From Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society
Here are the slides from the energy symposium at Sigma Xi’s Annual Meeting and International Research Conference. Clicking on the thumbnails will open presentations in pdf format.
Hans Püttgen: The Energy Challenges of the 21st Century.
Vernon Roan: Alternatives for Transportation Energy.
Christine Ehlig-Economides: Unexpected Difficulties with Geologic CO2 Storage.
American Scientist magazine (which is published by Sigma Xi) hosts informal lunchtime lectures–with pizza–throughout the academic year. On September 24, Thomas Meyer came over from Chapel Hill to talk about the world’s energy supply, including solar fuels. Here’s an audio slideshow of his presentation.
UPDATE: Presentations from the energy symposium are now available in pdf format.
Energy is, of course, the theme of Sigma Xi’s Annual Meeting and International Research Conference in Houston, TX (November 12-15).
And we’ve announced our initial line-up of speakers for the energy symposium! They are still subject to change, but here’s how the symposium is shaping up:
John Ahearne (Moderator) - Executive Director Emeritus of Sigma Xi, former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy and Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense.
Michal Moore - Senior Fellow, Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy, University of Calgary in Alberta. Former Commissioner with the California Energy Commission.
Hans B. Püttgen - Energy Systems Management Chair and Director of the Energy Center at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. Georgia Power Professor Emeritus of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Vernon Roan - Director, University of Florida Fuel Cell Laboratory and Professor of Mechanical Engineering, University of Florida.
As I mentioned in the previous post, the peak oil article is available only to subscribers… but I have permission to share the charts and figures from the paper. So here are more trends and numbers to digest! Stephanie Freese and Barbara Aulicino at Amsci prepared the graphics.
Figure 5. The values predicted by the limits-to-growth model and actual data for 2008 are very close. The model used general terms for resources and pollution, but current, approximate values for several specific examples are given for comparison. Data for this long a time period are difficult to obtain; many pollutants such as sewage probably have increased more than the numbers suggest. On the other hand, pollutants such as sulfur have largely been controlled in many countries.
April 27, 2009
The May-June issue of American Scientist includes a feature on energy! Subscribers and Sigma Xi members can read the full article, “Revisiting the Limits to Growth After Peak Oil.”
In the article, ecologists Charles A. S. Hall and John W. Day, Jr., worry that attention to peak oil and resource limitation faded after the energy crisis of the 1970’s. “Those who advocated for resource constraints were essentially discredited and even humiliated,” they write. What’s more, “there is a common perception, even among knowledgeable environmental scientists, that the limits-to-growth model was a colossal failure…”
