Two academics to debate climate science at Rice University Jan. 27

CONTACT: Franz Brotzen
PHONE: 713-348-6775
E-MAIL: franz.brotzen@rice.edu

Two academics to debate climate science at Rice University Jan. 27

With the failure of world leaders to reach a comprehensive agreement at last month’s talks in Copenhagen, it is evident that public opinion on climate change remains divided. Two scholars will appear at Rice University’s McMurty Auditorium Jan. 27 to discuss global warming and what steps — if any — should be taken to deal with it.

Titled “The Great Climate Change Debate: Global Climate Models and the Evidence,” the program will feature Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and Gerald North, distinguished professor in the departments of Atmospheric Sciences and Oceanography at Texas A&M University.

With more sophisticated satellites and other platforms with which to observe Earth’s climate being put in place, scientists are gathering more data about how the climate changes and the factors that influence it.

A debate has been brewing in the scientific community about what some of this evidence might have to say for the validity of the global climate models that have underpinned much of the concern about human influences on climate, especially through the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Do the data suggest that the models need to be reworked in a fundamental way, adjusted slightly to accommodate new evidence, or do they suggest that the models are fine as they are?

While the conclusions on these issues certainly have implications for policy debates about restricting greenhouse gas emissions and other issues, the focus of the Jan. 27 discussion will be on the scientific theories about climate and what the evidence has to say about them.

Lindzen received his bachelor’s degree (1960), his master’s degree (1961) and his Ph.D. (1964) from Harvard University. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society. His research involves studies of the role of the tropics in midlatitude weather and global heat transport, the moisture budget and its role in global change, the origins of ice ages, seasonal effects in atmospheric transport, stratospheric waves and the observational determination of climate sensitivity.

North received his bachelor’s degree (1960) from the University of Tennessee and his Ph.D. (1966) from the University of Wisconsin. He headed the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M from 1995 until 2003 and held the Harold J. Haynes Endowed Chair in Geosciences from 2003 to 2008. His research interests include modern- and paleo-climate analysis, satellite remote sensing and mission planning, climate and hydrology modeling, and statistical methods in atmospheric science.

The debate begins at 7 p.m. in McMurty Auditorium in Duncan Hall on the campus of Rice University, 6100 Main St. For directions, go to http://www.rice.edu/maps/maps.html.

The event is open to the public. It is sponsored by the Center for the Study of Environment and Society and the Shell Center for Sustainability at Rice.