Posts Tagged ‘climate change’

Climate Scientist James Hansen speaking locally next month

Posted on: January 9th, 2020 by Brent Gotsch
Dr. James Hansen, Columbia University Climatologist will be speaking locally on February 6, 2020.

Dr. James Hansen, Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Cli­ma­tol­o­gist will be speak­ing local­ly on Feb­ru­ary 6, 2020.

 

Dr. James Hansen, Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Cli­ma­tol­o­gist and for­mer Direc­tor of the NASA God­dard Insti­tute for Space Stud­ies, will be giv­ing a talk about cli­mate change with a focus on the Catskill Region next month. “Catskill Con­ver­sa­tion  with James Hansen” will dis­cuss the cur­rent cli­mate emer­gency and be the inau­gur­al event of the Youth Empow­er­ment and Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Sum­mit (YESS) that will take place at the Ashokan Cen­ter. The talk will be giv­en on Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 6 from 7:00pm — 9:30pm at Kingston High School locat­ed at 403 Broad­way in Kingston, NY. Sug­gest­ed dona­tion is $10 for adults and $5 for chil­dren and stu­dents. The talk will be fol­lowed by a ques­tion and answer ses­sion.

Dr. Hansen was trained in physics and astron­o­my at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa. His ear­ly research on the clouds of Venus helped iden­ti­fy their com­po­si­tion as sul­fu­ric acid. Since the late 1970s, he has focused his research on the Earth­’s cli­mate, espe­cial­ly that of anthro­pogenic cli­mate change. Dr. Hansen’s tes­ti­mo­ny before con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees in the 1980s helped raise aware­ness about cli­mate change. Dr. Hansen was elect­ed to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences in 1995 and was des­ig­nat­ed by Time Mag­a­zine as one of the 100 most influ­en­tial peo­ple on Earth in 2006. He has received numer­ous awards includ­ing the Carl-Gustaf Ross­by and Roger Rev­elle Research Medals, the Sophie Prize and the Blue Plan­et Prize.

Cli­mate change is affect­ing pre­cip­i­ta­tion lev­els in the Catskills that in turn impact our streams. Cli­mate change has been cre­at­ing con­di­tions that favor extreme weath­er events such as floods and pro­longed droughts. All of which have a sig­nif­i­cant impacts on stream and ripar­i­an ecosys­tems.

Reg­is­tra­tion for the pro­gram can be accessed by click­ing this link.

Dr. James Hansen testifying before Congress about Climate Change in 1988.

Dr. James Hansen tes­ti­fy­ing before Con­gress on the top­ic of Cli­mate Change in 1988.

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Public Comment Period Open for New Flood Risk Documents

Posted on: June 29th, 2018 by Brent Gotsch

The New York State Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Con­ser­va­tion (DEC) is now accept­ing pub­lic com­ment on two flood-risk man­age­ment doc­u­ments. The “State Flood Risk Man­age­ment Guid­ance” doc­u­ment and the “Guid­ance for Smart Growth Pub­lic Infra­struc­ture Assess­ment” doc­u­ment can be down­loaded and reviewed by vis­it­ing the NYSDEC web­page ded­i­cat­ed to the Com­mu­ni­ty Risk and Resilien­cy Act (CRRA). The dead­line for pub­lic com­ments is August 20. Com­ments should be sub­mit­ted by email to climatechange@dec.ny.gov and include “CRRA Com­ments” in the sub­ject line or by mail­ing writ­ten com­ments to DEC, Office of Cli­mate Change, 625 Broad­way, Albany, NY 12233–1030.

The guid­ance doc­u­ments describe how sea-lev­el rise and river­ine flood­ing pro­jec­tions adopt­ed by NYSDEC in 2017 should be incor­po­rat­ed into project design in spec­i­fied facil­i­ty-sit­ing, per­mit­ting, and fund­ing pro­grams. The CRRA Act seeks to address issues relat­ed to cli­mate change in New York State by adopt­ing offi­cial sea-lev­el rise pro­jec­tions; con­sid­er sea-lev­el rise, storm surge and flood­ing for appli­cants of cer­tain pro­grams; imple­ment smart growth pub­lic infra­struc­ture pol­i­cy; pro­vide guid­ance on nat­ur­al resilien­cy mea­sures; and devel­op mod­el local laws con­cern­ing cli­mate risk.

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