Climate change is a serious and life-threatening hurdle for our species. We need new ways to deal with the rapid change in our climate and in our ecosystems. In fact, the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”) concludes “that previous reports erred in being to cautious: The time to stem the flow of greenhouse gases is shorter than had been estimated. We face the possibility of a runaway situation in which an increase in global temperature feeds back to accelerate global heating. Such a process would lead to a massive change in climate and a catastrophic elevation of sea level. We face a threat to civilization.”
Basic research has brought us tools and techniques that allow us to measure data critical to understanding Earth and the cosmos. For example, GPS few out of simple curiosity about general relativity, studies of atomic nuclei brought us the invention of MRI, and experiments of molecules in space lead to the development of the laser.
