Stories by Ben Santer

A play celebrates the agreement that opened nations worldwide to accepting the science of climate change

The president’s letter to his new science adviser emphasizes the crucial role science plays in our society—much as Roosevelt did in a similar missive in 1944

You must rebuild public trust in the scientific impartiality of the EPA, the DOE and other agencies

An engaged and well-informed public has always been the foundation of our democracy

With COVID-19, as with climate, we need to explore a variety of possible futures in order to set policy

The U.S. president’s hostility to expertise puts us all in danger

Human lives, human touch and direct human interactions are gone—and so is the sense that we can trust our leaders to act quickly and effectively in the face of a catastrophe

Both are existential challenges—and a president who belittles and neglects science has made them both tougher to address

The author, a climate scientist, faced a political controversy, along with a personal crisis, more than two decades ago, bringing lessons that resonate today

Martins Beach fostered a love of patterns and a desire to hold the powerful accountable

In situations where lives are at stake, you need to be rigorously honest with yourself and with others—not take out your Sharpie to distort the truth

In complex systems, small changes can make big differences

As I learned during my youth in Germany, exploring frontiers beats hiding behind barriers

It’s crucial to measure what we believe against reality, whether we’re talking about climate models or presidents. Now it's time to vote

If he so desired, Donald Trump could go down in history as the man who transcended ego and ignorance by acting  to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Fat chance

Keeping citizens safe is an essential responsibility of government, but when it comes to the dangers of climate change, the Trump administration just doesn’t care

If I could, I’d bring politicians who doubt the reality of human-caused global change to spend a few days on the Juneau Icefield

Pres. Trump threatens the equilibrium not just of the international order, but of the planet we all depend on

Civility and decency are crumbling on a daily basis, undercut and weakened by language emanating from the White House

The Trump administration’s proposal to re-evaluate the science is really an attempt to muddy the waters

That attitude, shared across the political spectrum when the probe launched in 1977, has now fallen into disrepute in some quarters

In rejecting the Paris climate accords, our government has ceded moral, ethical, economic, and political leadership to other, more enlightened countries.