I believe that Swinburne bought into Keck as a minor partner a few
years ago, and that is why the Keck meeting is there. We can argue
about whether this is optimal, but I suspect someone thinks
it is both politically necessary and a way of developing links
to the experienced user community. Perhaps having meetings
that are not centered around a science topic is excessive, in
general; this is a question the community should take up but I
don't know if calling out specific examples will produce the
desired result.
In general, for astronomers far from the biggest centers (e.g. in
Australia, South America, South Africa, India), staying in touch with
the community involves a lot of travel, including when you host
a meeting, but the alternative of isolating those people is not
attractive.
I think a problem with public shaming and Golden-Fleece type
awards is that every meeting organizer has some reason for doing
their thing, and shaming is just going to alienate people from the
cause.
In my opinion a worthy cause is to eliminate excessive travel,
like people who fly in for one or two days of a conference. That's
annoying for other reasons also (I don't think organizers like it)
and maybe it's time we started adding a guilt-trip to the gauche
factor.
A positive example is doing things like the Spitzer TAC by
teleconference.
If we must talk about bad examples, one year of flying SOFIA
at full planned schedule (3x/week or so) is probably about the same
order of carbon load as all the people traveling to *all* the 200+
conferences on the CADC meeting list in a year.
- Ben
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Benjamin Weiner
Assistant Astronomer, Steward Observatory
b...@as.arizona.edu
http://mingus.as.arizona.edu/~bjw/
If people cared about the earth, instead of moving a large number of
astronomers to Melbourne to visit a small number there, wouldn't it
make more sense to move the small number of Aussie astronomers to the
US to visit the large number there?
And WHEN will the carbon trump the politics? I hope this happens in
my lifetime.
Not sure about your objection to flying in for a day or two - I'm not
sure the planet cares whether you stay one day or ten. One point
though - if there were better telepresence tools, one would not have
to fly in just to give a talk. That would really save travel and
energy.
Thanks again for your comments,
-Bruce
UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory
Bruce_...@lbl.gov
510-486-5489
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Benjamin Weiner
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b...@as.arizona.edu
http://mingus.as.arizona.edu/~bjw/
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Maybe this is just an area where I diverge from the majority, but I don't agree with this statement:
> Meetings should be held (when necessary at all) at places that minimize the total travel required,
> period.
Meeting locations are chosen for many reasons and to balance many concerns. Energy conservation should be a primary concern, but I don't believe that it should be _the_ primary concern. Holding a meeting (such as the one that started this thread) in Australia is hard to justify from a CO2 standpoint, but the benefits may in some cases outweigh the costs. For instance, if you can involve many of the new students and postdocs in Australia who would not be able to justify a trip to the US (and who might not even travel to a meeting in another site in Australia), and who in the future would be much more informed and be able to participate remotely (meeting people once face-to-face helps a lot in facilitating future electronic meetings, in my opinion), that would be a substantial positive. For them to meet many of the Keck staff might also help make future observations go more smoothly (which would then be done remotely). And many people (myself included) participate much less in remote meetings that are held in different time zones: the level of motivation is much higher.
There are other concerns. People may have sponsoring organizations that want to spend money locally. There actually is a point to having a meeting that people want to attend in a nice location, if you are going to have the meeting in the first place.
If we believe this whole Astronomy thing has merit, then it has costs, both monetary and environmental. [One could also say that meetings should be help in the location that minimizes the total financial cost.] We should be conscious of both of those, but setting them as absolute priorities is inflexible.
David
(And of course there is the complication that the attendance for a meeting is highly dependent on when/where it is, so knowing in advance the location
Hi, Folks.
Maybe this is just an area where I diverge from the majority, but I don't agree with this statement:
> Meetings should be held (when necessary at all) at places that minimize the total travel required,
> period.
Meeting locations are chosen for many reasons and to balance many concerns. Energy conservation should be a primary concern, but I don't believe that it should be _the_ primary concern. Holding a meeting (such as the one that started this thread) in Australia is hard to justify from a CO2 standpoint, but the benefits may in some cases outweigh the costs. For instance, if you can involve many of the new students and postdocs in Australia who would not be able to justify a trip to the US (and who might not even travel to a meeting in another site in Australia), and who in the future would be much more informed and be able to participate remotely (meeting people once face-to-face helps a lot in facilitating future electronic meetings, in my opinion), that would be a substantial positive. For them to meet many of the Keck staff might also help make future observations go more smoothly (which would then be done remotely). And many people (myself included) participate much less in remote meetings that are held in different time zones: the level of motivation is much higher.
There are other concerns. People may have sponsoring organizations that want to spend money locally. There actually is a point to having a meeting that people want to attend in a nice location, if you are going to have the meeting in the first place.
If we believe this whole Astronomy thing has merit, then it has costs, both monetary and environmental. [One could also say that meetings should be help in the location that minimizes the total financial cost.] We should be conscious of both of those, but setting them as absolute priorities is inflexible.
David
(And of course there is the complication that the attendance for a meeting is highly dependent on when/where it is, so knowing in advance the location that minimizes the total travel is hard. Plus there are issues about not all flight miles being equal...)
Lots to agree with on all sides here - no-one said mitigating climate
change would be easy! I've tried to express my views on all this in a
physics world op-ed that will come out in October - I hope it will
resonate with all of you (or at least provoke more discussion!). I'll
ask the editor how embargoed it is...
One thing I add in that article is that the price (in dollars) of
emitting greenhouse gases *will* increase in the next few decades,
either sooner because we push for it, or later because it becomes
obvious even to the vested interests that nothing else makes economic
sense. We are in the business of climate change damage limitation -
and in that spirit, figuring out how to work carbon-efficiently is a
good investment. In a way it's depressing to have to couch it in these
terms - but I am interested in talking with *everybody* on this issue,
and there are plenty out there with hard economic noses :-)
Cheers
Phil
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