CHAMPAIGN,Ill. – Ralph Cicerone, the president of the National Academy of Sciences, will give the inaugural lecture Monday (Sept. 13) in a series honoring the late Charles David Keeling, an analytical chemist who measured atmospheric carbon dioxide with great precision.
Cicerone, like Keeling, an alumnus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Chamapign, will review Keeling’s record of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and the physical basis of the greenhouse effect, through which increasing amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases alter Earth’s surface energy budget.
The lecture, to begin at 7 p.m. in 100 Noyes Lab, 505 S. Mathews Ave., Urbana, is titled “C02, Energy and Climate: Then and Now.”
“Earth’s climate has changed especially in the past 30 years, as observed in data on surface air and water temperatures, ice amounts and sea level,” Cicerone said. “I will present data on these indicators from various sources. Combustion of fossil fuels by humans is the dominant cause of the measured CO2 increase, and I will discuss the past and future of human energy demand. I will address the need for energy policy and technology to recognize three constraints: energy security, costs and climate change. The latter constraint is not as well recognized by the general public because future climatic change can far exceed what has been observed to date.”
A reception will take place immediately after the lecture, in the south lounge of the Illini Union, 1401 W. Green St., Urbana.
The lecture is sponsored by the department of chemistry; the School of Chemical Sciences; the department of atmospheric sciences; the School of Earth, Society, and the Environment; the School of Integrative Biology; the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; the School of Integrative Biology, the department of electrical and computer engineering; and the College of Engineering.
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