Spring Break
Colloquium focuses on global, local climate changes
Jeff Sullivan
Issue date: 9/5/08 Section: News
09/05/08 - This fall's University of Rhode Island Honors Colloquium, "People and Planet: Global Environmental Change," starts Tuesday with a whole new approach to community education.
The content of the series will be focused on climate change to raise awareness of not only global effects of negative human impact on the environment, but also what it would mean for Rhode Island.
"The earth is being changed from human impact at an unprecedented rate," said Arthur Spivack, a professor of oceanography at URI and one of the colloquium's coordinators. "Our goal is to get people to understand some of the aspects of this with somewhat of an emphasis on climate, and have a discussion on what are some of the potential responses."
Another URI oceanography professor, Steven D'Hondt, and communication studies professor Judith Swift are also helping to coordinate the events with Spivack.
"It won't be an indictment of how we got to where we are," said Swift, according to a press release. "Instead, we will look to the future of these issues - what we do know, what do we need to know, what are we going to do to address it and what are the consequences of those choices."
As opposed to last year's "China Rising" format, this year will not be exclusively lectures or discussion panels. Instead, other mediums, including film and theater, will be presented in the hopes of reaching a broader audience.
"We really wanted to approach this in a way that would get the non-specialists or non-experts interested," Spivack said. "I think that a lot of these issues related to global change are not really scientific issues but related to the values that society holds."
Presenters Rebecca Robinson and John Merrill's film analysis on Sept. 16 will use documentary clips to pick apart the theory that global warming is not related to human activity in a discussion called, "The Great Global Warming Hoax?"
URI economics professor and Director of the Honors Program Richard McIntyre said that plans to take the series in a different direction have been on the drawing board for some time, and they just needed the right people to make it happen.
The content of the series will be focused on climate change to raise awareness of not only global effects of negative human impact on the environment, but also what it would mean for Rhode Island.
"The earth is being changed from human impact at an unprecedented rate," said Arthur Spivack, a professor of oceanography at URI and one of the colloquium's coordinators. "Our goal is to get people to understand some of the aspects of this with somewhat of an emphasis on climate, and have a discussion on what are some of the potential responses."
Another URI oceanography professor, Steven D'Hondt, and communication studies professor Judith Swift are also helping to coordinate the events with Spivack.
"It won't be an indictment of how we got to where we are," said Swift, according to a press release. "Instead, we will look to the future of these issues - what we do know, what do we need to know, what are we going to do to address it and what are the consequences of those choices."
As opposed to last year's "China Rising" format, this year will not be exclusively lectures or discussion panels. Instead, other mediums, including film and theater, will be presented in the hopes of reaching a broader audience.
"We really wanted to approach this in a way that would get the non-specialists or non-experts interested," Spivack said. "I think that a lot of these issues related to global change are not really scientific issues but related to the values that society holds."
Presenters Rebecca Robinson and John Merrill's film analysis on Sept. 16 will use documentary clips to pick apart the theory that global warming is not related to human activity in a discussion called, "The Great Global Warming Hoax?"
URI economics professor and Director of the Honors Program Richard McIntyre said that plans to take the series in a different direction have been on the drawing board for some time, and they just needed the right people to make it happen.
