April 2007
On April 14, 2007, I was the moderator of the Step It Up 2007: Jacksonville Public Forum on Climate Change.
I also made a presentation on “Fossil Carbon Emissions and Mitigation” at the event. My presentation is available as a PDF by right-clicking this link.
News Release
St. Augustine, FL, March 26, 2007 — At the recent Jacksonville meeting of the Florida Energy Commission’s Climate Change Advisory Group and again at the Orlando meeting of the full Florida Energy Commission, Robert Farmer, a St. Augustine-based energy engineer and climate change specialist, presented recommendations to establish official State public communications on the climate change issue. Mr. Farmer is president of Third Planet, a non-profit organization focusing climate change education and president of Concept Communiqués, Inc., a public relations and corporate communications agency with a particular focus on communications related to climate change.
Citing growing public awareness of the effects of climate change, Mr. Farmer pointed out the public is becoming increasingly concerned and feeling quite isolated and helpless because they have so few avenues for addressing the problem, “short of changing light bulbs.”
“This year the urgency has ramped up considerably with the release of the science report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in February, and I can confidently predict that it will rise several more notches with the IPCC report on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability to be released in less than 3 weeks (April 2-5, Brussels). This report will have particular resonance for Florida. Continue reading
October 2006
This summer Third Planet left South Florida to take up our global climate change advocacy work on Florida’s First Coast. The direct impact of the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons on our lives was too much. The straw that broke the camel’s back. Not that we’re out of harm’s way, but my family feels safer. We’re out of the peninsula.
For many years I spoke to Southeast Florida and Bahamian audiences, organized workshops, worked in local and state policy circles, and generally got myself involved in “all things global climate change and energy”. Energy engineering, as people who know me will tell you, is my forté.
In the 1970s, when I was a power systems planning engineer, I first learned about the exponential growth of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere from the combustion of fossil fuels. My life as a fossil fuel power engineer changed. I became increasingly involved in building more efficient power systems, and fugitive gas/waste gas cogeneration became my area of specialization. As the years went by and evidence built for me that these so-called greenhouse gases were having a discernable effect on our atmosphere, I became more involved in advocacy. Continue reading