Michael E. Mann
Michael E. Mann is a noted climate scientist and Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Pennsylvania State University. From his Q&A with Samantha Page for Cosmos:
Is a change in the way that we view climate change and the way that we talk about it going to keep us from those apocalyptic scenarios that we’re all kind of worried about?--Marshal Zeringue
All of these threads have come together in an almost perfect storm, if you’ll forgive the pun, that is creating a potential tipping point in the public consciousness.
There’s a race between two tipping points. The tipping point of the public consciousness, which we want to see, and the tipping point in the climate system that we don’t want to see and that we’re coming perilously close to. For example, the melting of major ice sheets and the global sea-level rise that would entail.
It’s a race between our ability to mobilise the public and policymakers to action and the increasingly devastating impacts of climate change we will see the further we go down this road of fossil fuel burning. That’s really the challenge, to turn this ship around as quickly as possible.
But we’re not going to avert all of the dangerous impacts of climate change. If you live in Puerto Rico or California, just about anywhere around the world – Australia is dealing with unprecedented summer heat right now, devastating heat and flooding events. Some bad stuff is already happening.
The challenge here is to...[read on]
