Naomi Oreskes
Oil on canvas 23 x 23 cm
Coloured Light
2019 - 20
Naomi Oreskes
Oil on canvas 23 x 23 cm
Naomi Oreskes started her career as a mining geologist and then turned to the history and philosophy of science. Her research looked into the strength of the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the climate science community and led her to uncovering the extent that the fossil fuel industry has supported climate denialsm. Her book Merchants of Doubt, co-written with Erik Conway, produced a turning point in the way vested interests influence policy, from tobacco to the coal and oil industries.
Kevin Anderson is Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester and at Uppsala University, Sweden. He has been Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He has consistently demonstrated that there is little chance of keeping warming below 2° and that the consequence is worse than appears to be recognised by governments. He calls for radical changes in policy and personal behaviour and refuses to fly himself and has been supportive of Greta Thunberg.
Gavin Schmidt was born in Barnet, London, went to school Corsham in Wiltshire and then studied maths at Oxford and London. He applied his mathematics to climate modelling being amongst the first to develop global system models. He is now and Englishman in New York, having succeeded James Hansen as Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) the USA’s leading climate science institute. He co-founded the climate science blog RealClimate and his work on the public communication of climate science has made him well known.
Corinne Le Quéré FRS CBE, is Professor of Climate Change Science at the University of East Anglia and former Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. She conducts research on the interactions between climate change and the carbon cycle. She is Chair of France's High Council on climate and a member of the UK Committee on Climate Change. In 2016 she was listed among the 20 "women making waves in the climate change debate" on the Road to Paris by the International Council for Science.
Erica Thompson, a climate modeller, is a Senior Policy Fellow at the Centre for the Analysis of Time Series at the London School of Economics and a Fellow of the London Mathematical Laboratory, where she leads the research programme on Inference from Models. She is interested in statistics, uncertainty, climate change, and the appropriate use of mathematical modelling to support real-world decisions, as well as all aspects of the transition to genuinely sustainable ways of living and working and is secretary of the One Planet Council. She is the originator of the Hawkmoth Effect, dark sibling to the Butterfly effect.
James Hansen, born 1941, trained in astrophysics and became Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. His work on the development of the atmosphere of Venus led him to look at Earth’s atmosphere and realise the significance of anthropogenic global warming. His 1988 Congressional testimony on climate change and later climate activism raised awareness of the climate emergency. He has been arrested during demonstrations.
Michael Mann is a climate scientist and geophysicist with degrees in maths, physics and geology. He is director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. His work on paleoclimate and reconstruction of the historic temperature record led to the ‘hockey stick graph’ that proved a valuable tool in communicating ideas of global warming. He is author of a prodigious number of scientific papers and a co-founder of the climate science blog RealClimate and an active communicator of the subject to a wide audience, attracting opprobrium from the worst of the climate denial forces.
Alison Green has a PhD is in psychology and is an academic leader who swapped academia (she was Deputy Dean at the Open University and Pro-Vice Chancellor of Arden University) for environmental activism as a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion. She is National Director UK of Scientists Warning and acts as an independent witness on psychological aspects of climate breakdown. She has played a key academic role in Extinction Rebellion and co-edited the hugely successful XR book, 'This is not a Drill'.
Gail Bradbrook is one of the co-founders of Extinction Rebellion. Her PhD is in molecular biology and she has devoted much of her life to social and environmental activism. She has said that climate change requires civil disobedience: “Given the scale of the ecological crisis we are facing … Only this kind of large-scale economic disruption can rapidly bring the government to the table to discuss our demands. We are prepared to risk it all for our futures.”
Warren Washington, born 1936, joined the American National Center for Atmospheric Research in 1963. Specializing in computer modelling the Earth's climate, he worked at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and chaired the National Science Board. He led the development and application of advanced coupled atmospheric-ocean general circulation models (GCMs) to study the impacts of human activities on future climate. At age 83 he is senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
As an African-American, Washington has served as a role model for generations of young researchers from many backgrounds. In 1999, he was awarded by the American Meteorological Society "for pioneering efforts as a mentor and passionate support of individuals, educational programs, and outreach initiatives designed to foster a diverse population of atmospheric scientists."
Hans Joachim Schellnhüber is a German atmospheric physicist, climatologist and founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and former chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change. In 1995 he proposed the 2 °C guardrail for global warming that eventually became a global target by governments worldwide. 25 years on, he is pessimistic, saying “We don’t want to see the truth. As Greta Thunberg would say, I would like people to panic and take action according to the state of emergency we are in.”
Ndoni Mcunu has an MSc in Applied Environmental Science, is a PhD student at Witwatersrand University’s Global Change Institute. She is the Founder & CEO of Black Women in Science, which aims to provide knowledge and awareness of science and research for university students and rural women. She is also a Greenmatter Fellow for her academic research in climate change and agriculture. Ndoni Mcunu has been listed as the Top 50 most Inspiring Women in Tech in South Africa in 2017, which is an award issued by the Netherlands and South Africa.
Here's Ndoni Mcunu talking in January 2020. Here she write about her work for The Conversation.
She is passionate about women’s development, education and poverty alleviation in Africa, improving the lives of our youth, specifically young women. "I believe that education is a tool to enable improved and informed personal and professional decisions. It could also be a tool to empowering rural and disadvantaged young women to improve their livelihood."
Megan Rowling, Welsh born but now based in Barcelona, is a journalist with Thomson Reuters Foundation, specialising in humanitarian and development issues, including climate change and disaster risk. She describes herself as a feminist who cares about climate change, aid, sustainable development and resilience. She initiated Reuters’ climate change coverage, growing it into an award-winning news service focused on the developing world. She attends the big climate conferences, distilling the interminable hours of statements and discussions into articles that feed the worlds news media.
Farhana Yamin is an international environmental lawyer who played a key role in drawing up the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2015 and was lead author for assessment reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on adaptation and mitigation issues. She has published numerous books and articles on the nexus of climate change and development and as a climate change and development policy expert, Farhana has advised leaders and countries for 20 years.
She is an associate fellow at Chatham House and visiting professor at UCL and a member of the Global Agenda Council on Climate Change at the World Economic Forum. and served as an adviser to the European Commission on emissions trading directive and as special adviser to Connie Hedegaard, EU commissioner for climate action.
She founded Track 0 and in April 2019 as an Extinction Rebellion activist Farhana Yamin glued herself to Shell's London headquarters in protest at the oil firm's climate impact.
Johan Rockström researched the building of resilience in water scarce tropical regions. He pent 12 years as director of Stockholm Resilience Centre and then in 2018 became joint director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. His work focusses on global sustainability under climate change and in 2009 he led the team that published the 'nine planetary boundaries', a framework for maintaining a 'safe operating space for humanity' as an approach to sustainable development. There are Earth system processes on the planet that have boundaries or thresholds which should not be crossed. The extent to which these boundaries are not crossed marks what Rockström's group calls the safe operating space for humanity.
Luisa-Marie Neubauer is a German climate activist, one of the leaders of the School strike for climate movement in Germany. She has brought the climate emergency to the attention of public, through protests, discussion, speaches and writing. With Alexander Repenning she co-wrote a book, Vom Ende der Klimakrise: Eine Geschichte unserer Zukunft or From the end of the climate crisis: a story of our future. They pose the question of whether we can avoid the climate crisis or whether it will overwhelm us. Here is her TED Talk.
Stefan Rahmstorf is a German oceanographer and climatologist. Since 2000, he has been a Professor of Physics of the Oceans at Potsdam University. His work focuses on the role of ocean currents in climate change. He was one of the lead authors of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. He is a leading communicator of climate science, a co-founder of RealClimate and KlimaLounge and frequently writes and broadcasts on climate science for a general audience. He wrote a 224-page children’s book ‘Wolken, Wind und Wetter’ on climate cience. Video: The Art and Science of Stefan Rahmstorf
Julia Steinberger, Swiss-American economist, Professor at Leeds University, researches and teaches in the interdisciplinary areas of Ecological Economics and Industrial Ecology. Her research examines the connections between resource use (energy and materials, greenhouse gas emissions) and societal performance (economic activity and human wellbeing). She is interested in quantifying the linkages between resource use and socioeconomic parameters, and identifying alternative development pathways to guide the necessary transition to a low carbon society. Research focus on living well within planetary limits.
Chris Packham took a degree in zoology and then pursued his childhood passion for nature as a wildlife photographer and then in 1986 joined the team presenting the BBC children’s series, The Really Wild Show, which he did for the next ten years. Since 2009 he has presented the BBC's Spring Watch series. By his own account, told in his autobiography, 'Fingers in the Sparkle Jar', Chris Packham had a difficult childhood, often bullied by his peers, but it was only as an adult that he was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. He has become a leading campaigner for all aspects of nature conservation, making films, giving lectures and working with several of the leading wildlife organisations. He has recently been speaking out about the climate emergency, promoting Extinction Rebellion and joining XR actions.
Mari Foroutan was a PhD student at Waterloo University, Canada.
"My research focuses on the application of new algorithms and technologies in remote sensing to study climate change. I also research planetary extremes from hyper-arid hot deserts to freezing worlds."
A scientist and an artist, she created the TED-ED cartoon 'Could we actually live on Mars?' Her last published paper, in the Journal of Glaciology, was titled 'Automatic mapping and geomorphometry extraction technique for crevasses in geodetic mass-balance calculations at Haig Glacier, Canadian Rockies'
Returning to Canada after visiting her family in Iran, Mari died in the Tehran plane crash of January 2020, accidentally shot down, a consequence of military tension between the USA and Iran.
Greta meets Jane
Biff Vernon Oil on canvas 45 x 60 cm
This was painted in January 2019 when Greata Thunberg and Jane Goodall met in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum. Since then Greta's face has become one of the most reproduced images of that year.
Doug Francis a Red Rebel
Biff Vernon Oil on canvas 34 x 28 cm
To contact us send e-mail to:
Biff Vernon