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The French president’s call to “ Make our planet great again ” is more likely to occur if we renew efforts to make the Paris Agreement work.   Emmanuel Macron Takes Aim At Trump On Climate Change In Congressional Address  Some people care more about job growth than the survival of future generations, he said. French President  Emmanuel Macron  extolled the Franco-American relationship on multiple fronts but issued a stern warning about the need to address climate change during his address to a joint session of  Congress  on Wednesday.  Speaking entirely in English, Macron laid out the numerous ways ― human rights, trade, terrorism ― in which both the U.S. and France must strengthen multilateral ties in order to confront what he called a “new world order” marked by violence and conflict.  His most forceful comments came in the form of a veiled rebuke against President  Donald Trump  on climate policy. Macron has emerged as a leader in the...

As Earth Day rolls around again, there are historic concerns about our environment still to be solved and new concerns we hadn’t even anticipated back at the first event in 1970.   Old environmental issues are still with us including Climate Change . Climate Change has brought some very inconvenient facts and sense of great urgency to Earth Day. One of the most dramatic moments in the efforts to communicate Climate Change was the ‘hockey stick’ graph authored by Dr. Michael Mann and some colleagues demonstrating a major spike in greenhouse gases in the 20 th century. Check out this 20-year update by Dr. Mann: Earth Day and the Hockey Stick: A Singular Message  On the 20th anniversary of the graph that galvanized climate action, it is time to speak out boldly Two decades ago this week a pair of colleagues and I  published the original  “hockey stick” graph in Nature, which happened to coincide with the Earth Day 1998 observances. The graph showed Earth’s temp...

Presidential tweets, however colorful, do not provide the core reasoning upon which societies make policy—it has and will continue to be science.  Science and the respect for science in human growth are hard-won processes that helps free us from a Stone Age mentality. Evolutionary psychology rests on the observation that most of our modern brain traits are still wired for fighting nature, predators, and anyone who gets in our way. Our ‘gut’ reactions to background stimuli (like a rustle in the grass) are an example.   Now, with over seven billion of us still growing on a planet filled with our infrastructures (roads, bridges, pipes) and the repercussions of our growth ( Climate Change , pollution, loss of biodiversity, over consumption), science is a fundamental necessity for humanity moving quickly to address most of our environmental and technical challenges ahead. Science gives our minds a solid frame of reference that helps keep our paleolithic brains in check and adapt ...

One of the biggest problems in trying to communicate the urgency of addressing Climate Change is that most people think it will only happen far into the future and someplace else. Neither is true. Climate Change is hitting home now . However much US partisan politics are split on the scientific consensus on Climate Change, 97% of climate scientists around the world agree that Climate Change is happening, and we are causing it. “A synthesis of this research – a survey of surveys – concluded that the expert consensus on climate change is between 90 to 100%, with a number of studies converging on 97% agreement. Among peer-reviewed studies examining expert agreement on climate change, there is consensus on consensus.” (Page 2, “ The Consensus Handbook, Why the scientific consensus on climate change is important ”) How do we get the public to understand and appreciate that Climate Change is happening now, here in Rochester and everywhere else (because it’s a planetary phenomenon)? We have ...