by J. Marshall Shepherd, AMS President. The full text was posted earlier today on his blog, Still Here and Thinking.
This week NOAA, the parent agency for the National Weather Service (NWS), announced a hiring freeze at a time when its vacancy rate is already around 10%. I understand that this number is near 20% for the Washington, D.C. area NWS Office. At this point, pause and consider public safety. As we enter the severe weather/tornado season, the Sequester has forced the hand of our NOAA management and possibly jeopardized the American public’s safety, stifled scientific capacity, obliterated morale within NOAA/NWS, and dampened hopes for the next generation of federal meteorological workforce. Beyond safety, we have increasingly clear evidence that weather is important to our economy, a critical consideration for an agency in the Department of Commerce.
Now to be clear, I know, personally, the senior level managers at NOAA/NWS very well: they will do everything within their power to adjust and mitigate impact. This commentary is really not about them.
Like our dedicated military, border patrol agents, police officers, and firefighters, NOAA employees provide a valuable public service that affects our lives every day, including warnings and alerts. A community would be outraged at cuts to a nearby Fire Station staff, particularly during a rash of arsons. Additionally, NOAA/NWS personnel are increasingly missing as subject matter experts for major Emergency Management training and conferences.
The vibrant and critical private weather enterprise adds value to data, models, and warnings from NWS. I have often joked that NOAA is to the private sector weather enterprise, what the potato farmer is to a company that makes French fries. It is a vital partnership, which includes research and applications from academic partners as well. The AMS Washington Forum will bring together these sectors for a vital meeting next week, including the increasingly important discussion about creation of a U.S. Weather Commission.
I am fearful of what is happening in our community with draconian sequester cuts, challenges to travel/science meeting attendance and other stresses on science/R&D support within NOAA, including journal publications, fees, etc. If you couple this with looming concerns about weather satellite gaps, computing capacity to support advanced modeling, and employee morale, we are slipping down a slippery slope of “eroding” the U.S. federal weather enterprise. Since industry, academia, and federal agencies work closely together, these effects will ripple throughout the broader community.
The public may take for granted a tornado warning based on Doppler radar or a hurricane forecast based on satellite information. Likewise, the public probably just assumes that they will have 5-9 day warning for storms like Sandy; 15-60 minutes lead time for tornadic storms approaching their home; weather data for safe air travel; or reliable information to avoid hazardous weather threatening military missions. However, these capabilities can and will degrade if we cut weather balloon launches, cut investments in the latest computers for modeling, reduce radar maintenance, delay satellite launches, or shatter employee morale. We are accustomed to progress and innovation, but I fear capabilities will regress instead, jeopardizing our lives, property, and security. And I have not even spoken about the challenges that a changing climate adds to the weather mix.
At my university, I see young, vibrant, and talented students everyday who embody the next generation weather enterprise. They are taking notice of what is happening, and I believe this seriously jeopardizes our future workforce.
As we enter the active spring tornado season, let’s hope the sequester season ends, before the hurricane season begins.
AMS Teaching Excellence Award Renamed after Edward N. Lorenz
Almost five years after his passing, the AMS is honoring Edward N. Lorenz by renaming the Teaching Excellence Award after the pioneer meteorologist. Best known as the founder of the chaos theory and butterfly effect, Lorenz was also an influential professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for decades.
According to Peter Lamb in his recommendation to rename the award:
Edward N. Lorenz was arguably the most accomplished research meteorologist of the twentieth century. His seminal contributions in several key areas of our science today either carry his name or a name that he provided. At MIT, his principal instructional role was to introduce multiple generations of beginning doctoral students, many with little or no background in meteorology, to the challenges and rigor of the theoretical essentials of our science. Those lectures were renowned for their consistently very high standards of preparation and presentation, just like Professor Lorenz’s external seminars.
Lorenz received the MIT Department of Meteorology’s “Best Teacher” award the first year student evaluations were conducted as well as subsequent years. He went on to win the Kyoto Prize and AMS Carl Gustaf Rossby Research Medal, just a few of his numerous honors. Many of Lorenz’s students went on to distinguished research careers. Several were recognized with the AMS Rossby Medal and Charney Awards, and two of his past students received the AMS Teaching Excellence Award.
The AMS Council passed the recommendation in January, renaming the award “The Edward N. Lorenz Teaching Excellence Award.” Nominations for all awards are now open with a deadline of May 1. The Council encourages members and friends of the AMS to submit nominations for consideration for the Society Awards, Lecturers, Named Symposia, Fellows, Honorary Members, and nominees for elective Officers and Councilors of the Society here.
For Science and Discovery, Videoconferencing Won't Get It
by J. Marshall Shepherd, AMS President. The full text was posted earlier today on his blog, Still Here and Thinking.
I am sitting here during coffee break at the NASA Precipitation Science Team Meeting in Annapolis, Maryland. This meeting is a gathering of the world’s top scientists working with the TRMM, GPM, and other NASA programs related to precipitation, weather, climate, and hydrology.
A prevailing lament of many of my federal colleagues attending this meeting is the concern about the ability to attend scientific meetings because of travel restrictions and sequestration/budget issues. As I ponder their laments, I reflect on whether (1) these colleagues are spoiled federal employees not adjusting to austere budgets, (2) these colleagues are victims of a perception about federal employee travel because of a few isolated bad choices (e.g. GSA conference story publicized in the media, or (3) I have a bias as AMS president because we host meetings and have an interest at stake.
Here are four things that I come up with:
We risk stifling scientific and technological innovation: Yes, budgets are tight and some travel/conference activities (a very small percentage) are questionable. However, as someone that has attended scientific meetings and conferences for over two decades, these meetings are very intense, intellectually-stimulating, and advance the science. They are not vacations or frivolous. I arrived at the meeting room yesterday at 7:45 am, sat through various sessions, met with two different working groups/planning committees, and discussed a potential new scientific collaboration. I got to dinner at 8:15 p.m. There is a movement towards the use of various videoconferencing solutions. Those advocating these measures have completely missed the point that the most valued aspects of attending conferences and meetings are the “hallway” meetings, poster sessions, lunch/dinner meetings that lead to potentially transformative research, or the chances to caucus with colleagues on a new method or technology. (AMS Executive Director Keith Seitter made these points in The Front Page in December.) The presentations (what gets videoconferenced) are important but often secondary or tertiary to the value of such meetings.
All professions stay current on their topic, why should scientists and engineers be different?: I cannot imagine any profession or industry not wanting its employees to be current on the latest methods, techniques, and discussions. I am certain that leading companies continuously train their employees. Scientific meetings are “the training” for many professionals. For example, our AMS annual meeting has up to 20+ “conferences” within one conference. It also has various short-courses, town halls, and briefings. I argue that we risk “dumbing down” our U.S .scientific workforce with such arcane travel restrictions. At a time when we need to push the innovation envelope for society, we risk folding it up and discarding it. As an example, our Air Force pilots are the best in the world. They develop their skills through course work and flight simulators. However, at some point, they have to get into a real aircraft and interact with other pilots to gain knowledge, experience, and “tricks” of the trade.
Another offshoot of federal travel restrictions is our standing with the international community. U.S. presence is essential at many international meetings. Many of our collaborators and colleagues abroad are also being affected in terms of their own meeting planning, expectations, and the possibility of no U.S. presence. Does anyone see the inherent problem with this from the standpoint of international partnerships and our reputation?
What I also find amazing (and admirable) is that many federal colleagues (often called “lazy” or not-dedicated) have paid their own way to meetings or conferences. But if they do this, are they representing themselves? Should they discuss their work at the conference (since technically they are on vacation)?
Stifling the Private Sector: The private sector and small businesses are critical to our economy. I spoke with several major company representatives and small businesses at our 2013 Austin AMS meeting. They were also lamenting. They were talking about how the lack of federal attendees severely hinders their access to potential new clients and business. This has more than a trickle down effect on the health and vibrancy of our private sector and its contributions to economic vitality.
The Next Generation: As a young meteorology student at Florida State, I was in awe of attending the AMS and other meetings and having the opportunity to meet the woman who wrote my textbook, the Director of the National Hurricane Center, or a NASA satellite scientist. Our current generation of students (undergraduate or graduate) are in jeopardy of losing these valuable career-enriching opportunities. AMS, for example, hosts a Student Conference and an Early Career Professional Conference. By design, we expose hundreds of future scholars, scientists, and leaders to the top professionals in our field. In 2013, many of these professionals can’t travel or have to jump through hoops to declare the travel “mission critical” in NASA-speak (I spent 12 years as a NASA scientist).
I conclude that I am not being a “homer” on this issue. There are real concerns about the status and future of scientific discovery, innovation, private industry health, international reputation, professional development of our workforce, and exposure of our next generation.
Video conferencing just won’t get it.
Added 29 March, to clarify: I am aware of the challenges related to travel and emissions. Three points are worth adding:
- AMS has a Green Meetings initiatives.
- Large shifts to videoconferencing are not completely immune to costs, such as energy required to support increased computing/IT requirements, and
- Videoconferencing may be highly appropriate for smaller committee and board meetings but not large scientific meetings, which was the point of this post.
AMS Policy Colloquium: Where Science, Policy, and Communication Collide
by Jen Henderson, Skywarn storm spotter, writer, and grad student at Virginia Tech in Science and Technology Studies. Republished from her blog at JenHenderson.com
This week, I’d like to have a little chat with my friends and colleagues who are connected to the world of atmospheric and meteorological sciences: Faculty members, industry professionals, employees of NOAA and the National Weather Service (NWS). And yes, this includes my fellow graduate students in these fields, as well.
Here’s a little story:
Last week, as I sat in front of a computer at a local NWS office, 
I found myself mesmerized by the most simple of objects: a weather balloon.
In the photograph in front of me, a meteorologist stood dressed in a warm jacket, jeans, and hat gripping a thin cotton string topped by a whitish orb. It hovered like a small sun over his left shoulder. I recalled the time I watched a weather balloon launch a few months ago, how carefully the meteorologist measured the helium that inflated the balloon, which before it filled with air sat on the table like a large loaf of bread dough. I helped him inspect it for defects before following him out into the dusk of an early autumn evening where he released it into the cloudy sky above. He would later tell me that launching the balloon, and the small brick-like rawinsonde that dangled below on its journey into the upper atmosphere, was still one of the most reliable means for collecting data important to weather forecasting.
My question that day was how to get members of different publics as excited about weather as I then felt. What kind of research were meteorologists able to do based on this weather balloon launch, or sounding? What did the launch reveal about trends in weather? Where might people like me, a graduate student in a discipline outside the sciences, learn more?
- What I really want to know was this: How might meteorologists and atmospheric scientists more successfully communicate what they do to those of us who are not familiar with their work? How might they channel the passion they have for what they do into stories that inspire the rest of us?
Communicating sciences to various publics has been on my mind for several years, but it was brought home to me last summer when I attended the American Meteorological Society’s annual Policy Colloquium in Washington, D.C. I was one of a few social scientists to mingle with and learn from various atmospheric and meteorological scientists, ranging in experience from graduate school students to tenured professors and industry professionals. While the colloquium centered on introducing attendees to several aspects of the policy world, which is rich in opportunities and complexity, the underlying theme, you might say, focused on encouraging scientists to think about their potential role in communicating what they do to different publics–policy makers, elected officials, students, and members of the general public.
As I listened to seasoned speakers from all walks of life, I gained a few unexpected insights into science policy and scientists themselves.
- Many scientists harbor the assumption that they’re not good at communicating their work. Not true! I heard many of my scientist colleagues refer to themselves as bad communicators, introverts, and pointy-headed thinkers. They insisted they didn’t know how to communicate (although they did have an inkling about how important it is that they do so). What I experienced instead was the opposite. Most of the participants were excellent story tellers and more than adequate communicators, they just hadn’t thought about the intersection of their narrative and research skills. With a little practice (and a lot of critique), many left the colloquium more confident about their ability to explain not only their work but why it might be important to different audiences.
- Science affects policy and policy affects science. In fact, I would suggest that the two are intertwined in ways that make it difficult to distinguish them at times. Issues surrounding funding, regulation, and accountability shape the types of science we do and the ways in which it gets done. And then of course the types of science performed across the country affect and influence policy. See how they’re intertwined? There is no pure science nor is there pure policy. As they say in my discipline, Science and Technology Studies, they are co-constructed.
AMS policy group at Mount Vernon. - There are multiple ways to participate in communicating sciences to your chosen public. With the help of communications staff members from The American Geophysical Union (AGU), we practiced distilling lengthy research agendas into a few sentences that could resonate with a listener. AGU staff encouraged us to think about the story of our research, the narrative hook that would capture someone’s interest; to practice talking about our research with school children, members of the media, even through socia media sites; and to consider building a relationship with our local government officials, many of whom have little scientific background but must make decisions involving scientific information. (For a concise way of thinking about how scientists can act in multiple ways, read The Honest Broker, by Roger Pielke, Jr., or check out his awesome blog.)*
So what’s my overall message?
You, my friends, have the opportunity to join an amazing group of people at the American Meteorological Society who believe that the passion each of you feel about your work can be productively channeled into the science policy world…and beyond. The same elements of the universe that inspire you to pursue your research can inspire others. Your experience can give you a voice in shaping the multiple conversations among members of the public, policy makers, industry professionals, local government officials, and your fellow colleagues.
I wish I could attend again. The colloquium opened up opportunities and allowed me to make connections I wouldn’t have had otherwise. It helped me understand the challenges of the political world and how these issues shape my own work. And it was so much fun!
The AMS Policy Colloquium is now accepting applications for the next cohort who will meet in DC for nine days this June. But hurry, the deadline is March 31. If you’re a student or faculty member and you’re accepted, you can apply for NSF funding. So what have you got to lose?
*To read more about science policy, the AMS colloquium, and how these two things have shaped my work and my colleagues’ work, please check out our article in the February 19, 2013 issue of Eos, the AGU’s weekly newspaper. Goldner, Henderson, and Shieh.
AMS eBooks: No Longer Just Icing on the Cake
One of the growing traditions at the AMS Annual Meeting has been the cake cutting celebration of new books published by the Society. This year’s meeting was no exception—the ceremony touted a particularly yummy year of reading provided by AMS Books sweetened by a brand-new venture into electronic reading.
Indeed, the icing on the cake—literally—was the enhancement of the program’s eBook distribution. Written into the frosting was the impending collaboration between Springer and AMS to enable electronic distribution of dozens of books and monographs.
If you weren’t fortunate enough to get a slice back in January, hunger no longer: today, you can have your cake and eat it, too, because the Springer-AMS website is now officially open.
Springer’s Senior Publishing Editor in Earth Science and Geography, Robert Doe, says, “The AMS book program is internationally renowned, and many of their titles are classed as seminal. I am delighted that these quality books will now be available electronically for the very first time.”
The 12 titles available as eBooks immediately will grow to approximately 50 in 2013, and 3 to 5 of AMS’s selection of new releases will be added each year. The current collection includes key works on climate change and meteorological hazards including Lewis and Clark: Weather and Climate Data from the Expedition Journals and Deadly Season: Analysis of the 2011 Tornado Outbreaks aswell as instructional texts like Eloquent Science: A Practical Guide to Becoming a Better Writer, Speaker, and Atmospheric Scientist. Over time, the eBooks list will be expanded with out-of-print legacy titles that will also be available through print-on-demand.
The collaboration with the world’s largest collection of science, technology, and mathematics eBooks–enables AMS to benefit from Springer’s innovative ePublishing technologies, long-term library relationships, and reach into global institutional markets. According to AMS Executive Director Keith Seitter, “The American Meteorological Society is committed to achieving the broadest possible dissemination of the important science published in our books. This agreement with Springer opens new avenues for that dissemination and therefore represents an important means to achieve our goals.”
“Our arrangement enhances both discoverability and access to our content, but puts Springer in the driver’s seat in terms of remaining on top of technology—file formats and devices that tend to change as often as each year,” says AMS Books Managing Editor Sarah Jane Shangraw.
For individuals, AMS eBooks will be available for purchase not only from Springer but also eBooks.com, Google Books, and other eBook retailers in files downloadable to any device. People at institutions that subscribe to SpringerLink will be able to view web-based books using their institutional login. The SpringerLink “Springer Book Archive” will make available books published prior to 2005.
AMS will continue to distribute print books directly and through its print distribution partner, the University of Chicago Press.
New NSTA Executive Director Talks Climate Education
Last month, AMS member David L. Evans began as the new executive director of The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the largest professional organization promoting excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning.
Evans—former director of the Center for Sustainability: Earth, Energy, and Climate at Noblis, Inc.—has served the science profession in many different capacities throughout his career. Along with serving as undersecretary for science at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., he was assistant administrator for Oceanic and Atmospheric Research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, deputy assistant administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service, senior scientist and deputy administrator at the National Ocean Service, and program manager at the Office of Naval Research. Evans was also a tenured professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island and was a classroom teacher in Media, Pennsylvania.
The Front Page asked Evans about his plans as executive director.
As the new executive director of NSTA, what are your plans for promoting education about climate and weather?
The National Science Teachers Association is a partner in the development of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and will be working to encourage their adoption and assisting with implementation. One of the design constructs of the NGSS has been to reduce the breadth of topics covered in favor of greater depth. Weather and climate are among the disciplinary core ideas in the standards, which are important at all grade levels. In addition to their presence as “topics,” weather and climate provide ideal areas to explore science and engineering practices and cross cutting concepts like model development.
How did teaching prepare you for a career in science (and/or science prepare you for teaching?)
For me, teaching and science have always been intimately linked. Being a scientist has always inspired me to share what I know, whether in a journal article or in the classroom. Teaching is where it all begins, where we can ignite a spark in students to want to learn more about science. Discovering something new about the world we live in and discussing and sharing the information with others is all part of the scientific process of evidence-based reasoning and communication.
How do you feel your background in general will aid in facilitating the goals of the NSTA?
My background includes teaching at both high school and university levels, conducting and managing scientific research, and leading large scientific and educational organizations. At NOAA, I worked to enhance the education programs in the National Marine Sanctuaries, the National Sea Grant College Program, and NOAA Cooperative Institutes. At the Smithsonian, I worked to develop the National Science Resource Center and to emphasize the importance of the public understanding of science in the museums and zoo. My executive skills coupled with my management expertise will be helpful in leading the NSTA and navigating the association’s future. My program and administrative experiences will be helpful in managing the NSTA.
Are there plans for any new programs/innovations in the NSTA?
It is really too soon to talk about new programs in detail. However, STEM education is on the national agenda and there seems to be broad agreement on its importance. NSTA’s mission is to promote excellence in science teaching and learning for all and that is not confined to doing everything the same way that it has always been tried. We have learned quite a lot about how people learn and we have mature and evolving technologies that make “information” available everywhere, all of the time. NSTA will be a part of the changing landscape of professional development for teachers and new learning methodologies for students.
AMS Lowers Dues for Members in Developing Countries
The AMS Council recently approved a reduction in the cost of membership for those living in countries with developing economies. AMS President J. Marshall Shepherd announced the change in this message:
As the new American Meteorological Society (AMS) President for 2013, I am pleased to inform you of a recent change to the AMS dues structure that directly impacts those living in resource-restricted areas. Effective immediately, scientists and other professionals residing in countries with developing economies (CDE) are entitled to AMS membership for just $20, a fraction of the regular member cost.
The current list of eligible countries as approved by the AMS Council may be located on the AMS Web site at http://www.ametsoc.org/MEMB/countrydeveconomylist.html
I urge you to take advantage of this opportunity to enhance your networking and professional development. AMS CDE membership runs on a calendar year basis (January-December) and includes a subscription to Digital BAMS (www.ametsoc.org/digitalbams/), published monthly. Journal subscriptions are optional and may be purchased at the discounted member rate. Additional benefits specific only to members include:
- Full access to Digital BAMS, the online version of Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS), the official publication of the AMS
- Subscription to AMS News You Can Use, a weekly electronic newsletter that highlights topics in meteorology and related sciences from sources around the world
- Society journals at greatly reduced subscription rates and deep discounts on new and classic titles in the collection of AMS Books
- Discounted registration fees for AMS annual and specialty meetings and continuing education programs
- Special Member privileges on our AMS Online Career Center
- Full voting privileges
An application for CDE membership may be downloaded from http://www.ametsoc.org/MEMB/
apps/2013apps/cde_app.pdf and returned to AMS by fax or mail. Please refer to the application form itself for specific instructions. If you have any questions regarding AMS membership or the application process, our Member Services department is available by email at [email protected] or by phone at 617-227-2425 to assist you.
Join AMS and be part of a diverse and dynamic national and international scientific network that’s 14,000 members strong. I encourage you to fully immerse yourself into the Society, and where possible, engage in the numerous opportunities to contribute, such as volunteering for committee service or nominating fellow colleagues for awards. Help shape the future of our profession by becoming a member today.
Sincerely,
Dr. J. Marshall Shepherd
President, American Meteorological Society
A Simple Investment in the Sciences
It’s not every day you get a chance to invest in a sure-fire start-up based on science you know very well. Even rarer is a start-up that is the brainchild of a group of determined middle school students. And when was the last time you could make that investment, for free, with just a click on the internet?
Vicky Gorman, a science teacher in Memorial Middle School in Medford, New Jersey, is currently taking the AMS’s DataStreme Atmosphere distance learning course. The students, and the start-up venture, are hers, so we’ll let Vicky explain it as she did to AMS President Marshall Shepherd this week:
Two of my 7th grade students approached me last fall about submitting an idea for the $5000 Beneficial Foundation School Challenge. These two young ladies brought many ideas and wonderful enthusiasm to the table. We decided on a “Citizen Science Education Program” to bring science into the lives of the citizens of our community, and allow students to apply their science knowledge to the real world. I am developing this program with my students now as my final project for the DatasStreme course. The focus of the program is Earth Science, which as you know, needs a greater presence in both child and adult education in the 21st century. I can see this project making a difference in our community, county, state, and beyond.
Fast forward a few months to January of this year. We were selected as a top ten finalist! However, now, we need your help. We have posted a video to the Beneficial Challenge web site, as have the other nine schools. Click there and you will see that this final phase of the competition will be decided by number of votes for our video.Voting opened on Monday, and closes at midnight on next Monday, 11 March. You may vote every day and multiple times every day.
Here’s what you’re looking for when you click on the links above:
Let’s take this opportunity to start up something new, and invest in the future of earth sciences.
Vision Prize: Polling Experts about Climate–and Each Other
If you can’t get enough of prediction by forecasting weather or climate–or basketball tournament brackets, elections, and the Oscars—here’s the game for you: Try the web-based opinion poll of climate and earth scientists—the Vision Prize.
A nonpartisan research project using the Web for incentivized polling, the Vision Prize is testing a new way to get scientists to speak candidly to the public about climate change, without media filtering.
“We all recognize the need to do science communication, but we still seem to struggle to do this well,” says Jonathan Foley, Director of the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment. “As a new approach to this problem, Vision Prize deserves our attention.”
Foley’s institute is collaborating with Carnegie Mellon University to try out this poll-based experimental method. The advisors include behavioral psychologists, economists, and public policy scholars, so participating scientists may feel a bit like the tables have been turned, with humans becoming the lab rats on the treadmills.
Don’t let that stop you, however. Participants are having fun at it, getting serious results, learning about their colleagues, and yes—there’s that “incentivized” part—they’re winning prizes, too. Participants not only make gut-check projections about future climate but also predict what their colleagues think—a way for the rest of us to gauge their confidence and consensus.
Surprisingly, so far the results show that experts systematically underestimate the consensus amongst their peers. For example:
(“Expected Answers” are predictions of what the most likely answers were; “Actual Answers” are predictions of climate made by those surveyed.) The participants who best predict their colleagues’ opinions win gift cards towards the charity of their choice. All in all, scientists should feel right at home doing public service to win a chance to do even more public service.
Poll results are annotated by a measure of the stature of the participants within the climate science community. The web site provides h-index scores that factor both how many papers participants have published and how often those papers are cited. In a press release today, Vision Prize noted that the polls have been taken by some impressive participants.
“We’re very encouraged by the high quality of our 275+ expert participants,” says Peter Kriss, the director of research. Vision Prize provides mean h-index scores to give readers of the poll an approximate metric for assessing the relative expertise of the participants who selected a given answer. “We were very impressed to find mean h = 36 among our top 50 experts,” says Kriss. As a point of reference, h ≈ 12 might be a typical value for advancement to tenure at major research universities; membership in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences may typically be associated with h ≈ 45 and higher (Hirsch, PNAS, 2005).
The mean for all participants so far is h=13, but that may change soon.Vision Prize is now actively seeking additional participants from the scientific community, including doctoral students. “The larger the number of climate and earth scientists participating, the more useful the results,” says Vision Prize Managing Director Mark Kriss.
Vision Prize makes its results open to the public, so it’s certainly imaginable that not only are policy makers and pundits paying attention but also some prediction obsessed spectators who themselves are predicting how the polls turn out. The web site is currently polling about a round of topics that began in September 2012 and will wrap up at midnight, April 30th.
If you qualify, by all means get into the game as a participant as soon as possible. Answering the survey questions takes about five minutes, after quick registration. Mark Kriss, Vision Prize managing director, says, “Early voting helps boost participation rates so your post would be timely now. The larger the number of participating scientists, the more useful the results.”
By the way, even if you don’t end up participating, the Vision Prize is also open to suggestions about questions to ask the experts.
The Short and Long of Sequestration Forecasts
By now your head is probably spinning with all the conflicting forecasts what the Federal sequestration will do to us. (For a sample, try the Washington Post’s compilation of various projections.) If the collective disagreement of pundits indicates a kind of chaos–a bit like making a weather forecast when the numerical models just will never converge, an ensemble gone haywire–then you’re right. The reason for the confusion, says AMS Policy Program Director William Hooke, is that nobody knows what will happen. Here’s how he put it, in an interview with The Weather Channel’s Maria LaRosa on yesterday’s Morning Rush show:
TWC: What should we expect in particular for weather agencies? What is your top concern right now?
My top concern is the same as the weather top concern. The uncertainty in all this. We make good weather forecasts because we have practice. The case of the sequestration is something different. It’s unprecedented. We don’t know what will happen. That includes the policy makers at the top and the bench forecasters at the bottom.
TWC It may be a couple weeks before we some of the direct impacts? How are you folks preparing, or can you?
Hooke: You know, an NGO like the American Meteorological Society can’t do much but watch with horrified fascination. The real issue is what happens to those scientists and technicians who try to keep the radars prepared and keep staff online when bad weather occurs with little notice, and just be ready to protect property and to protect the American public.
TWC And the AMS gives out grants for all kinds of things, and how does that impact money that you guys give out?
Hooke: We’ll certainly be getting less and so we’ll be less capable in turn. We, like many private sector firms and academic researchers, depend a great deal on NOAA, the National Weather Service, and other federal agencies to keep things humming, particularly innovation, particularly improvements in forecasts and services.
However, as we know from weather forecasting, the short term may be overwhelmed by chaos and uncertainty, but that doesn’t mean seasonal or climate projections can’t have some teeth in them. City College of New York physics professor Michael Lubell, who is also director of public relations for the American Physical Society, told Ira Flatow yesterday on National Public Radio’s Science Friday that the short term uncertainty is itself a determinant for the long term prospects of science:
One of the difficulties we have in science is that it’s not like a road project. You say, “well, we don’t have enough money to continue paving something today, we’ll call the crew off and bring them back six months or nine months from now.” Science—you cut it and the people aren’t coming back, facilities aren’t going to be opened again….
I think of this as taking a frog or taking a goose in a pot of water and we’re slowly heating it up, and eventually the goose gets cooked and by the time it gets cooked it’s too late to deal with it. That’s what’s going to happen to us. Unfortunately the public doesn’t see it immediately, and I think the President probably made a mistake by trying to scare people, because you’re not going to see it at least for several months, if not then. It’s just going to be a slow erosion, and the case with science, as I said, is that erosion is not some you see easily.
I would argue…that the more devastating effects are the long-term effects. If you have a longer line at the airport today, put money back in and those lines will get shorter. If we remove our money from the investment—and let me just make a couple comments about this. I mean half of the economic growth since World War II was attributable to science and technology. One fact that people usually don’t know is that laser enabled technology accounts for one-third of our economy today, and they began with a small amount of government money more than 50 years ago.
[With cuts] the programs shut down forever. When people are smart, they find other things to do.