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понедельник, 12 марта 2012 г.

GUEST EDITORIAL: COMMUNICATING GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE TO THE PUBLIC AND CLIENTS

"Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get." This often-used quote takes on a new meaning these days because what to "expect" in the future has become a spirited, often polarized, and increasingly nonscientific "debate." Increasing numbers of broadcast meteorologists, to whom the public looks for information and guidance on climate change and global warming, are not offering scientific information but rather, all too often, nonscientific personal opinions in the media, including personal blogs. Alarmingly, many weathercasters and certified broadcast meteorologists dismiss, in most cases without any solid scientific arguments, the conclusions of the National Research Council (NRC), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and other peer-reviewed research. For example, a recent public claim is, "I do not know of a single TV meteorologist who buys into the man-made global-warming hype."

Such posturing aside, sampling the many climate-change Web sites2 may leave many of us who want to be objective communicators of weather and climate information confused to say the least. How do we maintain our professional integrity while also exercising our rights to freely express our opinion on an issue that a recent Harris poll indicated is of great concern to the public in many countries? How do we best apply our own specialized education, knowledge, and communication skills to help the public understand the complex issues of climate change? We strongly believe that, above all, if we are to professionally, fairly, and objectively communicate scientific information (as opposed to a personal or political opinion), we should use our scientific training to stay as informed as possible and make sure to read beyond the headlines.

Few of us possess extensive training or research experience in global climate modeling or paleoclimatology, solar physics, glaciology, oceanography, or the numerous other rigorous disciplines related to climate change. However, many AMS Sealholders, CBMs, and most CCMs have a bachelor's degree in meteorology or a related science and should be comfortable reading climate change-related papers or abstracts in BAMS, Journal of Climate, Journal of Geophys/co/ Research, and other peer-reviewed sources such as summaries of recent IPCC and NRC reports.

The expertise of scientists actively researching climate change is well beyond that of most professional meteorologists, some of whom may only have basic training in weather analysis and forecasting. Nonetheless, the public sees media meteorologists as experts. If we "experts" communicate conflicting information, conveying personal opinions with no scientific basis, the public can become confused and often collectively "tune out" of the issue just when it requires the most attention. The same would happen if we gave conflicting personal opinions during dangerous weather events. When we stray from objectivity in communicating the latest scientific findings, we do the public a disservice.

As outlined in the CBM and CCM programs, a responsible broadcast and/or consulting meteorologist should continue to stay as informed as possible and look to the AMS for leadership. The "AMS Statement on Climate Change" recently adopted by the AMS Council should be required reading for all of us who communicate with the public or seek guidance on climate change. While some of us may disagree with its exact wording, the weight of the scientific evidence behind the Statement is very solid. If we consider ourselves practicing scientists or science communicators, those of us with little or no training in the science of global circulations, air-sea interactions, radiative physics, and/or global modeling would be hard pressed to disagree with the basic consensus view of so many outstanding researchers who contributed to documents such as the AMS Statement or other recent reports issued by prestigious national and international scientific panels and peer-reviewed scientific papers in journals such as the Journal of Climate. The consensus view certainly is not final or definitive: our science is dynamic, but it is the best science we have right now.

In its "Final Remarks," the AMS Statement reads: "Despite the uncertainties noted above, there is adequate evidence from observations and interpretations of climate simulations to conclude that the atmosphere, ocean, and land surface are warming that humans have significantly contributed to this change and that further climate change will continue to have important impacts on human societies, on economies, on ecosystems, and on wildlife through the twenty-first century and beyond."

If those who represent and communicate our shared sciences to the public feel a need to express personal opinions about global change and global warming, then they also have a professional obligation to at least share the above conclusions, which reflect the best thinking of our expert colleagues actively working to better understand and predict what may be the greatest challenge our science has ever faced.

[Author Affiliation]

-Bob Ryan (AMS PAST PRESIDENT; CBM; CCM; NBC-4, WASHINGTON, D.C.) and John Toohey-Aloro/es (AMS COMMISSIONER ON PROFESSIONAL AFFAIRS; CBM; CCM; NBC TELEMUNDO, MIAMI, FLORIDA)

Soderling beats Gonzalez to reach French final

Robin Soderling's upset of Rafael Nadal cleared a path to the French Open final.

The player who took advantage: Soderling.

The surprising Swede extended his improbable Roland Garros run by beating Fernando Gonzalez in a seesaw semifinal on Friday, winning 6-3, 7-5, 5-7, 4-6, 6-4.

Soderling let a big lead slip away when he lost his serve in the final game of the third and fourth sets. He fell behind 3-love and 4-1 in the final set, but down the stretch came up with the kind of shotmaking that has carried him through the tournament, and he swept the last five games.

On Sunday, the No. 23-seeded Soderling will play the winner of the second semifinal between No. 2 Roger Federer and No. 5 Juan Martin del Potro.

"I have very far to go," Soderling said.

Federer is trying to complete a career Grand Slam and win his 14th major title, which would tie Pete Sampras' record. Federer has been beaten at the French Open each of the past four years by Nadal, the four-time defending champion who lost to Soderling in the fourth round Sunday.

Soderling never advanced beyond the third round in his previous 21 major tournaments.

"I had maybe the biggest challenge in tennis right now to beat Nadal here on clay in Paris," he said. "I was still in the tournament, so even though I played a great match, I wanted more. I still feel that way."

Soderling has never won a clay-court title, and the victory over Gonzalez was only his fourth in a five-set match.

"I did a good job of coming back," Gonzalez said. "But Soderling is playing at a really high level. He gets to every ball. I couldn't take him out of position."

The 3 1/2-hour semifinal had lots of drama, and a little controversy. Gonzalez challenged a call late in the fourth set, contending a shot by Soderling had landed wide, and when the umpire denied his appeal, Gonzalez sat on the disputed mark in the clay to smooth it out.

"I did something for fun," Gonzalez said. "One point doesn't affect a five-set match."

Gonzalez won the game anyway, but played the rest of the match with dirt caked on his shorts.

The quality of play was high throughout. Soderling had 74 winners, including 16 aces, and Gonzalez totaled 59 winners, including 22 aces.

On another sunny day in Paris, with temperatures in the low 60s, the crowd included six-time French Open champion Bjorn Borg of Sweden. The nation's tennis fortunes have slipped in recent years, and Soderling is the first Swede to reach any clay-court final since 2000.

"We really need some upside in the tennis in Sweden," Soderling said. "Hopefully this will make a lot of young kids start playing tennis."

When Soderling hit a forehand winner on the first match point, he fell to his knees and covered his eyes.

"My first feeling was actually relief that the match was over, because it was a really long match, and I was tired at the end," Soderling said. "And then after a few seconds, I got really, really happy."

He has won nine consecutive matches, a career best, and is expected to climb to a career-high ranking of No. 12 next week.

The all-Russian women's final Saturday will renew a rivalry dating back a decade, and Svetlana Kuznetsova hopes to fare better than the first time she faced Dinara Safina.

They were juniors then _ Kuznetsova from St. Petersburg, Safina from Moscow, both with athletic bloodlines.

"I was like 12 or 13, and Dinara was an unbelievable girl," Kuznetsova said. "She's one year younger than me. I had no chance playing against her. I remember I lose to her 6-1, 6-love or something."

They've played each other many times since, and Safina leads 7-4 in tour-level matches. Saturday's showdown will be the biggest yet, with a Grand Slam title at stake.

It would be the first for Safina and the second for Kuznetsova, the 2004 U.S. Open champion.

"It's definitely going to be stress, definitely going to be emotion, definitely going to be business. Everything," the seventh-seeded Kuznetsova said.

They've been the best players on clay this year, meeting on the surface twice in finals last month. Kuznetsova beat Safina for the title at Stuttgart, Germany, then lost when they played in the final in Rome a week later.

Since climbing to the top of the rankings in April, Safina has reached the final in the four tournaments she has played, all on clay.

"She's going to be favorite to win," Kuznetsova said. "She's No. 1. She has played an unbelievable season."

In Safina's 21 matches as the top-ranked player, she has lost only once _ to Kuznetsova.

среда, 7 марта 2012 г.

Carly Simon to Promote Her New CD on QVC

WEST CHESTER, Pa. - Nobody does it better than Carly Simon. That's what QVC officials are hoping when the singer promotes her new CD, "Into White," on Friday.

Simon, 61, will perform with her children, Ben and Sally Taylor - from her marriage to James Taylor - during a 30-minute broadcast on the cable home shopping channel, a subsidiary of Liberty Media Corp. The broadcast begins at 7 p.m. (EST).

"Into White," on the Sony BMG label, a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann …

B is for BLAKE; A Is For Alphabet, B Is For Boxer, C Is For Clown, D Is For Dwarfs & Midgets and E Is For Everley Brothers. In other words, Peter Blake, the father of British Pop Art, is in Wales. EMILY LAMBERT takes a look at the show.(News)

Byline: EMILY LAMBERT

PETER BLAKE creates collages that are undoubtedly odd but never jarring or disruptive. His taste for cut-and-paste techniques does not, like most dada art, culminate in black humour. Blake is nothing if not light. He opposes nothing and negates nothing but instead basks in the icons of popular culture. His prints indulge the utmost veneration for Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, The Beatles, and Elvis.

If Andy Warhol's aim was to render culturally salient images meaningless, Blake puts his heroes on a pedestal, paying homage to them with neither irony nor ambiguity. He at once has affinities with Warhol and is his antithesis.

True, posing the Madonna beside roller skaters and weightlifters on Venice Beach - as in Blake's 1996 series Madonna on Venice Beach - suggests unadulterated irony.

But Blake's Madonna belongs there, blended seamlessly and comfortably into the scene. The juxtaposition is unfamiliar, but neither disturbing nor abrupt. It's as if the beach had always been her abode.

Blake is never particularly critical of the cultural iconography he plays with, just amused.

Indeed, Blake's worship of idols can be downright shameless.

His Alphabet series consists of 26 screen-prints illustrating each letter of the alphabet, from the obvious Z for Zebra, to the more ironic and humorous.

T, for example, stands for The Beatles, the iconic K represents The King (in other words Elvis Presley), then there's the esoteric P for Pachyderm.

This series characterises Blake's method of working, incorporating found images from postcards, magazines and popular ephemera.

But mixed in with Blake's predilection for iconic figures found in unlikely places is his love of the purely peculiar. Under O we discover Ornithology, Rainbow Babe represents R and U is a photographic collage of Unusual People.

Perhaps his best known work is the album cover for The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. This strange, colourful huddle of people exemplifies Blake's style: among Beatles dressed in (psychedelic) uniform are Marylin Monroe (again), Charlie Chaplin, and a child wearing a Rolling Stones T-shirt.

Thirty years later, Blake returned to his love of crowds with Demonstrations in a Department Store (1998): cowboys, circus girls, nudes standing on each other's heads, dressed-up young boys, a model aeroplane flying down from the ceiling and Greek statues.

In juxtapositions that are always joyous, Blake makes the members of this motley crew belong together.

Of all the various forms of Pop Art, Blake's is the most affirmative, his humour the most sincere.