An expert in energy systems and climatology will discuss global warming at 11 a.m. Thursday (Nov. 8) at West Virginia University.

Robert G. Watts, the Cornelia and Arthur Jung Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at Tulane University, will speak onGlobal Warming and the Future of Planet Earthin Room 101A of the National Research Center for Coal and Energy on the Evansdale Campus.

Free and open to the public, the seminar is sponsored by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the WVU College of Engineering and Mineral Resources.

Global warming is real and serious,Watts said.Climate models and data indicate this with certainty.

We have passed the �€~tipping pointif it is defined as the point in time beyond which the Earth will suffer grave consequences regardless of what we do in the future,he added.But there is still time to minimize these consequences. The climatology is clear. The ball is now in the court of the engineering community.

Watts received his bachelors degree in mechanical engineering at Tulane, a masters in nuclear engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a doctorate in mechanical engineering from Purdue University.

He studied atmospheric and ocean science at Harvard University and has worked at the Institute for Energy Analysis in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria.

Watts has studied energy systems and climatology for more than 40 years and has edited two books on energy and global warming. His latest book,Global Warming and the Future of Planet Earth,will soon be published by Morgan and Claypool.