Minutes of the February 10, 2003 Meeting
Smoky Mountain AMS Chapter

We met at 7:00 P.M. in Room 166 of the Agricultural Engineering Building at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. We opened the meeting with a discussion on energizing our organization.

We voted unanimously to donate $50 to Korrnet who has hosted our website since the beginning. Our website is now hosted by the AMS the address is http://www.ametsoc.org/chapters/smokymnt/. We also voted to donate $50 to the Southern Appalachian Science and Engineering Fair.

Elections:

We were able to get only one person to volunteer for each office so elections were not necessary. Our new officers are:

                     President           Dale Kaiser

                                                       Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center
                                                       Environmental Sciences Division
                                                       Oak Ridge National Laboratory
                                                       P.O. Box 2008, MS-6335
                                                       Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831-6335
                                                       (865) 241-4849
                                                       http://cdiac.ornl.gov                                      


                      Vice President    David Gaffin

                                                      Senior Forecaster
                                                      National Weather Service
                                                      5974 Commerce Blvd.
                                                      Morristown, TN 37814
                                                      423-586-3771
                                                      David.Gaffin@noaa.gov


                      Sec/Treasurer      Gloria (Glo) Turner

                                                       Retired Earth-Space Science Teacher
                                                       2559 Walnut Ridge Way
                                                       Sevierville, TN 37862
                                                       glo@tree-castle.com


Our speaker for the night (Steve Lindberg) spoke on "Mercury beyond Oak Ridge -- The Global Perspective: Musings from a 30-year Career in Mercury Research at ORNL". Steve did a wonderful presentation showing some of the Mercury pollution highlights of his career. He reminded us of the Minamata Bay Japan Incident beginning in 1953 and explained the history including thousands of deaths and illnesses from methyl mercury the form most harmful to the environment. This form of Mercury quickly enters the atmosphere. It is produced from land fills, especially when landfill gases are burned. In the past this form of mercury as well as elemental mercury has been released by the work done at Oakridge, by many industries especially those using chlorine and in mining, and metal refining. Mercury is also added to or air anytime things burn like forest fires. When Mercury enters the Atmosphere it is quickly transported around the globe.

After the presentation we adjourned to Kashmir restaurant for some good Indian food.

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