Podcasts about resources group

In this episode, Deepa and Amy discuss ways to support underrepresented entrepreneurs in climate tech and “making the umbrella bigger for who gets to be a climate entrepreneur,” along with the reality and challenges in the entrepreneurial space.Quotes“Underrepresented people are underrepresented often because they are undersupported.” – Deepa Lounsbury“Bringing that productization piece is almost as important - or just as important - as the technical solution in and of itself.” – Amy SimpkinsDeepa is the CEO of LabStart, which unlocks underrepresented entrepreneurial talent from diverse communities and breakthrough climate innovations out of our national labs and institutions. She has spent the last 18 years bringing innovative clean energy products, programs, and initiatives to life. This includes bringing a new residential battery product to market at Enphase Energy, building out the $24M California Sustainable Energy Entrepreneur Development (CalSEED) program to fund early stage entrepreneurs, setting up GE's first distributed energy platform, commercializing a demand side flexibility software product at a startup, and investing at one of the earliest clean energy venture capital firms, Angeleno Group. Deepa holds a bachelor's degree in Business from the University of Southern California as well as a master's degree from UC Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group.Resources:If you enjoyed the conversation, please share the episode with other innovators. Leave us a positive review and subscribe to Power Flow on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Check out our awesome merch! And hey, you can even apply to be a sponsor or a guest.You can follow Power Flow Podcast on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. 

Every host agency starting to look alike for you? Hear from over 30 host agencies in Host Week's Meet the Hosts sessions! We interview them to learn more about their culture, programs, and success stories. Tune in for the 10-20 minute interviews that will help differentiate and humanize the myriad of host agencies out there. Host Week 2024 Landing Site: https://har.news/hostweek View Host Week Magazine: https://har.news/2024HWmagazine Host Week Specials: https://har.news/deals Register for Host Week 2025: https://har.news/signupHW2025 7-Day Setup Course with HAR: https://har.news/7DScourse Host Week 2024 Survey: https://har.news/hwsurvey

How does transitioning to renewable energy challenge the electric grid?As of 2022, renewable and non-greenhouse gas emitting sources accounted for 52% of California's in-state electricity generation with the remaining 48% fueled by natural gas. Legislation passed in 2018 mandates that the state must reach at least 60% renewable energy by 2030 which California is quickly on its way to meet. The 60% goal adds ambition to the emissions reduction goals set by SB 32, the 2016 update to prior landmark climate legislation that required California to reduce its emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. Transitioning to reliance on renewable energy sources introduces new challenges to the electrical grid, which was designed primarily around gas-fired power plants that can operate 24 hours a day.  The majority of California's renewable energy comes from solar and wind. Such renewable energy generation varies depending on the time of day and season, among other factors. Compared to gas-fired power plants, solar and wind energy isn't as predictable or transferable from one location to another.With limited energy storage capacity, the US electrical grid lacks the infrastructure necessary to store large amounts of energy, so the variability of wind and solar energy makes it more challenging to balance energy supply and demand in real-time, which is an essential function of the energy system. As a result, the energy system design must evolve to meet the challenges of solar and wind variability, particularly during periods of peak demand, in order to ensure grid stability and sufficient energy support.  At the same time, California's energy grid has seen a large growth in demand due to the electrification of the transportation and residential sectors. Electric vehicle (EV) sales are 60 times higher than they were a decade ago and continue to rise, increasing by 85% from 2020 to 2021 alone. In 2023, EV sales in California account for 25% of EVs sold in the US. California has also enacted higher building energy efficiency standards to help accelerate the decarbonization movement. As of 2023, all new buildings must have at least one heat pump for heating or water heating, or they will face higher energy efficiency requirements. This growth in the prevalence of electric appliances and vehicles has increased the demands on the electric grid. This can be a particular problem if EV owners charge their cars or run their appliances at the same time that other electricity demand is at its peak. A California's Public Utilities Commission report published in 2023 found the state needs to invest at least $50 billion by 2035 in order to accommodate high adoptions of distributed energy resources associated with transportation and building electrification. Energy Storage as a SolutionImproving solar battery storage is vital in accelerating a transition to clean energy as these batteries store solar energy during the day and deliver it back to the grid at night when power is more expensive and carbon-intensive to produce. As of October 2023, California has increased its energy battery storage capacity by 757% to 6,600 megawatts. The state still needs to continue increasing its capacity to 52,000 megawatts to meet clean electricity demands by 2045. These batteries are also especially vital as climate change is increasing the intensity of heatwaves and wildfire seasons leading to increased Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS). During hazardous conditions, electricity companies turn off power circuits to reduce the risk of power lines falling and igniting a wildfire. Solar batteries are one tool to help alleviate the loss of power and can deliver electricity to areas prone to PSPS blackouts. However, large-scale batteries are not a perfect solution as they have considerable environmental costs and require many rare minerals in their production, which have significant associated sustainability and mining costs. Other energy storage technologies from green hydrogen to reservoir storage of hydropower can also help the state meet its energy demands.About the Guest: Dr. Carla PetermanAs PG&E's Executive Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer, Dr. Carla Peterman directs the corporation's sustainability and regulatory efforts. Previously, Dr. Peterman served as an energy official within the California government, including as CPUC commissioner, where she oversaw their $768 million EV charging infrastructure investment in 2018. Dr. Peterman received a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group in 2017, writing her dissertation on state policy for solar energy.  For a transcript of this episode, please visit https://climatebreak.org/balancing-the-grid-californias-shift-to-renewable-energy-sources/

Black Friday is here, but Burt Flickinger says spending will be different based on average home incomes across the country.

In this episode of Flanigan's Eco-Logic, Ted speaks with Chelsea Congdon, Co-founder of the Global Biodiversity Narrative Project. She also served as a Water Resources Specialist for the Environmental Defense Fund, Water Program Director for Public Council of the Rockies, and is a Film and Media Producer.Chelsea considers herself to be a western water junkie with two decades of work with Natural Heritage Institute (California) and Environmental Defense Fund (western US and Mexico), taking program designs from the energy world and applying them to the water world. Most recently, she has been consulting on collaborative projects to improve river management, stream flows, and water accountability in Colorado. She also serves on the boards of Western Resource Advocates, Colorado Rocky Mountain School, and Space for Giants.She and Ted discuss her background - a Colorado native, born and raised in Denver, spending most summers and weekends in Aspen, and being a naturalist from the start, with the Roaring Fork Valley embedded in her life from the beginning. They also discuss her studies at UC Berkeley, her interest in water resources, her work with the Energy and Resources Group, wanting to specialize in being a generalist. As a film and media producer, Chelsea is committed to bringing compelling stories about relationships to nature to a variety of audiences. She uses storytelling and multimedia communication to help people -- especially young people -- find a voice, get involved, be entrepreneurial and feel effective in promoting positive social change. In her current role as co-founder of the Global Biodiversity Narrative Project, Chelsea is deeply engaged in creating and promoting the stories that help people see themselves as a part of nature and engage a broad global movement in transforming relationships with the planet. 

Far East Gold (ASX: FEG) chairman Paul Walker joins Small Caps to discuss the company's upcoming exploration plans at Trenggalek copper gold project and the recent significant investment made by Eurasian Resources Group. The company has defined several untested high-magnetic bodies which it believes has the potential to be large scale, porphyry type copper gold targets. Far East is now further assessing the potential of those priority prospects with a detailed geological mapping program underway. The potential at Trenggalek was highlighted recently when Eurasian Resources made a $4 million investment. An unlisted company 40% owned by the Republic of Kazakhstan, Eurasian identified Trenggalek as its reason for taking a stake in Far East. Covering 12,813 hectares, the Trenggalek asset includes a significant database of information from extensive, advanced exploration work previously carried out on the project. Notably, the area also contains the granted the Izin Usaha Pertambangan – Operasi Produksi (IUP-OP) mining licence for operation and production, which is valid for 10 years until 24 June 2029 with the ability for the company to extend the IUP-OP for two additional 10 year periods. Articles:https://smallcaps.com.au/far-east-gold-kick-starts-java-copper-project-international-group-first-right-to-buy/https://smallcaps.com.au/far-east-gold-attracts-new-strategic-investor-oversubscribed-raising/https://smallcaps.com.au/far-east-on-target-strategic-copper-gold-development-plans-indonesia/ For more information on Far East Gold:https://smallcaps.com.au/stocks/asx-feg/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One spin-off complete and another separation announced. Show transcript can be found at: https://specialsituationinvesting.substack.comRemember you can support the show in the following ways:Consider switching to Fountain for all of your podcast needs. Fountain sources its content from the podcast index and allows users to receive and stream bitcoin micro payments between fans and content creators. Get payed just to listen or "boost" your favorite podcaster. To sign up for Strike visit the following link : https://strike.me/en/To get $10 for you and $10 for me at sign-up use referral code: ZEYDWPOr contribute to the show directly by visiting: https://buzzsprout.com/1923146Once on the shows website you can scan the QR code displayed and donate any amount of bitcoin to show your support. 

In this episode of Flanigan's Eco-Logic, Ted speaks with William Boyd, Michael J. Klein Chair, Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law, and Professor at UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. He is also a Faculty Co-Director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, and Project Lead for the Governors' Climate and Forests Task Force (GCF).William and Ted discuss his background, growing up in South Carolina. He received his B.A. from University of North Carolina, his M.A. and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group, and his J.D. from Stanford Law School. He then moved to Washington D.C. and worked for the World Resources Institute, and was previously a Professor of Law and a John H. Schultz Energy Law Fellow at University of Colorado Boulder School of Law. His primary research and teaching interests are in energy law and regulation, climate change law and policy, and environmental law. He continues to be actively involved in climate, energy, and environmental policy matters at multiple levels of governance. Since 2009, he has served as the Project Lead for the Governors' Climate and Forests Task Force (GCF), a unique subnational collaboration of 38 states and provinces from Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Spain, and the United States that is working to develop regulatory frameworks to reduce emissions from deforestation and land use. Boyd is also the founding Director of the Laboratory for Energy & Environmental Policy innovation (LEEP), a policy innovation lab based in Boulder, Colorado that works with partners around the world to develop and support real-time policy experiments, establish robust networks for learning and exchange, and contribute to effective and durable policy outcomes.

In this episode of Flanigan's Eco-Logic, Ted speaks with Dr. Evan Mills, a recently retired Senior Scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), operated by the University of California--one of the world's leading research centers on energy and environment. He was past leader of LBNL's Center for Building Science, which represented the work of about 400 people, and continues his collaborations with "The Lab" as an Affiliate. He is also a Research Affiliate at the Energy Resources Group, operated by the University of California.Dr. Mills is a member of the international body of scientists under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC collectively shared the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 with former U.S. Vice President Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. He and Ted discuss his background, growing up in the LA Hollywood Hills amongst creatives of all sorts. His academic career began at an alternative high school in Southern California. He then attended the University of California at Santa Cruz and was exposed to energy and building energy, and transferred as a sophomore to the University of California at Berkeley. While completing his Bachelors of Science degree in Conservation and Resource Studies at Berkeley, he studied and taught about green buildings with Sim van der Ryn. He received a Masters of Science degree from Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group (where he is now a Research Affiliate) and a Ph.D. from the Department of Environmental and Energy Systems Studies under Thomas B. Johansson at Lund University in Sweden. In Sweden, he worked closely with the Swedish State Power Board (Vattenfall) and the Swedish National Board for Industrial and Technical Development on national energy planning projects, while serving as an energy advisor to the Swedish Parliamentary Working Group on Energy Futures. He then spent most of his career at LBNL. His closest mentor and collaborator there was Art Rosenfeld, for whom he served as his Deputy Director of the Center for Building Science, later leading the Center. He also currently consults widely for private industry and the public sector.Dr. Mills research centers on the impacts of climate change and mitigating those impacts through reduced emissions and loss prevention. His specialties are energy efficiency in buildings and industry and the intersection of energy technology, global climate, and risk management. His interests further center around pinpointing "sleeper" uses of energy and empowering policymakers, consumers, and non-traditional market actors to capture improved efficiencies, reduced greenhouse-gas emissions, resilience, and other non-energy benefits. Specifically, he highlights the edge cases and topics that don't get attention from mainstream policies, programs, or research agendas like the problem of kerosene lighting in the developing world, the issue of housing insurance in the face of climate change, green-gaming, the carbon footprint of cannabis cultivation, and remaining optimistic about the areas of improvement in building commissioning. 

In this episode of Flanigan's Eco-Logic, Ted speaks with Andrew McAllister, third- term Commissioner at the California Energy Commission.Andrew has over 30 years of experience in the domestic and international energy arenas, primarily related to policy, utility planning, energy efficiency, and distributed renewable energy. He has worked across the world to deploy clean, cost-effective energy solutions with counterparts ranging from tiny remote communities to the largest of utilities. He administered two of California's signature renewable energy programs, developed and operated energy efficiency programs for utilities, and conducted a broad range of policy-related research for California and the federal government.He is a board member and immediate past board chair of the National Association of State Energy Officials, and a board member of the Alliance to Save Energy. His deep grounding in technology, policy, and the marketplace provides him with uncommon insight on the accelerating changes taking place in California's energy sector.He and Ted discuss his background, growing up in Nashville, TN, attending Dartmouth College where he started understanding how important energy was when studying engineering. He later served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica, and obtained a master of science and a Ph.D. from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley.Prior to joining the Energy Commission, he was managing director at the California Center for Sustainable Energy. He worked with the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association International, Ltd. in Central and South America, Southeast Asia, and Africa on renewable generation, load management, utility planning, and remote power projects. He was also a project manager at an energy-consulting firm and an energy efficiency analyst at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.In his current role at the Energy Commission, he leads the policy area of energy efficiency, including the Building Energy Efficiency Standards, appliance efficiency, and load management and flexibility. More broadly, he is focused on enabling modern, data-rich analytical tools to support strong clean energy policy development and program implementation.Andrew concludes by sharing his experience walking the walk and talking the talk, putting California's energy code into practice with the construction of his energy efficient and sustainable home in Davis. Watch the process from start to completion, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUbH4Vpt8ZE. 

Experts Stanley Cohen and Arthur Kavanaugh give busy clinicians a rundown of what's new and noteworthy in the 2021 GRAPPA guidelines update. Relevant disclosures can be found with the episode show notes on Medscape (https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/984267). The topics and discussions are planned, produced, and reviewed independently of the advertisers. This podcast is intended only for US healthcare professionals. Resources Group for Research and Assessment of Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis (GRAPPA): Updated Treatment Recommendations for Psoriatic Arthritis 2021 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35761070/ Etanercept Treatment of Psoriatic Arthritis: Safety, Efficacy, and Effect on Disease Progression https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15248226/ GRADE: An Emerging Consensus on Rating Quality of Evidence and Strength of Recommendations https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18436948/ US Welcomes First Adalimumab Biosimilar, Amjevita https://www.centerforbiosimilars.com/view/us-welcomes-first-adalimumab-biosimilar-amjevita Impact of Clinical Domains Other Than Arthritis on Composite Outcomes in Psoriatic Arthritis: Comparison of Treatment Effects in the SEAM-PsA Trial https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35863864/

Speaking on "1st Generation" Fragility: The impact it has on our lives in 3HO present day and historically.  Listen to "Second Generation" perspective on how to listen and hear US in real time.    Resources:  Group therapy with the Trauma Healing Project Email: dmcilwain@healingattention.org https://healingattention.org/    For Somatic Therapy:  https://directory.traumahealing.org/   You can DONATE to this broadcast at: http://www.gurunischan.com/uncomfortableconversations   Uncomfortable Conversations Spotify Playlist:  https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2lEfcoaDgbCCmztPZ4XIuN?si=vH-cH7HzRs-qFxzEuogOqg  

What if you could pay someone else to cancel out your carbon emissions? As countries, organizations, and even individuals around the world commit to lowering their impact on the climate, many have been doing just that. So today, we're going to look at how “carbon offsets” work and whether they are an effective tool for slowing climate change. For this episode, we sat down with carbon trading and offsets expert Dr. Barbara Haya from the University of California Berkeley. Dr. Barbara Haya is a Research Fellow at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California Berkeley. She leads the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project, which studies the effectiveness of offset programs and carbon trading with the goal of ensuring these programs and policies support effective climate action. Dr. Haya is also helping the University of California to develop its own strategy of using offsets to meet their carbon neutrality goals. Haya received her PhD at UC Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group, and has previously worked with NGOs to help support international offset program reform. For more episodes of TILclimate by the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative, visit tilclimate.mit.edu. To receive notifications about new episodes, follow us on Twitter @tilclimate.CreditsLaur Hesse Fisher, Host and ProducerDavid Lishansky, Editor and ProducerAaron Krol, Associate ProducerAdam Nacov, Student Production AssistantSylvia Scharf, Education SpecialistMichelle Harris, Fact CheckerMusic by Blue Dot SessionsArtwork by Aaron Krol

Thanks to Ginnie for stopping by my booth at the TLMI Annual Meeting. So exciting to meet younger people encouraging others to join the industry! Make sure you link up with Ginnie.Packaging Is Awesome with Adam Peek is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.If you listened to the podcast and wanted to connect with Specright to rid the world of waste. Let's go! www.specright.com/pkgOr…Are you sick and tired of the same positions at your PLANT consistently being open or just not being filled? Or maybe your facility just isn't retaining talent due to not having dedicated recruitment support.If you need contract-to-hire support, or you are looking to hire directly for industry professionals…. Spark Packaging can help. Spark Packaging is the industry partner who provides all your recruitment and staffing needs.  If you are hearing this…and thinking “THAT'S ME”…You need to go to to SparkPackagingINC.com/HIRING , again that is SparkPackagingINC.com/HIRING and answer some of their questions. Once received a Spark team-member will reach out A-S-A-P!Thank you for reading Packaging Is Awesome with Adam Peek. This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to Packaging Is Awesome with Adam Peek at www.packagingisawesome.com/subscribe

In this episode of the Power for All podcast, Kristina Skierka, Founder and CEO of Power for All, speaks with Prof Dan Kammen, a Professor of Energy at the University of California, Berkeley, with parallel appointments in the Energy and Resources Group. The conversation focuses on how the renewable energy sector has changed over the years and the role of innovations in driving energy access in peri-urban and rural communities, particularly the Pay-As-You-Go (PayGO) model. Dan notes solar energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels. He attributes that partly to scaling up and manufacturing but mostly to figuring out how to work a system that, for a long time and maybe even today, is not bending over backward to accommodate clean energy. “Human connections, thinking about energy access, energy justice, and asking the gender and racial questions of inequality were never on the table as they are now,” he adds. He notes there are still problems in a world that still subsidizes fossil fuels more than investing in renewables but we also have a world of disruptive clean, socially just energy options. Dan notes PayGo is a democratic system that allows the consumers to see what energy costs and to pay for it, as they wish, in small units. He, however, cautions against opportunists who may take advantage of the system.

In episode 139 of Berkeley Talks, Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO and Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for Sustainable Energy for All, gives the Energy and Resources Group's 28th Annual Lecture on Energy and Environment. In the March 31, 2022 talk, Ogunbiyi discusses how to drive a just, inclusive and equitable transition to affordable and sustainable energy for all, and how the Russia-Ukraine war is affecting energy markets around the world.Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News. (This page will go live by Friday afternoon.)Follow Berkeley Talks and review us on Apple Podcasts.(Photo by Bamas100 via Wikimedia Commons) See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Philly born, Penn State grad Tahiirah Habibi returned to Philly to study wine, eventually heading to Miami to Somm at the St. Regis Bal Harbor and Michael's Genuine. Trying to further her studies with the Court of Master Sommeliers, her frustration with the Court caused her to leave and start Hue Society, a hub for Black wine professionals. Tahiirah Habibi is a Sommelier, Entrepreneur, and Activist. She is also the co-founder of The Roots Fund and founder of the Council of Resources Group.Heritage Radio Network is a listener supported nonprofit podcast network. Support The Grape Nation by becoming a member!The Grape Nation is Powered by Simplecast.

The Kevin Alan Show talks with the guys from Dirigo Readiness Resources Group LLC, a company dedicated to teaching emergency preparedness, personal protection and readinessSupport the show (https://patreon.com/thekevinalanshowpodcast)

Sometimes taking care of the patient is the easy part. It's talking to bystanders, parents, and patients who have communication challenges that's hard. Our experts are Drs. David Shatz and John Rose from UC Davis Medical Center. Resources: Group critical incident stress debriefing Family presence during resuscitation Country Hits is a production of Wisconsin's South Central Regional Trauma Advisory Council. Special thanks to the  UC Davis Departments of Surgery and Emergency Medicine. Jonathan Kohler is @jekohler on Twitter and at RxCreative. 

Youjin Chung is Assistant Professor of Sustainability and Equity at the University of California Berkeley, with a joint appointment in the Energy and Resources Group and the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. Her work encompasses the political economy of development, feminist political ecology, critical agrarian and food studies, and African studies. She draws on ethnographic, historical, and participatory visual methods to examine the relationship between gender, intersectionality, development, and socio-ecological change in Sub Saharan Africa with a focus on Tanzania. She is interested in understanding how agrarian landscapes, livelihoods, and lifestyles articulate with capitalist forces, and how these processes of uneven encounter reshape the identities and subjectivities of rural women and men, as well as their relationships with the state, society, and the environment. She is currently working on a book manuscript, Sweet Deal, Bitter Landscape, which examines the gendered processes and outcomes of a stalled large-scale agricultural land deal in coastal Tanzania. Her second project, tentatively titled Flesh and Blood, investigates the role of gender, race, and species in the making of the “livestock revolution” in Tanzania and the wider region. Previously, Dr. Chung was Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University. She received her PhD and MSc in Development Sociology from Cornell University, and an MPhil in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge, Jesus College. She completed a Dual BA in International Studies, and Journalism and Communication at Korea University. Learn more about Social Science Matrix at Learn more at https://matrix.berkeley.edu.. Visit Professor Chung's website: https://youjinbchung.net/

This is part 2 of a four-part series put together by Centrum and Cleo Woelfle-Erskine and July Hazard to ask “what is queer ecology?” of climate scientists, ecologists, choreographers, poets, and creatives who each share unique perspectives on how queer and trans identities can and do play important roles in shifting the way we think about the sciences and our relations with the more-than-human. This project is part of Woelfle-Erskine and Hazard’s 2019-2020 Centrum Northwest Heritage residencies, made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts. For this conversation, Woelfle-Erskine and Hazard meet up with Melecio Estrella and Andrew Jones to talk about the ways their practices in the performing arts and earth sciences intersect with queer ecologies. We learn about the processes and thoughts that have brought vertical dance, activism, and Earth science together and together the group starts to outline new possibilities for understanding how queerness and queer identities are integral to relations with the human and non-human. Melecio Estrella has been a Bay Area performing artist, director, and teacher for the past 19 years. He is co-artistic director of Fog Beast, artistic director of BANDALOOP, and a member of the Joe Goode Performance Group since 2004. Recent notable directorial engagements include the opening of The Momentary at Crystal Bridges in Bentonville, AK (Feb. 2020), The National Art Gallery of Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur (2019), The Big Reveal at the Asian Art Museum of SF (2019), Art and About in Sydney Australia (2018), and the JFK Centennial Celebration at The Kennedy Center (2017). Andrew Jones is an Earth scientist who works at the interface of human and environmental systems. His research uses quantitative models and data analysis to understand climate change and human-Earth system interactions at decision-relevant scales. He also collaborates with social scientists and interacts closely with stakeholders to understand how science can effectively provide actionable insight into strategies for increasing resilience of energy water, food, and urban systems. Andrew is an Adjunct Professor in the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley where he teaches courses on the intersection of science of and society. He has participated in a number of science-art collaborations over the years including The Climate Music Project and several dance-theatre works with performance group Fog Beast. He also helped to organize and facilitate a series of thematic residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts at the intersection of artistic practice, scientific practice, and climate equity.

This is an episode with podcast guest Chris! Chris finished his Ph.D. from the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley. This is an interdisciplinary Ph.D. focusing on Water and Sanitation in Urban India. He researched low and middle-income regions in India and also minored in Engineering. Not everywhere in the world has 24/7 access to water. Chris talks about interesting results including that smaller cities with a lower standard of living were less likely to benefit from existing technologies, especially families with girl children. Chris also talks about his experience in surviving graduate school and making it out successfully with his degree and even lining up a job in the government sector. He is currently working as a Senior Environmental Scientist for the State of California. Although this is very much a pivot from Chris's academic pursuits, he is still able to make an impact where it really matters! We also cover how to start a podcast! Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple, or Google Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts!

This week I am joined by Jessica Reilly-Moman. Jessica is a social scientist, political ecologist, and a mixed media journalist focusing on climate change and resilience in coastal communities. We discuss her climate research that has led her through the mountains, to large-scale solar projects in the desert, and sailing through Latin America. Jessica's cross-national perspective has given her insight on the unique set of issues in different places but also their commonalities. She shines a light on inequities as they relate to climate change and why we must view climate actions not as having singular effects, but rather as a whole system. And who and how they impact. After all of her worldly travels, Jessica is back to where she grew up in New England finishing her Ph.D. in Ecology & Environmental Studies at the University of Maine's Darling Marine Center. In her off time from saving the world, she enjoys singing and dancing with her daughter. She even treats us to a little serenade! Mentioned: Ivanpah Energy and Resources Group at Berkeley Sailing for Climate blog Tomorrow's Air Jessica Reilly-Moman

We're talking Impact, Leadership & Outcomes with Judy Douglass with Cru – Christian Leadership Alliance Outcomes Conference

We're talking Impact, Leadership & Outcomes with Judy Douglass with Cru – Christian Leadership Alliance Outcomes Conference The post What God's Doing With The Women's Resources Group At Cru appeared first on iWork4Him Podcast.

In this episode we chatted with Edem Yevoo, a first-year master’s student at the Energy and Resources Group. Edem joins us to reminisce about Sunday Supper, to share his family’s journey from Ghana, and to thank his father for being his biggest fan.

Nobel Laureate Daniel Kammen, head of U.C. Berkeley’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, discusses efforts to build clean energy solutions that meet the social and developmental needs of the communities they serve.---Discussions around today’s clean energy transition tend to focus on technological challenges, and the costs and climate benefits of renewable energy. Yet the social and cultural implications of a transition to clean energy are often overlooked.Nobel Prize laureate Daniel Kammen talks about his research into the ways that the adoption of clean energy may impact society and, by extension, guide political discourse. He also discusses how taking into account social, economic and developmental realities could accelerate the move away from fossil fuels, and speed electrification in some of the poorest regions of the globe.Daniel Kammen is Distinguished Professor of Energy in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also Director of Berkeley’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, and a former Science Envoy for the U.S. State Department. Related Content Mongolian Energy Futures: Challenges of Radical Energy Sector Decarbonization https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/paper/mongolian-energy-futures-repowering-ulaanbaatar Robust Carbon Markets: Rethinking Quantities and Prices in Carbon Pricing https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/policy-digests/robust-carbon-markets Energy Transition Challenges for the 2020s https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/energy-policy-now/energy-transition-challenges-2020s

Interview with Nicholas Bridgen, CEO of Ferro-Alloy Resources Group (LON:FAR).The Ferro-Alloy Resources Group (FAR) is a vanadium development company. Their primary focus is the 'giant' Balasausqandiq vanadium deposit in Kyzylordinskaya oblast of Southern Kazakhstan. The deposit is claimed by Bridgen to be amenable to a much simpler, cheaper processing treatment than other deposits. In fact, Bridgen thinks FAR can be the lowest-cost producer in the world, and could still maintain a reasonable margin even in an environment of low spot prices.Even for the most optimistic shareholder, they will have been left disappointed by the share price performance of FAR. Starting the year at £0.56, the price has fallen to £0.15 today. FAR's market cap is £47M. Excess supply and low spot demand from the steel industry pulled down ferrovanadium alloy prices in Europe and the US to a two-year low in the first week of October 2019. This has clearly been a key factor behind this decline, but could the management team have done anything differently?Bridgen argues the macro story of vanadium will lead to price discovery, but he is keen to dispel the common assumption that vanadium redox flow batteries (VFRBs) will be economically viable in the near future. In fact, companies with inferior Vanadium projects that base their model of primary demand for VFRBs are "deluding themselves." We appreciate Bridgen's pragmatism.Bridgen claims to have an experienced team behind him, but the two key things here are scale and margins; this is what is supposed to make FAR stand out. +90% of the world's vanadium production and 70% of the world's supply comes from a material called magnetite. It is low-grade iron ore, so creates more cost because of additional shipping and processing expenses. Bridgen is very critical of the flowsheet followed by his vanadium juniors. They all have to go through a complex process of concentration, roasting to 1,100 degrees celsius, then a regrind before the material is ready to be leached. FAR's material is ready to be leached right from the off.As far as a mining jurisdiction, Kazakhstan has now become a 'well-run country,' that is 'above all the other stans in terms of its government.' While Kazakhstan isn't necessarily an ideal jurisdiction, Bridgen appears confident it is an area FAR can flourish in.There is a significant overhang at FAR, and investors will want more justification than the vanadium price. The company listed at around £0.70 after all. Bridge insists FAR is in control of progressing the project, and dilution; these are the key to driving the price back up. Investors will be sceptical and will want to see this reflected in the market before having any confidence.The next step will be a larger Feasibility Study. How will FAR finance this? Bridgen wouldn't tell us how much cash FAR has on hand, but did say they need to raise capital this year, sooner rather than later. FAR is debt-free and option free, so it seems debt may be an area Bridgen looks at. Will they go to market?The reality here is the quality of the asset and the vanadium macro story can only help FAR so much. Investors want to see active decision making. They want to see their money spent wisely. Bridgen and his team have an awful lot of work on their hands if they want to get FAR back on track, and back delivering for shareholders.Company page: http://www.ferro-alloy.com/ Make smarter investment decisions, subscribe here: https://www.cruxinvestor.com For FREE unbiased investment information, follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook:https://twitter.com/cruxinvestor https://www.linkedin.com/company/crux-investor/ https://www.facebook.com/cruxinvestor Take advantage, hear it here first: https://www.youtube.com/CRUXinvestor 

Today’s guest is Dan Lashof, Director of World Resources Institute, United States. He coordinates WRI’s work in the United States across climate, energy, food, forests, water and the sustainable cities programs. This includes overseeing the work of the U.S. climate team, which aims to catalyze and support climate action by states, cities, and businesses while laying the groundwork for federal action in the coming years. Dan has been working to promote solutions to climate change for more than two decades. Before the World Resources Institute, Dan was the Chief Operating Officer of NextGen Policy Center and previously served as the Director of the Climate and Clean Air Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. His focus is developing federal and state regulations to place enforceable limits on carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping pollutants. He has participated in scientific assessments of global warming through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and has monitored international climate negotiations since their inception. He was a member of Governor McAuliffe’s Climate Change and Resiliency Update Commission, and has testified at numerous Congressional and California legislative hearings. Dan earned his Bachelor's degree in Physics and Mathematics at Harvard and his Doctorate from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley. Dan is married to Diane Regas and has three adult children. When not working Dan enjoys bicycling, hiking, eating, and cheering for the Golden State Warriors. In today’s episode, we cover: WRI history and the nature of their work The 4 pillars Dan believes are needed to solve climate change Some examples of WRI’s current initiatives How they measure success How WRI is different 'Unique nature of the climate problem Role of government Role of policy Role of natural gas in short and long-term Role of big oil Role of adaptation Where Dan would allocate a large pool of money to maximize impact Dan’s advice for others seeking to find their lanes to help Links to topics discussed in this episode: WRI website: https://www.wri.org/ NRDC: https://www.nrdc.org/ WRI renewables accelerator for cities: https://www.wri.org/events/2019/02/american-cities-climate-challenge-renewables-accelerator NYC’s Green New Deal: https://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/209-19/action-global-warming-nyc-s-green-new-deal#/0 Science based targets: https://sciencebasedtargets.org/ You can find me on twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at info@myclimatejourney.co, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests. Enjoy the show!

Joining James on our weekly podcast was Event Resources Group’s director, Kevin Waters. Kevin entered the event industry in 1992 when he started his own agency and has since been a board member for the International Live Events Association (ILEA). He is now the director of event consultancy firm, Event Resources Group. Here, he discussed the various training and qualifications we can now receive within the event industry. “Never dry”, the event industry is constantly evolving, with new techniques, practices and technologies being introduced all the time. Various training courses within the industry may help professionals from being left behind. However, is there such a thing as ‘over-education’? Should those hoping to gain entry into the event industry focus on work-based education rather than classroom-based? The event industry is no longer focused on hosting a repetition of conferences or parties; it endeavours to move audiences’ emotions to create memorable experiences. Professionals hosting the same, tired events each year fail to understand the value of “spectacular” events and will, therefore, be overshadowed by “specialists”. Kevin believes that event professionals, especially those just starting out, should “cherry-pick” courses and training sessions and follow a specific line of education to give themselves an edge over their colleagues. Broad-scale event training courses may produce a conveyer belt of generic event professionals with no distinctive knowledge, experience or ability. If you would like to feature on one of our weekly podcasts, please email editor@eventindustrynews.com.

This episode features a conversation on Ecological Economics with Richard Norgaard. Richard is a Professor Emeritus of Ecological Economics in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley, the first chair and a continuing member of the Independent Science Board of CALFED, and a foundation member and former president of the International Society for Ecological Economics. He is considered one of the founders of and a continuing leader in the field of ecological economics. Our host is Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-author of Journey of the Universe and professor at Yale University.In this conversation, Richard surveys the history of human economies and the myths and premises of current economic practices. In place of our ecologically destructive practices, he endorses an ecological economics that emphasizes care, coevolution, and protection of the environment.We hope you enjoy the Journey!--- What is our place in the 14-billion-year history of the universe?What roles do we play in Earth's history?How do we connect with the intricate web of life?This podcast series is part of a larger project called Journey of the Universe that invites us to reflect on these questions. It consists of a film, a book, a series of conversations, and online classes. The creators of the Journey project imagine that by knowing more about the universe and Earth we will also know more about ourselves. This may give us grounds for navigating our own journey in challenging times. How did we come to be part of this universe story? How do we belong and how can we participate in its future flourishing? This series is a gateway into exploring these questions. In these podcasts of the Journey of the Universe Conversations we will meet scientists and historians, environmentalists and teachers, gardeners and urban planners. All of them are reflecting on how we can be more fully alive in this context of participating in a universe story.Connect deeply with these materials and more via the Journey of the Universe: A Story for Our Times Specialization, a series of Massive Online Open Courses hosted by Coursera and created by Yale.To receive up to date announcements on new podcasts and Journey community offerings, subscribe to our newsletter.

In this episode, we talk to Dr. Dan Kammen about the many intersections between housing policy and climate policy. Dr. Kammen is one of the world’s leading energy experts. He is a Distinguished Professor of Energy at UC Berkeley, where he holds appointments in the Energy and Resources Group, the Goldman School of Public Policy, and the Department of Nuclear Engineering. He is a former Science Envoy for the U.S. State Department, appointed during the Obama presidency. He was a coordinating lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for its report which assessed man-made global warming. He was a chief specialist for renewable energy and energy efficiency at the World Bank and served in a variety of roles in global energy initiatives and other federal roles, including at the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency. Throughout the conversation, Dr. Kammen discusses how the lack of housing affordability significantly contributes to transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions, as well as necessary policy changes, the Green New Deal, the urgency of the situation, and how housing and climate advocates can better partner together. Intro/Closing Song: Free Music Library, YouTube, “Clover 3” URL: www.youtube.com/audiolibrary

Dr. Daniel Kammen, Professor of Energy & Society, Energy and Resources Group (ERG) and the Director, Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL), provides an overview of the current state of energy around the globe and the changes that are happening rapidly. After completing his undergraduate studies at Cornell and then graduate studies at Harvard, where he received his Ph.D. in 1988, Dr. Kammen embarked on his long career in the energy field. His postdoctoral work at Caltech and Harvard led him to a position of professor and Chair of the Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at Princeton University in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs from the early to late 90s. Notably, Dr. Kammen is the Class of 1935 Distinguished Professor of Energy at the University of California, Berkeley, and he holds additional appointments in the Energy and Resources Group, the Goldman School of Public Policy, as well as the Department of Nuclear Engineering. And in 2010, Dr. Kammen was honored to be named the first Environment and Climate Partnership for the Americas (ECPA) Fellow, tapped by former Secretary of State Hilary R. Clinton.  Dr. Kammen discusses his background and training as a physicist and the steps that he took to reach his current area of study and development in the energy field. Upon seeing an ad seeking engineers for work in Central America, the young physicist convinced the group to include him as well, alongside the engineers, and thus his journey began on the path to energy studies—solar, wind, etc. Dr. Kammen discusses how energy is thought about by various governments, and how new technology and climate change issues are changing the game. He talks about how old utility models are giving way to newer models, and how solar and cleaner energy is leaping forward in the market. As he states, clean energy can make energy management and production actually easier while helping to reduce climate problems.  Dr. Kammen details many of the current problems with energy in America. As he explains, regarding the US government, the current administration is still investing in antiquated energy sources, such as coal, that absolutely cannot be a part of our future, as modern society attempts to move to more sensible, climate-friendly energy sources. The energy expert talks about the future of clean energy in regard to transportation, etc. He talks about emissions, discussing the number of emissions that are created by not only the operation of cleaner energy vehicles but also in the manufacturing of them. As he states, electric vehicles use lighter materials, composite materials, that make them more favorable, with a smaller carbon footprint simply in manufacturing, thus tipping the scales in favor of electric over gas-powered, before consideration of the batteries (which most people think is the main issue). Dr. Kammen goes on to discuss lithium batteries and sources of lithium. He states that even with the lithium and recycling taken into account, the incredible benefits of using cleaner energy vehicles is clear.  Dr. Kammen talks about the future of energy, greenhouse gases, and air quality, and how investing in new sources of energy is good for the environment, as well as the economy!

Dr. Richard Norgaard is Professor Emeritus of Ecological Economics in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley, environmental pioneer, and founding member and former president of the International Society for Ecological Economics. After receiving his PhD at the University of Chicago, where he studied with numerous economists who would later be awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, he became a critic of free market fundamentalism and went on to found the field of ecological economics which he continues to lead today. His recent research addresses how environmental problems challenge scientific understanding and the policy process, how ecologists and economists understand systems differently, and the impact of globalization on environmental governance. A philosophical and eclectic thinker, Dr Norgaard received the Kenneth E. Boulding Memorial Award in 2006 for recognition of advancements in research combining social theory and the natural sciences –and for more than 40 years he has been a strong voice calling for introduction of values of spirituality, beauty and ecological boundaries into mainstream economics. He is the author of Development Betrayed: The End of Progress and a Co-evolutionary Revisioning of the Future, co-author or editor of three additional books, and has over 100 other publications spanning the fields of environment and development, tropical forestry and agriculture, environmental epistemology, energy economics, and ecological economics. He serves on the Board of Directors of the New Economics Institute, on scientific advisory boards to Tsinghua and Beijing Normal University, and on the Board of EcoEquity.   In this interview, Richard discusses the dichotomy between ecology and economics, how a kind of faith thinking underpins the economic system (economism), and the failure of neo-classical economics to adequately grasp environmental limits. He also touches on the limits of conventional economic measures and the need for an approach system to environmental issues that allows for effective global governance while respecting agency at the local level. A proud Californian, Richard also discusses his work in water stewardship for the California Delta independent science board and the danger of conservation's inherent bias towards the past in addressing the challenges posed by a changing climate. This is a rare opportunity to hear the latest views of a pioneering thinker who has had a major influence on how we think about ecological economics, raising profound questions about our understanding of economic progress and development. The post Episode 29: Interview with Dr Richard Norgaard, Professor Emeritus of Ecological Economics appeared first on The Sustainability Agenda.

Nos acompañaron en cabina Gerardo Garza y Francisco Elizondo, socios fundadores de Science and Resources Group, una iniciativa que busca rediseñar la alimentación del futuro. También estuvo con nosotros Juana Ramírez, fundadora de Sohin (Soluciones Hospitalarias Integrales), una empresa que atiende y acompaña a personas con enfermedades crónico-degenerativas. Transmitido el sábado 18 de febrero de 2016 Código Startup – Gerardo Garza y Francisco Elizondo, fundadores de Science and Resources Group Colaboración – Salim Nayar, ¿Qué realmente es la sustentabilidad? Know How – Juana Ramírez, fundadora de Sohin Colaboración – Verónica Colsa, Plataforma PRO 2017 Síguenos en Twitter ► twitter.com/XponenteMX Danos like en Facebook ► www.facebook.com/XponenteMX Sigue a nuestros colaboradores: José Luis Ayala twitter.com/JoseLuis_AyalaM Emilio Saldaña twitter.com/pizu Salim Nayar twitter.com/SalimNayar Producción Fernanda Casas Contenidos Jesús Uresti Grupo Imagen Multimedia Imagen Radio | Poniendo a México en la misma sintonía | Xponente bit.ly/1IifcAk

The Challenge of Climate Change: What Can and Can’t Be Fixed? A Roundtable discussion and reception launching the MSc in Global Environmental Politics and Policy, organised by the Birkbeck Population, Environment and Resources Group. Free event open to all: Book your place As we approach the 25th anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit in 2017, climate change continues to pose a formidable global socio-economic, political and environmental challenge. The latest Conference of Participants in Paris culminated with a multilateral commitment to keep global temperature rise this century below 2 degrees Celsius, promising an agreement with a ‘long-term vision’ that was also to act as an ‘engine of safe growth’. In this panel, we consider whether these aspirations to reconcile economic growth with control over global warming are realistic, feasible or even desirable. What are the prospects of enforcing these objectives? What kind of policies and political mobilisations might help to secure them? Can and does technology help in addressing climate change? And what are the implications of all this for an increasingly ‘crowded, complex and coastal’ planet? Four specialists on these subjects will discuss these and other related questions in an accessible and conversational format. Panelists: Aideen Foley, Lecturer in Physical and Environmental Geography Birkbeck College. Diane Horn, Reader in Coastal Geomorphology Birkbeck College. Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics, Birkbeck College. Nick Srnicek, co-author of Inventing the Future. Chair: Alex Colás, Reader in International Relations, Birkbeck College

A roundtable discussion and reception launching the MSc in Global Environmental Politics and Policy, organised by the Birkbeck Population, Environment and Resources Group and presented by the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research. As we approach the 25th anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit in 2017, climate change continues to pose a formidable global socio-economic, political and environmental challenge. The latest Conference of Participants in Paris culminated with a multilateral commitment to keep global temperature rise this century below 2 degrees Celsius, promising an agreement with a ‘long-term vision’ that was also to act as an ‘engine of safe growth’. In this panel, we consider whether these aspirations to reconcile economic growth with control over global warming are realistic, feasible or even desirable. What are the prospects of enforcing these objectives? What kind of policies and political mobilisations might help to secure them? Can and does technology help in addressing climate change? And what are the implications of all this for an increasingly ‘crowded, complex and coastal’ planet? Four specialists on these subjects will discuss these and other related questions in an accessible and conversational format. Panelists: Aideen Foley, Lecturer in Physical and Environmental Geography Birkbeck College Diane Horn, Reader in Coastal Geomorphology Birkbeck College Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics, Birkbeck College Nick Srnicek, co-author of Inventing the Future Chair: Alex Colás, Reader in International Relations, Birkbeck College Image credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten Facebook: www.facebook.com/BirkbeckPolitics/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/birkbeck-dept-of-politics Twitter: www.twitter.com/bbkpolitics Centre website: www.csbppl.com Department website: www.bbk.ac.uk/politics/

TOPICThe Shared-Use Strategy of Transportation IN THIS EPISODE[02:33] Introduction of Susan Shaheen. [02:56] Susan explains what shared-mobility services are. [03:46] Susan describes the societal and individual benefits of shared-mobility services. [05:48] Susan shares if car-sharing services are being universally accessed or if they are more concentrated in certain areas. [07:10] Is anyone currently making car-sharing services available to other parts of the population? [07:42] How is the Zipcar model—individuals sharing a car—expanding, and what is the market acceptance? [10:38] Susan shares the benefits of shared-mobility services to municipalities and society. [12:34] Are these shared-mobility services putting cab companies and their drivers out of business, and is there any data about these services driving down wages for those drivers? [14:35] Are all communities being served by shared-mobility services? [16:30] Are shared-mobility services impacting the need for public transportation, as well as the investments that would result in the reduction of vehicle-miles traveled? [20:29] Susan shares where people can learn more about her work. [21:31] Susan shares one change that would lead to smarter, more sustainable, and more equitable communities. [22:17] Susan describes the action that listeners can take to help build a more equitable and sustainable future. [22:34] Susan explains what our communities look like 30 years from now. GUESTSusan’s interest in environmentally- and socially-beneficial technology applications led her to focus her doctoral research on carsharing, linked to public transit in the mid-1990s. Today, she is an internationally recognized expert in mobility and the sharing economy and co-directs the Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC) of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California (UC), Berkeley. She is also an adjunct professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. She has authored 57 journal articles, over 100 reports and proceedings articles, four book chapters, and co-edited one book. Her research projects on carsharing, smart parking, and older mobility have received national awards. ORGANIZATIONThe Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC) was formed in 2006 to combine the research forces of six campus groups at UC Berkeley: the University of California Transportation Center, the University of California Energy Institute, the Institute of Transportation Studies, the Energy and Resources Group, the Center for Global Metropolitan Studies, and the Berkeley Institute of the Environment. Since TSRC was founded, it has been a leading center in conducting timely research on real-world solutions for a more sustainable transportation future. In addition to performing research informed by a diverse array of perspectives, TSRC also engages in education and outreach to promote its core values of sustainability and equity, to ensure that we are able to meet the transportation needs of the present without compromising future generations. TSRC conducts research on a wide array of transportation-related issues, addressing the needs of individuals as well as the public. Research efforts are primarily concentrated in six main areas: Advanced vehicles and fuels, Energy and infrastructure, Goods movement, Innovative mobility, Mobility for special populations, and Transportation and energy systems analysis. TSRC uses a wide range of analysis and evaluation tools, including questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, automated data collection systems, and simulation models to collect data and perform analysis and interpretation of the data. The center then develops impartial findings and recommendations for key issues of interest to policymakers to aid in decision-making. TSRC has assisted in developing and implementing major California and federal regulations and initiatives regarding sustainable transportation. These include

In 2004, Scott Zimmermann had a big idea. He had just quit the oil and gas industry — he’d been working in it for eight years, trying to reduce the impacts of fossil fuels — and enrolled at UC Berkeley as a dual-degree law student and master’s student in the Energy and Resources Group.He knew he wanted to do something about climate change. But instead of lobbying for the state or the federal government to adopt carbon cap laws, as a lot of environmentalists were doing at the time, he decided to start right where he was — with the campus.Read the story on Berkeley News. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dr. John Harte holds a joint pro­fes­sor­ship in the Energy and Resources Group and the Ecosys­tem Sci­ences Divi­sion of the Col­lege of Nat­ural Resources at the University of California at Berkeley. He received his PhD in Theoretical Physics at the University of Wisconsin. He completed a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at CERN in Geneva and a Post­doc­toral Fel­lowship at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia. He served on the faculty at Yale University before accepting a position at UC Berkeley. John has received many awards and honors during his career, including elected fellowship to the Amer­i­can Phys­i­cal Soci­ety and the California Academy of Sciences, a Pew Schol­ars Prize in Con­ser­va­tion and the Envi­ron­ment, a Guggen­heim Fel­low­ship, Phi Beta Kappa and University of Colorado Dis­tin­guished Lec­tureships, the Leo Szi­lard prize from the Amer­i­can Phys­i­cal Soci­ety, the UC Berke­ley Grad­u­ate Men­tor­ship Award, a Miller Pro­fes­sor­ship, and a George Polk award in investigative journalism. John is here with us today to tell us about his journey through life and science.

Discussion with Sam Borgeson, a PhD student in the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley. Sam’s aim is to reduce the environmental impacts of our buildings. He talks about building energy consumption, energy conservation, and the challenges building managers face in conservation.TranscriptSpeaker 1: [inaudible].Speaker 2: [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x, Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program, bringing you interviews, featuring bay area scientists and technologists, a calendar of local events and news. My name is Brad swift and I'm the host of today's show. Our interview is with three representatives of the organization, community resources for science, also known as crs. They are, relieves [00:01:00] a is cotton Nova crs program, Assistant Professor Bob Bergman of the UC Berkeley Department of chemistry. And Miriam Bowering, a graduate student and Professor Bergman's research group. Community Resources for Science is a nonprofit organization. The goal of crs is to help teachers give elementary and middle school students more opportunities to do science, to ask questions, test ideas, get their hands [00:01:30] on real science activities. Through these efforts, crs hopes to inspire the next generation of thinkers, makers, problem solvers, and leaders. This interview is prerecorded and edited today. We have a group of three people from the community resources for science talking with us about their program. And why don't you each introduce yourself and then we'll get into some details about your organization. Speaker 3: [00:02:00] My name is [inaudible]. Uh, I'm the program assistant at community resources for science. Speaker 4: My name is Bob Bergman. I'm a professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley. And I help to organize an outreach program, which was initially called chemistry in the classroom and then became community in the classroom and now it's called basis and it helps to organize graduate students to do presentations in the local schools. Speaker 3: I'm Miriam Bowering. I am a graduate student in chemistry at UC Berkeley [00:02:30] and I'm also a classroom volunteer. I bring groups of my coworkers into fifth grade classrooms to do science with them. Speaker 2: We're Alyssa, can you give us an overview of what crs does? Speaker 3: Community resources for science is an organization that was started by two parents who were involved with a lot of science in their children's schools and they decided that there was now enough science being done, so they figured out a way to individual teachers [00:03:00] get the resources that they need, uh, Ba snails from a local store or books that they need, um, or waste organized field trips. And it evolved into bringing scientists into classrooms to do hands on presentations as well. And that's grown from that? Uh, yeah. I mean now we're able to organize hundreds of volunteers that we have go into, uh, over 280 classrooms this past year [00:03:30] and get kids involved in doing actual science. And where is it that, uh, that you do this? What school districts? Uh, yeah, we are primarily in Alameda County and the Berkeley and Oakland School districts, uh, that we do the actual presentations because um, our volunteers can reach those areas most easily those schools. Speaker 3: But we go out and provide services to teachers and Castro valley as well. And some of the other West Contra Costa County [00:04:00] schools. What's the grade range that you try to impact? Crs as an organization has been supporting teachers k through five from its beginnings and we've started expanding into middle schools, so mostly sixth grade, um, because they still have one science teacher, but seventh and eighth they kind of start to branch out into different subjects. However, we do still work with teachers in seventh and eighth grade and we're very [00:04:30] willing to provide them with the personal support on an individual basis that they might need, you know, requesting resources and things like that. And we do go into middle schools and do science days where we have four or five lessons going on for different classrooms and they do, you know, one set in the morning and then they switch it around and do another set in the afternoon. And for teachers to get involved, how did they do that? Free?Speaker 5: Uh, yes it is. I think they can just visit the website, [00:05:00] which is www.crscience.org all the information they need is there. So they can not only contact crs to get scientists into their classrooms, but they can also look for other kinds of resources on the website there. Speaker 3: How do you find volunteers? How do you go about recruiting a, we actually recruited a lot more volunteers this past year than [00:05:30] we have in the past. And we're really excited about that. And thanks to our campus coordinators, Leah and Kristen, we were able to really reach out to 20 of the departments on campus and we have volunteers from 20th think what is their 21 departments here at UC Berkeley? So we're really proud of that. And Bob has done a great job of really getting the word out in the Department of Chemistry and college chemistry. A little bit about, how about the history of that is Speaker 4: this really started [00:06:00] almost accidentally. I was at a party and one of the people from crs was someone that my wife had gone to a graduate school at UC Berkeley with and she said that they were thinking about trying to get more scientists into the classrooms and wondered if I knew of anybody who wanted to do that. So I said I would go back to the campus and send out an email message in my department and just see if anyone was interested in doing that because it must have been seven or eight [00:06:30] years ago, I guess. And we started with a group of about 12 volunteers. Uh, we met in a seminar room in the chemistry department and I think it was probably one of the original organizers. It was probably Anne Jennings who came over and gave a short talk about what crs was all about and what they wanted to do to organize this program. Speaker 4: It's not a very simple thing. You not only need to have good contacts with the teachers, but, uh, you can't just throw people [00:07:00] into the classroom directly. You've got to give them some training and, you know, get them to understand what, um, what's age appropriate. Especially for the classes we were targeting, which were grades three to five. So we started with those 12 people and they basically, at that time, I put together their own presentations. And one of the interesting things about this program is that the graduate student volunteers actually come up with their own presentations, mostly isn't canned presentations that they get some [00:07:30] from somewhere else and they've come with, come up with some extremely creative stuff. Um, they're teaching kids at this level of things that I personally, you know, are really relatively sophisticated. And I personally never thought that you'd be able to, you know, sort of do this with people at that age. Speaker 4: But that was reasonably successful and it's really been the graduate student volunteers who've done most of the recruiting. So it started out in the chemistry department and these 12 original people [00:08:00] began to kind of, you know, dragoon their friends into doing this. And so it grew from 12 to 20 to 40 to 50 and then they began to attract and talk to some people in other departments. And then we reached a point where we thought that maybe there was a slightly different way that we could do this. They came up with the idea that maybe instead of doing this on an individual basis, we could do it with teams of graduate students. You may know that [00:08:30] that in most science departments, graduate students are part of research groups. So there'll be one professor who directs a, you know, a bunch of graduate students whom anywhere from three or four to 15 or 20 people, sometimes larger. Speaker 4: Uh, so the idea was to now put together teams that would be localized. Each team would be localized in a particular research group that and that has several advantages. One was that someone who wanted to do this didn't have to join in as kind of a lone individual. There's [00:09:00] always a certain reticence about that. The other thing that I think major advantage of this change was that it generated some continuity so that graduate students are not here forever or at least we hope they are not. And uh, as they graduate and before they graduate, they begin to bring in new students first year students who see that this program is going on and see that there are people who are interested in excited about it. And so that really is a major attraction for people to sign up. Speaker 1: [inaudible] [00:09:30] you are listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley we are talking with release has gotten over Professor Bob Bergman and Miriam Bowering about their work with community resources for science. Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say that one of the other things [00:10:00] that I worried about when we started this program was what, what their response was going to be from the research directors. That professors that these graduate students we're working with. Okay. Because you know, you, you could envision, um, somebody giving these kids a hard time because you know, they should be in the lab doing research and here they are out doing presentations in the local schools. I've seen my role as trying to, at least in the chemistry department, keep the faculty informed about what's going on. So right from the beginning when we started [00:10:30] this, uh, I, you know, got up at several meetings. My Chemistry Department faculty meets once a week and I gave several very short presentations telling people that graduate students were going to be doing this and that we hope that everybody would be supportive of it because we thought it was not only good for them educationally, but it was a real service to the community. Speaker 4: One of the things that that actually made this thing go much more smoothly than I might've thought is that a lot of people are supported, their research is supported by the National Science Foundation at [00:11:00] Berkeley and the National Science Foundation has actually required as part of their proposals, something called a statement of broader impact. And one of those broader impacts that you can put into your proposals is something about how people in your research group might be, you know, reaching out to the local community. So I think as time went on, people began to view this not so much as an incursion, as a favor to them because they could easily then put in their proposals the fact that their students were [00:11:30] involved in this and these activities. And I think that really was one of the things that that made it a lot less of a problem to do this and many research groups around the, around the campus, what is the teaching philosophy you apply to building your lesson plans? Speaker 4: There's a lot of, you know, ambiguity's about the research that's been done in educating people. One thing comes through extremely clearly and that is the two general ways that you can think of [00:12:00] or for educating people, and this is really true at any level including the college level, are to stand up in front of them and just talk at them and the other is get people involved in doing things, have them actually do hands on stuff. On the two founders started this, they knew that that kind of research had been done and so they started from the beginning making it clear to people that they were not the volunteers. I mean that they were not going to go in the classroom and just a lecture. Okay, just write things on the board and tell people stuff because [00:12:30] certainly at grades three to five and probably at even higher grades, you're going to lose people after about the first three minutes when you do that. So the, the goal of right from the beginning was to go in with presentations that involved having the kids do stuff that with their own hands and that's been something that we've stuck with really I think quite religiously since the beginning. Speaker 5: Definitely all lessons are expected to be hands on minds, [00:13:00] on, uh, inquiry style work. And Bob mentioned that the typical way you get to scientists in a classroom is someone's mom or dad comes in. And also typically what you get is someone's stands at the front and maybe doesn't talk but maybe just blow something up up there, which is fun for everyone. But it's, it's really great to go in there and gives the kids equipment to play with and let them start figuring things out themselves and, [00:13:30] and be able to guide them. I think it's also interesting to see the way we're able to even help educate teachers a little bit about how science works. So I've seen some really amazing teachers through this program, but you know, none of them are scientists and a lot of them don't really understand basically what it takes to be a scientist. Speaker 5: So at the end we usually give a few minutes to talk about any questions the teacher or students might have. And the teachers say, well, what does it take to be a scientist? Um, [00:14:00] and we might say, well just keep observing the world around you. Stay curious, play with things. And the teacher says, so what they meant to say was study hard and no, no, that's not it. You've got to be able to nurture that natural curiosity kids have. So I think that's a big part of what we do is go in there and kill some myths about what it takes to be a scientist. The great thing about the graduate [00:14:30] students that go in is they shatter stereotypes about scientists for the children. What do you see clip art style in your head when someone says scientist. Right. And that's not what ends up in their classroom. And that's really beautiful to see them kind of taken aback by that. When scientists first in, you know, Speaker 3: young and most of our volunteers are female actually, which is another great plus and young female scientists [00:15:00] doing things that kids didn't think was science. Speaker 4: Yeah. I think that it just turns out that graduate students are almost the ideal place in people's Times of life to do this. I have a bit more time flexibility. They still are still working very hard on their research, but you know, it's not, you know, okay, you have to be here at eight o'clock in the morning, you have to leave at five, you know, the way you would in a corporation setting. They're not overly wellmed with classes, at least not [00:15:30] after the first couple of semesters. So they have some flexibility in, in that regard. And there's a reasonable support from the institution. Right. I think that's a big issue that the, the campus and you know, and uh, as I said to a large extent, the, you know, people's research advisors have really provided a lot of at least moral support for this. And so it, it really makes graduate students almost ideal. Speaker 4: I think what relates is said about, you know, shattering these stereotypes is also has been a really interesting sort of eye opener for me. [00:16:00] It really is true that these kids have a very different stereotype about what scientists are from what they see coming into the classrooms and having people who they see almost as kind of corresponding to s you know, to a big sister or cousin or you know, somebody that, you know, they really can relate to I think has had a big effect. And then having people at, you know, sort of the student time of their lives when they're still young enough to be, to be seen as young people by the kids in the classrooms [00:16:30] as I think been an important facet of this. [inaudible] Speaker 1: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We are talking with releases, got Nova Professor Bob Burg and Miriam Bowery about their work with community resources for science. Speaker 3: [00:17:00] How do you assess the impact your presentations have on students? Speaker 4: Um, no. You put your finger on one of the stickiest issues with respect to all of this kind of thing with respect to education in general, which is not only how do you find out if it works, but how do you define what works? And you know, whether something works and what doesn't, [00:17:30] I think when all of us like to do in the most perfect world is, is actually track the people who experience these presentations and see what difference it makes in their lives. Okay. So this is a big deal, right? Because if you know anything about research in general and educational research, it's not enough to just track the people who have had this experience. You've got to have a control group of people who haven't had the experience, right? And then you've got to track two groups. [00:18:00] And you know, in some ways it's, it's like having a drug that's really effective. Speaker 4: There's a real moral question as to whether it's okay to keep a control group that isn't, doesn't have access to this stuff. Right? But assuming you can do that, um, it would require way more resources than we have to track people, let's say to the point where they've applied to college, right? Or even to the point where they've gone through college to see how successful they've been once they've been in that environment. What we hope and what we sort of believe [00:18:30] deep in our hearts completely intuitively is that people who have these experiences will do better later in their educational lives. But proving that in a scientifically respectable way is a major undertaking and it's one that we really don't have resources for by any means right now. So, you know, we're pretty much working under the, the faith I guess that exposing people to this sort of thing will really make them [00:19:00] more interested in science. Speaker 4: So we really believe quite strongly that a, a major impact of this is not just, you know, generating people who, who might turn out to be scientists. Although we certainly hope that would be one of the things that that happens. But we'd really like to educate the general public on scientific issues, how science is done and why it's exciting and the meaning of many scientific investigations is, and we hope that by catching people catching, you know, kids early and [00:19:30] doing this, uh, really will have a lasting effect. The best we can do is get feedback from the people involved in the program and see whether they like it. And if they like it and they feel it's been successful and there you are at the point at which they're experiencing these presentations, if if they're excited about what we're doing. That's what we're going with. Speaker 5: This is the great thing about community resources for science. There is a staff there who are experts in science education, [00:20:00] so I sent my lesson plan draft to Heidi Williamson who coordinates the basis program and she read it. She gave me a long email with lots of suggestions of various levels of detail and I worked them in and I continued to develop as now my team members are giving me feedback and so are the teachers. So the lessons really do get improved over time from that first draft. It's not, it's not just any graduate student can make something up and go in and help the kids [00:20:30] learn something. There really is some accountability [inaudible] Speaker 4: are there any interesting stories that any of you have that you want to share about classroom experiences with with the program? Speaker 5: My favorite moments in there are when kids really put stuff together. So when they hear what we've told them and they make their observations and then they just come up with something good at their own theory for why a water job looks different from an [00:21:00] oil drop and it really makes sense or why you can get a piece of pencil lead to float on water if it's horizontal but not vertical. And when they can explain that themselves after making the observations, it's just, it's incredibly high ventilation rates if you're not right under the dots, but they actually aren't accomplishing anything in terms of air quality. So that's my plug, I guess, for people to pay attention and think about their environment. Sam Bergeson, thanks [00:21:30] for being on spectrum. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: did you see an example of data visualization? Check out the official campus dashboard at the website. My power.berkeley.edu Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: [00:22:00] irregular feature of spectrum is dimension. A few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. Rick Karnofsky and Lisa cabbage with the calendar Speaker 6: on Saturday, December 1st wonderfest is putting on a special event called end of days. Does Hollywood get doomsday? Right? Planetary Scientists, Chris McKay will discuss this topic as he introduces a special screening of seeking a friend for the end of the world. Starting [00:22:30] Steve Grill and Karen Knightley popcorn is free and a no host drink and candy bar. We'll be there. Tickets are tax deductible and benefit wonderfest and variety children's charity of northern California. They must be purchased in advance for $25 visit wonderfest.org for more info. The annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union is the first week of December at the Moscone Center. Each year they have a public lecture that is [00:23:00] free and open to the public. This year that talk is on Sunday, December 2nd from noon to one and Moscone South Room One oh two lead scientists for the Mars exploration program. Michael Meyer program scientists for the Mars Science Laboratory. John Groton, seeing and participating in scientists on the Mars Science Laboratory. Rebecca Williams, well discuss curiosity driven Mars exploration. Curiosity is the most sophisticated explorer ever sent to another [00:23:30] planet and the trio. We'll talk about its latest activities. A full sized inflatable model of the rover and hands on activities for families will follow the lecture. For more information, visit agu.org Speaker 7: on Tuesday, December 4th at 7:00 PM at the California Academy of Science and Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, Mary Ellen Hannibal. We'll present the Pritzker lecture, the spine of the continent, her book about one of the single most [00:24:00] ambitious conservation efforts ever undertaken to create linked, protected areas extending from the Yukon to Mexico, the entire length of North America. This movement is the brainchild of Michael Sule, the founder of conservation biology. EO Wilson calls it the most important conservation initiative in the world today. In this fascinating presentation, Mary-Ellen Hannibal takes us on a tour of her travels down the length of the North American spine, sharing stories and anecdotes about [00:24:30] the passionate, idiosyncratic people she meets along the way and the species they love. Reservations are required and seating is limited. Go to the California Academy of Science website for tickets. Speaker 6: Now three new stories, and I'm joined by Rick Kaneski and Lisa cabbage. The November 29th issue of nature has an article discussing a massive black hole in the tiny galaxy, n g c one two seven seven one of the galaxies in the cluster that is [00:25:00] the constellation Perseus to the best of our astronomical knowledge. Almost every galaxy should contain in its central region what is called a supermassive black hole. Past studies have shown that the mass of the black coal typically accounts for about a 10th of a percent of the massive its home galaxy that Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. In Heidelberg. Researchers know that the black hole has a mass equivalent of 17 billion suns, that the galaxy [00:25:30] is only a quarter of the milky ways diameter. These observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Hobby Eberly telescope show that the black hole accounts for almost 14% of the galaxies mass past spectrum guests. Nicholas McConnell published a paper last year that holds the current record for the largest black hole, which is between six and 37 billion solar masses. So the black hole in NGC one to seven seven may or may [00:26:00] not top this record. Speaker 7: The journal Nature Geoscience reports this week that the shells of marine snails known as terra pods living in the seas around Antarctica are being dissolved by ocean acidification. These tiny animals are a valuable food source for fish and birds and play an important role in the oceanic carbon cycle. During a science cruise in 2008 researchers from British Antarctic survey and the University of East Anglia in collaboration with colleagues from the [00:26:30] u s would tell oceanographic institution and Noah discovered severe dissolution of the shells of living terra pods in southern ocean waters. The team examined an area of upwelling where winds cause cold water to be pushed upwards from the deep to the surface of the ocean up well, water is usually more corrosive to a particular type of calcium carbonate or arrogant night that terra pods use to build their shells. The team found that as a result of the additional influence of ocean acidification, [00:27:00] this corrosive water severely dissolve the shells of terror pods, coauthor and science cruise leader. Speaker 7: Dr Geraint Tarling says as one of only a few oceanic creatures that build their shells out of air gunnite in the polar regions. Terror pods are an important food source for fish and birds as well as a good indicator of ecosystem health. The tiny snails do not necessarily die as a result of their shells dissolving. However, it may increase their vulnerability to predation and infection. Consequently having an [00:27:30] impact to other parts of the food web. Ocean acidification is caused by the uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere emitted admitted as a result of fossil fuel burning. The finding supports predictions that the impact of ocean acidification on marine ecosystems and food webs may be significant Speaker 2: science daily reports that dozens of climate scientists have reconciled their measurements of ice sheet changes in Antarctica and Greenland over the past two decades. [00:28:00] The results published November 29th in the journal Science roughly have the uncertainty and discard some conflicting observations. The effort led by Andrew Shepherd at the University of Leeds in the UK reconciles three existing ways to measure losses. The first method takes an accounting approach. Combining climate models and observations to tally up the gain or loss to other methods. Use special satellites to precisely measure the height and gravitational pull [00:28:30] of the ice sheets to calculate how much ice is present. Each method has strengths and weaknesses. Until now, scientists using each method released estimates independent from the others. This is the first time they have all compared their methods for the same times and locations. Understanding ice sheets is central to modeling global climate and predicting sea level rise. Even tiny changes to sea level when added over an entire ocean can have substantial [00:29:00] effects on storm surges and flooding and coastal and island communities. Speaker 8: The music heard during the show is by Stan David from his album, folk and acoustic made available by a creative Commons license 3.0 for attribution. Speaker 9: Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please [00:29:30] send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Discussion with Sam Borgeson, a PhD student in the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley. Sam's aim is to reduce the environmental impacts of our buildings. He talks about building energy consumption, energy conservation, and the challenges building managers face in conservation.TranscriptSpeaker 1: [inaudible].Speaker 2: [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x, Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program, bringing you interviews, featuring bay area scientists and technologists, a calendar of local events and news. My name is Brad swift and I'm the host of today's show. Our interview is with three representatives of the organization, community resources for science, also known as crs. They are, relieves [00:01:00] a is cotton Nova crs program, Assistant Professor Bob Bergman of the UC Berkeley Department of chemistry. And Miriam Bowering, a graduate student and Professor Bergman's research group. Community Resources for Science is a nonprofit organization. The goal of crs is to help teachers give elementary and middle school students more opportunities to do science, to ask questions, test ideas, get their hands [00:01:30] on real science activities. Through these efforts, crs hopes to inspire the next generation of thinkers, makers, problem solvers, and leaders. This interview is prerecorded and edited today. We have a group of three people from the community resources for science talking with us about their program. And why don't you each introduce yourself and then we'll get into some details about your organization. Speaker 3: [00:02:00] My name is [inaudible]. Uh, I'm the program assistant at community resources for science. Speaker 4: My name is Bob Bergman. I'm a professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley. And I help to organize an outreach program, which was initially called chemistry in the classroom and then became community in the classroom and now it's called basis and it helps to organize graduate students to do presentations in the local schools. Speaker 3: I'm Miriam Bowering. I am a graduate student in chemistry at UC Berkeley [00:02:30] and I'm also a classroom volunteer. I bring groups of my coworkers into fifth grade classrooms to do science with them. Speaker 2: We're Alyssa, can you give us an overview of what crs does? Speaker 3: Community resources for science is an organization that was started by two parents who were involved with a lot of science in their children's schools and they decided that there was now enough science being done, so they figured out a way to individual teachers [00:03:00] get the resources that they need, uh, Ba snails from a local store or books that they need, um, or waste organized field trips. And it evolved into bringing scientists into classrooms to do hands on presentations as well. And that's grown from that? Uh, yeah. I mean now we're able to organize hundreds of volunteers that we have go into, uh, over 280 classrooms this past year [00:03:30] and get kids involved in doing actual science. And where is it that, uh, that you do this? What school districts? Uh, yeah, we are primarily in Alameda County and the Berkeley and Oakland School districts, uh, that we do the actual presentations because um, our volunteers can reach those areas most easily those schools. Speaker 3: But we go out and provide services to teachers and Castro valley as well. And some of the other West Contra Costa County [00:04:00] schools. What's the grade range that you try to impact? Crs as an organization has been supporting teachers k through five from its beginnings and we've started expanding into middle schools, so mostly sixth grade, um, because they still have one science teacher, but seventh and eighth they kind of start to branch out into different subjects. However, we do still work with teachers in seventh and eighth grade and we're very [00:04:30] willing to provide them with the personal support on an individual basis that they might need, you know, requesting resources and things like that. And we do go into middle schools and do science days where we have four or five lessons going on for different classrooms and they do, you know, one set in the morning and then they switch it around and do another set in the afternoon. And for teachers to get involved, how did they do that? Free?Speaker 5: Uh, yes it is. I think they can just visit the website, [00:05:00] which is www.crscience.org all the information they need is there. So they can not only contact crs to get scientists into their classrooms, but they can also look for other kinds of resources on the website there. Speaker 3: How do you find volunteers? How do you go about recruiting a, we actually recruited a lot more volunteers this past year than [00:05:30] we have in the past. And we're really excited about that. And thanks to our campus coordinators, Leah and Kristen, we were able to really reach out to 20 of the departments on campus and we have volunteers from 20th think what is their 21 departments here at UC Berkeley? So we're really proud of that. And Bob has done a great job of really getting the word out in the Department of Chemistry and college chemistry. A little bit about, how about the history of that is Speaker 4: this really started [00:06:00] almost accidentally. I was at a party and one of the people from crs was someone that my wife had gone to a graduate school at UC Berkeley with and she said that they were thinking about trying to get more scientists into the classrooms and wondered if I knew of anybody who wanted to do that. So I said I would go back to the campus and send out an email message in my department and just see if anyone was interested in doing that because it must have been seven or eight [00:06:30] years ago, I guess. And we started with a group of about 12 volunteers. Uh, we met in a seminar room in the chemistry department and I think it was probably one of the original organizers. It was probably Anne Jennings who came over and gave a short talk about what crs was all about and what they wanted to do to organize this program. Speaker 4: It's not a very simple thing. You not only need to have good contacts with the teachers, but, uh, you can't just throw people [00:07:00] into the classroom directly. You've got to give them some training and, you know, get them to understand what, um, what's age appropriate. Especially for the classes we were targeting, which were grades three to five. So we started with those 12 people and they basically, at that time, I put together their own presentations. And one of the interesting things about this program is that the graduate student volunteers actually come up with their own presentations, mostly isn't canned presentations that they get some [00:07:30] from somewhere else and they've come with, come up with some extremely creative stuff. Um, they're teaching kids at this level of things that I personally, you know, are really relatively sophisticated. And I personally never thought that you'd be able to, you know, sort of do this with people at that age. Speaker 4: But that was reasonably successful and it's really been the graduate student volunteers who've done most of the recruiting. So it started out in the chemistry department and these 12 original people [00:08:00] began to kind of, you know, dragoon their friends into doing this. And so it grew from 12 to 20 to 40 to 50 and then they began to attract and talk to some people in other departments. And then we reached a point where we thought that maybe there was a slightly different way that we could do this. They came up with the idea that maybe instead of doing this on an individual basis, we could do it with teams of graduate students. You may know that [00:08:30] that in most science departments, graduate students are part of research groups. So there'll be one professor who directs a, you know, a bunch of graduate students whom anywhere from three or four to 15 or 20 people, sometimes larger. Speaker 4: Uh, so the idea was to now put together teams that would be localized. Each team would be localized in a particular research group that and that has several advantages. One was that someone who wanted to do this didn't have to join in as kind of a lone individual. There's [00:09:00] always a certain reticence about that. The other thing that I think major advantage of this change was that it generated some continuity so that graduate students are not here forever or at least we hope they are not. And uh, as they graduate and before they graduate, they begin to bring in new students first year students who see that this program is going on and see that there are people who are interested in excited about it. And so that really is a major attraction for people to sign up. Speaker 1: [inaudible] [00:09:30] you are listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley we are talking with release has gotten over Professor Bob Bergman and Miriam Bowering about their work with community resources for science. Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say that one of the other things [00:10:00] that I worried about when we started this program was what, what their response was going to be from the research directors. That professors that these graduate students we're working with. Okay. Because you know, you, you could envision, um, somebody giving these kids a hard time because you know, they should be in the lab doing research and here they are out doing presentations in the local schools. I've seen my role as trying to, at least in the chemistry department, keep the faculty informed about what's going on. So right from the beginning when we started [00:10:30] this, uh, I, you know, got up at several meetings. My Chemistry Department faculty meets once a week and I gave several very short presentations telling people that graduate students were going to be doing this and that we hope that everybody would be supportive of it because we thought it was not only good for them educationally, but it was a real service to the community. Speaker 4: One of the things that that actually made this thing go much more smoothly than I might've thought is that a lot of people are supported, their research is supported by the National Science Foundation at [00:11:00] Berkeley and the National Science Foundation has actually required as part of their proposals, something called a statement of broader impact. And one of those broader impacts that you can put into your proposals is something about how people in your research group might be, you know, reaching out to the local community. So I think as time went on, people began to view this not so much as an incursion, as a favor to them because they could easily then put in their proposals the fact that their students were [00:11:30] involved in this and these activities. And I think that really was one of the things that that made it a lot less of a problem to do this and many research groups around the, around the campus, what is the teaching philosophy you apply to building your lesson plans? Speaker 4: There's a lot of, you know, ambiguity's about the research that's been done in educating people. One thing comes through extremely clearly and that is the two general ways that you can think of [00:12:00] or for educating people, and this is really true at any level including the college level, are to stand up in front of them and just talk at them and the other is get people involved in doing things, have them actually do hands on stuff. On the two founders started this, they knew that that kind of research had been done and so they started from the beginning making it clear to people that they were not the volunteers. I mean that they were not going to go in the classroom and just a lecture. Okay, just write things on the board and tell people stuff because [00:12:30] certainly at grades three to five and probably at even higher grades, you're going to lose people after about the first three minutes when you do that. So the, the goal of right from the beginning was to go in with presentations that involved having the kids do stuff that with their own hands and that's been something that we've stuck with really I think quite religiously since the beginning. Speaker 5: Definitely all lessons are expected to be hands on minds, [00:13:00] on, uh, inquiry style work. And Bob mentioned that the typical way you get to scientists in a classroom is someone's mom or dad comes in. And also typically what you get is someone's stands at the front and maybe doesn't talk but maybe just blow something up up there, which is fun for everyone. But it's, it's really great to go in there and gives the kids equipment to play with and let them start figuring things out themselves and, [00:13:30] and be able to guide them. I think it's also interesting to see the way we're able to even help educate teachers a little bit about how science works. So I've seen some really amazing teachers through this program, but you know, none of them are scientists and a lot of them don't really understand basically what it takes to be a scientist. Speaker 5: So at the end we usually give a few minutes to talk about any questions the teacher or students might have. And the teachers say, well, what does it take to be a scientist? Um, [00:14:00] and we might say, well just keep observing the world around you. Stay curious, play with things. And the teacher says, so what they meant to say was study hard and no, no, that's not it. You've got to be able to nurture that natural curiosity kids have. So I think that's a big part of what we do is go in there and kill some myths about what it takes to be a scientist. The great thing about the graduate [00:14:30] students that go in is they shatter stereotypes about scientists for the children. What do you see clip art style in your head when someone says scientist. Right. And that's not what ends up in their classroom. And that's really beautiful to see them kind of taken aback by that. When scientists first in, you know, Speaker 3: young and most of our volunteers are female actually, which is another great plus and young female scientists [00:15:00] doing things that kids didn't think was science. Speaker 4: Yeah. I think that it just turns out that graduate students are almost the ideal place in people's Times of life to do this. I have a bit more time flexibility. They still are still working very hard on their research, but you know, it's not, you know, okay, you have to be here at eight o'clock in the morning, you have to leave at five, you know, the way you would in a corporation setting. They're not overly wellmed with classes, at least not [00:15:30] after the first couple of semesters. So they have some flexibility in, in that regard. And there's a reasonable support from the institution. Right. I think that's a big issue that the, the campus and you know, and uh, as I said to a large extent, the, you know, people's research advisors have really provided a lot of at least moral support for this. And so it, it really makes graduate students almost ideal. Speaker 4: I think what relates is said about, you know, shattering these stereotypes is also has been a really interesting sort of eye opener for me. [00:16:00] It really is true that these kids have a very different stereotype about what scientists are from what they see coming into the classrooms and having people who they see almost as kind of corresponding to s you know, to a big sister or cousin or you know, somebody that, you know, they really can relate to I think has had a big effect. And then having people at, you know, sort of the student time of their lives when they're still young enough to be, to be seen as young people by the kids in the classrooms [00:16:30] as I think been an important facet of this. [inaudible] Speaker 1: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We are talking with releases, got Nova Professor Bob Burg and Miriam Bowery about their work with community resources for science. Speaker 3: [00:17:00] How do you assess the impact your presentations have on students? Speaker 4: Um, no. You put your finger on one of the stickiest issues with respect to all of this kind of thing with respect to education in general, which is not only how do you find out if it works, but how do you define what works? And you know, whether something works and what doesn't, [00:17:30] I think when all of us like to do in the most perfect world is, is actually track the people who experience these presentations and see what difference it makes in their lives. Okay. So this is a big deal, right? Because if you know anything about research in general and educational research, it's not enough to just track the people who have had this experience. You've got to have a control group of people who haven't had the experience, right? And then you've got to track two groups. [00:18:00] And you know, in some ways it's, it's like having a drug that's really effective. Speaker 4: There's a real moral question as to whether it's okay to keep a control group that isn't, doesn't have access to this stuff. Right? But assuming you can do that, um, it would require way more resources than we have to track people, let's say to the point where they've applied to college, right? Or even to the point where they've gone through college to see how successful they've been once they've been in that environment. What we hope and what we sort of believe [00:18:30] deep in our hearts completely intuitively is that people who have these experiences will do better later in their educational lives. But proving that in a scientifically respectable way is a major undertaking and it's one that we really don't have resources for by any means right now. So, you know, we're pretty much working under the, the faith I guess that exposing people to this sort of thing will really make them [00:19:00] more interested in science. Speaker 4: So we really believe quite strongly that a, a major impact of this is not just, you know, generating people who, who might turn out to be scientists. Although we certainly hope that would be one of the things that that happens. But we'd really like to educate the general public on scientific issues, how science is done and why it's exciting and the meaning of many scientific investigations is, and we hope that by catching people catching, you know, kids early and [00:19:30] doing this, uh, really will have a lasting effect. The best we can do is get feedback from the people involved in the program and see whether they like it. And if they like it and they feel it's been successful and there you are at the point at which they're experiencing these presentations, if if they're excited about what we're doing. That's what we're going with. Speaker 5: This is the great thing about community resources for science. There is a staff there who are experts in science education, [00:20:00] so I sent my lesson plan draft to Heidi Williamson who coordinates the basis program and she read it. She gave me a long email with lots of suggestions of various levels of detail and I worked them in and I continued to develop as now my team members are giving me feedback and so are the teachers. So the lessons really do get improved over time from that first draft. It's not, it's not just any graduate student can make something up and go in and help the kids [00:20:30] learn something. There really is some accountability [inaudible] Speaker 4: are there any interesting stories that any of you have that you want to share about classroom experiences with with the program? Speaker 5: My favorite moments in there are when kids really put stuff together. So when they hear what we've told them and they make their observations and then they just come up with something good at their own theory for why a water job looks different from an [00:21:00] oil drop and it really makes sense or why you can get a piece of pencil lead to float on water if it's horizontal but not vertical. And when they can explain that themselves after making the observations, it's just, it's incredibly high ventilation rates if you're not right under the dots, but they actually aren't accomplishing anything in terms of air quality. So that's my plug, I guess, for people to pay attention and think about their environment. Sam Bergeson, thanks [00:21:30] for being on spectrum. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: did you see an example of data visualization? Check out the official campus dashboard at the website. My power.berkeley.edu Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: [00:22:00] irregular feature of spectrum is dimension. A few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. Rick Karnofsky and Lisa cabbage with the calendar Speaker 6: on Saturday, December 1st wonderfest is putting on a special event called end of days. Does Hollywood get doomsday? Right? Planetary Scientists, Chris McKay will discuss this topic as he introduces a special screening of seeking a friend for the end of the world. Starting [00:22:30] Steve Grill and Karen Knightley popcorn is free and a no host drink and candy bar. We'll be there. Tickets are tax deductible and benefit wonderfest and variety children's charity of northern California. They must be purchased in advance for $25 visit wonderfest.org for more info. The annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union is the first week of December at the Moscone Center. Each year they have a public lecture that is [00:23:00] free and open to the public. This year that talk is on Sunday, December 2nd from noon to one and Moscone South Room One oh two lead scientists for the Mars exploration program. Michael Meyer program scientists for the Mars Science Laboratory. John Groton, seeing and participating in scientists on the Mars Science Laboratory. Rebecca Williams, well discuss curiosity driven Mars exploration. Curiosity is the most sophisticated explorer ever sent to another [00:23:30] planet and the trio. We'll talk about its latest activities. A full sized inflatable model of the rover and hands on activities for families will follow the lecture. For more information, visit agu.org Speaker 7: on Tuesday, December 4th at 7:00 PM at the California Academy of Science and Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, Mary Ellen Hannibal. We'll present the Pritzker lecture, the spine of the continent, her book about one of the single most [00:24:00] ambitious conservation efforts ever undertaken to create linked, protected areas extending from the Yukon to Mexico, the entire length of North America. This movement is the brainchild of Michael Sule, the founder of conservation biology. EO Wilson calls it the most important conservation initiative in the world today. In this fascinating presentation, Mary-Ellen Hannibal takes us on a tour of her travels down the length of the North American spine, sharing stories and anecdotes about [00:24:30] the passionate, idiosyncratic people she meets along the way and the species they love. Reservations are required and seating is limited. Go to the California Academy of Science website for tickets. Speaker 6: Now three new stories, and I'm joined by Rick Kaneski and Lisa cabbage. The November 29th issue of nature has an article discussing a massive black hole in the tiny galaxy, n g c one two seven seven one of the galaxies in the cluster that is [00:25:00] the constellation Perseus to the best of our astronomical knowledge. Almost every galaxy should contain in its central region what is called a supermassive black hole. Past studies have shown that the mass of the black coal typically accounts for about a 10th of a percent of the massive its home galaxy that Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. In Heidelberg. Researchers know that the black hole has a mass equivalent of 17 billion suns, that the galaxy [00:25:30] is only a quarter of the milky ways diameter. These observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Hobby Eberly telescope show that the black hole accounts for almost 14% of the galaxies mass past spectrum guests. Nicholas McConnell published a paper last year that holds the current record for the largest black hole, which is between six and 37 billion solar masses. So the black hole in NGC one to seven seven may or may [00:26:00] not top this record. Speaker 7: The journal Nature Geoscience reports this week that the shells of marine snails known as terra pods living in the seas around Antarctica are being dissolved by ocean acidification. These tiny animals are a valuable food source for fish and birds and play an important role in the oceanic carbon cycle. During a science cruise in 2008 researchers from British Antarctic survey and the University of East Anglia in collaboration with colleagues from the [00:26:30] u s would tell oceanographic institution and Noah discovered severe dissolution of the shells of living terra pods in southern ocean waters. The team examined an area of upwelling where winds cause cold water to be pushed upwards from the deep to the surface of the ocean up well, water is usually more corrosive to a particular type of calcium carbonate or arrogant night that terra pods use to build their shells. The team found that as a result of the additional influence of ocean acidification, [00:27:00] this corrosive water severely dissolve the shells of terror pods, coauthor and science cruise leader. Speaker 7: Dr Geraint Tarling says as one of only a few oceanic creatures that build their shells out of air gunnite in the polar regions. Terror pods are an important food source for fish and birds as well as a good indicator of ecosystem health. The tiny snails do not necessarily die as a result of their shells dissolving. However, it may increase their vulnerability to predation and infection. Consequently having an [00:27:30] impact to other parts of the food web. Ocean acidification is caused by the uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere emitted admitted as a result of fossil fuel burning. The finding supports predictions that the impact of ocean acidification on marine ecosystems and food webs may be significant Speaker 2: science daily reports that dozens of climate scientists have reconciled their measurements of ice sheet changes in Antarctica and Greenland over the past two decades. [00:28:00] The results published November 29th in the journal Science roughly have the uncertainty and discard some conflicting observations. The effort led by Andrew Shepherd at the University of Leeds in the UK reconciles three existing ways to measure losses. The first method takes an accounting approach. Combining climate models and observations to tally up the gain or loss to other methods. Use special satellites to precisely measure the height and gravitational pull [00:28:30] of the ice sheets to calculate how much ice is present. Each method has strengths and weaknesses. Until now, scientists using each method released estimates independent from the others. This is the first time they have all compared their methods for the same times and locations. Understanding ice sheets is central to modeling global climate and predicting sea level rise. Even tiny changes to sea level when added over an entire ocean can have substantial [00:29:00] effects on storm surges and flooding and coastal and island communities. Speaker 8: The music heard during the show is by Stan David from his album, folk and acoustic made available by a creative Commons license 3.0 for attribution. Speaker 9: Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please [00:29:30] send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Learn how the hidden world just beneath the surface could hold the key to our climate and and energy future. Eoin Brodie explores how shifting rainfall patterns affect the soil and the carbon cycle. Janet Jansson looks at the potential of microbes in the soil to lead to better biofuels or to help scientists understand the planet’s carbon cycle. Margaret Torn examines what will happen to the carbon in soil as the climate changes. Trent Northen explores how soil microbes adapt to extreme environments. Moderated by John Harte, who holds a joint professorship in the Energy and Resources Group and the Ecosystem Sciences Division of UC Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources. Series: "Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory " [Science] [Show ID: 23269]

Learn how the hidden world just beneath the surface could hold the key to our climate and and energy future. Eoin Brodie explores how shifting rainfall patterns affect the soil and the carbon cycle. Janet Jansson looks at the potential of microbes in the soil to lead to better biofuels or to help scientists understand the planet’s carbon cycle. Margaret Torn examines what will happen to the carbon in soil as the climate changes. Trent Northen explores how soil microbes adapt to extreme environments. Moderated by John Harte, who holds a joint professorship in the Energy and Resources Group and the Ecosystem Sciences Division of UC Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources. Series: "Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory " [Science] [Show ID: 23269]

Chris Jones is a Research Associate at RAEL and Phd student in ERG at UC Berkeley. His research is in industrial ecology, environmental psychology, ecological economics. He is lead developer of the CoolClimate Calculator at the web site coolcalifornia.org.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. Our interview is with Chris Jones, a research associate at the renewable inappropriate energy laboratory known as rail and a doctoral [00:01:00] student in the energy and Resources Group at the University of California Berkeley. His primary research interests intersect the fields of industrial ecology, environmental psychology, ecological economics and climate change policy. He is lead developer of the cool climate calculator and online tool that allows households and businesses to estimate their complete carbon footprints, compare their results to similar users and develop personalized climate action plans to [00:01:30] reduce their contribution to climate change. Versions of this tool have been adopted by the state of California via the cool climate network partnership along with nongovernmental organizations and communities throughout the United States. Chris Jones, welcome to spectrum. Thank you very much, Brad. Thank you for having me. Can you give us an overview of the renewable inappropriate energy lab? Speaker 4: Sure. Rail as we call it, is a multidisciplinary energy research [00:02:00] lab on campus. The director is professor Dan Kevin. He's a leading energy expert in really a broad range of disciplines. And then the important part about rail and the energy and resources group is that it's multidisciplinary. So everybody at Erg has to do engineering policy, environmental sciences, social sciences. There's also a lot of law and business and public health and we put it all together. Rail is really solutions oriented. So we're looking at developing programs, technology [00:02:30] and policy and putting them together both in developing country context and in developed countries, for example, here in the United States. Speaker 3: So the lab is this interdisciplinary group. And do you have a certain focus for yourself? Speaker 4: We've been developing online carbon management software for quite some time now. And we are also developing programs that use these carbon management tools. So we do lifecycle assessment and we do behavioral sciences [00:03:00] and we try to put those two, uh, disciplines together in new ways. Speaker 3: And I think the lifecycle assessment I'd be, I'm curious about how you, how you go about it Speaker 4: doing that. Sure. Lifecycle assessment is really the foundation of the work that we do in the lab in the cool climate network which develops these online carbon management tools. Lifecycle analysis fundamentally is just looking at the materials and the processes that go into a product or a service [00:03:30] and then applying emission factors essentially for each of the material in inputs. A problem is of course is that for any given product there could be hundreds of companies involved or more in making any individual products so it can get out rather complicated. What you end up doing is making certain assumptions about average materials or average products and trying to figure out what are the important components of that product and then coming up with an estimate. Of course people have different ways. Different researchers [00:04:00] have different assumptions that go into, you know, analysis so you could get different researchers doing analysis of the same product and come up with different answers. Speaker 4: Many times, thankfully there are international standards of doing this stuff. We really look not at the product level but at the full consumer level. So, uh, we might look at the typical American household and say, well how much meat do they consume? How much dairy do they consume, how many grains and how much [00:04:30] vegetables do they consume and come up with an estimate of their total food carbon footprint. And they compare that to their transportation footprint, their energy footprint, waste and come up with a full more comprehensive analysis. So we're really looking at the high level and then some of the uncertainties in the individual product life cycle assessment can kind of, um, hit the impact of those is less important. Speaker 3: So the focus is on a broader use pattern rather than discreet individual products. Speaker 4: [00:05:00] Yeah, exactly. And in, in some sense for some people, being able to differentiate between individual products is the holy grail for many people. So being able to tell the difference between product air B, which one should I select? The problem is that given uncertainties in life cycle assessment, the uncertainty or the margin of error is often greater than the difference between the competing products. So you really will never be able to tell the difference between coke or Pepsi, [00:05:30] but what we can tell is that on average soda has this impact and milk as something else and water has a very different carbon footprint. Those are the types of data that we can provide to individuals that I think is useful and meaningful as well and that we have actually good data to support. Speaker 3: Do you use some data and not other data because of those, those very differences that you were talking about and how do you choose what data is going to be the best? We have to look Speaker 4: at how other practitioners [00:06:00] are using the data and which data are the most highly vetted, but in many cases we need to use a new data and so it really is a ongoing process of validation using the peer review system as kind of a minimum bar for validating the types of data that we think could be used. Speaker 3: Is The lab trying to do some data generation of its own? Speaker 4: We are mainly providing secondary data and [00:06:30] analysis and algorithms that we try to make freely available. We think that providing sophisticated analysis that's also transparent and we develop into this online software that's user friendly, that we make freely available. We think that that really is our value in collecting a lot of the data, putting it together in new and useful ways. So in terms of collecting raw data, we don't actually collect a lot of our own raw data. Speaker 3: So in building your models, are [00:07:00] there any overarching algorithm approaches or is each case setup Speaker 4: cool? Well, each case is, is very different. They're little engineering models that we put together for either each kind of product or each behavior that we're trying to change. And oftentimes we draw on existing research and those models can be very different. At the end of the day though, it really comes down to pretty simple math, back of the envelope calculations. And many times they, they really do start out in the corner [00:07:30] of a piece of paper somewhere and we, you know, we put them into our spreadsheet models. We also do, uh, different econometric models. We do engineering analysis, energy analysis, life cycle input, output analysis. And, uh, we do try to look at what other researchers are doing. I think it's really important for researchers to be able to share methods, be able to share data and through online systems you can actually do that. And really interesting and new ways. It's called open data [00:08:00] or linked data. So if you want the carbon footprint of a product, you should just be able to put in your software carbon footprint, this product and anybody who's done research on that, the data should just pop right into your wife's website and it should be done in real time. So there's a movement to make open and link data widely and freely available. Speaker 5: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. [00:08:30] We are talking with Chris Jones about carbon footprint calculator. He helped develop called the cool climate calculator. You can try it if the website cool. California Dipo RG. Speaker 3: The cool climate calculator is focused now in the United States. And what are your plans for taking it beyond that? Speaker 4: In fact, the next [00:09:00] stage is to develop international versions of the calculator. So we've already in partnership with researchers in Brazil, built a Brazilian one version. We've built a version for the US Virgin Islands. We're developing a version now for Sweden and we have an abroad international dataset that we're going to be using to develop international version of the tool. We're also trying to get much more specific and local and better within the United States. So to get these, you know, estimates at the city level, actually [00:09:30] something we've developed but haven't launched on the online interface yet. Ultimately we'd like the city of Berkeley and the city of Los Angeles and you know, any city in the United States actually to have an online portal, kind of a dashboard system, uh, that has all this information displayed in really useful ways. And also ultimately we'd like to do it over time as well. And we have these estimates to see how, uh, cities are meeting their climate action goals. For example, to see how users within a particular community are using [00:10:00] the tool, engaging with their community based programs to set targets, engage in local programs and not only make pledges but actually make reductions and track those. Over time Speaker 3: it would seem that Americans are so much more wasteful than the international community in general. So that the contrast that if we can do it here then with, with having the website able to contrast what it's like California versus Italy [00:10:30] versus Spain, Speaker 4: turns out the, the largest contributors in the United States to carbon footprints often are not the largest contributors elsewhere. And many countries they have larger sources of renewable energy, uh, hydro energy, nuclear energy, which means that emissions from energy consumption are much, much lower. Half of our energy, electricity is produced by coal and a huge carbon footprint from using energy in this country. It's less than California. We have a lot of natural gas [00:11:00] and it turns out that in many developing countries is actually food that is the largest impact. You know, these comparisons internationally are really interesting, but ultimately you're right. I mean the United States, our carbon footprint is on average five times greater than the global average. So let's say we're able to reduce our emissions by 80%. Well that would just get us to the current global average and if everybody lived like that, we would have the existing emissions of greenhouse gases. Speaker 4: [00:11:30] We need to get 80% below that. In order to stabilize the climate, we need to think about what types of programs we put in place in order for us to get there. A lot of people look at individual behavior and they say, well, that's not where it is. Um, you know, we have to change policy, we have to change technology and of course those things are true. However, we won't get all the way through policy and technology. We, the studies that we've done through other studies that I've seen from other groups that what is in placed in projected [00:12:00] won't actually get us there. We need to change behavior and through individual behavior. Anybody who has taken steps to reduce their own impact immediately wants to do collective action. They want to show others what they've done and it's much more powerful if they can move towards collective action. Speaker 4: And then from collective action they often move to political action. So we say, well it's a chicken and egg thing and we say we can't do anything without political world, but you're not going to get political will without getting people involved. And so by showing [00:12:30] people that this is actually easy, fun, makes your life better, you would ultimately generate the political world. So I think behavior needs to play an important role and it's all behavior. People need to adopt the technology. That's behavior. People need to adopt the policies, support the politicians that are going to drive change. And so really understanding individual behavior I think is really an important key to invest in it. Speaker 5: [inaudible] [00:13:00] you are listening to spectrum KALX Berkeley. We are talking with Chris Jones by his work to influence greenhouse gas related behavior by individuals, families, businesses, and communities. Speaker 3: What is it that refines the data and can you characterize how the data gets better? Speaker 4: We like [00:13:30] to develop smart tools. Ultimately we'd like to develop learning tools, uh, learning tools that can collect data from all of the users and then be able to use that in ways that can help inform the development of the, of the, the tools as well. Particularly things like the recommendations. So we could look at the most popular recommendations or how many people are taking this particular action, how much total CO2 are people saving from these particular actions. We also have a lot [00:14:00] of work, just basic research grant work in collecting all of these new data sets because there are so many that go into our tools and updating them all the time and it's just a constant task for us to do to keep these tools updated. Now, if the data were smart and linked in an open data and linked data framework, our job would be much, much easier. But we have to make our own data open and linked as well before we can expect that from others. Ultimately [00:14:30] someday, hopefully, um, these totals will get much smarter, much quicker. Speaker 3: So the real goal then is to make your program the centralized repository. Speaker 4: We can think of it like a hub, a hub of part of a network, a large network. And so hopefully our hub will support lots of other initiatives. And of course there'll other hubs out there as well. But the important thing is to kind of link this kind of sophisticated is information network together in a way that [00:15:00] is optimal that that kind of meets everybody's needs at the lowest cost, lowest amount of investment. I think. And Dan Cameron, a director of our lab has said this many times, the greatest barrier out there right now is just lack of technical expertise in solving all of these problems. There's a tremendous need for research capacity, for intellectual capacity because all of these disciplines need to work together. So a lot of experts in many different disciplines, [00:15:30] but how do they work together? We have a limited kind of ability to solve these problems collectively. Speaker 4: And if we're all doing the similar work or certainly not optimizing our potential. So somehow we have to learn to communicate in a much more effective way. That's a real challenge. Well, it's a real challenge. Even on campus. We don't know what each other are doing. I had a meeting last week in a research lab and told them about the data that we had and they like, oh great. That [00:16:00] would save us months worth of work. We're planning on doing the same thing. They didn't know we had it and you know there are over 400 researchers on campus, faculty doing environmental research just right here on campus and we often don't know what each other are doing. I'm not faculty. I work under Dan. So Dan has, you know, he's one of the 400 and then Dan has staff and graduate students who are all doing different things too. Now that's just right here on campus, much less statewide, nationally, internationally. It's, it [00:16:30] is really a challenge to know what people are doing and more and more people don't want to share what they're doing until it's done. So it's, it is a, it is a challenge. Yeah. Speaker 5: [inaudible] spectrum on KALX Berkeley. We're talking with Chris Jones about the cool climate calculator he developed. You [00:17:00] can try this calculator at the website. Cool. california.com [inaudible]. Speaker 4: So you've mentioned that you're looking at, at a more of an overview context, but do you feel that products in general should have an identifiable greenhouse gas rating or not in terms of information on specific products? [00:17:30] I think you need to look at, you know, experts like the GoodGuide, uh, who, whose job it is to evaluate what we can actually say, given what we know about particular products. And often it's not the product we know about, it's the company, but are we able to put a carbon score on an individual product? Hmm. Some sort of rating I think is possible. And I don't know if a carbon score itself is meaningful to people may not be, then there's other issues involved. So it depends [00:18:00] on what the product is, you know, if it's a cleaning product, then you care about the chemical makeup as well as you might want to know was it intensive carbon use to make it? Speaker 4: Yeah. So there's, there's a variety of things that come into the mix and it would seem that you have a large behavioral component in what you're trying to do. And so you don't really want to overwhelm people with data and make them more confused than they were or drive them away from even trying to deal [00:18:30] with this, right? It's how are you trying to assess what, what works, what doesn't work, right? Well, people can quickly get overloaded with information. Absolutely. And you have to be really selective with the type of information that you provide to two people. And the context in which you provided is really important. If it is a recommendation that comes from a friend, and that can be much more useful than going to some website somewhere and clicking through and trying to find out some data. [00:19:00] We are really highly influenced by our peers and not just what are our friends doing? Speaker 4: What are people like us doing, but what do they expect of me? How do they expect me to behave? And those social influences are really extremely important on determining our behavior. We need to learn to tap into those social [inaudible] motivations and to really understand what drives people's behavior. And that is part of the work that we do through a program called the cool California challenge. [00:19:30] It's a competition between California cities to be the coolest California city. So we're going to engage cities across the state in competition. We're going to choose three finalists. Individuals are going to get points for doing things we want them to do, so they'll get points for reducing their energy consumption, they get points for driving their car less. Uh, we're gonna use this as a social experiment to figure out what types of messages, what types of incentives, what types of rewards are going to motivate individuals, [00:20:00] at least in a California context. Speaker 4: And when does that start? Well, it'll start in early 2012 once we have got all of the approvals we need from the university. So people are going to be able to voluntarily share information through the program. And so we'll be picking three cool California cities and they have the chance to even become the coolest California city. But really it's about community building more about collaboration than anything else. So we're using these [00:20:30] points structure as a way to engage the community in a whole range of different efforts that they want to do already. To the extent that we can quantify the emission savings from things that they're doing, which is what we're good at, we'll be able to give them points. And those points were kind of serve as an umbrella for accomplishing things that the city wants to already accomplish to meet its climate action goals. For example, Speaker 6: is there any point that I haven't brought up that you wanted to make about [00:21:00] the research or the lab that you're Speaker 4: part of? Well, one thing that does come up often in a university is how can people make a career of this kind of thing? Well, often my answer is, well, how can you not make a career about it? At Berkeley, we have so many opportunities to do this type of work, to do work that's meaningful. It may not be climate change related work, but to do something that is of value to society and we have in some sense an obligation to do that [00:21:30] because we have kind of an opportunity cost if we decide not to take this opportunity to create programs, to use this information for the benefit of society and we decided to do something that is a little perhaps more self-serving than we're kind of foregoing that opportunity. I feel like there's just tremendous amount of potential here on campus to really be leaders to, you know, making a better world. Speaker 4: And I think that's what most people here try to do. Whatever discipline they're in, hopefully [00:22:00] students recognize that hey, they want to get involved. Tons of things for them to do. Volunteer your time, find some time to dedicate to a research lab that's doing this stuff. We have hundreds of research tasks that need doing. It's really just endless the amount of opportunities here, so people who want to get involved, lots of things to do. Lots of good work to be done. Chris Jones, thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Thank you so much for having me. Speaker 5: [inaudible] [00:22:30] your resolution to lower your carbon footprint in 2012 and beyond can be realized with the help of the cool climate calculator. Does it cool. california.org that is cool. California all one word.org Speaker 6: a regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. [00:23:00] Rick Karnofsky joins me for the calendar on New Year's Day. This Sunday, the Arden wood historic farm 34 600 Arden Wood Boulevard in Fremont is hosting a $2 walk to a Monarch Butterfly overwintering site. Discover the amazing migration of these tiny creatures and how they survive the long cold season. In the eucalyptus trees, you'll use spotting scopes to see the magnificent creatures up close and personal. There are two drop in events with no registration required. [00:23:30] The first walk is 1130 to 1230 and the second walk is one 30 to two 30 call (510) 544-2797 for more information. January 5th is the first Thursday of the month and thus free admission day at the UC botanical garden. The garden is open 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM there is a docent tour at 1:30 PM on the first Thursdays of the month. Speaker 6: They explore to him next to the Palace of fine arts in San Francisco. Hosts [00:24:00] after dark from six to 10:00 PM four guests 18 and over. Enjoy the standard museum exhibits, cocktails for purchase and special attractions that vary by the month. Theme. January's theme is rock, paper, scissors. In addition to a tournament they exploratorium. We'll have a talk by evolutionary ecologist, various nervo on how the evolutionary game of rock, paper, scissors is played by the common side. Blotched lizard. Learn how the game is found in hundreds of species worldwide [00:24:30] and how it drives the formation of new lizard species and keeping with the rock part of the theme. SLAC national accelerator laboratory scientists, Sam web reveals how paleontologists determine pigmentation patterns in dinosaur skin and feathers by using an intense x-rays to excite copper, calcium, and other elemental Addams embedded in fossils. Paper brings you collaborative, ink drying and scissors brings you complimentary. Speaker 6: Haircuts and mission is $15 $12 for senior students and persons [00:25:00] with disabilities or is free for our members. Visit www.exploratorium.edu/after dark for more information, the bay area skeptics present a talk titled Skepticism and critical thinking. Teaching our children and ourselves. This free event presented by Dr Matt Norman, associate professor and director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Psychology at University of the Pacific. He characterizes the talk by saying we all need to evaluate [00:25:30] the world critically and scientifically without disability. We fall prey to anyone wishing to sell us goods and services regardless of their true efficacy, effectiveness or even harmfulness. This will be Wednesday, January 11th that Cafe Valparaiso 31 oh five Shattuck avenue in Berkeley. That talk begins at 7:00 PM Thursday is the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco's golden gate park hosts nightlife from six to 10:00 PM four guests 21 and over. There's no nightlife for January 5th [00:26:00] consider heading to the exploratorium instead. There will be a nightlife on January 12th the theme is how to, in honor of the new year, nightlife is teaming up with experts at skillshare. Speaker 6: Make SF, the distilled man and the bike kitchen to create the ultimate how to workshop at stations throughout the building. Learn to play guitar, build a bike, juggle boil and egg pin insects, DJ like a pro with help from the urban music program and even how to impress your date with your knowledge [00:26:30] of the cosmos. It's also your last chance to visit the live reindeer. See the Aurora borealis in this new man theater and dance under a snow flurry in the Piatsa before the season. Four science closes on January 16th tickets are $12 or $10 for academy members. For details in tickets, please visit bit dot Lee slash n l Dash Info. Now several news stories. The Kepler space telescope has found the first two earth sized exoplanets. [00:27:00] The planets are currently due. You noted Kepler 20 e and capital 20 f and orbit a sunlight star called Kepler 20 that is 950 light years from us. Speaker 6: Kepler 20 he is 87% of their size, but at 1,040 Kelvin is hot enough that it has most likely evaporated. Any atmosphere capital of 20 f might have an atmosphere and is only 3% larger than Earth at 705 Kelvin is still quite warm. UC Santa Cruz, planetary [00:27:30] scientists, Jonathan Forney claims. If it started out with the amount of water we had on earth and Venus is probably long gone just like it is on Venus. But if that planet had a tremendous amount more water than it might have some leftover, the coupler 20 system includes an additional three larger planets and surprisingly these have orbits that alternate with the small earth sized planets. Speaker 6: Science now reports that pigeons can learn basic math, while many species can discriminate quantities. [00:28:00] So you were thought to be able to reason numerically. In fact, many believed only primates can do this. Damien scarf in his colleagues of the University of Ark to go in New Zealand trained pigeons to sort sets by the number of objects within the set, regardless of the color or shape of objects that the set contained Duke University neuroscientist, Elizabeth Brennan, noted that despite completely different brain organization and hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary divergence, pigeons and monkeys [00:28:30] solve this problem. In a similar way, the findings make scientists optimistic about finding basic and perhaps even advanced mathematical skills in other animals. Speaker 2: Yeah. [inaudible] [inaudible] the music heard during the show is from a David loss sauna album titled Folk and Acoustic. [00:29:00] Thank you for listening to spectrum. We are happy to hear from listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email or email address. Is spectrum a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [00:29:30] [inaudible] [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Chris Jones is a Research Associate at RAEL and Phd student in ERG at UC Berkeley. His research is in industrial ecology, environmental psychology, ecological economics. He is lead developer of the CoolClimate Calculator at the web site coolcalifornia.org.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. Our interview is with Chris Jones, a research associate at the renewable inappropriate energy laboratory known as rail and a doctoral [00:01:00] student in the energy and Resources Group at the University of California Berkeley. His primary research interests intersect the fields of industrial ecology, environmental psychology, ecological economics and climate change policy. He is lead developer of the cool climate calculator and online tool that allows households and businesses to estimate their complete carbon footprints, compare their results to similar users and develop personalized climate action plans to [00:01:30] reduce their contribution to climate change. Versions of this tool have been adopted by the state of California via the cool climate network partnership along with nongovernmental organizations and communities throughout the United States. Chris Jones, welcome to spectrum. Thank you very much, Brad. Thank you for having me. Can you give us an overview of the renewable inappropriate energy lab? Speaker 4: Sure. Rail as we call it, is a multidisciplinary energy research [00:02:00] lab on campus. The director is professor Dan Kevin. He's a leading energy expert in really a broad range of disciplines. And then the important part about rail and the energy and resources group is that it's multidisciplinary. So everybody at Erg has to do engineering policy, environmental sciences, social sciences. There's also a lot of law and business and public health and we put it all together. Rail is really solutions oriented. So we're looking at developing programs, technology [00:02:30] and policy and putting them together both in developing country context and in developed countries, for example, here in the United States. Speaker 3: So the lab is this interdisciplinary group. And do you have a certain focus for yourself? Speaker 4: We've been developing online carbon management software for quite some time now. And we are also developing programs that use these carbon management tools. So we do lifecycle assessment and we do behavioral sciences [00:03:00] and we try to put those two, uh, disciplines together in new ways. Speaker 3: And I think the lifecycle assessment I'd be, I'm curious about how you, how you go about it Speaker 4: doing that. Sure. Lifecycle assessment is really the foundation of the work that we do in the lab in the cool climate network which develops these online carbon management tools. Lifecycle analysis fundamentally is just looking at the materials and the processes that go into a product or a service [00:03:30] and then applying emission factors essentially for each of the material in inputs. A problem is of course is that for any given product there could be hundreds of companies involved or more in making any individual products so it can get out rather complicated. What you end up doing is making certain assumptions about average materials or average products and trying to figure out what are the important components of that product and then coming up with an estimate. Of course people have different ways. Different researchers [00:04:00] have different assumptions that go into, you know, analysis so you could get different researchers doing analysis of the same product and come up with different answers. Speaker 4: Many times, thankfully there are international standards of doing this stuff. We really look not at the product level but at the full consumer level. So, uh, we might look at the typical American household and say, well how much meat do they consume? How much dairy do they consume, how many grains and how much [00:04:30] vegetables do they consume and come up with an estimate of their total food carbon footprint. And they compare that to their transportation footprint, their energy footprint, waste and come up with a full more comprehensive analysis. So we're really looking at the high level and then some of the uncertainties in the individual product life cycle assessment can kind of, um, hit the impact of those is less important. Speaker 3: So the focus is on a broader use pattern rather than discreet individual products. Speaker 4: [00:05:00] Yeah, exactly. And in, in some sense for some people, being able to differentiate between individual products is the holy grail for many people. So being able to tell the difference between product air B, which one should I select? The problem is that given uncertainties in life cycle assessment, the uncertainty or the margin of error is often greater than the difference between the competing products. So you really will never be able to tell the difference between coke or Pepsi, [00:05:30] but what we can tell is that on average soda has this impact and milk as something else and water has a very different carbon footprint. Those are the types of data that we can provide to individuals that I think is useful and meaningful as well and that we have actually good data to support. Speaker 3: Do you use some data and not other data because of those, those very differences that you were talking about and how do you choose what data is going to be the best? We have to look Speaker 4: at how other practitioners [00:06:00] are using the data and which data are the most highly vetted, but in many cases we need to use a new data and so it really is a ongoing process of validation using the peer review system as kind of a minimum bar for validating the types of data that we think could be used. Speaker 3: Is The lab trying to do some data generation of its own? Speaker 4: We are mainly providing secondary data and [00:06:30] analysis and algorithms that we try to make freely available. We think that providing sophisticated analysis that's also transparent and we develop into this online software that's user friendly, that we make freely available. We think that that really is our value in collecting a lot of the data, putting it together in new and useful ways. So in terms of collecting raw data, we don't actually collect a lot of our own raw data. Speaker 3: So in building your models, are [00:07:00] there any overarching algorithm approaches or is each case setup Speaker 4: cool? Well, each case is, is very different. They're little engineering models that we put together for either each kind of product or each behavior that we're trying to change. And oftentimes we draw on existing research and those models can be very different. At the end of the day though, it really comes down to pretty simple math, back of the envelope calculations. And many times they, they really do start out in the corner [00:07:30] of a piece of paper somewhere and we, you know, we put them into our spreadsheet models. We also do, uh, different econometric models. We do engineering analysis, energy analysis, life cycle input, output analysis. And, uh, we do try to look at what other researchers are doing. I think it's really important for researchers to be able to share methods, be able to share data and through online systems you can actually do that. And really interesting and new ways. It's called open data [00:08:00] or linked data. So if you want the carbon footprint of a product, you should just be able to put in your software carbon footprint, this product and anybody who's done research on that, the data should just pop right into your wife's website and it should be done in real time. So there's a movement to make open and link data widely and freely available. Speaker 5: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. [00:08:30] We are talking with Chris Jones about carbon footprint calculator. He helped develop called the cool climate calculator. You can try it if the website cool. California Dipo RG. Speaker 3: The cool climate calculator is focused now in the United States. And what are your plans for taking it beyond that? Speaker 4: In fact, the next [00:09:00] stage is to develop international versions of the calculator. So we've already in partnership with researchers in Brazil, built a Brazilian one version. We've built a version for the US Virgin Islands. We're developing a version now for Sweden and we have an abroad international dataset that we're going to be using to develop international version of the tool. We're also trying to get much more specific and local and better within the United States. So to get these, you know, estimates at the city level, actually [00:09:30] something we've developed but haven't launched on the online interface yet. Ultimately we'd like the city of Berkeley and the city of Los Angeles and you know, any city in the United States actually to have an online portal, kind of a dashboard system, uh, that has all this information displayed in really useful ways. And also ultimately we'd like to do it over time as well. And we have these estimates to see how, uh, cities are meeting their climate action goals. For example, to see how users within a particular community are using [00:10:00] the tool, engaging with their community based programs to set targets, engage in local programs and not only make pledges but actually make reductions and track those. Over time Speaker 3: it would seem that Americans are so much more wasteful than the international community in general. So that the contrast that if we can do it here then with, with having the website able to contrast what it's like California versus Italy [00:10:30] versus Spain, Speaker 4: turns out the, the largest contributors in the United States to carbon footprints often are not the largest contributors elsewhere. And many countries they have larger sources of renewable energy, uh, hydro energy, nuclear energy, which means that emissions from energy consumption are much, much lower. Half of our energy, electricity is produced by coal and a huge carbon footprint from using energy in this country. It's less than California. We have a lot of natural gas [00:11:00] and it turns out that in many developing countries is actually food that is the largest impact. You know, these comparisons internationally are really interesting, but ultimately you're right. I mean the United States, our carbon footprint is on average five times greater than the global average. So let's say we're able to reduce our emissions by 80%. Well that would just get us to the current global average and if everybody lived like that, we would have the existing emissions of greenhouse gases. Speaker 4: [00:11:30] We need to get 80% below that. In order to stabilize the climate, we need to think about what types of programs we put in place in order for us to get there. A lot of people look at individual behavior and they say, well, that's not where it is. Um, you know, we have to change policy, we have to change technology and of course those things are true. However, we won't get all the way through policy and technology. We, the studies that we've done through other studies that I've seen from other groups that what is in placed in projected [00:12:00] won't actually get us there. We need to change behavior and through individual behavior. Anybody who has taken steps to reduce their own impact immediately wants to do collective action. They want to show others what they've done and it's much more powerful if they can move towards collective action. Speaker 4: And then from collective action they often move to political action. So we say, well it's a chicken and egg thing and we say we can't do anything without political world, but you're not going to get political will without getting people involved. And so by showing [00:12:30] people that this is actually easy, fun, makes your life better, you would ultimately generate the political world. So I think behavior needs to play an important role and it's all behavior. People need to adopt the technology. That's behavior. People need to adopt the policies, support the politicians that are going to drive change. And so really understanding individual behavior I think is really an important key to invest in it. Speaker 5: [inaudible] [00:13:00] you are listening to spectrum KALX Berkeley. We are talking with Chris Jones by his work to influence greenhouse gas related behavior by individuals, families, businesses, and communities. Speaker 3: What is it that refines the data and can you characterize how the data gets better? Speaker 4: We like [00:13:30] to develop smart tools. Ultimately we'd like to develop learning tools, uh, learning tools that can collect data from all of the users and then be able to use that in ways that can help inform the development of the, of the, the tools as well. Particularly things like the recommendations. So we could look at the most popular recommendations or how many people are taking this particular action, how much total CO2 are people saving from these particular actions. We also have a lot [00:14:00] of work, just basic research grant work in collecting all of these new data sets because there are so many that go into our tools and updating them all the time and it's just a constant task for us to do to keep these tools updated. Now, if the data were smart and linked in an open data and linked data framework, our job would be much, much easier. But we have to make our own data open and linked as well before we can expect that from others. Ultimately [00:14:30] someday, hopefully, um, these totals will get much smarter, much quicker. Speaker 3: So the real goal then is to make your program the centralized repository. Speaker 4: We can think of it like a hub, a hub of part of a network, a large network. And so hopefully our hub will support lots of other initiatives. And of course there'll other hubs out there as well. But the important thing is to kind of link this kind of sophisticated is information network together in a way that [00:15:00] is optimal that that kind of meets everybody's needs at the lowest cost, lowest amount of investment. I think. And Dan Cameron, a director of our lab has said this many times, the greatest barrier out there right now is just lack of technical expertise in solving all of these problems. There's a tremendous need for research capacity, for intellectual capacity because all of these disciplines need to work together. So a lot of experts in many different disciplines, [00:15:30] but how do they work together? We have a limited kind of ability to solve these problems collectively. Speaker 4: And if we're all doing the similar work or certainly not optimizing our potential. So somehow we have to learn to communicate in a much more effective way. That's a real challenge. Well, it's a real challenge. Even on campus. We don't know what each other are doing. I had a meeting last week in a research lab and told them about the data that we had and they like, oh great. That [00:16:00] would save us months worth of work. We're planning on doing the same thing. They didn't know we had it and you know there are over 400 researchers on campus, faculty doing environmental research just right here on campus and we often don't know what each other are doing. I'm not faculty. I work under Dan. So Dan has, you know, he's one of the 400 and then Dan has staff and graduate students who are all doing different things too. Now that's just right here on campus, much less statewide, nationally, internationally. It's, it [00:16:30] is really a challenge to know what people are doing and more and more people don't want to share what they're doing until it's done. So it's, it is a, it is a challenge. Yeah. Speaker 5: [inaudible] spectrum on KALX Berkeley. We're talking with Chris Jones about the cool climate calculator he developed. You [00:17:00] can try this calculator at the website. Cool. california.com [inaudible]. Speaker 4: So you've mentioned that you're looking at, at a more of an overview context, but do you feel that products in general should have an identifiable greenhouse gas rating or not in terms of information on specific products? [00:17:30] I think you need to look at, you know, experts like the GoodGuide, uh, who, whose job it is to evaluate what we can actually say, given what we know about particular products. And often it's not the product we know about, it's the company, but are we able to put a carbon score on an individual product? Hmm. Some sort of rating I think is possible. And I don't know if a carbon score itself is meaningful to people may not be, then there's other issues involved. So it depends [00:18:00] on what the product is, you know, if it's a cleaning product, then you care about the chemical makeup as well as you might want to know was it intensive carbon use to make it? Speaker 4: Yeah. So there's, there's a variety of things that come into the mix and it would seem that you have a large behavioral component in what you're trying to do. And so you don't really want to overwhelm people with data and make them more confused than they were or drive them away from even trying to deal [00:18:30] with this, right? It's how are you trying to assess what, what works, what doesn't work, right? Well, people can quickly get overloaded with information. Absolutely. And you have to be really selective with the type of information that you provide to two people. And the context in which you provided is really important. If it is a recommendation that comes from a friend, and that can be much more useful than going to some website somewhere and clicking through and trying to find out some data. [00:19:00] We are really highly influenced by our peers and not just what are our friends doing? Speaker 4: What are people like us doing, but what do they expect of me? How do they expect me to behave? And those social influences are really extremely important on determining our behavior. We need to learn to tap into those social [inaudible] motivations and to really understand what drives people's behavior. And that is part of the work that we do through a program called the cool California challenge. [00:19:30] It's a competition between California cities to be the coolest California city. So we're going to engage cities across the state in competition. We're going to choose three finalists. Individuals are going to get points for doing things we want them to do, so they'll get points for reducing their energy consumption, they get points for driving their car less. Uh, we're gonna use this as a social experiment to figure out what types of messages, what types of incentives, what types of rewards are going to motivate individuals, [00:20:00] at least in a California context. Speaker 4: And when does that start? Well, it'll start in early 2012 once we have got all of the approvals we need from the university. So people are going to be able to voluntarily share information through the program. And so we'll be picking three cool California cities and they have the chance to even become the coolest California city. But really it's about community building more about collaboration than anything else. So we're using these [00:20:30] points structure as a way to engage the community in a whole range of different efforts that they want to do already. To the extent that we can quantify the emission savings from things that they're doing, which is what we're good at, we'll be able to give them points. And those points were kind of serve as an umbrella for accomplishing things that the city wants to already accomplish to meet its climate action goals. For example, Speaker 6: is there any point that I haven't brought up that you wanted to make about [00:21:00] the research or the lab that you're Speaker 4: part of? Well, one thing that does come up often in a university is how can people make a career of this kind of thing? Well, often my answer is, well, how can you not make a career about it? At Berkeley, we have so many opportunities to do this type of work, to do work that's meaningful. It may not be climate change related work, but to do something that is of value to society and we have in some sense an obligation to do that [00:21:30] because we have kind of an opportunity cost if we decide not to take this opportunity to create programs, to use this information for the benefit of society and we decided to do something that is a little perhaps more self-serving than we're kind of foregoing that opportunity. I feel like there's just tremendous amount of potential here on campus to really be leaders to, you know, making a better world. Speaker 4: And I think that's what most people here try to do. Whatever discipline they're in, hopefully [00:22:00] students recognize that hey, they want to get involved. Tons of things for them to do. Volunteer your time, find some time to dedicate to a research lab that's doing this stuff. We have hundreds of research tasks that need doing. It's really just endless the amount of opportunities here, so people who want to get involved, lots of things to do. Lots of good work to be done. Chris Jones, thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Thank you so much for having me. Speaker 5: [inaudible] [00:22:30] your resolution to lower your carbon footprint in 2012 and beyond can be realized with the help of the cool climate calculator. Does it cool. california.org that is cool. California all one word.org Speaker 6: a regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. [00:23:00] Rick Karnofsky joins me for the calendar on New Year's Day. This Sunday, the Arden wood historic farm 34 600 Arden Wood Boulevard in Fremont is hosting a $2 walk to a Monarch Butterfly overwintering site. Discover the amazing migration of these tiny creatures and how they survive the long cold season. In the eucalyptus trees, you'll use spotting scopes to see the magnificent creatures up close and personal. There are two drop in events with no registration required. [00:23:30] The first walk is 1130 to 1230 and the second walk is one 30 to two 30 call (510) 544-2797 for more information. January 5th is the first Thursday of the month and thus free admission day at the UC botanical garden. The garden is open 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM there is a docent tour at 1:30 PM on the first Thursdays of the month. Speaker 6: They explore to him next to the Palace of fine arts in San Francisco. Hosts [00:24:00] after dark from six to 10:00 PM four guests 18 and over. Enjoy the standard museum exhibits, cocktails for purchase and special attractions that vary by the month. Theme. January's theme is rock, paper, scissors. In addition to a tournament they exploratorium. We'll have a talk by evolutionary ecologist, various nervo on how the evolutionary game of rock, paper, scissors is played by the common side. Blotched lizard. Learn how the game is found in hundreds of species worldwide [00:24:30] and how it drives the formation of new lizard species and keeping with the rock part of the theme. SLAC national accelerator laboratory scientists, Sam web reveals how paleontologists determine pigmentation patterns in dinosaur skin and feathers by using an intense x-rays to excite copper, calcium, and other elemental Addams embedded in fossils. Paper brings you collaborative, ink drying and scissors brings you complimentary. Speaker 6: Haircuts and mission is $15 $12 for senior students and persons [00:25:00] with disabilities or is free for our members. Visit www.exploratorium.edu/after dark for more information, the bay area skeptics present a talk titled Skepticism and critical thinking. Teaching our children and ourselves. This free event presented by Dr Matt Norman, associate professor and director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Psychology at University of the Pacific. He characterizes the talk by saying we all need to evaluate [00:25:30] the world critically and scientifically without disability. We fall prey to anyone wishing to sell us goods and services regardless of their true efficacy, effectiveness or even harmfulness. This will be Wednesday, January 11th that Cafe Valparaiso 31 oh five Shattuck avenue in Berkeley. That talk begins at 7:00 PM Thursday is the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco's golden gate park hosts nightlife from six to 10:00 PM four guests 21 and over. There's no nightlife for January 5th [00:26:00] consider heading to the exploratorium instead. There will be a nightlife on January 12th the theme is how to, in honor of the new year, nightlife is teaming up with experts at skillshare. Speaker 6: Make SF, the distilled man and the bike kitchen to create the ultimate how to workshop at stations throughout the building. Learn to play guitar, build a bike, juggle boil and egg pin insects, DJ like a pro with help from the urban music program and even how to impress your date with your knowledge [00:26:30] of the cosmos. It's also your last chance to visit the live reindeer. See the Aurora borealis in this new man theater and dance under a snow flurry in the Piatsa before the season. Four science closes on January 16th tickets are $12 or $10 for academy members. For details in tickets, please visit bit dot Lee slash n l Dash Info. Now several news stories. The Kepler space telescope has found the first two earth sized exoplanets. [00:27:00] The planets are currently due. You noted Kepler 20 e and capital 20 f and orbit a sunlight star called Kepler 20 that is 950 light years from us. Speaker 6: Kepler 20 he is 87% of their size, but at 1,040 Kelvin is hot enough that it has most likely evaporated. Any atmosphere capital of 20 f might have an atmosphere and is only 3% larger than Earth at 705 Kelvin is still quite warm. UC Santa Cruz, planetary [00:27:30] scientists, Jonathan Forney claims. If it started out with the amount of water we had on earth and Venus is probably long gone just like it is on Venus. But if that planet had a tremendous amount more water than it might have some leftover, the coupler 20 system includes an additional three larger planets and surprisingly these have orbits that alternate with the small earth sized planets. Speaker 6: Science now reports that pigeons can learn basic math, while many species can discriminate quantities. [00:28:00] So you were thought to be able to reason numerically. In fact, many believed only primates can do this. Damien scarf in his colleagues of the University of Ark to go in New Zealand trained pigeons to sort sets by the number of objects within the set, regardless of the color or shape of objects that the set contained Duke University neuroscientist, Elizabeth Brennan, noted that despite completely different brain organization and hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary divergence, pigeons and monkeys [00:28:30] solve this problem. In a similar way, the findings make scientists optimistic about finding basic and perhaps even advanced mathematical skills in other animals. Speaker 2: Yeah. [inaudible] [inaudible] the music heard during the show is from a David loss sauna album titled Folk and Acoustic. [00:29:00] Thank you for listening to spectrum. We are happy to hear from listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email or email address. Is spectrum a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [00:29:30] [inaudible] [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

James Hansen, renowned climate scientist and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies gives a compelling, lecture regarding the implications of today's actions on earth's future. Sponsors: Berkeley Institute of the Environment, Energy and Resources Group, Department of Geography, Progressive Perspectives, Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center, Sierra Club

James Hansen, renowned climate scientist and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies gives a compelling, lecture regarding the implications of today's actions on earth's future. Sponsors: Berkeley Institute of the Environment, Energy and Resources Group, Department of Geography, Progressive Perspectives, Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center, Sierra Club