Speaker to clear the air about global warming

The Boise State chapter of Sigma Xi is bringing author and meteorologist Richard Sommerville for a lecture titled “Can Climate Models be Trusted?” as part of their Distinguished Lecture Series.

The lecture, geared toward the educated layman, is free and open to the public.

Sigma Xi is an international research society with nearly 75,000 members worldwide.

Sommerville, an expert on climate change, is a ppXology at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of the award-winning and critically acclaimed book The Forgiving Air: Understanding Environmental Change.

Alfred Dufty, BSU professor of biology and Sigma Xi president, said Sommerville should broadly appeal to students and the general public, not just to other scientists.

“Living in a place like Idaho, where climate has a huge impact on the economics of the state, climate changes are important news,” Dufty said.

Sommerville comments frequently on climate and environmental issues for the print and broadcast media. He also lectures widely to both scientific audiences and the general public.

Dufty said the lecture will cover global environmental issues pertaining to such topics as climate change, energy, population and policy issues.

“The whole idea of global warming has wide political and ecological implications, and it is very much a concern today,” Dufty said.

“If not my generation, your generation will have to deal with it.”

In addition to his work as a researcher, Sommerville has briefed United Nations climate-change negotiators and advised federal agencies on education and outreach. Dufty said Sommerville has a good reputation and is widely known in his field.

“This is probably the most prominent lecturer we’ve brought in a long time.”

Climate change is a highly complex subject spanning several technical disciplines from meteorology to climate modeling, and from economics to paleoclimatology. It’s also highly politicized and contentious. To help the average citizen navigate this debate, Somerville’s contributions provide a guide to what science does and doesn’t know about climate past, present and future.

Somerville’s presentation will also deal with the reliability of computer climate models, why understanding clouds is a top research priority for climatologists and what’s fueling the heated, polarized debate over global warming.

The suggestion that humans are changing the climate tends to evoke two main responses. One reaction is deeply skeptical: “How could humans be a significant player in an epic, cosmic scheme in which the Earth’s climate varies enormously between ice ages and periods like the Cretaceous when the average temperature was perhaps 20 degrees hotter than averages today?”

The other common response is sympathetic: “Of course the climate is changing: just look at how warm last winter was. Anyone can see it’s changing!”

Claude Spinosa, BSU department chair of geosciences, said global warming is a cause for concern, not alarm.

“Is global warming really occurring? Absolutely. Is it occurring naturally? Absolutely. Is it occurring artificially? Absolutely,” Spinosa said.

Spinosa said climate change should also be of concern to humanity.

“It can happen in just decades. For example, the El Ni

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