[Feb. 7, 2012] Clark Weaver slumped in his chair, weary after a full day treading the marble hallways of Congress with fellow climate researchers. Climate Science Day is not a junket for the atmospheric scientist who works as a contract employee at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; it is more like science version of speed—dating. Going from office to office, the best hope was that 20 minutes with a staffer might be the start of an ongoing science-based relationship.
On the last meeting of the day, Weaver hit the jackpot: a meeting with a legislative aide to U.S. Senator Jon Tester, the moderate Democrat who represents Montana.
“We started from scratch and she wanted to know glacial cycles, rate of deforesting, solar variability—all of the issues that could impact climate and why I think that humans are the main driver of climate change,” he explained afterward at a debriefing with colleagues at a pub on Capitol Hill. “She was very interested and very sharp, as every staffer that I’ve ever met on the Hill has been. And before I knew it, it was an hour and a half later.”
The threat of climate change is not some distant apparition for the indigenous peoples who dwell along the shores of Alaska’s bays and rivers—it is something they are confronting today. And it affects the major pillars of their society, speakers said recently at AAAS.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment