One Big Question Revisited

10 years ago, we asked thirty scientists what was one big question they'd like to answer. Some of Joellen's students happened upon the link. They were struck by the passion and emotion evident in her response. We wondered how would Joellen answer that question today?

"As a scientist, I'm just desperately interested in how the winds will change and how that will stir the ocean and how much heat and carbon the ocean will take up. It's both a climate question, and a science dynamics question. It's a future question as well as a deep past question," explains Russell. "When we ask these questions as scientists, we're looking at this sort of disconnection between regular folk and scientists asking these questions. How do we answer them and do they want to know the answers? And I am watching the carbon in the atmosphere and we're still on our way up. The United States has cut 23% off their total emissions. My son was born in 2007, so he's never lived in a world where the United States wasn't cutting its carbon emissions while growing its economy. I love that that he knows that, right? It's part of my work to watch and see how this works and try and encourage everybody. But what I realize is there's no rule. There's no law. This is Dunkirk. This is not D-Day. This is Dunkirk. This is all the little boats. We are going to solve this. We've already turned the corner. You just can't see it quite yet. We can do it, we'll get there."