Dave talks to one of the world's leading climate scientists, Dr. Gavin Schmidt from NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York. Schmidt holds the same position once held by his predecessor and mentor, James Hansen, who was one of the first atmospheric science to truly sound the alarm on planetary warming.
Schmidt, an expert on climate models, explains how accurate the current state of the art models are and how climate modeling has evolved since the early days of the 70s and 80s. Bottom line, the models are accurately predicting what our sensory arrays in space and on the ground are telling us in terms of the data indicating our planet is indeed warming.
In a wide-ranging discussion, Schmidt covers the science and politics of climate change and gives us an update on climate denialism, which is something he and some colleagues have been combating for years on their realclimate.org website.