New Unity College President gives Climate Misconceptions lecture

Our new college president, Dr. Stephen Mulkey, gave a lecture on climate change to the assembled third year class last night, about 65 or 70 students in all, plus a few staff and faculty and other students who were interested.

Mulkey, a tropical forest ecologist, was keen to dispel misconceptions that the general public has about climate change.

(The slideshow is available online here, and hopefully the audio lecture will also soon be available.)

Here is the list of misconceptions he worked on, one by one, plus my summary of his rebuttals.

Each misconception was dispelled by a series of slides containing the rebuttal, generally using real data.

• Misconception: Weather is climate - Local weather events are taken as evidence for or against global climate change.

(Rebuttal: Climate records are much longer -- thirty years of consistent data are usually required to demonstrate a climate change. Also, weather watchers may not be capable of distinguishing when mean and variance change together.)

• Misconception: Natural variation is the cause - Climate has always varied over the history of the earth, and the observed changes are part of that natural variation.

(Rebuttal: Yes it has, but the climate record shows current change is unprecedented in its speed. Modeling experiments demonstrate that humans must be the cause of 60-70 percent of the current changes.)

• Misconception: Models don't work - Climate models are unreliable and cannot predict future climate.

(Rebuttal: Models are increasingly reliable. Scientists are still tinkering with models to decrease the small amount of remaining uncertainty, but we can now predict what will happen with a good deal of confidence.)

• Misconception: It s the sun - The earth is warming, but it is caused by the sun not by human activities.

(Rebuttal: Modeling and empirical studies agree that, although solar cycles are involved in the overall system, they are not large enough in magnitude to be driving the current changes.)

• Misconception: Global greening CO2 is good for plants - Global warming may be a good thing because higher CO2 will benefit humankind through enhanced plant growth.

(Rebuttal: Plants do grow faster in higher CO2 concentrations, true, but this is more than cancelled out by the degradation of ecosystems, particularly rainforests and arctic soils, which are already adding CO2 and methane to the atmosphere.)

• Misconception: Global warming is trivial. We will be able to adapt because climate change will not have significant impacts on the Earth’s ecology and human economy.

(Rebuttal: Global warming is already non-trivial. People are already suffering and dying, in far-away places such as sub-Saharan Africa, but also here in the US as a result of extreme weather events. And it will get worse, perhaps much worse. The economic impacts of the extreme weather events in the US in just the last year added up to $42 billion, never mind the economic multiplier events of slowed growth as a result of the disaster. (The $42 billion was just in direct losses and disaster relief.))

Mulkey concluded his talk by asking why students were not "in the streets" already, and describing the tension between his duties as Unity College president, and his willingness to make a strong statement and join the ranks of those already arrested in protest (Hansen, McKibben, and Speth, to name just three that come to mind.)

(I for one would prefer he stay out of jail and help us get this college moving yet faster in the right direction to really begin to help solve this problem. But if he really wants to spend a night or two of experiential learning in the DC city jail, that shouldn't slow us down too much.)

What was most gratifying to me about the talk was the rather large number of students that stayed to ask questions.

I was instrumental, along with some of my colleagues, in making climate change and sustainability a general education requirement for all majors at Unity College several years ago, making us an early adopter of this important step which is now recommended by the ACUPCC and ASSHE.

But I wouldn't say that this was then, nor has it been since, popular among students. Even some other faculty have complained. It was a fairly radical step at the time, and many thought we were forcing the subject on students.

I think time and hard experience will show that we were right to do so, but in the meantime it was obvious from the reception to last night's talk that some of the heavier hostility has now waned, and it's certainly good to see the going get a little easier. I've really been enjoying my two sections of the required class this year, primarily because of the strong student interest in the subject matter.

It doesn't hurt that the administration seems to "have my back."

Last night only a small handful of students were dismissive or bored, and twenty or so hung around to ask questions and learn more.

Next week's lecture by Dr. Mulkey will take the discussion to the next level.

Meanwhile, back in class, we will begin to unpack a few of the assertions Stephen made and take a longer look at the evidence in each case, trying to answer students' more in-depth questions.

Tune in for the next exciting episode!

More on the Bakken for class today

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/business/energy-environment/in-north-dakota-wasted-natural-gas-flickers-against-the-sky.html?hpw

Principled administration

Reminded me of someone I know well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/nyregion/the-secrets-of-a-good-principal.html?src=me&ref=general

All the fun of the fair

The thirty-somethingth annual MOFGA Common Ground Fair was this weekend and Unity College had a number of activities, including the organization of a giant number 350 made of real fair-going humans.

We also had a booth in the Energy and Shelter area. here at students Kelly, Rebecca and Elizabeth on duty Sunday afternoon.

The wall in the background is supposed to be a demonstration of failed insulation. It worked well for most folks, but we did get a handful who would come right up and say "That's not the right way to do it!" without waiting for the explanation or reading the sign that titled "Little Wall of Horrors."

Well, no, we do know that's not the way.... promise...

Thanks to Jesse, Anthony, Jake, Joey, Sandra, Amy, Rebbecca, Elizabeth, Kelly, Melora, Tom, Cheryl, Sierra, Aliza, Roland, Teneel, Sam, Jonah, Amanda, Randy, and Laura for the help with the booth.

NPR on oil boom, for class

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/25/140784004/new-boom-reshapes-oil-world-rocks-north-dakota

Hoofs and dags and Captives

Saturday was the first of two field trips each academic year in which Aimee and I host first year students from Unity College's Captive Wildlife Care and Education program at our farm.

This program, called "Captive" for short among students, trains applied biologists for careers in zoo=keeping and other animal care work at a professional or managerial level. Students may also go into veterinary careers.

It's a very popular program with young women, but there are a handful of young men too. The students are characterized by a particular fondness for animals.

Aimee and I enjoy having the students to the farm because a) it takes away some of the very back-breaking work of sheep care, and b) it's fun to watch the students literally come to grips with the sheep. The professors who run the program, Sarah Cunningham and Cheryl Frederick, are routinely delighted with the arrangement too, because of the great experience for their students at a crucial time in their education.

It's a good trade for all concerned, but especially the students, who like all students need to learn some important lessons.

Sheep are cute and fuzzy, especially our little lambs, but they're also wild and woolly, and will struggle mightily to get out of the shepherds hands.

They also smell.

A lot.

They smell a lot. And it's not a good smell.

I'm not sure how many "Captive" students question their career choices when, often for the first time in their lives, they are told to grab on to their damp, stinky, heavy, powerful, struggling animal and make her assume the proper control position for hoof care or medicine, or whatever peculiar and seemingly perverted task is called for, but if they do, well, that's a good lesson, isn't it?

One that had better be learned sooner rather than later in the college career. If you don't like handling sheep at this point in your career, you aren't going to like giraffe or hippopotami or grizzlum bear very much later, either, and so it may be time to go off and get yourself a communications degree, or join some other less contact-oriented line of work.

Today's task was FAMACHA® care, as well as the ubiquitous dung tags or "dags" for short, and a little hoof trimming. Nothing too difficult, but, as always, animals need to be immobilized and properly handled to manage all this, and it's probably the handling part that is the main lesson.

It's certainly the main emotional lesson. As we routinely tell the students, sheep care is a bit like rugby, and indeed it's no surprise that the regions of the world that produce the most domestic sheep, Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and of course my own homeland of northern England, also produce the best rugby players.

There are no half-way measures in rugby and sheep handling.

You just have to get "stuck in" and grab your sheep. This kind of gumption is not that easy to learn quickly, especially if you're a fashionable young lady from suburban America who has just left her teenage years.

There are other good lessons. FAMACHA care provides one. The main point of this routine is the control of the barber-pole worm, Haemonchus contortous. Infestation by this parasite is exhibited by the symptom of anemia, which itself is exhibited by lack of red blood cells in the blood vessels of the eyelid.

If the eyelid is white or creamy colored and almost devoid of red blood cells, then you treat for worms using a broad spectrum anti-helmintic such as Ivormec.

Notice the scientific language. The lesson is less about FAMACHA or worms, and more about science and its practical uses. First year students fresh out of high school in the first four weeks of their college career are apt to cherry-pick the lessons they like and the lessons they don't like. Routinely, the lessons they like are the ones with warm fuzzy animals, and the lessons they don't like have long words, math, and lots of complicated science reasoning.

This is understandable. One necessary character trait for a good college teacher is empathy for the student. It's a long time ago now, but I still remember well enough being an seventeen-year old RAF aeronautical engineering trainee, and being fascinated by fast fighter jets and less interested in the math, science, and engineering of flight.

But an empathetic student, faced with a sad wormy sheep, being taught by an empathetic professor, can begin to grasp that the proper care of this animal depends on her properly learning the science of worm management, and thus the science of biology, particularly cell biology and evolutionary ecology, is required.

And thus, dear readers, another applied biological scientist is born, and the world, or worm, turns once more.

Two sheep needed to be wormed, which was occasion for another big word : "intubate." Lacking a proper drenching tool, the Womerlippi Farmers get Ivormec into a sheep's stomach and importantly, not into a sheep's lungs, with an intubation kit that was originally designed for hypothermic new-born lambs. It's a little awkward but works.

The sheep had been out on good pasture all summer, so their hooves were nice and didn't need much trimming.

They didn't even have too many dags, which was in some ways a pity because dagging is a disgusting job and at this point in a college career a Captive students badly needs to have to do some truly disgusting animal care job or another.

They did fight a bit, but the proper holds and positions take care of that. A sheep can't move at all if held properly in any one of half a dozen holds. The students learn quickly to get the animal into the proper position and keep him there. Only one lamb escaped treatment, by scrambling rather athletically over a gate we thought was too tall to scramble over.

You never learn not to be surprised at what animals may do.

Three groups of students were handled in this way, nearly fifty students in all, but only ten sheep, counting the one that escaped. Three or four sheep per group.

Still, everyone got to get their hands on a sheep. And a good day was had by all, except possibly the sheep.

There was also a bit of talking involved, as we explained scientific care routines and bits and pieces of sheep medicine, and a little farming, all by reference to science. It's relatively easy to actually get lessons into the student's brain, once you've got his or her attention using the hands-on or haptic teaching method, wet wooly animals optional.

We call this approach praxis at Unity College. It's a relatively unique feature of our pedagogy. And it works.

Which saves an awful lot of effort and money. You'd be surprised how much expensive education is out there that doesn't work nearly as well.

You'd think folks would catch on, but they don't.

Aimee has pictures here. Enjoy.

Piscataquis Village Project

In a very argumentative paper published in a book called "Smart Growth and Climate Change,"(ed, Matthias Ruth from the Maryland Policy School) a few years ago, I argued that so-called "smart growth" planning regulations would not "save" climate emissions.

And they won't. I stand by that claim.

Smart growth is not restriction on growth. It is growth, only (arguably) smarter. It adds emissions. To actually reduce emissions takes shrinkage, not growth, unless of course you retire old sources of emissions at the same time.

Think about it.

But while you're thinking about, understand that I'm not arguing against well-planned development. Better planning is something we badly need, especially when performed voluntarily.

Here's a recent letter from a developer:

Hello Mick-
I stumbled across your "teaching, research and service" website this morning. Tons of interesting stuff. I wonder if you know about or may be interested in a project we are working on in Piscataquis County. We have a way to go yet, but we are off to a reasonable start with $250,000 in contingent investment. If you have a chance, take a look. I'd be interested in any comments you may have. Link below.
Sincerely-
Tracy Gayton

www.facebook.com/villageproject