Oak Ridge National Laboratory Experts Help Gore Address Climate Change

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT/AP: Experts Help Gore Address Climate Change
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 18, 2007

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Oak Ridge National Laboratory researcher Virginia Dale likes to say the scientific process is all about studying vast amounts of evidence over time. In the case of global climate change, the Department of Energy lab has crunched 100 trillion bytes of information in its high-performance computers. The results went into the international studies credited by Al Gore for his Nobel Peace Prize.

''Basically one third of all the (computer) runs that were done were done at the Oak Ridge lab,'' said David Erickson, a climate modeling expert who helped brief the former vice president during a multimedia show-and-tell at the lab two years ago.

Colleague John Drake said Oak Ridge also helped develop models used at the two other participating computer centers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.

''From where we sit, it was very satisfying to know that we communicated a good chunk of the actual work that was done,'' Erickson said. ''Obviously, Al Gore is an effective communicator.''

Gore's documentary, ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' won two Academy Awards last year and has been credited with changing the debate in America about global warming. The Nobel announced last week may do the same internationally....

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Oak-Ridge-Climate-Change.html