china
Where People Are: Hope and Fear
02/06/10 05:01
How do you engage
ordinary people in the need to prepare for climate
change? This is a problem the environmental
movement has struggled with for a long time. My
particular area of focus — climate change
adaptation — is new enough that trying to describe
what we do in this field can take more time than
more people have patience for, much less trying to
show how the field is relevant to their lives and
their children’s lives.
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Climate of Doubt
02/06/10 04:59
A Chinese colleague
turned to me when we were alone after a meeting.
John: Do you truly believe that humans have caused
climate change? I was shocked by the question. As a
scientist working on climate change issues, I have
seen and read many lines of evidence that the
climate is changing rapidly, that humans have
caused these changes, and that we must (and can)
actively respond to these shifts. Almost as strange
as being asked the question was having the question
come from a colleague whom I believe to be one of
the most effective members of our organization’s
climate adaptation staff.
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Friends in High Places
19/05/10 16:18
I have just returned
from the first of three quick trips to China. Even
by my standards, the first journey was extremely
peripatetic, full of constant motion. But sometimes
having so many changes in quick succession shows
surprising connections — hidden threads and
themes.
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NEWS: climate adaptation case studies
22/08/08 13:31
A colleague closely
affiliated with WWF who is now at Australian
National University has just written an excellent
series of climate adaptation case
studies. Jamie Pittock, the author,
is in the highest tier of international
freshwater conservation and policy advocates. I
highly recommend downloading the 6.5 mb file. A
major recommendation behind this and a
companion overview
of climate
adaptation that I wrote with another colleague,
Tom LeQuesne, is maintaining healthy freshwater
species and ecosystems is the key to keeping
reliable and high-quality freshwater resources
for societies, economies, and livelihoods
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The Round Tables
09/04/08 15:56
Perhaps my favorite
anecdote about China is the prevalence of round
tables in restaurants. I almost never saw square
tables, and I quickly learned upon entering a room
-- even for a relatively casual meal — to turn to a
ranking Chinese colleague and ask, Where do you
want me to sit?
Almost invariably we were seated in private rooms with our own set of dedicated serving staff. A rotating lazy susan sat in the middle of each table. All of these features are quite different than in the West, of course. But the seating rank was perhaps the surprising element. Asking where to sit was important because these seating positions are carefully ranked. Some restaurants even had numbers at the seats, and two very nice private dining rooms actually had a small LED screen in front of each chair that could be recalibrated for groups that were smaller than the total number of seats available.
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Almost invariably we were seated in private rooms with our own set of dedicated serving staff. A rotating lazy susan sat in the middle of each table. All of these features are quite different than in the West, of course. But the seating rank was perhaps the surprising element. Asking where to sit was important because these seating positions are carefully ranked. Some restaurants even had numbers at the seats, and two very nice private dining rooms actually had a small LED screen in front of each chair that could be recalibrated for groups that were smaller than the total number of seats available.
Read More...
Aquatic Synergasms
06/04/08 16:31
A few years ago, the
term “synergistic” was all the rage for National
Science Foundation grant proposals and probably
elsewhere in scientific funding venues. The term
still seems to rage across the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; the U.N. body that
focuses on “global warming” ). Synergistic
basically means that
the interaction between two of more forces is
different than simply adding the forces together.
In the western portions of North America, for
instance, annual precipitation is becoming more
variable (particularly with more droughts and
higher rates of evaporation, resulting in drier and
more frequently dry periods). Although fire is a
natural part of the landscape in the region, the
interaction of more fire and a drier climate is
likely to transform the region as fires become more
frequent and more intense. That’s a synergistic
interaction. Read
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