Climate Reality Leadership Corps Training 2020

Climate Reality

Javeria Asad, Alkhobar – The Climate Reality project launched its first virtual Climate Reality Leadership Corps Training from 18th July to 26th July 2020.

The Training was based on informative and life-changing presentations and live sessions executed by the Climate reality change project chairman and former US Vice president Mr. Al Gore, accompanied by highly cooperative 500 mentors and trainers.

This virtual training was attended by more than 10k mentees from all over the globe. It was a magnificent experience for me to be the part of this global training. I was included in table group number 137 with 20 other marvelous teammates mainly from Middle East region including Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain.

Trainers

Our group trainers were Stefania Romano and Vahram Ayvazyan. Both trainers guided us on every single step through their knowledge and experiences and made this venture flexible and easy going for us.

The climate reality project was founded by Nobel Laureate and former US Vice President Mr Al Gore in 2006, who shared his concerns regarding climate crisis with the world. A major step taken by an individual became a gigantic group of activists, cultural leaders, organizers, scientists, and storytellers.

There are 21,000 Climate Reality Leaders activating communities in 154 countries having 10 branches in different countries Africa, Canada, Europe, Philippines, India, Japan, Mexico, Brazil and Indonesia.

Through multiple societal tools like public leadership training, global media events, digital communications, and issue-based campaigns, Climate Reality is effectively functioning to spread the truth, facts and raise awareness about the climate crisis.

Mission

The mission of this project is to catalyze a global solution to the climate crisis by making urgent action of necessity across each sector of society. These urgent actions are based on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, speed the global shift to renewables, to gather the world leaders to work on ‘Paris Agreement’ effectively.

Paris Agreement aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Training agenda was based on live sessions presented by Mr. Al Gore, who shared slides related to past events occurred in many countries of the world due to climate crisis such as floods, storms, intense rains, heat strokes, and land sliding.

He added, according to the ‘National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Institute for Space Studies’, surface temperature analysis, nineteen of the 20 hottest years have been since 2001.

We Can Change

The five hottest have been the last five years. Increasing levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere are causing global average temperatures to rise. Heat stress, air pollution, mental disorders, and vector, food, and water-borne diseases are all exacerbated by a changing climate.

But in parallel, he encouraged the trainees that all these fluctuations in climate, demands us to take urgent actions to handle the situation with the attitude “We can change”.

Mr. Al Gore also shared live interactive sessions with experienced personalities and influencers from different climate organizations who are working on the climate crisis to discuss the solutions. He also invited many successful climate change leaders who took effective actions to spread awareness.

My Climate Story

The most interesting part of the training was the table talk/ virtual workshop with our mentors and teammates who pooled their points of view based on their life and work experiences. Our mentors buoyed all of us wonderfully to complete our learning exercises especially “My Climate Story”. This learning exercise enabled me to link my work experience as an HVAC Design Engineer with climate change.

I have earlier worked on AC and ventilation systems as I have been located in hotter regions. I started my job in Karachi, Pakistan, and did many projects in Dubai and UAE and later moved to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

As all the countries where I have been living, have hot and humid weather, therefore consequently most of my designs are based on air conditioning and ventilation with treated air using diverse cooling and ventilation systems provided air or water-cooled equipment.

Climate change has heavily impacted the selection and design of air conditioning systems due to global warming and continuous rise in temperatures, cooling requirements in all types of residential, commercial, and health care buildings also augmented, as a result, plant size increased which consequently inflated the budget of the client.

Global warming has drawn great attention in recent years (as mentioned by Al Gore in his first session) because of its large impact on many aspects of the environment and human activities in buildings. This noticeable climate change brought major problems and issues in air conditioning systems.

It is found that for each 18C rise in external temperatures, the peak cooling load increases approximately by 10%, the chiller power by 14%, and fan power for distribution by 30–50%.

HVAC

In the future, HVAC needs will also include improved integration of all HVAC components and improved integration of HVAC systems with other building systems. Additional measures involve the development of construction materials and components with low toxic pollutant emissions.

Well as an engineer I tried best to describe all these observations and solutions technically. But overall this climate change is affecting our lives massively.

Although as HVAC engineers, we are trying to create an indoor friendly environment for people in parallel. We need to work out to have polluted free outdoor surroundings too, where our kids can grow and enjoy nature.

I thoroughly enjoyed the training and felt proud to become a Climate Reality Leader after receiving my certificate. It will be great to serve the community as an official Climate Reality Leader. I have decided to spread the word about the climate crisis as its high time we should go towards some practical solutions. Like renewable energy products and smart building control systems.

References: The climate reality change project.