Speaker: John Magnuson, Emeritus Professor of Zoology and Limnology, UW-Madison
Abstract: While Climate Change is global in extent, the impacts are felt locally and can provide strong evidence for climate change. Lake Mendota ice cover is useful as a miner's canary and when combined with global ice information can indicate global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shared the Nobel Peace prize in 2007 for its science synthesis. Its analyses reveal that the pattern of change in temperature and precipitation are heterogeneous around the world. These differences point to markedly different impacts in different regions of the globe. The challenges of climate change are to mitigate the causes to reduce the magnitude of change and to adapt to the inevitable changes that are occurring. In Wisconsin the Governors Task Force is considering the mitigation issues and the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICCI) is considering adaptation. Both require action and taking a long-term view.