Sun Feb 12 2012
Dr. William Shilts, 1959 Western Reserve Academy graduate, offered "A Glacial Geologist's View of Global Warming" during a presentation to the WRA student body Feb. 19 in the Chapel.
Shilts, the executive director of the Institute of Natural Resource Sustainability at the University of Illinois, is the recipient of WRA's 2009 Morley Science Medal.
Shilts drew on his decades of work as a geologist to try to explain the impact of global warming.
Shilts, a native of Hudson, spent more than 25 years working in Canada for the Geological Survey of Canada, first as a research scientist and later as head of the environmental geochemistry section in the Mineral Resources Division.
"Where I've worked, there is clear evidence that the climate is warming," Shilts said. "The glaciers I've studied were as far advanced when the first air photos were taken of northernmost Canada in 1948 as they've been in the last 7,000 years and, probably, in the last 60,000 years, based on various methods of radiometric dating."
Shilts said it is difficult to pin down humans' impact on global warming.
"Most of the conclusions about human impact on global warming have been derived from computer modeling of the atmosphere, and not from rigorous applications of geological reasoning," he said. "Regardless of where the truth is, the concept of human-induced warming is a political reality, globally, and we have to have a strategy to deal with the emissions from fossil fuel generated energy."
In response to the question of what can we do about global warming, Shilts said preparation will play a vital role.
"If (global warming) is natural, there's not much we can do," he said. "But regardless of whether it is natural or human caused, we can prepare for it."
The Morley Science Medal is named for Edward W. Morley, a Western Reserve College faculty member in the late 1800s and early 1900s. His best-known work, the Michelson-Morley Experiment of 1887, attempted to measure the velocity of the Earth and the speed of light, the results of which helped pave the way for Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.
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