Reporting from the Summer ESIP meeting in Knoxville, Tn.

Tom Wilbanks has just finished talking about the changing CO2 scenario picture. His talk concluded that we are now looking at higher-end scenarios (up to 1200 ppm CO2) that will take the planet into a climate environment that is very risk filled. So the high-end scenarios that the IPCC were most concerned about are now the middle range expectations for the near future. The mitigation efforts have failed to gain sufficient international impetus to maintain the hope for a limited climate change response to human activities. The focus is shifting to adaptation.

Eileen Shea from NOAA is now talking about the new NOAA Climate Service. The job for NOAA is to enable individuals to take responsible actions at all levels, from local responses to national policy. NOAA will need to be a central partner in the proposed National Climate Service, which is a multi-agency effort. Check out the NOAA strategic plan on the web: www.noaa.gov/ngsp

NOAA is looking to build more agency-wide climate capabilities so that all of the parts of NOAA are prepared to work together toward a more climate literate public. NOAA is looking for people who can walk between science and decision making. This is a move away from a pure-science effort.

NOAA has an interest and a responsibility to support mitigation efforts and to model how climate change might lead to extreme weather events. This fall, NOAA will be formally submitting a package to Congress to authorize the Climate Service.

The NOAA Climate Services Portal is at www.climate.gov
They are looking for user feedback.

Google is moving ahead with their gigabit internet decision

A thousand communities await their decision, but you have to believe that Google's real intention here was to put a clear light on the lack of world-class broadband in American cities.
Check out their website: Google Fiber to the Home

Here in Santa Barbara, we never got to the point of hi-jinks and cyber-begging, but you have to believe that the local mix of internet mavens and Hollywood stars might prove a highly visible target for Google's effort. Once you get Brad Pitt, Al Gore, and Oprah up on gigabit internet, you can forget about the mayor of Outerbumfrak buzz cutting her hair and tattooing "I love Google" on her bleeding scalp.

So Google, if you are indeed still pondering where to put your gigabit internet, ponder this: Santa Barbara will put you on the map like no other small town in the US. Of course, it's already a Google Map, but you know what we mean.

Certainly enough ignorance to go around

Another week, and a week of reading through another flurry of aggravated blogs and blog comments on topics environmental, political, and other. One of the common strategies in these postings is to accuse someone of ignorance. "That ignorant so-and-so can't seem to understand ________." Calling someone ignorant is an increasingly easy, and unfortunately increasingly non-trivial attack these days. A Google search for "ignorant" culls up more than 30 million hits. Of course, a similar search for "expert" results in more than a hundred million hits.


Just as knowledge can and might well be considered to have a wide variety of types, so too does ignorance. The top of this list, up in the rarified climes of professional expertise, is the increasing ignorance of scientists in the face of an increasing deluge of scientific information (publications) and data resources. Even those in tiny specialties have seen the content load of new science double every few years. Some decades ago when I was a graduate student at Penn, I shared a house with three medical students. After their required specialty rotations each of them decided that pathology might be the only real occupation for their future. "We actually know so little about the human body," they lamented, "It might be safer to study them after they're dead." Let me call this type of ignorance "professional-ignorance." While scientists do their best to keep up and keep pace with the information load, they are all a little guilty of this. In their defense, they are the folks who face the actual precipice of the unknown--the edge of knowledge; and they are tasked to expand this knowledge envelope for us all. Their work defines the boundary between ignorance and knowability. However, "professional ignorance" is not the ignorance I'm usually reading about in the blogosphere,  even though science-bashing is back in vogue.


The next type of ignorance we find is what I would call "educated-ignorance." There are far too few hours in a day or even a year to stay on top of all of the many possible topics of interest to any one individual. If even the experts have a hard time in their own fields, what sort of chance does anybody else have? Educated-ignorance is pretty much my life. I've spent several years learning how to learn various subjects, but I'm more or less (sometimes, I hope much less) ignorant about any of these, as I swim the mighty currents of an omnipresent information overload. Educated-ignorance is reflexive enough to understand its shortcomings. It is the knowledge virus of the information age. Fortunately, its victims are also savvy enough in just-in-time learning to turn a temporary lack of understanding into a more robust purview on any one selected topic. The educated-ignorant individual is appropriately suspicious of the entire notion of certainty. For even as she can, with some effort, cure her ignorance of, say, the impact of volcanic dust on jet engines, or the mysteries of credit default swaps, she knows that, in the weeks ahead, her lack of attention to these topics will increase her ignorance of them.  Calling someone who understands educated-ignorance "ignorant" has no real effect. They are prone to agree with you.


The remaining realm of ignorance is where its invective is based. It is used mostly by people who have selected a few cherished sources of information (perhaps a radio talk-show host or a famous blog). The insult is directed at everyone who have either chosen other sources of information or who have disagreements with the writer's sources. The writer is usually certain that the messages his sources have revealed are so evident and so rational that anyone who listened to them would have to agree with them, and so would agree with him. This certainty is the launchpad for any number of claims of ignorance in others. It also reveals a more focused form of ignorance in the writer. As Eric Hoffer noted, "We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand." Let's call this "infallible-ignorance." The infallibly ignorant has gathered all of her knowledge eggs into a tiny basket, and defends this with an unbridled ferocity. Here we find the bellowing of the demagogue, and the bluster of the true believer. The infallibly ignorant may have an under-developed skill in researching beyond the sources they trust, and can never understand the depth of their own ignorance.  They can change, of course. Most of us were like this at some point in high-school or college; clinging to the right to bullshit our way through life. Most people do move on, but the infallibly ignorant just dig in. 


While there is certainly enough ignorance in the world for each of us to have our share, we can try our best to avoid the folly of infallible-ignorance, and to discover and overcome the limits of our knowledge at least for another day.


Image: calm, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (2.0) image from manuel_72's photostream

Hello again to books, and a sad farewell to book stores

I've spent, over my adult life, probably the equivalent of an entire year browsing in book stores. This is after I made enough money not to hang out in libraries. My wife has a broad range of browsing destinations, but she always knew where to find me... at the nearest book store. For twenty years we've budgeted at least fifty dollars a month for books. Book store gift certificates have long been welcome birthday and holiday gifts, and eagerly spent. I've been a member of the Seminary Coop book store in Chicago for many years: they sent me dozens of books seamail (remember that?) when we lived in Kyoto, Japan. I'm a great fan of Kramers Books in DC, and will spend a good part of any day in Portland, OR at Powells World of Books. I write books.

Suddenly, this week. I feel like a bookstore quisling; like I'm in foreign territory out for no good. And there is one simple reason for this: my iPad.  I have several eBook readers on my new iPad, and a few dozen titles, and I'm thinking I might never buy another block of celulose again. I'm reading at least as much as before, only my transactions are all online. I went browsing today downtown, and found a few titles I might have purchased on the spot. Except now, the only spot that matters is the one on the Amazon, or Apple, or other ebook seller site.  Oh, I'll certainly succumb to that great new photography or occasional architecture book, simply because the print resolution is satisfying. But when I wander into my local book store, my wallet mostly stays firmly in my pocket.

This scares me, since I figure if I'm not buying books, given my history and love for the product, then who will? Or should I simply step up a bit to look at the big picture, and figure that book stores are the modern equivalent of telegraph offices or stagecoach corrals. My son is in grad school, reading more books than he ever figured he might, but his son or daughter might need to be told of the days when reading materials were sold in stores as books. My latest novel has been much more successful as an eBook than a paperback. And my next novel might not ever see an ink and paper incarnation. A moment of sadness is a small indulgence here. My wife will still know where to find me: at the nearest coffee shop with wifi, downloading another book.

Gigabit technology and University research

While the UC Santa Barbara already shares one of the fastest internet connections on the planet, students and others who live away from campus find that their ability to connect to academic resources from home can seriously impact their ability to work. Google's gigabit internet fiber to the home would reconnect these scholars and students to the resources that are now only available physically on campus. This would also allow University alumni and others who want to access resources from camus in homes around Santa Barbara.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcelgermain/3840597155/sizes/s/ CC licensed by MarcelGermain

What can we do with gigabit internet? What can't we do!

Google's enticing offer to build out test sites for gigabit internet (fiber to the home) opens the door to the next level of computer networking. The difference between the internet (WAN) and the local network (LAN) disappears, and we are all as connected as the devices in the same building. In one move, this fact demolishes that threshold between downloading content and using content. The download delay disappears and the game, the videoconference, the movie we need is just HERE.

Usability experts have long known that the key to psychological comfort in an interface is the feeling of control. Push a button and something happens NOW. Want to see that HD video preview? Push a button and watch it. Want to send a file to a colleague, push a button and it's there. Of course, the need for speed will also push our expectations. In a couple years we will be hungering for that 4k video feed. Of course, that's the glory of fiber optics--change out the hardware on both ends and a gigabit connection can become a 16 gigabit connection.

Bring it on Google! Santa Barbara is ready for you!
photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sirwiseowl/170066780/sizes/s/ CC licensed by sirwiseowl

Earth Science Meeting in DC #4

Jake Weltzin from the USGS is talking about using phenology to study climate change effects. Phenology is the study of the variations that occur seasonally in plants and animals. When leaves turn color in that fall, that's a phenological event. The timing of these events offers scientists great clues for climate change. In a recent study 62% of species are showing predictable changes in response to climate warming. This means their springtime changes are occurring earlier. For some species, such as migratory species, this can be a deadly trend. The USGS Phenology effort is looking for student scientists and others to help perform a hundred thousand observations. This is a great opportunity for science students to get involved.

Earth Science Meeting in DC #3

Bryant Cramer, Associate Director for Geography, USGS has stepped up to the podium. He notes that it is the uncertainty in the physical models for the future that earth science decision makers need to manage to be able to drive processes/policies such as Carbon cap-and-trade.  The critical first step is to take earth system models to a new level of certainty. He also noted that when USGS stopped charging for Landsat scenes the amount of data delivered skyrocketed.

Earth Science Meeting in DC #2

Pai-Yei Whung, Chief Scientist at the US EPA has stepped up to the podium. The EPA needs to quantify the impacts of its regulations to assure that they are beneficial for society. The data to information (through tools) to decisions and assessment requires the best available science practices, including observational data analysis.

In the Midwest there were two 500-year floods in 15 years (1993 and 2008). Increased water flows can cause sewer systems to fail. The increase of the likelihood of reoccurring sewage incidents in the water system due to climate changes may require new standards for sewer systems.

Dr. Whung notes that "Community is KEY" to the AirNOW effort at the EPA. What are the emergent Internet-based tools that would help the EPA to grow this community effort?

Earth Science Meeting in DC #1

The opening plenary of the ESIP Winter meeting at DC is just underway.
Listening to Michael Freilich, the director of NASA's Earth Science division.
He's talking about how the measurements we make about the Earth need to inform the models that can tell us the longer-term picture of the Earth's climate.
Sea level rise is a combination of adding water and heating the water (about half from each today).
"Snapshots for most earth systems don't work." We need longer-term measurements.
NASA makes its data available freely. Recently, the European Space Agency has also been moving to the NASA position.

Helen Wood, Senior Advisor for Satellite and Information Services at NOAA takes the podium. She mentions that the NASA open data policy has helped NOAA to open up its data policies. NOAA is looking to build a National Climate Service that can pull together all of NOAA's efforts in this area. NOAA is also interested in sustainable fisheries and sustainable coastal communities, as well as weather forecasting and science.

Eight Years in the Bush Leagues: Got a long way to recover from that

The report back from the IOC (and congrats to Rio!) is that nothing Obama could have said or done would have made Chicago more attractive. Rio had a exceedingly good point about sending the Olympics to a new continent. There is more to this than Rio's merits. The great majority of IOC members travel internationally, and comments back to the US delegation confirm that travel to the US is now a "harrowing experience" at the border for many nationalities (thanks to Boing Boing for this link).

Of all the changes in travel over the past several years, and in response to 9/11, the most impractical and counterproductive for America has been the level of harassment that foreign nationals now face to enter the US. Of course, several nations have reciprocated and so US travelers have found boarder crossings equally difficult. It is not that border security is unimportant, but it should be done with a greater economy. Instead of fingerprinting millions of travelers, we should be training border agents to be more perceptive. Keep the crossing secure, but don't make every foreign traveler feel like a criminal.

The sight of a gathering of Republican activists cheering the announcement that Chicago had lost its bid for the Olympics (assuming here that they are not closet Brazil supporters) is simply sad. It shows are complete lack of class. Makes one happy that crowd is no longer in the White House.

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuckincustoms/351212669/sizes/m/ stuck in customs cc license

teabaggers: lie down with fleas, you may catch more than an itch

Watching the recent "teabagger" protests, and glancing at their organizers' blogs, it becomes obvious that these people are new at the game. They have no real center for their message, and they welcome anyone who has any sort of protest to voice. The problem with not doing some kind of in-group policing is that you end up being held hostage by the fringes of your protest. That one jackass over there wearing the KKK hood, or waving the swastika or some other blatantly offensive sign, becomes the poster child for your protest. On the left, this hijacking was often accomplished by someone with kerosine and an American flag. That one photo took all the headlines and the content of the speeches never made the front page. It didn't take long for antiwar protest organizers to learn to help their protest sympathizers stay on message. If the teabaggers don't learn the same lesson, they will find their protests to be increasingly anti-productive. And if they are really not concerned by the fellow in the KKK hood or waving a sign that threatens the life of the president, then they don't understand that free speech and hate speech are two quite different things. They also confuse these on their blogs, which gives their sympathizers license to go out and do the same in public. Here is an illustrative video from CNN.
Every administration needs a loyal opposition, so nobody wins when the opposition is hijacked by jackasses.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eikootje/209318417/  eikootje, used under CC license

The President is too smart to talk to kids, oh my!

This is really what the fear is out there in GOP land. Obama, it seems, is just too smart, to convincing, too great a speaker to be allowed to talk to children. Children! Innocent and locked into their public schools where the President can talk to them without their PARENTS standing ready to clamp hands over their tender ears should the President sound too convincing. The horror of having elected someone who can speak! Why, the world has not seen anything like him since... well, since we started electing people like the last one. Clinton could talk up a storm, only he tended to like his own voice a little too much. Doesn't the GOP remember "The Great Communicator?" Reagan also gave a talk to kids in school.
Here is a clip from the cable news where a Republican strategist lays out this line of argument. Just listen to Joe Watkins and decide for yourself. If you are a Republican, can you really believe that the Nation does not deserve a President that is intelligent, passionate, and convincing? If you're from any other political side... just listen and shake your head.

Zombie Walks and Tea Parties

The same day that 2,000 tea party goers went to D.C., 5,000 people showed up in Fremont, Seattle for a record-breaking zombie walk. Fremont is, of course, as much or more of a sister city to Santa Barbara than any of its official sisters. Fremont took in a covey of Santa Barbara artists in the early '80s, and they brought with them the Solstice Celebration, which is now a major Seattle event. Of course, Seattle is a big town, with big-town ideas: like 500 naked bicyclists leading the parade (try that on State Street!).

What do tea parties and zombie walks have in common? They both celebrate something really... dead. Tea parties like to believe that the corpse of big-bank capitalism can be raised again, and the same gravy train that derailed (at which time we discovered... THAT'S NOT GRAVY! EEWW!) can be reassembled, so they can get along with their vision of prosperity.

Meanwhile the rest of the country is looking ahead at the next dream, something emergent and potentially wonderful, even though it might not lead to a billion-dollar bonus at some pirate investment bank.

Tea party zombie walkers, put some zip in your step. Carry the corpse with some elan. Why not. Everyone else is laughing. So go ahead. Step up and go for the full Thriller tango.

Green Academy ties the line at the beach

Drive along Cabrillo this week and you will see dozens of palm trees decke out with ribbons. These ribbons symbolize the scale of sea level rise in the ice on Greenland. Like the lightblueline project, the Santa Barbara High School Green Academy effort uses public art to make a scientific statement. You can visit the green academy website here: http://www.thegreenacademy.org/sea/

Governor tells staff to prepare for warming

Not waiting for the line to get drawn in Santa Barbara, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, issued an executive order in November for State agencies to prepare reports on the impacts of sea-level rise due to climate change. Here is the text of the order: http://gov.ca.gov/executive-order/11036/

Not waiting for the Governor, The New Media Studio and the Donald Bren School at UCSB initiated its own study of the impacts of sea-level rise on the City of Santa Barbara last March. And so, by the time the State is just convening its first conference on sea-level rise, Santa Barbara is going to have an initial study completed and ready to use as a model for other cities and coastal regions in California. The City has been very helpful and cooperative with this study, and again Santa Barbara has an opportunity to take a leading position in addressing the challenges of climate change.

As lightblueline also noted, the expected sea-level rise this century is potentially up to 1.5 meters, which, using a conservative linear estimation puts the sea level up more than seven meter in 500 years.

The point of gathering information about future impacts is to assess the various responses we can make, from cutting carbon in the near term, to hardening the coastline if we fail to stop the progress of climate change. Knowing the relative costs of all the options lets us determine, in purely economic terms, the best path. In terms of keeping Santa Barbara's ocean down by the waterfront, for reasons that include economics, but also include our moral obligation to our children's childen to leave the planet like we found it, there is no substitute for reducing greenhouse gasses in the short term as a world-wide goal. This is where the Governor will soon have help from the new White House.

Obama promises to put the US on the forefront of fighting climate change

This makes local action much more proactive and much less reactive. Once we have a federal plan to limit carbon (to match the California and the Santa Barbara plans), and once the current administration handlers are not censoring their own scientists, I would guess we will be better prepared to talk about climate change and its longer-term local impacts.

Of course the only reason property values tanked in Santa Barbara was because we didn't paint the line (thanks Jerry!).

Just in time for the republican convention

I looked at the National Hurricane Center and saw that Gustav is headed directly for New Orleans and should arrive there just in time to remind the nation and the planet how seriously deficient the Bush administration's job was with Katrina, and just how much more of the same we would expect from a McCain administration. We can only hope that the people on the coast are finding safety this time around, although the preparations for the next hurricane might still leave New Orleans swamped again.  

Georgie, that's a heck of a job you're doing!

Kris Krug: Meeting Facilitator Extraordinaire

On a non Climate Change note: I've been working at UC Santa Barbara on a project to plan a whole new Web 2.0 academic social network service. We gathered forty experts from all over the nation to do a one day design charrette. Wanting to get the most out of the day I turned to another expert, this time an expert meeting facilitator: Kris Krug from Rain City Studios in Vancouver, BC.

Kris has done a number of barcamps and other meetings, so I was confident he could keep these uber-nerds on topic for the whole day. With Kris at the helm of the open-space-style meeting day we had probably the best single day meeting most people in the room can remember. At the end of the day one participant said that she'd never had so much fun working so hard. We ended up with seven vision graphic posters and 56 report outs in one day.

Since then a number of participants have asked me how I did it.  So I take a lot of the credit whenever possible... :-)  only I could not have done it at all without Kris.  Kris kept the whole room moving at the speed of conversation. So if you're looking for someone to take control of your next one-day workshop... you know who to call.

Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment

I'm at the University of New Hampshire, where we are getting a report on current situation of climate change. This study is also outlined at ClimateChoices .  Note: this website also looks at California. Cameron Wake is outlining the difference between two futures... one that could be catastrophic and the other, which can be adapted to. Under the high-emissions scenario, New Hampshire's summers will feel like those in North Carolina by the end of the century. 

A range of expected climate features can be predicted. For example, the models all point to more extreme precipitation events. The "100 year" floods might happen every ten years. These events also impact waste water treatment plants around the area.  Under the higher emissions scenario, most of the maple forests in the Northeast will be gone by the end of the century.

In terms of the IPCC (conservative) 17 inch sea level rise, the 100 year flood plain puts large parts of Boston at risk. The current 100 year flood plain becomes the 2 year flood plain. One event like the 100 year flood under the new sea level would cost Boston 70-90 billion dollars in damage.

All of these changes can be, at least in part, avoided if we reduce carbon emissions in the short term.