Climate Changed

Climate Change Judge Wants to Know What Caused the Ice Age

Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

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Judge William Alsup is like a kid who loves science class, only his class is a federal courtroom and his teachers are the world’s sharpest minds on climate change.

He screened Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” the 2006 documentary about the way global warming affects the environment, before Wednesday’s hearing and spent time watching National Geographic programs on volcanoes and the Great Barrier Reef to prepare. He even dressed the part for a presentation by attorneys for Chevron Corp. and leading scientists studying the issue: