Global warming has become controversial and hotly-debated amongst scientists and politicians. Tuesday the University of Wyoming hosted astrophysicist and educator Jeffrey Bennett to give a lecture to the community on global warming science and why it matters.
Bennett graduated from the University of San Diego in 1981 with his bachelor’s degree in biophysics and later earned both his master’s and doctorate at the University of Colorado in astrophysical, planetary and atmospheric sciences. Bennett then spent time researching and teaching in Colorado and throughout the country. He has also written multiple books, including children’s books and textbooks.
Recently, Bennett has taken to touring throughout the nation to educate the public on the issues of global warming.
This tour brought Bennett to the University of Wyoming to speak to students, faculty and the community about the questions and controversy concerning climate change. He structured his presentation around three main ideas: the science behind global warming, the consequences and the solutions of this global issue.
The science behind this issue is the greenhouse effect.
“If you’re looking for an analogy to this there’s a really simple one, which is a blanket,” Bennett said. “If you go outside on a cold Wyoming night and you wrap a blanket around you, the blanket isn’t giving off any heat, so why do you get warmer? It’s because the blanket is slowing the escape of your own body heat.”
In talking about the political debates over global warming, Bennett argued that all people agree that global warming is in fact occurring, but there are a multitude of people who feel that action does not need to be taken because it is natural for the Earth’s temperature to change.
“Up until the 1950s or so you can believe that the sun was driving this,” Bennett said about the theories behind cause global warming, “but if you keep looking [at the data] the sun and the temperature of the earth have been going in opposite directions the last few decades.”
In addition, Bennett argued that this is not just a more liberal political stance to combat global warming, as there have been very strongly conservative politicians that have stated that we as a globe need to do something about this very real issue.
As an example, Bennett quoted Margaret Thatcher’s speech to the United Nations in 1989: “What we are doing now to the world … by adding greenhouse gases to the air at an unprecedented rate … is new in the experience of the Earth. It is mankind and his activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways.”
Throughout his lecture Bennett emphasized that this was not an issue on whether global warming was real or not but rather a debate over what to do about it. In his career Bennett has spent time educating citizens around the country, both young and old, about this controversial issue.
In ending his lecture, Bennett asked all those attending to imagine their grandchildren in 50 years receiving a letter from their current selves, stating their personal opinion on global warming. What will those grandchildren be thinking as they read it?
