Climate Change Science: Dr. Paul Alivisatos, Berkeley Lab Director

Video Published on Mar 6, 2012

Jan 31, 2011. As a director of a national laboratory, I'm sometimes asked about the scientific underpinnings of climate change issues and their relationship to human activities. I imagine that some of you have also been asked these questions. Government officials want to know that their policy and spending decisions are based on sound science, and ordinary citizens want to know why so much emphasis is being placed on "clean" and "green" energy. I've developed a brief exploration of the basic science of carbon dioxide's influence on the temperature of the planet, along with some of the empirical evidence behind scientists' concerns about the long-term impacts of anthropogenic carbon emissions.

Tags: human activity, carbon dioxide, Fourier, heat transfer, Keeling, oxygen, glaciation, warming, Arrhenius, feedback