Forum on Global Climate Change Components

Sponsored by
The Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies'
Center for the Study of Global Change

Friday, October 29, 2004
Saturday, October 30, 2004

Yale University
Environmental Science Center, Room 110
21 Sachem Street, New Haven, CT
 

Climate change has been clearly observed on a variety of time scales.  Most recently global warming and the role of human activity in exacerbating it has been one of the most compelling global issues for discussion and action.  Although there is no fundamental disagreement on the simple physical linear relationship between the increase in the radiatively important gases, such as carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere and the expected increase in temperature, there are fundamental uncertainties on how this simple relationship is confounded by feed-back effects and external forcings.  The feed-backs can be both positive and negative and the external forcings can be terrestrial or solar.  These issues are directly involved in discussions on what actions are necessary or prudent to mitigate the inferred consequences of human exacerbated climate change. .  Some areas which are under scrutiny to determine the causes of variations in climate include: solar variability, aerosols, the hydrologic cycle and the role of the oceans.

A forum to discuss the certainties, uncertainties and social, political and economic responses to these putative causes of change in climate is scheduled for the afternoon of Friday, October 29 and all day Saturday, October 30 of 2004.   The attached schedule of speakers and discussion leaders was the result of deliberations of the organizing committee composed of  Karl K. Turekian (chair), Mark Pagani, Steven Sherwood and Robert Mendelsohn all of Yale.  Haroon Kheshgi of ExxonMobil has provided advice to the organizing committee.       

The Forum is supported by funding from ExxonMobil.

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