SOUTH KINGSTOWN — Scientists from around the country are expected to gather next week at a University of Rhode Island honors colloquium to hear the latest research in worldwide environmental change and the role of human influence, but it won’t all be dry, academic exchanges of information.

In fact, a cabaret is on the agenda for the event, which runs from Sept. 9 to Dec. 9 and is open to the public.

A cabaret?

Yes — and with reggae thrown in. It will be called “A Shore Thing.”

“The impression of scientists as geeky types is nonsense,” said Judith Swift, a URI professor of communications and theater. “They are so much fun to work with and dedicated to what they do. We make sure what we do is accurate, but at same time I can take liberties in terms of the format, and approach it whimsically, which scientists often can do.”

So Swift, who has done similar cabarets in collaboration with a colleague since the 1980s, said she will focus on coastal science.

“We will, for example, interview a scientist, read some scientific papers, then say, ‘OK, we going to sing about the whole issue of the water cycle, so people can understand how the water cycle works.’ ”

The reggae comes in, Swift said, “when we decide what we are going do about tropical coral reefs, and the obvious metaphor is connected with the tropics. The music one associates with that is, perhaps, reggae.”

She said there will be a song about estuaries. The significance lies in the rise in sea level.

“Narragansett Bay is an estuary,” she said, and has the potential of being affected adversely by global climate change.

“People talk about them as the nurseries of the ocean,” she said. “Nurseries are places where there is a lot of sex, mating of different species. We ask what’s a hot tempo, and we look at Latin American forms — so we might have the ‘Estuarine beguine.’ We sometimes anthropomorphize things, which drives scientists crazy, but occasionally we have to. We have a song ‘Miss Nitrogen,’ because it’s humans who are creating point-source and nonpoint-source pollution, not nitrogen itself.”

Swift said the ‘Miss Nitrogen’ number went over well at previous conferences, including the Nature Conservancy Marine Aggregation, a biennial meeting in California with scientists from all over the world.

“Scientists have told me that what is terrific about this is that it really communicates a fairly complex idea in a way people can get their minds around,” she said.

One of Swift’s fans is a colleague, Art Spivack, a professor of oceanography at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography.

“The first time she presented to a group of oceanographers we all sat there with frowns on our faces pretty much like glum scientists,” Spivack related. “She won us over.”

Spivack, Swift and Steven D’Hondt, also a professor of oceanography, are the coordinators for the colloquium.

Among the expected speakers are several who are considered heavyweights in the field of global warming and other environmental changes.

These include Elizabeth Kolbert, a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine and author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change; Charles Mann, author of 1941: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus, which won the Best Book Award of the National Academy of Sciences; Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences; Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board; and Robert Socolow, director of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative at Princeton University.

“This is one of the strongest groups of speakers that we have had,” said Spivack. “For example, Rhode Island has signed onto this lawsuit suing the [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] over who is allowed to establish carbon dioxide emission standards. We have Mary Nichols, the chair of the California Air Resources Board, leading the charge on this.”

Spivack said the URI coordinators have spent much energy over the past two years to find “the combination of leading thinkers in the field, but also people who are dynamic speakers and who will be accessible to the layman.”

He said it won’t be only the cabaret that’s different about this colloquium.

“Instead of just another lecture, we will have various film clips, then panel discussions and a dissection of these film clips,” he said. “We are calling it ‘Hollywood Armageddon,’ how the pop media look at this problem, and we will kind of pick that apart with the lens of science and film.”

Spivack will speak on Oct. 28 on the mitigation of the global carbon climate problem. “We will be critiquing popular documentary films,” he said. Of the honors colloquium as a whole, he said, “We view this as the principal lecture series of the university, and the principal public outreach program. My understanding is it has been going on for 48 years.” URI colloquium events

Most events for the series "People and Planet: Global Environmental Change" take place on Tuesday evenings at 7:30 in the Chafee Auditorium on URI’s main campus in Kingston. Exceptions are noted in the schedule.

Sept. 9: Historical Background on Global Climate Change — Elizabeth Kolbert, staff writer, The New Yorker and author, Field Notes From a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change.

Sept. 16: The Great Global Warming Hoax? — URI oceanography professors Rebecca Robinson and John Merrill unwrap the arguments using documentary film clips.

Sept. 23: Scientific Evidence of Global Climate Change — Michael E. Mann, director, Earth System Science Center at Penn State.

Sept. 30: Hollywood Armageddon — URI professors Kathryn Moran and Tom Zorabedian examine film clips from nightmare narratives through their respective lenses of science and film.

Oct. 7: Human Transformation of the Americas Before Columbus — Charles C. Mann, journalist, author of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.

Oct. 14: Impact of Global Environmental Change on Evolution — Stephen R. Palumbi, professor, Stanford University, and author of The Evolution Explosion: How Humans Cause Rapid Evolutionary Change.

Oct. 21: Geoengineering Solutions to the Greenhouse Problem — Ralph J. Cicerone, president, National Academy of Sciences.

Oct. 28: Astonishing Solutions — URI professors Arthur J. Spivack and James J. Opaluch dissect documentary film clips and discuss mitigating the global carbon-climate problem.

Nov. 12: (Wednesday): California Action on Greenhouse Gases and Climate Change — Mary D. Nichols, chairwoman, California Air Resources Board.

Nov. 18: Human Effects on the Ocean and its Ecosystems — Jeremy Jackson, professor, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD.

Dec. 2: Solutions to the Global Carbon and Climate Problem — Robert Socolow, co-director, Carbon Mitigation Initiative, Princeton University.

Dec. 9: “It’s a Shore Thing,” a Coastal Cabaret — A fresh, salty and musical look at global environmental change in our coastal zones. 7:30, Edwards Auditorium.

The following events will be presented in conjunction with the 2008 Honors Colloquium:

•From Silent Spring to Silent Night: The Use of Pesticides and the Human Immune System, Sept. 25, 7:30 p.m., Memorial Union Ballroom, URI Kingston. Prof. Tyrone Hayes, UC Berkeley. Keynote for URI Diversity Week.

•Climate Change in Rhode Island: A New Geography for the Ocean State, ongoing, in various locations. Call (401) 874-2303 for locations.

•Library Book Programs, ongoing, in various locations.

Call (401) 874-2303 for information.

For more colloquium information and directions, visit uri.edu/hc or contact the URI Honors Center at (401) 874-2381 or debg@uri.edu.

tmorgan@projo.com