Two scientists who shared half the Nobel Prize in physics for studying how climate works were thrilled to win but said they’d rather not have had the subject to study in the first place.
It’s a bittersweet victory. Two scientists who shared half the Nobel Prize in physics for studying how climate works were thrilled to win but said they’d rather not have had the subject to study in the first place. Syukuro Manabe, originally from Japan, and Klaus Hasselmann of Germany were awarded half of the prize for their work in “the physical modeling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Tuesday. The second half of the prize went to Giorgio Parisi of Italy for explaining disorder in physical systems, ranging from those as small as the insides of atoms to the planet-sized. Both Hasselmann,89, a professor at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, and the 90-year-old Manabe, a senior meteorologist at Princeton University, said they were gratified to be the recipients. At the same time, Hasselmann told The Associated Press he “would rather have no global warming and no Nobel prize,” while Manabe said it was “1,000 times” easier to reveal the physical underpinnings of climate change than to get humanity to take action.
