CCI scientists featured at BDN ‘Climate change and Maine’s next 200 years’ event – P. Mayewski, S. Birkel, C. Isenhour

The Bangor Daily News covered its sold-out “Bangor Daily Brews: Climate change and Maine’s next 200 years” event featuring University of Maine Climate Change Institute researchers Paul Mayewski, Sean Birkel and Cynthia Isenhour. “I think for a long time the media was treating this [climate change] as a situation in which there were two sides, says Mayewski, the Distinguished Maine Professor in the School of Earth and Climate Sciences and director of the CCI. “But, of course, in truth, there really aren’t two sides. When you speak to the scientific community, it’s 98, 99 percent of the people who understand what’s going on in the climate system who believe that humans have had a great impact.” Isenhour says it’s important to follow the money, due to concentrated efforts to undermine the science and to create doubt, which is unique to the United States. “The [hard] science is there,” says the professor of anthropology and climate change and faculty associate in the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions. “We need to figure out how to really understand this problem as a social problem.”