Green Astronomy at the AAS Meeting
I'm here in Washington DC for the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, an enormous zoo of a conference. More than 3000 astronomers attended this year! I have done what I can, and helped organise a splinter session on "Energy, the Environment and Astronomy: Education and Action" this afternoon.
We had a poster up advertising it on Tuesday - I spent the day standing in front of it talking to astronomers, various officials from government agencies, lecturers, students and teachers, and listening (without interrupting!) to their ideas about how we can reduce our energy consumption/CO2 emissions. Actually I did do some interrupting, when one teacher tried to convince me that cycling was as bad as flying. (As we now know, this is only true if you replace the calories you burn on your bike by eating burgers).
After persuading them to calculate their carbon footprints (amazing how many people don't know what theirs is!), most of them came along to the session today. We had about 50 people, and a pretty impressive program of speakers, including Joe Romm from the Centre for American Progress (you may know his blog, http://climateprogress.com, it's very good). An hour of hardcore climate science and stark futurology from Romm was just what was required to shake up the crowd a bit, and then we followed it up with some success stories from the Gemini Observatory (whose staff have significantly reduced their air travel in the last year, among many other things), and from the University of Arizona mirror lab, where they are prototyping low cost, massive scale solar power generators using telescope technology .
The beginning of the week, when I met the other 5 session organisers for the first time, was already pretty special - there are really not that many people around who are as committed as they are - but to leave DC with the email addresses of 50 astronomers and educators who all want to get going and make a difference, well, that's really quite something. Next step: to all get out there and advance the public understanding of science...
We had a poster up advertising it on Tuesday - I spent the day standing in front of it talking to astronomers, various officials from government agencies, lecturers, students and teachers, and listening (without interrupting!) to their ideas about how we can reduce our energy consumption/CO2 emissions. Actually I did do some interrupting, when one teacher tried to convince me that cycling was as bad as flying. (As we now know, this is only true if you replace the calories you burn on your bike by eating burgers).
After persuading them to calculate their carbon footprints (amazing how many people don't know what theirs is!), most of them came along to the session today. We had about 50 people, and a pretty impressive program of speakers, including Joe Romm from the Centre for American Progress (you may know his blog, http://climateprogress.com, it's very good). An hour of hardcore climate science and stark futurology from Romm was just what was required to shake up the crowd a bit, and then we followed it up with some success stories from the Gemini Observatory (whose staff have significantly reduced their air travel in the last year, among many other things), and from the University of Arizona mirror lab, where they are prototyping low cost, massive scale solar power generators using telescope technology .
The beginning of the week, when I met the other 5 session organisers for the first time, was already pretty special - there are really not that many people around who are as committed as they are - but to leave DC with the email addresses of 50 astronomers and educators who all want to get going and make a difference, well, that's really quite something. Next step: to all get out there and advance the public understanding of science...
posted by Phil at 2:37 AM
2 Comments:
PS. I am satisfying the other half of #dowhatyoucan by watching the Daily Show then going to bed :-)
That is such a great effort Phil - and I'm so glad that you interrupted the guy who tried to tell you that cycling was as bad as flying!
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