UL Sustainable Development

Price Waterhouse Cooper on Material Scarcity

Colin Fitzpatrick — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:02:57 +0000

just read the executive summary

http://www.pwc.com/en_GX/gx/sustainability/research-insights/assets/impact-of-minerals-metals-scarcity-on-business.pdf

Climate Change and Agriculture

Colin Fitzpatrick — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:38:48 +0000

article from Time

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2105169,00.html?xid=tweetbut

All is one

Colin Fitzpatrick — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:13:13 +0000

Yesterdays class reminded me of this video

Rio +20

Colin Fitzpatrick — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:10:25 +0000

20 years on from the seminal Earth Summit, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development will return to Rio. Check out the website to see what it is about

http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/index.html

Oil’s tipping point has passed (since 2005)

Colin Fitzpatrick — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:53:01 +0000

Article by James Murray and David King published in Nature today

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v481/n7382/full/481433a.html

This may be behind a pay wall if you are accessing it from off campus but if you do some searching around on the internet you will find plenty of commentary about it.

Nuclear Power for Ireland

Colin Fitzpatrick — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:46:39 +0000

Professor Philip Walton, Professor Ian McAulay & Mr Denis Duff

Date – Thursday 9^th February 2012

Time – 6pm

Venue – Jean Monnet Theatre, Main Building

Abstract

Historically the Irish Government’s policy has been firmly opposed to nuclear energy on the grounds of the risk it poses, yet some argue that nuclear energy is one of the cleanest, safest and economic forms of energy available to mankind today. Nuclear Power has been employed successfully over the past 50 years by many countries yet Ireland continues to reject it.

Three members of the BENE (Better Environment with Nuclear Energy) group; Professor Philip Walton, Professor Ian McAulay & Mr Denis Duff will explain this is the case and also put forward their reasons why they believe Ireland should adopt nuclear energy as an important part of our energy mix.

Presenters

Philip Walton is Emeritus Professor at NUI Galway. Up until his retirement in 2005 he was Professor or Applied Physics at the University. He has served for seven years on the Board of the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland and has also served as Radiological Protection Officer at NUI Galway.

Professor Ian McAulay has a background in health physics and has been extensively involved in measurements of radioactivity in the environment and in radiation protection. He was heavily involved in the nuclear debate thirty years ago and at that time was one of the Irish scientists trying to correct imbalances in the media coverage.

Mr Denis Duff is a mechanical engineer currently working in the power generation sector. He has wide experience of different electrical generation systems both in Ireland and abroad. These include a wind turbine generation evaluation project as well as solid fuel, oil and gas-fired thermal stations.

Refreshments will be served after the presentation.

RSVP: Josephine.Hogan@ul.ie by Monday 6th February 2012

Blogs

Colin Fitzpatrick — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:12:29 +0000

Don’t forget to set up your blogs! There are none yet!

Green Campus

Colin Fitzpatrick — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:25:51 +0000

Anyone (staff or students) interested in the Green Campus initiative (like the Green Flag for schools) come along to kickoff meeting tomorrow at 1pm in A1-112. If interested but not able to come along contact reena.cole@ul.ie or Shane Hickey (0037036@studentmail.ul.ie).

For students this can count towards the Presidents Volunteer Award…

Course Booklet

Colin Fitzpatrick — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:38:40 +0000

SD Module Guidebook 2012

Your Blogs

Colin Fitzpatrick — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:01:12 +0000

This module is going to use as little paper as is possible. To do this you will be submitting your assignments by blog and we will need to get the address. If you already blog then you should set up a new one dedicated to only this module. We’d like if everyone could use wordpress and when you have it set up then post its address in the comments of this entry.

You should set it up so that your address is in the form http://firstnamelastname.wordpress.com If you have any queries about the process then post them in the comments here also.