A dramatic climatic
impact resulting from man’s industrial and agricultural
activities is by now a fact. The most prominent greenhouse gas is
CO2, which is released in huge quantities in energy
production. Consequences of
particular concern are a shift of climatic zones, sea level rise,
lowering of the ocean’s pH, declining biodiversity and increasing
weather extremes.
Political response to
the problem has been building up, none the least by the UN and the
EU, with guidance provided by the recent IPCC 2007 report: The
matter is urgent, as countermeasures will be become increasingly
expensive if postponed. To anticipate the consequences and define
ways to alleviate them is a major scientific challenge, to which
physicists can contribute in various ways.
The starting
point
is a
prediction of temperature rises and their potential consequences.
Climate and environmental system modelling has reached a state
where the results agree adequately with many observations, but to
provide a rational basis for political action, further refinement is
necessary.
In view of the
dominating role of CO2, low carbon energy supply is a
major issue. Options are Renewable Energies (biomass, wind,
solar thermal, photovoltaics e.a.), nuclear fission and prospective fusion reactors. But there remain until
now unsolved problems
like costs, management of solar and wind fluctuations, energy storage,
nuclear safety and waste disposal as well as the extremely challenging
physics and technology for fusion reactors. Another approach is Carbon
Capture and Storage (CCS), the separation of CO2 from
fossil-fuel combustion followed by subsurface or deep-ocean storage
of the generated CO2. Furthermore, there are numerous
measures to lower the energy demand, such as improved
thermal insulation of buildings, or intelligent traffic control.
A different approach is
‘geo-engineering’, including artificially raising the
atmospheric albedo, or promoting ocean fertilization to increase the
oceanic CO2 uptake. However, numerous side-effects,
frequently of an ecological nature, are to be expected, so that a
critical advance assessment is required.
Despite of all of these
possibilities, climatic change appears inevitable to a considerable degree. Therefore, strategies of adaptation must be
developed to steer the economic, societal, and environmental effects
of the changes toward tolerable routes.
During the seminar all
of these items will be treated in some detail by internationally
distinguished
experts. While economic, societal and purely technological
aspects cannot be ignored, the emphasis will be on the physics
viewpoint.
A book will be published of the lectures, while the
transparencies will be made available in the
AKE-Archiv .
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