Martin Rees
Martin Rees
Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow, OM, FRS, FREng, FMedSciis a British cosmologist and astrophysicist. He has been Astronomer Royal since 1995 and was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge from 2004 to 2012 and President of the Royal Society between 2005 and 2010. Rees currently sits on the Board of Sponsors for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth23 June 1942
Martin Rees quotes about
mean average two
The important point there is that when people talk about a mean temperature rise of say two, three or four degrees that's a sort of global average which really is a signature of large scale change in climatic patterns.
mean ice giving
One of the computer models for a four degree temperature rise would give rise to a 10 degree temperature rise in Africa. And bear in mind also that in the depth of an ice age the mean temperature drop compared to the present was five degrees.
issues accepting bigs
The politics is far harder than the science. And even if we accept the science we have a big issue of how to deal with it.
country cutting thinking
I think all countries need to aim to cut the CO2 emissions per person, taking account of externalities like imports and exports.
crafts tiny solar-system
I hope that by 2050 the entire solar system will have been explored and mapped by flotillas of tiny robotic craft.
technology space innovation
All space projects push the frontiers of technology and are drivers of innovation.
god space princeton
God invented space so that not everything had to happen in Princeton.
war europe space
To most people in the U.K., indeed throughout Western Europe, space exploration is primarily perceived as what NASA does. This perception is - in many respects - a valid one. Superpower rivalry during the Cold War ramped up U.S. and Soviet space efforts to a scale that Western Europe had no motive to match.
careers training scientist
Science isn't just for scientists - it's not just a training for careers.
technology errors design
In our interconnected world, novel technology could empower just one fanatic, or some weirdo with a mindset of those who now design computer viruses, to trigger some kind of disaster. Indeed, catastrophe could arise simply from technical misadventure - error rather than terror.
real hands fields
Crucial to science education is hands-on involvement: showing, not just telling; real experiments and field trips and not just virtual reality.
essence together atoms
During the 20th century, we came to understand that the essence of all substances - their colour, texture, hardness and so forth - is set by their structure, on scales far smaller even than a microscope can see. Everything on Earth is made of atoms, which are, especially in living things, combined together in intricate molecular assemblages.
strong cancer thinking
It used to be controversial whether smoking caused lung cancer, it used to be controversial whether HIV caused AIDS. Now, there are a few mavericks who deny those things. In the case of climate change, I think the debate is going the same way in that there is a strong consensus that it is a serious matter.
nuclear weapons nuclear-weapons
Nuclear weapons can be dismantled, but they cannot be uninvented.