Stuck between THE DOTS
The 4th almanac Stuck between the Dots:The Survive, Influence, Provender, and Tarn Nexus lecture took settle at the Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Starting point on Friday, April 18th, 2014. This year's lecture tackled issues exclaim toughen transformation by accent the IPCC Machinist Assortment II's 2014 report and interdisciplinary research efforts on the Stanford college (IPCC stands for Intergovernmental Turn on Survive Impact, and Machinist Assortment II deals with "Impacts, Minor adjustment, and Propensity"). In her hollow space clarification, Dr. Stacey Hunched, Controller of the TomKat Starting point for Sustainable Influence and Schoolteacher in the Fork of Chemical Developed, emphasized the desires for providing sufficient energy, athletic food supply, and clean water to a growing world those and that sustainable sour solutions are interconnected and cannot be tackled in inaccessibility.
Several key remarks are uncomforting. For example, we now reveal that risks are sporadically distributed corner to corner the conglomerate those, that economic dead and sufferers due to fanatical weather goings-on are disdainful for unsophisticated countries, and that the same as it comes to sour policies, conversations habitually send on amongst governments, rather than amongst scientists and policymakers.
Furthest remarks shed new light on current issues. It was spiky out that the IPCC Machinist Assortment II report, to the same extent get-up-and-go the most extensive report of its variety, and no-one else utilizes "model" economic position and may not be the accurately ambush for evaluating risks sidekick with toughen transformation. Weakening office for differences in working class priorities, viewpoint, and cultures, can we utterly support a universally-applicable set of metrics to give a ruling risks from toughen change?
In addition to goodwill from Stanford PhD students, the pastime parley sessions of the lecture delved esteem all the rage various toughen transformation issues with keep to to ethos, Investigate systems, and conduct science and engineering. The social equality is that toughen transformation is popular, regardless of what we do today. Although, we necessitate chronicle that that we are arranged with the deep memo and perceptive tools, and with exposition minds professional in interdisciplinary teams, the good news is that we are exceptional align than always former to clasp this conglomerate endeavor.
Additional information with regard to Stuck between the Dots lecture can be establish here.
The IPCC Machinist Assortment II report can be establish here.
SILICON Pass by Influence Sky-scraping (SVES)
Hosted by the Precourt Influence Efficiency Starting point, this year's Silicon Pass by Influence Sky-scraping vacant easily swayed ideas in various energy topics, from unmanageable policy to big memo to Internet of Bits and pieces. Featuring in his gratifying expression, Schoolteacher James Sweeney, Controller of Precourt Influence Efficiency Starting point (PEEC) at Stanford, set an intense mention for the day, citing a in the nick of time NREL report that establish that 80% of all U.S. electricity desires may well be generated from renewable sources by 2050, definite current resources.
The upshot beg esteem questions: How notably cheaper does renewable energy need to be and how do we get there? How do we hold fossil fuels as on-demand sources rather than for baseload generation? How can we ambush renewable energy and sour issues from a policy perspective? Group were qustions to which the speakers deliberate many moist solutions.
In her great keynote, What went before Executive of Michigan Jennifer Granholm deliberate a unbiased idea: a unmanageable policy for energy based on bringing individual fly to populate yard. Embezzle cue from Speed to the Top, an initiative funded by the Fork of Stage, she deliberate introducing incentives to impulse move ahead at the Ability flat. The purpose is to conscious up to the gratification of Speed to the Top - benefitting 22 million students in 40,000 schools -- with everybody Ability drafting a "distributed, competitive, lissom" policy that, readily, energy orderly carbon trail in a way personalized to their own relations and desires.
On the production stain of the energy equation, a big sensitivity with enlightened fossil fuel sources is carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Nonetheless introduce are many hopeful technologies that convert CO2 to good quality fuels such as methane, essentially several "renewable" source, the economics may not employment out as just. As electricity entitlement varies indoors the day, so do CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, thus making this promising supply of "cleaner-burning" fuels open. This smoothness is offensive, if truth be told to energy companies who need a permanent, or at token typical fuel source, for electricity generation.
Additional information with regard to the parley topics and speakers biographies from SVES can be establish at here.
Pr?cis by Paricha Duangtaweesub and Mengyao Yuan.
"Questions or comments? Dealings the authors at paricha@stanford.edu."
