Part I: How we understand life and climate change has changed, but have we?

At the Lindau Meeting, Nobel Laureates’ lectures have been a lot about the deepest principles of the science that won the Nobel Prizes. In the old but immaculately maintained lecture hall, whose walls have heard the voices of great scientists for decades, I experienced history happening. These are the people who actually changed the world we live in – for the better! So deep and profound an impact on mankind by these men and one woman (an entirely different but profound issue for another yet important day) that their once-new knowledge is now, well, mundanely obviously socially common knowledge.

Awesome.

In this hall I have come to realize my own story on this little blue planet can be an important one. As I myself research the basic principles of how DNA actually works, Professor Werner Arber delivered his lecture, “Cultural values of scientific endeavors,” where I relearned the history of the knowledge that DNA is the code of life. Somehow this was different; hearing the story from Nobel Laureate Arber at the Lindau Meeting with the incredible ensemble of people from around the world with me.

Professor Arber retold the experiment of Avery MacLeod and McCarty in the 1940s that showed DNA was the code of life, not proteins. The experiments that led to this one are largely less appreciated by society as the key step towards our current futuristic state of science and medicine. I reckon it’s the job of my peers and me to be the tellers of the history of science while remaining its sentinels.

1995 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry Mario Molina presented next. He along with Paul J. Crutzen and F. Sherwood Rowland won the prize,

“…for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone.” –Nobel Foundation 1995

Climate change is real, climate change is serious, and climate change is fixable; if we care to fix it. If we don’t, our lifestyles, our way of life, and the lively state of our planet will perish. We have the technology to fix this potential global catastrophe. Unfortunately, a minute minority of people with great power do not share my view.

A twenty percent probability that sea levels will rise so high that nations and economies will crumble, is twenty percent higher than what I’m Ok with: zero. For only a zero percent probability do we do nothing. Anything above ZERO — well, ladies and gentlemen, it’s go time.

This is an awesome moment in the history of the world.

Let’s do this.


…kevin eduard hauser