I am a child of Sputnik, the satellite launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. That event created opportunities for me to escape the horrors of apartheid by emigrating from South Africa to the United States. There, fortuitously, I was given excellent opportunities to explore how an interplay between the waves and currents influences climate variability, from interannual El Niño events to millennial ice ages. During my career, I also witnessed intriguing facets of the interactions between the profoundly different worlds of science and of human affairs. Up to 1957, El Niño was welcomed as a blessing, but by 1982 it had become a curse—not because it changed, but because our human activities are making us vulnerable to natural climate variability. We have learned to cope admirably with the occasional failures of the Indian monsoons; the resultant famines are not as calamitous as they once were. What guidance does that limited success provide for a response to global warming, a climate change we humans are inducing? This article briefly summarizes how my career as a geoscientist brought me to the conclusion that a strategy to promote responsible stewardship of planet Earth should be based on love rather than fear. We can only love what we know, so warnings of imminent gloom and doom should be complemented with efforts to make everyone aware of the wonders of our amazing planet—the only one in the universe known to be habitable.

中文翻译：

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从邮票到抛物线


我是苏联于 1957 年发射的人造卫星 Sputnik 的孩子。那次事件为我从南非移民到美国创造了逃离种族隔离恐怖的机会。在那里，我很幸运地获得了绝佳的机会来探索海浪和洋流之间的相互作用如何影响气候变化，从年际厄尔尼诺事件到千年冰河期。在我的职业生涯中，我还目睹了截然不同的科学世界和人类事务之间相互作用的有趣方面。直到 1957 年，厄尔尼诺现象还被视为一种祝福，但到了 1982 年，它已成为一种诅咒——不是因为它发生了变化，而是因为我们的人类活动使我们容易受到自然气候变化的影响。我们已经学会如何巧妙地应对印度季风的偶尔失败。由此产生的饥荒不再像以前那样灾难性。这种有限的成功为应对全球变暖（我们人类引发的气候变化）提供了哪些指导？本文简要总结了我作为地球科学家的职业生涯如何使我得出这样的结论：促进负责任的地球管理的战略应该基于爱而不是恐惧。我们只能热爱我们所知道的东西，因此，在对即将到来的悲观和厄运的警告的同时，还应该努力让每个人都意识到我们这个令人惊叹的星球的奇迹——宇宙中唯一一个已知适合居住的星球。