SEI-US Events
Events are open to students, faculty, staff and community members.
Upcoming Events:
SEI is a supporting organization for the Navigating the American Carbon World: New Direction for Climate Action April 14-16, 2010 event in San Francisco, CA hosted by the Climate Action Reserve, Point Carbon and IETA. The event will take a comprehensive look at the status of climate policy in 2010 and how climate initiatives will move forward with or without new policy.
Past Events:
Can We Afford the Future
Talk with Frank Ackerman
Thursday, Feb. 25, 2010
3:30-5:00 P.M.
Tufts University,
Tisch Library,
Hirsch Reading Room
Most scientists see climate change as a growing threat to life as we know it, requiring a prompt, large-scale response. But economists and U.S. policymakers tend to speak in less urgent terms, asking instead, how much can we afford to do without losing jobs and businesses and hurting our quality of life?
This event is organized by Friends of Tufts Libraries
Greenland’s glaciers acceleration and warming of the North Atlantic: what is the connection?
Speaker: F. Straneo (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Thursday, January 7, 2010, noon-1pm
SEI-US, 11 Curtis Avenue, Somerville, MA
Download presentation (pdf)
The Greenland Ice Sheet's contribution to sea level rise more than doubled in the last decade, predominantly due to the acceleration of outlet glaciers flowing into deep fjords in western and southeastern Greenland. The glacier speed-up occurred approximately at the same time as a warming trend began in the North Atlantic Ocean, adjacent to Greenland’s southeastern and western sectors, giving rise to the hypothesis that glacier acceleration was triggered by ocean warming. This hypothesis, however, is largely untested because of our limited knowledge of the conditions and variability in Greenland’s glacial fjords. Here, I will present new measurements from several glacial fjords in East Greenland which shows that warm, subtropical waters are presently reaching the glaciers’ terminus and driving substantial submarine melting. These findings will be discussed in the context of the long-term oceanic and atmospheric changes over the North Atlantic region.
Speaker's Bio:
Dr. Straneo is a tenured Associate Scientist in the Physical Oceanography Department at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who studies the high latitude oceans and their role in climate. Her current projects include investigating the variability of the Atlantic’s overturning circulation, the export of fresh water from the Arctic and the impact of ocean warming on the Greenland Ice Sheet. Dr. Straneo is a member the U.S. AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation) Science Team – a U.S. Climate Variability and Predictability Program, and of the ASOF (Arctic SubArctic Ocean Fluxes) Steering Group – an international effort that focuses on the Arctic/Sub-arctic exchange. She teaches and advises graduate students in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography. Dr. Straneo holds a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the University of Washington, USA, and a Laurea cum Laude in Physics from the University of Milan, Italy.
Web Page:www.whoi.edu/science/PO/people/fstraneo/
SEI Open House
SEI is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year!
Please join us on Wednesday, September 23th from 5-6:30pm for SEI’s annual open house.
11 Curtis Ave., Somerville, MA 02144
A Proposal for a Future Reservoir System for Southern New England
Thursday, September 24, noon-1pm
Stockholm Environment Institute - US
Location: Fletcher School, 7th floor, Rm 702
Speaker: Tom Baron
On the Edge: Regional Perspectives on Climate Policy
Wednesday, September 9, noon-1pm
Stockholm Environment Institute - US
11 Curtis Ave., Somerville, MA 02144
Tea Nõmmann and Siim Espenberg from Tallinn and Sopon Naruchaikusol from Bangkok, climate scientists visiting from the SEI Centers in Estonia and Thailand, will give short presentations on climate policy in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia during a brown bag lunch on Wednesday, September 9, at 12 noon, at the SEI-US office, 11 Curtis Avenue. The discussion will also touch on how regional issues can better be accommodated in global climate policy.
What we can learn from Spain: Urban mobility planning in Barcelona
Wednesday, August 12, noon-1pm
Stockholm Environment Institute - US
11 Curtis Ave., Somerville, MA 02144
What are the results of implementing better transit networks, traffic calming zones, and a bike sharing program? Are these measures always environmentally-friendly? Are they enough to create better places to live and enjoy? Learn about the development of urban mobility plans in Greater Barcelona and Catalonia, Spain. See what the Catalan Government is encouraging municipalities to do.
Marius Navazo is a geographer who has been working for the last 10 years in town and regional planning, focused on transportation and its impacts to improve cities from a social and environmental perspective. He has been working at the Catalan Government for the last 4 years, and now he is a freelancer working for different municipalities in the Barcelona area. Marius is currently a 6 month visiting fellow at the LivableStreets Alliance.
Climate Change Adaptation in costal communities / Motivating Action on Climate Mitigation
Thursday, June 18, noon- 1pm
SEI, 11 Curtis Ave, Somerville
Travis Franck, MIT
Download pfd of the presentation
Travis Franck will be presenting his PhD research on climate change adaptation, in particular, how coastal communities will be impacted by sea-level rise and tropical storms. He is improving economic estimates of climate change costs by including a more behavioral societal response than previous work. Risk perception and stochastic storm events are combined into a model that includes climate science, macroeconomics, and coastal engineering components.
Additionally Travis has been involved with Climate Interactive, a project to develop interactive tools that motivate action on climate mitigation by educating and challenging people's mental models. He will be presenting the Climate Rapid Overview And Decision Support simulator, a computer model targeted at policymakers and UN negotiators. The model allows decision makers to quickly analyze country proposals (e.g., US proposing 80% below 1990 by 2050, China 20% carbon intensity reduction) and understand the climate implications, including atmospheric concentrations, temperature and sea-level rise.
Website: <http://climateinteractive.org/>
Blog: <http://climateinteractive.wordpress.com/>
Travis Franck is a climate change researcher and PhD candidate with the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at MIT. His research interests include the dynamics of climate policy and the implications of delaying action, important environmental and economic feedbacks in climate adaptation, building more climate-robust communities, and uncertainty analysis of carbon permit pricing. He is interested in strengthening forthcoming domestic and international climate policies, and most recently attended the COP-14 in Poznan, Poland. He holds a S.M. in Technology Policy and Civil Engineering from MIT, and a B.S. in Computer Science and Environmental Science from Iowa State University.
A new theoretical basis for contingent valuation of public goods: asking the right question
(ongoing joint work with Herman Daly and Joshua Farley)
Friday, June 5, noon- 1pm
SEI, 11 Curtis Ave, Somerville
Deepak Malghan, Centre for Public Policy, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, India
One of the enduring pursuits in environmental economics has been the question of determining a market value for ecological services that by their very nature are not traded on any markets. How can (and should) one determine the value of services like flood control, micro-climate stabilization, etc. that a forest provides? Economists use what is called the "contingent valuation" method to determine `prices' for these services where nor market exists. Stripped of all the details, contingent valuation methods try to determine market prices through various "willingness to pay" surveys. We argue that extant contingent valuation methodologies suffer from fundamental theoretical and practical flaws and that they cannot succeed in determining the true social value of sustainability.
On a more technical note, using a stock-fund representation of the economy-ecosystem interaction problem, we show that optimal scale of the economy, rather than some shadow price must become the objective of contingent valuation exercises. We present technical as well as normative arguments to support the claim that our methodology better aggregates the social value of biophysical sustainability than extant techniques.
Deepak Malghan is an ecological economist on the faculty of the Centre for Public Policy, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, India. His current research is centred on developing an analytical theory of scale. In ecological economics, scale measures the proportional relationship between the physical size of the economy and the ecosystem that contains and sustains it. Deepak has a Ph.D. in ecological economics from the University of Maryland and a MPA from Princeton University.
How land change scenario models do (and do not) work.
Tuesday, May 19, noon- 1pm
SEI, 11 Curtis Ave, Somerville
Gil Pontius, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University
The presentation will describe conceptual approaches and performance metrics for various types of land change models that simulate the transitions among land categories through time. Such models perform two conceptually distinct tasks. First, they specify the quantity of change in each land category; and second, they allocate those changes in space. Pontius and his colleagues have developed methods to assess the accuracy of models by comparing the simulated changes to the available data. He has computed the measurements for 13 applications of peer-reviewed models. Results revealed more error than correctly predicted change at the resolution of the data in 12 of the 13 cases. We will discuss the implications of these results for the broad field of scenario modeling. No experience in modeling necessary; this is an all-ages show, fun for the entire family.
Gil Pontius has been a professor in the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University since 1998. During 1995-1997, he worked with Charlie Heaps, Jack Sieber, Eric Kemp-Benedict, Michael Lazarus, and Bill Dougherty at the Boston Center of the Stockholm Environment Institute. His areas of expertise include Geographic Information Sciences and Land Change Modeling. He has developed several quantitative techniques that have been included in the GIS software Idrisi.
You can obtain publications at www.clarku.edu/~rpontius and learn more at http://www.clarku.edu/departments/geography/facultybio.cfm?id=104&progid=15&
Most relevant publications:
Pontius Jr, Robert Gilmore, Wideke Boersma, Jean-Christophe Castella, Keith Clarke, Ton de Nijs, Charles Dietzel, Zengqiang Duan, Eric Fotsing, Noah Goldstein, Kasper Kok, Eric Koomen, Christopher D. Lippitt, William McConnell, Alias Mohd Sood, Bryan Pijanowski, Snehal Pithadia, Sean Sweeney, Tran Ngoc Trung, A. Tom Veldkamp, and Peter H. Verburg. 2008. Comparing the input, output, and validation maps for several models of land change. Annals of Regional Science 42(1): 11-47.
Pontius Jr, Robert Gilmore, Robert Walker, Robert Yao-Kumah, Eugeino Arima, Stephen Aldrich, Marcellus Caldas and Dante Vergara. 2007. Accuracy assessment for a simulation model of Amazonian deforestation. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 97(4): 677-695.
Pontius Jr, Robert Gilmore, Emily Shusas and Menzie McEachern. 2004. Detecting important categorical land changes while accounting for persistence. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 101(2-3): 251-268.
Future Stability of Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets and Its Global Implications - Answers from the past
Thursday, May 14, noon- 1pm
SEI, 11 Curtis Ave, Somerville
Sebastian Koenig, Climate System Research Center at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
Can We Afford The Future?
Tuesday, April 21st, at 5:30 in Cabot 205
Frank Ackerman gave a presentation based on his book on climate change economics, Can We Afford The Future?, as part of the Tufts Energy and Climate Forum.
Thursday, April 2, noon- 1pm
Carbon Taxes as a US Policy Option
SEI, 11 Curtis Ave, Somerville
Gilbert E. Metcalf, Tufts University
Download presentation
Thursday 12 March, 2009, 12 noon - 1:30 pm
Resilience in Ecosystems and Institutions
Lance Gunderson,
Department of Environmental Studies
Emory University
This event is co-sponsored by the The Institute for Global Leadership's International Resilience Program, the Stockholm Environment Institute
(SEI-US) and Tufts University's interdisciplinary graduate Program,
Water: Systems, Science and Society (WSSS), and the Center for
International Environment and Resource Policy (CIERP), The Fletcher
School.
Wednesday March 18, 12 noon - 1:00 pm
What to do with 150 Gigatons?
How Grassland Restoration Can Sequester Legacy Atmospheric Carbon While Mitigating Floods and Building Healthy Economies
Jim Laurie and Seth Itzkan
To read about the topic of reduce atmospheric carbon with healthy grassland systems, please read:
A Global Strategy for Addressing Global Climate Change Future.
Tuesday, February 17, 5:00 - 6:30 PM
Can We Afford The Future?
Malkin Penthouse (4th floor, Littauer Bldg),
Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge.
Frank Ackerman
SEI-US Symposium
Friday, December 5, 2008, 9am – 5pm
Taking Climate Change Seriously: Research and Policy Directions for the Next US Administration
More information
Monday, November 3, 2008: 12-1pm
Improving Home Energy Efficiency: Tips For Homeowners And Renters
Anja Kollmuss
Wednesday, October 22, 2008, noon - 1pm
Regional Impacts of Climate Change Policy in Mitigation and Adaptation
Karl W. Steininger Economics Department, Graz University, http://www.wegcenter.at (research group EconClim)
Download paper: http://www.uni-graz.at/vwlwww_memo_0805_steininger_regional_biomass.pdf
Monday, October 6, 2008, noon - 1pm
Climate Policy based on Individual Emissions
Shoibal Chakravarty and Massimo Tavoni
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Climate Sensitivity, Damages, and “Fat-Tailed Uncertainty” in Climate Economics
Frank Ackerman, Liz Stanton, and Ramón Bueno
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Developing a New Climate Economics Model -- Do We Really Need Another One?
Frank Ackerman, Liz Stanton, and Ramón Bueno
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Grassroots Development Work in Rural India
Anja Kollmuss, SEI-US
Wendesday, March 12, 2008
Astier Almedom, Tufts University
Towards a “Resilience Index” for global public health and stability/security.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Oxana Savoskul
The Syr Darya Basin in Central Asia: its past, present and future
PPT Presentation
Wednesday, Feb 20, 2008
Kent Portney, Tufts University
Climate Protection Policies in U.S. Cities: Why Do Some Cities Take Climate Change More Seriously than Others
Monday, Dec 17, 2007
Anja Kollmuss, SEI-US (Anja's bio)
Improving Home Energy Efficiency; Tips for Home Owners and Renters
Handout
PPT Presentation
Thursday, Dec 13, 2007
Jack Sieber, SEI-US (Jack Sieber's bio)
Groundwater Modeling in WEAP with MODFLOW
Friday, Nov 30, 2007
Symposium on Climate Change
more information
Thursday, Nov 15, 2007
Sivan Kartha, SEI-US
The Right to Development in a Climate Constrained
World Monday, Nov 19, 2007
Prof. Ian Waitz, MIT
Aviation and Climate Change
Monday, Nov 5, 2007
Richard Klein, SEI
The Global Environment Facility: Funding for Adaptation or Adapting to Funds?
Thursday, Oct 11, 2007
Michael Lazarus, Bill Dougherty, and Sivan Kartha, SEI-US
News from the Frontlines: Regional, State, and Local Climate Initiatives In the US