To answer the second question first, scary. The spark was when I realized that rejection of climate science was an issue for groups that I was actually part of or associated with. I attend an Evangelical church. We’re living in Texas where it isn’t just 20 or 30 percent of the people around me [rejecting climate science]. Depending on where I am and what I’m doing, it could be 99 percent of the people around me who don’t think climate change is real.

So that was the point at which I felt I had not just a collective responsibility as a climate scientist, but I had a personal responsibility because I knew that I would probably be the only scientist many of them would ever meet, and the only one that they would ever listen to. I still take that responsibility very seriously so when I get invitations for speaking engagements, for example, I preferentially accept the ones where I know that if I say no, they’re not going to invite anybody else.