Past Events
October 06, 2011
Join members of the MIT Energy Club for a discussion about what will and what
should change about our relationship to nuclear power here in the U.S. after
the Fukushima disaster. Is that the same or different from what will/should
happen elsewhere? In this round-table discussion we will try to compile a set
of policy and technology recommendations for the path forward, and to better
understand the strengths and weaknesses of different policy options. A light
dinner will be served.
October 05, 2011
Howard Gruenspecht, Deputy Administrator of the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
October 05, 2011
Speaker: Tsuyoshi Segawa
Six months ago, the strongest earthquake ever recorded in Japan caused the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, when the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan was inundated by a massive tsunami. The spectacle of explosions and a partial meltdown renewed fears of nuclear power in many people around the world. However, there are also many reasons to embrace nuclear power: it is carbon-free, reliable, and the fuel is potentially abundant. This
October 04, 2011
Some of America's top scientists discuss their frustration with the lack of progress on the pressing problem of climate change, and talk about their ideas for what scientists and citizens can do while policymakers fail to act. What does the latest research show on both the climate and the attitude of Americans?
October 04, 2011
Speaker: Cynthia Scharf serves on the UN Secretary-General's Climate Change Support Team and also works for the Secretariat of the UN's High-level Panel on Global Sustainability.
October 03, 2011
Speaker: Michael Mann (Penn State University)
Abstract: I will review recent work aimed at establishing the nature of, and understanding the factors governing, large-scale climate variability in past centuries. Among the approaches I will discuss are the (1) statistical reconstruction of past climate changes from climate proxy records, the (2) forward modeling of the processes recorded by proxy records, (3) climate model simulations of the response to estimated changes in radiative forcing, and (4) experiments in which proxy data are assimilated directly into climate models.