Numbers can be powerful things, but they don't necessarily help
the average person grasp what's actually going on in science.
Instead, personal stories tend to make a bigger impact. And
that's understandable. Things you can see—or things that someone
can show you—are going to stick in your head a bit more than a
barrage of data. This is especially a problem, I think, with
climate change. Some of the largest impact of climate change, so
far, have happened in places far removed from the experiences of
the people who create the most anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
So it's often hard to take the idea "the Earth is getting
warmer" and really grok what that actually means. That's why
people like Will Steger are important. Steger is an explorer and
science communicator who has won the National Geographic
Society's John Oliver La Gorce Medal—an award that's also been
given to Amelia Earhart, Robert Peary, Roald Amundsen and
Jacques Cousteau. He does most of his work in the Arctic and
Antarctic, places where he has cl