Mayor’s Inspire program brings top notch, international level speakers to the city.

By Staff

BURLINGTON, ON September 13, 2011 The Mayor is ready to put on the third in a series of Inspire sessions that he holds at the McMaster University DeGroote School of Business on Thursday September 29th – 7 pm. This time we get to hear Tom Rand, one of those successful software entrepreneurs that survived the dot com bubble in 2000. He sold his company in 2005 when it had reached the xxx level

Rand is the Inspired speaker – part of Mayor Goldring’s efforts to bring intelligent debate to the city.

Rand is the Inspired speaker – part of Mayor Goldring’s efforts to bring intelligent debate to the city.

Rand now focuses his efforts on carbon mitigation and is active in Cleantech venture capital, technology incubation and commercialization plus public advocacy. Rand is the Cleantech Practice, Lead Advisor at the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto and sits on the board of a number of clean energy companies and organizations, including Morgan Solar.

The first 100 people at the Inspire event to be held at the DeGroote School of Business on the South Service Road on September 29th will be given a copy of Kicking

The first 100 people at the Inspire event to be held at the DeGroote School of Business on the South Service Road on September 29th will be given a copy of Kicking

Tom’s book Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our Word, will be the focus of his talk on the 29th. In a different approach to getting his books into the hands of people Rand is giving away 100 copies of his book at the event.

Rand has a BSc in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo, a MSc in philosophy of science from the University of London / London School of Economics and an MA and PhD in philosophy from the University of Toronto. He speaks publicly about the issue because it is his belief that we have yet to have a serious, public conversation about the threat of climate change, and the economic opportunities afforded by the global transformation to a low-carbon economy.

“I’m really just a guy trying to slow our gallop toward an over-heated climate. Doing what I can with what I’ve got.” Is how Rand explains what he does.

Tom Rand is a part of the group of people who work out of one of the most impressive operations in the country.  The MaRs centre is an incredible learning place that brings new ideas to the market.  Log into

Tom Rand is a part of the group of people who work out of one of the most impressive operations in the country. The MaRs centre is an incredible learning place that brings new ideas to the market. Log into www.marsdd.com

Kick is richly illustrated and accessible. It addresses achievable solutions that will have a real and meaningful impact on the future for our children. It’s been conceived to appeal to a broad range of readers on multiple levels. For those who skim read and pull quotes and captions, Kick provides an engaging glimpse of this fascinating subject. For those who seek deeper understanding, the lively, factual text provides an easy-to-understand summary of the technologies and supports all claims with scientifically verified end-notes-from a politically neutral technology expert. Kick will engage, entertain and educate the public about one of the most important subjects of our time. The book deals with Solar, Wind, Geothermal, Biofuels, Hydropower, Ocean, Smart Buildings, Transportation, Efficiency and Conservation and the Energy Internet.

Rand has an interest in the Planet Traveler – North America’s Greenest Hotel. The building was an abandoned structure in downtown Toronto when Tom and his partner Anthony Aarts bought it. During 2008-2009 it was converted into a low-carbon hotel. The target was to reduce carbon emissions from business-as-usual by three-quarters. Using existing technologies, and leveraging only 5% of the buildings value that target is being met. Technologies deployed include geo-exchange heating and cooling, solar thermal and PV, high-efficiency lighting and drain-water heat recapture. The geo-exchange pipes were the first to be buried under a public laneway in the City of Toronto.

It’s a different hotel – Tom Rand thinks it is one of the best examples of how we can cut down on carbon emissions.

It’s a different hotel – Tom Rand thinks it is one of the best examples of how we can cut down on carbon emissions.

The overall lesson? “Buildings are really low-hanging fruit when it comes to emissions reductions”, says Rand. “Not only can we reduce emissions by three-quarters or more, we can make money doing it.”

Rand points out that we ” have just left the hottest year on record. While experts again try to ring alarm bells, our media still gives voice to the pseudo-intellectual pursuit of climate skepticism. Perhaps while Rome burned, some bravely questioned the finer qualities of fire. Perhaps on Easter Island, as the last trees fell, some elders courageously debated the necessity of wood. These days, Margaret Wente, Globe and Mail columnist and Rex Murphy, CBC voice, sing in tune with the likes of Glenn Beck, sincerely believing their skepticism to be a form of intellectual virtue. It is not.”

German chancellor Angela Merkel calls the low-carbon economy the “third industrial revolution.” A new energy internet supplied by clean energy sources like biomass, wind solar, hydro, and geothermal has spread across the continent. There are new storage technologies like compressed air and low-friction flywheels. Large-scale efficiencies make economies more competitive. If Canada gets it right, we’ll sell this stuff to the rest of the world.

The transition to a low-carbon economy brings huge economic opportunity, but it is not optional.

While Wente asks whether humans can control the climate, global average ocean temperatures hit record highs. More ominously, as the oceans have warmed since the 1950s, plankton levels have dropped 40 per cent. As goes plankton, so goes the rest of oceanic life.

Skepticism becomes a vice when applied to a broad consensus of expert opinion warning of existential danger. The policy commitments demanded by climate science need broad public support. Skeptics erode that support without intellectual justification.

Let’s be clear, says Rand. We have known since the early 19th century that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, insulating the earth like a blanket. In 1965, the U.S. president’s Scientific Advisory Committee warned the build-up of carbon dioxide would cause changes in the climate. By 1989, then U.K. prime minister Margaret Thatcher declared to the UN General Assembly that climate change was the single greatest threat to our very existence. There are other informed opinions.

Thatcher, no shill for the environmental movement, was scientifically literate. The same cannot be said for those who scoff at the accumulated wisdom of our scientific elite. All national academies of science in the developed world have endorsed the basic premises of human-caused climate change. The only scientific argument remaining is not about whether climate change is real or imagined, but whether the results will be catastrophic or merely disastrous.

Yet untrained skeptics assure us that the dangers of which the scientists speak may not be real.

For Murphy, public acceptance of expert opinion on climate change amounts to religious indoctrination. Wente asserts that climate cannot be controlled by human behaviour. Beck argues that it’s a Communist conspiracy. The purported dangers are at best hypothetical constructions of a few scientists, at worst mere monsters under our bed, easily dismissed with a dose of adult skepticism. The skeptics explicitly cast themselves against the orthodoxy of our time, as noble knights standing up to society’s pressure to conform.

This is nonsense. Climate change is not like politics or a painting. The opinions of laypersons are not relevant. It’s hard science, and the truth of the matter has been settled by those qualified to make the judgment.

But we’re far past the complex theoretical models now. Ask an Australian farmer what climate change means. The same climate instability that brought Australia the longest drought in human memory, now unleashes catastrophic flooding. To B.C. foresters, it’s the pine beetle destroying their timber. Lloyd’s of London, like most insurance companies, faces escalating costs due to extreme weather events. Russia’s scorching summer, which temporarily ended grain exports, and the floods in Pakistan are but appetizers before the main event.

The pseudo-intellectual pursuit of climate skepticism delays Canada’s participation in a new economy, and it makes it harder to have that public and adult conversation we so desperately need: the one about how volatile nature has become, and how angry it will get.

 

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