Climate Change and Global Warming

Biography

Gene Fry grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas, USA. He received his PhD in Resource Economics from Cornell University in 1989. He testified before the Maine and New York utility commissions and a nuclear plant siting board. He became policy & planning director at the Maine energy office in 1988. In 1990 Dr. Fry joined the Massachusetts utility commission staff. He spent half his time on energy efficiency programs, analyzing savings estimates and reviewing program plans. During 2009-11, he was in charge of evaluating many energy efficiency programs for Western Massachusetts Electric and Connecticut Light and Power. In a 1991 case to assign prices to air pollution, Dr. Fry was point person for CO2. He reviewed scores of studies on the evidence for it and its consequences. He recommended $22 / ton of CO2. Over 2005-2009, he wrote hundreds of summary articles about climate change for 2 monthly newsletters. His research has included how CO2 and CH4 relate to temperatures over millions of years via albedo changes and natural feedbacks; recent warming rates for US cities; economics of home solar water heating; and the economics of nuclear power plants as they age. The 1st shows that we can expect 5°C warming or more from current CO2 and CH4 levels, mostly over the next 300 years, as well as even more warming if humans emit even more carbon. Dr. Fry has presented information on global warming to some 40 audiences. He has distributed his CDs, with a library on climate change, to more than 20,000 people over 10 years. He has made three 2,000 mile bicycle trips, most recently from Seattle to Boston with his son in 2003.

Research Interest

1. Temperatures trends in the US, mostly summer highs over 41 years, for 348 US cities. 2. Analysis of temperatures over the past 15 million years to project global temperature changes over the coming decades and centuries. I connect changes in albedo (ice, snow, clouds, sulfates) and natural emissions (permafrost, methane hydrates, peat and forest fires, and outgassing from a warming ocean) to future temperature trends.