Climate Change: Past and Future with Oceanographer Michael Sutherland

Thursday, June 17, 2021 at 7 p.m.

Earth has been through a huge range of climates, from “greenhouse”, with no polar ice caps, to “snowball”, where the planet was mostly, if not entirely, covered in ice and snow. Some climatic events led to massive global die-offs. Today we face the onset of a great global warming event caused by our industrialized society. Carbon dioxide is the primary cause of temperature change in the atmosphere, and over the past two-plus centuries we have added a huge amount of carbon dioxide to earth’s atmosphere by burning oil, gas and coal. This has led directly to a sharp rise in global temperature, in both the atmosphere and ocean, whose effects we are now experiencing regularly in the form of massive heat waves, increased storm intensities, abnormal weather patterns, and sea level rise. Forty years have passed since the scope of the problem was first made clear. The question now is, how do we as a collection of societies across the planet address this increasingly imminent threat? Several main strategies exist, including replacement of carbon-burning energy sources with renewables. Renewable energy production is a critical part of any path toward a sustainable climate for humanity.

Michael Sutherland is an oceanographer and geophysicist who has worked in the offshore energy industry for more than ten years, and is working actively now to make renewable energy a reality. When not offshore, he lives in the valley with his three children and two cats.