Overview[edit]

The Computing and Climate Change Reading Group meets every Wednesday lunchtime (12pm) in the Software Engineering lab debugging room (Third floor Bahen - BA3234). Bring your own lunch.

Our aim is to discuss books, papers, research ideas and practical projects on any aspect of climate change where computer science might have a role, whether it be in the basic science (e.g. computational models of climate), policymaking and decision support (e.g. visualizations& decision tools), or designing mitigation and adaptation solutions (e.g. green IT). We'll also spend some time exploring interdisciplinary aspects.

Everyone is welcome!

Objectives[edit]

Some potential objectives:

• Understand climate change from multiple perspectives, both academic (different disciplinary perspectives) and non-academic (e.g. culturally-based organisations, grassroots communities, etc)
• Explore the role of computer science (as a discipline) and computer scientists (with our particular skill sets) in responding to the challenge of climate change

...and some early goals for the group:

• familiarize ourselves with various disciplines' basic theoretical foundations
• identify discipline specific terminology used for shared concepts, and create a catalogue of key terms and concepts
• read articles and books from different disciplines and groups, with discussions moderated by someone from the respective area (perhaps starting with CS topics?)
• create an annotated bibliography
• curate a set of pointers to other web resources

Topics to discuss[edit]

Geo-engineering[edit]

Scheduled for our lunchtime meeting on June 29th, just in time for the CGCS talk on Climate Engineering by Mark Lawrence later in the day (3pm MP137). Suggested readings:

• Schematic of the main proposals (from an article at Lawrence Livermore Labs)
• Another schematic with more details on cost, timescale and likely effectiveness (from Next Nature)
• Alan Robock's article 20 Reasons Why Geoengineering May Be a Bad Idea
• More resources on Geoengineering (from Steve's blog)
• more links from Jim Prall
• Article from last Saturday's Globe and Mail and in response, a Geo-hacking primer by Lou Grinzo

Agent Based Modeling[edit]

(Michalis: These are links were sent to me about a year ago by Michail Fragkias. I'm transcribing his comments from Greek.)

• "Agent-Based Computational Economics contains links for the entire social science ABM universe".
• "For a general introduction, take a look at the first chapter (available online) of Generative Social Science: Studies in Agent-Based Computational Modeling by Joshua M. Epstein who is a very interesting author."
• "Another very important author is Robert Axelrod"
• "The book Complex Adaptive Systems by Scott Page has reached a point where it is considered a standard textbook".
• "The book Hidden Order by John Holland is a gem".
• "I always recommend the book Micromotives and Macrobehavior by Schelling, which was groundbreaking for the idea of ABM".

The Keystone Pipeline[edit]

When Cheryl McNamara visited on August 17, she encouraged us to write letters to President Obama, to ask him not to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline. Here's some background material:

• The Million Letter March
• ...which is sponsored by the Citizen's Climate Lobby
• James Hansen's keynote talk to the CCL
• Follow the protest in DC on twitter
• Cheryl's Slides
• Homework letter to Obama

Potential Readings[edit]

Books[edit]

• A Vast Machine by Paul N. Edwards
• Greening Through IT by Bill Tomlinson
• Snowball Earth by Gabrielle Walker
• Fixing the Sky by James R. Fleming
• Sustainable Energy without the hot air by David Mackay

Background Papers[edit]

Papers mentioned during meetings[edit]

• Daniel Gilbert, If Only Gay Sex Caused Global Warming: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0702-26.htm
• Miron Zuckerman, Michele M. Lazzaro, and Diane Waldgeir, Undermining effects of the foot-in-the-door technique with extrinsic rewards, Journal of Applied Psychology (1979), 292–296.
• Richard D. Katzev and Theodore R. Johnson, Comparing the effects of monetary incentives and foot-in-the-door strategies in promoting residential electricity conser- vation, Journal of Applied Psychology (1984), 12–27.
• Karl E. Henion, The effect of ecologically relevant information on detergent sales, Journal of Marketing Research 9 (1972), no. 1, 10–14.

Videos[edit]

CO2-ink demonstration

Nature of Science part 1, 2, and 3

CBC documentary Playing God with Planet Earth

Bill McKibben article set to video

Other Resources[edit]

IEEE TCSC on Green Computing

ClimateEducation.net Free Online Course

Steve's CSC2600 Course on Climate Change Informatics

The IPCC FAQ collection

Past Meetings[edit]

(We're currently taking a short break, planning to start up again a few weeks into the fall term)

• August 17, 2011 A talk by Cheryl McNamara of the Toronto chapter of the Citizen's Climate Lobby (her slides are here)
• August 10, 2011 A visit to the Cities Centre to talk about Cities and Climate Change
• July 27, 2011 Kaitlin Alexander, presenting her work on the software architecture of climate models
• July 20, 2011 Discussion of Wilson & Dowlatabadi's paper, "Models of Decision Making and Residential Energy Use".
• July 13, 2011 Discussion of "A Vast Machine" by Paul N. Edwards
• July 6, 2011 Visit by Adriana Mugnatto-Hamu, climate change spokesperson for the Green Party of Canada
• June 29, 2011 Geoengineering (in preparation for the talk that afternoon by Mark Lawrence)
• June 22, 2011 discussion of potential topics to discuss
• June 15, 2011 (no meeting)
• June 8, 2011: Kickoff meeting