Benjamin L. Preston
The deputy director of the Climate Change Science Institute at Oak Ridge National Laboratory will discuss climate change science and policy during a Tuesday lunch lecture. The meeting is open to the public.
Ben Preston is deputy director of ORNL’s Climate Change Science Institute. His talk is titled “The State of Climate Change Science and Policy: Local to Global.”
The Friends of ORNL meeting starts with socializing and coffee at 11 a.m., lunch begins at 11:30 a.m., and the lecture starts at noon. A question-and-answer session is scheduled at 12:45 p.m., and the meeting adjourns at 1 p.m. A catered lunch by the Soup Kitchen will be available for $8.
The changing global climate is widely regarded as one of the most pressing and complex environmental issues of the modern era, a press release said. A range of policy responses have been proposed or implemented at international, national, and even local levels. These include actions to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.
Yet, increasingly, policy attention is being devoted to actions that can increase resilience and reduce risks associated with both extreme weather events in the present as well as future climate change, the press release said.
Climate policy is dependent, however, upon a strong scientific foundation, the release said. While the scientific community has been aware of the potential for greenhouse gases to alter the global climate since the mid-19th century, significant uncertainty remains regarding future rates and magnitudes of climate change. Research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is currently focused on ecosystem observations and experiments to understand potential positive feedbacks in the climate system. Such insights can ultimately help inform understanding of the response of the Earth system to a changing climate and help inform international, national, and local decision-making regarding climate preparedness. Linking science at the global scale to action at the local scale, however, takes a large multidisciplinary team of researchers as well as practitioners.
Preston is a senior research scientist in Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Environmental Sciences Division, where he also acts as the deputy director of ORNL’s Climate Change Science Institute, or CCSI, and as the lead for CCSI’s Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability Science research theme. Preston received a bachelor’s degree in biology from the College of William and Mary and a doctorate in environmental biology from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Preston served as a Carolina Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, with subsequent appointments at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Washington, D.C., and the CSIRO in Melbourne, Australia.
His research involves the development of empirical and process models as well as the application of geographic analysis tools to estimate climate change impacts and, in particular, characterize interactions between climatic and socioeconomic change. He is also active in research evaluating opportunities and constraints associated with climate adaptation and risk management. Preston has contributed to recent national and international assessments of the consequences of climate change, and he has authored dozens of publications on climate change impacts, adaptation, and environmental assessment.
Tuesday’s meeting is at the University of Tennessee Resource Center, the white-colored building at 1201 Oak Ridge Turnpike between Taco Bell and Applebee’s at the intersection of the Turnpike and Rutgers Avenue. Use the canopy entrance at the southwest (back) corner of the building. There is plenty of parking.
For $8, the Soup Kitchen offers you at least two choices of hot soup, half sandwich (with pickle and chips), dessert, and beverage (iced tea or hot coffee), the press release said.
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