Tag: Pieter Tans

We can’t rule out catastrophic climate change

A couple of weeks ago I plugged an upcoming talk by Pieter Tans of NOAA’s Earth Systems Research Lab in Boulder — a carbon cycle specialist and winner of the Roger Revelle Medal. The talk has now been and gone (on Wednesday in Wellington), and the Science Media Centre has made an audio recording available. It’s embedded below the fold, and very well worth a listen. After an excellent introduction to climate basics (basic physics and chemistry mean that the climate’s changing), Tans traverses our addiction to fossil fuels, and how we might fix the problem.

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Climate Change and the End of Exponential Growth

An intriguing title for what promises to be an interesting seminar in Wellington later this month. Pieter Tans of NOAA’s Earth Systems Research Lab in Boulder — a carbon cycle specialist and winner of the Roger Revelle Medal at the 2010 Fall AGU — will be the guest of the NZ Climate Change Research Institute. Here’s a flavour of what he’ll be talking about:

Man-made climate change is a clear manifestation that we have reached limits of resource consumption by our species, and that continuing business‐as‐usual has a substantial chance of destroying civilization. It is also likely that fossil fuel resources will not remain cheap for much longer, with high energy prices becoming an impediment to development. Vigorous policies to decrease our dependence on fossil fuels are necessary to continue enabling development and to safeguard it by reducing the risk of catastrophic climate change.

Tans’ talk is scheduled for Wednesday 26 October at 6:00 pm in Lecture Theatre 1, Old Government Buildings. I’d be there, if I were in Wellington. I’m not, so I’d welcome first hand reports. For more information, contact Liz Thomas at the CCRI.