It took nearly a century from the first measurements of the “greenhouse” effect of CO2 to figuring out what controlled Earth’s past climate and our recent ice ages.
HSV Audubon will welcome geophysicist Dr. Peter Trabant as guest speaker for its March 14 monthly program.
Trabant will discuss the history of our knowledge of Earth’s climate and how we came to understand its workings, beginning with Nobel Laureate Svante Arrhenius, who theorized in 1896 that increasing atmospheric CO2 would trap more heat and was a cause of the ice ages.
Trabant said, “But we now know that was not so and it would be the orbital calculations of Milutin Milankovitch, while under house arrest in 1914, that provided the true answer, upon confirmation by paleoceanographer Cesare Emiliani in 1956 and later by analysis of ice cores.”
Trabant will also talk about the observed effects on our local environment and its birds via Audubon’s Climate Watch program. “My goal is to dispel some of the myths on the issue,” said Trabant, “and how two individuals, namely Milutin Milankovitch in 1918 and Cesare Emiliani, through observations and the leftovers of the Manhattan Project in the 1950s were able to decipher the workings of our climate system.”
on March 14 at 10 a.m.
CORONADO CENTER AUDITORIUM
THE SPEAKER
Before retiring, Dr. Trabant was a consultant to the petroleum industry as an exploration geophysicist for offshore oil and gas. He earned his Ph.D. in oceanography at Texas A&M University and authored technical papers and textbooks on geophysics and our understanding of Earth’s past climates in the search for hydrocarbons.
Trabant grew up in Germany, France and Italy, attending French and British schools, before enlisting in the U.S. Navy. After his service chasing Soviet U-boats on the Cuban blockade and serving as an interpreter to the U.S. 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean, he obtained a B.S. in geology at U. of Miami.
Flooding of their home during tropical storm Allison in Houston forced Trabant and his wife, Sissy, to move to higher ground in the Texas “Hill Country,” until the drought of 2010 made them climate refugees once again, spurring the move to Hot Springs Village in 2011.
So far, in retirement, Trabant concentrates on hunting bass from his kayak and bicycling both paved and unpaved roads while capturing our magnificent scenery and waterfowl through his DSLR, including the 2017 solar eclipse. Pete and Sissy also spent six years sailing their 35-foot sloop IONA from Galveston to his hometown of Paris, France.