Living on the Real World

That was the topic of an AMS Webinar at the beginning of this week. Here’s the online blurb:

Presented by the AMS Interfaith Committee, hear stories, work, ideas from panelists across various spiritual/faith-based backgrounds on environmentalism, and how the AMS and spiritual/faith communities can work together in this important space. This is one of a series of topics related to conversations, work, and ideas on collaboration and relational building between the AMS and faith/spiritual communities. Organizer: Dr. Carlos Javier Martinez – National Center for Atmospheric Research Panelists: Rabbi Geoff Mitelman – Sinai and Synapses Dr. William (Bill) Hooke – American Meteorological Society James Rattling Leaf, Sr. – Cooperative Institute Research Environmental Sciences, North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center Dr. Emma Frances Bloomfield – University of Nevada, Las Vegas Nana Firman – GreenFaith The Q&A, chat file, anonymous survey results, and attendee list from this webinar will be shared with its organizers.

My impression is that the webinar was recorded and will be available online to members sometime soon. Very thankful for the opportunity to be part of the event; meant a great deal. Some personal takeaways (starting with a full disclosure):

Disclosure. At the time I embarked on a career in atmospheric science as a newly-minted Ph.D. in 1967, I saw myself as a confirmed atheist. Wound up embracing Christianity in the spring of 1976 – a story for another day. My life has felt profoundly different – more meaningful and more complete – ever since.

Takeaway #1. Faith and religion have long been considered the third-rail of conversation in the government workplace, and in much of the private-sector and academic workplace as well. There’s good reason for this, as much of the growing awareness of systemic racism and other barriers to diversity, equity, and inclusion in our society attests. It’s all too easy for religious bias to negatively impact decision making and basic standards of workplace fairness (ironic, as most faiths hold fairness and equity as basic tenets). But just as it’s become necessary for our society to put systemic racism and related negative topics on the table and thus begin to rectify them explicitly, it also seems important and timely to open a broader, more nuanced discussion of faith, spirituality, and faith-based knowledge systems that could offer many positives to our profession.

However, years of enforced silence on this topic in the professional sphere mean that today we lack vocabulary, protocol, and traditions for having the safe and respectful discussion that’s needed to jump start the process. We should expect it take some time to develop these needed foundations. We should enter this realm with some appropriate caution, and take special pains to bring along representatives of as many indigenous forms of worship worldwide into the discussion as early and quickly as we can.

Takeaway #2. Spiritual and faith-based knowledge systems already can and do inform the Weather, Water, and Climate Enterprise – the academic-, public-, and private-sector institutions and professionals engaged in the science and application of weather and weather forecasting. Ignoring these aspects to our work is therefore not an option; we must instead seek to integrate them effectively.

Start with application, where the connection is more familiar, easier to see. Most people would agree, and the AMS vision statement makes explicit, the “application” is not self-serving so much as for societal benefit. In a world where broad swaths of society and societal institutions self-identify as spiritual or faith-based, life-protecting risk communications on all time frames from climate change to tornado warnings will work best when framed in terms that are compelling and actionable to members of these groups. Similarly, what is deemed a true societal benefit versus something less, or even a negative, depends on the cultural and spiritual lens of the person or peoples involved. Given these realities, the issue is not whether faith-based and spiritual knowledge systems inform science, but rather how to harness such “informing” fairly and effectively.

Connections to the science itself might seem less obvious, or perhaps unnecessary. But consider the following question: where do new scientific concepts originate? Physical scientists might argue they come from experiment and observation, and from mathematics – but social scientists tell us that most of our ideas originate socially, from contact with others. Faith and cultural backgrounds and spiritual natures necessarily color and shape these contacts. And consider the choices that determine what science is prioritized, gets attention, gets financially supported, gets done. In these days of government and private-sector budget support for science, much of that has a faith-based, or spiritual, or cultural tinge. And this is only a single example, to illustrate a point. Other examples abound.

All this is preamble, a much broader issue than the connection between faith and spirituality and environmentalism and environmental science per se.  This week’s panelists focused to a great degree on environmentalism and the calls of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish faiths for environmental stewardship. But the spectrum of views spanning just these three faith traditions is far broader than the hour of conversation would allow. Even in this respect, they represented only the merest sliver of the thinking on the subject. Meanwhile, other faith perspectives – Hinduism, Buddhism, and those stemming from the varied experience and tradition of a host of indigenous peoples worldwide – weren’t heard from. That’s why the AMS BRAID chair Ayesha Wilkinson and the webinar moderator Carlos Martinez emphasized early and often that Tuesday’s conversation was intended to be the first of many, rather than a one-off, and why they assiduously and repeatedly invited all participants to make suggestions about future topics and panelists.

Takeaway #3. (Readers may disagree with this one, but remember, the takeaways here are personal). One of the biggest benefits that the spiritual dimension has to offer is hope. By contrast, climate/global change issues tend to invite the opposite: fear and anger in the face of evidence of impending doom and the seeming failure of others to care or to take action. That negative outlook is only exacerbated by a raft of other societal ills all too evident today – including but not limited to the pandemic, social inequalities and unfairness of a variety of types, wars such as that now underway in the Ukraine, and more. To paraphrase Henry David Thoreau, most of us are living lives of quiet desperation.

Such dismal future prospects can turn some people, including some scientists, into scolds – delivering harsh messages that are growing more sharply pointed as the time window for stemming the worst effects of climate change seems to be closing. Worse, it’s well known from social science that negative emotional states make it more difficult to think clearly. This is bad news for scientists, engineers, and for the other professionals in the Weather, Water, and Climate Enterprise. Given that so many of the problems the larger world faces are in our wheelhouse, we need to be thinking at our best.

Again, most people, including those nominally “well off,” are hungry for real hope – hope that isn’t founded on delusion or ignorance, or momentary pleasurable distractions.

In the faith-based system of thought that I know best, that hope is fairly basic, and on point as well. It stems from nothing less than the message throughout the Old and New Testament Bible that a Higher Power is in the business of the restoring the Earth and its peoples to the originally-intended Eden-like state, and will ultimately succeed. And the Judeo-Christian tradition by no means has a monopoly on such hope.

Takeaway #4. Most of us will find it tempting, natural to dive right into future conversations on these topics. That’s appropriate and welcome and has much to recommend it. These matters, like all others, benefit from a diversity of views. But the presence of a few experts among this week’s panelists – Rabbi Geoff, Nana, and Emma – should remind us that there’s already an extensive thought and published literature here. Some might want to be more disciplined – allow such literature to inform their thinking.

Where to start? One point of departure might be the books on Carlos Martinez’ professional website.

(If I had one recommended addition to the books you’ll find there it would be Mike Hulmes’ Why We Disagree about Climate Change.)

Takeaway #5. Carlos Martinez is a force of nature. We all owe him a debt of gratitude for doing the hard work required to stand up a structured, respectful, actionable conversation on this set of issues, and showing us how we might ourselves work some of these perspectives into our respective day jobs. You’ll find his professional website useful as well as thought provoking, perhaps even inspiring.

Thanks, Carlos.

On February 8 and February 10, LOTRW posts explored possible futures for the Weather and Climate Enterprise and associated steps/actions required to get there. These prompted a comment from Michael Douglas, which he posted in the American Meteorological Society Open Forum. (As it turns out, the so-called AMS “Open” Forum is really not all that open; it’s accessible only to AMS members, so extended excerpts are provided here.) Mike says:

Bill Hooke’s message from almost 2 years ago (4-28-2020) [link added] about the need for more scientists as a silver lining to the COVID-19 pandemic is a valid one, as are both of your comments about the need for support from the public for building a resilient weather enterprise.  

Politicians respond (in a democracy) to public pressure and science-based solutions to environmental issues ultimately depend on a science-savvy society for support.  Adding more basic researchers to the pot won’t necessarily solve the problem of getting essential information into the hands of those who need it and in obtaining support from the public for those politicians.

He then adds this observation (which concludes in a cautionary vein):

Many scientists neglect public outreach opportunities because it isn’t part of their official duties. If they teach college courses, they may think that is plenty – perhaps too much effort – for their renumeration.  Secondary or primary school teachers likewise may be constrained by state mandates of what they are allowed to teach in their classes.  And state or federal researchers (like I was) don’t usually have public outreach built into their work plans except in minor ways.  Some researchers in my NOAA lab even shied away from giving seminars to their own colleagues because it was a distraction from their research.  And very few entertained the thought of giving a talk about their research to the public.  Sometimes such an opportunity wasn’t even available to them – or it wasn’t formally encouraged.  And during my latter years it was controlled.

He continues:

Frustration during the 2020 election campaign, where environmental issues – aside from climate change – were not really discussed by the presidential candidates in their debates, led me to put together “A Norman Environmental Primer” for our local community.  It was, and is, an effort to bring attention to “environmental issues” that I view as important for basic public awareness.  The Primer is web-based, since errors or omissions can easily be corrected, and because the material is imagery-intensive.  It is a bit presumptuous to call it a “Primer”.  Each section of the Primer could have been written by individuals here in Norman more qualified to write them.  And every topic could be expanded to book-length. But then even fewer people would read it.   The Primer, buried within another website that I’d previously prepared, is at:

He closes with these two invitations:

I’d encourage readers to peruse the Primer and read through topics they find interesting…

I’d encourage motivated educators to produce a Primer for their own local community.  Public outreach doesn’t have to be restricted to those already involved in teaching or research.  And it should cast a very wide net because one never knows who will benefit most from it.

I accepted this invitation – gave the Primer a look. And was duly rewarded! Turns out the Primer is indeed thoughtfully crafted, informative, appealing. If you take the trouble to check it out, you can approach his material in a couple of ways. You might look for things that could be improved or criticized. If you do, sure enough, you’ll find them. (Mike has acknowledged as much.) Or you could work through it with an eye to how you might do something similar for your backyard/neighborhood. (That’s what Mike is hoping.) Speaking of your neighborhood, in the vernacular of Sesame Street, in so doing, or by other means, you’d be reminding folks that just like the postal worker,  baker, doctor, trash collector, “a scientist is a person in your neighborhood.” This would be a good thing.

You’d also be taking an additional step. To see this, note that yesterday the Winter Olympics concluded. Strikingly, the Chinese hosts, with a population of 1.4 billion, and the United States, with a population of one-third billion, lagged Norway (population 5 million) in the medal count. The glib conclusion is: sure! All of Norway is icily cold and mountainous. But to dig deeper is to discover that all Norway, including the kids, make a point of having fun outdoors in the cold, in addition to playing computer games. And they’re really just having fun; Norwegians are not identifying the few physically gifted kids and focusing on their athletic development while encouraging the general population to confine their attention to video games. In fact, identifying athletically-gifted kids in any systematic way before they reach the age of 13 is proscribed by Norwegian law, motivated by a sense of children’s rights. (And obviously, Norway is not the only culture that can boast such success. Ethiopian and Kenyan dominance in marathons comes to mind, etc.)

In the same way, science and engineering shouldn’t be the province of “nerdy geniuses” alone, while the rest of us are sidelined spectators. They are and should be participatory. By following Michael Douglas’ example, you and I can start the ball rolling in our respective neighborhoods.

Let’s get on it.

Last December, James Anderson published a new book: GOOD ENOUGH FOR THE CLIMATE: The Surprisingly Simple Math of the Planet and Inspiring Stories of Action and Innovation  (both Kindle and a paperback versions are available).

Here are two reasons why I bought it.

The title. C’mon. Who labels anything as merely “good enough” in today’s world of hype and clamor for eyeballs and attention? And when was the last time you saw the words “surprisingly simple” and “math” in the same sentence? As for“inspiring stories?” A notion not usually juxtaposed with the topic of climate change. The majority of books and serious written material occupying this space are rather gloomier.

Definitely wanted to find out more.

Considering the source. Then there’s who Jim Anderson is. He’s been at Earth Networks and its antecedents for two decades, where he is currently Senior Vice President, Global Sales. Formerly he consulted and conducted economic and policy research in the agricultural, energy, and environmental sectors. His education includes an MBA from Georgetown University, an MS in environmental economics and policy from the University of Maine, and a BS in biology and economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. (Hmm. Quite different from the usual picture of higher education as “learning more and more about less and less.”)

Unsurprisingly, as a result of this broad experience spanning many years at the highest levels of the private-sector and operating across a truly global theater, Mr. Anderson is well-known to those in our field. But there’s more. The people from this corporate world, his peers, those who know him the best, respect him the most – electing him chair of the International Association of Hydro-Meteorological Equipment Industry (HMEI) at their Twenty-first General Assembly meeting in 2019. They like him as the voice for their entire industry and the big idea of for-profit weather and climate products and services.

Book-length perspectives on climate change from this particular source – corporate leaders – aren’t all that common. As a class, the business C-suite crowd are an unusually thoughtful bunch, have much to teach the rest of us, but the pressures of market competition provide them incentive to keep their thoughts in-house, focus on advantaging their individual companies. We don’t often get to hear from them in this vein.

On the face of it, then, this book provides a rare chance to see the climate-change problem in its broadest aspects through a private-sector, for-profit lens.

OK, Bill, that’s why you bought it. What did you actually find?

A few things.

Start with the title. In a word, it’s apt. (To greatly oversimplify – apologies all around), the author’s premise is that the climate challenge is big and complicated. There’s not perfect solution, only coping strategies. These are/will be expensive and take time and effort to implement. But they’re good enough to turn a big problem into a handful of smaller, more-manageable ones. There’s no real showstopper too big for humanity to handle. The needed science and technology are basically available.

The key is the carbon budget, and Anderson begins by walking the reader through these basics. Although the math involves truly big numbers, reflecting Earth’s size, burgeoning human population and increasing per capita consumption, the math that matters is essentially no more than arithmetic.

He then asks: what would happen if we simplified the climate change problem down to its essential elements and took action? In the middle chapters, Anderson explores general principles of innovation, and problem framings that would foster progress.

Using Laura Zinke’s “colors of carbon” as his frame, Anderson’s closing chapters examine, in turn, green carbon (the land); blue carbon (ocean and coasts); black carbon (engineered solutions). In each he summarizes the basic challenges and opportunities for driving the world toward more favorable carbon budgets. He borrows from the “existence theorem” language and approach of mathematicians – instead of limiting himself to actual solutions (a very small set), he looks at the much larger body of successful work by individuals and/or corporate or government or NGO entities already underway that need only be successfully scaled up.

This brings readers to his chapter on gold carbon (a hue not covered by the Zinke paper). Here Anderson focuses on innovation of a different sort – he lifts the veil and offers examples of the innovative thinking underway worldwide on the part of financiers, venture capitalists, and clever entrepreneurs designing business models to incentivize, sustain, and scale up work in this space.

So…the title’s promise is fulfilled. The book doesn’t present a polished picture of the path to climate stabilization so much as a rough outline of basic features.

Content/approach. There’s much to like here. The basic issues are captured, but without unnecessary refinements or overmuch detail. And that level of detail is consistent throughout. What’s more, he makes his message clear, without flogging the readers with it.  Perhaps the material on gold carbon is the best example of this. He stresses the need for massive investment. Then, instead of being prescriptive, saying “and this is the way that has to happen,” he simply starts telling stories -stories of individuals and startups and venture capitalists who see a specific piece of the puzzle and say “there’s a profit-making investment opportunity here.” Each story is in itself a little bit inspiring (per the book’s title), but what’s really inspiring is the aggregate of these interviews and cases. Readers will conclude something like “I don’t know whether this exhausts the stories out there, or whether these are only the tip of the iceberg – but it sure feels like the latter, like he’s just scratching the surface of tons and tons of diverse innovation, spanning the full range of actions where innovation is needed.” And that’s what’s inspiring about the stories, that’s what gets us to his premise that “we’ve got this.” It’s less about accomplished fact than it is about emergent possibilities.

Writing style. Here the book is stellar. The language is crisp and clean – the vocabulary and minimal use of jargon make the main ideas accessible to readers from a broad range of perspectives – those in the weather and climate enterprise, their customers, lay people across the board, and even the author’s children, who loom large in his motivation for the book. Emphasis on interviews (all the mini-narratives making up the larger message) keep readers engaged. The writing flows; the book is a page-turner. The weekend’s coming up. You can buy the Kindle version and read it through before returning to work on Monday.

The conclusion? This book is way-more-than-simply-good-enough to repay your investment in it. Buy it, and follow through and actually read it, and you’ll be reminded that climate change is a big problem but not an intractable one. You’ll return to your current work within the Weather and Climate Enterprise with renewed hope and sense of purpose. Perhaps you’ll be inspired to drop what you’re doing to build your own startup. Whatever your path, you’re on your way to becoming heroes of this story as it unfolds.

The previous LOTRW post, focusing on the future of the Weather and Climate Enterprise, and the need for sustained and strategic public-private collaboration, evoked a few responses from the AMS Community (thanks all around!). This thoughtful and extended contribution from Howard Hanson was  in the mix (full disclosure: Howard and I go back many years through our joint time at NOAA):

Bill — It’s encouraging to hear that NOAA leadership is taking such an ecumenical approach to the future of the enterprise. My experience was that this approach was always embedded in the organization, but it didn’t seem to be spoken from the top as much as this.

One thing I don’t see in your discussion is a view toward strengthening resiliency of the enterprise with respect to withstanding the slings and arrows of choices by the electorate that put science in general at risk. How should the future evolve so that such interludes as the presidential term ending in early 2021 don’t do so much harm?

That, certainly, is an ecumenical subject that just about every scientific and technical organization could get behind. Best, HPH

To begin with Howard’s comment: the “ecumenical approach” has indeed been imbedded throughout the organization, and in the hearts and minds of NOAA employees. But given the number of employees, and the breadth and the scope of NOAA’s work, it should not be surprising to find a history of widely diverse approaches to the collaboration (some short-lived, some enduring), including several that might even have been at cross-purposes. As the safety-, economic-, and environmental stakes have grown in scale, urgency, and visibility, it’s increasingly necessary that the collaborations become more structured and disciplined, while maintaining the degree of diversity and flexibility needed to foster innovation. Accordingly, as Howard suggests, NOAA leadership attention is most welcome.

That bring us to Howard’s question: how to make science less vulnerable to politics? Here there’s no single right answer. The good news is there are multiple helpful ideas – many more than the AMS, or even the fuller community, has members. A few initial conjectures that will hopefully prompt wider and more deliberate thought.

The threat may be in our heads. One of the great and widely distributed human gifts is the ability to feel put upon. Scientists are no exception to this rule. Additionally, social scientists remind us that pessimism and risk aversion hold considerable survival value, and are therefore prevalent across society. Generally speaking, scientists are viewed by society as a privileged class. We should think hard before complaining.

Utility is our greatest protection. It’s by no means surefire. The goose that laid the golden eggs – was executed. But that goose has been the exception, and lives on as a cautionary tale. DJ Patil, President Obama’s Chief Data Scientist, made that point at an AMS Washington Forum several years ago, and in a Stanford commencement speech. He encouraged his hearers to return ten times their salaries /costs in value to their employers. The weather/climate enterprise surely meets that criterion today and will likely produce a far greater rate of return in future years. N.B.: to be useful is a far better insurance policy for our community than to be a climate scold. A bit of nagging, given the world’s current state, may be needed. But it’s better and more artfully done through the likes of Greta Thunberg. Enterprise focus is rightfully placed on practical help – and help that’s equally accessible to all, regardless of age, ethnicity, and political and cultural preferences. (Just saying.)

We want a supportive electorate? Then let’s invest in that electorate. Let’s put more attention toward making sure that the Earth sciences and their relevance to the human condition are taught, and taught well, throughout K-12 public education.

The 2022 American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting wrapped up on January 27^th. Throughout more than a year of preparation, the logistics and planning had been dogged by covid’s mutations and impacts. Early plans had envisioned a fully face-to-face meeting following the fully virtual meeting of 2021. The emergence of the omicron variant put paid to that aspiration. Planning moved toward a hybrid approach, and eventually culminated into hybrid leadership meetings, accompanied by a hybrid Student Conference, followed by a fully virtual program for all the rest. AMS Meetings staff bore the brunt of these blows, closely followed by the program organizers, the AMS volunteer leadership, and, ultimately, each and every participant.

Covid notwithstanding, the Meeting proved a remarkable success. Start with the numbers. Over 600 sessions; 2400 oral presentations; nearly 1000 poster presentations. But the better metric was the substance underlying these statistics. Scientists showed up to report and debate and stimulate further progress with respect to every aspect of meteorology, oceanography, climatology, hydrology, and space weather. The Earth and the Sun continued to yield their secrets.

The Meeting brough institutions and their leaders together as well, to share their accomplishments, and to signal their intents. A case in point:

NOAA leadership, led by Rick Spinrad, the NOAA Administrator, participated actively in the 2022 AMS Annual Meeting, engaging across the full span of the week’s programs and to good effect. A clear message (one among several): NOAA is currently and in the future will continue to be prioritizing climate services.

Spinrad and others provided a rationale and outlined an approach.

The rationale was not so much new as reaffirmed. U.S. weather creates opportunity but also poses risks to life, property and economic activity. Longer-term climate variability represents a similar mix of reward and threat. But there are several significant differences. To start, stakes are higher, stemming from the global need to incorporate climate sensitivity into $100T-worth of big-ticket investments in critical infrastructure and ways of doing business in energy, agricultural, and water sectors over the next twenty years. Knowing what the Earth system will do next, whether “on its own” or in response to human activity – and acting accordingly, will determine not just individual American future prospects but also the success of American institutions and America’s place in the world. Then there’s the greater complexity of climate; the longer time frames bring a vast array of processes into play, such as air-surface exchanges (air-sea, air-ice, air-land-vegetation)  over large areas, that are less consequential to the daily forecast. Finally, not only is climate science more rudimentary, but the application of climate science for societal benefit (economic growth, public health, etc.) is itself nascent, experimental. Weather forecasting and human impacts over the past century or so have provided hundreds of millions of experiments – forecasts, followed by action, followed by post-event verification. By comparison, the climate-forecast-services cases amount to the merest handful.

As for the approach, Dr. Spinrad made clear in his several talks that the needed advances in climate science and development of science-based services would need the concerted attention and focus of all NOAA elements, not just the National Weather Service ( a one-NOAA). But he went further, emphasizing that the work cannot be accomplished by NOAA alone, or even federal agencies as a group. The needed progress can only be realized by effective federal-private-academic partnerships.

Spinrad acknowledged that the public-private partnerships in the more mature weather sector had endured decades of checkered history prior to the National Academies Fair Weather Report of 2003. He vowed that NOAA had learned from that experience and resolved to do better: to engage the private sector at the outset; to listen; to focus more on process as opposed to predetermining bright lines dividing private and rights and responsibilities. He cited a process of outreach well underway, not just to established companies in the weather-climate space but also to a host of emerging companies. He invited any other interested parties to make themselves known and join in.

NOAA folks (from leadership on down to bench scientists and field meteorologists) would be the first agree that what’s needed from such partnerships is much more than mere relationship-building and  developing trust among a relatively small cluster of climate researchers and service providers. The challenge is to harness those improved relationships to the cause of making a better world – to change the topic of the conversation from sector-specific concerns to larger societal needs, from “playing well together” to “solving problems.”

How to start? There’s no single right answer, but a recent AMS study funded by NOAA surfaced some ideas. It examined explicitly the role that public policy plays in determining the sum societal value of Earth Observations, Science, and Services (OSS) as well as the allocation of that value and the costs of OSS production across society.

The study was exploratory rather than exhaustive. It examined three policy frameworks of quite different origin, purview, and standing. The first is the 2003 Fair Weather Report developed by the National Academy of Sciences, cited above. That policy focuses on collaboration. The second is the 2017 Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act enacted by the U.S. Congress. It focuses on innovation. The third is the current World Meteorological Organization development of a unified data policy (a successor to WMO Resolution 40), which seeks to make international contributions to and access to data and information more equitable, and at the same time expand the domain of data and information sharing from weather per se to Earth observations, science, and services more broadly.

The AMS study took as its point of departure views of individual stakeholders in the so-called Weather, Water and Climate Enterprise with respect to these policies. Their perspectives were captured through informally solicited public and private comments from senior members of the Enterprise—most notably during a session of the 2021 AMS Washington Forum; during special sessions of the 2021 AMS Summer Policy Colloquium, spaced over several days; during virtual sessions of WMO virtual Data Conferences of 2020 and 2021; and through a series of one-on-one interviews. Individually and in aggregate the comments hint at or suggest opportunities for extending and improving Enterprise value by broadening collaboration, fostering innovation, and making the Enterprise more equitable.

Respondents made suggestions including but not limited to the following:
– Broadening Enterprise purview: to include disciplines other than weather, to extend to end users and Congress, to document and articulate Enterprise value, and to shift focus from inward-looking dialog to externally purposed action.
– Fostering innovation: by building Congressional trust, thereby allowing legislators to shift from oversight and prescriptive approaches to development of incentives and resources for the Enterprise; by emulating the success and promise of EPIC, developing similar open-science approaches to other elements of the value chain such as data commercialization and risk communication.
– Advancing global equity, with respect to both participation and access to beneficial outcomes: by strengthening U.S. preparation for and participation in formulating WMO purposes and work.

Much work to be done. But the clearly-articulated NOAA commitment to the process, as affirmed by its leadership throughout the course of the AMS Annual Meeting, should lift spirits.

A final aside: as the report notes, AMS experience and resources could usefully be brought to bear as a means toward these ends – in a number of different ways. Though self-serving on its face, this assertion is also backed by two decades of faithful AMS stewardship in the role the National Academies suggested for it back in 2003.

What are we waiting for? Let’s get to it. There’s a role for each of us here.

“Civics is the study of the rights and obligations of citizens in society. The term derives from the Latin word civicus, meaning “relating to a citizen”. The term relates to behavior affecting other citizens, particularly in the context of urban development.” – Wikipedia

A read of the Wikipedia piece will almost certainly take you back to course material at one or more points in your education where civics was the focus. The ideas originated in ancient Greece. We’re told Spartans achieved momentary but significant historical success by teaching their citizens just enough civics to make them aware of their rights and obligations, but not so much that they might fail to conform. Their discipline and coherence as a people made them a force to be reckoned with. By contrast, the Athenians preferred civics of the more brawling sort, with individual freedom as the starting point. (It’s not too hard to see a similar spectrum spanning today’s geopolitics.)

Dip into the subject of civics a bit, whether reading the link above or more original sources, and you might soon find yourself investigating natural law: “a system of law based on a close observation of human nature, and based on values intrinsic to human nature that can be deduced and applied independent of positive law (the enacted laws of a state or society). According to natural law theory, all people have inherent rights, conferred not by act of legislation but by “God, nature, or reason.” Natural law theory can also refer to “theories of ethics, theories of politics, theories of civil law, and theories of religious morality.” One big name in this arena is the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). (With oversimplification) Hobbes held that people might argue about what makes for happiness, but he saw nearly universal agreement on what people fear (violent death at the hand of another). Hobbes formulated nineteen (!)[1] such laws. An example: “The ninth law is that every man acknowledge another for his equal by nature. The breach of this precept is pride.” We have all seen that notion highlighted in the American Declaration of Independence.

This intellectual material is profound. Moreover, there’s ample evidence in today’s world that all eight billion of us have lost sight of these basics in the heat and stress of the moment – growing awareness of and frustration and despair with the systemic inequities in our relationships with each other; wrestling with the pandemic, threats that Russia may invade the Ukraine; and other woes. We might do well to revisit and take to heart this foundational subject matter – do a better job of getting along.

But from at least one perspective, civics and natural law as currently framed are lacking. The topics show no explicit acknowledgement that we must work out our societal rights and obligations, and our relationships with each other, all while living on and constrained by a real-world Earth.

That Earth, though generous – is finite. It is also dangerous. It does much if not most of its business through extreme events – not just earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and violent storms, but also abrupt climate change, disease outbreaks and pestilence, ecosystem collapse, and more. And it’s not only generous and dangerous – it’s also fragile. The life-essential services it offers can be disrupted or forever lost if we human beings fail to meet our natural obligations with respect to planetary-stewardship.

The Spartans and the Athenians, even Thomas Hobbes, can be forgiven for not taking these realities into account. Throughout history to that point, Earth’s resources had been for all practical purposes infinite. And extreme events were viewed as interruptions of the natural order – acts of God, and therefore inherently unforeseeable.

Today we know differently. We know natural resources are finite. We have some ability to foresee nature’s risks. We have noticed our local, regional, and global effects on the environment, habitats, and ecosystems. Accordingly, we need a branch of study focused on the rights and obligations of some eight billion people riding at high speed through the universe on an open-air convertible that we call the Earth. And we need to extend natural law to include the nature of the planet we live on.

We need a geocivics.

What might that look like? To distill it to a few principles will take time. But the work is well underway. We see the start emerging in the geocsciences. In ecology. In the IPCC reports, and hundreds of other national, regional, and local conversations underway in and across governments, the private sector, and civil society. But here’s a candidate(first-draft) natural law to sharpen minds:

The first law is that humankind make it a priority to develop a predictive understanding of Earth’s life-giving resources and how they are trending; where, when, and how threats might arise; where vital ecosystem services are declining or risk compromise – in order to help guide and develop equitable and effective coping strategies.

We know a great deal about how the Earth system works. But we need to know more, and with great urgency if we hope to sustain let alone improve our current lifestyle.

Closer to home? That sounds like the American Meteorological Society’s mission: advancing the atmospheric and related sciences, technologies, applications, and services for the benefit of society.

By coincidence, the AMS 2022 Annual Meeting gets underway (hybrid: face-to-face and virtually) today.  The sessions and talks will touch on many aspects of geo-civics, though not by name. In fact, the meeting theme “Environmental Security: Weather, water, and climate for a more secure world” hits at the heart of the subject.

During the meeting, but also in the months that follow, let’s keep our geocivic responsibilities in mind. Let’s join the rest of the world in extending natural law to include our natural world.

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A closing note: eight billion people are accomplishing a lot while our backs are turned. One implication is that hardly any idea we have is “new.” For that reason most academics are obsessed with literature search – constantly exploring for prior investigations of any and every aspect of interest. That’s true here. Google “geocivics” and you find hits – to work at the University of Colorado (Colorado Springs campus) on gerrymandering, and other efforts exploring the influence of geography on civics. This LOTRW post is suggesting an expanded view of the term.

[1] For true scholars (or gluttons for punishment?) here is Hobbes’ full list:

• The first law of nature is that every man ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war.
• The second law of nature is that a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth, as for peace, and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself.
• The third law is that men perform their covenants made. In this law of nature consisteth the fountain and original of justice… when a covenant is made, then to break it is unjust and the definition of injustice is no other than the not performance of covenant. And whatsoever is not unjust is just.
• The fourth law is that a man which receiveth benefit from another of mere grace, endeavour that he which giveth it, have no reasonable cause to repent him of his good will. Breach of this law is called ingratitude.
• The fifth law is complaisance: that every man strive to accommodate himself to the rest. The observers of this law may be called sociable; the contrary, stubborn, insociable, forward, intractable.
• The sixth law is that upon caution of the future time, a man ought to pardon the offences past of them that repenting, desire it.
• The seventh law is that in revenges, men look not at the greatness of the evil past, but the greatness of the good to follow.
• The eighth law is that no man by deed, word, countenance, or gesture, declare hatred or contempt of another. The breach of which law is commonly called contumely.
• The ninth law is that every man acknowledge another for his equal by nature. The breach of this precept is pride.
• The tenth law is that at the entrance into the conditions of peace, no man require to reserve to himself any right, which he is not content should be reserved to every one of the rest. The breach of this precept is arrogance, and observers of the precept are called modest.
• The eleventh law is that if a man be trusted to judge between man and man, that he deal equally between them.
• The twelfth law is that such things as cannot be divided, be enjoyed in common, if it can be; and if the quantity of the thing permit, without stint; otherwise proportionably to the number of them that have right.
• The thirteenth law is the entire right, or else…the first possession (in the case of alternating use), of a thing that can neither be divided nor enjoyed in common should be determined by lottery.
• The fourteenth law is that those things which cannot be enjoyed in common, nor divided, ought to be adjudged to the first possessor; and in some cases to the first born, as acquired by lot.
• The fifteenth law is that all men that mediate peace be allowed safe conduct.
• The sixteenth law is that they that are at controversie, submit their Right to the judgement of an Arbitrator.
• The seventeenth law is that no man is a fit Arbitrator in his own cause.
• The eighteenth law is that no man should serve as a judge in a case if greater profit, or honour, or pleasure apparently ariseth [for him] out of the victory of one party, than of the other.
• The nineteenth law is that in a disagreement of fact, the judge should not give more weight to the testimony of one party than another, and absent other evidence, should give credit to the testimony of other witnesses.

You’ll want to read her absolutely brilliant and uplifting 2021 article. But first please indulge a bit of LOTRW backstory.

Each year, come January 1, most of the world’s eight billion people share a common aspiration – to make their next 365 days “better” than the last. Definitions of “better” may vary. Some seek happiness. Some desire accomplishment. Some seek peace – whether world peace or simply peace of mind. Given the 2021 we’ve just experienced, a better 2022 seems like a low bar, whatever your aspiration..

Close to home, that’s certainly been true here at LivingontheRealWorld. Take, for example, the last few posts of 2021, which have made reference to stream of consciousness.

(In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts “to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind” of a narrator.)

But those previous posts at LOTRW date no more recently than early November! After ten years and one thousand posts (about one post every four days over the period), the LOTRW stream of consciousness slowed to an intermittent trickle in 2021; now the stream bed seems nothing more than a dry wadi. (What was/is the cause of this? You might argue that I’ve run out of ideas. Think what you want. But like everyone and everything else these days, I prefer to blame the psychological drought on climate change. Everything is drying up.)

But somewhere in the uplands of the watershed, the consciousness precip must have made its return, because the stream is running again. Here’s what it has looked like for me over the past couple of days:

One of the realities of our world of eight billion people and 200 million square miles of surface area, is that a lot happens while our backs are turned. So what do 6 billion smartphone users do? Sometimes idly, sometimes driven by FOMO, we surf the web. My search has yielded oodles of turn-of-the-calendar content. One NYT post that caught my attention mentioned a David Brooks column devoted to his annual “Sidney awards.” I checked it out.

In Mr. Brooks’ own words, “At the end of every year, I pause from the rush of events to offer the Sidney Awards, which I created in honor of the late, great philosopher Sidney Hook. The Sidneys go to some of the year’s best long-form journalism — the essays that touch the deeper human realities. During this shapeless year, waiting endlessly for this pandemic to be over, I’ve found myself drawn to stories of fascinating individuals.”

Unsurprisingly, Brooks’ offerings this year featured a number of somber pieces, plumbing great depths of sorrow and brokenness. At the end Brooks acknowledges this:

“OK. Enough grimness. Let’s find some hope. We’ve all read a zillion pieces on political polarization, but April Lawson’s essay “Building Trust Across the Political Divide,” in Comment, is like none other. The secret is that Lawson has actually been working in the field of political bridge-building, and she deftly dissects why so many of those well-intentioned efforts go wrong.”

Wow.

April Lawson’s piece, dating back all the way to the prior January, is an absolute gem. Rather than attempt a summary, I’ll let you discover it for yourselves (or, perhaps you’d already read it, as early as a  year ago?). Her analysis of our polarized predicament is insightful by itself, but learning (however belatedly – remember, we’re talking remedial reading here) about her work at Braver Angels Debate to pave a new way forward is truly energizing. Exhilarating to see that such work is ongoing, and to contemplate the possibilities. I hope you’re able to give it a careful read.

A closing note. That wasn’t the last bend in the stream-of-consciousness. The whole issue of remedial reading – the search for useful information in today’s “noisy” information world (flow) of consciousness and the attraction of chasing around the web hoping to stumble across such gems – reminded me of something I hadn’t thought about for years. In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s my statistician dad, Robert Hooke, and a colleague Terry Jeeves were both working at the Westinghouse Research Laboratories in Pittsburgh. They developed a strategy for direct search for optima in the performance of any physical or chemical system (or in seeking information on the internet?) when analytical methods were of no avail. They published a paper on the technique (Hooke R & Jeeves T A. “Direct search” solution of numerical and statistical problems. J. Ass. Comput. Mach. 8:212-29, 1961). While admitting that “direct search is a crude, brute force method having no mathematical elegance,” Hooke later suggested that the resulting large number of citations to this paper (over 270 by 1980; ballooning to over 5000 to date) hint “there are more [such intractable] problems around than one might think. Among real nonlinear multivariate problems, those that are solvable analytically or by socially acceptable numerical methods seem to constitute a set of measure zero.” Dad used to share his work along these lines with his teenage sons at the dinner table during those years. Nowadays you can find YouTube lectures on the Hooke and Jeeves direct search systems here. If he were alive today, this continuing interest in his work would (a) come as a surprise, and (b)  trigger one of his signature wry smiles…

This past week and over the next, those worldwide who are alarmed (and many of the merely concerned) by climate change are riveted on the daily news from COP-26, the latest in a multi-year series of global summits on that existential challenge.

Thousands of people have assembled in Glasgow for the event. They span the gamut – from world political leaders to Greta Thunberg to corporate executives to representatives from civil society. Let’s start with the important minority there to conduct United Nations business. They are negotiating and solemnizing the particulars necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, adapt to evolving climate threats, and stand up mechanisms and instrumentalities for financing the whole. Last week their presidency programme focused in turn on the world leaders’ summit; finance; energy; youth and public empowerment; and then nature itself. In the second week they shift attention to adaptation, loss, and damage; gender; science and innovation; transport; cities, regions, and the built environment.

This first group is vastly outnumbered by others running a so-called  Green Zone Programme of Events, offering an eclectic range of contributions from artists, corporations, civil society, universities, government agencies, and other constituencies. All are hoping to garner wider attention to their views, their skills, their needs, and their proposed solutions. An accompanying media frenzy is pushing out video, op-eds, and backstory to the rest of us.

That media coverage is quite diverse in emphasis and focus. Every point of view is finding some outlet. But in one crucial respect the messages are essentially unanimous. They all anticipate that the likely COP-26 – fuel reductions, caps on methane emissions, afforestation and the rest – remain well short of the fixes needed to bound global warming at 1.5⁰C. Faced with tough choices, nations and their leaders find themselves hesitant to step up.

But an even more worrisome challenge remains unaddressed – indeed (also unanimously) unmentioned. A quick and admittedly subjective assessment of all various agendas, schedules and sessions for the week finds one topic MIA:

The needed workforce.

Of paramount concern is the lack of the skilled workforce needed to decarbonize the economy. One estimate: to meet a US goal of clean energy by 2035 will require 900,000 workers (a fourfold increase over today?s levels; current growth trends are projected to provide less than half that number). Wind energy companies are also vigorously competing for scarce talent. Engineering skills ranging from energy assessment to project management/design are needed. Offshore projects require additional skill sets and face similar labor shortages. And the challenge doesn’t end there; the need for workforce to operate and maintain the systems coming online poses additional requirements. Consider this single example, from the October 23^rd issue of The Economist): the coming shortage of mechanics trained to repair electric vehicles. The UK alone is expected to require 90,000 newly-trained electric-vehicle mechanics by 2030. This is just one of myriad niche needs facing a global society attempting to innovate itself out anthropogenic climate change.  

The glib answer often given in response to this concern is that the needed workforce will come from the nearest-neighbors. Oil workers, including off-shore oil workers, can be retrained for the wind energy work. Automobile mechanics can be similarly retrained. And so on. But a closer look shows that such redeployment is not trivial. For example, while rotating the tires on an EV should be little different from the task for any other car, work on the electric motor or a 900-volt battery is substantially different from tinkering with a combustion engine.

What might be called climate-change workforce gaps would be problem enough if they were occurring in isolation. But that’s not what’s happening in today’s real world. In 2020, economists predicted a 90% economy after the global lockdowns. The recovery of restaurants, hotels, bars and other businesses in the entertainment sectors would be slow. Travel and tourism would also struggle to bounce back. The recovery has in fact been slow, but not because of reduced demand. Instead it has proved to be labor shortages that are forcing these businesses to reduce hours of operation, occupancy, and delay and stretch service provision. Crew shortages are forcing airlines to cancel hundreds of flights. A post-pandemic shortage of housing stems in part from shortages of construction labor. Supply chains of every description, from computer chips for automobiles to this year’s Christmas presents, have all been disrupted, again aggravated by corresponding dislocations in labor supply. In many retail outlets, the product advertising that used to greet customers has been replaced by prominent “we’re hiring!” signs.

(In fact, there is historic precedent for this. Prior to the Black Death, the bubonic plague which killed a third of the European population over the time span of a year or between 1346-1353, feudalism held sway. Nobility enjoyed wealth while laborers were held in poverty. But in the years following, the labor shortage gave the serfs the upper hand. The middle class was born.)

The world will successfully decarbonize, build resilience to natural hazards, and protect habitats and the environment only by growing the needed workforce. This in turn requires that governments and peoples develop and implement policy toward this end.

What policies would be beneficial?

A recent AMS Policy Program Study, Who Will Make Sense of All the Data? Assessing the Impacts of Technology on the Weather, Water, and Climate Workforce, provides some preliminary insights. The authors synthesized expert perspectives with published views. All see a future marked by rapid, continual, and sustained innovation and social change. In particular:

• Proliferating sensors, platforms, and networks are making data more available
• Advances in chip technology and cloud resources are spurring the uptake of artificial intelligence and machine learning (as well as a shift in the dominant programming language)

These trends hold corresponding implications for the weather-, water-, and climate workforce:

• Data management and systems-thinking skills are needed
• Continual innovation favors workers who are adaptable, who can quickly adopt and master new tools
• The ability to problem-solve and think at a systems level need to be broadly brought to bear across WWC science.
• Continual development of new technologies will likely also favor workers committed to and comfortable with lifelong learning.
• Workers with these qualifications will be highly sought after not just within the WWC enterprise, but beyond it, posing challenges for employers
• The challenges go beyond those individual employers can address.

Community-wide, even nationwide policies will be needed:

• These extend both to renewed approaches to K-12 and higher education; as well as continuing training and education for mid- and late-career workforce.
• Here as elsewhere in society, improvement in diversity, equity, and justice is paramount.

Two closing comments. First, policies must necessarily favor the carrot rather than the stick. As the post-covid shortage of service workers daily demonstrates, peoples can’t be forced to work at specific tasks. They need incentives, not regulations. And while straight economic incentives are necessary, they will not be sufficient. Work needs to be meaningful, satisfying, productive.

Second, it might seem that the weather, water, and climate workforce is the merest sliver of a much larger workforce that is the one that truly matters. True enough. But consider this: the environmental intelligence that is mined from weather, water, and climate data is the fundamental starting point for guiding some $100T of food, water, and energy infrastructure investments that must be made worldwide over the next twenty years. Otherwise, much of that colossal sum will be directed in wasteful ways. And the world will fail to meet COP-26 targets.

The October 23-29 print edition of The Economist features a cover story entitled Instant Economics: the real time revolution. The story is good news for the Weather (Water, and Climate) Enterprise, and good news for the larger world.

(To grossly simplify), the article notes that throughout the history of economics, the relevant data – levels of economic activity, employment, money flows, etc. – have been developed and made available only months (in some cases many months) after the fact. This may not have been too injurious to the advance of economic theory on timescales of decades, but it has limited its practical application. This has been particularly vexing to governments attempting to adjust fiscal and monetary policy to the needs of time and circumstance.

According to The Economist, the exigencies of the pandemic have combined with increasingly muscular and capable information technology to change all that. The result was that governments worldwide were able to see the economic impacts of the global and national shutdowns at the time of the pandemic’s onset. They were able to institute quick-fix policies, track their effects, detect emerging consequences (both good and bad), and adjust and adapt accordingly. They could identify needs; target and distribute stimulus checks; recommend government pledges to buy vaccines, etc. early – well before shortfalls in economic activity and sector-by-sector impacts would have shown up in traditional data. The article explores in some detail the emergence of new digital proxies for economic activity, based on novel private-sector data sets – tracking the mobility of mobile phone pings, or interpreting OpenTable real-time estimates of restaurant use, and myriad others – that make nimble reaction possible. They contrast this present-day government agility with the slow response and missteps that characterized government interventions as recently as the 2007-2008 global financial crisis.

This story should sound familiar to meteorologists. A similar shift occurred in our field – only it began a bit earlier – actually, 180 years ago. Prior to that time, meteorologists exchanged weather information by letter. By this means, it was just barely possible, and only long after the fact, to piece together occasional vague pictures of patterns in weather and their movements. The invention of the telegraph changed all that. Telegraph operators began sharing local weather data over their lines. Weather patterns and their movements came more sharply into focus. Worldwide, national weather services came into being.

Initially, those services were confined to nowcasts – depictions of prevailing conditions. But not long after, weather forecasting became a thing. And if we “forecast by analogy” in view of the vibrancy of the new data-based economic research (also documented in the article), it doesn’t take too much imagination to envision near-to-intermediate term improvements over the next decade in the quality, number, and specificity of economic forecasts.

That matters, because weather forecasts are about more than public safety in the face of weather hazards. They are also vital to wringing the last bit of economic value out of weather benefits to sensitive sectors. And these touch virtually every aspect of the economy – from the obvious, such as agriculture, water resources, and energy use and renewable-energy availability, to the more subtle, such as ground-, air-, sea-, and riverine transportation or public buying preferences in the face of weather or even election turnouts.

To be fair, weather predictions have always been used to guide economic activity as well as protect people and property from harm. This goes back long before the recent impact-based decision support services (IDSS) label was applied. Business and governments have sought and received such service from the National Weather Service and the larger Weather Enterprise for decades. But climate change, and new vulnerabilities of communities and economies to disruption of critical infrastructure are driving growing complexity, urgency, and stakes of such work. They’re also making it more important to take into account not just the connections between the big-picture weather patterns and what goes on in local weather details, but the corresponding connections between macro-economics and the outlook and proper strategies for the micro-economic sphere – individual corporations and small business. The new interest in and understanding of these economic connections, and new analytic capabilities for teasing them out, make it likely that the weather (and climate) information will be wielded more adeptly across all walks of life, and that value of weather (and climate) forecasts will grow commensurately.

The full Economist article notes that this creative destruction of economics (to use Schumpeter’s term) is creating new winners (“collaborators”) and losers (“lone wolves”) among economic researchers, with “lab leaders” somewhere in between.

A word, especially to early-career scientists in our field: anticipate that something similar will happen across meteorology – and at the nexus of these two major disciplines. Embrace this opportunity! Supplement your meteorological nous with enough background in business and economics to pull your weight in multi-disciplinary collaboration; enhance your usefulness (and personal brand) further by acquiring some familiarity with artificial intelligence. AMS journals can help – including both the now-venerable Weather and Society and the newbie, Artificial Intelligence for the Earth Systems. Learn more about related topics at the upcoming 2022 AMS Annual Meeting (including the 38^th Conference on Environmental Information Technologies and the 21^st Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Environmental Science and so much more).

Do this and you can write your own ticket over the course of your career. And help a needy, challenged world at the same time.

What are you waiting for?

stream of consciousness: a narrative mode or method that attempts “to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which [sic] pass through the mind” of a narrator.

When I was in high school, my English teachers introduced me to this notion and terminology, as well as a few bits of the corresponding literary genre. It was all eye-opening and fascinating.

Years later, coming up on the eleventh anniversary of LOTRW (that’ll be around the end of this month) and over 990 posts (taking the WordPress metadata at face value) I’ve had opportunities to reflect on blogs as inherently a “stream-of-consciousness” form. In fact, one of their attractions from the outset and all along has been the idea that at any point it would be okay to write about whatever happened to be on my mind versus sticking to some specified path.

So here’s an example. In response to the previous post, a remembrance of Francis Bretherton, I received an e-mail from Roger Pielke, Sr. After some kind words, he offered a link to a recent paper he’d co-authored, entitled Environmental and Social Risks to Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health—A Bottom-Up, Resource-Focused Assessment Framework, noting that “it built on the framework [Bretherton] advocated.”

Here’s the Pielke, Sr., et al. abstract, quoted verbatim:

Risks from human intervention in the climate system are raising concerns with respect to individual species and ecosystem health and resiliency. A dominant approach uses global climate models to predict changes in climate in the coming decades and then to downscale this information to assess impacts to plant communities, animal habitats, agricultural and urban ecosystems, and other parts of the Earth’s life system. To achieve robust assessments of the threats to these systems in this top-down, outcome vulnerability approach, however, requires skillful prediction, and representation of changes in regional and local climate processes, which has not yet been satisfactorily achieved. Moreover, threats to biodiversity and ecosystem function, such as from invasive species, are in general, not adequately included in the assessments. We discuss a complementary assessment framework that builds on a bottom-up vulnerability concept that requires the determination of the major human and natural forcings on the environment including extreme events, and the interactions between these forcings. After these forcings and interactions are identified, then the relative risks of each issue can be compared with other risks or forcings in order to adopt optimal mitigation/adaptation strategies. This framework is a more inclusive way of assessing risks, including climate variability and longer-term natural and anthropogenic-driven change, than the outcome vulnerability approach which is mainly based on multi-decadal global and regional climate model predictions. We therefore conclude that the top-down approach alone is outmoded as it is inadequate for robustly assessing risks to biodiversity and ecosystem function. In contrast the bottom-up, integrative approach is feasible and much more in line with the needs of the assessment and conservation community. A key message of our paper is to emphasize the need to consider coupled feedbacks since the Earth is a dynamically interactive system. This should be done not just in the model structure, but also in its application and subsequent analyses. We recognize that the community is moving toward that goal and we urge an accelerated pace. 

Hmm. What’s particularly fascinating here are the echoes to end-use-based climate-assessment approaches that have been proposed by Richard Moss and collaborators, and that are currently being pursued, with help from emerging networks such as SCAN (the Science for Climate Action Network). The basic idea – greatly over-simplified – is to complement conventional assessments (that start with scientific findings and consider the possible impacts) with assessments that start with societal questions and concerns and drill down to identify the existing science that is relevant and/or new science that would be most useful to addressing those particular societal needs.

Wound up reading Roger’s paper in its entirety and forwarding the link to colleagues in the Policy Program here at AMS (full disclosure: who are pursuing work along SCAN-like lines with support from NOAA’s Climate Program Office). Might add, this came as the United States has finally sorted out its path forward for developing the next U.S. National Climate Assessment.

In turn, this material called to mind a similar policy shift at the US National Weather Service that has been underway over the past few years – a move from production-of-forecast focus to a starting point that begins with end-use (also known as impact-based decision support, or IDSS) and works back.

But (building on today’s metaphor) that’s a bit further downstream, possibly (no promises!) the subject of a future post…

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Drifting around the final bend-in-today’s-stream-of-consciousness: Paul Robeson, and his powerful (and evolving) renditions of Old Man River (the video here provides his latter-day version of the song’s lyrics – changes described in the Wikipedia link above to his biography). The man was an extraordinary artist (singer and actor) but much more – a lawyer, political activist, McCarthyist target, athlete. His life story is painful to recall but inspiring in like measure – a microcosm of the rough road facing Americans of color throughout the 20^th century. Perhaps you have the time for a bit of a read, a little remembrance, and some soul-searching in light of today’s troubles.