Climate Change

A new report aimed at offering guidance to local, state and federal leaders to improve the health of coastal waters has been released after a Newport Beach City Councilwoman pushed for the study. Councilwoman Nancy Gardner was one of 18 elected officials from California, Oregon and Washington state who requested the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative report, titled “One Coast, One Future: Securing the Health of West Coast Ecosystems and Economies.” The report urges leaders to adapt and prepare for climate change impacts through an ecosystem-based approach that recognizes the interconnections among marine life, climate and local economies.

UCI has created a new Environmental Institute to develop solutions concerning global change, officials announced Thursday. The institute will focus on conducting research on climate change and its effects, green solutions, and new energy technologies. Scientists from various backgrounds and departments across campus will work on these projects. The institute will award grants on a competitive basis to UCI research teams who are geared toward research, innovation and societal response.

With the demand for fresh water growing and its supply quickly dwindling worldwide, a panel of UCI experts will explain tonight how world leaders should approach the looming crisis through innovation. H20logy: Tapping into Technology to Solve Water Demands will showcase several UCI experts? novel approaches to questions of water supply and demand, purity and recycling, regulation, and public education. The accessibility and affordability of water is not a guarantee, experts warn.

Alex Coolman Kirsten Cappel is going international. The energetic 21-year-old from Huntington Beach has been interning at Costa Mesa's Earth Resource Foundation, an environmental group on 17th Street. The experience, she says, has given her a good sense of the way local politics work. But Cappel's professional and intellectual aspirations go far beyond 17th Street. Later this month she's heading to Geneva, Switzerland, where she will be part of a delegation of American students that will participate in a human rights summit.

Whether or not climate change is to blame, rising sea levels are a growing concern for Newport Beach city officials. For the past few years, municipal workers in charge of closing the city’s tide valves, which prevent ocean water from coming up through storm drains, have noticed that the high tides are getting higher. “It seems to be just several inches above what the tide book calls for, so we just plan to close the tide valves sooner so water doesn’t come into the storm drains,” said Mark Harmon, director of Newport’s General Services department, which oversees the tide valves.

A new candidate has entered the race for the Newport Beach City Council's 4th District. Mark Tabbert, an environmental activist and financial advisor, challenged incumbent Leslie Daigle when he filed the requisite paperwork Monday to run in the November election. "I've been bothered for a long time about what we say and do on environmental issues," said Tabbert, who has lived in Newport since 1998. A Santa Ana Heights resident, Tabbert says he is looking for a local platform to bring attention to climate change, species extinction and resource depletion, among other problems.

I cannot understand why the L.A. Times and the Daily Pilot continue on their editorial pages to defend the Irvine 11 (Editorial: Irvine 11, D.A. both made mistakes, Daily Pilot, Oct. 2; "Editorial: Punishing the 'Irvine 11' again, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 24"). I have observed and been involved with what has been going on at UC Irvine for at least 10 years or more. For too many years, these Muslim students have been causing disruptions, spewing their hate and making it difficult for serious students to get to classes and do what they have come there for — an education.

-- Deirdre Newman UCI earth scientist named endowed chair UC Irvine atmospheric scientist Michael Prather, one of the world's top experts in global climate change, has been named the Fred Kavli Endowed Chair in Earth System Science. The position was created with a $1-million gift from The Kavli Foundation, founded by Santa Barbara entrepreneur Fred Kavli. The foundation gave the gift to the Department of Earth System Science so that an internationally prominent researcher in the geosciences could hold the new chair.

Why would you reprint most of the "Applauding the 'Irvine 11'" article from the Los Angeles Times on Sept. 27, 2011? The article already appeared, in its entirety, the previous day in the L.A. Times. Did you feel we hadn't gotten enough of the prejudice of the L.A. Times coverage, which was more than transparent, with regard to the pre-meditated acts of verbal violence by the Muslim students against the Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, accusing him of being an "accomplice to genocide?"

Hundreds of international artists and digerati will converge at the UC Irvine Claire Trevor School of the Arts Dec. 12 to 15 for DAC 09, the Digital Art and Culture conference organized by UCI Studio Art and Engineering professor and conference director Simon Penny. This is the first time the international conference, founded in 1998, will be held on the West Coast. The international interdisciplinary conference series involves a variety of fields, including media studies, media art, hyper-textual literature, computer science, cognitive science and human-computer interaction.