490 research outputs found
Simulation files to reproduce the paper "Impact of an acceleration of ice sheet melting on monsoon systems"
No full textSimulation files to reproduce the results of the paper entitled "Impact of an acceleration of ice sheet melting on monsoon systems", A. Chemison, D. Defrance, G. Ramstein C. Caminade, submitted to Earth System Dynamics, 202
Modelling the snowball Earth: from its inception to its aftermath
No full textInternational audienceThe relationship between CO2 variation and Neoproterozoic glaciation has deeply evolved these last years. Through the use of an innovative climate-carbon coupled model, the causes of the CO2 decrease that led to the onset of the global glaciation (Sturtian) has been shown to be strongly related to the dislocation of the Rodinia super continent, promoting CO2 consumption through silicate weathering1. Another important issue is the evolution of atmospheric CO2 during the Snowball episode itself. It appears not to be just a linear accumulation with time through the ongoing solid Earth degassing. Indeed, efficient CO2 diffusion in seawater might have promoted the oceanic crust dissolution, resulting in an asymptotic CO2 rise in the atmosphere2,3, stressing the question of the snowball melting threshold. Indeed, it has been shown that greenhouse climate induced by the storage of the CO2 in the atmosphere invoked to escape a snowball Earth was possibly not sufficient to melt the snowball Earth due to thermal inversion in vertical column4. Therefore, CO2 is may be not the only trigger for the deglaciation. Finally, the super greenhouse climate thought to have followed the snowball episode was explored. We demonstrate that, despite very high temperatures under 0.2 bars of CO2, the amount of rainfall might have been limited by the availability of latent heat which cannot be higher that the total energy provided by the sun. As a consequence of limited increase in the water cycling, CO2 consumption by continental weathering might not exceed 10 times its present day value. The return to normal climatic conditions after the snowball melting should thus have lasted several million of years, further increasing the biological perturbations linked to a snowball event5. The aim of this contribution is to revisit the issue of the role of atmospheric CO2 before, during and after a Snowball Earth and to deliver a new picture of its feedbacks with climate. 1. Donnadieu, Y., Y. Godderis, et al. (2004). "A 'snowball Earth' climate triggered by continental break-up through changes in runoff." Nature 428(6980): 303- 306. 2. Ramstein G., Donnadieu Y., Goddéris Y. Proterozoic glaciations. Comptes Rendus Geoscience 336 (7-8): 639-646 Jun 2004 3. Le Hir G., Goddéris Y., Donnadieu Y., Ramstein G. (2008). A geochemical modelling study of the evolution of the chemical composition of seawater linked to a "snowball" glaciation. Biogeosci. 5, 253-267. 4. Le Hir Guillaume , Goddéris Yves, Donnadieu Yannick , Ramstein Gilles (2008) A scenario for the evolution of the atmopsheric pCO2 during a Snowball Earth, Geology, 36 (1): 47-50 5. Pierrehumbert, R.T. (2004). High levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide necessary for the termination of global glaciation: Nature, v. 429, p. 646-649, doi: 10.1038/nature02640. 6. Le Hir Guillaume, Donnadieu Yannick, Goddéris Y, Pierrehumbert Raymond T., Halverson Galen P., Macouin Mélina, Nédélec Anne b, Ramstein Gilles. (2008).The snowball Earth aftermath: Exploring the limits of continental weathering processes, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, EPSL-09573; No of Pages 11
Modelling the snowball Earth: from its inception to its aftermath
No full textInternational audienceThe relationship between CO2 variation and Neoproterozoic glaciation has deeply evolved these last years. Through the use of an innovative climate-carbon coupled model, the causes of the CO2 decrease that led to the onset of the global glaciation (Sturtian) has been shown to be strongly related to the dislocation of the Rodinia super continent, promoting CO2 consumption through silicate weathering1. Another important issue is the evolution of atmospheric CO2 during the Snowball episode itself. It appears not to be just a linear accumulation with time through the ongoing solid Earth degassing. Indeed, efficient CO2 diffusion in seawater might have promoted the oceanic crust dissolution, resulting in an asymptotic CO2 rise in the atmosphere2,3, stressing the question of the snowball melting threshold. Indeed, it has been shown that greenhouse climate induced by the storage of the CO2 in the atmosphere invoked to escape a snowball Earth was possibly not sufficient to melt the snowball Earth due to thermal inversion in vertical column4. Therefore, CO2 is may be not the only trigger for the deglaciation. Finally, the super greenhouse climate thought to have followed the snowball episode was explored. We demonstrate that, despite very high temperatures under 0.2 bars of CO2, the amount of rainfall might have been limited by the availability of latent heat which cannot be higher that the total energy provided by the sun. As a consequence of limited increase in the water cycling, CO2 consumption by continental weathering might not exceed 10 times its present day value. The return to normal climatic conditions after the snowball melting should thus have lasted several million of years, further increasing the biological perturbations linked to a snowball event5. The aim of this contribution is to revisit the issue of the role of atmospheric CO2 before, during and after a Snowball Earth and to deliver a new picture of its feedbacks with climate. 1. Donnadieu, Y., Y. Godderis, et al. (2004). "A 'snowball Earth' climate triggered by continental break-up through changes in runoff." Nature 428(6980): 303- 306. 2. Ramstein G., Donnadieu Y., Goddéris Y. Proterozoic glaciations. Comptes Rendus Geoscience 336 (7-8): 639-646 Jun 2004 3. Le Hir G., Goddéris Y., Donnadieu Y., Ramstein G. (2008). A geochemical modelling study of the evolution of the chemical composition of seawater linked to a "snowball" glaciation. Biogeosci. 5, 253-267. 4. Le Hir Guillaume , Goddéris Yves, Donnadieu Yannick , Ramstein Gilles (2008) A scenario for the evolution of the atmopsheric pCO2 during a Snowball Earth, Geology, 36 (1): 47-50 5. Pierrehumbert, R.T. (2004). High levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide necessary for the termination of global glaciation: Nature, v. 429, p. 646-649, doi: 10.1038/nature02640. 6. Le Hir Guillaume, Donnadieu Yannick, Goddéris Y, Pierrehumbert Raymond T., Halverson Galen P., Macouin Mélina, Nédélec Anne b, Ramstein Gilles. (2008).The snowball Earth aftermath: Exploring the limits of continental weathering processes, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, EPSL-09573; No of Pages 11
Modelling the snowball Earth: from its inception to its aftermath
No full textInternational audienceThe relationship between CO2 variation and Neoproterozoic glaciation has deeply evolved these last years. Through the use of an innovative climate-carbon coupled model, the causes of the CO2 decrease that led to the onset of the global glaciation (Sturtian) has been shown to be strongly related to the dislocation of the Rodinia super continent, promoting CO2 consumption through silicate weathering1. Another important issue is the evolution of atmospheric CO2 during the Snowball episode itself. It appears not to be just a linear accumulation with time through the ongoing solid Earth degassing. Indeed, efficient CO2 diffusion in seawater might have promoted the oceanic crust dissolution, resulting in an asymptotic CO2 rise in the atmosphere2,3, stressing the question of the snowball melting threshold. Indeed, it has been shown that greenhouse climate induced by the storage of the CO2 in the atmosphere invoked to escape a snowball Earth was possibly not sufficient to melt the snowball Earth due to thermal inversion in vertical column4. Therefore, CO2 is may be not the only trigger for the deglaciation. Finally, the super greenhouse climate thought to have followed the snowball episode was explored. We demonstrate that, despite very high temperatures under 0.2 bars of CO2, the amount of rainfall might have been limited by the availability of latent heat which cannot be higher that the total energy provided by the sun. As a consequence of limited increase in the water cycling, CO2 consumption by continental weathering might not exceed 10 times its present day value. The return to normal climatic conditions after the snowball melting should thus have lasted several million of years, further increasing the biological perturbations linked to a snowball event5. The aim of this contribution is to revisit the issue of the role of atmospheric CO2 before, during and after a Snowball Earth and to deliver a new picture of its feedbacks with climate. 1. Donnadieu, Y., Y. Godderis, et al. (2004). "A 'snowball Earth' climate triggered by continental break-up through changes in runoff." Nature 428(6980): 303- 306. 2. Ramstein G., Donnadieu Y., Goddéris Y. Proterozoic glaciations. Comptes Rendus Geoscience 336 (7-8): 639-646 Jun 2004 3. Le Hir G., Goddéris Y., Donnadieu Y., Ramstein G. (2008). A geochemical modelling study of the evolution of the chemical composition of seawater linked to a "snowball" glaciation. Biogeosci. 5, 253-267. 4. Le Hir Guillaume , Goddéris Yves, Donnadieu Yannick , Ramstein Gilles (2008) A scenario for the evolution of the atmopsheric pCO2 during a Snowball Earth, Geology, 36 (1): 47-50 5. Pierrehumbert, R.T. (2004). High levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide necessary for the termination of global glaciation: Nature, v. 429, p. 646-649, doi: 10.1038/nature02640. 6. Le Hir Guillaume, Donnadieu Yannick, Goddéris Y, Pierrehumbert Raymond T., Halverson Galen P., Macouin Mélina, Nédélec Anne b, Ramstein Gilles. (2008).The snowball Earth aftermath: Exploring the limits of continental weathering processes, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, EPSL-09573; No of Pages 11
Modelling the snowball Earth: from its inception to its aftermath
No full textInternational audienceThe relationship between CO2 variation and Neoproterozoic glaciation has deeply evolved these last years. Through the use of an innovative climate-carbon coupled model, the causes of the CO2 decrease that led to the onset of the global glaciation (Sturtian) has been shown to be strongly related to the dislocation of the Rodinia super continent, promoting CO2 consumption through silicate weathering1. Another important issue is the evolution of atmospheric CO2 during the Snowball episode itself. It appears not to be just a linear accumulation with time through the ongoing solid Earth degassing. Indeed, efficient CO2 diffusion in seawater might have promoted the oceanic crust dissolution, resulting in an asymptotic CO2 rise in the atmosphere2,3, stressing the question of the snowball melting threshold. Indeed, it has been shown that greenhouse climate induced by the storage of the CO2 in the atmosphere invoked to escape a snowball Earth was possibly not sufficient to melt the snowball Earth due to thermal inversion in vertical column4. Therefore, CO2 is may be not the only trigger for the deglaciation. Finally, the super greenhouse climate thought to have followed the snowball episode was explored. We demonstrate that, despite very high temperatures under 0.2 bars of CO2, the amount of rainfall might have been limited by the availability of latent heat which cannot be higher that the total energy provided by the sun. As a consequence of limited increase in the water cycling, CO2 consumption by continental weathering might not exceed 10 times its present day value. The return to normal climatic conditions after the snowball melting should thus have lasted several million of years, further increasing the biological perturbations linked to a snowball event5. The aim of this contribution is to revisit the issue of the role of atmospheric CO2 before, during and after a Snowball Earth and to deliver a new picture of its feedbacks with climate. 1. Donnadieu, Y., Y. Godderis, et al. (2004). "A 'snowball Earth' climate triggered by continental break-up through changes in runoff." Nature 428(6980): 303- 306. 2. Ramstein G., Donnadieu Y., Goddéris Y. Proterozoic glaciations. Comptes Rendus Geoscience 336 (7-8): 639-646 Jun 2004 3. Le Hir G., Goddéris Y., Donnadieu Y., Ramstein G. (2008). A geochemical modelling study of the evolution of the chemical composition of seawater linked to a "snowball" glaciation. Biogeosci. 5, 253-267. 4. Le Hir Guillaume , Goddéris Yves, Donnadieu Yannick , Ramstein Gilles (2008) A scenario for the evolution of the atmopsheric pCO2 during a Snowball Earth, Geology, 36 (1): 47-50 5. Pierrehumbert, R.T. (2004). High levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide necessary for the termination of global glaciation: Nature, v. 429, p. 646-649, doi: 10.1038/nature02640. 6. Le Hir Guillaume, Donnadieu Yannick, Goddéris Y, Pierrehumbert Raymond T., Halverson Galen P., Macouin Mélina, Nédélec Anne b, Ramstein Gilles. (2008).The snowball Earth aftermath: Exploring the limits of continental weathering processes, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, EPSL-09573; No of Pages 11
Impact of an accelerated melting of Greenland on malaria distribution over Africa, simulation files
No full textSimulation files to reproduce the results of the paper entitled "Impact of an accelerated melting of Greenland on malaria distribution over Africa", A. Chemison, G. Ramstein, A. M. Tompkins, D. Defrance, G. Camus, M. Charra, C. Caminade, submitted to Nature Communications, 202
UMUC - European Division - Ramstein Commencement - Mason G Daly - May 7 1965
No full textEurope;Hoffmann, RosemaryDr . Mason G. Daly
Director
European Division
University of Maryland
RAMSTEIN -7 May, 1965
I knew I would end up at an enormous disadvantage this evening, being introduced by old sweat-shirt Rolmer, member of the faculty - kindly man that he is, he was bound to be hard on the bureaucrat who most symbolized the Establishment in Heidelberg - and following, as is so often my fate at banquets and conventions and conferences, the leader of that Air Force education Establishment at Wiesbaden - which is, if anything, more astonishing and bureaucratic than ours in Heidelberg - following that dynamo of dispatches and directives who has just spent more time with deans from the University of Southern California in the last six weeks than he ever had to spend with directors of the Maryland program in sixteen years.
I first knew K. Douglas Beakes so long ago that the K stood for something, although I've forgotten what and he won't tell me now. He was at the time, as I was, more hirsute and less of a balding egg-head. He was in Austria, an education advisor, becoming a ski expert and courting a red-head. He won many skiing trophies, won the red-head, and wrote a book on skiing. When the Austrians changed the world's whole approach to skiing, he had no choice but to move on and enlarge his professional career.
I next knew him when he was an advisor in Morocco. He and his red-head were producing by then, and he was writing a book on teaching Arabic . Books on that subject are so rare that it is still something of a classic. His career has continued on its logical path to its present eminence. He moved on to the second slot in USAFI, thence to Chief of Education
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for Air Force, Europe. He may know more about off-duty educational effort than any of us present , because he achieved much of his doctorate study and all of his research and dissertation writing on his own off-duty time - which was mainly, the Air Force saw to that , between ]2:22 at night and 4:48 in the morning. I think it is well that he did wind that degree up before the coming of Dean Hancey and USC, because he no longer has even those precious morning hours left to himself. He sees his lovely red-head now only at Christmas and every second wedding anniversary. He has pretty well dropped skiing and Arabic, and devotes his writing talents to issuing USAFE interpretations and clarifications of Air Force directives (I almost said restrictives, rather than directives) .
A military community with a flourishing education program in its midst is bound to be highly agitated and usually confused about its goals. The Air Force more so than the others for some reason, it seems to me, and it requires, therefore, a near genius to interpret for it its own goals. No service is more responsive to new educational developments, more sensitive to charting its levels of educational achievement, more ready to launch the latest in language teaching, programmed learning devices and machines, graduate programs.
The Air Force, you know, worried itself sick until it riffed out or educated into respectability those old fly-boys, the ones with the crumpled hats, those old rye-slugging, crapshooters of World War II vintage. The Air Force pled with Maryland and other schools to do something about their everlasting shame when those fly-boys showed up, on the charts as under-educated and over-sexed. LeMay stuck that cigar in the side of his mouth and proclaimed What we educators could never have dared dream -proclaimed that every last one of those guys must get a university degree, and wear a regulation hat, or get out. What a declaration! Repeated every few minutes from that level!
Of course the directive writers were soon at work grinding out what they call “implementations” of that cigar-flavored declaration, and marvelous things happened, unbelievable things happened, paranoia prevailed in every education center around the world. Tuition assistance money flowed out of those implementing documents, limited only by the fact that there wasn't any money to begin with, or by the fact that an Air Force budget computer broke down somewhere and, well, there was a 10 billion shortage for the fiscal year - and those Sidi Slimane runways still had to be plowed up and turned back into a camel pasture.
Those first “implementing” documents were relatively simple, but today it takes a computer and Doug Beakes writing amendments 24 hours a day to sort out and explain their temperamental purpose and devious intent.
I've read everything that LeMay and that type ever said about educating airmen. Lovely stuff. Would fill a half page double spaced. Sound, straightforward, succinct heartening . But a decade or so of “implementation” produces striking and unexpected and wonderfully tangled and contradictory interpretations.
In a six month period they can write a four foot shelf of directives which require another six months and a sixteen foot shelf of explanations. In the initial six month period they decide LeMay's half page philosophy meant that every minute in the classroom must be job related. So, in the next six month period all hands turn to interpreting that to mean that the course being taught in Oriental Philosophy to an airman stationed in Thule, Greenland, who has the vital job of keeping the sewage flowing under the frozen tundra, is job related. Thousands of pages of justification and explanation, and countless nights of sweating in fear that there has been a misappropriation of funds.
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Six months later the “implementers” take a 180 degree turn, admit that the sewage stirrer in Greenland was in the wrong MOS to begin with, admit that no classroom in the world can keep up with the burgeoning technology of the oh-so-dynamic Air Force, and LeMay's little piece of paper is suddenly meant to encourage the broadest, most humanistic education devised by man since the ancient Greeks . More humanities, please, some philosophy, and aesthetics, please, to keep the electronic circuits and silositting from driving these poor airmen to blowing themselves and the whole world up. A new flood of confusing pentagonese and more piles of paper, more paranoia in the education center.
Next, a tape recorder got switched on somewhere and brought a native speaker in Bulgarian or Basque or Bantu right into the classroom in an Alaskan or Alabaman air base and all fly-boys could now be directed to speak two languages just like that native. That's what LeMay meant all the time. While the Army was plodding along putting up a few punctured asbestos booths with a modest Grundig for the listening amazement and amusement of the individual student, the Air Force launched the most modern console systems, electronic laboratory wonders just a little less impressive than the cockpit of a B 54 .
The new approach, usually referred to as audio-lingual or (more dreadfully) as oral-aural, swept up the energies and talents of the Air Force at all levels, and USAFE led all the rest. Although there are still many fly-boys no more proficient in two languages than I am, there is promise in the air. And, you know, this “implementation” has not suffered a reversal yet, and it must be at least 18 or maybe 24 months old. Why, it's even swept old Maryland into its orbit, and although we refuse to call the new approach either audio-lingual or oral-aural because, thank heavens, it isn't quite either , we are excited enough to be off-balance, and we've started our own little shelf of interpretations and justifications hoping for absolution for our
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daring. If Air Force's representative , Doug Beakes, has contrived to lead us down the academic garden path, he's going to stay down there with us and so is Curtis LeMay , disability retirement or no.
Yes, the torment and turmoil of education in the military is endless and self-generating. Less than six months ago the Air Force from on high and USAFE down below here declared, that any post-graduate program it sponsored in its midst must be for the good of the Air Force as a whole, not the nation in the abstract or the individual in particular. Aerospace Management, fine; preparation for post-retirement teaching, absolutely out of the question. There were days and weeks and even months of a madness which sounded as though Air Force had given up on that sewer stirring airman and oriental philosophy, even at the undergraduate level. That “implementation”, spawned right off the same old piece of paper, has now, in the usual six short months, been interpreted in the light of that big Texan and his Great Society pronouncements. Air Force is now gung-ho, and quite properly so, to see whole new programs introduced to get soon-to-retire service personnel ready for a teaching career . How sensible, how valid - especially in the services who try desperately to keep a valuable man in uniform. That valuable man, however happy he may be in uniform, can see that he must wonder what he is retiring to, not just what he is retiring from, can see he may spend more years in so-called retirement than he did in service. But still the ironies are there to be ironed out. Set up a whole program for postretirement career, for the big re-tread and re-settlement out in that Great Society. But still no officer can get a penny of tuition assistance if he is within two years of being let out of the gate.
Programs of education in the military, indeed in most of American society, do not operate by logic or legality - obviously. If they did, the airman in Thule wouldn't do anything but stir
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sewage , we wouldn't be holding this event honoring graduates of the University of Maryland at this unlikely place and time , Doug Beakes would have time to up-date his book on skiing rather than innovate new dimensions into USAFE education . Where the need has shown itself to rise above logic and legality, certainly we have risen above reason itself, in our paranoiac education centers . And, so help us all, we will rise above the next “implementation.”
We all here should realize that we are a part of the greatest segment of American higher education -the adult segment seeking fulfillment, enrichment, the better life, whatever cliche fits. Even Harvard has more people in its night, just-slightly off-campus classes than it has ln Harvard College itself. The will of John Lowell, who died in 1836, started all this at Harvard, and that will contains a statement of the heart of the whole matter. Lowell left a fund to be used to maintain public lectures in Boston, as the will said, “upon philosophy, natural history, and the arts and sciences…. for the promotion of the moral, intellectual and physical instruction and education of the inhabitants of said city.” As if that directive was not rich and broad enough, he added a codicil that permitted the teaching of “any subject that.... the wants and taste of the age may demand.” Although Lowell's will provided that some of the lectures might be free (a thing Maryland cannot find a way to do, as you know), it added that each student should pay a sum “not exceeding the value of two bushels of wheat,” for the “more abstruse, erudite, and particular,” subjects. Obviously Maryland only teaches the abstruse, erudite, and particular subjects, but with government subsidy for tuition, my friends, you are getting a great deal indeed for your bushels of wheat.
Will all of the University of Maryland faculty please rise. Will all of the University of Maryland administrators please rise. I ask you all to please join me in applauding our raison d 'etre, these graduates and their fellow students
Amount of CO2 emissions irreversibly leading to the total melting of Greenland
No full textInternational audience[1] The long-term response of Greenland to anthropogenic warming is of critical interest for the magnitude of the sea-level rise and for climate-related concerns. To explore its evolution over several millennia we use a climate-ice sheet model forced by a range of CO 2 emission scenarios, accounting for the natural removal of anthropogenic CO 2 from the atmosphere. Above 3000 GtC, the melting appears irreversible, while below 2500 GtC, Greenland only experiences a partial melting followed by a re-growth phase. Delaying emissions through sequestration slows significantly the melting, but has only a limited impact on the ultimate fate of Greenland. Its behavior is therefore mostly dependent on the cumulative CO 2 emissions. This study demonstrates that the fossil fuel emissions of the next century will have dramatic consequences on sea-level rise for several millennia. Citation: Charbit, S., D. Paillard, and G. Ramstein (2008), Amount of CO 2 emissions irreversibly leading to the total melting of Greenland, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L12503
UMUC - European Division - Mason G Daly - Graduating Seniors Banquet - Doves and Hawks on the European Education Front - May 19 1967 - Ramstein, Germany
No full textEurope;Hoffmann, RosemaryDr. Mason G. Daly
Director
European Division
University of Maryland
Ramstein
19 May, 1967
Graduating Seniors Banquet
DOVES AND HAWKS ON THE EUROPEAN EDUCATION FRONT
That happens to be the extraordinary title given to me by your extraordinary education adviser. I can only wonder why? And why he should suggest that I speak on the subject for 30 minutes. Don't worry, I am not going to talk that long. You students may be used to sitting in class for three hours at a stretch listening to a learned Maryland professor, but I doubt that there is a Maryland administrator alive worth listening to for thirty minutes.
Furthermore, I am not a political scientist, nor an ornithologist, and my knowledge of doves and hawks is limited. I am not in Fulbright's camp nor in, let's say, Goldwater's. I don't like to argue with either a dove or a hawk on any front. As a long and miraculously surviving academic administrator, I know that you stay out of camps, you learn to live in that gray, muddy, wobbly area between the extremes, the area of compromise. You just do not reveal your hand, your weapons, or even your purposes.
L.B.J. doesn't know what a credibility gap is, he doesn't have a clue about obfuscation, about keeping little secrets, about anger over a security leak, about public pronouncements and private purposes being not quite compatible. He should have been in the in the educational world longer than two years of grade school teaching. He should have had about twenty minutes as a university official and, well, he would have been in a greater mess than he is in now, no doubt of that, but he would not have all his present agony and anger over the fact that no one wants to believe him or follow him or even keep him very much longer in office.
But whatever else you may say about Lyndon Johnson, he's a greater leader than any of the doves or hawks will ever admit. Their very distrust and condemnation of him is the first sign of his greatness. The incredibility of his credibility gap is the certain sign that L.B.J. knows his business, regardless of his unhappiness and irascibility. You see, no one, just no one, can decide if he is a dove or a hawk, and that just drives both the doves and the hawks right off their roosts. Because, you see, poor L.B.J. isn't a dove and he isn't a hawk. Far from it. He's just messing around in between, in that gray area, and he's all muddy, he's unhappy, he's irascible, but he's one of those really natural, trapped and troubled administrators that you find on every front: the political front, the military front, and, to be sure, the educational front .
Struggling to determine my purpose here tonight with such a curious title, I turned to the ornithologist for a definition of doves and hawks, and very little light was cast upon Chuck Magnusson's purpose in giving me that subject. What the birdwatchers report made me sure I didn't want to be associated with either bird.
The dove family ranges all over the place, takes in all sorts of varieties and, except for the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, sometimes let's a whole specie die off without a troubled squawk. The passenger pigeon and the dodo are just two species which let themselves get extinguished. The male dove is usually an amorous creature, with a built in capability for a big display of showing that he is in love -feathers to fluff up, swellings and struttings that are really exhibitionary - that sort of thing. But he lets the female dove, usually a fairly dowdy, cooy creature, con him into being absolutely monogamous. No wonder a species disappears in time of crisis. No wonder he gets himself on posters as the symbol of gentleness and tender love and peace and tiresome compatibility.
The hawks are at least as heterogeneous as the doves, but they are all birds of prey. They don't fool around eating seeds and berries which turn to, pigeon milk in their crops, ready to regurgitate in semi-digested form for their young. They drag some live meat into the nest and it is up to the young to digest whatever they can. All hawks, young and old, have the common and fairly revolting way of upchucking the indigestible parts of the prey, sort of a Roman orgy in the bird world, but a practical procedure for the vigorously carnivorous. Hawks make the posters, too, the flags and crests of arms, more than the doves ever will in our troubled world of tough symbolism, because the hawk family includes all the eagles, kites, falcons and condors, as well as the vultures and even the secretary birds. The old two-headed eagle of the Austro -Hungarian world was too much of a hybrid to survive, but the German eagle is flying again, a bit too fat and prosperous and still with borrowed talons; and the old baldy American bird is impressive in size and hunting equipment, but given to indecision, frequent withdrawal, and staggering indecisiveness. There are still those who argue that the turkey gobbler would have been the better choice.
I quite frankly don't like these birds and all this symbolism, and I don't like the idea of being associated with either a peaceful pigeon (however amorously inclined and equipped) or a preying vulture (however viciously tempered and toenailed). I'd say fit more comfortably into the ambiguous realm somewhere between the robin red-breast and the magpie.
So, now that I have certified that I am neither a dove nor a hawk on any front, that I know a credibility gap when I am in one, that I admire and pity L. B. J., let me forge on to see if I can find out what I am talking about. At least I am beginning to get involved in the subject. I hope I don't lose you.
Let's try to discover if there really is an education front out here in Europe in the first place. Just what education business do we have on this front at all. Why aren't we back home where we belong, where, God knows, there is work to be done. What are we doing expending all of this professorial talent and administrative "genius" in Europe when people in Maryland aren't even half educated, when we don ' t have half enough high rise dormitories or a half decent football team, or half enough control over student unrest or half enough teachers half enough paid.
About half of our graduating class, 1967, got sent off to that half war, half around the world before we could finish them off in the half-sized classes we ran all over Europe this past year half hoping that DeGaulle was only half mad at the US and only half serious about kicking us out of France. We know precisely how Wilson of England is feeling, and he isn't either half in or half out of the Common Market.
What is left of the class of '67, and it is still larger than all but three we have graduated, is mostly Air Force types, those fly-boys, those scholars in blue who either have wings or keep the wings airborne; and bless them and all their classmates in khaki and navy blue and civvies, bless them all, they're not doves and they're not hawks. They're not birds and they're not politicians. They're not young and they're not old. They don't fit Winston Churchill's clever dichotomy of being young enough to still sow wild oats or old enough to grow sage.
The grads of '67 on this education front aren't the hawks that you find in the sprawling, unmanageable universities of today, forming revolution-of-the-month clubs in Latin American universities, four letter word societies and LSD tyrannies in US multiversities. And they aren't the doves cooing around nervously in the status quo, forgetting that education has something to do with changing as well as retaining civilized living. They aren't those tiresome zealot-crusaders, shouting down opposing views with jeers and cat-calls, insisting that infallibility is more theirs than it is the Pope's in Rome. Nor are they the clay-like pigeons ducking every responsibility in sight, creatures which caused Arthur Goldberg to remark that what this country needs is not so much a good fivecent cigar as a good eleven-foot pole --because so many people refuse to touch so many issues with a ten-foot pole .
These are people who suspect that the university may still be the noblest institution of man, who are finding out that the university remains civilization's principal repository of knowledge, haven of painstaking scholarship, place of detached perspective, of peaceful meditation, of objective analysis, AND of vigorous and varied viewpoint. These are people who dimly, if not brightly, perceive that the university is an atmosphere, even in these remote European enclaves in this sprawling University of Maryland, an atmosphere of creativity which leads mere men brilliantly to unfold the shrouded secrets of the chemical and physical universe, tenderly to turn black and white lines into inspired Shakespearean poetry, majestically to transform dead inkspots into the "Passion According to St. Matthew," humbly to elevate man, inch by inch, one more stage above the jungle which spawned him.
These are people who are not so remote from the humble, aged Michelangelo and his credo : ANCORA IMPARO --"I am still learning."
These are people who will always be learning. Their education front is where they are, in Ramstein Air Base in Germany or Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Vietnam. And when we understand that breed of bird for what he is we have gone a long way to understanding what we are doing here with our professorial talents and administrative "genius." And Maryland is stronger because we are here and because we are graduating them in Tokyo and in Heidelberg, and honoring them, and their wives and their advisers and commanders in settings like this in Ramstein and Tan Son Nhut.
This feeble old administrator, robin red-breast cum magpie, shares with you in Europe an anxious time, a time of transition and anxiety in Army and Air Force circles, a time of transition and anxiety in old Academe. Our worlds are in transition and neither the doves nor the hawks have the answer. But this is not a new condition -to be in transition. Adam is quoted as having remarked to Eve that they were facing a time of transition -right after she plucked that apple and he did a little sampling of the most obvious temptation.
What a different kind of transition; American Academe on the European education front -and American Academe on the home front. We shift with the air bases and supreme headquarters as casually as dominoes from country to country, and hopefully reform a scattered student body. They build a whole new campus and a thousand acre parking lot just as casually.
And what a different breed of bird these students are, or so I am told, and our professors are told, when we talk of transition with stateside administrators and professors. They tell us about the Russian roulette going on in the stateside classroom, the Great Grade Chase which asks a self-respecting university professor to assume the kind of power that decides if this or if that student goes off to fight in Vietnam, to make the report card into a scorecard for Russian roulette. In the context of the rough, tough war in Vietnam, are the issues which are ripping colleges and universities apart in white hot debate, and making the dove sometimes a nastier, dirtier bird than the hawk. When our society makes military service a form of banishment; when our government is caught in the bizarre position of anathematizing the very activity it considers essential to our survival; when the party in power proclaims in effect that its draftees are intellectually inferior and therefore fit for the fighting front rather than the classroom....... Well, when a society and a university are in that kind of transition, where are we, indeed?
Well, one place WE are not is in the midst of academic Russian roulette. Rather, we are in the midst of the proof that about the only thing that is ESCALATING on the education front -on the fighting front, and on the cracked but not yet entirely crumbled NATO front -is the demand for more and more education.
Maryland's third largest overseas center is right now Saigon. Doug Beakes escalates this education front every few minutes with another graduate program. The GI bill is in effect and is beefed up every time congressmen let their conscience work a little overtime. Post-service career guidance and training is taking hold for the man in service so that he doesn't turn into a social drop-out the moment he is a military drop-out. Right here in Germany, with the Air Force, Maryland launches its first overseas industrial teaching certification program so that some of these highly skilled and experienced technicians can pass on that experience and talent in the classrooms of America in the years ahead. USC tailors a graduate program to service needs in a daring cross-disciplined curriculum that admits that this is the space age, an age where our fine feathered friends, the doves and the hawks, will be as obsolete as the dodo. Man -the education front in Europe is escalating.
And I trust you will forgive me, the old magpie flapping nervously about on the front, if I crow with a little pride at what is happening here tonight, a little pride for these professors, these "genius" administrators, and these solid, determined students whom we are honoring in the presence of their greatest supporters, their advisers, commanders, librarians, AND spouses. In the whole marvelously bizarre operation which brings these men and women to that academic moment which will be so solemnly staged in Heidelberg in a couple of weeks, I know only too well that we "genius" administrative magpies are the least element in the mix. But we get confused and we flap around importantly and try to get in the act too; and, well, you just have to humor us, you have to let us speak once or twice a year, even though thirty minutes would be sheer disaster. We are, to leave the magpie metaphor, like the beat up old whale who got all worked up over a submarine. He nuzzled it and rubbed up against it and carried on something awful. When all at once it let go with a torpedo and he charged to the surface and began passing out cigars
Relative contributions of climate change, stomatal closure, and leaf area index changes to 20th and 21st century runoff change: A modelling approach using the Organizing Carbon and Hydrology in Dynamic Ecosystems (ORCHIDEE) land surface model
No full textInternational audience[1] The recent evolution of continental runoff is still an open question. A related and controversial question is the attribution of this change and its consequences on our predictions of the behavior of future runoff. Here, the Land Surface Model Organizing Carbon and Hydrology in Dynamic Ecosystems is used to perform a set of transient simulations of the runoff from 1900 to 2100. We first show that the model's simulated runoff increases for the 20th century from a global point of view as well as its geographical pattern changes are close to the observations made in this paper. Moreover this trend is simulated to increase further during the 21st century under the SRES A2 scenario. We have designed a set of simulations to test the impact on global runoff evolution of three factors: climate, stomatal conductance, and vegetation growth, all sensitive to CO 2 increase. A complete factor-separation analysis of the influence of these three factors and of their interactions shows that climate change largely drives the 20th and 21st century runoff increase. The other two factors (stomatal conductance and vegetation growth) play a minor role in the 20th century runoff trend but we show that these contributions increase for the 21st century simulations. Although the interactions between the factors also plays a negligible role in the 20th century global runoff increase, our results show that they become significant during the 21st century, usually reducing the direct effect of each factor. However, our study does not reveal any important negative feedback to counteract the effect of climate warming on the hydrological cycle. Citation: Alkama, R., M. Kageyama, and G. Ramstein (2010), Relative contributions of climate change, stomatal closure, and leaf area index changes to 20th and 21st century runoff change: A modelling approach using the Organizing Carbon and Hydrology in Dynamic Ecosystems (ORCHIDEE) land surface model
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