Public Lectures

In November 1995, after three days of deliberations in Madrid's Palacio de Congresas, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reached the historic finding that "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate". This sentence changed the world. While other individuals and national scientific organizations had reached similar conclusions before Madrid, the "discernible human influence" statement marked the first time that the international climate science community had spoken so clearly and forcefully.

The reaction was swift. The "discernible human influence" conclusion led to Congressional investigations, charges of "scientific cleansing" allegations of corruption of the peer-review process and professional misconduct, and claims of political tampering. Santer spent several years addressing such criticism. This lecture is a reflection on the top ten scientific and personal lessons Santer learned after publication of the IPCC's 1995 Report. Many of these lessons still have relevance in today's world.

Elizabeth Barnes loves noise - atmospheric noise that is. Her passion is sifting through geophysical data in search of previously undetected signals. She gets to do this every day, as well as teach the next generation of scientists techniques for doing so, as an Assistant Professor at Colorado State University. Her research covers a variety of questions related to atmospheric variability, including, "Can we forecast extreme weather 5 weeks in advance?" to "How does the atmosphere respond to volcanic eruptions?" Prof. Barnes and her fantastic research group have written over 40 papers on extracting atmospheric "music" from the "noise" across a range of past, present and future climates.

Prof Mark Howden is the Director of the Climate Change Institute at ANU and a Honorary Professor at Melbourne University. Mark's work has focused on how climate impacts on, and innovative adaptation options for, systems we value: agriculture and food security, the natural resource base, ecosystems and biodiversity, energy, water and urban systems. He helped develop the national and international greenhouse gas inventories which are the basis for the Paris Agreement and has assessed sustainable ways to reduce emissions. Mark has worked on climate variability, climate change, innovation and adoption issues for over 27 years in partnership with many industry, community and policy groups via both research and science-policy roles. Mark has over 400 publications. He has been a major contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 1991, sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He is now a Vice Chair of IPCC Working Group 2. Mark sat on the US Federal Advisory Committee for the 3rd National Climate Assessment and currently contributes to several national and international science and policy advisory bodies.

Dr. Richard Johnson of the University of Colorado will share results from his collaborative research that investigated how climate change during the Miocene caused a near-extinction of our ancestors, and how certain mutations led to the emergence of a lineage that later became humans and modern apes. Insights from these studies have led to a better understanding of how all animals survive climate change, and also for the diseases that are expected to emerge or worsen in the next century. It also may lead to new approaches to stay healthy with increasing global temperatures.

Most of the CO2 released when we burn coal, oil or gas is eventually absorbed by the oceans, where it reacts with seawater leading to acidification. Ocean acidification has been shown to harm many marine organisms, including corals, under controlled laboratory conditions.

This talk will describe how Dr. Calderia's team altered seawater chemistry in a natural ecosystem without any artificial confinement, for the first time ever, and measured the biological response in order to better understand ocean acidification and its impacts on corals.

Dr. Caldiera will describe the effects of ocean acidification on corals, his team's research in the great barrier reef, and the need for energy technologies that provide for human systems while protecting the natural environment.

Cynthia Rosenzweig presents a Walter Orr Roberts Memorial Public Lecture titled, "Climate Change Challenges to Agriculture, Food Security, and Health." In this talk she will talk about how agriculture is being called upon to ensure both human and planetary health as changes in earth's climate affect food security and ecosystem services at both global and regional scales.

This talk is about how developing high-resolution projections can help real people, from wine growers in California to water managers in Texas, prepare for a changing climate.

This talk focuses on the distinctive responsibilities of the major investor-owned producers of fossil fuels, describing new science on the scale of their contribution to the problem; the actions companies took and could have taken in response to the scientific evidence of climate change; and the evidence that civil society actions to hold companies accountable may be need to hasten our transition to a safe climate future.