasonal snow. Such data ultimately will provide a better understanding of the timing and volume of runoff in the face of climate change, said the CU-Boulder researchers.
The High Asia mountains funnel water into such major river basins as the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Indus, Amu Darya and Syr Darya. The High Asian mountain ranges under study include the Himalaya, Karkoram, Hindu Kush, Pamir and Tien Shan. The mountain ranges straddle Bhutan, Nepal, China, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Through the partnership, scientists and students within the 10 countries will carry out collaborative research with CU-Boulder scientists. The project also will support satellite data processing by CU-Boulder staff and trainings for local institutions and observers within the study area to collect water and precipitation samples for the project.
While about one-third of the world's population depends to some degree on fresh water within the High Asia hydrological system, not enough data exists on river and stream flows and the contribution of seasonal snow and glacier melt to paint an accurate picture of the water resources there, said Armstrong, a senior research scientist at CU-Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center, or NSIDC.
The team requires an accurate quantitative portrait of each major river basin and sub-basin in High Asia. The Indus River, for example, which is fed by waterways from the Himalaya, Karakorum and Hindu Kush mountain ranges, comes together at the city of Besham, Pakistan, "where it immediately turns into the largest irrigation system in the world," said Williams. "The sources of water in High Asia feeding the major foothill regions where most of the people live are really the crux of this study."
Armstrong said there is a lot of misinformation in the public arena regarding glaciers, including reports that glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than anywhere else in the world and, if this rapid melting continues, rivers are on track to first flood and then dry up. "Those reports simply are not true," Armstrong said.
USAID is an independent United States government agency that provides economic, development and humanitarian assistance around the world in support of the foreign policy goals of the United States.
"USAID wants to know how the High Asia water resources affect local populations," said Armstrong, also a fellow at the CU-headquartered Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. "They are looking at this challenge from a sustainability perspective, including what is going to happen to rivers like the Indus and the Brahmaputra in the next 20 years."
The researchers will use remote-sensing satellite data from NASA, the European Space Agency and the Japanese Space Agency to develop time-series maps of seasonal snowfall amounts and recent changes in glacier extent, said Williams, a fellow at CU-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and a CU-Boulder geography professor. They also will use local meteorological and river discharge data from throughout the High Asia study area.
"What's really driving this study are questions about water security," said Williams. "There is a lot of international interest in accurate water resource data from the High Asia region and what the water security consequences are, since water conflicts between countries can escalate rapidly. This study should provide answers as to what is real and what is false."
"Once we have a picture of recent and current conditions, we can go forward and run computer ‘melt models' based on the temperatures at various elevations, giving us trends in snowmelt and glacier melt by region and time," said Armstrong. "That's when we start to come up with water volumes for individual rivers and streams from both melting snow and ice."
The modeling results will be verified using geochemical and water isotope "tracer" techniques developed at CU that allow researchers to follow water as it courses through mountain landscapes. Previous studies by Williams and his research group showed high mountain groundwater in Colorado dominated by snowmelt can be locked underground for decades before emerging into downstream waterways. "These isotopic and geochemical measurements provide unique fingerprints, allowing a CSI-like approach to tracing water sources," said Williams.
Critical to the project is the university's expertise in remote sensing research through NSIDC -- including assessing changes in Earth's snow and ice cover -- and INSTAAR's research on the physical, chemical and biological processes in "critical zones," which are the areas between treetops and groundwater. INSTAAR administers both the Long-Term Ecological Research site at Niwot Ridge west of Boulder and the Critical Zone Observatory project in the Boulder Creek watershed for the National Science Foundation.
One of the biggest project challenges will be to obtain data from some of the most remote regions on Earth, said Williams. The water, rain and snow samples collected by collaborators within the study area will be sent back to CU-Boulder for analysis.
The research will bring together scientists and government officials in the countries of High Asia to coordinate and compare results on what part of river flows come from glaciers and seasonal snow. This sharing of information is important because the rivers of Asia can cross several country borders. USAID support will contribute to the research and coordination and CU-Boulder will make its archived and new data on snow and ice easily available to all the countries and their citizens.
The CU team will hire Asian project managers and collaborate with research scientists affiliated with various Asian institutes. "We already have some good scientific contacts in the region, people we know who are reliable and who can deliver," said Armstrong.
A number of CU undergraduate and graduate students will be involved in the study and support will be available to Asian students by way of the funding provided to Asian project partners.
"One of the main project goals is to transfer scientific understanding to people in the region who can continue these measurements and analysis once the USAID project is finished," said Armstrong. "The idea is to provide the local population with the information they need to make decisions that will increase sustainability as land use and climate change."
Contact
Moe Tabrizi
Richard Armstrong, 303-492-1828
Mark Williams, 303-492-8830
Jim Scott, CU media relations, 303-492-3114
NEWS SOURCE: CU Boulder News Center
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LEED certification is a U.S. benchmark for sustainable building design, construction, operation and maintenance. The $46.5 million Williams Village North, with 131,246 gross square feet, is projected to be nearly 40 percent more energy and water efficient than modern code-compliant buildings of the same size.
"Our platinum rating -- a first for the campus -- represents a lot and we're very proud of what we've accomplished through the efforts of many dedicated people," said Moe Tabrizi, campus sustainability director. "It reflects our commitments to immediate energy, water and resource conservation and our long-term goal of carbon neutrality, as well as the belief that we can provide students interactive learning in every corner of campus."
CU-Boulder has eight other structures that are LEED gold rated and another with a silver designation. All future new or renovated buildings on campus will be at least LEED gold rated, with the goal of seeking LEED platinum whenever possible, Tabrizi said.
In a building that gets 12.5 percent of its energy from on-site solar panels, Williams Village North residents have a hand in controlling the flow of electricity. They are able to shut off power to nonessential and not-in-use outlets with single switches installed in each room. Residents will be able to monitor electricity using meters and information kiosks in the building, which also are slated for upcoming energy savings competitions.
A free water bottle filling station shows how many plastic containers may have been diverted from landfills as users stock reusable vessels. Since the building opened in mid-August, the estimated savings stands at more than 24,000 bottles.
The building is home to two Residential Academic Programs, or RAPS -- Sustainable by Design and Social Entrepreneurship for Equitable Development and Sustainability. Architecture Assistant Professor Matthew Jelacic serves as faculty in residence for both of the RAPS.
"Williams Village North offers more than a living space, it offers a lifestyle," said Kambiz Khalili, executive director of Housing and Dining Services. "Our partnership with the campus and resident student leaders provided the opportunity to commit resources that allow CU students to fully explore the impacts of sustainability in a unique living and learning environment."
The site has low-flow water fixtures installed in sinks, showers and toilets, and native landscaping that requires little or no watering.
Other green features include energy-efficient lighting with daylight harvesting, advanced heat-recovery systems and low-volatile organic compound, or VOC, materials.
"As we began the design process, it became obvious to us that if we stretched our collaborative efforts we had a chance to create the first LEED platinum building on campus," said Curt Huetson, director of facilities, planning and operations for Housing and Dining Services. "I challenged our project team, which actually signed a pact and committed to make it happen. As a result, each member now points to this facility with tremendous personal pride."
Team members included Paul Leef, director of planning, design and construction and campus architect; Steve Hecht, manager of design and project management; Heidi Rogé, project manager; Tom Goodhew, campus planner; Richelle Reilly, landscape architect; and Paula Bland, director of Residence Life. Also included were campus engineers Jonathan Akins, Pieter van der Mersch, Pepper Clayton and Joe Branchaw.
Only 1.5 percent of Williams Village North project costs came from the sustainability integration that makes the building LEED platinum rated and will translate into significant utility savings over time.
For more information on CU-Boulder's green campus initiatives visit www.colorado.edu/cusustainability/greeningcu/GreeningCU.html. For more information on Housing and Dining Services visit housing.colorado.edu/.
Contact
Moe Tabrizi, 303-492-1425 moe.tabrizi@colorado.edu Kambiz Khalili, 303-492-6494 kambiz.khalili@colorado.edu Curt Huetson, 303-735-1111 huetson@colorado.edu Elizabeth Lock, CU media relations, 303-492-3117 elizabeth.lock@colorado.edu
NEWS SOURCE: University of Colorado News Center
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Maxwell Boykoff's interest in how the media covers the science of climate change began as a side project nearly a decade ago.
The University of Colorado professor -- who was studying vulnerability and hurricane activity in Central America at the time -- was musing about the interaction between science and public policy when he started to wonder how the media's coverage of climate change has impacted the public's perception.
NEWS SOURCE: Boulder Daily Camera
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NEWS SOURCE: Renewable Energy Portal
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