Bulletin of the American Physical Society
Joint Fall 2011 Meeting of the APS New England Section and the New England Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers (NES/AAPT)
Volume 56, Number 17
Friday–Saturday, November 18–19, 2011; Amherst, Massachusetts
Session A1: Plenary Session: Climate Change |
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Chair: Donald Candela, UMass Amherst, Room: Campus Center Auditorium |
Friday, November 18, 2011 1:00PM - 1:10PM |
A1.00001: Welcome Invited Speaker: Steven D. Goodwin |
Friday, November 18, 2011 1:10PM - 2:00PM |
A1.00002: Climate Change and Sea Level Rise, Lessons from the Past and Models of the Future Invited Speaker: Robert M. Deconto Recent observations of the polar ice sheets show an accelerating rate of fresh water input to the global ocean, yet the dynamic behavior of the ice sheets and the potential rate and magnitude of future sea level rise remain difficult to predict. New geological discoveries from the Arctic and Antarctic indicate a highly sensitive polar climate system, and far greater variability of the ice sheets than previously suspected. Here, we'll review some of these recent findings in the context of new climate and ice sheet modeling studies, providing a geological perspective on climate sensitivity and the potential response of the ice sheets to a warming world. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, November 18, 2011 2:00PM - 2:50PM |
A1.00003: Carbon Cycling with Nuclear Power Invited Speaker: Klaus S. Lackner Liquid hydrocarbon fuels like gasoline, diesel or jet fuel are the most efficient ways of delivering energy to the transportation sector, in particular cars, ships and airplanes. Unfortunately, their use nearly unavoidably leads to the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Unless an equivalent amount is removed from the air, the carbon dioxide will accumulate and significantly contribute to the man-made greenhouse effect. If fuels are made from biomass, the capture of carbon dioxide is a natural part of the cycle. Here, we discuss technical options for capturing carbon dioxide at much faster rates. We outline the basic concepts, discuss how such capture technologies could be made affordable and show how they could be integrated into a larger system approach. In the short term, the likely source of the hydrocarbon fuels is oil or gas; in the longer term, technologies that can provide energy to remove oxygen from carbon dioxide and water molecules and combine the remaining components into liquid fuels make it possible to recycle carbon between fuels and carbon dioxide in an entirely abiotic process. Here we focus on renewable and nuclear energy options for producing liquid fuels and show how air capture combined with fuel synthesis could be more economic than a transition to electric cars or hydrogen-fueled cars. [Preview Abstract] |
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