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moves toward a warmer tempera-ture. Water security was Amery’s fo-cus as he talked of the “tipping point”for countries around the world. “Thetipping point for poorer countries ismuch easier to reach than the tippingpoint of a country like ours,” he said.Dr. Amery made clear the poten-tial consequences of water short-ages in poor or developing coun-tries. As water becomes scarce, adownward spiral of social tension,government intervention, lack of trade, declining health, increas-ing poverty and violence push thecountry past the tipping point andinto chaos and out of existence.It is called global warming andits going to take a global change.“What I do affects you, and whatyou do affects me,” Edward Nortonstated as he concluded the film. This concept, on a global scale,can fully illustrate the larger picture.
 According to the lm, “we are
one globe and one world.” Ideashave tipping points as well; it’s go-ing to be the accumulation of sup-port from individuals, businesses,and governments that pushes theidea of changing global warmingover the edge toward progress.
The Voice of the Colorado School of Mines, a Superior Education in Applied Science and Engineering
Volume 88, Issue 17February 4, 2008
News - 2Features - 5Sports - 7Fool’s Gold - 9Opinion - 10
If global warming does notexist, what do we lose by act-ing to cut emissions anyways? A dozen students and facultymembers from the LAIS depart-ment gathered in Hill Hall 204on Wednesday, January 30, todiscuss the issue of global climatechange. Initially planned as a view-ing of the interactive web seminar(webinar), “The 2% Solution,” tech-
nical difculties shifted the “watch
and comment” format to a moreinteractive general discussion.“Focus the Nation” producedthe “2% solution” webinar featuringnotable climate scientist StevenSchneider, “natural capitalism”founder Hunter Lovins, and sus-tainable jobs leader Van Jonesdiscussing the issues raised byglobal warming and the pos-sibilities of the “2% solution.” The 2% solution calls for peopleto “cut roughly 2% of current warm-ing levels for 40 years” said Wood-son. This solution aims to mitigatethe effects of a predicted three tofour degree world temperature in-crease through reducing emissions80% below current levels by 2050.Focus the Nation is an educa-tion initiative calling on students toend the nation’s apathy towards the“civilizational challenge” of globalclimate change by discussing and
nding solutions to the problem.
Professor Carl Mitcham fromLAIS began the discussion, as thewebinar failed to load, by notingthe US was “the leader in renew-able energy technology.” But, afailure in leadership and investmentled countries such as Germanyto supplant the US’s dominance.
Web seminar fails, studentsmaintain vibrant discussion
Akira Rattenbury
Staff Writer 
 Tina Gianquitto, another LAISprofessor and co-coordinatorfor the event, opened discus-sion to participants on threeproposed methods of action tosolve global warming: policy in-tervention, market-driven solu-tions, and grassroots efforts.“Most countries are not aswell off as the US, and peopleconcerned with eating can’t focuson global warming,” said studentKenneth Lo. He continued onthe psychological problem of a solution. “People are hard tochange and people are impatient.”“Many adjustments are notnecessarily going to be expensive,”said Gianquitto, citing as an exam-ple the overall savings generatedby switching from an incandescent
to compact-uorescent light bulb.
Discussion shifted when LAISprofessor and event co-coordina-tor Sandy Woodson asked: “Arewe not obligated to change tocleaner technology?” Gianquittoand Woodson then constructed amatrix based on Pascal’s Wagerfor global warming. The matrixillustrated the effects of actingon global warming dependingon whether it exists or not. If global warming exists and wechoose to act, humans can avertdisaster and continue the spe-cies. If global warming does notexist and we choose to act, wewill still have marginal positive
benets from cleaner technology.
 Topics continued to varythroughout the evening, includ-ing arguments on the merits of current tactics to convince peo-ple about environmental issues. The use of “charismatic mega-fauna” such as panda bears as“spokes-animals,” and corporate“green-washing” were discussed.
National Geographic film and water securitydiscussion inspire dialogue on the tipping point
Patrick Beseda
Staff Writer 
“What makes me the most fearfulis how increasing human popula-tions will continue to impact theplanet,” Jonathon Stillman, PhD,said as he spoke about globalclimate change during this year’sFocus The Nation presentation.CSM participated in the nation-wide event that united campusesacross America to raise awarenessabout the current global climateshift. “The idea of global warmingis still abstract to many Americansbecause they are not actually feel-ing the heat,” Stillman reiterated.
Strange Days on Planet Earth
 was shown, followed by LAIS pro-fessor Dr. Hussein Amery’s pre-sentation concerning water secu-rity in the changing climate. “Theessence of Focus The Nation isabout changing the business-as-usual mindset,” Amery said.Narrated by actor Edward Nor-ton, the National Geographic series
Strange Days on Planet Earth
aimsto increase national awarenessabout global warming. “In the year2001, the International ClimateChange Partnership ended thedebate of ‘is it real?’ with theirdefinitive report,” the film stated. The debate now focuses onquestions of action. What do wegive up today to make our worldbetter in the long run? What do wesacrifice, today, for the preciousfuture of our children and future gen-erations? According to many at theevent, consequences may be morewidespread than we can predict.Dr. Amery spoke of both thephysical effects of the global climatechange and the socio-political conse-quences that will occur as the climate
Planning for the Future: 
Dr. Hussein Amery, above, presentsstudents with socio-political consequences of global warming.
PATRICK BESEDA / OREDIGGER
Nation
 
CSM Students F cus the
On Tuesday, January 29
th
, tworepresentatives of Focus the Na-tion, Dr. Ryan Fogt of NOAA Research and Dr. Joe Barsugli of the University of Colorado Boulder,came to host part two of ClimateChange Discussions. The presen-tation itself wasn’t a lecture but aquestion and answer discussion.
Is carbon dioxide really thebiggest problem with globalwarming? What about the natu-ral kind formed everyday?
 To see the extremity of today’scarbon dioxide levels, we have toknow what they were in the past.Under the many layers of Antarctic
Climate change experts visit NHV seminars
Kyle Clark
Staff Writer 
ice, there are bubbles that containatmospheric samples from hun-dreds of years ago. From thosebubbles, we can assign a plot of carbon dioxide levels to a timeline.
From scientic data, we can relate
those carbon dioxide levels to thetemperature of the Earth. Recently,both have spiked quite dramatical-ly. We currently have 380 parts permillion of carbon dioxide in the at-mosphere. While that doesn’t seemlike much, it does appear to have a
signicant inuence on the planet.
 To answer the question aboutnaturally forming emissions, wehave taken sample data from bothpopulated and unpopulated areas
to nd how much natural carbon
dioxide is actually being produced.We have measured out that theanthropogenic carbon dioxide ismany times more massive thanthe natural output by comparison.
What about water in the at-mosphere?
Water is technically generatingthe greatest greenhouse effect, butwe don’t consider it an anthropo-genic greenhouse gas. As we burnfossil fuels, we put more carbondioxide into the air. That helps pre-vent the heat we receive from thesun from escaping. This evaporates
water which amplies the heating
process even more. So, eventhough water is technically a green-house gas, its evaporation into theatmosphere is only a side effect.
SEE “PANEL” PG 4
 
Inside this Edition 
ZACH AMAN / OREDIGGER
Crime Spree at CSMPage 2World News in Brief Page 2MACS ColloquiumPage 3MME Lab ExpansionPage 3Tech BreakPage 5Scooter GuyPage 9Prison ProblemsPage 10
 
February 4, 2008
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Zach Aman,
Editor-in-Chief 
 TEXAS - A man accused of killing his wife is now claim-ing that the “devil” enteredhis body while he was tryingto exorcise a demon fromhis wife. The 60-year-oldman, Jan David Clark, hasbeen formally charged withmurder and is now in jail.RWANDA - 34 people havedied in two massive earth-quakes that shook bothRwanda and Congo lastSunday morning. The 6.0and 5.0 magnitude quakesleft 231 people wounded.MIDDLE EAST - A submarine internetcable has snapped, adding additionalnetwork stress after two breaks in aMediterranean cable last Wednesday. The cut has led to a “critical” break-down in global telecommunications,according to the Associated Press.CHAD - Last Saturday,hundreds of rebelscharged the capital cityin an attempt to topplePresident Idriss Deby. The rebels clashedwith governmenttroops in the strongestattempt heretofore.CHINA - In the middle of one of the worststorms in half a century, Chinese PrimeMinister Wen Jiabao has asked citizensto “have faith” that the “severe naturaldisaster” can be overcome. An estimated100 million people have been affected.
Oredigger Staff 
Zach Aman
Editor-in-Chief 
Hilary Brown
 Asst. Editor-in-Chief 
Sara Post
Copy Editor 
Andrew Aschenbrenner 
Opinion Editor 
Josh Elliott
Business Manager 
Cericia Martinez
Prospector Editor 
Richard Walker 
Webmaster 
Meave Hamm
Lead Prospector Photographer 
Ryan Browne
 Asst. Business Manager 
Abdullah Ahmed
 Asst. Business Manager 
Mike Stone
Fool’s Gold Editor 
Jason Fish
Content Manager 
Kevin Duffy
Content Manager 
Lily Giddings
Content Manager 
Matthew Pusard
Content Manager 
David Frossard
Faculty Advisor 
oredig@mines.edu 
This Week at
Mines
J. Thomas McKinnon,a Professor in CSM’sChemical EngineeringDepartment, has co-authored a guest com-mentary in the DenverPost entitled “Our newenergy economy.” Visitdenverpost.com andsearch “energy econ-omy” to read more.Local energy expertshave hailed CSM, NREL,and CU as major attrac-tions for technologicalbusinesses. The con-versation sparked af-ter Sun Microsystemsannounced a 432-acrepurchase near Louisville. The Colorado Senatehas officially approved Vicki Cowart and JamesR. Spaanstra to theCSM Board of Trustees.
Last Wednesday, a 2005 Nis-san Xterra and laptop computerwere stolen from the ColoradoSchool of Mines campus, estab-lishing one of the largest campuscrime sprees in the school history.Police Chief Keith Turney, of CSM’s Department of Public Safety,issued a campus-wide e-mail last Thursday explaining the criminalevents. The message stated thatthe Xterra was stolen between 3:00and 3:30 PM and the keys were“taken off a desk in an open, un-
occupied ofce inside the [Brown]
building.” Similarly, the laptop wastaken from an “open, unoccupiedresidence hall room in Morgan Hall.” Additionally, a wallet was eitherlost or stolen from “in or near”the Student Center on campuslast Wednesday. Turney notedthat a credit card from this walletwas “fraudulently used in Aurora.”Marcia Williams, Director of Integrated Marketing Communi-cations at CSM, said, “We don’thear of incidents such as this veryoften at Mines, so we tend tobecome complacent. The crimealert this week from Public Safe-ty was a real attention-getter.” Turney also commented on theunusual nature of the crime spree.“This is very unusual,” he said.“When you have a bunch of thingsthat happen at the same time, youmake the assumption that they’reconnected. It would be more likelythat the car theft was correlatedto the 2 other opportunity thefts inthe residence halls.” Turney addedthat the department has not con-cluded the events are wholly linked. According to Turney, the depart-ment received two calls describ-ing a suspicious person; policerecords formalize the descriptionas a “black male, 26-30 yearsold, 6 feet tall, slim, with a black stocking cap, black jacket, andblack backpack.” The suspect wasseen driving a cab on campus.Public Safety has asked thatall individuals with informationregarding these events contactthe department at 303-273-3333and speak with an officer.Williams concluded, “As a result,we’ll all be more aware of protect-ing our personal property andreporting suspicious activities—here on campus and everywhere.I appreciate that Keith Turney of Public Safety kept us informed.”
Crime spree at CSM
Sport Utility Vehicle, laptop, wallet missing
Zach Aman
Editor-in-Chief 
COURTESY WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Missing:
A 2005 Nissan Xterra - model year pictured above - was stolen out of theBrown Building parking lot last Wednesday between 3:00 and 3:30 PM.
 
Page 3
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February 4, 2008
“What is the best guess forthe future, given the observationsof the past and the models wehave?” is the question Reto Knuttiof the Institute for Atmosphericand Climate Science at the ETHin Switzerland asked listeners atthe MACS Colloquium on Feb.1. Knutti, who was a leadingauthor of the IPCC’s Fourth An-nual Report on Climate Change,spoke for about an hour about“Challenges in Quantifying Cli-mate Model Bias, Dependence,and Performance.” He discussedthe ability to “trust the numeri-cal models we have… that havebeen run for the IPCC report.”Knutti began his presentationby discussing how, in terms of short-term weather prediction,scientists are very good at mak-ing predictions. “We can predict
the ow in the atmosphere, which
is nice,” he said while showinghow scientists predicted Hurri-cane Katrina three days ahead of time. He balanced that, however,by talking about how predictinglong-term climate is not as ad-vanced of a science. “It is at leastone million times the computa-tional time” to be as accurate inthe long-term as it is in the short.Despite these limitations, how-ever, the IPCC and other climatescientists use models to predictthe future of climate change.Knutti spent the rest of his pre-Stereo vision goggles werepassed around to all in attendanceat Tuesday’s Physics departmentcolloquium. Looking through thered and green cellophane lenses,the crowd was faced with a three-dimensional image of a materialsample at the microscopic level. This interactive demonstra-tion contributed to a presentationby Dr. Mike Kaufman, recentlyappointed head of the ElectronMicroscopy (EM) Laboratory in theMetallurgical and Materials Engi-neering (MME) department. The colloquium fo-cused on the capabilitiesof the lab’s equipmentand its potential uses inresearch by professorsand graduate students.“We’ve already worked with Reu-ben on a nanotube project,” saidDr. Kaufman, referring to Dr. Col-lins of the Physics department. After completing his edu-cation at University of Il-linois, Dr. Kaufman traveledacross the country, teach-ing at University of Floridaand University of Northern Texas. Electron Microscopy(EM) has been his focus.“I’ve done a lot with [EM] inthe past,” said Dr. Kaufman.He accepted the position tolead the EM Laboratory at the be-Like biotechnology and com-puter science before it, nanotech-nology is a developing sciencewaiting to explode with numerousapplications. Now CSM is do-ing research to turn this technol-ogy into a revolutionary reality.Dr. Ryan Richards, an associateprofessor in the Chemistry depart-ment, has worked on nanoscale ma-terials for many years before comingto Mines this past fall. On Jan 31st,he gave a presentation entitled Nan-otechnology, catalysis, the environ-ment, and alternative energy to sum-marize and inform the student bodyof what his research was all about.Nanoparticles are particles thatare on the scale of 10^-9 metersor 1 nanometer. These particleshave very different properties thanparticles on the atomic level orregular condensed matter consist-ing of millions of atoms. Gold isone example of this phenomenon.Regular macroscale gold is inert,but nano-gold is very active andworks in reactions such as theoxidation of CO. It also has sizedependent optical properties. Thisis displayed in an artifact called theLycurgus cup, made in the 4th cen-tury AD, which is green, but looksred when illuminated from within.Nobel Laureate Richard Smal-ley once described the need fornanotechnology by stating, “Theenergy challenge and global sustain-sentation describing why this isnot necessarily a smart thing to do.“In most cases, your estimategets better and your uncertaintygets smaller as you add moremodels,” Knutti said. “But youshouldn’t get more and more
condent by adding the same type
of models… these models [whichare of the same type] are not in-dependent or distributed aroundthe truth.” With these words, hedescribed a phenomenon whichis uncommon in most disciplines.Generally, when models of a physi-cal system are averaged together,they become closer to the actualreality. However, in climate sci-ence, the averaging of modelstogether leaves certain inaccura-cies in the overall model. Theseinaccuracies are consistent acrossthe models, so they are left in theaverage. “You have not gained byaveraging the models, becausethey contain the same errors.” An additional problem wasdescribed by Knutti. “The mod-els that get the current climatewell do not get the future climatetrends, necessarily… there is noconvergence in the future for themodels that do well in the pres-ent.” This problem creates moreuncertainty in climate models.In order to best know what thefuture will be, scientists must takethese uncertainties into account.Knutti described a shift in thinking,which he thinks would be good: “wemight have to think differently about
how we dene a good model.”
Climate change expertspeaks at MACS colloquium
Upgrades and expansion in storefor MME Dept. microscopy lab
Jake Rezac
Staff Writer 
Jason Fish
Content Manager 
taken with EM machines, includ-ing the one that needed stereoglasses. The crystal grains of someceramic pieces, different materialphases, and even the individualatoms of a lattice structure canbe seen with the lab’s equipment. The current EM Lab setup con-tains four microscopes, all withdifferent uses and abilities. Someof this equipment is old and isscheduled to be replaced soon.“We’ll be getting a scope from theNational Renewable Energy Lab inthe near future,” said Dr. Kaufman. Another machine on the wishlist for the EM Lab is a Focused IonBeam (FIB). It allows the user to cutaway thin slices of a sample, cap-ture an image of each new surface,and compile a video showing the fullinternal structure. “This tool has rev-
olutionized this eld,” said Dr. Kauf 
-man. “We need one at this school.” The possibility of a FIB comingto the EM Lab sparked interestin some of the crowd. “That willbe huge for the development of fuel cells,” said Jeremy Fields,a graduate student in Physics.While undergraduate stu-dents in the MME departmenttake an introductory coursein Electron Microscopy, thereare no advanced classes, norany graduate programs in thefield. “Students can’t learn[Electron] Microscopy as easilythese days,” said Dr. Kaufman.“We’d like to see some coursesor maybe short sessions soon.”ginning of last semester. Since hisarrival, he has worked to increasethe quality of the lab and upgrade itsfaculties. “We’re not really state-of-the-art. I’d really like to see improve-ment on this,” said Dr. Kaufman.Electron Microscopy bouncesfocused beams of charged elec-trons off of metals, ceramics,composites, geological samples,and some biomaterials. These scat-tered electrons are gatheredin by a detectorand an imageof the sampleis generated.Dr. Kaufmanshowed the au-dience manydifferentpictures
 
 C O U R  T E S  Y   W I K I M E D I A  C O M M O N S
Tomorrow’s technology grows smaller by day
Nanotechnology is the next step in scientific applications
Matthew Pusard
Content Manager 
ability will only be met through newmaterials created within the realmsof chemistry, physics and engineer-ing. This will not be accomplishedby someone sequencing the hu-man genome.” This gives an ideaabout how practical and pertinentRichards’s research is as it searchesfor solutions to real life problems.One of the main benefits of nanotechnology research is in thearea of catalysts. Catalysts and theirproducts account for over 40% of the world’s economy and Richardsis exploring catalysts that would al-low new reactions to be performed.When gold is on the nanoscale,it tries to recombine into a mac-roscale productquickly. Mes-oporous silicaSBA-15 is a cat-alyst that wouldprevent thisrecombination.Richards explained this by say-ing, “The primary application forthe mesoporous [molecules], theones with a pore size of over 2nanometers, is in catalysis becauseit is basically like putting a bunch of paper towel rolls together. You getstrength, but you also have a veryhigh surface area. Since all of thereactions are taking place at a sortof gas/solid interface, you increasethe surface area dramatically byhaving these porous materials,but they also have a certain me-chanical and thermal strength.” The nanogold ultimately allowsreactions that would put a singleoxygen atom onto an alkane withoutresulting in combustion of the alkane.Richards’ example for this processwas to turn cyclohexane into cy-clohexanol, and cyclohexanone. This process would allow for moreease in manufacturing chemicals.Nanoparticles as catalysts couldhave a resounding effect on the
medical eld. There is a need right
now in medicine for heterogeneousenantioselective catalysts, ones thatcould manufacture a one-handedside of the drug, but not the other. This is needed because most reac-tions produce a racemic mixture (amixture of both right and left handedmolecules). Onehand might bea potent drugfor AIDS, butthe other mightbe toxic. Thesemixtures are ex-
tremely difcult to separate due to
their same molecular weights andother physical properties so oneof the best options is to not createone version of the molecule at all. Itmust also be possible to remove thecatalyst from the drug. Richards de-scribed heterogeneous enantiose-lective catalysts as the “holy grail”for the pharmaceutical industry.Richards described his currentresearch on the heterogeneousenantioselective catalysts. “It will bea sort of reasonably intelligent trialand error. We have 4 ligands that wethink should work and what we needto do. We need to go through andput those on real working catalystsand see if they really do induce anyenantioselectivity. We also need todo the spectroscopy to see howthey sit on these [catalytic] surfacesand where the chiral center is andtake that knowledge into the secondgeneration [of the experiment].”Richards is currently explor-ing this possibility with Cin-chonidine, a naturally-occur-ing compound, on platinum. The nanotechnology might evenhave a basis in alternative en-ergy by allowing the creation of amethanol economy or a greenerbiodiesel. Richards’s research rightnow is with nanosheets of mag-nesium oxide. These blocks haveup to 50% of their atoms on thesurface, giving them very differentproperties as catalysts. The hopeis that these nanosheets could beused to make a more energy ef-
cient methanol forming process.
Richards explained, “It is knownthat you can take hydrogen andCO2 and put them together to formmethanol. The question is just howmuch pressure of hydrogen youhave to put to make that happen. You can make it happen if you have50 atmospheres of hydrogen orsomething ridiculous. The questionis more can we do this in an ener-getically favorable manner. You canmake more or less anything happenif you force it enough, but to have asort of methanol economy or to beable to functionalize this CO2 andbe able to do it economically andfeasibly, you need it to be undera threshold where you are puttingmore energy in to get that high pres-sure than you are actually gettingout in the chemical energy in yourmethanol. It is sort of like splittingwater. You can split water if youpump enough electricity in there. The problem is the energy from thehydrogen that you are generating ismuch less than the energy that youactually put in to split the water. Soto get that so that it is working in afavorable way is the real challenge.” This methanol, once acquired,could be used in hydrogen fuelcells. This would be the idealsolution because it would allowus to keep the current infrastruc-ture for the new fuel rather thanundertaking a massive, expensiveconversion. This process couldalso be used to make biodiesel. The current technique to make thiscompound uses sodium hydroxidewhich corrodes a vehicle’s engine. The method using methanol wouldmake biodiesel much more viable.Chris Kadigan, a metallurgy andmaterials science graduate studentcurrently working with Richards, saidhe enjoyed his research because“[Richards] really emphasizes theimportance of his research anddoesn’t really meddle with thingsthat are unimportant in the worldtoday. I think that’s the coolest thingabout his research, that it really is bigtime. It’s things that are very appli-cable to major issues in the world.”
 “The nanotechnologymight even have a basisin alternative energy...” 
 
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