Media advisory: COP28 experts available

As the hottest year ever recorded comes to a close, Dubai will host the U.N. Climate Change Conference, also known as COP28. The annual meeting is held to enact climate change-related negotiations. An estimated 45,000 people attended last year. Experts from the University of Wisconsin–Madison are available for commentary and analysis on science, law and policy related to COP28 and climate change.

Climate change and environmental justice

Sumudu Atapattu is director of Research Centers at the UW–Madison Law School. She is an expert on the link between environmental issues and human rights, climate change, international environmental law, climate refugees and environmental justice. Professor Atapattu is available related to the topics above and COP28 and is attending the meeting in Dubai.

Contact: sumudu.atapattu@wisc.edu

Health effects of climate change

Jonathan Patz is a professor of population health sciences. Professor Patz is available for interviews about the effects of climate change on human health and is attending COP28.

Contact: patz@wisc.edu

Carbon removal technologies

Greg Nemet is a professor in the La Follette School of Public Affairs. His research focuses on the process of technological change and the ways in which public policy can affect it.

According to new studies led by Gregory Nemet, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, carbon removal technologies need to develop faster to meet policy targets aimed at limiting global warming.

In one of their recent papers published Oct. 30 in Communications, Earth & Environment, Nemet and his research team debut the Historical Adoption of TeCHnology (HATCH) dataset — an innovative project that tracks and analyzes a variety of agricultural, industrial and consumer technologies adopted over the past century that can provide insight into the scale-up of new technologies such as carbon removal.

In another paper published Nov. 15 in Joule, Nemet and his research team find that 2 gigatons of carbon dioxide removal per year is currently taking place. Nearly all of that removal is accomplished by planting more trees and only 0.1% from novel CDR.

Nemet is available to discuss these findings and their relation to climate change goals.

Contact: nemet@wisc.edu

In addition to those above, more experts can be found on the UW–Madison Experts page.