COP 21- The United Nations Conference on Climate Change is happening this week.
Prof. Susanna Hecht, Faculty Cluster Leader of Global Environment and Resources, suggested some background readings for the event.
UC’s Carbon Neutrality Summit trends on Twitter
#ClimateUC has more than 1,100 mentions with notable tweets from Gov. Brown’s press office, the United Nations and the New York Times’ Andy Revkin
UC researchers identify 10 ‘pragmatic’ ways to fight climate change (10/30/2015)
(San Francisco Business Times) Chris Rauber
Scientists at the University of California’s 10 campuses and affiliated national laboratories have identified 10 ‘practical, actionable’ ways an overheating Earth can fight climate change with enough speed to get to a “carbon neutral” plateau.
The plan is aimed to buy time for longer-term fixes to climate problems linked to human behavior by quickly cutting back the production and build up of select greenhouse gases.
Whether the industrial world will take these goals to heart is another issue altogether.
But William Collins, director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s climate and ecosystem sciences division, told me Friday morning that “zeroing out” carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions is a necessary goal to meet the climate change challenge.
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2015/10/uc-researchers-identify-10-pragmatic-ways-to-fight.html
OP-ED: Is battery technology finally at the cusp of a revolution? (10/30/2015)
(GreenBiz) Venkat Srinivasan
Venkat Srinivasan is a Staff Scientist in the Energy Storage and Distributed Resources Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. He also serves as the Deputy Director of the Energy Storage Hub, titled Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR).
For two decades, battery technology has been almost, but not quite, at the verge of something big — and with it the promise of a clean-energy revolution. In the 1990s, General Motors and Toyota brought us the electric car. That experiment did not go so well: Even as some consumers loved their cars, high cost and low range made them a hard sale for the mass market.
Then came the cleantech boom at the turn of the century, and the hope of energy storage was re-ignited. Hundreds of companies have pursued as many innovative storage technologies, but progress has been slow. Because energy storage is the linchpin to solving the issue of renewable generation intermittency, plummeting solar prices suggest market demand for energy storage will grow. However, stubbornly high cost, limited lifetime and safety issues continue to thwart broader penetration.
http://www.greenbiz.com/article/battery-technology-finally-cusp-revolution
Melting ice in west Antarctica could raise seas by three metres, warns study (11/02/2015)
A key area of ice in west Antarctica may already be unstable enough to cause global sea levels to rise by three metres of ocean rise, scientists said on Monday.
The study follows research published last year, led by Nasa glaciologist Eric Rignot, warning that ice in the Antarctic had gone into a state of irreversible retreat, that the melting was considered “unstoppable” and could raise sea level by 1.2 metres.
This time, researchers at Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research pointed to the long-term impacts of the crucial Amundsen Sea sector of west Antarctica, which they said “has most likely been destabilized”.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/02/melting-ice-in-west-antarctica-could-raise-seas-by-3m-warns-study
A Path to Carbon Neutrality (11/02/2015)
(Huffington Post) Linda Katehi
When University of California President Janet Napolitano called for a UC Carbon Neutrality Summit that was held on the UC San Diego campus recently, participants were called on to address two profound questions: what steps must we take to protect the world for our children and what technologies and social changes will we need to help make this happen?
The Oct. 26-27 summit was an offshoot of the high bar set two years ago for the UC system’s 10 campuses when President Napolitano committed UC to emit zero greenhouse gases from its buildings and vehicle fleet by 2025, something no other major university has done.
When we reach our goal—and I do mean when, not if—it will serve as a powerful example to the rest of the nation and world about what can be achieved when we combine resolute political will with sound science and innovation.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-katehi/linda-katehi-a-path-to-ca_b_8456034.html
UC Researchers Present 10 Scalable Solutions for Climate Change (11/03/2015)
University of California climate experts announced 10 scalable solutions for moving the world towards carbon neutrality, a practical framework that outlines both immediate and longer-term actions for staving off catastrophic climate change.
Gov. Jerry Brown, who joined UC President Janet Napolitano at last week’s UC Carbon and Climate Neutrality Summit at UC San Diego, said the solutions from the UC Climate Solutions Group could help shape talks among global leaders at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris this November.
“This is a call to action. If we put all our best minds together in California with the research integrity and capacity of the University of California, that is a very formidable force, and nothing less than that is required,” said Brown.
http://link.ucop.edu/2015/11/03/uc-researchers-present-10-scalable-solutions-for-climate-change/
