Day 3 :
Keynote Forum
Jorg Imberger
University of Miami, USA
Keynote: Global warming: Hot air or a real threat with no soultion to be found on internet
Time : 10:00-10:45
Biography:
Jörg Imberger received his PhD from UCB and became Australia’s Youngest Full Professor at 35. His research interest are in environmental engineering as applied
to rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal seas. Recent foci include strategies for sustaining functionality of aquatic systems in a changing world. He is a Fellow of 10
international academies and the recipient of 30 major honours including the Onassis International Prize, the Stockholm Water Prize and Member of the Order of
Australia. He has published five books, with two in preparation, contributed to 19 books and has published 251 journals papers. Google Scholar credits him with
18,530 citations and an h-Index of 62.
Abstract:
Global warming has been elevated to a religious icon of the devil. This allows us to blame all and sundry on the devil, feel
righteous and do nothing useful. Billions of dollars are being spent annually on the so called global warming problem,
politicians are carrying on about it endlessly, spending taxpayers money, based on their uneducated understanding of the
problem, industry is exploiting the emotional aspects for the benefit of their shareholders and scientists are playing with large
numerical simulations, of dubious usefulness, like kids with new toys. It is time to take stock and put into focus the nature of
the threat that is real under a business as usual scenario. I will start with explaining why the interglacial periodicity is 100,000
years, a new result that seems to have escaped attention. This understanding opens the way for a simple quantification of the
effect of greenhouse gases and a synthesis of solutions to the, so called, global warming threat. I will use Western Australia as
an example, of how the world could become carbon neutral, almost overnight, prosper economically and protect it biodiversity.
The only question, in my own mind is, whether we have the courage to change course and not just follow our tribal leaders
blindly into extinction!