Schedule for 2015Q1

Here is the agenda for January to March of 2015:

• January - Climate Change: Time for Plan B?
• February - Sustainability: Will we run out of food or water?
• March - Open Discussion

Climate Engineering

Thursday, January 8, 2015, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

For the first meeting of 2015, we will look at Climate Engineering, also called Geo-Engineering, which some call the last hope to save humanity from climate change, while others call nuts. The first video will explain that geo-engineering is an umbrella term which includes many strategies with little risk, like agriculture and forest management.

However, Climate Engineering also includes controversial strategies of solar radiation management, SRM. The second video will explain the proper use of SRM. 

-------------------------------- Update 1/8/15 ----------------------

Here are the links to the websites and new videos presented at the meeting:

1) Website for CEC14, the first global inter-discipline Climate Engineering Conference. 

2) Video for Nathan Myhrvold interview on CNN

3) Video for David Keith interview on BBC

Topics for 2015

Thursday, January 8, 2015, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

For January we will continue with topic related to climate change, including geo-engineering, green jobs, oceans, fresh  water, agriculture and more. I will post a video a week before the next meeting which is on January 8.

In the meantime, please post your suggestion for other topics for the coming year.

Movies to Watch in 2014

Thursday, December 18, 2014, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

For the last meeting of the year, we will just have fun by examining the movies of 2014. The Golden Globes nomination just came out today, and we can use this as a guide. But if there is a movie that you would like to discuss, please add your movie suggestion as a comment. It does not matter if you saw the movie or not. Often the topic of the movie is enough for stimulating conversation.

Life Stories

Thursday, December 11, 2014, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

The schedule shows that December will be used for catch-up and trying new things. The first meeting of December was use to reschedule the Clean Energy Innovation meeting from November. The meeting focused on the upside. But there is also a downside and I said we would cover that next week. However, during the meeting, many more Climate Change topics came up including, water shortage,  energy storage, climate politics, green jobs, nuclear power, geo-engineering and the Clathrate Gun Hypothesis. As a result we will reserve January to cover these and any other topic of Climate Change.

So next week we try something new. There are many superb TED Talks about people who did interesting with there lives. These life stories provide life lessons that applies to anyone, and they are told in a way that is truly inspirational. For the test case, we will show the two talks from Diana Nyad, who at age 64 swam from Cuba to Florida. She is the only TED speaker to give a talk about a glorious failure and then return after achieving success.

Will breakthrough technology rescue the climate?

Bain Center is closed on November 20. Meeting has been rescheduled to:
Thursday, December 4, 2014, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

Frustrated with the inaction on climate change, the top innovators are taking matters into their own hand. Borrowing from the TED conference model, Goggle has started a "Solve for X" conference for innovators with big ideas, called moonshots, to pitch their ideas to investors. Like TED, Google has place these talks on the web so anyone can view them. The conference is for any big idea, but most of the talks were related to climate change. We will show these videos at our next meeting:

1. A quick review of the 2014 conference
2. The 2014 keynote talk by Ira Glass
3. A 2013 talk by Bill Gross about cheap solar power that was referred to by Ira Glass

-------------------------------- Update 12/6/14 ----------------------

HERE is a link to the video about wind power innovation that was shown during the meeting.

Does the UN have the right Carbon target?

Thursday, November 13, 2014, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

The UN plan to address Climate Change is for the world to get to zero carbon emission by 2100 and keep global average temperature rise below 2 degrees C from the preindustrial era. This means that the carbon concentration needs to be kept below 450 ppm; we are currently at 400 ppm.

However, there is a belief by some very influential climate activists that say we are already past the safe limit and need to go back to 350 ppm. The 350 target was determined by perhaps the most famous climate scientist, James Hansen.

In our next Zoom-In meeting we will discuss climate science. We will start by viewing James Hansen's TED Talk. 

-------------------------------- Update 11/13/14 -------------------------------

Here are the links to the other videos that were shown at our meeting:

1) This video explains why cold winters are becoming more common with climate change.

2) HERE is the intro to the IPCC final report, which includes Ban Ki-moon the UN Secretary General.