Dr. Andrew D. Miall, B.Sc., Ph.D., D.Sc., FRSC

Biography:
Andrew Miall was born and educated in Brighton, England, and completed his B.Sc. in Geology at the University of London in 1965. He emigrated to Canada in that year to commence graduate studies at University of Ottawa, gaining a Ph.D. in 1969. He worked for several companies in Calgary and then joined the Geological Survey of Canada in Calgary in 1972 as a Research Scientist in the Arctic Islands section, leaving for University of Toronto in 1979, where is Professor of Geology
Miall was Editor of the national Canadian journal Geoscience Canada from 1982 to 1989, and was Co-Chief Editor of the Elsevier journal Sedimentary Geology from 1987 to 2005. He is currently serving as the sedimentology editor for Earth Science Reviews. He is the author, co-author or editor of ten books, including "Principles of Sedimentary Basin Analysis", a research-level synthesis, now in its third edition. and “Canada Rocks: The Geologic Journey”, authored by N. Eyles and A. D. Miall (2007).
Andrew Miall was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences of the Royal Society of Canada in 1995, and was awarded an Honourary Doctorate from the University of Pretoria, South Africa, in March 2001. He served as Vice President of the Academy of Science of RSC from 2005 to 2007 and President of the Academy from 2007-2009.

Abstract:
The developed world is faced with two complex, parallel problems, which interconnect in a way that society has not had to face before: climate change and energy depletion. Approaches to the problem fall into two main groups: 1) Renewable, "green" energy technologies, most of which, it is suggested, are inadequate on issues of scale, and 2) proposals for large-scale development of fossil fuels, which could provide solutions to the energy question for several generations, but which are resisted in many quarters because of their assumed environmental implications. The main proposals for renewable energy are wind and solar power for the generation of electricity. They are being heavily promoted, but the small scale of the generating units and the irregularity of the driving power means they cannot substitute for base-load fossil-fuel plants. Carbon capture and storage is being promoted as a solution to the continuing use of carbon-based fuels, but the magnitude of the problem is currently three orders of magnitude beyond our capabilities.