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January 14, 2009 lecture by David Victor for the Woods Energy Seminar (ENERGY301). In his talk "New Ways to Think About Regulating Greenhouse Gasses," Victor discusses the need for an international and universal regulation on greenhouse gas emissions and he posits that the nature of the climate problem has been erroneously placed on compliance concerns rather than actual effort.
Stability in the ocean is based on the density of the water. Density must increase with depth in order for the ocean to be stable. Density is a function of both temperature and salinity, with cold salty water having a higher density than warm fresh water. Temperature and salinity in the ocean can be affected by the atmosphere. Heat can be added to or removed from the ocean, and precipitation and evaporation change the salinity of the ocean...more
May 20, 2009 - Mark Zoback, professor in the Department of Geophysics, Stanford University, discusses recent developments in natural gas extraction that enable cost-effective carbon capture and storage to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.
This lecture describes how pollutants mix in the atmosphere. Three cases are considered: confined mixing, unconfined mixing, and unconfined mixing with wind. In a confined volume, the concentration of pollutant in the air depends on the volume and the mass of the air present in the volume. Unconfined mixing is also known as diffusion, in which the pollutant disperses through the air from the source over time. When wind is considered, the p...more
The current Holocene epoch is considered to be a time period of relatively stable climate compared to earlier geological periods. Still, some significant changes in temperature and sea level did occur. These climatic fluctuations include the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, and more recently global warming. Temperature data for the 20th century shows a strong warming from about 1970 to the present day, typically associated with...more
March 4, 2009, Richard Morse states that coal is the largest growing source of energy and that regulation and policy are beginning to play a larger role in the economy of coal power. Morse also discusses the heavy reliance on coal by developing countries and the need to understand and evaluate all mitigation options.
The circulation in the atmosphere is composed of three circulation cells in the northern and southern hemispheres. These cells are caused by the rotation of the Earth which creates the Coriolis force. The Coriolis force deflects northern hemisphere motion to the right and southern hemisphere motion to the left. The majority of large-scale motion in the atmosphere is in geostrophic balance, meaning the Coriolis force acting on the motion is...more
Is Learning Feasible? - Can we generalize from a limited sample to the entire space? Relationship between in-sample and out-of-sample.
