When
Where
Seminar Format
Available via Zoom webinar. Contact the department to subscribe to the email list (zoom link provided in announcement).
Abstract
Fossil fuel corporations keep extracting more and more fossil fuels and increasing greenhouse gas emissions. This presentation will walk through the reasons for the climate emergency and then discuss how we can better communicate — and mitigate — them. (In other words, can we avoid geoengineering?) Dr. Carter will look at why IPCC assessments and the science community do not tell the whole story, and how the single most important IPCC AR6 finding (that global emissions must decline immediately and rapidly) is not communicated. He will examine how global warming is (and has to be) accelerating, and why the 1.5ºC limit is no longer possible. He will also explain "in the pipe" and total committed warming, global dimming and the aerosol cooling conundrum, risk-based climate sensitivity, and amplifying feedbacks. Finally, Dr. Carter will present practice-based mitigation factors, and conversion as the solution to the climate emergency.
Bio
Peter Carter, M.D. is a retired family physician who practiced medicine first in England and then on both coasts of Canada (in Newfoundland and British Columbia) for almost 40 years. When his sons were born, Peter became actively involved in peace, environmental and sustainable development issues, especially as they relate to children's health. (Fatherhood created that urge to leave the world a better place as a legacy for his children.)
As a founding director of CAPE (Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment) and, more recently, as founder of the Climate Emergency Institute, Peter has presented on sustainable development, environmental health policy, biodiversity, and climate change and ocean issues at international science and climate change conferences in Canada, the United States, Europe, Asia and South America.
Peter has been following the global warming and climate change research since 1988. His approach to assessing climate change is based on environmental health and human rights protection. He provides climate science information to several websites and organizations, and synthesizes climate change research for laypeople through social media.
Peter was an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Climate Change Assessment (AR5, 2014) and the IPCC’s 2018 Special Report on 1.5ºC. Also in 2018, Peter published Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival, which he co-authored with Elizabeth Woodworth. Peter’s mission now is to spread the full terrible truth about the extreme risks and magnitude of the global climate and ocean disruption emergency.
Peter Carter, MD Email | Website: Climate Emergency Institute | Peace Podcast | YouTube