Pardee Keynote Symposia
Highlights
P8. The Cause of Global Warming—
Are We Facing Global Catastrophe in the Coming Century?
Sponsored by GSA Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Division
Don Easterbrook
Atmospheric CO2 is at all-time highs and global temperatures have risen 0.8 °C in the past century. Climate modelers predict temperature increases up to 6 °C by 2100, based on the assumption that atmospheric CO2 is the cause of global warming, leading to catastrophic changes in food production, drowning of coastal cities, extinction of species, disappearance of arctic ice and alpine glaciers, and others. The session focuses on physical data related to global climate change. Scientists with expertise in geology, glaciology, climatology, and isotope physics will discuss glacier fluctuations in the past decades to millennia, isotope studies of ice cores, relationship of climate change to CO2 and solar variation, and patterns of past climate fluctuations.
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