 Welcome to the first great debate of this year's SHARE EGU 2020. My name is Jenny Turton. I'm a postdoc at the Friedrich Alexander University in Germany. Today I'm the lead convener for the great debate. Our debate today is called Cutting Carbon in the Geosciences. And we will focus on two specific areas, both fieldwork and conference attendance. So actually this great debate is very well timed with the first virtual EGU. And this is the first virtual great debate that's ever been hosted. So hopefully everything runs nice and smoothly. We will be taking questions from the audience using the Q&A box, which should be at the bottom of your screen. Please use the Q&A box and not the chat box. And this enables the panelists and the conveners to see the questions. Periodically I will be gathering the questions and putting them to our moderator who I will introduce in a moment. And then he will be able to pass the questions on to the panelists. So with this I would like to introduce our moderator today. His name is Professor David Vaughan and he's the Director of Science at the British Antarctic Survey. Welcome, David. Thank you very much, Jenny, our convener for the first ever EGU great debate online. This is an historic moment. And I'm joined today by four panelists who I will introduce in a little while to discuss one of these most pressing and urgent debates in geoscience at the moment. This debate was planned prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and would have been held at the EGU in Vienna with perhaps a potential audience of 18,000 scientists, science communication, communicators and students. But today we are meeting in a virtual sense in a very different world to the one in which this debate was planned where perhaps the most pressing thing that we have in our minds is the global pandemic. But nonetheless this overlaps and changes the way that we also think about our contribution to carbon. All across Europe, indeed much of the rest of the world our governments have called for a temporary change in our life and almost nothing I think will ever be the same again. Sitting at home here under lockdown, I think many of us are questioning what we got used to in our lives and wondering how things will change in the future. So I think this debate could have not come at a more interesting or relevant time. And I think it's really exciting morning to be discussing this. So without much further ado, let us begin. We're all aware of the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and that this is having an enormous impact on our planet. And that as a species we have very little option but to reduce the impact that we're having on this planet to find a more sustainable way to live in. Today our debate will come in two halves. The first around how we can envisage a future where scientific conferences are perhaps less of a significant feature in many of our lives. And the second around how we can actually do science in a more effective and sustainable way. How our trips to undertake field work can be reduced and questions around all of those things. So there are two specific areas for discussion. I will introduce our speakers in the briefest terms and allow them just a couple of points to set out their debate, their stalls if you like within this debate. And then we'll ask them some more specific questions and then open the floor to questions from the audience. As Jenny said, those questions should come in through the Q&A box and we will bring together as many of those questions as we can and ask those of our panel. So let's meet our panel. This is an interesting mix. These are not just people, not just people who make policy but also people who've taken things into their own hands to make things better and people who are already established in their careers and also those who will have to live through entire careers with the answers to the questions that we face. And so those people are looking forward to how things may change in the future. So Suzanne, Ella, Mark, Sudhir, welcome. I'll start with you Suzanne, Professor Suzanne Berthier, a committee chair for the EGU and a professor at Aachen University. You've been, I think, instrumental in swiftly changing the EGU's approach and bringing in this online format that we're all going to be involved with this week. You have first-hand knowledge of the advantages and the challenges of hosting big conferences online. But you also have an experience in fieldwork as well. So Suzanne, EGU's had to do some remarkably quick footwork to get where we are literally today. Is this really just coronavirus or were there other drivers towards changing this format? To be honest, we would never have gone 100% online this year if it hadn't been for corona. And I wouldn't recommend anyone to bring a meeting of our size online in just six weeks, which is why we've been calling it a big pilot experiment. But we hope that the experiment will allow us is to gather insight into what we'll work with a virtual conference and maybe take part of that into our future meetings. I mean, we've been in the last years and it wasn't just corona and six weeks jumping online because already in the last years, we've been thinking a lot about the environmental impacts of our general assembly. And we've been asking participants to travel by public transport. We give a metro ticket with the registration in Vienna. We were going to bicycle stands this year next to the conference center. We have water fountains, we have no plastic glass for any drinks. We have no plastic cups for any drinks we serve. We were going to face out our coffee cups and no printed program book, paper bags, no carpet. We were doing a real lot at the same time. And without it, we have done a full analysis. I think that the largest part of the carbon footprint of the general assembly probably comes from travel of participants to Vienna. And in the last few years, I was looking at the results. EGU has grown year by year. It was 18,000 participants last year. How many were you planning to host this year? Is that just going to keep growing? Certainly it seems like people's enthusiasm to come to Vienna and EGU is growing. How are you going to do with that? It's just wonderful that people are enthusiastic to come to the meeting. But it's true we've been steady growing. We looked into the numbers and it's about 1500 per year. So last year we had over 16,000 abstracts and participants. This year we had 18,000 in program. So we were expecting 18,000 participants. But our goal is not growth. So we've actually been trying to dampen the growth. So our goal is to deliver a good meeting experience for all in an accessible and sustainable manner. And we've been discussing different ways of organizing the meeting. And in fact, at the last program committee meeting in February, we had active discussion groups exactly on what we can do to further reduce the impact. And we didn't get much further in that because we were overtaken by corona during the meeting online. One of the big hurdles for us has been the discussion of say, a lot of the discussion has been about hybrid formats. So we would have a meeting in Vienna and allow remote attendance. But often when people discuss this, it's about the oral. So you can web stream the orals. But two sorts of our presentations are posters. That's 10,000 posters that would have been this year. And how do you bring these online in a way that you give an equal opportunity to the presenters? So we've been trying a different format this year with this place. And maybe we will take part of that further for next year's who knows. Thank you, thank you very much. Let's move on to Ella Gilbert, who is a PhD student with my own institute, the British Antarctic Survey, but also the University of East Anglia in the East of England. Ella has some experience in field work during her PhD, but she's also an extremely active science communicator and has a significant presence online. Ella, welcome. I hear you've just submitted your PhD, is that gone well? Well, I don't know. We'll find out, I suppose, if I've asked. Not absolutely, good luck for that. I guess this is a time for you to really reconsider and think where you're going. Is it a rude question to ask whether you're gonna stay in active research or are there other things that you think that you can do with your enthousiasms and around this debate? Not really at all. It's something I've been doing quite a lot of soul searching about, actually. I'm still a bit of a crossroads. So far in my career, I've sort of been collecting accolades and qualifications. So people take me seriously as an expert scientist. I've sort of reached the end of that road now. So I'm trying to assess how best I can contribute in a meaningful way to communicating about climate change and also contribute to climate action in a way that actually achieves something. So perhaps I'm usually, I became a climate scientist because I was an activist and campaigner first. I don't know how many people have joined sciences in that way. But I was involved in a lot of environmental campaigning and activism since, I don't know, 2007 or so, particularly around the impacts of fossil fuel industry and aviation. So I've made a lot of personal changes to my life as a result of that. So, you know, things like I'm vegan or I think I stopped flying short haul in 2008. And I've dramatically tried to cut down how much I fly generally. So since then I've only been flying for field work or for very important personal reasons. So that's my kind of motivation and background but I'm lucky because I live in Europe and I work at an institute which is very supportive of low carbon alternatives to things like conference attendance. And it's, I mean, I'm also fangirling a little bit over Mark because his website's been my absolute bible for the last 12 years. So yeah, train travel and bus travel in Europe is a lot easier than it is in other parts of the world. So yeah, those kinds of things are very important to me and I'm really pleased to be on the panel of this debate. Thank you very much. Let's move on to Dr. Sudhir Tiwari who joins us from Bombay, a completely different time zone today and who works for the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay. Sudhir, you have to fly to conferences, I guess, several times a year. How and why do you, what benefit do you find in flying to those conferences and to join these big meetings? First of all, I thank to conveners for inviting in this debate. I fly to conferences basically to meet people and make collaborations who are working in different fields. So, and also when you meet people, so there are something like some confusion in some concept or some software. You can meet people, let people in person and you can clear your doubt or that concept in person which you can mail, but in person you can like go in a good way like that. Okay, and what would you miss if you actually found it hard to attend those meetings in person? Do you feel that there could be online and virtual ways to interact that would work sufficiently or actually you're still gonna miss something by not coming to those meetings like you do? Yeah, like is you at one place you can interact with many people within one week of time and you can have different ideas for future workings and like that. So like when you attend a virtual meeting or virtual conference meetings, you cannot explore like you are in conference, you can go via posters and attend several seminars. So in life, I think it is better to interact with a person. Okay, thank you very much. And exchange ideas. Our last panelist today is Mark Smith. Mark Smith was the founder of a website that Ella mentioned just a second ago, seat61.com which is a website that as I understand it doesn't sell tickets to trains but provides information about how to travel on trains effectively for pleasure, for business. Mark, this sounds like a tremendous resource. How long has it been going and why did you set it up? Oh, good morning. Well, it dates back to 2001. I used to have a proper job about as far from a scientist as you can get working for British Rail and later the Department for Transport but I managed to get a webpage online just mucking around with your computer if you do. And I thought I would do something about how on the one hand easy, practical, affordable and above all enjoyable it is to take the train from the UK to Spain, Italy, Austria, Budapest, wherever. And on the other hand, how downright impossible it has become to find anyone in the commercial world who will tell you how to do it. And I mean both the rail industry itself which tends to work in silos and doesn't work together and the wider travel industry which is really set up to sell you flights, flights, car hire and more flights. So I thought I would be subversive and put the information on how to get to each of the major destinations in the major countries of Europe online. The train times out, the train times back, how much it costs, photographs of what the trains are like as people don't know. And most importantly how to buy the tickets. And that's really the crux of it. We've got 50 different ticketing systems. The days in the 1980s of me sitting in an office during university vacations issuing through tickets from London to Istanbul on blank ticket stock with a buy row, a long gone and we live in a world where almost you need a separate ticket for every train which is yield managed like airfares in that specific operator's ticketing system. So it's a bit of a jungle and I thought I would try and help people find their way through that jungle. And why seat 61? I'll always forget to mention that. It's the best seat on EuroStar. EuroStar first class. I will always treat myself to that seat if I was going somewhere special. Yes, okay, so I have not seen the inside of EuroStar first class but it's certainly a useful line that we use. Mark, post coronavirus, do you think trains are going to international travel by trains is going to be more problematic? Essentially on a train you're passing through perhaps several countries before you reach your destination whereas with that aircraft you're flying from one to the other. Do you imagine that that's actually going to be an issue in coming months and years? Well, on an aircraft you almost have to be sitting elbow by elbow to make the economics work. On a train there is much more space. It's not as critical to cram people in. So it could be that social distancing on a station and on trains is actually easier to do, more economic to do than on air travel. And of course we're in a situation where the airlines are taking a big hit. Most of the national rail operators are going to, they're state-owned, they're fairly certain to survive. So we could see a world where there aren't as many cheap airfares around, there aren't as many airlines around and actually it's another push towards towards rail travel even over longer distances. That's a very optimistic look forward. I was just going to mention my own background. As somebody who's been working in science now for a little over 30 years, I feel I've benefited enormously from cheap air travel and attendance to many conferences around the world and to undertake field work. I feel like now this is almost an aberration of history, that one period that my career happened to span may well be looked back at in a few years' time as the really the golden age of cheap air travel. And I actually say it would admit to feeling somewhat guilty about having had that access to places around the world. But I think there's little doubt that certainly over the last few years I've reduced my air travel and actually now try and limit myself to one or two trips overseas certainly intercontinental every year. But I know that many from my generation perhaps will feel a little bit like we've seen the best of it and that others may have to actually live with the consequences of that of cheap and available air travel. So let us begin with some of the more detailed questions. I think there is still a sense and many people have said to me, going to conferences is not about sitting in the rooms and watching presentations. A lot of the business that actually happens goes on after the main meeting has ended. Finding people to go to restaurants with and perhaps even bars and talking in a more informal way. Susanne, is there any way that EGU and similar organisations can actually help produce that sense of community that arises from meeting people face to face? I mean, for me, one of the main reasons we go to... We've been thinking a lot about why do people go to scientific conferences and it's because they want to present their research and want to learn about research of others and I think part of that you can do probably in virtual ways. But the in-person aspect, so you're meeting people and not only the people you already know, your colleagues but especially making new contacts. I think that's where a real value of conferences lies and that will be very difficult to do virtual. The aspect of spontaneously meeting somebody at a poster session and having a chat and then this way making new contacts. Ella, is this simply perhaps, sorry, to accuse you of this, Susanne, but is this the problem that perhaps an older generation has with getting up to date with social media? Sorry, let me direct that just to myself, Susanne. But really are there opportunities? I feel there is a wide and international community building up within social media space that perhaps we're not aware of. It's not quite as apparent. Yeah, I mean, I've made several very useful and important professional contacts via Twitter which has been really, really amazing and I've collaborated with people without having met them at all purely because of Twitter and the way that I use it is that I very carefully curate who I follow so that it is just the kind of people that I really need to or want to get in contact with. That does require the people that you want to get in contact with to be on Twitter. So it's a self-selecting group. But I think there is more and more awareness of the importance of kind of social networking online as a tool for professional development and for collaboration across institutes. And it's also much more equitable, right? Because we can't all afford necessarily to attend conferences. You have to have the funding to do so. It's often difficult for early career researchers or researchers in developing countries to find the funds to do that. And it's a much, it levels a playing field to an extent. So I think there is definitely a place for much more online networking for sure. How do you actually partition that activity in your working week? I mean, this is not simply recreation for you. This is actually part of your approach to doing research and being effective in research. So how do you actually think of that as part of your working week? It is difficult because if you let it, it can stray into being, like you say, recreational. But someone said to me when they first recommended that I joined Twitter, I can scroll through my Twitter feed, which is curated so that it's only my field and related scientists and scientific information. I can scroll through that feed and in five minutes, I can get a really good understanding of what the latest developments are in my scientific research, in my field. People post new papers, people post new news stories about things that are going on. And those five minutes, if you spend that at the beginning of the day, like you would check your emails when you get to work, have a coffee, read your Twitter feed, make sure that you're kind of abreast of current development, that can be really helpful. And it's a very quick, digestible way of doing it. And I find that very helpful. Of course, for me, I find it very natural because I've grown up with social media to an extent and I find it a lot more accessible, whereas I know that other people might not find that. It just becomes relatively intuitively to me. Sudeer, do you have similar experience? Are you also on social media in your environment and research community? Yeah, I use social media. In fact, I have collaborated with one of my colleague's social media only and I have collaborated in two people with social media for the papers. So it is useful for the collaboration. But first you have to know their background in which field they are working and all those things. So you can contact them from social media. If there is fun, you can collaborate with them and so on. So Marky, do you feel that the social media is actually taking the market from train travel or is it actually train travel growing in Europe at the moment? The sector of train travel that's taking the biggest hit is actually the commuting to work and the working from home, where we're seeing less people buy season tickets. But even looking at my career with the Department of Transport, there were so many occasions you wanted to go and talk to people face to face because you can say face to face things that you just don't feel comfortable saying online. You can get them over with nuances that don't come over through a laptop. And I think that's always going to be. We've had computers now for absolutely ages and although conferencing is getting better, I don't think it's hitting the real business travel. I mean, of course, there'll always be occasions where you can avoid a meeting by doing something online, but there are just so many occasions where it's better to do business face to face. And of course, you get as much done on the train chatting to your colleagues and sorting things out as you do when you get there sometimes as well. What is it that actually is the better thing that you get when you're meeting people face to face? I struggle to see, I feel it, I understand it, but I struggle to put my finger on what it is that actually makes meeting people face to face somehow better. Suzanne, do you have an insight into that and thinking about EGUs going online? I think I'm definitely moving out of my science field here, but I think it probably has to do with how you read a person when you meet them. So there's a lot of signals that probably will be less easy to pick up when you're talking on social media or even face to face. And I think before you reach the stage that you actually have a video call with someone, it's a bit of a hurdle. Whereas if you are at a conference and you're having your coffee at a break or you're standing at a poster, it's just really easy to just say, oh, could you tell me a bit about what you're working on? And I think it's just an aspect and I totally acknowledge what Ella is saying about social media. I've also met people via Twitter and yes, that works, but it works in a different way. And I think so far and maybe this is a career stage from my age, but I've definitely made more contacts at workshops and scientific meetings than I have done through email or social media. Is this really just a question of bandwidth? I mean, am I going to be able to, within the next five or 10 years, put on a virtual headset and walk around EGU and get equally lost in my virtual world as I did in the complex maze of EGU? Being a direct level in the basement. Ah, that's a difficult one. I mean, I think a lot of the experiences that we're building up now in Corona times and bringing meetings online will change the meeting landscape and I can see some meetings work perfectly online. I'm involved in a computer science meeting and that will work very well and maybe it will stay online, who knows? But I don't think we will go to a meeting landscape with only virtual meetings in the future. I think there is just a human need to actually meet the people that you work with. It's meeting new people, but also meeting your old friends and colleagues. I mean, a face-to-face discussion about your projects. I see now some questions coming in from the audience and maybe it's a useful time to go to some of those. There's quite a pointed question here. I'm sorry, I don't have an indication of where these questions are coming from, but it says, and this is probably one for Suzanne, Copernicus make a lot of money from the EGU and a lot of money from registrations from people coming in person. How does this influence the format of the conference and could Copernicus survive making less money out of it being an online conference? So to clarify, Copernicus is the conference organizer for EGU. Yeah, we take registration fee to organize the meeting, but most of the registration fee actually covers organizing the meeting. It's not that the General Assembly is making heaps of money, we have to make some money because we have to cover the costs of EGU and the other outreach and education activities that EGU organizes. Copernicus is like the EGU program committee actually really enthusiastic about exploring different formats. And I said, I mean, we started discussing this already in previous years. And I think it will just mean, it will mean a different way of organizing a different business model. So this year sharing your science online is free which is because we're not web streaming from a conference center, we went totally online. It's also an experiment. So we did not want to charge for this. But I think in future assignments, I mean, it could well be a way where when you participate online that you do pay registration fee to cover the costs that we're actually making in organizing this. So I am no way afraid that, you know, a different format would be a hinder. I think there is actually great enthusiasm in both Copernicus and EGU to look at different formats. Question for Sudeer, I think. Could more regional conferences work better? Is there a value in the global conference like EGU, AGU, those big conferences that people travel a long way to? Could more regional conferences help? For regional conferences, you will meet people like for that continent only. And through global conferences, you will meet people from different continents and the people which are working top class in their field in the global conferences, they generally visit there. Whereas in regional conferences, only that continent people, most of the people are from that continent. So the quality of the conference matters in the global, prospect, global conferences, you will meet more quality type of people than the original conferences, like. Okay. Ella, do you have a feeling around regional conferences versus global conferences? Would you rather save up your carbon emissions and go to one big global conference or would you favor more regional? I mean, definitely. We already have that with something like AGU versus EGU. And I think, like Sudeer said, you do just meet people from your typical regardless. And I think, like we've been talking about the impasse and element is really important, but we do have to do something. We have to be, by example, particularly for me as a climate scientist, I feel that if I am not doing my utmost to reduce my carbon emissions in my professional and personal life, then I'm completely hypocrite. There's a question to our other scientists, panelists, do you feel that science must be leading the way in this area and this debate or there are other people who say that actually there's a halo effect. The reason, the fact that many of us are involved in research around climate change and understanding the impacts of climate change on the earth system, means there's a certain halo that should allow us a free ride, if you like, in terms of carbon. Should we be leading or can we rest a bit on our laurels? Suzanne, a firm shake of the head there. First we should be leading. I mean, it's the scientists who give all the warnings. Climate science is a big filter near science. We are issuing the warnings. We should be giving an example by showing what is actually possible in our own behavior. And that might be at some times a bit painful in the sense that we have to choose to maybe not go to that meeting, which is a two-day meeting at another continent. Or maybe we're not going to do that fieldwork in that very interesting place. But I do think we have a responsibility to show that this is possible. And how do we actually demonstrate that? How do we actually, you know, we can lead and influence those around us and in our immediate spiel of researchers and colleagues and friends. But how do we actually demonstrate that in a more public way that we're doing something to reduce our own and professional carbon emissions? Does anybody post their personal target for carbon emissions? Is that... Ella, is that something that you've thought of doing? Making it... No, maybe I'm wrong. Sorry, I missed that. Yeah, I mean, that's a really interesting one. It's a really interesting one because it definitely makes you accountable to everybody else. And I mean, it requires you to calculate it first, of course. There's obviously various different metrics for accounting for different things. I mean, it's not necessarily so straightforward. I think that would be a really interesting idea if institutions did it, and then we also had to disclose our... I mean, big companies have to do it, so why shouldn't we as leading scientists do it voluntarily or even as institutions? Mark, to extend that discussion, a lot of people have talked about carbon offsetting in a sense. Do people by and large offset their train journeys as their flights or is it specifically a flight thing? Does carbon offsetting actually work online? I haven't got new figures, but I am almost certain that most people don't. And I suspect most people don't offset their flights either. I think there's an important point here. Sometimes debates like this can sort of head towards making grand gestures by going to conferences in Hong Kong via the Trans-Siberian Railway. And I think we need to recognise that it needs to be tackled from the other end in that there's still people, amazingly, going to Heathrow or Stanstad or Luton just to go to Edinburgh or Glasgow. And even holidays to Switzerland or Italy or Spain can quite feasibly be substituted by rail. So I think it very definitely needs to be tackled from that end. Cézanne? Offsetting. One of the things that we would have done this year if you had been in Vienna with the carbon offset, the travel of all participants. And that would be regardless of the amount how they came, train or bus or plane. We had a bit of discussion about this. I think personally it would have been a real milestone doing this. We would have been the first big meeting to carbon offset all the travel. But of course the carbon is already spent, right? So you do it afterwards. And that has been the bit where it's a bit uncomfortable, I find. So it's a real step forward, but it doesn't take away the underlying issue. So what is your view on that? The underlying issue being that we actually have to burn the carbon before we're going to start to offset it. And then of course I guess that these schemes for offsetting, some are very much better than others doing the job that they're saying that they're doing. So selection of those schemes is really quite important. Does anybody offset their travel? Sudhir, have you thought about doing that? It clearly adds to the expense of travelling, especially long distances. Yeah, like rather than doing multiple conferences in here, you can choose the conference electively for field specific conferences like one or two. So you can cut the carbon footprint rather than doing multiple conferences, you attend a specific conference one or two in a year. In this way you can reduce the carbon footprint. So be selective rather than necessarily paying somebody else to offset your carbon. Let me just ask, Mark, do you still fly anywhere or are you firmly in seat 61? Well, if it's trying to get to Vietnam, then I will probably fly, but I don't fly in Europe and don't fly, certainly not in the UK and Ireland either. So I will if I have to. Most journeys, do you think it actually takes you longer or is that similar to actually hanging around in airports and waiting for flights? Well, the first point is that your one-hour flight these days takes four hours. So even a four-hour train journey can just be as quick as flying. And we've seen that change over the years. The head of SNCF used to said some years ago that the magic figure where rail competed with air was a three-hour journey time because of half an hour to the airport, an hour check-in and an hour flight and half an hour into the city. That has now gone up to four or even five hours. And he cited Paris Perpignol, which has got a five-hour journey time with France's TGV. And they've got a 50% market share. So things have definitely changed probably since 9-11 and the extra security came in because flying is certainly no longer glamorous. For leisure travel, of course, people are willing to consider the train to much longer. The most popular pages on my website for European travel from the UK is not UK to France, that's number two. UK to Italy is always top. Netherlands in third place and UK to Spain in fourth place. And that always surprises me. Following on is a message, a question from our audience that says how should we actually incentivise people to at least think about alternatives to airline travel? Any quick pointers on how to actually push people to thinking about alternatives? Ella. I was hoping you might ask me that one. I don't think we need to be pressurising people to take individual action. I think it's more about changing the system that makes train travel appear inaccessible. It makes it inaccessible. It's so extortionately priced if you consider the carbon cost of aviation, which just doesn't reflect the actual true cost, the true environmental cost of taking a flight. We aren't able to travel sustainably because the way that our economic system is structured means that we aren't taking into account all of the costs. And if that changed, for instance, if we had an actual, proper carbon trading system or an accurately reflective price, that might be a very big game changer. And I think the way we think we structure our pricing systems is going to have to change and that requires a very big effort from big players like governments and even, I mean, in Europe, the EU, for instance. But we cannot do that as individuals, even as institutes in various countries. We have to kind of lobby for much larger scale change because that's realistically one of the key ways that it will happen quickly, quick enough for us to actually have an impact. Suzanne. Incentivising people to consider alternatives. Is that something that we need to do in a social sense? Or is it one that our organisations can take a lead in? Is it in their interests to bring people in in a different way, different mode of travel? It is because, like, it's a responsibility of a European Geoscience Union to ensure that we look after our climate. And I think that there is different ways. I mean, I could see on the chat and the question has already been pointed out. The website of Milán Klover who did an analysis for EDU 2019 and it shows that the majority of the carbon from travel to the General Assembly in Vienna came from flights over 1,500 kilometres. That was more than 85%. So the short-haul flights, the ones within Europe are not the big contributors. Whereas the short flights are the ones that are most likely to be done by train. Train also carries a carbon in many cases. But much less. So the question is how do we bring down the carbon of a big meeting when we know that a lot of the contributions come from these really long flights. And that links a bit to what Citi was saying. If you want to attend a conference in a different continent, it means a long-haul flight. So are there different ways of doing this? And that could be regional hubs, which has been brought up. Definitely one thing that I also saw brought up and it's what we've been thinking of when you invite people to come. The idea is that they stay for a whole week and not just fly in for a talk and fly out but really make the most of their experience. And one thing we've also been encouraging to do is that when you are already in Vienna use the opportunity to meet with other people. Set up meetings for your project with other people. We offer meeting rooms free of charge. We encourage other workshops to tag on before or after so people can combine so make the most of the trip. It's ways forward. I'm not sure we dare, but I'm very happy to read more and more suggestions in the chat and in the questions. I'm going to move the discussion on a little bit now towards not just conferences, but towards the way that we actually deliver science. Many of us are involved in field science. Often that takes us to quite remote places. British Antarctic Survey has a, my own organization has an annual schedule of taking people the 9,000 miles across the world to work in the Antarctic. And that involves in itself a great deal of carbon emissions from our ships and our aircraft. Some of the science that we do does benefit climate change research, but some of it actually doesn't. And I wonder if in your mind there is a difference between the way that we should treat science that is addressing climate change in terms of its carbon emissions and the way that we're just doing science that maybe answers other questions that society is interested in. Is there a halo effect around climate change science or should it just be seen as part of the rest of it? Ella, you've been involved in working some far away places. What was your feeling when you were involved? Guilt. No, you're right. I think this one is slightly thornier than the conference issue because you can't really do virtual field work in the same way. Like you've said, there's this kind of halo effect possibly like is the fact that I'm doing climate research in Antarctica justifying the fact that I had to fly to get there. I'm not really very sure about that one and I think I'm very conflicted about it. Ultimately, the kind of research that I was doing whilst I was there I felt was really contributing very directly to our understanding of climate change and I felt like it was very helpful, very useful and very important. But I don't know where you would draw the line because there's at some point going to be a balance where the carbon cost of getting there and the carbon cost of being there and I was involved in the airborne observation campaign which is the most carbon intensive form of fieldwork you could do. So at some point it's going to outweigh the carbon benefit of contributing to climate research. So it's really, really difficult. I'm not really sure I have an answer for that one which is perhaps not that helpful. Do you like me feel that perhaps when we are expending a lot of carbon to do our research that does put an onus on us as scientists to be particularly open in sharing data and making sure perhaps that data gets used as many times as possible, is preserved properly and actually contributes to the questions that we're really saying in our proposals that we're trying to answer. Absolutely and I think if we also make sure that whilst we're there we're really making the most of it so we're not just going for a week and doing some research. You make sure that whilst you're there you really make the most of it. Kind of like that point about making the most of being in Vienna for the whole week and not flying in for your talk. Make sure that you're getting the most data you possibly can, that you share it openly, that it's open source, that it's freely available for use by all people and that it's nice and accessible and understandable, well labelled, that kind of thing. But also as a climate modeler I'm also going to say that we need to make more use of our models and if we can validate them with more data of course as modelling gets better and better and better we can start to rely a little bit more on that. Obviously this is just me being my biased modelling self but I think all of these things are a thing that we need to work on together collectively it's going to be a collective effort if there's a way of sharing the load of field work so that different scientific teams don't all need to be there all at once perhaps you can combine research projects in some way for instance if you're doing airborne surveys you can combine the geosciences and meteorology in some way obviously that requires a lot more collaboration so it's a little bit more difficult. Suzanne you've been involved in field work as well as EGU organisation is field work a luxury or is it something that is a a rite of passage for geoscientists that need to have done some field work before they can become effective I've not done that much field work myself I'm a computer modeler but I've been at the Geological Survey of Norway for almost the last 16 years and I think the survey is in a sense lucky that they got the Hall of Norway at their backyard so they don't need to travel that far to study a lot of interesting geology problems but I really like what Ella brought up the open sharing and I think this is a way as a community we need to think about so that when somebody does travel far away and collects data and samples then this is shared and maybe that will then take away the need for somebody else to go to the same area so we should really document digitally everything that there is in that area and share it so dear you travel to fit for doing geological field work is it far to travel can you drive or can you do you have to fill basically I travel to field work via train every time and when it is very urgent only then I have to take to flight so in my PhD only I have done 15 weeks of field work mostly by train and after reaching at the destination nearest destination of field work I take local cars and record the data and do your samples ones that you would share with researchers once you finish doing your immediate problem or other networks that allow you to share your data in your sample yeah I think in this case institutes need to take like they have to take data from researchers once they have done field work they have to make some virtual online field work like university of Leeds and some other university have done it but in India we have to make such portals like you have done lots of field work have very good field photography structures and other data so you can make online portal for this so other researchers can access their data and this will save lots of time for accessing that field area and they can do other things in that same field area comments I see coming in through the chat and the Q&A have also pointed out the high carbon cost of high performance computing and modelling and that modelers themselves should realise that poor code for instance creates more carbon than a well optimised computer model is there any sense in which people try to improve their code from a carbon perspective as much as from an efficiency one or is it just getting those CPU powers that's the hardest thing I think it's a really interesting point as far as I have seen the discussion is not that progressed yet but there are initiatives in the centre if you buy a new cluster energy usage of the cluster is definitely one of the criteria that's evaluated and it should be the other thing is of course where does the electricity come from is it hydro power electricity is it a coal plant this matters I think it's a very valid point many of the activities that we do even without us thinking about it they carry an electricity use and a carbon cost in my career I've also been used a lot of satellite data and of course it feels like it comes for free but the whole infrastructure around putting a satellite into space is quite enormous and has a huge carbon footprint so those of us that use the data may not actually be getting it for free in a sense we're kind of coming quite close to the end of our time now and I would like to just give you panellists a second to just summarise what you think you would like people to take away from this debate and take into the future Mark from the perspective of travel what do you think people should be thinking about as we move forward out of the coronavirus world into a less lockdown situation the key thing is just to check if there is a feasible alternative it's not always easy to do so but have a check check the net see if there is any information out there about train or ferry alternatives and if there is an alternative weigh it up against their travel and say is it feasible because it very often is you're very modest in not saying check seat61.com I will say it for you I think is a remarkable resource and I thank you very much for your efforts in putting it together Sudeer, what are your closing shots on this debate I think researchers should have to choose their contents selectively which is more important for them so they can take that particular conference and not to do more conferences in the year so in this way they can reduce carbon footprint Thank you Ella what for the future I think my main points that I've taken away from this are that it's not just about individual actions and individual institutes it's about trying to encourage that systemic shift changing the cultures around how we do conferencing and field work and that is going to be really difficult but it's going to require much larger scale action lobbying governments etc and we really do need to lead by example as scientists and professionals in not just the climate sciences but the geosciences and I really like your idea of declaring your carbon emissions I'm going to make an effort to try and do that in future Suzanne your final words so we have now all been encouraged to post our carbon emissions I think that's a very good one I've been very happy to see this great debate because I think discussions like this help our community forward and I think one thing that we didn't have a chance to touch upon much is that as a science community we maybe also need to think about the criteria by which we evaluate or judge career progress so when we ask of people that they attend meetings and present do we meet do we meet in person so maybe we should talk to funders as well and people who evaluate career progress to make sure that there are different ways of doing field work participating in science communication are counted equally so I mean in the case of EDU I think corona has allowed us to the positive effect of experimenting with bringing a meeting of our size online and we may well not have found the best way of doing this but I think I hope it will give us an indication of what might work for future meetings and what we could keep because finally we are all responsible for our own carbon footprint thank you so I absolutely agree personally with those responses this is an issue that is for individual scientists their organisations and indeed the funders to address and to show some leadership on so I thank you very much what I've certainly taken about from this debate is really to think about my own personal actions and I wonder in the chats that follow whether people will consider what they're going to do into the future around their own carbon emissions as individuals and also as working scientists I personally will make sure I check with the man in seat 61 to see whether there are alternatives to travel via air and perhaps to invest a little time in enjoying that travel in a way that maybe I haven't in the past few years it is time I think to close this debate I thank all of the panellists Suzanne Sudia Mark, Ella, thank you very much for joining me this morning I would like to thank Jenny Turton and our other conveners thank you very much and that's it from me, goodbye