Special episode: Four Lessons Ben Santer Learned as a World-leading Climate Scientist

11/21/23 • 28 min

There are many great podcasts on the University of Utah campus and today U Rising is pleased to share an episode from Talking Climate, a podcast produced by the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy.
If you like what you hear, check out the rest of the Talking Climate podcast, where you'll find conversations about transformative research happening in the fields of climate science and policy at the University of Utah. Talking Climate is hosted and produced by Ross Chambless, community engagement manager for the Wilkes Center, and Margaret Call, an undergraduate researcher.
In this episode of Talking Climate, Ross speaks with Ben Santer, a Fowler Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and a visiting researcher at UCLA’s Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science & Engineering. Santer shares four lessons he has learned in the course of his career as a climate scientist.

Santer was a key contributor to the historic 1995 conclusion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that first declared “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate”. Santer was a lead author of a key chapter of that report – chapter 8 –and has done a lot of groundbreaking work to identify human fingerprints in atmospheric temperature and water vapor, ocean heat content, sea surface temperature in hurricane formation regions, and many other climate variables.

Subscribe to the U Rising podcast on your favorite streaming platform, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts. You can also access episodes of U Rising on our news website, linked here.

Previous Episode

This new center is working to reduce deaths of Native mothers and babies during pregnancy

The National Institutes of Health recently awarded University of Utah Health a $14 million grant to establish a maternal health research center – one of 10 across the country investigating how to reduce pregnancy-related deaths. Dr. Torri Metz, an associate professor, vice chair of research and clinician who specializes in maternal fetal medicine, is leading the new Elevate Maternal Health Research Center. In this episode of U Rising, Dr. Metz talks about the center and its focus on improving pregnancy outcomes specifically for Utah’s Indigenous populations.

Next Episode

The public perception of higher education--in Utah and across the country

What is the perception of higher education, both in Utah and nationally? Ken Goldstein, senior vice president for survey research and institutional policy with the Association of American Universities, joins host Chris Nelson to talk about the association’s latest research findings and the takeaways for higher education leaders.

U Rising - Special episode: Four Lessons Ben Santer Learned as a World-leading Climate Scientist

Transcript

Ross Chambless 1:47: So, there were specifically four lessons that you identified in your public talk last week. And I’ll just to kind of summarize what those four were. You said that one is defend scientific understanding. The other is never engage in science by eminence of position, don’t just preach to the choir, and declare your values. And I guess I just wanted to sort of unpack each