Nerdy Stuff

My department started off the school year yesterday with a great seminar given jointly with the Earth and Space Science (ESS) department. The speaker was Susan Solomon, a leader in our industry who was heavily involved in ozone hole work and is now on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Her list of honors took our chair five minutes to read and include a National Medal of Science and the Carl Gustav Rossby Award, and the Nobel Peace Prize that the IPCC shared with Al Gore. She spoke on climate change and issue of irreversibilty - can we really prevent global warming? How long will it take to get back to "normal", if that's even possible? The talk was very approachable and I wish she could do a public lecture on the same topic here because I know so many people not in my department, or not in school, who find the subject compelling. In the meantime, I always suggest that anyone wondering what's up with climate change read the IPCC fourth assesment report: Summary for Policymakers. It's written for senators, representatives, etc. so it's short and understandable for the non-scientific folk, and written by a group of some of the most respected researchers in the field.

Also: cloudy with a chance of rocks.