University of Montana Nobel Peace Prize laureate professor Steve Running finds space up front

Irony is offering a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who researches the effects of global climate change a front-row parking spot.

A noble idea for sure. After all, winning such an honor deserves a gift as rare as space for a car on the University of Montana campus.

But the UM student government gave forestry professor Steve Running http://www.cfc.umt.edu/PersonnelDetail.aspx?id=1139 a more befitting gift for his achievement: a front-row bike rack just outside the Davidson Honors College, commemorative plaque and all.

“I thought it was very cool that ASUM saw the moral relevance of a bike parking place,” said Running, who bragged about it to his scholarly out-of-state friends. “They got a hoot out of it.”

Running is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore. The panel provided nearly all the information for Gore’s film on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Running has academic friends at other major universities around the country who were bequeathed coveted parking places after they received Nobel Prizes in science, a point Running jokingly passed on to UM President George Dennison, who was in fact listening. Running got his spot.

But Running’s rock-star space in front of the Charles H. Clapp Building remains vacant most of the time. This climate change guru tries not to release toxic emissions into the atmosphere.

He bikes.

By CHELSI MOY of the Missoulian

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/articles/2008/11/28/news/mtregional/news07.txt