MIT professor takes a sober look at global warming

As part of the Edwin Way Teale Lecture Series on Nature and the Environment, Dr. Kerry Emanuel, a professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, presented the audience with a sober look at global warming.

"I want to give them [the audience] a feeling for the science of global warming and climactic change," Emanuel said after the lecture.

And he did just that. Packed with graphs and data, Emanuel presented facts about climactic change, never once favoring one scientific theory over the other. Emanuel showed the progression of the climate throughout history and presented data to the audience.

His main concern during the lecture was to show the audience that the climate has never been uniform in history. It fluctuates from time to time, Emanuel explained, and just like the climate, the earth's orbit itself has fluctuations every 100,000 years.

"What it means is that the ice ages were caused by these orbital variations," said Emanuel. "The earth cooled, then heated up again, and repeated this progress for decades."

But for the past hundred years a sharp increase in climate temperature has occurred. Greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutions have increased the overall temperature of the world.

"We are the ones doing that," Emanuel said. "No one will deny this. There is no controversy on this issue."

With the data he presented, Emanuel predicted the climate and temperature for the next decades, but he explained that there is a big uncertainty that lies in these data projections.

"If we use these models, they are pretty good," said Emanuel. "But we don't know what we are going to do in the future - are we going to curb our appetite for burning fossil fuels?"

Emanuel ended the presentation by clarifying both the risks and benefits of global warming. But he emphasized that the risks greatly outweigh the benefits.

"I came here to learn the facts," said Chris Cartelli, a 3rd-semester exploratory major. "I came here to hear an unbiased opinion and I feel I got that."

The lecture was one of six lectures that will be sponsored by the Edwin Way Teale Lecture Series this year. The series is designed to bring a variety of speakers to UConn to speak about nature and the environment.

"Dr. Emanuel's significant contributions to the field of atmospheric sciences as well as his renowned reputation in the science community made him an ideal choice to be a Teale presenter," said David Colberg, the public information coordinator for the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History.

"Global warming is a critical environmental concern," Colberg said. In addition, the upcoming international negotiations regarding reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases make this a particularly timely topic for a lecture in the fall Teale series."