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Sherri:
As I write this on December 31, 2007, the Bush Countdown Clock
registers that there are 385 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 37, 36, 35, seconds left of his
presidency--not a minute too soon for me, but you all know that. I also
write as a three-time loser, having tried and failed again to win election to
local office in Wall Township. I campaigned
in the Bus For Change (with friend Ron Sopenoff) and at parties
with Congressman Frank Pallone.
But here is how sad I was when the final tally came in.
However, 2008 has just got to be a better year for Democrats and for thinking
people everywhere. I lean towards Edwards at this point (New Jersey's
primary is on February 5), but basically agree with a woman interviewed in Iowa
recently--the Democratic field is rich with promise, and she supports "All of the above," so
that, rather than having no choices (think Republican field), I can easily
support any choice and will work as hard as in 2004 for a saner future.
Also, Alan and I plan to serve on township committees, because, even though I
lost, two independent candidates won and we shared similar positions on a range
of local issues.
Brian and Ginger are still
living in Sausalito, but are looking (hoping is more like it!) to buy a house
somewhere in the area. Needless to say, sticker shock prevails still in
the San Francisco area, and their price range doesn't afford them much.
They went to Austin, Texas, recently thinking to relocate to a more affordable
area, but decided against it. So, Mom and Al can continue to visit them as
often as possible. We were just there in December, and saw them a couple
of other times this past year, once on a family vacation in the Bahamas. Ginger
continues as a nurse
at the Veteran's Hospital in San Francisco, and Brian is an animator with
Secret
Level, owned by Sega, also in San Francisco. He continues to write
children's fiction and has other projects, but his CGA stuff is what pays the
bills, and he's sent his latest book off to an agent with hopes that 2008 will
be the lucky year. He's taken up surfing and they seem to have a good life
there, with dogs Murphy and Molly. Dan is in his fourth year of
apprenticeship for carpeting and flooring, and, because he's in the
Carpenter's Union, gets good money and benefits, and last January moved into an
apartment in Ocean Grove, in fact, in the back apartment of the house I used to
own (wish I had been able to keep it at the time!). It's furnished, all
utilities included, and convenient to his job. Increasingly, Dan is
working in New York City but his shop is based locally, so the early morning
hours he has to keep would be impossible if he had a long commute. He's
still a basketball junkie, a real fan of
LeBron, and in 2008 he hopes to
meet the girl of his dreams. He asked me to tell all of you to have a
great 2008 and to send money!!!
This summer our
former Japanese exchange student Madoka and his 10 year old son, Hibiki, visited
with us. We had a great time taking them to the
beach, to some local outdoor fairs, and to the Big Apple, where we enjoyed a
beautiful day at the Top of the Rock, despite the
terror alert being raised that very morning to orange! We also took
them to a Yankee
gamewith Alan's father and Hanne,
We've also recently celebrated Christmas with Al's family,
where we took the traditional picture of Alan,
Jerry, and Lisa on the couch (can you believe
they used to look like this?), and Brian came
for a short visit in June to attend a Writer's Workshop in Princeton. As
for my side of the family, we celebrated my nephew
Kyle's wedding to Lauren in early August, where
the entire family gathered on Geneva Lake, New York. Bob's mother,
Mary, got to see her grandkids. My brother
Tommy's daughter, Heather, worked for a time in White Plains on "Horton
Hears a Who," and she spent Labor Day with us, and we saw her in the city.
Sadly, my Aunt Frances, 91, succumbed to cancer, but I had a chance to see her
and cousins Kay and Butch, and celebrated her life with her family and friends.
Aunt Frances was always an inspiration to me, and I think some of my love of
travel came from her visits to Hampton with her husband, Ken, who worked all
around the world for the State Department. I haven't seen my sisters
lately, so am encouraging them to venture North--And that applies to any and
all. Here is Fran at her 90th birthday celebration,
and here am I in the same bed at her memorial service
at an inn near where Butchy lives. Here are
me, my brother Tom and my cousins Butch and Kay
and their spouses at the memorial service. (I added the previous 6
sentences so late
(Jan. 6th) that I've heard from many of you, and thanks so much for your cards
and updates, and come visit!) Now that Dan has moved out we have two free bedrooms and
lots of extra space besides.
While thoughts of
retirement occurring from time to time, I'm still teaching at Brookdale, both
the history of the Modern Middle East and the World Civilizations survey courses
(one of which is online, with a different set of technological demands on my
time). In the Middle Eastern History course I had to include Pakistan to
the list of possible failed states in the larger region. Student interest
remains high and I continue to use speakers to fill in gaps in my own
background. We finally hired a new Director of the International Center, where I
continue as the Faculty Liaison, and we've been successful in raising
money for scholarships, developing global programs for the community, and are
the #1 community college in sending students overseas. This May, I'll
venture to Egypt with Anthropology professor Barbara Jones (with whom I've gone
to Hawaii several times) and Al will audit one of the classes and be our
climatologist for the program.
In addition to Egypt, 2008 will
take us to the Middle East several more times, next week to Istanbul, where
Alan's student will defend her dissertation, and I will revel in the history and
majesty of the city. In February Alan has been invited to Israel and I
will accompany him, so my Middle Eastern History students will benefit from the
pictures and added info I'll get on those trips. We have to spend one week
in Paris this year, as we've done every year since 2004, so our March Spring
Break will see us spend a week at a rented apartment on the Left Bank and gain
at least 5 pounds on the baguettes and chocolate we'll consume. The rest of my time is spent exercising at
this great little health club, Wings, where I take yoga and pilates classes,
volunteer with Meals on Wheels, and will gear up for presidential politics in
2008.
I wish you all a
prosperous, peaceful, and politically active 2008! Please keep in touch.
Alan:
I guess a year in which I win the Nobel Peace Prize has to be considered a good
one. That is, if I really did win it. What is absolutely correct is
that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) did win the Nobel
Peace Prize in 2007 (along with Al Gore), and I am a member of the IPCC, along
with about 2,500 of my closest friends, including
seven other
faculty members at Rutgers.
The Rutgers website had an
announcement of our award for a brief time. Whether individual members
of IPCC can claim to be Nobel laureates is a matter of discussion among my
friends. The Chair of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, said, "This is an
honour that goes to all the scientists and authors who have contributed to the
work of the IPCC, which alone has resulted in enormous prestige for this
organization and the remarkable effectiveness of the message that it contains.”
The actual
Nobel Peace Prize announcement says, "Through the scientific reports it has
issued over the past two decades, the IPCC has created an ever-broader informed
consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming.
Thousands of scientists and officials from over one hundred countries have
collaborated to achieve greater certainty as to the scale of the warming."
Since I was a contributing author to eight of the chapters of the different
reports over the past 20 years, a reviewer of many more chapters, and a
participant in an important IPCC workshop three years ago in Paris, I have
decided that I did win the Nobel Peace Prize. I have always wanted to win
the Nobel Peace Prize, in spite of mistaken awards in the past (Henry
Kissinger), but never thought it would happen. It is great that this is a
peace award and not a science award, and it means that my entire life's work has
been recognized as being important for world peace. Furthermore that it is
a joint award speaks to the collaborative nature of our work. I'll take
it.
I also won the Bradley
Prize this year, consisting of a silver bowl with
my name engraved and a check
for $200. It is from the Geological Society of Washington for the best talk of
the year, out of 31 talks
given at their meetings in 2007. It was a rainy night in October, and
I went to their meeting at the Cosmos Club near Dupont Circle. While I had
a nice dinner, there were not that many people there (it was a World Series
night) and there were some hostile questions. I was completely shocked to
find out that I got the award. Perhaps it was the topic, "Nuclear winter
revisited: climatic consequences of nuclear conflict using current nuclear
arsenals." My colleagues and I have tried to publicize these results
during the past year, and this is one of the limited successes. All our
papers and figures, as well as PowerPoints on the results, are available at
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/nuclear/. (I just found out that
Chris Newhall, with whom I served in the Peace Corps in the Philippines, and who
went on to fame as a volcanologist, won the Bradley Prize in 1996. Chris
and I organized a special session together at the AGU Meeting in 2001 on the
10th anniversary of the Pinatubo eruption and wrote an article together
summarizing the results in Science.)
Things continue to go well
at Rutgers. My student
Chaochao Gao passed her Ph.D. exam in
December, 2007, and will soon complete the final revisions. Another
student, Elif Sertel, a Fulbright Scholar from Istanbul Technical University who
has been working with me for the past year and a half has also completed her
Ph.D. dissertation and will be examined in January in Istanbul. I have
been invited to be on her committee there, and am looking forward to visiting
Istanbul for the first time. Sherri will come on the trip. I
submitted two National Science Foundation proposals this year, one to study
geoengineering with Gera Stenchikov and Martin Bunzl at Rutgers and Rich Turco
at UCLA, and another to study climate change and hydrology in the Greater Horn
of Africa with Richard Anyah at Rutgers, and both were funded. So I will
soon begin working with two new graduate students, Ben Kravitz on the
geoengineering project and a new one we will choose later on the other project.
Elif will continue to work with Ying Fan Reinfelder and me on a third project,
at least for a while. I published 12 refereed journal articles this year,
and have one more submitted. If you are interested in more information or
want to read them, visit my
home page and click on
Publications.
I continue to serve as the
Director of the Meteorology
Undergraduate Program. We have 30 freshmen this year interested in
Meteorology, and the Open House this past October was very well attended.
We hired an excellent new Associate Professor this year, Mark Miller, and look
forward to having him as a colleague for a long time. However, we still
need at least two more Meteorology faculty members to offer more than a
bare-bones curriculum for our undergrad and graduate students.
The issue of
global warming had more attention from the public this past year than ever in my
life. I gave multiple talks on the subject to the United Nations,
community groups, schools, and scientific groups. Governor Corzine issued
an executive order requiring that New Jersey drastically reduce greenhouse gas
emissions. The same restrictions were then proposed as a law in New Jersey
and I testified at a New Jersey Assembly Environment and Solid Waste Committee
hearing on bill A-3301, the Global Warming Response Act, in West Orange, New
Jersey in February. I then participated with Assemblywoman Linda Stender
in a public forum about the legislation in May. The bill passed, and now
New Jersey leads the planet in its requirements for reducing emissions that
cause global warming. I also gave a talk at a conference in New Brunswick
on the effects of climate change on New Jersey organized by U.S. Senator Menendez.
Yet I drove to
these meetings in my yellow 2000 Audi A4, which gets about 21 miles per gallon.
It is a great car, my favorite color, and with a fabulous ride and sound system,
but I felt guilty driving it. So I sold the Audi and just two weeks ago I
picked up a brand new 2008 Toyota Prius. It is Barcelona Red Metallic, the
brightest color available, and actually quite peppy. It also has several
features not in my old car, XM radio, a backup camera, Bluetooth to connect to
the phone in my pocket, and a hatchback, which allows a large amount of cargo.
Furthermore, it is getting 42 miles per gallon. The technology is very
interesting. The main thing it does is turn off the engine whenever you
take your foot off the gas, and the car just coasts with the engine off.
It also generates electricity whenever it is slowing down and uses the electric
motor to help power the car, especially at low speeds, but it is simply turning
off the gasoline engine whenever it can that I think is the major factor.
It is the 7th Prius in my Department at Rutgers, and the first day I drove in I
parked next to three others, so I am a follower, but I finally get it.
Furthermore, in
August, 2006, we ordered solar panels (photovoltaic) for our roof. A year
later, the state of New Jersey processed our application for a $43,500 grant to
help pay for them, and we then proceeded to cut down the giant oak trees shading
the roof, extending the roof to make room for the 10 kW system, re-landscaping
the yard, putting a new roof on the house and installing plastic fascia to cover
the old wood and make it maintenance-free, and having the solar panels
installed. Our house went from looking like this
with trees to this with no trees to
this with landscaping and panels. The panels
are on the roof, but are still not properly tilted and hooked up, which should
take place very soon. Considering the grant, the one-time tax refund, the
electricity we will generate (and can sell back to the system running our meter
backwards when we generate more than we use), and the renewable energy
certificates we will receive and can sell back to the electric company each
year, the system should pay for itself in 5 years or so. It is very
interesting to see how hard it is to go green yourself and how much it costs -
installing compact fluorescents this year was the easy part - and I will write
an article about it soon. But the New Jersey subsidies made it do-able,
and the Federal government needs to move in that direction very quickly.
Here is our house with our two hybrids.
It should be beautiful in the summer and fall with the new trees blooming.
In March, we spent Spring Break in Cuba.
We visited my former student, Juan Carlos Antuña and his family in Camagüey,
where I gave a lecture and discussed ongoing research with him. In Havana,
we stayed at the Hotel Nacional, a well-preserved relic from colonial times,
where we stayed in the same room where Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner spent their
honeymoon. We saw lots of old cars, lots of anti-American propaganda, and
were able to see a cigar factory outside of town. Our trip was legal, as
we were both conducting scholarly activities there. We traveled through
México, and had
planned to return to Newark, but the airport was closed by a snowstorm. On
the way back, we were forced to spend one night in Cancún and then got the last
seats on a USA3000 charter flight to Hartford, Connecticut, where it took the
Customs agents an hour and a half to figure out that what we did was legal.
We had to rent a car and drive back to Newark to get our car. I went to
the trouble to make a slide show of the trip and you can
download it here to see all the pictures (28 Mb). It was fascinating,
my second time and Sherri's first, and we both hope the economic situation there
can be improved soon. The people were very nice, but I felt like I was
visiting a prison, with everybody standing around waiting for something to
happen. While they hoped for improvement, it seemed that they were also
afraid of what the future might hold. Clearly a change in our policy
toward Cuba, opening it up to American travelers and business, would accelerate
change there.
I visited Athens in April. It is in
Ohio and I gave a talk on global warming at Ohio University. I also
attended UCAR University Relations Committee Meeting in Monterey, California in
April. Sherri joined me in San Francisco the weekend before where we spent
time with Brian and Ginger. Then I drove down the coast, and before the
meeting I drove south through Big Sur to have lunch
at one of my favorite restaurants (for the view,
not the food), Nepenthe.
In May, Sherri, Dan and I went to
Acapulco, México, for the Spring AGU Meeting, and then to México City for four
days. Acapulco is past its prime, but México City is very interesting,
where I gave a lecture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM),
the biggest university in the world (270,000 students), and we visited the
archeological museum, Trotsky's house, Frida Kahlo's house, the pyramids of the Sun and Moon at Teotihuacán (where Dan
had his picture taken with Miss Indonesia), and saw the Ballet Folklórico and
even some naked protesters. We did see the cliff divers, the old fort, and
an exhibit on the Manila Galleon trade in Acapulco. Again, you can see a
slide show on the trip here (20 Mb).
In Italy I attended the IUGG meeting in Perugia, Italy. It was the most poorly organized
meeting I have ever attended. The schedule was not posted until just
before the meeting, so nobody could plan ahead which part to attend. The
posters were in a basement on the other side of the city from the University, so
were very poorly attended. We signed up for a post-conference tour of
volcanoes, but they posted the wrong description of the trip on the web, few
signed up, and it was cancelled. We had already bought our plane tickets
to stay in Italy after the meeting, so we designed our own tour to
Sorrento, on
Naples Bay and near Vesuvius and
the Amalfi Coast. And we spent one day in
Rome just before coming home, during which we saw the
Coliseum, the Forum, St. Peter's, and the
Pantheon. At St. Peter's we saw the Pietà and
the Swiss Guards. The food was great,
e.g., seafood in Sorrento and
pizza quatro stagioni in Rome, and there was a
jazz festival in Perugia, where we saw Solomon Burke and Sly and the Family
Stone. There is something wrong with Sly, and he could hardly sing or
play. We went to Assisi for a day with Gera and
Tanya Stenchikov, where we saw the cathedral
complete with monks. Here is a nice
picture of Gera and Tanya in a garden along
the way and another near the cathedral.
In Perugia we attended a cooking school that had been the site for the
C-8 conference. We met my former postdoc,
Suxia Liu, her husband Xingguo Mo, and their son.
One day we took the Circumvesuviano train from Sorrento for a day in
Pompeii. It was my first time there, and I was
shocked at what a big, developed city it was. Of course, we saw the
bodies trapped by the pyroclastic flow, and
the brothel, with different positions on a
"menu" like at a fast-food restaurant.
I also went to Boulder in October for the
annual UCAR meetings. It was great to see old friends in Boulder and many
attending the meetings.
Brian Toon and I were offered a chance to
publicize our nuclear
winter results at a meeting of the IPPNW
at the Royal Society of Medicine in London in October, where they had
harp music at the conference
dinner. The people
attending were impressed, but it does not seem to have turned into any
additional notice in the world yet. However, I got to visit
the British Museum,
to attend We Will Rock You, a musical based on the music of Queen, and to wait in the
Emirates Lounge at the airport - far more luxurious than Continental's
Presidents Club.
I visited State College in November.
It is in Pennsylvania, and I gave talks on geoengineering and nuclear winter.
I also attended a very interesting conference in New Orleans in November on
"Preparing for Climate Change Liability." I gave a summary of the science
of climate change, but all the others were lawyers, judges, and insurance and
business people, who are preparing for, or already, suing people for damages
from climate change. They are all convinced that global warming is real,
and are considering issues like whether oil and coal companies will be liable
for continuing to sell their products now that they know the consequences, or
how to price insurance for carbon sequestration to deal with the pond on Granny
Jones' farm that starts to bubble after CO2 is pumped into a nearby
oil well. I again went to the AGU Meeting in San Francisco in December,
where Elif presented our poster.
Sherri joined me and we went house shopping with Brian and Ginger. It is
shocking how expensive houses are in the Bay Area, and in their price range they
will have to live far from downtown or in a very small place. It is too
bad they can't afford a house in Sausalito, where they live now.
Brian said goodbye to us at the airport
I saw Bob Dylan for the 39th time in June,
this time with Sherri at the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City. It was a
strange place to see him, but it was a good concert, and we even won a few bucks
on the slot machines. I continue to be a fan of his weekly Theme Time Radio Hour on XM
radio, which I record. If you want to listen, please let me know.
And after a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat at my father's, Sherri and
I drove down to Lincoln Center and saw I'm Not There, the Todd Haynes
movie using 6 different actors to portray different times in Dylan's life.
It was fabulous, and I highly recommend it, especially the performance by Cate
Blanchett. Sherri even liked it.
Wisconsin did not go to the Rose Bowl
again this year, but will be in the Outback Bowl on January 1, 2008.
Wisconsin beat Michigan this year, which was enough to make a fabulous season.
May your 2008
be a healthy and fulfilling one. Happy New Year!
Sherri:
As I write this on December 31, 2007, the Bush Countdown Clock
registers that there are 385 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 37, 36, 35, seconds left of his
presidency--not a minute too soon for me, but you all know that. I also
write as a three-time loser, having tried and failed again to win election to
local office in Wall Township. I campaigned
in the Bus For Change (with friend Ron Sopenoff) and at parties
with Congressman Frank Pallone.
But here is how sad I was when the final tally came in.
However, 2008 has just got to be a better year for Democrats and for thinking
people everywhere. I lean towards Edwards at this point (New Jersey's
primary is on February 5), but basically agree with a woman interviewed in Iowa
recently--the Democratic field is rich with promise, and she supports "All of the above," so
that, rather than having no choices (think Republican field), I can easily
support any choice and will work as hard as in 2004 for a saner future.
Also, Alan and I plan to serve on township committees, because, even though I
lost, two independent candidates won and we shared similar positions on a range
of local issues.
In May, Sherri, Dan and I went to
Acapulco, México, for the Spring AGU Meeting, and then to México City for four
days. Acapulco is past its prime, but México City is very interesting,
where I gave a lecture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM),
the biggest university in the world (270,000 students), and we visited the
archeological museum, Trotsky's house, Frida Kahlo's house, the pyramids of the Sun and Moon at Teotihuacán (where Dan
had his picture taken with Miss Indonesia), and saw the Ballet Folklórico and
even some naked protesters. We did see the cliff divers, the old fort, and
an exhibit on the Manila Galleon trade in Acapulco. Again, you can see a
In August my father once again took the family to the same Club Med in the
Bahamas, 
