last blog

sadly today is the last day of our conference attendance! it went pretty quickly now that it's almost over, but I do feel like I've been here for a few weeks. been attending mostly side events and went to my first pro nuclear discussion here. I never new there were such mixed emotions about nuclear. I've always been for nuclear as I suppose I have heard much more information in favor of building new nuclear rather than opposed to. But I'm learning here that no issue or solution has benefits without draw backs and the drawbacks for nuclear go beyond finding a place to store nuclear waste. Lack of efficiency, how long it takes to build a plant and how much money it will cost are all problems in question with nuclear. In the pro nuclear presentation by the Q and A time there were heavy arguments of whether all of the pro nuclear statistics were true and nobody could seem to come to a agreed conclusion.
I really enjoyed one presentation by GGOS on satelite climate observations where they discussed future plans for implementing a number of new satelites into orbit. Various satelites with the abilities to map and read atmosphereic, terrestrial, and oceanic variables in order to help monitor and predict the earth's changes. This was one of those really slow and technical presentations which I felt could have been communicated a lot more efficiently, but the topic was quite interesting. Maybe it's the American way to expect technology to save us but, these findings in combination with efficient action seems to be a great route towards effective change.
I must say I'm sadly disappointed with the presentations skills of most of these speakers. Slow overloaded powerpoint pages, often times the speakers show little enthusiasm in their tone and expression. I know I shouldn't expect too much, some of the events are so official and political they are like watching cspan. But the few speakers that do put in the extra effort have fuller and more engaged audiences who applaud them at the end of their presentations. It's like a bunch of scientists trying to influences a bunch of politicians who are falling asleep in their meetings.
Well tomorrow we fly out of here tomorrow it's almost over! Poznan is beautiful it's a shame it gets dark here so early there is so much to see. Churches, old buildings, cobblestone streets it's like nothing we have in America which is what makes it so interesting. Back to school on monday, so long from poland.

Andrew