Friday, May 16

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Hi Everyone,

The last few days have been pretty busy academically.  On Wednesday 5/14, we heard a lecture on the challenges of modeling the summer Indian monsoon from Professor Subimal Ghosh of IIT-Bombay.  India receives 80% of its annual rainfall between the months of June and September; accordingly, much of the agriculture of the country relies on this rainfall.  Predictions and modeling trends are difficult and often inaccurate (I have notes on this lecture that I am happy to share when I return). 

The group then traveled once again to IIT-B for two more talks.  The first was from the Center for Rural Sustainability.  This group focuses on designing simple, elegant solutions that can be replicated and used by India’s rural poor.  We saw examples in the shop of a pedal-powered water pump, two different machines to make brickettes to preserve organic material used as fire-starter, and a seed-dryer, among other machines.  I loved the short tour of the shop; I want to do this type of work at some point in my life.  We finished the day with a talk from the Environmental Science and Engineering Department about the challenges of analyzing and mapping vulnerability to flooding caused by monsoons in the city of Mumbai.  I ate lots of dosas and they were all fantastic.

Yesterday (Thursday, May 15), the day began with a talk from Jyoti Majumdar, an employee at SwissRe, a reinsurance company.  I learned about the reinsurance industry and how it will be affected by climate change in the future.  SwissRe is a carbon-neutral company whose headquarters are in Zurich.  I am excited about the possibility of taking a tour of the SwissRe headquarters when I visit Switzerland.

The day continued with a group reflection and debrief on the three talks we heard on Wednesday.  This reflection turned into a discussion of world problems that lasted two hours.  We covered topics from the housing market crash in 2008 to the income inequality in the US and India to the worldwide homogeneity of my generation when compared with previous generations.  We discussed how all of these important topics will be affected by climate change in the near future and the challenges that my generation faces in reducing further greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating the effects of climate change.  This group discussion was my favorite academic part of the trip so far.  Everyone in the group participated and was respectful to one another; this was the most organized, well-executed large group conversation I have ever been a part of.  I hope more discussions like this ensue throughout the trip.

Later in the afternoon the class was the audience for a discussion about social inequality in India and climate change.  The discussion took place between a Ph.D. student from IIT-B, Krishna, and a member of my class, Billy, and was moderated by Dr. Iacono.  Following this discussion, we made our final visit to IIT-Bombay to hear a talk from the Energy Department. The professor who spoke to us was engaging and gave a great presentation (again, I have notes).  I filled up on street food because it was my last night in Mumbai.


Today we got up very early and flew to Bangalore.  We took a “three-and-a-half-hour bus ride” to Mysore that took six hours.  Upon arrival, we visited the Mysore Palace, a grand establishment that had an intricately carved interior.  It has been a long day, so I am off to sleep now.  Tomorrow we tour Mysore.

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