...the rest is figuring out what to do about it.
That was the concluding remark form Jason Smerdon during a panel discussion this weekend called: "Climate Chane & Extreme Weather: Are They Connected?" Dr. Smerdon was one of many climatology researchers on the panel, along with Richard Seager, Suzana Camargo, and Kevin Anchukaitis. This panel took place on Saturday during the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory's (LDEO) Open House event. LDEO is the location of most of the research done by Columbia University's Earth Institute. Once a year, LDEO opens its doors to the public and shares details on its various scientific projects and research. Not only do people with a general interest (of all ages) attend, but the Open House also invited back alumni of LDEO (former students, researchers, and employees of the observatory). For instance, the panel I mentioned was moderated by Heidi Cullen, an alumnus of LDEO as well as the Weather Channel's first on-air climate expert and creator of Forecast Earth.
The panel focused on links between climate change and extreme weather. If you are a climate change doubter and/or think the human effect on climate to be overstated, there would not have been much in the discussion or Q&A for you. The audience focused the questions on hurricanes and droughts, probably due to the recent occurrences of each in the United States. The recent trend for hurricanes that Dr. Camargo described was one of less frequent but more intense hurricanes, and this being due to changing precipitation patterns that are linked to climate change. Drought, on the other hand, was a more local occurrence tied to El Nino / La Nina events mostly. The climatologists predicted that the drought in Texas, for example, would likely continue into next year.
The crowd then moved on to the Big Question: mitigation of global warming. The scientists pointed out that there is no "magic bullet" that will reduce global warming and greenhouse gas emissions. A "transportation" and oil entrepreneur in the audience pointed out that the public often focuses most of its attention on transportation effects on global warming, but in reality the causes are manifold. Sure enough, agriculture, deforestation, energy production, transportation, and many other factors are causing this global warming.
After much discussion, the main takeaways were:
1) the climate is changing, and humans are major contributors to this change
2) scientists unanimously agree on global warming and climate change, but politics has misconstrued their message(s)
3) there is no clear answer on what to do about climate change. Even if we cut emissions to zero, we will be in serious trouble, so sequestering of greenhouse gases may be needed (but this is expensive and again a clear path is missing).
There were plenty of other interesting speakers throughout the day, including Jeffrey Sachs speaking on the lead-up to Rio +20, and a panel discussion on "Mega Quakes." But I did not get to see any of these, as I spent a good portion of the day volunteering at the welcome stand. This was fun and interesting, because while handing out maps and giving directions, I met many interesting people. Many young children arrived with their parents in tow, excited to see the experiments and displays designed for young budding scientists such as trashcan volcanoes and bathtub science. There were adults with an interest in what LDEO was and who just wanted to explore. Also many alumni arrived, LDEO scientists from the 60s and 70s who had incredible stories of rugged Indiana Jones-like science in the field. When I did get some free time, besides the panel and the stories, I wandered around the labs and the displays, where many interesting things caught my eye: a bamboo bicycle, the tree ring lab (where they use tree rings to date past climate fluctuations, droughts, rainfall, etc), and many details of LDEO's fleet of ships and their oceangoing (and mapping) expeditions.
It was an interesting day, and had I been blogging more lately I would have invited you all! The best part of the day, for me, remains the many young people who had a day of getting excited about science. Maybe one or two of them will go into this field, and they will look back on a world-class research institute opening its doors to them (even just for a day) to thank for that.
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