Energy and Climate Policy: Synergies, Conflicts, and Co-Benefits

First paragraph: Energy and climate policy have been closely linked ever since the 1970s when scientists stepped up efforts to model the warming effect of greenhouse gases (GHGs) on the earth’s climate. Carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuel combustion represents the largest source of GHG emissions, accounting for well over 60 percent of global emissions and around three quarters of GHG emissions in industrialised economies such as the US and the EU

The Discursive Politics of Unconventional Gas in Scotland: Drifting Towards Precaution?

With a long history of oil and gas production and potentially significant reserves of unconventional gas, Scotland represents a notable case amid the growing international controversy over unconventional gas development (UGD). This article applies argumentative discourse analysis to the Scottish debate over UGD and identifies several important storylines which have mobilised different discourse coalitions and shaped public opinion as well as policy-making. For now, anti-UGD storylines appear more encompassing and have achieved greater resonance. Of particular interest, however, is the role of the Scottish government as a third discourse coalition. Through a moratorium on all forms of UGD and a cautious 'evidence-based approach', the government has established a form of discursive dominance and has successfully minimised electoral risks. But its anti-Westminster storyline - created in the run-up to the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 - has undermined the government's pragmatic strategy by invoking Scottish resistance to the UK’s pursuit of shale gas. While the evidence-based approach persists as the preeminent storyline, its interpretation has 'drifted' from (1) a modestly reformed planning policy to (2) an exercise in scientific fact-finding combined with a public consultation and, arguably, (3) to a precautionary approach that might lay the foundation for an extended moratorium

Stellar Intensity Interferometry: Astrophysical targets for sub-milliarcsecond imaging

Intensity interferometry permits very long optical baselines and the observation of sub-milliarcsecond structures. Using planned kilometric arrays of air Cherenkov telescopes at short wavelengths, intensity interferometry may increase the spatial resolution achieved in optical astronomy by an order of magnitude, inviting detailed studies of the shapes of rapidly rotating hot stars with structures in their circumstellar disks and winds, or mapping out patterns of nonradial pulsations across stellar surfaces. Signal-to-noise in intensity interferometry favors high-temperature sources and emission-line structures, and is independent of the optical passband, be it a single spectral line or the broad spectral continuum. Prime candidate sources have been identified among classes of bright and hot stars. Observations are simulated for telescope configurations envisioned for large Cherenkov facilities, synthesizing numerous optical baselines in software, confirming that resolutions of tens of microarcseconds are feasible for numerous astrophysical targets.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures; presented at the SPIE conference "Optical and Infrared Interferometry II", San Diego, CA, USA (June 2010

Stellar intensity interferometry: Optimizing air Cherenkov telescope array layouts

Kilometric-scale optical imagers seem feasible to realize by intensity interferometry, using telescopes primarily erected for measuring Cherenkov light induced by gamma rays. Planned arrays envision 50--100 telescopes, distributed over some 1--4 km$^2$. Although array layouts and telescope sizes will primarily be chosen for gamma-ray observations, also their interferometric performance may be optimized. Observations of stellar objects were numerically simulated for different array geometries, yielding signal-to-noise ratios for different Fourier components of the source images in the interferometric $(u,v)$-plane. Simulations were made for layouts actually proposed for future Cherenkov telescope arrays, and for subsets with only a fraction of the telescopes. All large arrays provide dense sampling of the $(u,v)$-plane due to the sheer number of telescopes, irrespective of their geographic orientation or stellar coordinates. However, for improved coverage of the $(u,v)$-plane and a wider variety of baselines (enabling better image reconstruction), an exact east-west grid should be avoided for the numerous smaller telescopes, and repetitive geometric patterns avoided for the few large ones. Sparse arrays become severely limited by a lack of short baselines, and to cover astrophysically relevant dimensions between 0.1--3 milliarcseconds in visible wavelengths, baselines between pairs of telescopes should cover the whole interval 30--2000 m.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures; presented at the SPIE conference "Optical and Infrared Interferometry II", San Diego, CA, USA (June 2010

International Organizations and the Global Environment

First paragraph: The organisational network of global environmental governance (GEG) mirrors the complexity of the planet's manifold and overlapping ecosystems. Bursting onto the international stage in the 1970s, environmental issues began to be addressed by a series of new international organisations, most of them affiliated with the United Nations. Some of them, such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), were given a broad mandate, whereas others like the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) concentrated on a much more precise issue-area and have gained significant authority for their respective sub-fields. After the end of the Cold War, the rise of international environmental organisations has continued unabated. Yet the new institutions came to life in an already institutionalised context: some of the urgent tasks of management and coordination had already been allocated, and the newcomers often contributed to a growing trend towards organisational fragmentation

The Role of International Organizations in Global Environmental Governance

First paragraph: The organizational network of global environmental governance (GEG) mirrors the complexity of the planet's manifold and overlapping ecosystems. Bursting onto the international stage in the 1970s, environmental issues began to be addressed by a series of new international organizations, most of them affiliated with the United Nations. Some of them, such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), were given a broad mandate, whereas others like the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) concentrated on a much more precise issue-area and have gained significant authority for their respective sub-fields. After the end of the Cold War, the rise of international environmental organizations has continued unabated. Yet the new institutions came to life in an already institutionalized context: some of the urgent tasks of management and co-ordination had already been allocated, and the newcomers often contributed to a growing trend towards organizational fragmentation

The Challenge of Energy Management – Status-Quo and Perspectives for Reference Models

Energy management is one of the great challenges of the industry in the next years. Energy becomes more and more to a critical resource. Until now, enterprises need to implement energy management system with nearly no guidance. In the following paper we present the foundation of a reference model-based method that serves for setting up energy management systems in various industrial sectors. The goal is to support reduction emission and cost reduction as well as certification needs. In contrast to previous approaches, this approach enables a model-based certification and allows an automation of activities of the process of supervision of the consumption of energy and the appropriate reengineering of business processes

The Royal Society of Edinburgh Research Network in the Arts and Humanities Connecting with a low-carbon Scotland: Disciplinary and interdisciplinary reports, recommendations and research questions

First paragraph: The Royal Society of Edinburgh Research Network in the Arts and Humanities Connecting with a low-carbon Scotland was established in February 2016 with the objective of exploring what the humanities can contribute to the process of low-carbon transition in Scotland to help mitigate climate change. The Network has brought together over eighty scholars from throughout the UK and Europe, and has involved Creative Scotland and Creative Carbon Scotland in its work and activities