We’re running a new weekly lecture series this term to explore different disciplinary perspectives on climate change, entitled “Collaborative Challenges for the Climate Change Research Community“, sponsored by the department of Computer Science and the Centre for Environment. Our aim is to use this as an exploration of the range of research related to climate change across the University of Toronto, and to inspire new collaborations. A central theme of the series is the role of computational climate models: how researchers share models, verify models, create models, and share results. But we also want to explore beyond models, so we’ll be looking at ethics, policy, education, and community-based responses to climate change.

The lectures will be on Monday afternoons, at 3pm, starting on January 16th, in the Bahen Centre, 40 St George Street, Toronto, room BA1220. The lectures are public and free to attend.

The first four speakers have been announced (I’ll be giving the opening talk):

  • Jan 16th: Computing the Climate: the Evolution of Climate Models – Steve Easterbrook, Dept of Computer Science
  • Jan 23rd: Building Community Resilience: A Viable Response to Climate Change and Other Emerging Challenges to Health Equity? – Blake Poland, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
  • Jan 30th: Constraining fast and slow climate feedbacks with computer models – Danny Harvey, Dept of Geography
  • Feb 6th: Urban GHG Modelling Using Agent-Based Microsimulation – Eric Miller, Dept of Civil Engineering & Cities Centre

For more details, see the C4RC website.

Now that I’m back in Toronto, my calendar’s filling up already. Here’s a bunch of upcoming seminars on campus that I hope to get to:

Phew, that’ll keep me busy. For more details on the various seminar series see the CGCS seminar schedule, the Centre for Environment seminar schedule and the EHJIC seminar schedule.

Here’s a whole set of things I can’t make it to. The great thing about being on sabbatical is the ability to travel, visit different labs, and so on. The downside is that there are far more interesting places and events than I can possibly make it to, and many of them clash. Here’s some I won’t be able to make it to this fall:

Busy few days coming up in Toronto, around the celebration of Earth day tomorrow:

  • tonight, the Green Party is hosting an evening with Gwynne Dyer and Elizabeth May entitled “Finding Hope: Confronting Climate Wars“. Gwynne is, of course, the author of the excellent book Climate Wars, also available as a series of podcasts from the CBC;
  • tomorrow (April 22) the Centre for Environment has its Research Day, showcasing some of the research of the centre;
  • all week, the Centre for Global Change science is hosting Ray Pierrehumbert giving a lecture series “New Worlds, New Climates“. Tomorrow’s (April 22) looks particularly interesting: “Climate Ethics, Climate Justice”;
  • next Tuesday (April 27), the Centre for Ethics is running a public issues forum on “Climate Change and the Ethics of Responsibility“;

I won’t make it to all of these, but will blog those that I do make. Seems like ethics of climate change is a theme, which I think is very timely.