The Nobel Prize in physics in 2021 went in part to two gentlemen in their 90s: Prof Klaus Hasselmann from Germany and Dr. Syukuro Manabe from Japan/United States (Figure 1). These two pioneers in climate physics were honored for their ground-breaking scientific contributions which helped to understand and simulate the climate system and its response to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. The Nobel prize citation emphasizes their paradigm-shifting publications from the 1960s and 1970s.
Figure 1: Prof. Klaus Hasselmann (left) and Dr. Syukuro Manabe (right) received a share of the Nobel prize in physics in 2021 for their ground-breaking contributions to understanding the climate system and global warming.
When I give public presentations, the audience is often surprised to hear, that scientists knew about global warming and its implications already more than 50 years ago. “Why is it that politicians and the industry didn’t act earlier...
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