 "Photo: Sam Grenadier")
Though Texas Tech's nationally publicized climate-change researcher lectured on the highly-debated issue of global warming, she received few questions from an audience of faculty, staff members and students Monday in the Human Sciences building.
The lecture, "Global Warming Facts, Fallacies and the Future," was presented by Katharine Hayhoe, an associate professor of geosciences at Tech. It was hosted by The Tech Renewable Energy Society to present facts and data about climate change and allow audience members to come to their own conclusions, she said.
Lindsay Reed, a founding member of the year-old energy society and a unit manager of computing services in the College Of Human Sciences, said the climate change data Hayhoe presented helps in promoting his group's interest in expanding the use of renewable energy. "We always say in God we trust, but the others must bring data - (Hayhoe) has brought the data," he said.
"Our group looks at renewable energy, and one of the benefits of renewable energy is that it does not produce greenhouse gases," he said. "It's part of the solution to the problem of too much greenhouse gas, to begin using more renewable energy and less fossil fuels."
Hayhoe, who serves as a contributor and expert reviewer for the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said one of the root causes of climate change is an increase in greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, which is produced by human activities.
"The million-dollar question - really the billion-dollar question - is this: If these gases are now off the charts, in terms of the past hundreds of thousands of years, what do we expect will happen to temperature?" she asked.
Hayhoe said that since 140 years ago, the approximate time of the Industrial Revolution, temperatures and the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have increased at approximately the same rate.
"The 1990s was the warmest decade on record, but that's only because we haven't finished the 2000s yet," she said.
During her presentation, Hayhoe displayed a variety of graphs and photographs, including a picture of polar bears stranded on melting icebergs and melting glaciers in the Alps, Greenland, South America and Glacier National Park in the United States.
"By 2030, Glacier Park could have to come up with a new name," she said.
Though the lecture was designed to assist the audience of approximately 40 to come to its own conclusions, not all who attended the event were convinced to come to a conclusion about the causes of global climate change.
"I'm not sure what I believe," said Jay Daniel, a senior landscape architecture major from Lubbock. "You can't not believe the science, but it's hard for me - I don't know why - but I definitely believe that humans can have an impact on the environment."
Despite not coming to a definite conclusion after Hayhoe's lecture, Daniel said his interests in the environment inspire him to want make a difference.
"I'm interested in what I can do to better the environment and how to go about doing that," he said.
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