A place to relax, enjoy some coffee and cookies, and explore ideas about our physical universe... for science and non-science types!

Climate Change: Picturing the Science
Gavin A. Schmidt
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Monday, March 21, 2011
7:30 PM – 10:00 PM in Emerson Suites

How do we know what we know about climate change? Climate science connects meteorology, oceanography, mathematics and history in order to explain what has happened in the past, what is happening now and what we might expect for the future. In this presentation, Gavin Schmidt pulls together images from all around the world that illustrate how scientists go about this task and what they learned so far. He will explore both the implications and limitations of that knowledge and what that means for the human impact on climate into the future.

Gavin Schmidt is a climate modeller at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and is interested in modeling past, present and future climate. He received a BA (Hons) in Mathematics from Oxford University, a PhD in Applied Mathematics from University College London and was a NOAA Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate and Global Change Research. He was cited by Scientific American as one of the 50 Research Leaders of 2004, and has worked with the American Museum of Natural History and the New York Academy of Sciences. He is a contributing editor to the website RealClimate.org and co-author of "Climate Change: Picturing the Science" published by W. W. Norton (2009).

The Physics Café is a campus-wide lecture series sponsored by the Physics Department of Ithaca College.   The idea is to grab and hold the attention of science and non-science majors by offering talks on exciting and accessible current topics in physics.   Past Café lectures have featured the time-warping properties of black holes, the exploration of planet Mars, the communication of elephants, and remote sensing of archaeological sites.   The talks are presented in a café environment, where coffee is served and students and physicists can informally discuss new ideas.

The Physics Café regularly draws between 100 and 250 students from IC, so together with the 200-300 teachers from the Bureau event, we expect to attract a total audience of around 300 to 550 people.

Each talk in the Physics Café series is presented by a world-class expert.   These speakers are known for their abilities to communicate with non-scientific audiences, and have won awards for their efforts to engage the public in our search for a physical understanding of the Universe.

The lecture is free and open to the public. There are no pre-requisites!   No requirements!   Everyone is welcome!   Starbucks coffee (caffeinated and decaf.) will be served, along with cookies and biscuits.   An informal talk-back session with the speaker will immediately follow the presentation.

Contact: Professor Beth Ellen Clark Joseph
Center for Natural Sciences, Room 267
607 274 3968