I actually had the honor of spending time with Wally Broecker during a recent visit to Tucson. He was captivating — the group he spoke with didn’t want him to stop. The Earth Institute at Columbia University describes him best. “To his colleagues, peers and admirers he is a genius and a pioneer, the Grandfather of Climate Science. And to his countless friends – most of whom also happen to be colleagues, peers and admirers – he is simply Wally. Broecker is arguably one of the world’s greatest living geoscientists. For more than half a century, his major research interest has been the ocean’s role in climate change. He was among the pioneers in radiocarbon and isotope dating – the quintessential processes for creating maps of the Earth’s past climate fluctuations since as early as the Pleistocene period. He was also the first person ever to recognize the Ocean Conveyor Belt (which he named), arguably the most important discovery in the history of oceanography and its critical relation to climate.” Oh my.