Berkeley, Stanford biologists make foray into politics of climate change
July 25, 2014
Power couple: paleoecologists Anthony Barnosky and Elizabeth Hadly. Photo courtesy of Nature.
UC Berkeley biologist Anthony Barnosky’s 2012 Nature paper warning of an impending tipping point in Earth’s climate resonated with California Governor Jerry Brown, who called Barnosky out of the blue to ask his help in spreading the message to politicians and policy makers.
As reported in the July 24 issue of Nature, Barnosky, a professor of integrative biology and member of the Berkeley Initiative in Global Change Biology (BIGCB), and his wife, Elizabeth Hadly, a paleoecologist and professor of biology at Stanford University, devoted the next year to writing a consensus paper clearly explaining the on-coming consequences of climate change, and then getting hundreds of other scientists to sign the paper.
They presented the report to Brown in December of last year, and Brown has spread the report and the message around the world. (Read the full story in Nature)
RELATED INFORMATION
- Scientists uncover evidence of impending tipping point for Earth (6/6/2012 press release)
- Report warns of climate change ‘tipping points’ within our lifetime (12/3/2013 press release)
- Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change: Anticipating Surprises (NRC report)