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Ogmius Newsletter

Center News

Science, Technology, and Decision Making Symposium

On February 25 the Center sponsored an all-day public symposium to showcase the research and other efforts at the Center and the University of Colorado relating to science, technology, and decision making. The symposium included sixteen sessions on the following topics:

  • Striking Back! Protecting Spectators from Lightning in Large Stadiums by Joel Gratz
  • Changing the Climate on Climate by Susan Avery
  • Does Water Flow towards Money or Downhill? Lessons from the Western Water Assessment by Brad Udall
  • Assessing the Effectiveness of Lawn Watering Restrictions During the Drought of 2002 by Doug Kenney
  • Transfer of forecasting methods from the research community to operational agencies: Lessons learned by Martyn Clark
  • Climate Change and Regional Heat waves: Policy Implications by Tom Chase
  • One-Stop Shopping for Usable Science: The Case of Climate Information by Genevieve Maricle
  • Incorporating Large-Scale Climate Information in Water Resources Decision Making by Balaji Rajaopalan
  • Science and Security in the Age of Bioterrorism by Lisa Keranen
  • Decision structures for the new nuclear era by Jerry Peterson
  • The Impact of Frequency Agile Radio Communications on Spectrum Policy by Doug Sicker
  • Implications of Go-as-You-Pay for the Bush Space Vision by Shep Ryen
  • Presidential Science Advisor Lecture Series by Bobbie Klein
  • Journalism Values vs. Science Values: an uneasy match by Tom Yulsman
  • From Linear Model to Pasteur's Quadrant by Elizabeth McNie
  • In search of Pasteur’s Quadrant:  Opportunities and barriers in incorporating considerations of use in carbon cycle science research by Lisa Dilling

For more information and to view Powerpoint presentations see the symposium website.


Comings and Goings

Photo of LindaLinda Pendergrass recently joined our staff.  Linda was the office manager for the CIRES message center.  She will be assisting us with travel, updating and managing Center publications, office and building related issues, and student assistant tasks. Welcome Linda!

Photo of SallySally Dowlatshahi, a graduate student who received her B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois-Chicago in December 2001, has joined our staff to help on the Science Policy Assessment and Research on Climate (SPARC) project.


Rad Byerly Addresses NASA Meeting

On February 1, Rad Byerly spoke at a workshop in Boulder which NASA organized to determine what future capabilities it will need to accomplish President Bush’s program for humans to return to the Moon, and for a subsequent trip to Mars.  The workshop organizer invited Byerly, a member of the Space Studies Board (SSB) of the National Research Council, to present the results of two other workshops the SSB had conducted.  The first one found that: NASA’s human exploration program needed a goal beyond earth orbit and that Mars was a likely destination, and also that since we do not now know how to accomplish this, the program should proceed by steps, should learn from each step and modify its plans based on this learning, and should “go as you pay”.  The Administration announced a program very similar to what the workshop had recommended on the same day this workshop’s report was released.

The second SSB workshop addressed the role of science in the new NASA exploration vision.  It recognized that a great deal of research is needed to enable the vision and reciprocally that the vision might enable new kinds of space science research. It recommended in effect that such “enabled” science should not be given a high priority just because it could be done, but rather that all science should meet the criterion of “transforming” our understanding of space.

These SSB workshop reports form an important part of the context in which NASA will be carrying out its vision, and were relevant to deciding what capabilities should be developed. The workshop reports can be found here and here.


Lisa Dilling Presents at Fall AGU Meeting

In December 2004, Lisa Dilling presented at the Fall American Geophysical Union meeting, North American Carbon Program (NACP) Session on a Pilot Study on Reconciling Supply and Demand: Who are the Consumers of Information on the North American Carbon Balance? by L. Dilling, R. Pielke Jr. and D. Sarewitz.  The main purpose of the presentation was to introduce the method of reconciling supply and demand for information to the carbon cycle science community.

In December 2004, Lisa Dilling also presented an invited talk, “Communicating the Urgency and Challenge of Global Climate Change: Lessons Learned and New Strategies” by L. Dilling and S. Moser  at the Fall American Geophysical Union meeting, Communicating Climate Change session.  This presentation synthesized work at a workshop at NCAR in summer, 2004, that examined some of the pitfalls of current communication strategies on climate change and suggested alternative approaches.

In April 2005, Lisa Dilling will be presenting a talk, “Toward Carbon Governance:  Challenges for science and policy across scales” at the American Association of Geographers meeting in Denver, CO.  Direct management of the carbon cycle is already becoming a significant option proposed to mitigate rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations.  Decisions that affect the carbon cycle, whether inadvertently or deliberately, therefore occur at the widest possible variety of scales. This paper will examine how decision-making in institutions at different scales currently influences the carbon cycle and how scientific information enters the process.