Physics Café: "Achieving Carbon Neutrality"

11/12/08

Physics Cafe
Thursday, November 13, 7:30 p.m.
Emerson Suites, Ithaca College
"Achieving Carbon Neutrality: It Is Our Choices That Show What We Truly Are, Far More Than Our Abilities"

Ithaca College has signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC), a pledge to produce a plan by September 2009 for the campus to go "carbon neutral" by completely mitigating our greenhouse gas emissions.

Signed by 582 colleges and universities across the country, the pledge commits us to model ways to eliminate global warming emissions and provide the knowledge and the educated graduates to achieve climate neutrality.

This session of the Physics Café will frame Ithaca College's efforts to achieve climate neutrality. Stan Wrzeski will review the process by which Ithaca College will sort through its options, delineating key trade-offs that will be part of the discussion. Low-carbon technologies and strategies employed on other campuses will be explored for their potential in Ithaca.

Stan Wrzeski manages the interdisciplinary team of consultants helping Ithaca College develop a plan to achieve carbon neutrality. He has three decades of industry experience in the public sector, private sector and academia, packaging numerous broad public-private partnerships to explore state-of-the-art design and technology innovations.

As a building scientist, he's had one foot in the architectural realm and the other in engineering. Both educator and entrepreneur, he works the interstitial spaces among professions, effecting cross-disciplinary collaborations that are critical to the evolving field of sustainable design. Stan is also a member of the team helping Cornell University develop its climate action plan.

The Physics Café is a campus-wide lecture series sponsored by the Physics Department of Ithaca College. The idea is to grab and hold the attention of science and non-science majors by offering talks on exciting and accessible current topics in physics.

Past Café lectures have featured the time-warping properties of black holes, the exploration of planet Mars, the communication of elephants, remote sensing of archaeological sites, quantum matter, and string theory. The talks are presented in a café environment, where coffee is served and students and scientists can informally discuss new ideas. The lecture is free and open to the public. There are no prerequisites! No requirements! Everyone is welcome!

Starbucks coffee (regular and decaf) and cookies will be served. An informal talk-back session with the speaker will immediately follow the presentation.

Come and join us for an exciting look at real world physics. Who knows, maybe you'll be so fascinated you'll want to take a physics class next semester…

Contact Info

Professor Beth Ellen Clark Joseph
Center for Natural Sciences, room 267
[mailto:bclark@ithaca.edu]
607-274-3968

More Information at the Physics Website

Sponsors

IC Department of Physics
IC Presidents Climate Commitment Committee

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