Welcome to the Rhubarb talks website

The 'Rhubarb Talks' are a series of seminars by PhD students for PhD students at NOCS.



Upcoming seminars are posted below and cover a whole range of scientific exploits. Talks are held every other Monday afternoon at 4.30pm in the postgrad lounge (node 086) and are accompanied by nibbles and refreshments.



For more info or to volunteer for a talk, please contact The Rhubarb Team: Liz (E.Sargent@noc.soton.ac.uk),
Rosanna (R.Greenop@noc.soton.ac.uk), Maike (mjsp106@soton.ac.uk) or Sara (Sara.Cregeen@noc.soton.ac.uk)



Monday, March 12, 2012

March 5th 2012


Climate change science: how does the science work, what are its strengths and limitations?

Michael Henehen

Abstract:

Unfortunately, even as a scientist, it is often difficult to differentiate the chaff from the wheat with regards climate change science. Too often, climate change is viewed from within a political, or religious frame: a dogma that one may choose to identify oneself with, rather than an empirical fact. Even among those who are comfortable that man-made climate change is a reality, there is a worrying lack of understanding about the fundamentals of climate change: how it happens, how we know it is happening, etc. Here I'll be presenting a talk that I gave at the Art House earlier this month that attempts to cut through a lot of this and get down to the basics- how does climate change happen, has it happened before, and what has happened since we've started burning fossil fuels.
I'll then go through and discuss some of the most common arguments thrown out by contrarians.

No comments: