Let's Do This! How Past Climate Change Should Drive Urgent Ambition on Policy

Description

Having researched the record of climate and how it has evolved across the Arctic over the past three million years, there are clearly warm intervals in this history that can inform us about the rates of change occurring now. While climate deniers pitch that “the climate has always been changing,” the high latitude climate history suggests that urgent and ambitious change is our only choice. We have a responsibility to future generations – we need to focus on delayed but certain and irreversible climate impacts.
 
A talk for community members. Free and open to the public.
 
Julie Brigham-Grette Ph.D. is a Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Past Chair of the Polar Research Board of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. She has been conducting research in the Arctic for 40 years, including eight field seasons in remote parts of northeast Russia since 1991. Her research interests and experience span the broad spectrum of arctic marine and terrestrial paleoclimate records dealing with the Late Cenozoic to recent evolution of the Arctic climate, especially in the Bering Strait region. She most recently co-led the $10M International Continental Scientific Drilling Program at Lake El’gygytgyn in NE Russia collecting a record of Arctic change over the past 3.6 million years.