A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment
August 16, 2007
1. Top Item
The fair's green side; Climate exhibit features eye-opening display
By Bobby Caina Calvan, staff writer
Memories are best when deep fried, according to a freeway billboard advertising this year's State Fair. While great for corn dogs and Twinkies, that's certainly not so for planet Earth.
With global warming a hot topic, one exhibit at the State Fair hopes to enlighten the masses -- and elevate the discussion about climate change -- with a gigantic and eye-drawing sphere that shows hurricanes sweeping over oceans, tsunamis rippling across the globe and intense heat enveloping the Earth over the coming centuries.
"In
The State Fair, which opens Friday at Cal Expo and runs through the Labor Day weekend, has traditionally been a showcase for all things
Certainly, there will be food, rides, animals and other amusements to entertain the more than 1 million people who State Fair officials hope will arrive this year.
One of the featured exhibits called Toytopia centers on toys, a tip of the hat to this year's theme: Fun Never Grows Old.
The fair also has its serious side, said spokeswoman Jessica Dunning. "We also like to see ourselves as a cultural showcase," she said, explaining why the fair is devoting valuable floor space in Building B for the California Green Dream Expo.
The climate-change exhibit is the centerpiece of the environmental expo. At the exhibit's heart is a spherical movie screen, measuring nearly 6 feet across and seemingly suspended in air, that organizers hope will inject a considerable wow factor to the science exhibit.
"Science can be very dry. But this is captivating," said Wilfred von Dauster, a visual information specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The huge globe -- dubbed Science on a Sphere -- is a striking sight.
"This is so cool," said Barbara Rebiskie, a fire information officer for the
The traveling exhibit, on loan from NOAA, is meant to be an educational tool.
"It's one thing to be in front of a classroom showing pictures, and it's another to show a three-dimensional globe," said Kathy Hoxsie, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, a NOAA agency.
Television screens and photos can't fully demonstrate the wide-reaching effects of such things as the weather, she said. The sphere allows "us to show how one thing that happens on one side of the Earth affects the other side," Hoxsie said.
A case in point: The 2004 tsunami in South Asia that killed more than 200,000 people in eight countries traveled across the globe -- reaching both coasts of the continental
In effect, the device gives terrestrial beings an astronaut's view of global phenomena. Two weeks ago, the technology won a patent. A bank of computers controls four movie projectors that propel images of Earth -- or Mars, Pluto, the sun -- onto the suspended spherical screen.
The Department of Water Resources hopes the sphere will draw people to its other displays -- including one that simulates catastrophic floods and shows the benefits of wetlands in absorbing overflows from rising rivers.
Combating global warming has been a big part of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's environmental agenda. Water agency officials said climate change will have a profound impact on
Warmer temperatures could mean drier skies and parched landscapes and hasten disappearance of the state's snowpack, which in turn could reduce the availability of water for farms, wildlife and residential taps, they said. Dirty air could spread throughout cities and produce havoc on the rest of the environment.
"We want to make sure we are prepared," said Lynn, the meteorologist. She urged diligence in conserving water and vigilance in controlling climate change.
"Love it or hate it,"
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/327846.html
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