Friday 8 August 2008

Climate Change: Past, Present, Future - How much is anthropogenic?
Coordinator: Jörn Thiede, Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, AWI (Germany)

The Climate has changed constantly through Earth history, but the rate at which the recent climatic change occurs causes much concern. The symposium looks at the palaeoclimatic records, and assesses various climate forcing factors, asking how much of the total change is anthropogenic. As the energy industry is one of the main CO2 emitters, Carbon capture and storage is an important issue, treated in the symposium. The reliability of climate predictions is treated, as are impacts of the present change, and the need for action to reduce the implications.
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Geoscience program

08:30-08:35    Introduction
                      Jörn Thiede 
                      Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (Germany)

08:35-09:05    Paleoclimate: The deep and modern time perspective
                      Eystein Jansen 
                      University of Bergen (Norway)

09:05-09:35    Cenozoic Paleoclimate: From the Greenhouse to the icehouse world
                      Peter Barrett
                      Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand)

09:35-10:05    Climate and global biogeochemical cycles in the ice core paleoperspective
                      Hubertus Fischer
                      Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (Germany)

10:05-10:30    Coffee

10:30-11:00    Ocean-atmosphere interaction and climate change from an Arctic
                      perspective
                      Peter Schlosser
                      Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (USA)

11:00-11:30    Solar and Climate variability: past, present and future
                      Willie Wie-Hock Soon
                      Harvard - Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (USA)

11:30-12:00    Cosmoclimatology: the influence of Cosmic rays on Climate
                      Henrik Svensmark
                      Danish National Space Center (Denmark)

12:00-13:00    Lunch

StatoilHydro lecture

13:00-14:00    Links between late cenozoic paleoclimates and human history
                      Gerald Haug
                      ETH, Zürich (Switzerland)

Societal program

14:00-14:30    How reliable are climate predictions?
                      Lennart Bengtsson
                      Max Planck Institute  for Meteorology, (Germany); University of Reading (UK)

14:30-15:00    Climate concerns: carbon capture and storage
                      Olav Kaarstad
                      StatoilHydro (Norway)

15:00-15:30    Global Change Science in China: Past, Present and Future
                      Xiaoping Yang
                      Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (China)

15:30-16:00    Coffee

16:00-16:30    Arctic Climate: Present and future perspective
                      Ola M. Johannessen
                      Nansen Centre for Climate Research (Norway)

16:30-17:00    Climate Science and the need for action
                      Connie Hedegard
                      Danish Minister of Climate and Energy

17:00-18:00    Panel debate
                  
18:00              Press conference