At the school where I teach, the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), 1/3rd of the carbon footprint for the campus comes from flying faculty and staff to a variety of conferences and meetings. The good news is that telepresencing can reduce the climate footprint of an academic conference by a factor of 100 or more.
However, the academic conference still has a range of issues...
The crisis occasioned by the coronavirus pandemic should give rise to major questions about our collective futures as academics, no matter what our disciplines. The cancellation of many in person academic conferences has been accompanied by a flourishing of online events organised through various platforms. Disability rights groups point out that they have demanded more accessible events over...
Particle accelerators are essential tools for high energy physics and other research directions. After accelerating a primary charged particle beam these facilities generate specific radiation in a second step. The desired secondary radiation could be synchrotron radiation, free electron laser (FEL) pulses, neutrons, or exotic particles by colliding beams for HEP research. The entire process...
Decarbonizing our research is imperative, both since it's our generic responsibility as well as to future-proof our ability to conduct research in 10-20 years time. We will showcase our astronomical institutes CO2 self-assessment and want to encourage you to implement similar monitoring schemes at your home institutions. Since current flying and computing use have a critically high CO2...
