The Science of Global Warming

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Global warming sometimes seems like a political issue, or perhaps an economic one, if you’ve observed recent headlines of President Bush butting heads with European leaders.

But behind the heat and the very little light of “global warming realpolitik” is the science. Turns out, that’s also messy. Global warming research is one of the biggest scientific pigpiles of our time. All over the world, climatologists and biologists, meteorologists, geologists and physicists are drilling ice cores in Antartica and measuring rain fall in Bangladesh.

They’re taking temperatures 2,000 leagues under the sea, and going into space, trying to find out how the climate is changing, what’s causing it, and what, if anything, we can do about it. Today, we’re peeling back the politics, and asking scientists for the bottom line on Global Warming.
(Hosted by Jacki Lyden)

Guests:

Dr. Richard Lindzen, Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Dan Schrag, Professor of Geochemistry, Harvard University

Bill Moomaw, International Environmental Policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy

and Kevin Trenberth, head of the climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.