Students, from left, Krista Thomason, Becca Steinberg and Zachary Matthews pose with books signed by author Michael Mann.
The Athens News covered a Sustainability Studies theme event that brought Climate scientist Dr. Michael E. Mann to campus on March 28 in an article headlined “Speaker at OU takes aim at climate-change denial.”
During his talk Wednesday, Mann explained that global temperatures have been steadily rising, hitting new maximums in 2014, 2015, and 2016. “Oceans have been warmer than they’ve ever been,” said Mann. This causes water to evaporate over the ocean’s surface, creating a layer of warm air that energizes hurricanes and makes them bigger and faster, he said.
Evaporation of water over land surfaces creates dry conditions, like those that preceded recent cataclysmic wildfires in California. “Our climate models tell us this is exactly what we should expect,” Mann said.
According to Mann, these changes will only become more intense and difficult to adapt to, unless the world economy is transformed to no longer depend upon fossil fuels. Even so, many politicians in the United States simply deny that what climate scientists study is valid, rather than addressing the meaning of their findings.
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