Michael Mann, Ph.D, a professor of Earth and Environment at the University of Pennsylvania, gave a talk based on his book Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis, which he also held a signing for after the talk on Feb. 24.

Mann is a Presidential Distinguished professor, Vice Provost for Climate Science, Policy, and Action, and is Director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media at UPenn.

He’s published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific articles and six books, including Our Fragile Moment. He is highly distinguished in his field, receiving many awards throughout his career.

During the lecture, Mann covered three chapters of his book, and three distinct points he made in it: Rapid global cooling, rapid global warming, and humanity’s ability to save itself.

The first is global cooling, in the book’s chapter, “Mighty Brontosaurus, Don’t You Have a Lesson for Us?” The title comes directly from lyrics from the 1983 song Walking in Your Footsteps by The Police, which he played a sample of.

The theme was the parallels of the asteroid impact that killed off the non-avian dinosaurs and the major threats of nuclear war in the 1980s.

The asteroid impact that drove dinosaurs to extinction tends to be misconstrued, according to Mann.

“What actually killed off the non-avian dinosaurs wasn’t the direct physical effects of this asteroid impact,” said Mann. “What killed off the non-avian dinosaurs was the global event.”

What he means by the “global event” is “ejecta,” dust and other particles kicked up by the impact that blocked the sun and caused rapid global cooling. While many animals were killed in the immediate impact, fires, landslides, and tsunamis, the actual extinction event was due to cooling, killing plants, and dismantling ecosystems.

Nuclear war has the same idea in mind. Mann showcased a paper and a 1983 special report by famed scientist and communicator Carl Sagan, who warned that with a large-scale nuclear attack, there was a huge risk of “nuclear winter.”

Nuclear attacks would cause ejecta to block the sun like the asteroid impact, causing the same rapid global cooling.

The next chapter Mann touched upon was “Hothouse Earth.”

The chapter revolved around the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which was a rapid global warming event that happened around 55 million years ago, triggered by volcanic eruptions in the North Atlantic, where Iceland is now.

The planet warmed nine degrees celsius over 10,000 years, which is much slower than the rate the planet is warming today.

A lesson to be taken from this event is that it wasn’t caused by “runaway warming” from a large methane gas release. Methane, like carbon dioxide, is a greenhouse gas that traps heat from the sun, however, methane is a much more powerful one.

“This is not cause for doom if we look at what happened then and look at what the latest climate models tell us,” said Mann. “There’s no evidence of a runaway warming effect as scientists once thought.”

This is good news for today because there have been claims of a runaway effect happening again by releasing trapped methane under ice. The reality is, that it’s unlikely at this point.

The reason this is good news, is that at this time, there’s no natural and unstoppable event happening. There’s an ability to make change.

Agency is the biggest point Mann touched on in the last section of the talk, and the last chapter he goes through, “Past is Prologue. Or is it?”

The leadup to today in terms of climate science, has been poor. Exxon Mobil had scientists who had accurate findings about global warming that could lead to “potentially catastrophic events” back in the 1980s. Exxon hid this information for a long time.

Mann also explained how it would have been much easier to slow the effects of climate change in 2000 versus today. Measures to avoid “potentially catastrophic events” will need to be more aggressive.

Even then, the past year alone has shown how climate change is making impacts. 2024 was the hottest year on record, hurricane Milton was devastating, and the January California wildfires were the most recent in a string of disasters.

Mann is aware of the dread and exhaustion that climate change discussions can bring, however, it’s not all doom and gloom.

“There is urgency, and there is agency,” said Mann.

College students, Mann believes, are a group that can bring real change. Students at the University of California, Berkeley, effectively ended the apartheid regime in South Africa through demonstrating and getting the school to divest funds from apartheid-supporting parties.

“You can do the same today, you have a voice, you have an opportunity, you have a platform to be the change you wish to see in the world,” Mann said.

The talk ended with questions, where a lot of the major points were touched on again, especially that of agency and being aware of the misinformation and disinformation that’s rampant in climate discussions. One note Mann made was that communication skills are key for getting people to listen to science.

“The better communicator you are, the more opportunities you’ll get,” said Mann.

Associate professor of environmental science Andra Garner, who worked with Mann for her PhD and was the contact to bring him to Rowan, agrees with his sentiment and praises him for his skills.

“[Mann] is a really great climate scientist and equally great communicator,” said Garner. “He has a lot to say that resonates with people.”

Students that attended the event agreed.

“I like the message of ‘you can do something,’” said Angelena Revas, a sophomore geology student, also mentioning the importance of language in science communication.

Revas was part of professor and associate dean of the School of Earth and Environment Dr. Eddie Guerra’s astrophysics class. Many students from that class attended the talk.

Guerra said the talk was a “Reminder not to lose faith in science and data,” and that there’s still “discourse” around these topics.

For comments/questions about this story DM us on Instagram @thewhitatrowan or email news@thewhitonline.com