The presenters at BioForum: Adapting to Climate Change come together on a panel to take questions from the audience.
Bio
Dr. Kimberly Cahill
Dr. Kimberly Cahill is a McKeehan Fellow in Horticulture and Agronomy in the Department of Viticulture and Enology at the University of California, Davis.
Robert Marcial
Robert Marcial is Director of the PG&E Pacific Energy Center (PEC).
Peter Roopnarine
Peter Roopnarine is curator of the Department of Invertebrate Zoology & Geology at the California Academy of Sciences.
Frank Schwing
Dr. Frank Schwing is an oceanographer with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries Service, and director of the Pacific Fisheries Environmental Laboratory in Pacific Grove, CA.
Schwing received a PhD in Oceanography from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. He is the author of over 120 peer-reviewed scientific publications, many on climate change and its influence on marine ecosystems and their populations. He has given over 150 seminars and presentations at scientific conferences, and is a frequent speaker to local and national groups and in the media on climate change and other science issues. One of his most recent efforts is an essay in Thoreau's Legacy: American Stories about Global Warming, published by Penguin Classics.
Previously, Schwing has worked with the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and was an Expert Reviewer for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Climate Assessment. He is a visiting professor in the Department of Oceanography, Naval Postgraduate School, and is a fellow with the Joint Institute of Marine and Atmospheric Research at the University of Hawaii.
Schwing has worked for NOAA since 1989, and has received the U.S. Department of Commerce Bronze Medal Award.
Dr. Carol Tang
Carol Tang is the Director of Public Programs and has overseen museum facilitation, lifelong learning, and exhibition scientific content at the California Academy of Sciences since before the opening of the new facility.
When Tang was the Assistant Chair of Education at the Academy, she worked extensively with SFUSD earth science professional development programs and oversaw teacher services, careers in science, outreach, field studies, and youth and adult courses. Before coming to the Academy in 2001, Tang was an assistant professor of geological sciences where she specialized in paleontology and earth system science and was one of the first researchers in the NASA Astrobiology Institute. She received a Ph.D. in 1996 and an MS in 1993 from the University of Southern California and a BA in paleontology with honors from UC Berkeley in 1989.
She is currently an adjunct professor at San Francisco State University and a research associate at the UC Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley.
Increase in the global average surface temperature resulting from enhancement of the greenhouse effect, primarily by air pollution. In 2007 the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecasted that by 2100 global average surface temperatures would increase 3.2–7.2 °F (1.8–4.0 °C), depending on a range of scenarios for greenhouse gas emissions, and stated that it was now 90 percent certain that most of the warming observed over the previous half century could be attributed to greenhouse gas emissions produced by human activities (i.e., industrial processes and transportation). Many scientists predict that such an increase in temperature would cause polar ice caps and mountain glaciers to melt rapidly, significantly raising the levels of coastal waters, and would produce new patterns and extremes of drought and rainfall, seriously disrupting food production in certain regions. Other scientists maintain that such predictions are overstated. The 1992 Earth Summit and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change attempted to address the issue of global warming, but in both cases the efforts were hindered by conflicting national economic agendas and disputes between developed and developing nations over the cost and consequences of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.
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