Please join us as Professor Kerry Emanuel, a renowned climatologist and political conservative, assesses current scientific understanding of climate change and sounds a call to action.

The vast majority of scientists agree that human activity has significantly increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The great majority of these scientists hold that continued warming presents significant risks to humankind over the coming centuries. Projected changes to the climate system will result in rising sea levels and associated coastal flooding, decreasing habitability of tropical and arid regions, increasing acidification of ocean waters, risks to marine ecosystems, and increases in food and water shortages. Yet global warming skeptics and ill-informed elected officials continue to dismiss the broad scientific consensus.

What evidence led the scientific community to these conclusions? How robust is that evidence? To what extent should we trust uncertain projections of future climate change based on complicated global climate models? How do we deal with climate change as a problem of risk assessment and management? Professor Emanuel will discuss the impact of climate change on our lives and on those of our children and grandchildren.

Kerry Emanuel is The Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is a founder and co-director of the Lorenz Center, a climate think tank devoted to basic, curiosity-driven climate research. He is one of the world’s leading authorities on hurricanes. His research interests focus on tropical meteorology and climate, with a specialty in hurricane physics. In particular, he has explored the possibility that recent climate change, along with other factors, has contributed to the increased hurricane activity in the Atlantic. He is the author or co-author of over 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers and three books, including Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes and Atmospheric Convection, a very influential book in the atmospheric science community. He is a member of both the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2006, he was named as one of the “Time 100” most influential people of the year.

Talks in this series are sponsored by Brotherhood and include a delicious buffet breakfast of assorted bagels, smoked salmon, pickled herring, whitefish salad, tabbouleh, desserts and more. Breakfast begins at 9:15 am The presentation runs from 9:45 am to 10:45 am and is usually followed by a question and answer session. Admission is $10; free to Brotherhood members. For more information, email brotherhood@templeisaiah.net.