My name is Jonathan Hester. I am not an expert in climatology or any related field of study. However, I am an applied scientist with a B.S. degree in Materials Science and Engineering (Purdue University, 1993) and a Ph.D. in Polymer Science (MIT, 2000). Because of my scientific training, and in my daily job as a research scientist at a diversified technology company, I have significant experience in searching, reading, and evaluating primary technical research. I hope I can use this experience to help anyone accessing this site become informed about the issue of global climate change as I am doing so myself. Through direct work experience related to polymer membranes for improved water sustainability, as well as 2 years of service in the U.S. Peace Corps (Ghana, 1993-1995), I also have had a persistent interest in science related to global environmental sustainability. I would not describe myself as a “tree hugger” (though I do believe it’s neither smart nor ethical for us to destroy all the trees, or animals, or economically disadvantaged humans). I believe humanity’s continued progress will be attended, as it has been in the past, by the application of increasingly sophisticated technology. But, as our population continues to grow and our technologies become more powerful, I think we need to expand the idea of “sophisticated technology” to include sophistication with respect to the sustainability of our planet. I can offer evidence that such sophisticated technologies for energy production either exist or could be developed rapidly if we collectively choose to do so. In short, I believe I can contribute to a pragmatic and informed perspective on what needs to be done and how we might do it.
My name is Howard Creel. I am privileged that Jon invited me to join him on his journey. Like Jon, I am not educated as a climatologist, but I have been working as a scientist since the early 1980s with an undergraduate degree in chemistry and a Ph.D. in polymer science and engineering. I am also a STEM educator, having taught polymer chemistry for more than thirty years and undergraduate chemistry at a community college for over ten years.
In 2006 I hosted a series of lectures exploring technology trends that have the potential to destroy life on this planet: water resources, food production, global pandemics, and climate change. The speakers wove a data driven, startling, and sobering tapestry of the forces that can easily undermine our fragile existence, highlighting very plausible doomsday scenarios of famine, disease and water scarcity all exacerbated by the changing climate.
This experience (filtered through a chemistry lens), left me with a focus on carbon pollution and its effects: we dig up fossil carbon at an astounding scale, combust it and emit carbon dioxide, which (along with other greenhouse gases) accumulates in the atmosphere and traps heat. For close to fifteen years I have educated myself, taken action to mitigate emission of greenhouse gases, and prepared to adapt to the changes already underway – changes that will profoundly affect me, my family, my community and human society. My passion and drive arise, not from being a “tree hugger” (like Jon), but from the startling realization that we humans have the capacity to destroy ourselves through either failing to arrest devastating climate change or failing to adapt to the climate we will inevitably, inexorably create.
Today, we appear to lack the capacity to act decisively enough to avert complete disaster. Our imperative must be the success of the next few generations, who will be hardest hit by the changes already underway. We must act while we can. I hope to contribute. I hope you commit yourself as well.