Over 100 people braved the weather last night to listen to Biology Prof. Chris Field, founding director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, who addressed a number of current environmental concerns. Stanford Scientific Magazine hosted the lecture entitled “IPCC, Kyoto and the next steps to meet the challenge of Climatic Change.”

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Jaclyn Tandler

Chris Fields and global warming/IPCC etc talk

During the two hour talk, Field offered insight on the recent report by The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that helped the panel to win the 2007 Nobel Prize for Peace along with Al Gore, and he looked toward the future of international efforts to curb global warming.

The report is not an independent study of any scientific institute, but the product of a lengthy and tedious process involving many scientists and government representatives from all over the world, including Field.

“[The report] consists of multiple layers of monitored review,” Field said. “After the first draft, we sent it to hundreds of leading scientists in the field. We then reviewed their comments, which added up to 175 pages long, before carefully choosing those that can be substantially supported with scientific evidence.”

According to Field, the report has received international acclaim because it managed to gather the consensus agreement of all the participating countries regarding details on policy making.

“We sit down with the representatives from all the governments,” Field said, “and go over our proposal on policy making. No one left the room until we finally reached agreement on every single details that we put into the report.”

The report also looks into climate changes in many specific regions. Through many maps and charts, Field showed the audience the dramatic rise in temperature in California during the past fifty years.

The report points to carbon dioxide emission as the main culprit for the current climatic change by showing a strong correlation between the change in carbon emission and the rise in temperature.

Field ultimately went over the possible solutions to global warming. According to him, each alternate energy source has its own limitation. Solar and wind energy are unstable sources of energy that are incompatible with the current models of engines, while nuclear energy poses the risk of nuclear weapon proliferation and accidents.

“What the IPCC would like to suggest can be summarized in a house with four walls,” Field said, “and they say conservation, efficiency, new technology and capture and storage. In all, it is adaptation that we have to make.”