I recently attended a summit in Washington DC on climate change where the keynote speaker was Dr John Holdren who is the Science Advisor to President Barack Obama. Dr Holdren gave a great presentation on the facts proving climate change, or what he coined "climate disruption". He believed "climate change" was too soft and too gradual a term that didn't portray the message of the true climate phenomenon that is currently facing the earth. Keep your eye out for "climate disruption" in the media.

Of particular interest to me was his commentary on why he thinks the majority of climate 'disruption' deniers exist - anxiety. Anxiety caused by scientists through their dire predictions of what faces human kind, with little in the way of solutions or examples of how we can/will overcome this. This made me reflect on my academic career which has been largely about identifying problems and letting the engineers come up with the solutions. Perhaps as scientists we need to be more solution based and less issue based in how we communicate to the public. I recorded his talk so if you would like to hear the full version click the play button below.