Interview with Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist and devout Christian

Katharine Hayhoe

The Facts are not enough

by Jeff Turrentine, originally published by OnEarth

A week ago the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its most recent report on the wide-ranging impacts of global warming. The general tone, suffice it to say, wasn’t cheerful, relying on descriptions of troubling real-life phenomena that, until recently, seemed the province of dystopian science fiction.

But even amidst all the doom and gloom, there’s reason for optimism, says Katharine Hayhoe. She’s a respected climatologist and director of Texas Tech University’s Climate Science Center, and she served as an expert reviewer for the IPCC’s previous report, in 2007. (I profiled her two years ago for OnEarth.)

Since the last IPCC report, Hayhoe has complemented her work on climate modeling with a sideline career as one of the country’s most articulate and effective climate communicators. (In addition to her natural speaking and writing skills, Hayhoe has an added advantage when dealing with the various types of skeptics she encounters: her own husband, an evangelical Christian minister, used to be one.)

(Continued here.)