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Let’s first look at the common definitions of global warming and climate change. Global warming is an average increase in the Earth’s temperature due to greenhouse effect as a result of both natural and human activities. In common usage, "global warming" often refers to the warming that can occur as a result of increased emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities. e.g., carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, and fluorinated gases, which act like a greenhouse around the earth, trapping the heat from the sun into the earth’s atmosphere and increasing the Earth’s temperature. Climate change refers to any significant changes in climate through temperature, precipitation, wind, etc. for an extended period (decades or longer) as a result of natural processes (e.g., sun's intensity, ocean circulation), and human activities causing changes in the atmosphere's composition through e.g., burning fossil fuels and deforestation.
The term climate change is often used interchangeably with the term global warming, but above definitions clearly indicate that if we want to focus on the impact of human activities, we should use the definition global warming. Sometime ago I posed the following question in various platforms: Is it global warming or global warning? Unprecedentedly catastrophic recent climatic anomalies are clearly global warnings through blazing hot summers, brutal winters, hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones from North America to Africa and from Asia to Europe. It is now considered by the overwhelming majority of scientists that global warming is the most important threat to humanity! It is becoming more apparent that humanity may be facing more drastic problems in the near future as a result of global warming which will be unavoidable unless great measures are taken very soon.
I define six primary targets (so-called: six main pillars) from system level to global level in whatever we can do in order to achieve better future as follows:
better efficiency,
better cost effectiveness,
better use of energy and resources,
better energy security,
better environment, and
better sustainability.
We have been in a fossil fuel era and ended up with such a desperate picture! The key question here is: how to cure this problem! While people all over the world are coming together to tackle global warming, tactics/methods are still being used to try to divide the scientists and the public opinion by diverting us from the major source of the problem. In a simple but effective analogy, the patient is about to die. Therefore, It is now the time to change our diet from junk food to healthy diet and our habits and life style from extravagant/wasteful altitude to conscious behavior. This is very crucial in combating the global warming individually. Large scale and long term solutions require infrastructural changes, unlike some try to change the cover or wrapping paper to green and claim that they contribute to the solution. Some try to take a kind of pain killer type pill and claim that he/she is curing the illness! It is not! Because the patient needs a surgery! In this token the infrastructural changes are crucial! Each day we fail to take the essential responsibility for the most important problem and compromise our communities and our future.
There is a lot of information out there, each adding to the understanding of global warming and climate change issues! There have been many conferences, symposia, workshops, meetings, etc. Yet, I wanted to come up with something which will perceive the issues, problems and effective solutions from a wider perspective and more consensus forming position. That’s why I decided for the Global Conference on Global Warming. Why it has a wider perspective? Because aim is to bring all disciplines together from engineering to sciences and from business to social sciences and art! Why it is more consensus building? The area has been a kind of unique to scientists only. But what we know is that the solutions in practice are driven by engineers and decision makers. So far engineers have not really been part of this important issue. It must be our ultimate objective to build a better consensus by bringing engineers face to face with all other disciplines in a broad range of issues yet to be tackled for ultimate solutions.
If you wish to discover more and do more about global warming, come and join us to make difference and to be part of solution to this global crisis! I like to modify the well-know slogan to “THINK BOTH LOCALLY AND GLOBALLY! AND ACT BOTH LOCALLY AND GLOBALLY”.
It is now my privilege to invite researchers, scientists, engineers, practitioners, policy makers, even politicians to this global event on global warming from all over the world to exchange information, present new technologies and developments, and discuss the future direction, strategies and priorities in the field of global warming and climate change.
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| Additional Information |
The primary themes of the conference are global warming and climate change, not only in engineering and science but also in all other disciplines (e.g. ecology, education, social sciences, economics, management, political sciences, and information technology). It covers a broad range of topics on energy and environment policies, energy resources, energy conversion technologies, energy management and conservation, energy security, renewables, green technologies, emission reduction and abatement, carbon tax, sustainable development, pollution control and measures, policy development, etc. Therefore, papers on related topics are solicited from all relevant disciplinary areas, ranging from current problems, projections, new concepts, modeling, experiments and measurements, to simulations. The topical areas of interest include, but are not limited to:
Acid precipitation
Aerosols
Atmospheric changes
Biofuels and alternatives
Carbon sequestration
Carbon tax
Clean technologies
Climate change and heath issues
Climate change modeling and simulations
Climate networks (oceans, regions, forests, etc.)
Climatic events
Coupled ocean-atmosphere system
Deforestation
Earth sciences
Ecology
Ecosystem and biodiversity
Energy policies and strategies
Energy quality and security
Energy technologies
Engineering tools
Environment policies and strategies
Environment quality and security
Environment technologies
Environmental education and training
Exergy
Food and agriculture
Forestry
Global earth observations
Global economics
Global environment
Global policies
Global warming modeling and simulations
Green design and manufacturing
Green energy
Greenhouse gases
Heath issues
Hurricanes and catastrophic events
Hydrogen and fuel cell technologies
Hydrological cycles
Information technology
Measurement techniques and data management
Nuclear energy and technologies
Oceans and global warming
Policy and strategy development
Renewables
Smog
Solid and municipal wastes
Space and atmospheric applications
Stratospheric ozone depletion
Sustainable development
Sustainable environment and health
Thermal pollution
Urban and regional planning
Volcanoes and volcanic events
Waste management
Water and water issues
Weather forecasts and scenarios
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