The dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment and one of the school's professors will be recognized Thursday (Sept. 25) by Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm for their work on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Rosina M. Bierbaum, dean and professor of SNRE, led four U.S. delegations to IPCC plenary meetings in Shanghai, Montreal, Costa Rica and Mexico City, including the 2001 final Science Assesssment approval. She coordinated the White House review of the 1995 and 2001 reports and served as an expert reviewer of the 2007 IPCC report.

Maria Carmen Lemos, an SNRE associate professor, contributed to a chapter in the "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" volume of the 2007 IPCC reports.

The IPCC, a global network of approximately 2,000 scientists, shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore. According to the Nobel Peace Prize citation, the IPCC has produced scientific reports for two decades that have "created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming."

Granholm is visiting campus Thursday to kick off a Michigan Law conference on the next president's environmental program Thursday by discussing Michigan's role in that program, especially in light of the state's recently passed renewable energy legislation.

Granholm's address, slated for 4 p.m. in Honigman Auditorium, formally opens "An Environmental Agenda for the Next Administration," the Law School's inaugural environmental law conference.  During her talk, Granholm will give tributes to Bierbaum, Lemos and other University of Michigan participants on IPCC, a group which collectively won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
 
Other U-M recipients are:

• Henry Pollack Emeritus Professor of Geophysics, Department of Geological Sciences. He is one of the world's leading experts on global climate change and worked extensively creating an international research consortium that has reconstructed the earth's climate history during the past 500 years. He was a contributing author of the paleoclimatology chapter in the 2007 IPCC reports.

• Joyce Penner Ralph J. Cicerone Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences. She was a coordinating lead author of a chapter in one of the 2001 IPCC reports and a lead author of a chapter in the 2007 IPCC reports. Two of her graduate students, Minghuai Wang and Li Xu, contributed to the 2007 IPCC reports and also are tribute recipients.

• Natalia Andronova Research Scientist, Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences. She was a contributing author of a chapter titled "Understanding and Attributing Climate Change" in the 2007 IPCC reports.

• Detlaf Sprinz Visiting Professor, Department of Political Science. He reviewed the "Mitigation and Climate Change" volume in the 2007 IPCC reports.

The conference, hosted by the Law School's Environmental Law and Policy Program and co-sponsored by the Environmental Law Society, features top experts on environmental issues facing the nation and the world, as well as an opportunity to hear from some of the key policy makers, law professors and public interest attorneys in the environmental field.

The full program and registration information are available at: http://www.law.umich.edu/centersandprograms/elpp/Documents/conferenceprogram/index.htm.

About the School of Natural Resources and Environment
The School of Natural Resources and Environment's overarching objective is to contribute to the protection of the Earth's resources and the achievement of a sustainable society. Through research, teaching, and outreach, faculty, staff, and students are devoted to generating knowledge and developing policies, techniques and skills to help practitioners manage and conserve natural and environmental resources to meet the full range of human needs on a sustainable basis.
http://www.snre.umich.edu/

For more information, contact

Kevin Merrill
School of Natural Resources and Environment
O: 734.936.2447 | C: 734.417.7392
merrillk@umich.edu