Y'all come. Directions and details here.
If anyone is interested in seeing me present this talk in your town, please contact me.
You're invited to a discussion session entitled "Cybernetics of Climate" presented by Dr. Michael Tobis, Research Scientist Associate at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics. at The University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Tobis's presentation will focus on climate change as an example of whether, when and how computing can influence policy.
As human activity changes the composition of the global atmosphere at an unprecedented pace, human society is faced with unprecedented challenges. We have to determine to what extent the changes matter, and by when. Some argue that the risks of excessive policy response are as large as or larger than the risks of inadequate policy response. One of the unique aspects of the problem is that the conditions being predicted have no historical or paleontological analogy. We are entering new territory, and are forced to make projections based only on scientific principles, without any direct observations.
Most progress in engineering relies to some extent on doing exactly this sort of extrapolation. The assistance of high performance computers is crucial in developing most new technologies these days, from spacecraft to medicines.
How well do these techniques apply to predicting the future of the earth as a physical system? Climate simulations often take center stage in public discussions about climate change, but how should these computations be understood? Is the climate system well enough characterized to rely on models? If not, how should that affect what we do about it?
Dr. Tobis will offer a tour of how computers and computations are used in addressing our planet's future and some ideas as to the strengths and limitations of these approaches.
Michael Tobis started his career as an electrical engineer with a focus in statistics. As a graduate student, he built one of the first multicore computers and used it to run ocean simulations using code he himself developed. Since his doctorate in climatology, he has been focusing on climate computation, at Argonne National Laboratory, at The University of Chicago, and now at The University of Texas at Austin.
Update: Changed the posting date to move this to the top, to remind people in commute distance of this.
8 comments:
Webcast?
MT --- Off-topic, but the July 2009 issue of Scientific American has an article on The Science of Bubbles & Busts which you may care to read.
Some other good articles; I found the one on Grassoline informative.
Webcast, or video online later, _please_ sir? (I realize hoping for an actual transcript is so last-millenium of me.) With a link if you're taking followups online?
I don't know if there will be video.
I will post the slides.
Besides the talk will be better the second time I give it :-). Any takers?
Would indeed love to see the slides. Hopefully someone will video.
good interview (with extensive video excerpt) by Gavin Schmidt on skill and constraints of climate models at edge.org yesterdy...
How did it go?
Michael - would you be willing to come and give the talk as an invited speaker at this: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/wsrcc/
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