Comments on: What will Higher Education look like in a 2050 -80% +2c 450ppm world?

By: Revisiting ‘Thinking the unthinkable’ | ../learninglab/joss

Revisiting ‘Thinking the unthinkable’ | ../learninglab/joss — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:40:31 +0000

[...] Dieter Helm, I’ve noted before that this method of accounting creates an illusion6 around our official emissions figures, [...]

By: Energy, the economy and resilience – ../learninglab/joss

Energy, the economy and resilience – ../learninglab/joss — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:01:02 +0000

[...] and rationing? At what point do we change our habits, our practices, our institutions instead of telling ourselves that we are being efficient, as we do today? How can we teach a relevant curricula with less money [...]

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:10:40 +0000

Thanks Robert, I think that’s the most scary part of this, the developing world will really be at the sharp end of a warming environment. There have been some interesting medical takes on this suggesting that Climate Change may be the most important health question in the next century as infrastructure breaks down and many tropical diseases stage a comeback – Here – though I’m sure I read something more recently too.

By: Oil and the story of energy – ../learninglab/joss

Oil and the story of energy – ../learninglab/joss — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:34:38 +0000

[...] my previous post, I discussed energy efficiency and our carbon emissions. I tried to highlight how despite our [...]

By: Earlier Today I Gave A Talk In Australia « UK Web Focus

Earlier Today I Gave A Talk In Australia « UK Web Focus — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:55:13 +0000

[...] At the recent CETIS 2009 conference Joss told me of his interests in environmental issues and his heartfelt concerns of the needs to reduce energy usage. On his blog Joss recently asked “What will Higher Education look like in a 2050 -80% +2c 450ppm world?“. [...]

By: Robert Cosgrave

Robert Cosgrave — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:14:31 +0000

You are correct, in that I use the word ‘fine’ somewhat loosely. But I didn’t say we would retain our economic model or that it would be plain sailing by any stretch

I expect in the first world we won’t face malthusian population collapses or failed states. Our democracies may not survive, our economic model may not survive, but our society will. We can afford to fall back on cooler ground. We can afford, over a century, to build new cities in the north and migrate to them. We can, and probably will in the end, afford Geoengineering. It might not work, but we can afford to try, and once we start seeing regular climate related mass casualty events in the first world, we will. The 21st century might not repeat the economic growth of the 20th, but the first world will make it through, more or less. So, while it’s going to be a very busy century, I expect my children to live through it.

China? India? Indonesia? These nations live a lot closer to the line than we do. High temperature scenarios would bring the strong chance of collapse of civil society and death on a grand scale. They might not be ‘fine’.

Also, I’ll tip my cap to you here and note that this is your field, not mine. I certainly don’t disagree that 6C is looking likely now.

By: Joss

Joss — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:02:15 +0000

Just a note to point out that Stephen Downes thinks the outlook in this post is conservative: http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=50801

By: Joss

Joss — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:47:24 +0000

I’m not so confident that “we’ll be fine”. Ignoring the related challenges of moving to zero carbon energy while retaining an economic model that promotes growth first and foremost, a +4c world may well encourage/force massive migration of populations, putting pressure on the relatively well positioned countries like the UK. A couple of useful maps can be found on slide 29 here: http://joss.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/2009/11/16/bill-rees-the-vulnerability-and-resilience-of-cities/ and from the MET Office here: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20091022.html

By: Robert Cosgrave

Robert Cosgrave — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:36:08 +0000

This is topical for me, as my alma mater sits today substantially underwater
Think in the first world, we’ll be fine. It’ll be rough, yes, but we’ll make it.
The big question is whether the big emerging world countries like India, China, Indonesia, can preserve their economic growth in the heat and deliver their populations to middle income, tertiary educated levels, or whether they collapse as failed states. That will make an order of magnitude difference in the size of the Tertiary sector in 2100.

By: Joss

Joss — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:24:08 +0000

Yes, the +2c rise is increasingly viewed as a very conservative figure, as the Tyndall paper shows. However, a +6c and even a +4c rise by 2100 has such profound implications across the board, that the difficulty is how to fruitfully engage with such a scenario. I’m not sure how useful the +2, +4, +6c markers are. To the casual observer, they probably appear quite tolerable changes in temperature that mask the actual predicament we’re facing. In trying to define a ‘resilient education’, I think we need to foreground the socio-economic changes these forecasts imply. It needs to be a cross-disciplinary effort (it’s by no means just a matter of technical problems requiring solutions) that attempts to make fundamental changes to how we live in the world.

Bill Rees has already published a couple of papers on this matter: http://ceae.colorado.edu/~amadei/CVEN4700/PDF/HigherEd%28Rees%29.pdf & http://www.academicmatters.ca/AcademicMatters/docs/AM_APR_08.pdf

They’re a good starting point for discussion and action. For me, they also help put EdTech into perspective. I’m beginning to think that we need to pause and consider the cognitive dependencies we’re creating between technology and learning. A resilient education surely has fewer and different technological dependencies?

By: Martin

Martin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:36:16 +0000

Thanks for pulling this stuff together Joss. Over at the JISC online conference, where we are talking about the future of higher education institutions, it struck me that when Graham, Rob and myself did our future interviews, climate change was a factor in them, yet we probably haven’t engaged with this enough.
At the recent climate change conference they were talking about a +6 degree rise – it may be that limiting it to +2 becomes an aspiration before we know it.