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[0:24]

We are now, that we’ve turned 50, one of the oldest multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary climate research units in the world. And we’re very proud of the fact that the Institute has evolved over the last 50 years to do many more things, which is what makes it so exciting.

You’re constantly learning, and when you take students into the field, you can watch exactly what it was like the first time you went in the field. It’s always invigorating to see new people come into the field.

[0:54]

In the early years, we as an Institute were involved in a program called CLIMAP. It was the first approach at understanding the real differences between the Ice Age world and the modern world.

The next big jump scientifically to the Institute would have been the understanding of the significance of glaciers, large ice sheets, and how warming the ocean can result in massive losses of ice.

I think the next big jump is around the period of acid rain, and people like Steve Norton in our Institute were pioneers in understanding how we had polluted the atmosphere and led to the loss of forests.

We recovered ice cores from Greenland to demonstrate that humans really did create acid rain, that it wasn’t just something that occurred naturally.

[1:46]

And then we began to go into the period of greenhouse gas warming and the massive loss of glaciers, rise of sea level.

We’ve been pioneers in organizing large research programs: the International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition, 21 countries; the Greenland Ice Sheet Program, which had 25 U.S. institutions; the National Geographic and Rolex Everest Expedition, with multiple countries.

So we’ve been big leaders in research.

[2:15]

And now that we’re into the period in which people understand that climate is changing, we’ve been pioneers in terms of software development, creating software that not only allows people to understand and provide perspective, but also to make it publicly available.

The biological side, which has been very strong in the Institute, understanding how lakes in the Arctic will or will not take up more carbon as things get warmer, how lakes in Maine are impacted by pollutant inflow, working with the CDC in Maine to talk about predictions for the migration of ticks as a consequence of warming.

[2:57]

I believe we were the first, or one of the first, to ever develop a state-based climate change report, which we upgraded over the years.

And now, under the Mills administration, she enacted the Maine Climate Council, of which many members of our Institute are involved, which is very important because they provide a voice for the things that we do, for what the state does, for what the interests are, and they also see how the process works.

And then, of course, we are trying to build even more associations with engineers so that we can contribute to an understanding of what are the potential sources for renewable energies.

[3:35]

We are, in many ways, the glue that holds a lot of climate change together. We’re a signature research program.

We have partners in the state. We have partners nationally, internationally. So it’s really all about good partnerships, collaboration.

We also have a remarkable array of graduate students. Graduate students are an integral part of our Institute. They’re very important to us.

I personally consider them to be junior colleagues. You work with them closely, and they each come with a different skill set, which is really exciting. And they bring, as a consequence, something different to the Institute with every single new student.

[4:14]

There are two things that probably characterize our Institute. One is collaboration, and the other one is the concept of change, which is our middle name.

We are trying very hard to understand from Indigenous people in the state and in places like Greenland what their view is of what’s going on.

And the way other cultures, Indigenous cultures, view their place in the environment is very important.

And, of course, the local tribes in Maine, there’s an immense amount to be learned. The only reason that they need a scientist there is that it’s somebody who can translate it to the rest of the world, which they’re not given the opportunity to do.

[4:53]

It’s critically important to everybody, but for our students, we have the ability to introduce them to see other things, other places, other people.

It’s very comfortable to stay home, but it’s critical, particularly when you’re younger, to experience things.

[5:15]

It’s important that the Institute keep evolving and drawing in more and more expertise and synthesizing that expertise.

We have been primarily the messengers of what’s happening. We need to become more involved in the solution.

We are hopeful in the Institute. We wouldn’t go out and do the things and go to the places we go if we weren’t hopeful about whether it was valuable, whether or not things would work out okay.

And I think that this latest generation, they understand that this is really not just about getting a job and doing all the same things that we’ve always done before, that they can actually do something to have great effect, is very valuable.

[5:55–6:14]
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