Spring 2001

ME/IE 8773-8774

Global Warming and the Engineering Implications

by

Robert G. Watts, Ph.D.

Cornelia and Arthur L. Jung Professor

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Lindy Claiborne Boggs Center for Energy and Biotechnology

Tulane University

New Orleans, LA 70118-5698

Wednesday, February 7, 2001

3:30-4:30 p.m.

Room 108 ME

Broadcast on UNITE Channel A

Coffee and cookies will be available in 152 ME following the seminar

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated that the evidence is strong that we have already experienced global warming due to increased atmospheric loading of carbon dioxide released when fossil fuels are burned. Recent proxy climate data appear to strongly support this view. The scientific community, at least in the field of geophysics, is in near unanimous agreement that we will be faced in this century with climate changes due to increased atmospheric greenhouse forcing. The magnitude and distribution of climate change, the rate at which it will occur, and the impacts on the environment and on humans are not known with certainty. It is the goal of climate models to be able to accurately predict future global and regional climate change. Alas, the current imperfect models disagree on regional change, and to some degree even on global change. They may never be able to accurately predict regional change, and they certainly will not in the new future. But the physics is clear. Change will occur. How shall we respond? If we continue to operate in the way we have in the past, we are essentially betting the livelihoods of future generations that: 1) greenhouse warming will not be substantial, or 2) it will not be so rapid or extreme that we cannot adapt to it, or 3) the change will be either benign or beneficial. The consequences of losing such a bet are considerable. A standard baseline energy scenario developed by the IPCC, called the Business as Usual scenario, and has the atmospheric carbon dioxide loading nearly tripling by 2100. Yet we have shown that even this scenario implies that more than 10 terawatts of energy must be produced from non-fossil sources by 2050. Stabilizing CO2 at lower levels implies even more non-fossil energy production globally. The magnitude of the implied infrastructure transition and technology advances supports my contention that global warming has now become an engineering problem.

Robert G. (Bob) Watts is the Cornelia and Arthur L. Jung Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Tulane University. He enrolled at Tulane University 1955 intending to study architecture. He mistakenly got in the wrong line at registration and, not being one to patiently stand in long lines, he became a mechanical engineering student, a kind of Forrest Gumpian fortunate accident. He received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Tulane in 1959. In 1960, he received an M.S. degree in Nuclear Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was awarded a Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University in 1965. In 1969 he accepted a National Science Foundation Senior Post Doctoral Fellowship to study high temperature physics at Harvard University, but Dr. Richard Goody, with whom he intended to study, left the university that year. Left with an office among atmospheric scientists and oceanographers, he became interested in meteorology and oceanography, and did research in these areas for several years. In 1976 he was invited to spend a year at the Institute for Energy Analysis in Oak Ridge, where he became interested in paleoclimatology and in the problem of global warming. He has served as a visiting scientist at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna, the Institute for Energy Analysis in Oak Ridge and Batelle Northwest Laboratories in DC. He is the originator and past director of the National Institute for Global Environmental Change, South Central Region at Tulane University. He has been a member of the ASME Committee on Environmental Heat Transfer since 1975 and is a frequent contributor to the Journal of Geophysical Research and to Climatic Change as well as the engineering literature. His current research interests are in the human response to environmental risk and in carbon-free global energy supply. He is a former semi-pro baseball player and is the author of Keep Your Eye on the Ball: The Science and Folklore of Baseball and is the editor of Engineering Response to Global Climate Change and the forthcoming Innovative Engineering Solutions to Global Warming. He lives in the most interesting city in North America, New Orleans, with his wife and three children and eight, three and 5/9 grandchildren.

Informal Faculty Luncheon: Wednesday, February 7, 2001, 12:00 noon. A table is reserved at McCormick's Restaurant, Radisson Hotel Metrodome. Prof. Watts will be able to attend.