Climate change is projected to have significant impacts on regional water resources over the next century. As longtime Colorado River water manager Eric Kuhn will discuss, science predicts that the future of the Colorado will include more severe droughts, changed precipitation patterns, altered hydrographs, greater demands, and reduced supplies. Kuhn will explain the differences between traditional conservative and popular conservative approaches to water management and argue why the popular conservative approach that disregards climate change could have dire consequences for the West. 

This Walter Orr Roberts public lecture addresses the important intersection between climate change and climate variability. Dr. Lisa Goddard, research scientist with the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), describes the processes, principally in the ocean, that give rise to decadal-scale variability, the current and future prospects for predicting that variability, and the utility of such predictions in planning for uncertainty.

Since Hurricane Katrina, there has been an increasing concern that a changing climate will bring about more frequent and more intense extreme weather events. This concern has motivated scientists to investigate the connection between global warming and extreme events such as hurricanes. In this lecture, Dr. Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research discusses the scientific evidence that suggests a connection between global warming and hurricanes and comments on the political ramifications of this connection.

Climate change is only one of the forces that fall under the umbrella of "global change." Disruptions to ecosystems brought about by warming and other variables affect biodiversity and bring about significant change to the global environment. In this public talk, Dr. Camille Parmesan, research fellow at the University of California Santa Barbara, reveals the correlation between climate change and shrinking biodiversity and highlights examples of how specific species are impacted by a changing climate. In her conclusion, Parmesan stresses the fact that species will be unable to adapt to climate change in the short-term, and she suggests that only by curtailing the long-term warming trend of the planet will we be able to preserve current species and ecosystems.

This Walter Orr Roberts Public Lecture features award winning science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson, who discusses abrupt climate change and the paradigm shift that accompanies this new scientific concept. In addition to presenting the evidence for abrupt climate change, Robinson comments on the resistance within the scientific community and society at large to climate change theories. He posits that a culture war between capitalism and science is currently waging and warns the outcome could have tremendous effects for the future of mankind. In his conclusion, Robinson praises the ethical values of the scientific community and suggests that society as a whole look to the scientific method as a means for political organization.

Precipitation patterns in the American West are widely varied and lead to both tremendous floods and prolonged droughts, and understanding these variations is a key component in helping residents adapt to life in this region. In this lecture, Kelly Redmond, deputy director of the Desert Research Institute, discusses natural variability in precipitation patterns throughout the West and comments on the additional impact human-driven climate change may have on climate and water resources in the region.

The realization that society's reliance on fossil fuels is resulting in alarming changes to the Earth's climate is forcing people to evaluate a host of issues concerning energy consumption and its effect on the environment. This public event addresses these issues and endeavors to educate concerned citizens about the challenges that lie ahead. In the first half, David Keith, an expert on energy and professor at Carnegie Mellon University, describes the world's current consumption of fossil fuels and suggests future options for energy that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Keith presents the surprising idea that fossil fuel consumption can continue without its harmful side effects provided energy companies pursue carbon sequestration technologies, which Keith argues are both possible and practical. In the second half, Stanford University professor Steve Schneider talks about the challenging policy dilemmas presented by climate change in both the developed and developing world. As a possible model for pursuing environment-friendly policies, Schneider offers the case of Bhutan, a developing country that has favored environmental and cultural production over the material benefits of Western-style industrialization. This event is part of the Walter Orr Roberts Public Lecture Series. Recorded on July 25, 2000 in Aspen, Colorado.

Recent developments in space technology - and in the attitudes of political and economic figures - make it clear that the cost of access to limitless resources of nearby space can be dramatically reduced. Such cost reduction makes a host of new ventures far more attractive, and suggests an economically sound program for using those resources to provide cheap, clean, abundant energy for the residents of Earth. In this lecture, Dr. John Lewis, professor at the University of Arizona and co-director of the Space Engineering Research Center, argues that space travel can be accomplished at a fraction of the current cost so long as competitive private companies are allowed to take the place of the long-time government monopoly of space.

Improvements in energy efficiency alone are probably insufficient to stabilize carbon dioxide concentrations and mitigate their global warming potential. In this lecture, Dr. Martin Hoffert, Professor Emeritus at New York University, demonstrates that a global transition to sustainable carbon-free energy systems must be initiated to avoid a "stabilization crunch" and to meet Rio Treaty implementation demands.

This public lecture is taken from a scientific meeting on the topic: "Global Change and Natural Hazards." In this talk, Dr. William Hooke, director of the US Weather Research Program Office at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, explores extreme events, which include geophysical phenomena, ecosystem events, and societal extreme events. He discusses how the research community and government programs approach this "cycle of disaster."

Using satellite imagery, scientists have been able to monitor environmental change over large areas such as the Amazon. As Dr. Bruce Nelson discusses in this lecture, satellite technology enables monitoring of both natural and human-created change. Drawing from his work with Brazil's National Amazon Research Institute, Nelson explains why the human impact in the Amazon is cause for concern, and he also shows why natural disturbances in the rain forest are interesting to study.

About 20 stations have been established along the coastline of Antarctica, but only two are maintained year-round on the interior plateau: the Russian station at Vostok and the U.S. station at South Pole. In this entertaining and informative slideshow, Antarctic researcher Stephen Warren vividly illustrates the logistics of living at the South Pole. In addition, Dr. Warren discusses the results of the scientific research that brought him to the coldest place on Earth.

The twentieth century brought about sweeping environmental, economic, social, and political change. Each type of change was itself substantial, but collectively these changes collaborated to produce unprecedented impacts on the Earth and the human way of life. In this lecture, Nay Htun, Deputy Director of the United Nations Environmental Programme, addresses these changes and places them in the context of global environmental change. Dr. Htun describes the forces negatively affecting the global environment and talks about possible solutions to these impacts.