Lectures 2015
YSSP Lecture Series
Invited Speakers
Energy Myths and Realities
Professor Vaclav Smil, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
Realistic appraisals of national and global energy prospects require interdisciplinary understanding of many complex and interactive processes. Unfortunately, discourse at political and public levels has been governed for decades by misleading simplifications and misrepresentations, and this has led to many unrealistic expectations.
Climate Change and its Consequences
Prof. Dr. Helga Kromp-Kolb, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria
Dr. Kromp-Kolb is head of the Centre for Global Change and Sustainability at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. A trained meteorologist, she is a leading expert on climate change and its impacts, and, more broadly, her expertise includes environmental topics ranging from air pollution to disaster risk analysis. Dr. Kromp-Kolb was the coordinating lead author (along with Dr. Nakicenovic at IIASA) of the Austrian Assessment Report 2014 (AAR14); this consists of three volumes that present the existing knowledge on climate change in Austria, and on the needs and possibilities for mitigation and adaptation. She is advisor to the Ministry for Defense and Sports; Central Institution for Meteorology and Geodynamics; World Wide Fund for Nature; and the Virtual Collegium for Social Ecology (IFF). Her awards
include the Austrian Climate Protection Prize 2008, WWF Panda Award 2006, Golden Honor for Service to Vienna 2006, Scientist of the Year 2005.