al-mofhariz

One of the most important contributors to our understanding of climate change, Earth scientist Wallace Broeckerlectures on our increasingly hot planet—and what we can do about it.

“The Earth’s climate system is an angry beast,” says Dr. Broecker. “And we’re poking it by adding greenhouse gases.” Every day, 60 to 70 million metric tons of carbon dioxide are dumped into the atmosphere. And even if a well-meaning fairy godmother were to turn all the world’s citizens into energy-saving paragons overnight, the resulting reduction in CO2 emissions could not stop the great warming tide headed our way.

The Newberry Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, a longtime researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and author of the just-released book Fixing Climate: What Past Climate Change Reveals about the Current Threat—And How to Counter It, Dr. Broecker has been investigating the link between ocean chemistry and global warming for more than 40 years.

So how c…

David Engber explores this question in a three-part series for Slate magazine that may be of interest to FHSA members.  Engber traces the manufacture of uncertainty about science through a number of examples, ranging from intelligent design, industry-sponsored research, and environmental activism.  He connects this trend to Richard Hofstadter's discussion of the "paranoid style in American politics."  Sage Ross has an interesting assessment of moderate versus immoderate doubt about science from a history of science perspective.