SPEAKER SERIES: Dr. Susan Solomon
"A World of Change: Climate Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow"
This talk aims to provide scientific information that can be useful for everyone who wants to better understand the dual challenges of the science of climate change, and why international agreement on climate change policy has proven particularly difficult.
The strong evidence showing that our planet is warmer today than it was a century ago will be presented, and the scientific reasons why most of the warming is very likely to be due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels, will be described.
Linkages of global warming to local and regional warming will be discussed, as well as connections to climate impacts including rainfall, streamflow, wildfires, and crop production. Evidence shows that the warming due to carbon dioxide increases persists for more than a thousand years, making the warming essentially irreversible.
On the human side, global increases of greenhouse gases arise from a mix of different countries, both developed and developing, with different current emissions, infrastructure capabilities and past commitments that are among the factors influencing policy discussions.
Comparisons will be briefly drawn between the success of policy on ozone depletion (Montreal Protocol) versus the apparent gridlock on climate change,outlining the lessons that may thereby be learned and the reasons why the speaker remains optimistic about the future.
Sponsored by Yale, Stanford, and Harvard