Chronic disease, homeland security, and sailing to where there be dragons

The five papers in this special issue share the perspective that attitudes toward risk are strongly shaped by social context, and that understanding context can help us understand how risk decisions are made, and thereby how to make them better

Clark County pre-disaster mitigation project: Suggestions for project initiation

Attention to several organizational issues will facilitate the efforts of the Clark County regional Pre-Disaster Mitigation project. Key considerations include defining terms efficiently, establishing and maintaining a clear timeline, determining rules for acceptability of new information, determining the nature and boundaries of concerns to be addressed, evaluating a full range of mitigation options, considering how to manage uncertainty, and ensuring stakeholder buy-in and participation. The NOAA seven-step process should serve as an operational template. Project participants should anticipate substantial uncertainty, and consider probabilistic methods (e.g. Monte Carlo analysis) for coping with uncertainty within a GIS framework

Uncertainty, climate change and nuclear power

Long time-horizon environmental risks with potential for global impacts have increased in visibility over the past several decades. Such issues as climate change, the nuclear fuel cycle, persistent synthetic chemicals, and stratospheric ozone depletion share some characteristics, including intergenerational impacts, strongly decoupled incidence of risks and benefits, substantial decision stakes and extreme uncertainty. What is not well understood are the similarities and differences among sources and implications of uncertainty among these global environmental threats, especially those associate with current and future human behavior. This describes the uncertainties associated with managing two global concerns: the nuclear (fission) fuel cycle and anthropogenic climate change. It finds that the two issue share some common uncertainties, some highly differentiated uncertainties and some interdependent uncertainty. It argues that these uncertainties preclude simple conclusions about the tradeoffs between risks from anthropogenic climate change and those from nuclear power. It concludes that a framework that treats uncertainty as an aspect of management, not as an analytical challenge, will both improve options for effective policy making and provide direction for useful (from a policy perspective) future research

Clark County GIS vulnerability assessment project: Looking ahead, designing mitigation, and managing uncertainty

After reviewing the progress of the Clark County GIS Vulnerability Project to date, it appears to me that now is an appropriate time to look to the end of the project, and use that to shape the next several steps. The NOAA guidelines may still have use, but it is more important that the project make progress than that it meet particular prescriptive steps

Technical risk information: Decision tool or rhetorical ammunition? Undisputed facts in the Yucca Mountain debate

This paper examines how both opponents and proponents of the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca mountain Nevada claim that uncontroversial information supports their conflicting positions. Four pieces of information in particular are claimed by both sides: the distance of the proposed site from Las Vegas, the volume of waste that has been produced, the threat of terrorism since 9/11/01, and the occurrence of an earthquake in early 2002. Possible explanations for the difference include naive positivism, social constructionism, persistent beliefs and implicit warrants. The latter two models better explain observed knowledge/preference states. If so, more or better information alone will not improve the dialog about Yucca mountain. Rather, dialog should include a discussion of the ways in which they interpret information and draw conclusions based on their beliefs and warrants. This conclusion may be generalized to a range of information-intensive risk decisions

International Symposium on Technology and Society Invitation

Conference invitatio

UNLV sustainability task force report

The UNLV Sustainability Task Force has completed its mission to provide you with recommendations as to how UNLV can best pursue sustainability ideals. The attached report contains our conclusions and recommendations, along with appendices containing supporting materials and details

Afternoon concurrent track 2: The State of climate change education

AFTERNOON CONCURRENT TRACK 2: THE “STATE” OF CLIMATE CHANGE EDUCATION Moderator Scott Mensing Student Union Room 211 David Hassenzahl, Michael Collopy, Scott Mensing – NSHE EPSCoR Climate Infrastructure Grant Education Component Abstract: The Nevada System of Higher Education has received funding from the National Science Foundation EPSCoR program to develop climate change research infrastructure. This session will present information on what the Education Component is doing and plans to do, and solicit ideas on future climate education efforts for NSHE. Education is one of six components of this grant, and will support NSHE efforts on: Undergraduate research. Each school year and summer, funds are available to undergraduates at any NSHE institution of higher education to do research related to climate change. Graduate research. A number of competitive graduate research fellowships are available to graduate students at UNLV and UNR. Students propose research, supported by at least two faculty mentors. Curriculum development. A graduate student will work with the Component Lead to do research on climate education norms and methods across the United States and in Nevada. Part of this will be in anticipation of a 2010 NSHE Climate Education Conference, which will establish existing courses and programs, identify gaps, and propose course and program activities. K-12. The K-12 program will provide school-wide climate change education to middle school teachers in at-risk middle schools in Clark County and Washoe counties. A new cohort of teachers will be supported each year. Paul Buck – A Team Teaching Approach to Improving Climate Change Education in Nevada Middle Schools Abstract: The NSF EPSCoR RII Climate Change Infrastructure Award includes a small but important effort to build educational infrastructure among in-service middle school science, math, and English teachers at six Nevada middle schools. We will focus on whole school or whole grade level approaches, often referred to as a “professional learning community” or “community of practice” model, engaging a cohort of teachers at selected schools. Using specific elements of Nevada climate change research themes particularly relevant to each local community, this project will create a magnet school in one of the proposed themes at each school. The themes will be guided by the Nevada state science teaching framework and national science teaching standards. Target schools have student populations 50% or more minority and the proportion of science classes taught by teachers considered not highly qualified is above the school district mean. The use of graduate students to act as mentors and content links to in-service teachers will help develop a science research community that includes NSHE and middle school teachers working together. Donica Mensing, Hans-Peter Plag, Jen Huntleysmith – Assessing the State of Sustainability Education: A Case Study of Faculty Efforts at the University of Nevada, Reno Abstract: The University of Nevada, Reno established a Sustainability Committee in 2008, one goal of which is to strengthen the focus of the undergraduate curriculum on sustainability. In the process of implementing this goal, a faculty working group has discussed and come to agreement on several critical issues, including definitions, participation, methods, and culture. Discussion also led to recognition of a spatial component of sustainable development, in addition to the often referred to temporal component, and addressed the implicit ethical obligations that arise in considering these aspects of sustainability. Participation in the working group has been guided by the desire to be as cross-disciplinary as possible, explicitly including faculty from every college, on the understanding that sustainability naturally concerns almost all disciplines and areas of study. The initial method chosen by the committee to collect data is a survey of both faculty and undergraduate students, to develop a baseline on which to assess the current coverage of sustainability issues by the undergraduate curriculum. A secondary goal is to assess and compare the strength and direction of personal attitudes about sustainability issues. Discussions have also stressed the need for developing a culture on campus that values sustainability as a practice and subject of inquiry. Efforts to address cultural, administrative, attitudinal, and practical barriers to improved teaching on these issues will also be discussed

Morning concurrent track 3: Weathering climate change in the curriculum

MORNING CONCURRENT TRACK 3: WEATHERING CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE CURRICULUM Moderator Barbara St. Pierre Schneider Student Union Room 213 Andy Jorgensen – Creating a Learning Community for Solutions to Climate Change Abstract: The Climate Solutions Committee of the Council of Environmental Deans and Directors (CEDD) has proposed the creation of a learning community that will develop curricular content on solutions to anthropogenic climate change by drawing on the best available research on the phenomenon, coupled with the most effective pedagogical methods. The goal is to transform academic education about climate change from the current emphasis on physical and biological science to an interdisciplinary enterprise that includes mitigation and adaptation. We propose to use a community-building process to produce an adaptive virtual tool chest of curricular resources, methods, and experiences that can be used by educators at a variety of levels, focused on how to teach about climate solutions in general education and courses for science majors. The goal is to equip college students not just to diagnose problems but to give them the capacity to address and fix them. Amy Northrup, David Hassenzahl – Climate Education Courses in the United States Abstract: Climate change is becoming an increasingly common topic of courses at institutions of higher education across the United States. However, the literature on appropriate and effective climate education praxis is limited. This session will outline, presents early findings on, and solicit ideas about how best to proceed with, an evaluation of climate education courses and programs. The first stage of this research is the development of a database of climate education syllabi. It is a non non-random sample, but should represent the range of courses being offered, and can be used to assess what topics are being covered, at what institutions and program, and at what academic level . David James, Tom Piechota, Jeff Jablonski – Sustainability and General Education Abstract: The topics of sustainability, environmental literacy, and climate change are becoming part of many university educational programs. This presentation will present some of the national programs that are incorporating sustainability and the climate change. In addition, the presenters will give an update on the revisions being proposed to the UNLV General Education core, which may include incorporating sustainability into an educational outcome related to ethics and sustainability as dimensions of responsible citizenship

Climate Change Education for Nevada

42 PowerPoint slides Session 1: Education Convener: David Hassenzahl, UNLV Abstract: -Five Year Strategic Plan -Goal 6 - Create a scholarly environment to promote research skills and intellectual development for Nevada educators and students (K-12, undergraduate undergraduate, and graduate) -Primary Strategy - Develop educational infrastructure to train students at all levels and provide public outreach in climate change issue