Drs. William Moomaw and Gilbert Rodgers will discuss the importance of Newton’s town trees and how in the changing climate we are experiencing this will affect their sustainability and growth. The Minerva Action Group is an independent organization of individuals with interest and expertise in climate issues and particularly in trees and woodlands. It has created and conducted exercises for students, government officials, and town’s people to understand the role of trees in capturing and sequestering carbon, providing regional cooling and reducing flooding by evaporating water from their leaves. The discussion will suggest how to improve the management of town trees to track these changes and alter practices. There will time for informal discussion and light refreshments following the program”
Co-sponsored by Union Church, FUUSN Climate Action Team, SHOL Care Creation Team, and Green Newton
Speakers:
William Moomaw is Professor Emeritus, Tufts University and Distinguished Visiting Scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center. He holds a PhD from MIT and previously taught chemistry and was Director of Environmental Studies at Williams College. He is a physical chemist who helped develop the first ozone layer protection legislation while working for the U.S. Senate, and has been a lead author of five Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Reports including the 2007 report that shared the Nobel Peace Prize. He has published extensively on technical solutions to reduce climate altering emissions. He is currently working internationally and nationally to identify and implement Natural Climate Solutions that accumulate additional atmospheric carbon out of the atmosphere in forests, wetlands, and soils. In 2019, he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for his “contributions to our understanding of climate change and its global impacts and to the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”
Gilbert Rodgers is Senior Managing Director of Energyzt, an association of energy experts whose goal is researching and communicating the impacts of integrated energy markets. In this role, he oversees development of integrated energy market models focusing on insights into the changing dynamics of renewables, fossil fuels, and transportation industries. He has more than 40 years of experience in the energy industry and has held senior-level positions both in the private sector and in the U.S. federal government. He was instrumental in setting up the data and analytical functions of the Federal Energy Administration which became DOE. His background in climate science dates back to 2007 when at Global Insight (later became IHS) he developed and managed a group on climate change. In research conducted while consulting with Energyzt, he addressed green-house-gas emissions and impacts in many studies including proposed electric transmission lines from Canada to the US and state and regional programs to achieve reduction of carbon emissions to meet net zero-emission goals. As one of the leaders of the Minerva Action Group, he initiated the student exercise estimating the amount of carbon capture by different species, sizes, and ages of trees. Another experiment he formulated and implemented was observing micro-paricles of plastics commonly found in bottled drinking water.
