For our children’s children: A lecture by Dr. Kim

By Florence Wayas, Service Learning Coordinator

This week we were privileged to welcome Dr Jin Won Kim, from the National Institute of Meteorological Sciences, who delivered the commencement talk for our 2020 IB Diploma Group 4 project, which is focusing on how to mitigate the damage done by the increasing number of natural disasters linked to the increase in carbon dioxide levels, this year.

Dr. Kim, is a climate change scientist who was educated in Korea and the USA, where he began his career in research at Oregon State University, Berkeley and UCLA for the last 17 years. Dr. Kim’s lecture discussed the natural variation that already exists in the earth’s very unique climate and the different causes of variation outside of the natural pattern that we would expect. The climate model research experiments presented by Dr. Kim, confirmed the links with greenhouse gases that we have come to understand. The impacts of this are both positive and negative. For example, the overall incidence cyclones has decreased but the intensity of the ones which do happen is much higher. The impact of extreme weather patterns, such as heatwaves, increased precipitation and hydrology changes on food production and water availability are the most pressing issues facing our global community. According to Dr. Kim, we need to find a way to balance the industrial activities, needed to maintain a good quality of life, and their impacts on climate change for our long-term survival. Conservation will be a key component of the plan for sustainable development.

The Group 4 project is a mandatory interdisciplinary project that every IB Diploma student who is studying a Science (Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Computer Science, and Design & Technology) has to complete. It aims to model the way scientists across different disciplines work together to further the development of science and the ethical framework that has to be considered centering on social, environmental and economic issues.

We are so very grateful to Dr. Kim for sharing his knowledge and research with our students, inspiring them to create solutions that are steeped in science, for all of our tomorrow’s.

Click Here to see the presentation.