[LINK] Climate science on the Road to Copenhagen

[Tom Worthington]

Greetings from the Australian National University Climate Change 
Institute Open Day in Canberra.Links to some material 
at: 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2009/07/climate-science-on-road-to-copenhagen.html>.

Professor Will Steffen just presented "What does the science really 
say about climate change?" This follows the release of his report 
"Climate Change 2009: Faster Change & More Serious Risks" (Department 
of Climate Change, 22 July 2009) and the Synthesis Report of the 
Copenhagen Climate Change Conference (March 2009). He started by 
debunking climate change sceptic arguments. I missed the morning 
sessions as I was presenting to the ANU Green ICT Working Group, so I 
missed: the Southern Ocean, terrestrial ecosystems, Smart grids and 
renewable energy, but there are brief audio previews available on: 
Climate change and public health, smart grids, the global carbon 
cycle. Last on the agenda is a panel discussion "The Road to Copenhagen".

My question for the panel is: "The evidence for climate change is now 
clear, so shouldn't the research effort change to economic, social 
and political processes to help governments, business and the 
community make changes to their behaviour?". In my own Green ICT 
Strategies COMP7310 course at ANU, we only spend about half the 
course on the science and technical theory and the other half on how 
to communicate this to business leaders and to change business practices.

ps: "The Road to Copenhagen" is also the name of a web forum, chaired 
by several well known personalities, for providing non-government 
input to the next round of climate change discussions at COP15, 7 to 
18 December 2009. Despite being sponsored by several multi-national 
companies, this seems to be a genuine effort to get community input 
to the process.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Australian National University