Speaker Profiles

(Listed in alphabetical order)

David Archer

David Archer
David Archer has been a professor in the Department of The Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago since 1993. Dr. Archer has published over 70 scientific papers on a wide range of topics within the global carbon cycle and its relation to global climate. He teaches classes on global warming, environmental chemistry, and geochemistry. He has written a text book for non-science major undergraduates called Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast, and is currently working on a book for a lay audience putting the global warming climate event into the context of geologic time in the past and the future, to be published by Princeton University Press, and another book with coauthor Stefan Rahmstorf which will be an "unofficial guide" to the IPCC Fourth Scientific Assessment Report, to be published by Cambridge University Press.

How much CO₂ is Too Much?
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Wallace Broecker

Wallace Broecker
Wally Broecker has been the Newberry Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, Columbia University, since 1977. He has been a Member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1979, and is a Foreign Fellow of the Royal Society, London. He is the recipient of the Vetlesen Award (1987), the Roger Revelle Medal of the American Geophysical Union (1995), the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society, London (1990), the National Medal of Science (1996), and the Blue Planet Prize (1996). His research interests include paleoclimatology, ocean chemistry, isotope dating and environmental science. He is the author or co-author of ten books, most recently "Fixing Climate: What Past Climate Changes Reveal about the Current threat – and How to Counter It."

Dryland Hydrology and Climate : A Glacial Perspective
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Marianne Douglas
Marianne S.V. Douglas is a professor in the department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta where she is also the director of the Canadian Circumpolar Institute. She received her PhD in Arctic limnology and paleolimnology from the Biology Department at Queen's University in 1993. After a two year PDF at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, she joined the Department of Geology at the University of Toronto where she continued her work on environmental change across the Canadian High Arctic for the next ten years before moving westwards to work and live in Edmonton and Whitehorse. Douglas's life-long interest in circumpolar regions has also sent her to the Antarctic. She is the current chair of the Canadian Committee for Antarctic Research.

Recent Environmental Change in Canada's High Arctic
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Steve Grasby
Stephen Grasby has been at the Geological Survey of Canada since receiving a Ph.D. in Geochemistry from University of Calgary in 1997. He has worked on regional groundwater studies in the Canadian Parries, and in British Columbia, including climate change impacts of regional water supply. He has also conducted extensive study on thermal and mineral springs in western and northern Canada.

Impact on Water Resources, Drought in the West?
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Dave Hughes
David Hughes is a geologist with 35 years experience studying the energy resources of Canada for the Geological Survey of Canada and the private sector. He developed Canada's National Coal Inventory, which is a digital knowledge base on coal used to determine the availability and environmental constraints to development of coal resources for conventional and non-conventional uses, including coalbed methane production and the sequestration of CO₂. He is also Team Leader for Unconventional Gas for the Canadian Gas Potential Committee, an organization which publishes Canada's most authoritative assessments of National natural gas potential.

David's evolving analysis of global and North American energy issues has been presented across Canada, the United States and internationally to Federal, Provincial, State and Municipal governments and agencies, professional and policy associations and forums, and many other public- and private-sector groups. Aspects of his analysis have also been taken up by the popular press and trade journals including the Toronto Star, Canadian Business Magazine, the Canadian Press wire service and innumerable internet sites.

The Energy Sustainability Dilemma: Powering the Future in a Finite World
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David Keith
Director, ISEEE Energy and Environmental Systems Group and Canada Research Chair in Energy and the Environment, University of Calgary.

Professor Keith works near the interface between climate science, energy technology and public policy. His technical and policy work addresses the capture and storage of CO₂, the economics and climatic impacts of large-scale wind power, the use of hydrogen as a transportation fuel, and the technology and implications of geoengineering.

Keith has served as a member of several advisory boards and panels including Canada's 'blue ribbon' Panel on Sustainable Energy Technology and as a member of US National Academy committees. He currently serves on Canada's Capture and Storage Task Force, and is one of the world's energy experts named by National Science Academies to the InterAcademy Council study on Transitions to a Sustainable Energy Systems. Keith has addressed technical audiences with articles in Science and Nature; he as consulted for national governments, industry and environmental groups and has reached the public through national media in Canada and the US. He was named environmental scientist of the year by Canadian Geographic in 2006.

Climate and Carbon Engineering
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Steve Larter
Director of the Petroleum Reservoir Group and Co-Director, Alberta Ingenuity Center for Insitu Energy(AICISE) and Canada Research Chair in Petroleum Geology, University of Calgary. Steve Larter works near the interface between petroleum geology, petroleum engineering and fundamental studies of life in the deep subsurface. His work has been focused at understanding microbial processes in the subsurface and how these impact reservoir fluid properties in heavy oilfields. Latterly, he has been working with Adams and Gates to develop engineering and biological solutions to rapidly reduce environmental impact of energy recovery from oilfields and his group and related spinoff companies have several technologies deployed in the energy industry seeking to achieve zero emission of carbon to atmosphere during energy recovery.

Improving the Efficiencies of Energy Production from the Oil Sands
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Judith Lean
Judith Lean is a Senior Scientist in the Space Science Division of the Naval Research Laboratory. She has served on a variety of advisory committees, is a member of the AGU, IAGA, AAS/SPD and AMS, a Fellow of the AGU and a member of US NAS. A US citizen since 1992, she has a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Physics, from the University of Adelaide, Australia and B.Sc. (Hons) from the Australian National University. The focus of her research is the Sun's variability and its impact on the Earth system, including climate change and space weather, about which she has published over 100 papers, and delivered over 250 presentations.

Climate Responses to Solar Variability
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Brian Luckman
Brian Luckman has taught Geography at the University of Western Ontario since 1971. For the last 40 years he has carried out studies of geomorphology, glacier fluctuations, dendrochronology and environmental change in the Canadian Cordillera, principally in Jasper and Banff National Parks and, latterly, in the Yukon. He heads a major interdisciplinary project with colleagues from Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Mexico and the United States reconstructing climate and hydrological variability in the American Cordillera using tree-rings. These studies address the impacts of climate change on alpine environments and the human communities within them.

Tree Rings as Temperature Proxies
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Andrew Miall

Andrew Miall
Andrew D. Miall has been on faculty at University of Toronto since 1979 and holds the Gordon Stollery Chair in Basin Analysis and Petroleum Geology. He received a Ph.D. in sedimentology from University of Ottawa in 1969 and was awarded the D.Sc. from the University of London in 1992. Andrew was a Research Scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada in Calgary 1972-1979, working on geology of the Canadian Arctic Islands. He is the author of "Principles of Sedimentary Basin Analysis," now in its 3rd edition. He was elected Fellow of Royal Society of Canada in 1995 and is currently President of the Academy of Science.

The Geoscience of Climate Change: Understanding the Climate System, and the Consequences of Climate Change for the Exploitation and Management of Natural Resources: An Introduction to the Symposium
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Kate Moran
Kathryn (Kate) Moran is a University of Rhode Island (URI) Professor with a joint appointment in the Graduate School of Oceanography and the Department of Ocean Engineering. She is also a registered Professional Engineer and the Associate Dean for Research and Administration, Graduate School of Oceanography. Moran co-led the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program's Arctic Coring Expedition which recovered the first paleo-climate record from the central Arctic Ocean. She also led one of the first offshore expeditions to investigate the seafloor following the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. Previously, she was the Director of the international Ocean Drilling Program; managed mission-specific drilling platform operations in the North Atlantic and Arctic; designed and developed oceanographic tools; participated in more than 35 offshore expeditions; and has served as Chair and member of national and international science and engineering advisory committees and panels. Professor Moran is active in public outreach (through public lectures, national panel discussions, and teacher training) on global climate change. Currently, Moran is spearheading a research initiative on Offshore Renewable Energy at the University of Rhode Island.

The Cenozoic Arctic Ocean Climate
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W. Richard Peltier
W. Richard Peltier FRSC received his undergraduate degree in physics from the University of British Columbia and his doctoral degree in physics from the University of Toronto. His research focuses on the area of geophysical fluid dynamics and problems connected with the understanding of processes that control the evolution of the atmosphere, the oceans and the solid Earth and of long timescale climate variability. Peltier is a past recipient of the Sloan, Steacie, Killam and Guggenheim Fellowships, is Past President of the Canadian Geophysical Union and is an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society. He is also a past recipient of the Kirk Bryan Award of the Geological Society of America, the Patterson Medal of the Meteorological Service of Canada, the J. Tuzo Wilson Medal of the Canadian Geophysical Union, and the Bancroft Award and the Miroslav Romanowski Medal of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2004 he was awarded the Vetlesen Prize of the G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation and in 2008 of the Milutin Milankovic Medal of the European Geosciences Society. His current position is as University Professor and Professor of Physics at the University of Toronto where he is Founding Director of the Centre for Global Change Science and Scientific Director of the SciNet facility for High Performance Computation.

Climate Models: Are They Compatible with Geological Constraints on Earth System Processes?
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Don Rose
Don works as Senior Programs Engineer with the Zero Emission Technologies (ZET) Group of the Clean Electric Power Generation Group at the CANMET Energy Technology Centre – Ottawa (CETCO). The ZET group is carrying out research on CO₂ capture and multipollutant emission reductions from fossil fuels. The research is focused on developing oxy-fuel combustion technology to achieve these ends.

Don previously worked at Environment Canada in the Electricity and Industrial Combustion Division. While at Environment Canada, he managed the Group's clean coal R&D portfolio and was involved with programs addressing air pollutant emissions from fossil fueled electricity generation plants. He was actively involved with Environment Canada's development of the New Source Emission Guidelines for Thermal Electricity Generation and the Canada-wide Standard for Mercury Emissions from Coal-fired Electric Power Generation Plants.

Clean Coal and CO₂ Capture and Storage Technologies
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William Ruddiman
William F. Ruddiman is emeritus professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia. He received a Ph.D in marine geology from Columbia University in 1969 and worked at Lamont-Doherty Observatory from 1976 to 1991, where he was a Doherty Senior Research Scientist and Associate Director (1980-1984). He was a member of the Environmental Sciences Department at Virginia from 1991-2001 and Chair from 1993-1996. He is author of Earth's Climate, now in 2nd edition. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and the American Geophysical Union.

Climate Changes at Geologic Time Scales: An Overview
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Nat Rutter
Nat has spent most of his career working on scientific problems concerning the Quaternary Period, the last 2.6 million years of Earth history. After graduating with his Ph.D. from the University of Alberta, he joined the Geological Survey of Canada in Calgary, spending most of his time investigating the glacial history and climate change of Western Canada. After a short stint as Environmental Advisor with the National Energy Board in Ottawa, he returned to the University of Alberta as Professor and then as Chairman of the Department of Geology. He and his graduate students continued climate change research not only in Canada but also in China, Siberia, Europe, Africa and South America. He is currently University Professor Emeritus of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

He has been a member of many scientific committees and organizations, including President of the International Union for Quaternary Research. He was one of the founding members of the international program on Past Global Change. Nat is the founder and first editor-in-chief of the scientific periodical Quaternary International.

His many honours include Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada,Officer of the Order of Canada, Honourary Professor of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Honourary Doctor of Science degrees. He has distinguished career awards from the Geological Asssociation of Canada, The Geological Society of America and the Canadian Quaternary Association.

The Late Cenozoic Climate Record from the Loess of China
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D. C. Sego
Dr. Sego's 31-year career has focused on research related to permafrost and oil sands mine wastes. In 1990, he initiated research on freeze thaw separation of water from oil sands mature fine tailings followed by spray freezing to separate contaminants from the recycle water. Then the use of plants to stabilize the surface of soft tailings was studied. In 2000, in collaboration with colleagues from industry and government the concept for the Oil Sands Tailings Research Facility was initiated. Construction was completed in 2005 and to date a total of 25 graduate student projects are either completed or actively underway. Recent research has focused on mechanical dewatering of tailings along with stabilization of soft tailings to ready it for reclamation. Dr. Sego's work has inspired others, including the 81 graduate students who have completed their degrees and the 5 MSc and 12 PhD students presently under his supervision.

Environmental Impact of the Oil Sands
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Appy Sluijs
Appy Sluijs is a paleoclimatologist at the Institute of Environmental Biology at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. In 2006, he graduated cum laude at Utrecht University on a Ph.D. thesis entitled 'Global Change during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum'. His research is focused on reconstructing paleoclimate during the 'fossil greenhouse world' of the early Paleogene, particularly across several phases of rapid carbon injection such as the PETM and Eocene Thermal Maximum 2. He combines multiple, particularly organic, proxies, such as dinoflagellate cyst micropaleontology and TEX86 paleothermometry. He received the Outstanding Young Scientist Award of the European Geosciences Union in 2007 and is currently member of the editorial board of the scientific journal Geology. He regularly lectures for general audiences on the geological perspective on climate change and co-produced a complete web-based high school education plug-in on this subject.

Rapid Carbon Injection and Transient Global Warming During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum
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Lowell Stott
Lowell Stott is professor Earth Sciences at the University of Southern California. He received a Ph.D in Oceanography from the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island in 1989 and then moved to the University of Southern California to start a program in climate science. His research seeks to understand what factors are responsible for Earth's dynamic natural climate variability. He served as Chair of the National Science Foundation Earth System History (ESH) science steering committee 2004-2007 and routinely serves on advisory committees for climate and environmental sciences.

The Oceanic Climate Capacitor
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Don White
Don White was educated at the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia. He is a senior research scientist at the Geological Survey of Canada where he has worked as a geophysicist since 1989. He has been involved in the IEA Weyburn CO₂ Monitoring and Storage Project since 2001 where he acts as the theme leader for Monitoring and Verification (Geophysics).

Geological Storage of Carbon: 8 Years of Experience from the IEA Weyburn CO₂ Monitoring and Storage Project
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