Nobel Prize in Physics seen as signal and warning to do more against global warming
S眉ddeutsche Zeitung, taz, Frankenpost
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences鈥� to award this year鈥檚 Nobel Prize in Physics to Klaus Hasselmann of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg and Syukuro Manabe of Princeton University in New Jersey has been welcomed in the German press as an important signal to political leaders and climate change naysayers that more needs to be done to stop global warming.
Hasselmann, 89, headed the institute from 1975 to 1999. His model linked together weather and climate and his methods identified evidence that both natural phenomena and human activities affect the climate. The award is a clear message, the S眉ddeutsche Zeitungs鈥� Marlene Weiss: The modeling of global warming is based on solid physics. If still not enough is done, it鈥檚 not because of science. 鈥淚t is, of course, a shame that in 2021 it will still be necessary to record this fact,鈥� she notes. 鈥淢odels that can predict the development of the climate have been around for around 50 years, and real warming has been proven in the data for around 30 years.鈥� In taz, Kai Sch枚neberg : 鈥淚t would probably have been better for everyone -- really for everyone -- if this man had received this award a few decades earlier.鈥� It was Hasselmann鈥檚 work that led the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1995 to state for the first time that the human influence on global warming was recognisable, he writes. The Frankenpost that Hasselmann has played 鈥渁 major role in the political, economic and social rethinking that has recently begun on climate issues.鈥� The award is also symbolic plea that climate change and the fight against it be given the highest priority worldwide.
Germany is one of a handful of countries globally to have enshrined the goal of climate neutrality by or before 2050 in its national law.
