The Nelson Institute Blog

Emeritus professor Waltraud Brinkmann (geography/environmental studies) will receive the 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Climate Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers at the organization’s annual meeting in San Francisco in April. Though retired from the faculty, Brinkmann remains active as a senior scientist in the Nelson Institute’s Center for Climatic Research.

We would like to welcome the new Spring 2007 graduate students:

Conservation Biology & Sustainable Development MS

• Julia Caldwell, advisor: Nancy Mathews (Julia is in Montpellier on study abroad this semester)
• Megan Christenson, advisor: Jonathan Patz

Land Resources

• Yasemin Gulec Can (PhD), advisor: Arnold Alanen
• Thais Passos Fonseca (MS), advisor: Doug Reinemann
• Thomas Shevlin (MS), advisor: John Harrington

Water Resources Management MS

• Matthew Krueger
• Charles Thompson
• Scott Van Egeren

For a listing of all of the Nelson Institute Graduate Students, check out the Nelson Institute Graduate Student Roster

From Alex Steffen on WorldChanging.com:

Now, just in case I have to say it again: climate change is real… What is worrysome, though, is the idea, which one is beginning to hear all over the political map, that climate change trumps every other environmental issue, or, even more, that climate change is not an environmental issue at all. These arguments usually precede a call for some action which reduces carbon output but has other demonstrably negative environmental impacts, whether that’s damming a river for hydropower, launching into a massive nuclear energy program or seeding the ocean to produce a plankton bloom. . . .

[A]ll these issues — climate, biodiversity, population, poverty, conflict, public health, toxics, terrorism — are all bound together and part of the same fabric.

To think otherwise is to suffer from a carbon blindness which could lead us actions which undermine the future, taken in the name of the future itself.

So, what do you think? Is there a hierarchy of environmental issues? How should we relate these different fields to each other? Where does global warming fit?

Chad Monfreda for WorldChanging.com
February 13, 2007 8:45 AM

The reasons to care about climate change are obvious, right? A planetary fever is about to deal a wallop of catastrophic floods, insect borne disease, deadly heat waves, and an all around worsening of the risks people face everyday across the world. But if human vulnerability gives climate change saliency, aren’t direct adaptations to current risks a more efficient way to meet our goals than greenhouse gas mitigations that would have an indirect effect decades away?

(Photo: Jakarta Flood by Rian Triharyana)

Back in December, Alex argued that it’s time to start making our systems more resilient to the effects of climate change, even while we work to limit the magnitude of climate disruption. Now, a commentary in the journal Nature goes a bit farther, (more…)

In late January, Nelson Institute director Frances Westley, land resources graduate student Andrew Stuhl, and UW System regent Tom Loftus attended the Arctic Frontiers Conference in Tromso, Norway. The conference brought together scientists, politicians, conservationists, and indigenous peoples concerned with the changing Arctic landscape. Highlighting both the obstacles and opportunities that global warming presents to the circumpolar region, the gathering was an example of the complex task of understanding and managing coupled human and natural systems.

The visit to Tromso was also an opportunity to strengthen the relationship between the Nelson Institute and the Arctic research and governmental communities. Troms County invited the the Nelson Institute to help guide the development and design of an Arctic think tank. The think tank will study the Arctic’s economic, ecological, political, and social environments in order to propose effective governance strategies. While the think tank will serve Norwegian homeland interests, it will also position itself as an international leader in research and outreach. Tromso, a city that sits on the border between Norway and the rest of the circumpolar region, will be the home for the think-tank.

For more details about politics, culture, and environment of the Arctic, as well as materials describing the think tank’s mission and next steps, please consult the Tromso Report. For questions and comments on this document, contact Andrew Stuhl at stuhl@wisc.edu.

(A collaborative series on WorldChanging.com by Hassan Masum, David Zaks, and Chad Monfreda.)

How much is a pristine lake worth? A clean atmosphere? An oil field?

Answering these questions takes us from the heart of economic philosophy to the frontiers of analytical science. It turns out to be very difficult to give objective monetary values, even in principle. But as our analytical capabilities and understanding of ecosystem services increases, we’re developing useful valuation methods that will form the basis for future policy and financial activities.

Our last post explained the biophysical basis of ecosystem services. In this post, our goal is to explain how people come up with those intriguing currency figures for ecosystem values, and look at a couple of examples. This is the “macro-economics of ecosystem service valuation”, which aims to help policy-makers, investors, and citizens to internalize the value of our shared natural heritage.

At the same time, currency-based measures of value have their limits. Where monetary measures fall short, valuation can be done in a number of complementary ways. It’s only by understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each that we can make appropriate use of these tools, to put knowledge about the ways ecosystems work into practical, everyday use.

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Nelson Institute professor Calvin DeWitt will be a guest Tuesday (Feb. 13) on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Here on Earth program, with host Jean Feraca. The hour-long call-in discussion will focus on the recent teaming-up of Evangelicals and scientists for environmental protection.

The program will air live on WPR’s statewide Ideas Network from 3 to 4 p.m. and be repeated from 9 to 10 p.m.� (In Madison, the Ideas Network station is WHA, AM 970.)� It will also will be webcast live and made available for listening at other times via free podcast.

Wisconsin’s electric utilities are on the leading edge of a national building boom of coal-fired power plants, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and Nelson Institute professor Jonathan Foley believes that’s the “wrong path” to energy meet future energy needs. Read the story about and a related column in Madison’s Capital Times about Foley’s views on clean energy.

Dr. Pamela Matson of Stanford University, a member of the Nelson Institute Board of Visitors, writes to us with this opportunity:

I am the scientific director for a fellowship program that provides a unique professional development opportunity for outstanding mid-career faculty, and I’m writing to ask your help in identifying good candidates from your department or from your professional acquaintance.

The Leopold Leadership Program at the Woods Institute for the Environment (www.leopoldleadership.org) was established to provide academic environmental scientists with the skills and connections they need to become effective leaders and communicators of science to non-scientific audiences, especially policy makers, journalists, business leaders and citizens groups. We select up to 20 Fellows each year to participate in intensive training sessions that teach them leadership skills and techniques and how to communicate their science and its relevance to society in ways that various non-scientific audiences can understand. The program’s ultimate goal is to improve the understanding and use of science in decision-making by preparing top scientists to engage effectively in outreach to various audiences. In addition to receiving the training, the Fellows become part of a network of past Fellows (now over 100) and program advisors who are leaders in conducting scientific outreach beyond traditional academic and scientific circles. (For more information, see the website above or the Leopold Leadership background flyer.)

The Call for Applications is now open for the 2008 fellowships and the application deadline is April 16, 2007.

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