Henry Pollack

No place on Earth is changing faster than the rapidly warming Arctic. Guest speaker Henry N. Pollack will explain how the thawing of Asian and North American permafrost, the destruction of Arctic Ocean sea ice, the thinning of the Greenland ice sheet, and the disruption of Arctic ecosystems are all proceeding at an extraordinary pace and will have consequences that extend well beyond the Arctic region.

Pollack is a professor of geophysics (emeritus) at the University of Michigan, where he served as chairman of the Department of Geological Sciences and associate dean for research in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. His current research focuses on the record of climate change as recorded by the temperatures in the rocks beneath the Earth’s surface. Pollack has served on many advisory panels for the National Science Foundation, provided briefings about climate change to Congress and the White House, is a science advisor to former Vice-President Al Gore’s Climate Project, and was a contributing author to the Nobel Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report. He is the author of A World Without Ice, which focuses offers insight into why ice matters, and how we humans are dramatically changing this critical component of our global environment. He is also the author of Uncertain Science…Uncertain World.

Copies of Pollack’s book, A World Without Ice, will be for sale at Pacific Collections and there will be a book signing after the lecture.