Mennonite Weekly Review

FORT COLLINS, Colo. — When former Vice President Al Gore and a United Nations environmental panel received the Nobel Peace Prize on Dec. 10, an ecologist who is a member of Fort Collins Mennonite Church had a hand in the research that helped garner the award.

Jack Morgan, who works with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service at Colorado State University, has investigated the effect of carbon dioxide emissions on the grasslands of the Great Plains.

His research went into the most recent reports on the environment and global warming by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the peace prize with Gore.

Though concerns about the effects of global warming cover the spectrum from apathy to doomsday panic, Morgan said there is considerable merit to the theory that greenhouse emissions are having an adverse effect on the Earth’s welfare.

“What we know certainly is that these greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are increasing,” Morgan said in an interview Dec. 13. “There are still questions about the degree of warming. [But] it’s not only possible, it’s under way.”

In his research, conducted on prairies in Colorado and Wyoming, large greenhouse-like structures were erected over stretches of grassland. Inside these structures, the effects of various carbon dioxide concentrations are weighed, along with the effects of increased warming.

Morgan, who has been studying grassland ecology since 1988, said the heightened carbon dioxide levels caused more growth productivity, but decreased the forage quality of the grass. Higher carbon dioxide also promoted the spread of woody plants that ultimately could choke off grassland growth.

Morgan said the attention drawn to global warming by the peace prize and by Gore’s book and Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, have been very helpful in informing the public about the risks of greenhouse emissions.

“On balance, it’s been good in that it made people realize” how serious the issue is, he said.