[Rantman] lecture at MIT: Rethinking Climate Change: The Past 150 Years and the Next 100

[rPauli]

The panel of speakers offers a concise foundation of climate science, a 
nice summary of the current situation, a touch of economics and good 
overview of the future - mostly as it applies to MIT campus - but the 
thinking is generic to global future.   And very smart questions and 
discussions follow.

http://eaps-www.mit.edu/paoc/about/news/rethinking-climate-change-past-150-years-and-next-100-reprised

If you want a solid grounding in the issue and the future, this is a 
good video.   It is aimed at college level audiences - but is not 
complex, nor forbidding.    Good, clear audio throughout, but video is 
not high def but easy to watch.

Worth checking out.

RP



            Video from "Rethinking Climate Change: The Past 150 Years
            and the Next 100 Years",
            the April 21, 2011, MITEI sponsored symposium - source: MIT
            WORLD.

Panelists sketched the past, present and future of climate change with 
*Kerry Emanuel* reviewing the science of climate change, noting that the 
greenhouse effect discovery dates back to the 18th century, and that by 
the end of the 19th, scientists had already begun worrying that 
consumption of fossil fuel and the accompanying release of CO_2  would 
lead to an increase in surface temperatures of 5-6°C. Modern science 
with its ice core measurements has tracked dramatic temperature changes 
on earth over tens of millions of years. But the last 100 years have 
been unprecedented, with the famous hockey stick illustration capturing 
the connection between human industry and increased CO_2 release. When 
scientists run some models forward, they show temperature increases 
ranging from 1.5 to 4°C. While these projections contain uncertainty, 
says Emanuel, "this does not mean we should do nothing."

Diverse climate change reconstructions agree: the warmest years of the 
past century were 1998, 2005 and 2010. "This is happening in real-time," 
says *Ronald Prinn*, and whether or not "Florida has a cold winter," 
warming is occurring "at a rate that should worry us all." The amount of 
heat the earth absorbs is simply much greater than it can bounce back 
into space, courtesy of greenhouse gas already accumulated in the 
atmosphere, and increasingly, by the secondary impacts of climate change 
such as the melting of ice sheets. At MIT, Prinn's group runs models 
that factor in clouds, ocean mixing, and varying levels of greenhouse 
gas emissions. In a "business as usual" model, with no real efforts to 
rein in fossil fuel use, Prinn puts the risk of a temperature increase 
higher than 4°C at 85%. If we manage to stabilize CO_2  emissions at 550 
parts per million (we're at 472 today), there is still a 25% chance of 
getting greater than 2°C change. Prinn worries about the instability of 
the arctic tundra and permafrost, which stores 200 times the amount of 
current human emissions in carbon, as well as the acidification of 
oceans, placing plankton, basis of all ocean life, at risk.

You can read about what other speakers had to say at this MITEI 
sponsored event at theMIT World website <http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/917>.








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