TMO Background Mode Interview with Climate Scientist Dr. Katharine Hayhoe
Dr. Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist and professor of political science at Texas Tech University, where she is the director of the Climate Science Center. She is also the CEO of the consulting firm ATMOS Research and Consulting. She received her undergraduate degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Toronto and a masters and Ph.D. in atmospheric science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. We started from basics in this chat and defined how science works via observation. Then we delved into the process of climate change research, successful computer models, the significant findings of climate science and whether some changes are exponential rather than linear. Finally, Dr. Hayhoe filled us in on some great resources for further reading.
Show Notes
My Background Mode interview with Dr. Katharine Hayhoe
- Katharine on Twitter.
- Katharine's home page.
- The Wikipedia page for Katharine.
- The Thinking Person's Guide to Climate Change (book, Amazon)
- Climate Feedback website.
- Skeptical Science website.
- Support TMO when you buy your Apple gear from Apple.
- The story of my Background Mode podcast.
- TMO Background Mode Twitter feed.
- Archive of all Background Mode Shows.
- Background Mode at iTunes.
- Send your comments to [email protected] or [email protected]
John,
This was one of the best episodes of Background Mode ever! Thank you to both you and Katherine. The only thing that could’ve made it better is if you could’ve reserved a few minutes for her to tell about the Macs she uses…
Old UNIX Guy
A most instructive and valuable podcast. The issue in a nutshell. Beautifully. I’ll be sending anyone with questions about climate change here to experience the lack of science and self delusion here. It’s frankly staggering.
Air Temperature, the basis for the whole hypothesis – didn’t work out, so we tossed it and now it’s water temperature.
Hurricanes are in decline, so now we talk about water the storms dump instead??
Fires on the west coast – either started by a camp fire or more likely the incident for which PG&E have already apologised – somehow linked to climate change??
Not one mm of sea level rise experienced anywhere – erosion, and notoriously bad drainage in Miami actually responsible for “examples” quoted.
And those with long memories will recall the scientific explanations for why weather isn’t climate, except that now it is.
Mr Gore had a thriving carbon credits business, I wonder what his new scam is?
President (oil) Bush withdrew climate funding once the theory looked sound (in the 1990s), told the scientists “it’s a political issue now”, set up the IPCC to milk citizens for taxes, and not actually do anything for the climate.
The US publishes a report claiming lack of action on climate change will hurt the economically disadvantaged, the same week Paris is on fire due to protests because carbon taxes are crippling the poor.
I’m happy we go green energy, delete nuclear power as the feeder for nuclear weapons, not to mention we still don’t know what to do with the waste, get off the carbon economy and the health issues not to mention corruption associated with it… but climate change advocates are not helping. Stick to the scientific reasons we need these outcomes, climate change has taken on the hallmarks of a religion, with accompanying media circus and you do science no service.
The Climate model how far back is it base? 1979, 1880s? Why is it when Al Gore back in the 80s talking about climate change he said in 20 to 30 years that the earth was going to cool down and now since that didn’t happen they now say it is global warming. Why do they say that the icebergs up in the North Pole is melting and this puts a % rise in temperature? You can prove that this is false by doing your own test. Get a glass of water with ice cubes. Pretend that the ice cubes are the icebergs now sit and watch and see if after the ice melts if it spills over the glass of water. Shocker! NO! This is all Bogus the real reason for climate change is more taxes and government control on all of us. Wise up!
Hi Deniese,
Climate models are tuned so that they accurately predict the past … we have very detailed temperature measurements going back to the 1880’s. Once a model accurately recreates the past it can then be trusted when it is “run forward” into the future.
Please provide documentation showing where Al Gore said what you claim … it’s bogus as far as I know and even if it’s not it proves nothing.
I can prove your ice cubes and a glass of water example is (hilariously) bogus by the following … take a full glass of water and add ice cubes to it and see if it overflows! It obviously will. It’s not the ice that is already floating on water that is the problem … it’s the ice that is on land that – if / when it melts – will be the problem.
I would highly encourage you to visit skepticalscience.com … they will provide even more detailed explanations of why yours (and everyone else’s) objections to the facts of global warming are wrong.
Old UNIX Guy