‘We’re part of the problem.’ Astronomers confront their role in—and vulnerability to—climate change

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/we-re-part-problem-astronomers-confront-their-role-and-vulnerability-climate-change

Source: By Daniel Clery, Science Magazine. 

Excerpt: ...concerns were cast in sharp relief by six papers published last month in Nature Astronomy. One, on the carbon costs of meetings, emerged directly from the 2019 European Astronomical Society (EAS) meeting in France, which took place during a record-breaking heatwave when temperatures exceeded 45°C. “We were sitting with no air conditioning, sweating through all these interesting talks,” Burtscher says. Discussions turned to climate change and the carbon emitted getting everyone to the meeting, and they inspired Burtscher and his colleagues to size up the meeting’s travel emissions. They added up to nearly 1900 tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂) equivalent or about 1.5 tons per delegate—roughly the same as emitted by an average resident of India in a whole year. ...Another of the six studies found that Australian astronomers each produced 37 tons of CO2 equivalent per year, of which 60% came from supercomputer usage. ...“There’s a lot of excitement about the potential” of virtual meetings, says Travis Rector of the University of Alaska, Anchorage, who heads the sustainability committee of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). When this year’s EAS meeting went virtual because of COVID-19, the team that calculated the carbon costs of the 2019 meeting did a new analysis. Based on a survey of computer and internet usage by delegates and organizers, they calculated emissions of 582 kilograms for the entire meeting, less than one–three-thousandth of the 2019 meeting total....