Global warming: Real or fiction?

Middletown — Global Warming is a hot topic today and is in the forefront of the news. Is Global Warming a reality or are the seemingly warmer temperatures cyclical in the Earth’s climate system? Wallace S. Broecker, PhD will present “The Grand Experiment: Climate Change and Global Warming” at 7:15 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 30. The lecture with Power Point presentation will be delivered at the Harriman Hall 111 Film Theatre on the campus of Orange County Community College. The lecture is free and open to the public. Broecker is one of the world’s foremost interpreters of the Earth’s operation as a biological, chemical, and physical system. He helped discover that the abrupt end of the most recent ice age occurred approximately 11,000 years ago. Broecker pioneered a number of new approaches to studying the earth’s climate, including the use of carbon and other isotopes to date marine sediments. He has examined ocean circulation patterns over time, studied gas exchanges between the ocean and the atmosphere, and traced carbon as it cycles through the Earth’s chemical, physical and biological systems. He is probably best known for his identification of a “great conveyor belt” of ocean currents that plays a critical role in Earth’s climate. Broecker is the Newberry Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and a scientist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. He has won numerous major awards for his research. He has authored over 400 journal articles and many books including “The Glacial World according to Wally Broecker,” “Greenhouse puzzles: Keeling’s World,” “Martin’s World,” “Walker’s World,” among others. Harriman Hall is universally accessible and located at the corner of Wawayanda and East Conkling Avenues in Middletown. This Lyceum lecture is presented by Cultural Affairs. For additional information, call 341-4891 or visit www.sunyorange.edu/lyceum.