The editor of Nature Reports Climate Change, Olive Heffernan, went to Lindau this summer to sit in on the 59th annual meeting of Nobel Laureates. She took three young scientists to hear the scientific panels and to talk with some of the Laureates, including Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina, who received their prizes for discerning the devastating effects of CFC’s on the stratospheric ozone layer.
Nature has a great video of Olive and the others at the conference. There are some excellent insights all around. I particularly liked the view of Walter Kohn that if we crank up our nuclear power output there would be “…a huge probability of it leading to a catastrophe.” Bjorn Lomborg sits down with the “Nature” crew and comes across, in my view, as not so much a climate skeptic as a climate cynic. He also doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo that nearly every policymaker in the world feels that climate change mitigation and adaptation need to fully incorporate sustainability. Regarding present impacts, I heard Jan Egeland, former UN chief of humanitarian affairs, say a couple of years ago that nearly every relief effort that’s being made these days has a significant climate factor that exacerbates the situation.
Beyond this compelling story from Nature, go to the Lindau website for some fascinating videos of talks by the Laureates, including from Walter Kohn on solar and wind power, and from Rowland, Molina and their collaborator, Paul Crutzen, on climate change.