The ECO Rotary Club welcomed Lynne Talley as our speaker.
Distinguished SCRIPPS Professor
The ECO Rotary Club welcomed Lynne Talley as our speaker. Lynne Talley is a Distinguished Professor of Physical Oceanography in the Climate, Atmospheric Sciences, and Physical Oceanography division at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego.
Her presentation was about the experience of being one of 34 lead authors (from around the world) who wrote Working Group I Contribution to the “Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”. Their 185 page summary report (it took 185 pages just to write the summary!) “Climate Change 2013 The Physical Sciences Basis.” is just one of four volumes written by the four working groups.
Group one’s findings are summarized with the following statement on page 4 “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased.”
Lynne’s work forms the foundation for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which includes a hundred and ninety-five countries, to make needed changes. These changes include telling nations which rely on selling fossil fuels for their national income and almost all of which depend on burning them for the bulk of their energy—that giving up such fuels is a good idea.
You can see the IPCC report here: