Obituary: Piers Sellers, astronaut who warned of global warming risks

Piers Sellers awaits the start of the
 mission's third space walk, 2006.

Piers Sellers, a British-born climate scientist for NASA who remained optimistic about the fate of the Earth, despite the grim climate change models he oversaw, and who gained US citizenship to fulfil a childhood dream of becoming an astronaut, has died in Houston aged 61.

He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year and went public with his diagnosis in a New York Times column. He wrote that, while he had hoped he would see solutions to the problem of climate change in his lifetime, he was devoted to continuing his climate research until he died.

"There is no convincing, demonstrated reason to believe that our evolving future will be worse than our present, assuming careful management of the challenges and risks," he wrote, sounding a note of optimism, despite increasingly drastic changes in the global temperature and precipitation patterns that he studied. "History is replete with examples of us humans getting out of tight spots."

Read the obituary in today’s Melbourne Age - “Piers Sellers, astronaut who warned of global warming risks.”

Piers Sellers is inspirational in "Before the Flood'

-       Robert McLean

Piers Sellers - inspirational!

Piers Sellers is an optimist and his brief appearance was for me the highlight of Leonardo DiCaprio’s movie, ‘Before the Flood”.

The NASA scientist and former astronaut has been diagnosed with terminal stage four pancreatic cancer and even though the 60-year-old will not see the outcome (his admission), he is absolutely positive humanity will respond positively to the unfolding threats of climate change.

The entire Before the Flood movie can be watched now, but the suggestion is that it will be taken off-line this weekend – I urge you to watch it as it thoroughly reinforces the need to each of us to do what we can to see our governments and the world community to do quickly what obviously needs to be done.