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<i><font size="+1"><b>August 5, 2020</b></font></i><br>
<br>
[move the thermometer]<br>
<b>Rising temperatures will cause more deaths than all infectious
diseases - study</b><br>
Poorer, hotter parts of the world will struggle to adapt to
unbearable conditions, research finds<br>
<br>
The growing but largely unrecognized death toll from rising global
temperatures will come close to eclipsing the current number of
deaths from all the infectious diseases combined if planet-heating
emissions are not constrained, a major new study has found.<br>
Rising temperatures are set to cause particular devastation in
poorer, hotter parts of the world that will struggle to adapt to
unbearable conditions that will kill increasing numbers of people,
the research has found.<br>
<br>
The economic loss from the climate crisis, as well as the cost of
adaptation, will be felt around the world, including in wealthy
countries.<br>
<br>
In a high-emissions scenario where little is done to curb
planet-heating gases, global mortality rates will be raised by 73
deaths per 100,000 people by the end of the century. This nearly
matches the current death toll from all infectious diseases,
including tuberculosis, HIV/Aids, malaria, dengue and yellow fever.<br>
<br>
The research used an enormous global dataset of death and
temperature records to see how they are related, gathering not only
direct causes such as heatstroke but also less obvious links such as
a surge in heart attacks during a heatwave.<br>
<br>
"A lot of older people die due to indirect heat affects," said Amir
Jina, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago and a
co-author of the study, published by the National Bureau of Economic
Research. "It's eerily similar to Covid - vulnerable people are
those who have pre-existing or underlying conditions. If you have a
heart problem and are hammered for days by the heat, you are going
to be pushed towards collapse."<br>
<br>
Poorer societies that occupy the hottest areas of the world are set
to suffer worst. As already baking temperatures climb further this
century, countries such as Ghana, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sudan
face an additional 200 or more deaths per 100,000 people. Colder,
richer countries such as Norway and Canada, meanwhile, will see a
drop in deaths as fewer and fewer people perish due to extreme cold.<br>
<br>
"You see the really bad impacts at the tropics," said Jina. "There's
not one single worldwide condition, there's a lot of different
changes with poorer people much more affected with limited ability
to adapt. The richer countries, even if they have increases in
mortality, can pay more to adapt to it. It's really the people who
have done the least to cause climate change who are suffering from
it."<br>
Huge heatwaves have roiled the US, Europe, Australia, India, the
Arctic and elsewhere in recent years, while 2020 is set to be
hottest or second hottest on record, in line with the longer-term
trend of rising temperatures. The deaths resulting from this heat
are sometimes plain enough to generate attention, such as the fact
that 1,500 people who died in France from the hot temperatures
during summer last year.<br>
<br>
Within richer countries, places already used to the heat will have
an adaptation head start on areas only now starting to experience
scorching conditions. "A really hot day in Seattle is more damaging
than a really hot day in Houston because air conditioning and other
measures are less widespread there," said Bob Kopp, a co-author and
climate scientist at Rutgers University.<br>
<br>
"It's not going to be free for Seattle to get the resilience Houston
has. Obviously in poorer countries the situation is much worse.
Climate change is a public health issue and an equality issue."<br>
<br>
The economic cost of these deaths is set to be severe, costing the
world 3.2% of global economic output by the end of the century if
emissions are not tamed. Each ton of planet-warming carbon dioxide
emitted will cost $36.60 in damage in this high-emissions world, the
researchers calculated.<br>
<br>
This worst-case scenario would involve emissions continue to grow
without restraint, causing the average global temperature increase
to surpass 3C by 2100. The world has heated up by about 1C, on
average, since the dawn of mass industrialization, an increase
scientists say is fueling increasingly severe heatwaves, wildfires,
storms and floods.<br>
<br>
A more moderate path, where emissions are rapidly cut, will see
temperature-related deaths less than a third of the more severe
scenario, the researchers found. The economic costs will be
significantly lower, too.<br>
<br>
"It's plausible that we could have the worst-case scenario and that
would involve drastic measures such as lots of people migrating,"
said Jina. "Much like when Covid overwhelms a healthcare system,
it's hard to tell what will happen when climate change will put
systems under pressure like that. We need to understand the risk and
invest to mitigate that risk, before we really start to notice the
impacts."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/04/rising-global-temperatures-death-toll-infectious-diseases-study">https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/04/rising-global-temperatures-death-toll-infectious-diseases-study</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[check that future of RCP8.5]<br>
<b>'Worst-case' global warming scenario still best guide until 2050,
study says</b><br>
Published on 08/03/2020<br>
UN panel's RCP8.5 scenario of sharply rising emissions matches
trends since 2005, PNAS study says, rejecting criticisms it's
"alarmist"<br>
By Alister Doyle<br>
A 'worst-case' scenario of surging greenhouse gas emissions this
century is still the 'most useful choice' for government planning
until 2050 despite criticisms that it is alarmist, a US study said
on Monday.<br>
<br>
The scenario of rising fossil fuel use, used by the UN panel of
climate scientists in reports over the past decade, had accurately
tracked cumulative carbon dioxide emissions to within 1% in the
years 2005-2020, it said. That was more precise than the other three
main pathways for emissions until 2100.<br>
<br>
Known as representative concentration pathway (RCP) 8.5, the
scenario foresees a rise in temperatures of up to 5C above
pre-industrial times by 2100, sharply at odds with the goals of the
2015 Paris Agreement to limit warming "well below 2C", agreed by
almost 200 nations.<br>
<br>
It remains consistent with announced government policies until 2050
and has "highly plausible" levels of CO2 emissions in 2100,
according to the study.<br>
<br>
"RCP8.5 is very, very relevant," lead author Christopher Schwalm of
the Woods Hole Research Center, Massachusetts, told Climate Home
News. "If it didn't exist, we'd have to create it."<br>
<br>
He said the study could be a wake-up call for greater action to curb
climate change.<br>
<br>
RCP8.5 is often portrayed by governments, scientists and the media
as a "business as usual" of increasing emissions. Yet it has become
increasingly controversial, with many scientists arguing it is
unlikely to materialise and could make people feel hopeless about
the future.<br>
<br>
"RCP8.5 is characterised as extreme, alarmist, and 'misleading',
with some commentators going so far as to dismiss any study using
RCP8.5. This line of argumentation is not only regrettable, it is
skewed," Schwalm and colleagues wrote.<br>
<br>
"Looking at mid-century and sooner, RCP8.5 is clearly the most
useful choice" for planners, they wrote in the journal Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences...<br>
<br>
Among attacks on RCP8.5, two scientists in January called RCP8.5
"dystopian" and said it "becomes increasingly implausible with every
passing year". The scenario assumes a fivefold rise in coal use in
the long term, whereas global coal consumption may have already
peaked.<br>
<br>
"Stop using the worst-case scenario for climate warming as the most
likely outcome -- more-realistic baselines make for better policy,"
urged Zeke Hausfather of the Breakthrough Institute in Oakland,
California and Glen Peters of the Center for International Climate
Research, Oslo, Norway.<br>
<br>
Exaggerating the risks by referring to RCP8.5 as the default for the
future world economy could lead to defeatism and undermine
government planning "because the problem is perceived as being out
of control and unsolvable," they wrote in the journal Nature.<br>
<br>
Schwalm acknowledged that RCP8.5 was far from perfect. It has
overestimated coal use and underestimated the fall in the price of
renewable energies relative to fossil fuels. But he said that these
flaws were not significant enough to undermine the scenario as a
whole. Other huge risks, such as a thaw of permafrost that could
release vast amounts of methane, are typically omitted from such
models.<br>
<br>
And he said too much of the criticism of RCP8.5 focused on 2100,
such as growth of coal or a doubling of the global population to 12
billion people, both of which now look unlikely. On a more human
time scale of 30 years to mid-century - the typical length of a home
mortgage loan - he said RCP8.5 was still the best guide.<br>
<br>
Detlef van Vuuren, a senior researcher at PBL Netherlands
Environmental Assessment Agency who helped design the RCPs, told CHN
that RCP8.5 was never intended to represent "business as usual" as
it covered the most extreme 5% of scenarios for emissions growth.<br>
<br>
And he wrote in an email that RCP8.5 had become less likely overall
with changing economic trends.<br>
<br>
"Since 2011, on the one hand no stringent climate policy was
implemented … But at the same time, renewables became much cheaper -
and it has become more likely that future cars will be electric
instead of petrol cars," he wrote.<br>
<br>
"All-in-all, I think that RCP8.5 is still useful as low probability,
high impact case," he wrote.<br>
<br>
Nico Bauer, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research,
also said that RCP8.5 was still relevant for scientific and
political debate.<br>
<br>
"First, it cannot be excluded, because fossil fuels are abundant and
the last decades have shown that countries like China and the US can
increase their production within short time periods by substantial
amounts," he wrote in an email.<br>
<br>
Also, it is useful to study the likely impact of climate change with
high emissions - even if it never happened - to understand the
impacts of policies and new technologies, he said.<br>
<br>
Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, governments agreed to limit the rise
in average world surface temperatures to "well below" 2C while
pursuing efforts for 1.5C. The UN says that reaching the 1.5C goal
would require unprecedented cuts in carbon dioxide emissions of 7.6%
a year this decade.<br>
<br>
Emissions are expected to dip in 2020 because of the economic
downturn caused by the coronavirus, but rebound in the absence of
structural change.<br>
<br>
The authors of Monday's report said that the pandemic did not affect
their findings.<br>
<br>
"Assuming pandemic restrictions remain in place until the end of
2020 would entail a reduction in emissions of 4.7 billion tonnes of
carbon dioxide," they wrote. "This represents less than 1% of total
cumulative CO2 emissions since 2005 for all RCPs and observations."<br>
<br>
UN reports often contrast RCP8.5 with the most stringent scenario,
RCP2.6, that foresees sharp emissions cuts to get on track for the
Paris Agreement.<br>
<br>
Last year, for instance, a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) on melting snow and ice and the state of the
ocean only used those two extreme scenarios, omitting what many
scientists view as the more likely middle RCP options.<br>
<br>
And a UN Environment report last year projected that temperatures
are on track to rise by 3.2C by 2100, if all governments' climate
action plans were fully implemented, far short of the RCP8.5
scenario.<br>
<br>
Climate scientists are updating climate modelling with new scenarios
for the next round of IPCC reports, starting in 2021.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.climatechangenews.com/2020/08/03/worst-case-global-warming-scenario-still-best-guide-2050-study-says/">https://www.climatechangenews.com/2020/08/03/worst-case-global-warming-scenario-still-best-guide-2050-study-says/</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[Time zone climate science - text and audio]<br>
August 3, 2020<br>
Heard on Morning Edition<br>
Rebecca Hersher at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., July 25,
2018<br>
<b>Everyone Loves The Chat Box: How Climate Science Moved Online</b><br>
In mid-April, hundreds of scientists from around the world were
supposed to fly to Ecuador for a five-day meeting about the latest
research on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and removing carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere.<br>
<br>
It was an important event. The scientists are writing part of a
crucial global climate science report scheduled for release next
year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the part of
the United Nations that assesses global climate science. National
governments rely on the multi-chapter report to anchor international
climate negotiations and to set greenhouse gas emissions targets.<br>
<br>
But the pandemic forced the IPCC to hold April's in-person meeting
online. Smaller scientific gatherings scheduled for the spring and
summer also met remotely...<br>
- -<br>
"For years we have faced a number of challenges in making our
physical meetings more participatory and inclusive," Valerie
Masson-Delmotte, co-chair of the IPCC working group that analyzes
the physical science of climate change, told the scientific journal
Nature before April's remote meeting. "Now we need to work to make
online meetings as inclusive and as participatory as possible."<br>
- - <br>
A scheduling nightmare<br>
<br>
Making the April meeting virtual did present some serious
challenges. One of the thorniest was figuring out what time of day
to schedule large group discussions. The scientists and other
experts involved in writing the report are spread out over 23 time
zones, which meant there were only two hours each day when everyone
could participate without being awake between midnight and 6 a.m.
local time.<br>
<br>
The time zone issues forced the meeting to take place over two extra
days and, even with the additional time, the scientific goals were
scaled back.<br>
<br>
It's unclear how that will affect the release date for the final
report. Finishing it on time, so governments can use it as they
enter the next round of climate negotiations, may ultimately hinge
on how the authors adapt to remote work...<br>
- - <br>
Going virtual was also harder for some participants than others.
Almost a third of the participants said they weren't able to fully
participate, including 36% of those from developing countries,
according to a survey conducted by the IPCC. That's compared to just
25% of participants from developed countries.<br>
<br>
One problem, especially for female scientists, was competing
familial responsibilities and work commitments. Leaving home for
meetings is inconvenient, but it separates participants from
day-to-day child care and other domestic responsibilities that
already fall disproportionately to women.<br>
<br>
"Many of us really struggle to work from home," says Lisa Schipper,
an environmental social scientist at the University of Oxford and
coordinating author of a report chapter about climate resilient
development options. She says that on one hand, she's glad that
being interrupted by children during work calls has become more
normal during the pandemic. "Having this opportunity to kind of feel
a bit more relaxed about these interruptions is good. But it's, of
course, extremely distracting too, because you can't listen to what
people are saying."<br>
<br>
Schipper worries that remote meetings will make it more difficult
for women to exert their influence and apply their expertise to the
IPCC's final report.<br>
<br>
That's particularly concerning because the IPCC has excluded women,
especially women from outside Europe and North America, for decades.
A 2018 study found that only one quarter of the executive leaders
for the latest IPCC report are women. Many female scientists told
that study's authors that child care and housework responsibilities
were their biggest obstacle to fully participating in IPCC work.<br>
<br>
One unexpected benefit of holding the meeting online was the chat
function that is built into video conferencing software. During
group video discussions, participants could simultaneously express
themselves in writing.<br>
- -<br>
"There is always work going on, but you really get that flurry of
activity in the few weeks before the deadline," Byers says. "Perhaps
more frequent meetings online every two months or something, maybe
that would keep more of the momentum going."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.npr.org/2020/08/03/893039258/everyone-loves-the-chat-box-how-climate-science-moved-online">https://www.npr.org/2020/08/03/893039258/everyone-loves-the-chat-box-how-climate-science-moved-online</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[Corruption at First Energy]<br>
<b>How a utility undermined climate policy -- then got caught</b><br>
Benjamin Storrow, E&E News reporterPublished: Tuesday, August 4,
2020<br>
<br>
In 2018, FirstEnergy Corp. was looking for help.<br>
<br>
Efforts by the Ohio utility to secure bailouts for its coal and
nuclear plants had been rebuffed by federal regulators. But the
power company had a plan to change its fortunes.<br>
<br>
Over the next two years, FirstEnergy channeled millions of dollars
to a dark money group allegedly controlled in secret by Larry
Householder, a Republican state lawmaker who became speaker of the
Ohio House in 2019.<br>
<br>
The dark money group in turn rained television advertisements down
on the state in an effort to drum up support for a bailout of
FirstEnergy's power plants.<br>
<br>
Yet the energy company's name was nowhere to be seen on the ads.<br>
<br>
Many of the TV spots sounded like they were crafted by
environmentalists. One shows utility workers striding purposefully
past wind turbines and standing near solar panels; a female narrator
then hopefully declares, "Clean air and clean energy begin with
clean government."<br>
<br>
In another, a young father who is described as a energy worker says,
"Big Oil wants us gone." News reports later identified him as an
employee of a FirstEnergy nuclear plant.<br>
<br>
In July 2019, with Householder at the head of the Ohio House, state
lawmakers approved a bailout for FirstEnergy worth $1.3 billion. The
law subsidized a pair of nuclear plants owned by the company and two
coal plants operated by a consortium of utilities, including
FirstEnergy. It also gutted the state's renewable energy portfolio
and its energy efficiency standards.<br>
<br>
Federal investigators arrested Householder and four associates on
racketeering charges last month. He's accused of accepting about $60
million from FirstEnergy in exchange for bailing out the company's
power plants.<br>
<br>
The scandal revealed the sustained, coordinated and ultimately
successful attacks by FirstEnergy on wind and solar programs in
Ohio. The company has supported a freeze on clean energy mandates,
backed anti-wind politicians, and pushed for a federal bailout of
its coal and nuclear plants in Washington.<br>
<br>
"The utility has captured the rulemakers and stacked the deck
against clean energy and in favor of the status quo," said Geoff
Greenfield, president and founder of Third Sun Solar LLC, a
developer in Athens, Ohio.<br>
<br>
Greenfield laid off 20 people following passage of the subsidy law,
known as H.B. 6, last year. He said efforts to attract investors and
employees have been hampered by the state's opposition to the clean
energy industry.<br>
<br>
"They see how our state treats renewables, and it basically
undermines their faith in Ohio," Greenfield said. "Investors say, 'I
have lots of places to invest my money, and Ohio doesn't look like a
favorable economic environment or as favorable. I'm going to invest
elsewhere.'"<br>
<br>
The bailout's cost to the climate is potentially enormous.<br>
<br>
The two coal plants subsidized by the legislation emitted 12.6
million tons of carbon dioxide last year, or about what's released
by 2.5 million cars annually. A third coal plant, the second-largest
in the state, elected to reverse its closure plans and stay open
following the legislation's passage...<br>
- -<br>
The climate consequences can be serious.<br>
<br>
In Ohio, FirstEnergy Solutions made the decision to keep open W.H.
Sammis, the second-largest coal plant in the state, after the
bailout law passed.<br>
<br>
Sammis emitted 12.3 million tons of CO2 in 2013, according to EPA
data. But the plant has run less and less in recent years. It ran
only 20% in 2019, down from 61% in 2014.<br>
<br>
Last year, it reported CO2 emissions of 4.6 million tons, or what
900,000 cars emit annually.<br>
<br>
The result is a one-two punch to climate and consumers, forcing them
to pay for polluting plants that are no longer economic, said Leah
Stokes, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara,
who has written extensively about Ohio's bailout law.<br>
<br>
She said FirstEnergy represents one of the most egregious cases of
utility corruption, but is part of a larger pattern of power
companies' approach to climate policy.<br>
<br>
"The goal is to slow down the clean energy transition so they can
pay down the debt on their fossil fuel infrastructure and build new
gas," she said. "In that way, it is part of a national trend, which
is climate delay from electric utilities."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063680411">https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063680411</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[Transformational expression]<br>
<b>Margaret J. Wheatley: Post-doom with Terry Patten</b><br>
Jul 14, 2020 - thegreatstory<br>
TITLE: "Opening to the World" - Terry Patten in conversation with
Meg Wheatley (May 2020)<br>
Original conversation:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://newrepublicoftheheart.org/podcast/028-meg-wheatley-warriors-wanted-its-time-to-defend-the-human-spirit/">https://newrepublicoftheheart.org/podcast/028-meg-wheatley-warriors-wanted-its-time-to-defend-the-human-spirit/</a><br>
Meg's website: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://margaretwheatley.com/">https://margaretwheatley.com/</a>
and Terry's podcast: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://newrepublicoftheheart.org/podcast/">https://newrepublicoftheheart.org/podcast/</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDyMYWoDy_I">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDyMYWoDy_I</a><br>
<p>- - -</p>
[thinking deeper]<br>
<b>Collapse 101: The Inevitable Fruit of Progress (Dowd)</b><br>
Jul 24, 2020<br>
thegreatstory<br>
This stand-alone 75-minute video is also the first in a two-part
series, "Collapse and Adaptation Primer". The second video in the
series is titled, "Post Gloom: Deeply Adapting to Reality". See
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://postdoom.com/">https://postdoom.com/</a> for more information. Additional resources
here: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://postdoom.com/resources/">https://postdoom.com/resources/</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml9uJNF_kXk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml9uJNF_kXk</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[MIT classic hurricane lecture by Kerry Emanual]<br>
<b>What Do Hurricanes Harvey and Irma Portend?</b><br>
Oct 2, 2017<br>
Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences MIT<br>
<br>
Speaker: Kerry A. Emanuel, Cecil & Ida Green Professor of
Atmospheric Science, Co-Director of the Lorenz Center<br>
<br>
Natural disasters are the result of the interaction of a natural
phenomenon with human beings and their built environments. Globally
and in the U.S., large increases in coastal populations are causing
corresponding increases in hurricane damage and these are now being
compounded by rising sea levels and changing storm characteristics
owing to anthropogenic climate change. In this talk, I will describe
projections of changing hurricane activity over the rest of this
century and what such projections tell us about how the
probabilities of hurricanes like Harvey and Irma have already
changed and are likely to continue to do so.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR7a3ET5uws">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR7a3ET5uws</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
[young students present FutureEcologies - 8 chapters]<br>
<b>'Scales of Change' - Technosalvation</b><br>
Today we're featuring an episode from one of our favourite podcasts
Future Ecologies, and their new mini-series "Scales of Change."<br>
<br>
In the series, hosts Mendel and Adam take a deep dive into the
various "Dragons of Climate Inaction," the psychological barriers
which prevent us from collectively responding to climate change with
the appropriate urgency.<br>
<br>
Listen to this episode on "Technosalvation" and subscribe to their
series by searching for Future Ecologies, wherever you listen to
podcasts.<br>
Website: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.futureecologies.net/dragons">www.futureecologies.net/dragons</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://soundcloud.com/radioecoshock">https://soundcloud.com/radioecoshock</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
[Digging back into the internet news archive - finding greatness]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming -
August 5, 1996 </b></font><br>
August 5, 1996: The New York Times profiles climate scientist Ben
Santer, who had just become the target of a lavishly-financed
defamation campaign by the fossil fuel industry. <br>
<blockquote><b>Believer Finds Himself At Center of Hot Debate</b><br>
By WILLIAM K. STEVENS<br>
LIVERMORE, CALIF. -- Dr. Benjamin D. Santer, a shy, even-spoken,
41-year-old American climatologist who climbs mountains, runs
marathons and enjoys a reputation for careful and scrupulous work,
is the chief author of what may be the most important finding of
the decade in atmospheric science: that human activity is probably
causing some measure of global climate change, as
environmentalists have long assumed and skeptics have long denied.<br>
<br>
The finding, issued for the first time in December 1995 by a panel
of scientists meeting under United Nations sponsorship in Madrid,
left open the question of just how large the human impact on
climate is. The question is perhaps the hottest and most urgent in
climatology today.<br>
<br>
Dr. Santer is in the forefront of a rapidly unfolding effort to
answer it..<br>
<br>
Dr. Santer graduated with top honors in 1976 from the University
of East Anglia in Britain with a degree in environmental sciences.<br>
<br>
To his dismay, his British education availed him little in the job
market when he returned to his parents' home, then in the
Baltimore area. He bounced around for the next few years, working
at various times as a soccer teacher, a German teacher for Berlitz
and an assembler in a zipper factory, at which point, he says, he
found himself "down and out in Seattle." He made two stabs at a
doctorate at East Anglia, abandoning both.<br>
<br>
He soon made a third attempt to earn a doctorate at East Anglia,
which boasts one of the world's top climatology departments, and
this time he succeeded.<br>
<br>
"I found it fascinating," he said, "the idea that humans could
have a potentially large impact on climate." In his dissertation,
Dr. Santer used statistical techniques to investigate the accuracy
with which computerized models of the climate system simulated
regional climates.<br>
<br>
He soon moved to another leading climatological laboratory, the
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, where he worked
for the first time on the problem of detecting the signal of
human-caused climate change, especially global warming -- the
"greenhouse fingerprint." He also met his wife, Heike, in Hamburg,
and they now have a 3-year-old son, Nicholas.<br>
<br>
Since moving to Livermore in 1992, Dr. Santer has grappled with
the related problems of testing the validity of climate models and
searching for the greenhouse fingerprint. His strategy is to
examine observed patterns of temperature change to see whether
they matched the unique patterns expected to result from the
combination of growing industrial emissions of heat-trapping gases
like carbon dioxide, on one hand, and sulfate aerosols that cool
some parts of the planet, on the other. According to this
reasoning, the pattern produced by the combination of greenhouse
gases and aerosols would be markedly different from that produced
by any natural cause.<br>
<br>
Climate models have been widely criticized for, among other
things, failing to adequately represent natural variability. One
critic, Dr. Richard S. Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, says the models are so flawed as to be no more
reliable than a Ouija board.<br>
<br>
"I think that's garbage," said Dr. Santer, part of whose job is to
assess how good the models are. "I think models are credible tools
and the only tools we have to define what sort of greenhouse
signal to look for. It's clear that the ability of models to
simulate important features of present-day climate has improved
enormously." He says that if the models are right -- still a big
if -- the human imprint on the climate should emerge more clearly
in the next few years. All in all, he says, he expects "very
rapid" progress in the search for the greenhouse fingerprint.<br>
<br>
When might it become clear enough to be widely convincing?<br>
<br>
"Even if New York were under six feet of water, there would be
people who would still say, 'Well, this is a natural event,' " he
said.<br>
</blockquote>
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