For the past two years Texas has been experiencing severe drought. Is this unseasonably dry weather part of a natural climate cycle? Or is human activity dramatically influencing our climate? Climate scientists studying Earth’s climate history seek to answer questions such as these. Although climate models cannot directly connect global climate change to a specific weather event such as the drought here in Texas, these models do predict that the frequency of extreme weather is increasing with the rise in global temperature.
The publication of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) thrust climate change into the political realm. Many perceived the implications of the report as a direct attack on U.S. and global economic interests. As a result, some sectors of the public professionally and personally attacked and even vilified some of the report’s authors.
One of the Iead authors of the IPCC report and a direct target of these attacks, leading climate scientist Michael E. Mann is the keynote speaker for the 2013 E. James Holland Symposium on American Values. Join us as he shares his personal experience and insights into Climate Change and American Values.
For the Symposium program and information on the E. James Holland Symposium and this year's topic, see the Symposium's web site.
This LibGuide contains biographical information resources on Dr. Mann, as well as examples of resources (books, government and congressional publications, articles, DVDs, and streaming videos) on the topic of climate change.
Michael E. Mann, Ph.D. is currently the Director of Earth System Science Center and Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Pennsylvania State University. As a leading researcher in the field of climate science he has published over 160 peer-reviewed journal articles. His commitment to communicating science to the general public is evident in the publication of two books, Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming and The Hockey Sticks and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines. He also uses various social media outlets to engage the public in conversations about science and policy and contributes to a website about climate science: www.RealClimate.org.
Professor Mann earned B.A. degrees in both Applied Math and Physics from the University of California-Berkeley. At Yale University he earned an M.S. in Physics and a Ph.D. in Geology and Geosciences. Prior to his current position at Penn State, he served as an Assistant Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and held a Research Assistant Professor position at the University of Massachusetts in the Department of Geosciences.
Professor Mann is the recipient of numerous awards including sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the other co-authors of the (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) IPCC report. In 2012, he was awarded the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union. The National Wildlife Federation awarded him the National Conservation Achievement Award for science in 2013. Among his academic accolades he was recently appointed as a Distinguished Professor at Pennsylvania State University, and he is an elected fellow of both the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union.
As the keynote speaker for the 2013 E. James Holland Symposium on American Values, Professor Mann will discuss the intersection between climate science and American values in a talk entitled: The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.
(From the Symposium web site.)