Bridging the gap between science and policy.

                  Two different languages

Harold Morowitz asserted that biology is "the bridge between physics and history."

Lynn Margulis, p. 77.                 

Separate systems of rewards and assessment of effectiveness exist that need to be linked together

Climate science as interpreted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is used as the basis of international policy with respect to implementing the Climate Treaty (1992) signed at Rio de Janeiro and ratified by the US Senate.

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC]

The case for

Global Warming as a paramount problem.

                  Ubiquity of the consequences: everywhere there are disturbing and distinct kinds of eveidence for the onset of a very unpredictable future for life and people on earth:

                                    Habitat

Fisheries                               

Wildlife

                                    Health

                                    Agriculture and Forestry

                  Short term and long term causes and responses.

Overview of the case:

Human activities from air pollution and deforestation, to poor commercial appliance efficiency and design practices have and continue to contribute heavily to destabilizing the planet’s climatic conditions.

Thermal regulation of the atmosphere depends on the timing and integrity of the carbon cycle. Human industrial production and deforestation have emitted excessive carbon dioxide vapor gas as waste from combustion.

Since carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide exhausts trap heat, they raise the air temperature. More thermal pollutants are produced than natural systems can absorb, raising air temperatures more quickly and to higher levels than ever recorded.

Ten hottest years in a century or more have occurred since 1989.

Gelbspan | Weart | Christianson .

Books that bridge gaps in our knowledge

Symbiotic Planet, Lynn Margulis, 1999.

Time, Love and Memory, by Jonathan Weiner. New York: Vintage,1999.

Filters against Folly, by Garrett Hardin. New York: Penguin,1989.

Evelyn Fox Keller, The Century of the Gene.