 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
1609 Connecticut Ave NW #400
Washington, DC 20009
Phone: 202.332.3320
Fax: 202.332.3327 |
 |
Help us SUPPORT the next generation of environmental leaders
SIGN UP for ELP updates
|
 |
 |
|
Download PDF*
|
Climate Change Perspectives
 DONNAN STEELE, ELP Fellow 2001-2003, is a Ph.D candidate in atmospheric chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studies how air pollution affects clouds and, more generally, the earth's climate. Previously, he worked for the Environmental Working Group on pesticide and water quality issues and with Ozone Action on reporting indicators of global warming.
After my first post-college jobs had run their course, my long-standing interest in physics led me back to school in academic science and my political and environmental passions led me to study global change. From my perch in Washington D.C., the climate debate did not appear to lack lawyers or economists or even environmental activists; it lacked scientists who were willing to discuss the realities of climate change with politicians and the public. And that is how I wanted to contribute.
Upon arriving at M.I.T., where I am now writing a doctoral dissertation on the effects of air pollution on the global climate through altered cloud behavior, my clarity about the politics of the issue began to dissolve. Scientists approach global change by first painting with broad strokes the physical and chemical outlines of the earth's climate and then laboring over the details to refine estimates of behavior and sensitivities. Causation and uncertainty are a constant focus. Scientists learn to balance each possibility with its counterpart, raise one hand and then the other while talking and then shrug their shoulders at the end. In part, this happens because the facade of objectivity is desperately important to scientists, and to conclude something that might lend support to either side of the political debate can appear to be bias. I came to graduate school so that I could back my political and moral discussions with fact, rationality, and credibility. But recently, after three years of immersion, I notice that my co-workers, many of them with backgrounds in advocacy as well as science, gesture with both hands while explaining how man's influence is revealed in the recent climate record and what it would take to reduce our impact in the future, and that I sometimes shrug in response. The inevitable result is that very few scientists are willing to become directly involved in public debates about climate change, and that they argue unconvincingly when they do.
In my work, I use a large bank of forty computers to calculate how water condenses on airborne chemical particles during cloud formation. There is evidence, from satellites, weather records, and chemical measurements taken on the decks of airplanes, that increases in certain urban pollutants alter cloud properties. It rains less often downwind of the east coast on weekdays than on weekends, following traffic and pollution patterns. Polluted clouds are denser and so allow less sunlight to shine through to the ground and the rain from dirty clouds, when it does fall, lands in locations different than those it otherwise would have found. The specific chemistry of these tiny pollution particles determines a good deal of the behavior of the clouds that form upon them. I dwell on details at this scale. The effects of the chemistry and physics involved, however, have global implications for the hydrological cycle and the influx of solar energy to plants and people at the earth's surface.
Not surprisingly, the remedies implied by current climate research target these same two scales: the molecular and the global. We scientists suggest reformulating fuels to contain less sulfur and nitrogen or switching fuel sources altogether, imposing carbon or energy taxes to discourage fossil fuel consumption, and carefully guiding the expansion of energy infrastructure in the developing world. These are very difficult positions to advocate. They alienate average citizens because they are so abstract, involve too large a scale, and lie beyond the control of everyone except the largest governments and industries. And they involve enough financial cost, political risk, and international friction as to prevent large governments and industries from acceding to them. Witness the withdrawal of the United States from the Kyoto negotiations and the industrial lobbying that surrounded the entire process. Perhaps, one day, there will be a breakthrough -- maybe efficient carbon sequestration -- that will allow an inexpensive and politically unopposable reduction of humans' influence on the climate. But the scientific community provides few feasible solutions short of such dramatic technological breakthroughs, acting as though those breakthroughs are inevitable and apparently preferring to stand on the sidelines until then.
Despite this gloomy analysis, there are several rays of hope. In addition to a growing list of scientists who brief politicians, write popular articles, sign petitions of scientific consensus, and serve on assessment panels (including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which quite effectively provides a briefing of scientific consensus for politicians and the public), there are a handful of examples within the academic community of effective advocacy and communication. Bill Clark, who teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, studies effective ways to facilitate communication between for scientists, politicians, and the public. M.I.T.'s Joint Program for the Science and Policy of Global Change, in which I am doing my Ph.D. work, brings natural and social scientists together with economists to consider the implications of various policies, treaties, and demographic trends on the earth's climate. Academics in these programs go to great lengths to be useful to politicians and understandable to the public. They brief leaders of climate-related industries and government officials and are quite effective at media relations. Yet both these examples are unconventional in the world of academic science.
As I've noted in passing, these few forward thinking-academic groups attract as students the same young scientists that find ELP and other such support networks. While the academic programs train us to use science to effect change outside of the scientific community, ELP provides links beyond academia and pushes us to go farther. Averting human-induced climate change and constructing climate-friendly energy and transportation practices will require scientists, politicians, and the many citizens of our country and all others to join hands and seek solutions together. There is some hope that the scientific community, though traditionally wary of and ill-suited to such projects, is finding ways to reach out. And there is also hope that the new generation of scientists will produce a few leaders who will build upon current successes and be full participants in the larger climate, not just the climate science, community.
|
prev [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] |
Home | About
Us | ELP Fellowship | New
England Regional Network | Eastern
Regional Network | Mid-Atlantic
Regional Network | Southeast Regional
Network | Meet ELP Fellows and Associates
| ELP Activity Fund Projects | Other
ELP Initiatives | Read Our Newsletter
| Jobs & Leadership Development Resources
| Support
ELP | Site Map | ELP
Community Site
© 1999-2007 Environmental
Leadership Program. All rights reserved. |
|
 |