Stockholm view from Grand Hotel. Photo: Mel MatthewsI came for the Nobel Prize awards. They are given by the Swedish king each December 10 to a handful of scientists and a literary figure, who thereby gain godlike status with colleagues and the world.

I had interviewed a few Nobel prizewinners during my science writing career. I grew up in a family of scientists. My grandfather was the Harvard astronomer Harlow Shapley, famous for his discovery that our solar system is not in the center of the galaxy. Most of Harlow’s extended family went into science.

So we were overjoyed to learn that one of Harlow’s sons, my uncle Lloyd S. Shapley, a well-known game theorist, was the co-winner of the 2012 Nobel Memorial prize in Economic Science.1 I was honored that uncle Lloyd included me in the accompanying group each winner is allowed. So – I came to Stockholm!

Does new evidence of warming count as news?

This just  in.

Global warming is causing Earth’s systems to change faster than the most sobering predictions of a few years ago. Drastic changes that had been expected over long periods, such as the melting of Greenland’s glaciers, are occurring sooner.

And a respected model forecasts that, by 2100, average global temperature may rise by 4 °C (6.3° F) even if all nations carry out the cuts in carbon dioxide equivalent (CO_2e) emissions they’ve pledged. A 4°C rise by 2100 would be twice the 2°C increase over preindustrial levels that world leaders declared in L’Aguila, Italy as the acceptable maximum.

These messages came through loud and clear at a press event

Tassels of brackish, dark seaweed stretch ahead of me, baking in the summer sun. I’m tempted to look up across Goleta Bay’s dark waters to the dusty blue of the Santa Barbara Channel. But I keep my eyes down to pick my way through the detritus of shells, stones, and insects, as my city feet are tend er.  It’s a lovely afternoon. The temperature is 68° F (20° C). The breeze wafts coolly from the sea. I think: Life’s a beach.

This beach is alive, actually. The dark mounds are mainly heaps of giant kelp. Explaining kelp’s importance as she leads me among the piles is Jenifer E. Dugan, a sandy beach scientist who is an Associate Research Biologist at the Marine Science Institute of the University of California at Santa Barbara. The roofs of the university buildings peek at us over the 40-foot high bluff.

Jenifer E. Dugan points out "wrack". (Author photo)

In dawn’s early light it was dim and cool on the porch. But my usual stroll across the lawn to the edge of Grand Canyon was blocked by four large animals grazing, as if the lawn was theirs not mine.   

Like many who graze news stories about ways the United States might respond to global warming, I thought Congress would do well to pass any of the proposed bills to cap US emissions of carbon dioxide (C0₂), the principal greenhouse gas. I assumed that neither the specific level of reduction nor the exact timing mattered—so long as Congress acted soon.

But on June 23, I heard NASA scientist James E. Hansen argue that we’re approaching a point where planetary impacts will be irreversible.

What’s happening in the world’s oceans? To the known problems of overfishing, pollution, and invasive organisms borne on ship hulls, we can add the lesser-known alterations caused by climate change