Carl Wunsch
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Carl Wunsch (born May 5, 1941) is the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physical Oceanography at MIT.
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[edit] Climate change
On the subject of global warming he has said:
- Thus at bottom, it is very difficult to separate human induced change from natural change, certainly not with the confidence we all seek. In these circumstances, it is essential to remember that the inability to prove human-induced change is not the same thing as a demonstration of its absence. It is probably true that most scientists would assign a very high probability that human-induced change is already strongly present in the climate system, while at the same time agreeing that clear-cut proof is not now available and may not be available for a long-time to come, if ever. Public policy has to be made on the basis of probabilities, not firm proof. [1]
And
- I believe that climate change is real, a major threat, and almost surely has a major human-induced component. But I have tried to stay out of the climate wars because all nuance tends to be lost, and the distinction between what we know firmly, as scientists, and what we suspect is happening, is so difficult to maintain in the presence of rhetorical excess. In the long run, our credibility as scientists rests on being very careful of, and protective of, our authority and expertise... I am on record in a number of places as complaining about the over-dramatization and unwarranted extrapolation of scientific facts. Thus the notion that the Gulf Stream would or could "shut off" or that with global warming Britain would go into a "new ice age" are either scientifically impossible or so unlikely as to threaten our credibility as a scientific discipline if we proclaim their reality [2]
He was one of the scientists interviewed in the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle but says his: discussion was grossly distorted by context... My appearance in the "Global Warming Swindle" is deeply embarrasing, and my professional reputation has been damaged. I was duped [3]
[edit] Selected honors
- Member, National Academy of Sciences, 1978
- Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1979
- Fulbright Scholar, 1981-1982
- Maurice Ewing Medal, American Geophysical Union and U.S. Navy, 1990
- Henry Stommel Research Prize, American Meteorological Society, 2000
- Foreign Member, Royal Society of London, 2002
- Bowie Medal, American Geophysical Union, 2006
[edit] Recent Publications
- Carl Wunsch, Discrete Inverse and State Estimation Problems, 2006. ISBN 0521854245
- Carl Wunsch, The Ocean Circulation Inverse Problem, 1996.ISBN 0521480906
- Walter Munk, Peter Worcester, and Carl Wunsch, Ocean Acoustic Tomography, Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0521470951
[edit] External links
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