Posts tagged ‘global warming’
Michael Mann Makes His Case
I approached the podium a few minutes before Michael Mann was scheduled to speak Thursday afternoon to ask him a simple question: Were all those police out front there because of him?
“Probably,” he smiled. “I think they’re probably superfluous, but it’s better to be safe.”
I’ve gone to probably a dozen Penn State Forum lunches in the past five years, and Thursday’s event at the Penn Stater Hotel was the first in which I’d seen a police presence. Three armed campus police officers—one from a K-9 unit—stood outside the packed conference room in which Mann spoke. I imagine they were there to stem any potential unrest after ads appeared on local radio this week urging people to boycott or protest Mann’s speech; I imagine those officers were aware as well that Mann has received death threats because of his work.
Mann, of course, is a climatologist, Penn State professor of meteorology and geosciences, and director of the University’s Earth Systems Science Center. If you know his name, it’s probably less because of his work—including his role in developing the iconic “hockey stick” model for measuring long-term global warming—than the reaction to it. U.S. Senators, state attorneys general, and TV pundits (among many others) have all gone after Mann in an attempt to discredit findings that show the reality and alarming rate of man-made global warming. If he’s not the favorite target of climate change deniers, he’s near the top of the list.
Mann’s speech Thursday was titled (more…)
What’s on Joe Bastardi’s Mind
Never a guy to shy away from attention or controversy, Joe Bastardi ’78 EMS is in the news lately more than usual. A former Penn State wrestler, prolific local columnist, proud body builder, global-warming skeptic, and respected long-term forecaster, Bastardi last week abruptly quit his post at AccuWeather, a move that made national news.
So this is well timed: Bastardi was featured a few days ago in a Q&A on the Vanity Fair website, in which he discusses his work, his muscles, weird 1970s holiday cartoons, and the reliability of Punxsutawney Phil. It’s highly recommended reading.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Richard Alley Warns of a “Tipping Point” in Greenland
Scientists who study climate change point out that no single weather event or natural disaster can be pegged conclusively to global warming. That said, most of those same experts agree that certain catastrophic events — like the record heat wave and huge fires currently ravaging Russia, and the ongoing flooding in Pakistan that the United Nations is calling the worst natural disaster in modern history — match predictions of extreme conditions caused by climate change. Another such event took place last week in the North Atlantic, and a Penn State expert was in Washington this week to weigh in on the potential consequences.
Richard Alley, the University’s Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences and a contributor to the U.N. panel that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, spoke Tuesday in front of a Congressional committee on global warming. Alley’s expertise is glaciology and ice-sheet stability, making him an obvious candidate to discuss the collapse last week of a 100-square-mile chunk of ice from Greenland. His predictions weren’t encouraging: Describing current Arctic melting as “the biggest and fastest thing nature has ever done,” Alley told legislators that warming oceans may mean Greenland will reach a “tipping point” within the next decade, after which the island’s ice mass would be unsustainable. The eventual melt-off would lead to sea-level rise that would devastate coastal cities around the world.
When he took part in our global warming roundtable a few years ago, Alley sounded optimistic — in spite of everything his own research showed him about our changing planet — that humanity could solve such massive problems. I hope he remains so.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Michael Mann Profiled in Philadelphia Inquirer
We’ve gotten a number of letters to the editor lately from people who have, let’s just say, very strong feelings on the subject of global climate change—and especially on the “climategate” brouhaha involving Penn State meteorology professor Michael Mann. Some of the discourse has been a bit less than civil: One reader called Mann “this low life on our faculty”; another said, “I am embarrassed that Mr. Mann is a part of Penn State. I would be disappointed if the University wasn’t doing all they can to send him to a different climate.”
So I was very interested to see a profile of Mann in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer. Writer Faye Flam came up to University Park this past week to interview Mann and has produced a fairly level-headed profile, one that examines the controversy in a calmer, more nuanced way. It’s worth reading.
Tina Hay, editor
Michael Mann and ‘Climategate’
The news last week that e-mail exchanges between prominent climate scientists had been hacked and made public — news that, probably not coincidentally, came a couple of weeks before the upcoming international climate conference in Copenhagen — has been overshadowed only by “news” about Tiger Woods’ personal life. Language in some of the e-mails seems to imply that scientists have hidden or altered climate change data. And a Penn State professor has been near the center of it.
Michael E. Mann, professor of meteorology and director of the University’s Earth System Science Center, is one of two climate scientists whose work and reputation are being questioned after the e-mail leak. Mann — one of five Penn State faculty members who participated in our climate change roundtable back in 2007 — has long been a leading voice among those pointing to man-made CO2 emissions as the primary cause of global warming. He’s one of the scientists involved in the Web site realclimate.org. And he’s also a favorite target of those who don’t buy the idea of man-made warming — “skeptics” or “deniers,” depending on your point of view.
Plenty of blog space has been taken up on the topic since the story broke. And while the story continues to develop — a few days ago, the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences released a statement (which you can read in PDF form here) announcing it would, per University policy, “look into the matter further” — we’ve found a few stories that offer a reasoned take on the controversy to date, including this one from Science Magazine, and this from Bloomberg News. You also can read Mann’s own explanation of some of the e-mails in question.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Blackout
Apparently 8:30 tomorrow evening marks an event called “Earth Hour,” in which people all over the planet turn off their lights for an hour to reduce energy consumption and the resulting pollution. Penn State is getting involved by turning off the lights of some of its showcase buildings, including Old Main and the IST Building. The Penn State sites are in good company—the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower are also taking part.
Chas Brua, contributing editor
Hot Topic
A Penn Stater’s research article, just published in the prestigious journal Nature, has been getting a lot of media play. David Pollard of Penn State and U. Mass. climatologist Robert DeConto created a 5-million-year model of the comings and goings of the West Antarctic ice sheet. That huge mass of ice is one of the question marks in studies of global warming—since the ice sheet holds so much frozen water, sea levels are expected to rise substantially if it melts.
To create their model, Pollard and DeConto studied historic levels of the isotope oxygen-18 (tied to ocean temperatures) and then checked their results against sediment core samples that hold evidence about past ice levels in the West Antarctic. The model suggests that the ice sheet melted and refroze many times over the past 5 million years, with the changes happening over the course of a thousand years or more—which in geologic terms is pretty rapid. A rise in ocean temperatures of 5 degrees Celsius would be enough to melt the ice sheet again, the researchers predict.
Here’s the article in Nature, as well as an editor’s note that summarizes it. The New York Times, NPR, and live.psu.edu were among the media sources talking about the research.
Chas Brua, contributing editor
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