April 1, 2009 — Dave Rutledge, the Tomiyasu Professor of Electrical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology, will speak on the diminishing supply of fossil fuel resources and climate change on Friday at 2 p.m. in the Mechanical Engineering Building, room 205, at the University of Virginia.

There is a vigorous debate now about whether oil, natural gas and coal resources will be sufficient in the future. At the same time, there is an intense effort to predict the changes in climate that will result from consuming these fossil fuels.

Rutledge says there's been surprisingly little effort to connect the two. Do we have a fossil-fuel supply problem? Do we have a climate-change problem? Do we have both? Which comes first?

He will explore whether understanding of producer limitations could help us better predict climate change.

For information, contact William F. Hall in the Department of Chemical Engineering at 434-243-1559.