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About the Roundtable Photo of Greenland: Courtesy of Philip Conkling, Philip Walsh, and Gary Comer For More Information Minnesota Public Radio |
Science Roundtable Participants
Gary Comer Gary Comer graduated from Hyde Park High School in Chicago, IL. He was formerly a Young & Rubicon copywriter and founded Lands' End, a sailing-products catalog in 1963. The Company transformed its product line from sailing items to a mail order catalog business for clothing, shoes, and luggage. The Company went public in 1986. In 2002 Lands' End was sold to Sears. Although he is now retired, Mr Comer stays actively involved with various charitable causes including the University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital, WHOI, Paul Revere Elementary School and the Comer Climate Change Fellowship program. William H Kling Bill Kling serves as President and CEO of American Public Media Group (APM). APM is the nonprofit parent support organization of Minnesota Public Radio and the sole shareholder of the Greenspring Company, both of which he also serves as CEO. Mr Kling is the founding president of MPR and responsible for MPR's two regional networks of thirty public radio stations and its national program production centers in Saint Paul and Los Angeles. MPR is the largest public radio entity in the nation outside of NPR in Washington D.C. Greenspring is the parent company for Minnesota Monthly Publications, a diversified magazine publishing company; and the MNN Radio Networks, a satellite fed, commercial radio network system. APM is also the parent company for Southern California Public Radio. SCPR operates radio station KPCC serving 14 million people in the Los Angeles area. Mr Kling currently serves as a director of The Saint Paul Companies, Inc, Wenger Corporation, and Irwin Financial Corporation and as a director of several fund Boards of The Capital Group - American Funds mutual funds. He is a member of the Board of Trustees for the JL Foundation and the Fitzgerald Theater. Prior to this, Mr Kling was an incorporator and founding Director of National Public Radio and the founding Chair and President of Public Radio International. He also served as a trustee of the Minnesota Orchestra. Mr Kling holds a BA in Economics from St John's University and completed graduate studies at the Graduate School of Communication Arts at Boston University in 1966. He and his wife, Sally, live in Minneapolis, MN.
Wallace Broecker Newberry Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences B.A., Columbia, 1953; M.A., 1954; Ph.D., 1957. Broecker's research interests center on climate systems, especially as they involve the role of oceans in climate change. He places strong emphasis on utilizing isotopes in investigating physical mixing and chemical cycling in the ocean and the climate history as recorded in marine sediments. Broecker's publications include: The Glacial World According to Wally (2002); "Chaotic climate," Scientific American (1995); Greenhouse Puzzles (1998, with T. Peng); The Last Deglaciation: Absolute and Radiocarbon Chronologies (1992, edited with E. Bard); "The great ocean conveyor," Oceanography (1991); "What drives glacial cycles?" Scientific American (1990, with G.H. Denton); The Carbon Cycle and Atmospheric CO2: Natural Variations Archean to Present (1985, edited with E.T. Sundquist); How to Build a Habitable Planet, (1987); and Tracers in the Sea (1982). Wallace S. Broecker, born November 29, 1931, Chicago, Illinois; A.B. Columbia, 1953; Ph.D. Columbia, 1958; Assistant Professor, Columbia University, 1959; Associate Professor, 1961; Professor, 1964; Newberry Professor of Geology, 1977 to present. Member National Academy of Sciences, 1979. Research interests include paleoclimatology, ocean chemistry, isotope dating and environmental science. AWARDS HONORS
William Buzenberg Bill Buzenberg is senior vice president of News for Minnesota Public Radio. Upon joining MPR in 1998, he expanded the News division to strengthen regional coverage and talk programming and has made KNOW-FM one of the highest rated major market public radio station in the nation. Buzenberg also launched American RadioWorks, public radio's largest documentary production unit, and serves as its executive producer. He also launched and serves as executive producer of MPR's new program on faith and spirituality called Speaking of Faith. Currently he is leading the Public Radio Collaboration project, "Whose Democracy Is It?" The Collaboration is a coalition of public radio stations from across the country sharing programming and special events during the same week to create a national conversation. Buzenberg has been a journalist for more than 30 years, and has worked in public radio for the last 25 years. He joined National Public Radio in 1978 as a reporter to assist in the launch of Morning Edition. He worked as an NPR foreign affairs correspondent for 11 years, covering Central and South America, and later the Philippines, and Western and Eastern Europe. For three years he was NPR's bureau chief in London. In 1989, Buzenberg returned to Washington D.C. to become the first managing editor for NPR News. Nine months later he was named vice president of News and Information. Buzenberg launched NPR's Talk of the Nation program, expanded NPR's newscast service to 24 hours/7 days per week, and extended All Things Considered to two hours. During Buzenberg's tenure, NPR was honored with nine DuPont-Columbia Batons and 10 Peabody Awards. In recognition of his achievements at NPR, Buzenberg was presented in 1997 with the Edward R. Murrow Award, the highest honor in public radio. With Susan Buzenberg, he co-edited "Salant, CBS, and the Battle for the Soul of Broadcast Journalism," published in the fall of 1998. Buzenberg is a 1968 journalism graduate of Kansas State University. He has also been awarded fellowships to study at the University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, and has two grown sons living in the Twin Cities.
Whitney MacMillan Whitney MacMillan retired as Chairman and CEO from Cargill on August 31, 1995. A native of Minnesota, he joined Cargill as a general trainee in 1951 after receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University. MacMillan held various jobs in San Francisco, Manila and Minneapolis. He was elected CEO in 1976 and Chairman of the Board in 1977, holding these positions until his retirement in 1995. In retirement, Mr. MacMillan is a director of the Salzburg Seminar, the Rural Development Institute, The Trilateral Commission, the EastWest Institute, the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, the International Peace Academy, The Western NIS Enterprise Fund, the Yale President's Council on International Activities, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources. With his wife he operates a cow/calf ranch in Montana.
John Ashton John Ashton sees the transition to sustainable development as the defining challenge of the age. It will require new approaches to problems based on a deeper understanding of the consequences of human actions. To drive it, governments, businesses, civil society and other sectoral interests will need to work together in solution-focused partnerships that allow each to contribute more effectively to the pursuit of shared goals. After four years as the UK's most senior environmental diplomat, John Ashton embarked in October 2002 on a period outside government to explore these ideas further from the newly created position of Director for Strategic Partnerships at LEAD International. LEAD is a non-profit body based at Imperial College, London. It provides high-level training in leadership for sustainable development for outstanding mid-career individuals; and supports its graduates, known as LEAD Fellows, in working together and in partnership with others to achieve sustainable development goals. The LEAD program now has over 1200 Fellows from over 70 countries. They occupy positions of leadership, in government, business, non-governmental bodies, the academic world and the media. They constitute a global network uniquely equipped to catalyze progress towards sustainable development, in their own countries and internationally. John Ashton will explore with LEAD Fellows and new partners interested in working with them how to harness this network more effectively to achieve collective outcomes. John Ashton was born in London on 7 November 1956, and educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle Upon Tyne and at Cambridge University, where he read Natural Sciences specializing in theoretical physics. On graduation in 1977, he spent a year as a research astronomer at the New Cavendish Laboratory. He joined the British Diplomatic Service in 1978. From 1981-4, he served as Science Officer in the British Embassy in Beijing, building bridges in science and technology between Britain and China while Chinese science was recovering after the lost years of the Cultural Revolution. From 1984-6, he was Head of the China Desk at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London. From 1986-8, he was seconded to the UK Cabinet Office. From 1988-93, after learning Italian, he served in the British Embassy in Rome. Here he carried out the first ever study for the British Government of the Mafia and the dangers it posed to British interests. From 1993-7, he was seconded to the Hong Kong Government as Deputy Political Adviser to Governor Chris Patten, dealing with matters relating to Hong Kong's transition to Chinese sovereignty. He was closely involved in all major dealings between the UK and China concerning Hong Kong. During this period, his interest in the environment drew him towards the diplomacy of global change. Accordingly, he spent 8 months from 1997-8 as a Visiting Fellow at Green College, Oxford seeking a cross-disciplinary understanding of the science, politics and diplomacy of climate change. He then returned to the Foreign Office as Head of its Environment, Science, and Energy Department. In that capacity, he advised the Foreign Secretary and other Ministers on environmental issues, and took part as a senior member of the UK team in international negotiations on the environment, including the climate negotiations and the World Summit on Sustainable Development. But his core aim was to build an environmental perspective for the first time in to British foreign policy, and thereby to unleash a stronger Foreign Office contribution to the UK's collective effort on the environment and sustainable development. This led in 2000 to the creation under his leadership of a new Department in the FCO, Environment Policy Department, with substantially enhanced human and financial resources; and in 2001 to the establishment of a pioneering policy network bringing together Environment Attaches from over 60 UK diplomatic missions with key policymakers in Whitehall Departments. During this period, he worked closely with the Rt Hon Peter Hain MP, and contributed substantially to his pamphlet "The End of Foreign Policy?" published in 2001 by a consortium including the Royal Institute for International Affairs. John Ashton is a Member of the Green College Centre for Environmental Policy and Understanding. He also serves on the Advisory Boards of the Climate Institute, Washington DC, and of the UK Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He is married, to Judy; he has one son, John Jr, and one stepson, Graham. He has a passion for the game of cricket. David Battisti David Battisti received a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences (1988) from the University of Washington. He was an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin until 1994. Presently, he is The Meriko Tamaki Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington and Director of the University's Earth Initiative. David Battisti's research is focused on understanding the natural variability of the climate system. He is especially interested in understanding how the interactions between the ocean, atmosphere, land and sea ice lead to variability in climate on time scales from seasonal to decades. His previous research includes coastal oceanography, the physics of the El Nino/Southern Osciallation (ENSO) phenomenon, midlatitude atmosphere/ocean variability and variability in the coupled atmosphere/sea ice system in the Arctic. Battisti is presently working to improve the El Nino models and their forecast skill, the drought cycles in the Sahel, and the decade-to-decade changes in the climate of the Pacific Northwest, including how the latter oscillations affect the snow pack in the Cascades and coastal ranges from Washington to Alaska. He is also working on the impacts of climate variability and climate change on food production in Mexico and Indonesia. Battisti's recent interests are in paleoclimate: in particular, the mechanisms responsible for the remarkable "abrupt" global climate changes evident throughout the last glacial period. Battisti has served on numerous international science panels, on Committees of the National Research Council. He served for five years as co-chair of the Science Steering Committee for the U.S. Program on Climate (US CLIVAR) and is co-author of several international science plans. He has published over 50 papers in peer-review journals in atmospheric sciences and oceanography, and twice been awarded distinguished teaching awards. Larry Edwards Lawrence (Larry) Edwards is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Minnesota. He received his B.S. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1976), his M.S. degree from the University of Michigan (1986), and his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology (1988). Immediately after finishing his doctorate he accepted a position at the University of Minnesota and has taught and performed research at that institution ever since. Edwards' research interests include the recent history of the earth's climate, geochemistry, and mass spectroscopy. Much of his career has focused on improving techniques to date and characterize natural materials that contain clues about past climate. In 1999, he was awarded the Patterson Medal of the Geochemical Society for this work. Edwards lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with his wife and two daughters. Daniel Hoffman Daniel Hoffmann has 20 years global experience in risk and reinsurance, corporate management, technology assessment and engineering consulting. As a Principal with Pacific Risks LLC, a risk management/risk mitigation consulting firm, he has most recently structured with the International Energy Agency (IEA) feasible finance vehicles for the development of Renewable Energy Systems in North Africa as part of the Mediterranean Renewable Energy Programme (MedREP). He also advised Energy Capital LLC on risk exposures relating to their clean energy equity fund and related ventures. Until December 2001, Mr. Hoffmann was a Senior Vice President with Swiss Re Financial Services (formerly Swiss Re New Markets), developing innovative risk transfer and risk financing solutions for emerging risks in the area of environment, alternative energy and sustainable development to Fortune 1000 companies. Most notably, he developed - as part of the continued assessment of climate change by the reinsurance industry - a new risk category relating to Greenhouse Gas and the trading of the associated emission reduction credits. Mr. Hoffmann is the founder of Strength International, advising senior corporate management on operational risks emanating from transatlantic transitional environments. While associated with Radian Corporation and Dames & Moore, Mr. Hoffmann provided environmental, engineering and construction consulting and process safety management services to the power, petrochemical and aerospace industries. He has worked both in the USA and Europe and was founding Managing Director of Radian GmbH. Mr. Hoffmann is a registered Civil Engineer and a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley with a Master of Engineering degree in Civil Engineering, Construction Management and Political Science. He is married and has a daughter and lives in Costa Mesa, CA. David Keith Professor David Keith works near the interface between climate science, energy technology and public policy. His policy work is now focused on the capture and storage of CO2. The fruits of this effort include analysis of the role of CO2 capture technologies in electric markets and on the combination of CO2 capture and biomass energy; overview articles in Science, Nature, and Scientific American; an international workshop in Aspen in July 2000 that brought together about 30 experts on capture technologies, geological and oceanic sequestration, technology policy, and representatives of major environmental organizations; invited presentations for the US National Academies, industry, academia and major environmental organizations; and, interviews on National Public Radio, CNN and various print media. In addition to the policy work on CO2 mitigation, Keith's broader climate and energy related research is currently focused on geo-engineering, the climatic impacts of large-scale wind power, and on hydrogen as a transportation fuel. Keith is trained as a physicist. As a graduate student under David Pritchard at MIT, he built the first interferometer for atoms work which was the hottest topic in physics according to ISI's Citation Index algorithms. As an atmospheric scientist, Keith worked at NCAR before joining James Anderson's group at Harvard, where he served as lead scientist for a new Fourier-transform spectrometer with high radiometric accuracy that flies on the NASA ER-2 high-altitude aircraft. Klaus Lackner Klaus S. Lackner joined the faculty of Columbia University in 2001, where he is now the Ewing-Worzel Professor of Geophysics in the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering. He received his Ph.D. in 1978 in theoretical physics from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. He held postdoctoral positions at the California Institute of Technology and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center before joining Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1983. He has been a scientist in the Theoretical Division for much of that time, but also has been part of the Laboratory's upper management. He held several positions among them Acting Associate Laboratory Director for Strategic and Supporting Research, which represents roughly a third of Los Alamos NationalLaboratory. Klaus Lackner's scientific career started in the phenomenology of weakly interacting particles. Later searching for quarks, he and George Zweig developed the chemistry of atoms with fractional nuclear charge. He is still participating in matter searches for particles with a non-integer charge in an experiment conducted at Stanford by Martin Perl and his group. After joining Los Alamos National Laboratory, Klaus Lackner became involved in hydrodynamic work and fusion related research. In recent years, he has published on the behavior of high explosives, novel approaches to inertial confinement fusion, and numerical algorithms. His interest in self-replicating machine systems has been recognized by Discover Magazine as one of seven ideas that could change the world. Presently he is developing innovative approaches to energy issues of the future. He has been instrumental in forming ZECA, the Zero Emission Coal Alliance, which is an industry-led effort to develop coal power with zero emissions to the atmosphere. His recent work is on environmentally acceptable technologies for the use of fossil fuels.
John Biewen John Biewen is a correspondent for American RadioWorks (ARW), the national documentary unit of Minnesota Public Radio. ARW's historical and investigative documentaries are heard nationwide on NPR stations. Among other projects, Biewen produced "Engineering Crops in a Need World," on the debate in India over genetically-modified crops; and "The Lock-Up Society," a multi-year series on the expanding US prison system. His recent awards include the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award and two Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Awards. Biewen is based at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Chris Farrell Chief Economics Correspondent Chris Farrell is co-host of Sound Money, Minnesota Public Radio's national program on personal finance. Farrell is also a contributing economics editor at Business Week magazine, and host of Right On The Money, a public television personal finance show. He was previously economics editor at Business Week and, before that, corporate finance editor. Farrell was finance editor at Business Times on ESPN and was heard on Business Times Radio. He holds degrees from the London School of Economics and Stanford University. John Gordon Jon Gordon is creator, producer, and host of Future Tense, public radio's daily technology program. Future Tense is heard on Minnesota Public Radio stations, and across the United States as part of Public Radio International's As It Happens show. Gordon has worked as a producer and reporter at MPR since 1990, winning numerous awards for his work, including the country's top business journalism prize, UCLA's Gerald Loeb Award. Gordon was schooled at Bemidji State University, Macalester College and the University of South Dakota. Daniel Grossman Daniel Grossman is an award-winning science journalist who has produced a series of radio documentaries and shorter radio shows, called The Human Footprint, exploring the global scope and profound scale of the human impact on Earth. The series explored biodiversity, global warming and the relationship between the two. A 16-year veteran radio-and-print reporter, Grossman was the science producer for National Public Radio's environment show Living on Earth. He studied the science of climate as a Ted Scripps Fellow at the University of Colorado. He was presented with a Pope Foundation Award for investigative journalism fostering social change for his reporting on climate. He was invited by the National Science Foundation to report on climate change on the Antarctic Peninsula during the 2002/2003 research season. The Human Footprint series is a collaboration with the Institute of Alpine and Arctic Research at the University of Colorado, where Grossman is a research affiliate. Thomas Levenson Thomas Levenson leads a double life. At least half the time, he presents a sober, respectable face to the world as the author of books on science, technology and history. Every now and then, however, a strange transformation takes hold of him, and he re-emerges in the allegedly glamorous guise of a documentary film maker, producing television on science, technology and history. Besides Einstein in Berlin, Levenson's writing persona has published two previous books Measure for Measure: A Musical History of Science and Ice Time: Climate, Science, and Life on Earth, along with articles on subjects that ranged from the science of Stradivari violins to the personal consequences of a total eclipse of the sun. Levenson sadly reports that the glamour of television is much overrated. But the process is genuinely exciting, or should be. Levenson's credits include a two-hour biography of Einstein for the PBS series Nova, along with eight other prime-time science documentaries, and he has won both an Emmy and a Peabody award for his efforts. Alison Richards Alison Richards is Science Editor at NPR. NPR's Science coverage ranges across all the basic sciences and also takes in environmental and energy issues, and some technology. Alison is responsible for daily news assignments as well as for developing special series and longer term reporting goals. Other reporters in the NPR Science group include Chris Joyce, Joe Palca, Richard Harris and David Kestenbaum. Before becoming science editor, Alison reported on science and health issues for the Science Desk. In previous lives Alison has been a senior science editor for BBC radio in the UK (yes, she is a Brit), a museum exhibition designer working primarily on science and technology projects, and am also the co-editor/author of four books including two examining the nature of creativity and other personal and social processes in science.
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