[Radix] New York Times coverage of events at US climate research center

[Ben Wisner]

Check out http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com for Andrew Revkin's account 
of the events at NCAR.

For those with limited connectivity, I'll paste the article in below, 
dated 7 August 2008

August 7, 2008,  8:50 am


    Dismay Over Cuts at Climate Lab
    <http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/07/mourning-and-debate-after-climate-labs-death/>

By Andrew C. Revkin <http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/author/arevkin/>

michael glantzMichael Glantz in 1999. (Credit: National Center for 
Atmospheric Research)

Most of the humans in harm's way from climate-related hazards don't have 
federal weather agencies 
<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E03E6DB1F30F930A35757C0A9619C8B63> 
with billion-dollar budgets 
<http://www.corporateservices.noaa.gov/%7Enbo/08bluebook_highlights.html>. 
They don't have crop insurance 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/world/africa/10rice.html>. They don't 
have reservoirs to hold rain 
<http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/the-warming-world-is-not-flat/>when 
it's abundant or storehouses ready to hold grain when famine looms.

For awhile, at least, they had Michael Glantz 
<http://www.ccb.ucar.edu/glantz/>. This scrappy 68-year-old political 
scientist spent the last several decades hopscotching around the world's 
harshest places trying to build their capacity to anticipate nature's 
hard knocks, from the El Niño hot spells 
<http://www.amazon.com/Currents-Change-Impacts-Climate-Society/dp/052178672X> 
in the Pacific to drought in Afghanistan 
<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F05E4D81F3FF935A25751C1A9679C8B63>. 
His haven for 34 years was the pink concrete buildings of the National 
Center for Atmospheric Research 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_center_for_atmospheric_research/index.html>, 
in Boulder, Colo. Now he's out. The atmospheric research center --- 
facing chronic budget shortfalls as Congress and the White House have 
sparred over spending --- has been shedding positions for years and now 
this modest effort to link climate science to human needs 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/07/science/earth/07climate.html> has 
been cut (saving $500,000 out of an $88 million annual science budget) 
[budget figure *UPDATED* from $120 million; $88 million is for science].

Some scientists there told me that Dr. Glantz's little team was always 
kind of a bad fit, given the main focus of the lab on physical sciences, 
and particularly on refining giant simulations run on supercomputers 
<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E5DA123EF932A25755C0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all> 
to try to mimic the interrelated workings of the planet's atmosphere, 
oceans, and frozen zones.

But the reaction was dismay among the small international community of 
social scientists trying to figure out how to make sure climate 
forecasts are useful to, say, an agriculture department in Ethiopia, or 
trying to figure out how supposed climate fixes like biofuels might 
create food shortages. Roger A. Pielke, Jr., who was a staff scientist 
at NCAR and is now at the University of Colorado, Boulder, has blogged 
on the decline of social science 
<http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/you-have-to-protect-your-core-4503>at 
the lab.

I'll be posting some additional views from scientists. To my mind, 
there's something resonating here beyond the issue of competing budgets. 
The specter of dangerous human-caused global warming, with its enormous 
potential consequences, its astounding complexity and high public 
profile, has become a beacon for thousands of scientists.

Much less challenging, and high profile, is the need, in a world heading 
toward nine billion people, to figure out how to make everything that's 
been learned about drought, floods, and other climate-related risks 
useful to the majority of the human population --- people in Niger and 
Bangladesh who face such risks every day right now, with or without 
whatever climate destabilization is coming from the ongoing buildup of 
greenhouse gases.

Dr. Glantz told me he'll keep maintaining his fragilecologies.com 
<http://www.fragilecologies.com> site and teaching and holding workshops 
overseas. But his group, including experts on Asian and African climate 
risks, is dissolved.

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