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Prof. Henry Jacoby participated in a Hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change, examining the economic impacts of climate change and stabilizing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Today's release of a widely anticipated international report on global warming coincides with a growing clamor within the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent the potentially devastating consequences of global climate change. "There's clear evidence that greenhouse gases have been increasing by very large amounts since preindustrial times, and the vast majority of these increases are due to human activity," said Prinn, whose specific task on the panel was to assess this issue.
Better models are rapidly defining the uncertainties ahead, says leading climate scientist Ronald Prinn. - The most definitive scientific assessment of global warming to date, a report released earlier this month from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), concluded with "very high confidence" that humans are contributing significantly to global warming. The report also precisely defines the scientific uncertainties concerning the extent, impacts, and timing of global warming. Ronald Prinn, professor of atmospheric chemistry at MIT and one of the lead authors of the report, says that estimating and understanding these uncertainties is key to evaluating climate data and to deciding on a course of action. Prinn, a leading climate scientist and the director of a worldwide project that carefully monitors the amounts of dozens of greenhouse gases, recently sat down with Technology Review to explain why climate-change science is uncertain, how technology is reducing that uncertainty, and what challenges remain.
Kerry Emanuel, Ernest Moniz. Despite their calm demeanors, Kerry Emanuel and Ernie Moniz impart grave and pressing concerns about global warming to this Museum gathering.
Ronald Prinn uses the Greenhouse Gamble wheels to demonstrate the risks and benefits of taking steps to mitigate climate change.
Changes in the Land: Environmental Stresses and the Terrestrial Biosphere's Capacity to Store Carbon
Jerry Melillo paints a grim picture: human land use -- specifically the conversion of forests into agricultural land -- represents an irreversible loss of the capacity of the planet to store carbon.
With Henry Jacoby, Ronald Prinn, John Heywood, Karen Polenske and others.
With Henry Jacoby, Ronald Prinn, John Heywood, Karen Polenske and others.
There's one basic answer to the question, Why are we worried about energy? The answer is climate change, argues MIT's Ron Prinn: if there were no global warming threat associated with fuels like oil and coal, there'd be no crisis.