by William Hooke, AMS Policy Program Director
A post from the AMS project, Living on the Real World
Back in the 1990s, while still working at NOAA, I was once part of a two-day U.S.-Japan bilateral discussion in Tokyo on science and technology issues. Bill Clinton was President. Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter’s former Vice President, was then ambassador to Japan. Tim Wirth, who at that time was Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs, was leading this particular delegation. Wirth, Mondale and the rest of us from the U.S. side were in a big meeting room with the Japanese. Leaders from Japanese government and industry filled the room, under auspices of MITI, the Japanese Ministry for International Trade and Industry. The Japanese couldn’t comprehend why the United States was moving so haltingly on a range of environmental and hazards matters.
“You have to understand,” Tim Wirth was saying, “that if government and industry worked with each other in the U.S. the way you do in Japan, people would go to jail.”
Tim Wirth’s remark has everything to do with this week’s discussions at the AMS Summer Community Meeting in State College. Two points: First, and foremost, this is our history and our policy in America. Our nation decided long ago that we wanted a free-market society, with minimal government. We wanted government to focus primarily on regulations that would foster capitalism and business competition, and at the same time curb corruption, restraint of trade, monopolistic practices, and other abuses. Second, this approach is a policy, a choice, or framework of choices, not an inescapable reality. Other governments are free to adopt other approaches, and have, as the Japanese example illustrates.
Well, as is so often the case, you pick your poison. The Japanese approach spurred
weather enterprise
Nothing but the Truth, Part 2
We noted that Richard Clark challenged his audience at the AMS Student Conference to make the pursuit of truth their purpose in scientific careers. Not surprisingly, others at the conference expanded on that theme. Jon Nese of Penn State gave a talk spanning some of the pros and cons of life in the various sectors of the weather enterprise, but perhaps most striking was his observation of the role that trust plays in scientific endeavors, academic, private, research, operational or otherwise. It’s worth hearing the way Jon expressed the interdependence between the sectors–operational, research, entrepreneurial, and otherwise–in this pursuit of truth as we embark on a meeting week full of discussions of uncertainties, promising findings, and future priorities.