ASHRAE CONFERENCE | GINGER SCOGGINS CHALLENGE ACCEPTED New ASHRAE president Ginger Scoggins has made the battle against climate change the cornerstone of her year in office. At the ASHRAE Annual Conference in Tampa, Florida, Tim Dwyer listens as she recalls female icons who brought man-made global warming to public attention W hen new ASHRAE President Ginger Scoggins was growing up in the 1970s, she was made aware that the world was experiencing an energy crisis in two ways: the enduring long lines at the gas station and her mother curtailing the use of air conditioning at home and in the car. With prophetic reasoning, she told Ginger that she did not want her daughter to grow used to the comforts of a controlled environment. Scoggins recounted her story at the launch of her presidential year in a sizzling Tampa, Florida, USA, in her presentation Challenge accepted: tackling the climate crisis. As a startling statistic of how households have evolved in the past 50 years, Scoggins highlighted that weve gone from approximately 20% of homes in the US having central heating and air conditioning to more than 70% now. This is a transformation, seen in many other parts of the world, that is like building the equivalent of a New York City every month across the globe. Of the 1970s, she remembered: It was hotter inside than it was outside: we went outside to cool down. Now, in many locations, it is much hotter outside than it used to be, driving people inside to controlled environments to escape. Undoubtedly reinforced by participating in the recent COP meetings in Glasgow and Sharm el-Sheikh, Scoggins reasserted her firm opinion that we are living in a climate emergency. Mitigation efforts may slow the rate of increase, but were not likely to reverse the trend. Ginger Scoggins She named the overlooked pioneering scientist of the mid-1800s, Eunice Foote, who was the first to have suggested that an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would change the atmospheric temperature and have an effect on climate. Her work preceded discoveries made by other scientists by five years, making her the rightful first vocal climate change advocate although, for reasons unknown, her work at the time was presented by a male colleague. Scoggins noted that, although women in scientific fields had made significant strides from the 1880s to the 1980s, there were still challenges for women in our industry. She told delegates how the patriarchism of her engineering consultant employer in the late1990s spurred her to leave and start her own business, which is now a multi-million dollar concern that competes with her old company. She said the sector has come a long way in terms of gender acceptance, recruitment and recognition, and that she could see a day when being a woman in this industry will not be an anomaly, but the norm, with equal representation among genders. As well as Foote, Scoggins referenced Margaret Thatcher, in part because of the late UK Prime Ministers early acceptance of climate change caused by humans (see panel). In her speech which could have been aimed at any climate deniers in the audience Scoggins said: Whether you believe we are in a human-made crisis or experiencing a natural climate transition, based on scientific evidence, there is no doubt that humans are accelerating the change in the climate that we are experiencing. She outlined ASHRAE initiatives that aim to improve understanding of how climate change and the resulting natural disasters affect building planning, design, construction and operation. These include developing member knowledge and tools to design resilient new and renovated buildings, to lessen the impact of the built environment on climate change and develop an understanding of all aspects of carbon reduction in buildings, including embodied carbon, refrigerant use and reduction, and end-of-life carbon. Scoggins confirmed a philosophical shift in ASHRAE, having expanded our focus from providing guidance on energy-related carbon, or operational carbon, to focusing on the whole life cycle of carbon in buildings. There is a long way to go, however, and as Thatcher reportedly opined, she may have to fight a battle more than once to win it. CJ GINGER SCOGGINS full presidential address can be watched at bit.ly/CJGSPres23 MARGARET THATCHER: FORESEER OF CLIMATE CHANGE In her 1988 speech to the Royal Society, Margaret Thatcher said: For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the worlds systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself which has led some to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. www.cibsejournal.com August 2023 13