Climate Change Institute

Director Climate Change Institute,
University of Maine

Michael Cope Morrison

Opsin Imaging

In this collection of adventure stories and restored period photos, authors Paul Andrew Mayewski and Michael Cope Morrison tell their personal experiences going to some of the Earth’s most remote and challenging places, the scientific discoveries they made there, and the journey that they, and the scientific community, made from a “gradualist” viewpoint–thinking that humanity was an inconsequential observer in a slowly changing climate–to the realization that we are deeply and irrevocably involved in the short- and long-term fate of a temperamental climate capable of dramatic changes in a matter of only a few years. they also tell of discovering the worldwide reach of industrial emissions; their effects on climate, Civilization, ecosystems, and our individual quality of life; the remarkable success of the Clean Air Act and the Montreal Protocols; and how some of the effects can clear up in weeks or months–and others only over centuries.