SOU Biology Professor to Expand the Global Warming Debate

Dr. John Roden will present the “alternative viewpoint” Thursday night
(Ashland, Ore) Dr. John Roden has questions. Is global warming caused by man, or are there other reasons? If the world is warming, what can be done about it? Dr. Roden will present “Global Climate Change: Why are there still skeptics?” at Southern Oregon University’s distinguished lecture series, “Insights,” Thursday, April 21, at 7:30 p.m. in the Meese Auditorium of the SOU campus in Ashland. Admission is free and open to the public.
“One area that has interested me is how politics, environmental advocacy, green business interests, and science have all mixed into a climate-change paradigm that is currently a behemoth that may not be questioned,” says Dr. Roden.  “And yet there are well-credentialed climate scientists who hold different views on these issues.”
Dr. Roden says he’ll present the skeptics arguments on climate change, although he’s not arguing that they’re right. “If you’re a critical thinker, you really should have both sides of an issue,” he says.
Dr. Roden will also review the North American climate change research he’s been doing the last two decades involving the measurement of stable isotopes in tree ring cellulose as indicators of plant water use. Although it sounds technical, Dr. Roden says he’ll present the information in a way that people without a science background will be able to understand. Recently the National Science Foundation awarded Dr. Roden a grant to continue his climate change research.
Dr. Roden holds a bachelor’s degree in Forest Management from the University of Washington, and the master’s and doctoral degrees in Botany from the University of California, Davis. He is a professor of biology at Southern Oregon University, where he has taught since 1999.
SOU president Mary Cullinan says the Insights distinguished lecture series was created “to showcase the excellent work of our faculty and to share the high caliber of SOU teaching and research with audiences from on and off campus.”