Dated: 5th November 2008
Venue: JZ Young Lecture Theatre, Anatomy Building, UCL
I later came to know that Arup is a global firm that focus on buildings, infrastructure and consulting. Its pretty huge with 10,000 staff working in more than 90 offices in 37 countries and having over 10,000 projects running concurrently at any one time. So it is an engineering firm with a keen interest in climate change issues, because obviously climate change impacts everything, and engineering business (as rightly perceived by Arup) will benefit a great deal from the science and evidence yielded through such events.
The aim of this event is:
2). to encourage interdisciplinary climate research within the UCL community and with external policy and research partners.
‘Humans, Energy, Climate: What next?’
Prof. Chris Rapley, Director of the Science Museum and UCL Fellow was the keynot speaker. Some of the points I took home were:
1. Organisms in order to live beyond their means, have to do so with energy, and with humans, the success to acquire this energy and how they use it to gain control has been testified through the ages from using beasts of burden to fossil fuels. The great thing about fossil fuel, like oil, is that 1 barrel produces the same energy as 3500 people cycling for 1 hour.
2. Energy generates prosperity and dependence. There was a graph he showed indicating GDP/capita over KiloWatt/capita - of course countries like Japan, USA, Canada, etc. are at the extreme upper right hand portion of the graph, while most poor countries are scattered towards the lower left hand portion.
3. Over the last 100 years humans have released 500 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Currently CO2 concentrations are around 380 parts per million and projected concentration for the year 2100 is 620 ppm.
4. Decarbonisong humankind - a heading in one of his slides, where he stated that there is no real evidence or knowledge on safety limits of global mean temperatur rise. The on-going rate of CO2 emission is 1-2 million tons per year and the later we leave it the harder it is.
5. AN ABSENT HUMAN HAS NO FOOTPRINT - another catchy line which obviously mean population control. How is the world going to control population growth, which is one of the major contributing factors to climate change.
6. The difficulties in tackling climate change are, 1) the evidence is complicate and methods are very technical; 2) there si still a disconnect (in knowledge and behaviour); 3) there is an inertia in the system in honestly dealing with climate change; 4) and there are vested interest (who sow confusion and doubt); 5) INEQUITY; 6) inadequate instruments and institutions and 7) market mechanism is weak.
7). Cost of inaction > Cost of action (Stern) - So what are the actions to reduce CO2. He presented a triangle - the govt. at the apex, business and people at the two opposite end on the base. Obviously the three have to work together - individuals (especially human ingenuity and enterprise), govt. representatives and businesses. Though 'corporate greenwash' may exist, it is wrong to demonise corporates, rather their engagement is important.
8). Leadership - Lots of rhetoric so far. So what is the Green New Deal that will address the triple crunch - oil, credit and ecological? Another line 'our problems are (hu)man made, they can be solved by (hu)mans' - a J.F. Kennedy quote which he added the (hu).
9). To regulate carbon extraction is the main step (citing the example of CFC) but oil companies and govts. are not interested in that.
Next was a lecture by Dr. Paul Brown, Earth Sciences, UCL, on 'Palaeoclimate - the context for future change'. Well it was interesting when it began but after 7 minutes into the lecture I was kind of lost... the palaeontology concepts were too much for me. But, anyway I did gt some points:
1). 10% of the world's population live within a few metres of the seas and oceans. Hmm.. scary scenario in the context of climate change. Ok.. that was easy.
2). The chalk beneath out feet - Ok.. so the ground on which we stand is made of different layers of soil/sediments/etc. Fine! Coming to chalk, it means that our world was mostly under water about 100 million years ago... Oh! Ok. Now on top of the chalk rest the Clay which then meant it was formed or laid down 50 million years ago. So what he was trying to convey is that scientists (in order to look back at the earth changes) drill the ground/ice/seabed beneath out feet. Ahhh!!! OK!
3). So drilling ice cores and seabeds yield information about climate change that occured over very long periods of time. Then he tells about the Halocene period (Halo what? Err, I've heard of Halloween...) and started comparing climate change events across periods before the Halocene (that began some 10,000 years ago and continuing at present) and the present! Shit!! How deep did he drilled?
4). So the Earth has been switching between Glacial and Non-glacial events before and according to scientific calculations and evidence, the CO2 that we have released and continuing to release is pushing the Earth to a Non-glacial era! Very scary indeed!!!! So by the year 2050, if its business as usual (BAU) now, then the CO2 concentrations will reach 850 ppm ; if controlled , then its 600 ppm and if active measures are implemented , its going to be 450 ppm. And we don't want it to reach 600 and dread intensely 850. The Non-glacial era occured between 542-100 million years ago and the Glacial era was from 80-5 million years ago.
5). The age of the oceans is between 150-160 million years. That's according to geochemistry study of organic matter. Wow!! So scientists are now studying not only ice cores, rock sediments, trees and coral but organic matter and living organisms to know about climate change patterns.
6). Tex86 - this is a bacteria fromt he ocean aving a lipid cellwall which scientists are studying to reconstruct the sea surface temperatures over long periods of time. Really? WoW!!! There is an increasing acidification of the oceans.
7). Life is resilient but the Earth will take more than 170,000 years to regain its original state.
'Predicting Impacts of Climate Change'
Dr. Richard Taylor (Geography), UCL began with, 'we don't know very much how 20%/30%/50% cut in CO2 emissions will result in'... Oh!...
1). Emissions - Concentrations of CO2, methane, etc. - Heat effects (cimate forces) - Climate Change effects (temperature, etc.) - Impacts (food, flood, etc.)
2). He informed about QUEST-GSI (Global Scale Impact), UCL - an alliance to assess the effects of climate policies.
3). Freshwater availability - Warmer atmosphere holds more water (estimated 7% more water for every 1 deg. Centograde rise in temperature) though corrently it is 1-2%. So then there is going to be more water...BUT only above the lattitude. And of course, more very heavy precipitation events (extreme events - floods).
4). Less crop per drop - Research carried out in the river Mubuku in Uganda to explore inter-relationship between precipitation, ground water recharge and run-off. Finding is, storage is more important rather than mean annual river discharge (and river discharge depends on precipitation).
5). What are the impacts of global rise in mean air temperature will be one of the key discussion points in Copenhagen COP-15.
6). He talked about Uncertainty research which deals with predictions. For example quantifying difference in predicted evapotranspiration, uncertain river basin response to more intensive precipitation. The aim would be then to translate uncertainty into policy. Hmm... but assumptions based on uncertainty have always palyed a role in policy right?
It was a dark cold day and it was getting even darker by 5 pm. So I decided to leave. And though I had a bad headache when I came in, I left feeling rather stimulated (intellectually of course).
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