Stefan Rahmstorf – A Scientist’s Mind, and an Artist’s Eye

My new video is up at Yale Climate Connections.  I do hope you’ll take a look at this one.

Oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf, of Germany’s Potsdam University, is known globally for his prolific output of scientific papers, and his high profile advocacy for the science of climate change. Dr. Rahmstorf is a founder of RealClimate, one of the Web’s first and most influential climate blogs.

Less well known is Dr. Rahmstorf’s passion and intensity as a photographer. Dr. Rahmstorf tells us in the video that “Science is about the rational mind, the dispassionate and the objective, whereas, photography to me is about the passionate and the subjective, and I couldn’t feel like a whole person if I was only developing the entirely rational part of myself.”

Rahmstorf describes a childhood trip with his parents to London, where, upon being given a small camera, “from the start I was thrilled by the possibilities of this, and immediately I had more ambition than just taking the usual holiday memory snapshots.” He goes on to detail some of his most important inspirations among great photographers, including Ansel Adams, Alfred Stieglitz, Dorothea Lange, and Minor White.

The video also follows Dr. Rahmstorf’s scientific explanation for the so-called “pause” in global surface temperatures, which he says is “only an illusion created by short term variability.” Climate skeptics who say that global temperature rise has paused, he says, “. . . are only confusing signal and noise.”