“If ever in history we needed optimism, we today need the optimism of science… We must commit ourselves to dare to build the world we want, knowing that it is possible if we but demand it.” – Walter Orr Roberts, 1967
In 1940, an ambitious young Harvard astronomer named Walter Orr Roberts packed a second hand telescope into a third hand car and drove to a mining camp 11,000 feet high in the Colorado Rockies to study the sun. From this unlikely beginning, more log cabin than laboratory, Roberts would build one of the most consequential scientific institutions in American history: the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
From Emmy awarding-winning director Lucian Read (Years of Living Dangerously), The Sky is the Limit tells NCAR’s story: Roberts’ visionary leadership, the architectural masterpiece I.M. Pei designed for its home, NCAR’s foundational and life-saving discoveries and, now, the political forces seeking to destroy in a matter of months what it took generations to build.
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The scientists who followed Roberts at NCAR pioneered our understanding of the atmosphere. They developed the models that now forecast tornadoes saving countless lives. They unraveled the mysteries of wind shear, helping pilots avoid catastrophe. Their measurements of hail and rainfall gave farmers a fighting chance against nature's fury. They were part of the battle against acid rain and the vanishing ozone layer. NCAR's scientists stitched together the threads of climate change giving humanity its first real chance to understand, and prepare for, the planet's warming future.
At its heart, The Sky Is the Limit is a love letter to the scientific method itself – to the idea that careful observation, open inquiry, and the relentless testing of ideas can quietly save millions of lives, often without the public ever knowing the names of the people who labor in their service.
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