I don't think this thread needs the vindication, but I guess this would be it:-
Quote:
The Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to scientists Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi, whose groundbreaking work over the past 60 years predicted climate change and decoded complex physical systems.
Manabe, 90, and Hasselmann, 89, were jointly honored for "the physical modelling of Earth's climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming," according to the press release from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Both men carried out pioneering work in the 1960s and 1970s that sounded an early alarm on human-made climate change.
Italian physicist Parisi, 73, claimed the other half of the award, for "the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales."
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It's a kind of sad claim to fame, rather like the guy who first informed the captain of the Titanic about the iceberg: he gets a rather muted, grudging "Well done, that man".
Of course, to the credit of Manabe, Hasselmann and Parisi, "discovering the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems" takes a lot more skill than being a lookout on a ship, and in all truth, quantifying and synthesizing what's going on with the global climate has been the first essential step towards acknowledging the problems now faced. Their work is the one big advantage we have over previous extinct species, who were too lazy to monitor global trends. If their attitude was " I don't care, I'm just going to carry on munching leaves" - well, they've only got themselves to blame.