home again home again jiggity jig

Hello!!!! I'm in the process of rejoining normal life, post-meeting.

First, the AGU (American Geophysical Union) meeting in San Francisco was OK this year. It was much too huge, which is my complaint year after year, but that's OK. There's something kind of comforting for me to be around 15,000 people just as geeky (or more so) than I am. We were all over SF this week. Made me happy. It's funny how comfortable I feel around science-types. I say "funny" because there really are several distinct science-types of people from students to academics to civil servants to managers (I feel a blog entry coming on this one day) but I can meld with most of them. Scientists are an interesting, unique breed. Overall, they're mostly innocent and quite trustworthy. Seriously. I'm trying to find the right unifying description. Passionate? That may be it. And it's not just for science. These folks are highly passionate about whatever it is that trips their trigger. Science. Politics. Hiking. Rock climbing. Music. Wine. Theater. Literature. Star Trek. Whatever it is, there is loads passion there...which is probably the key to why they have subjected their careers to the difficulties inherent in scientific research. You've GOT to be passionate about it to survive this business.

There's a general observation I'd like to make about climate change after being at the conference. There really isn't any discussion left on a scientific level about whether climate change is occurring or whether humans are the cause (that's pretty much an enormous DUH.). Those questions aren't even on the radar anymore in the scientific world for the reason that...um...We've done that one. Scientifically, it's answered. Science has moved beyond that into "what will the future look like" and "What can we do to alleviate the major problems?" sort of level. (This is a link to the Real Climate discussion of the meeting, Check out all 7 "dispatches" from AGU for a summary of some of the climate change sessions about things like geoengineering consequences and Tipping Points. PS - I didn't get to go to these sorts of sessions because I was too busy. More about that later.)

There remains some level of disconnect with the general public - the key question is what that level is and what amount of attention and worry I (we) should expend on it. Is this a very vocal, very small minority that can be safely ignored (i.e., science can move on to addressing the relevant questions and attempt to make progress?) Or is does the vocal minority have journalists and the media by the ear enough that we as scientists need to still be concerned with the level-zero issues (i.e., convincing the public that there is not a global warming conspiracy.) Is that even an issue for scientists? What level of social responsibility do scientists really have? Once the science has been investigated, does it really become the responsibility of scientists to address the politically-driven debate of today's world? Scientists aren't socially equipped to do this. But besides the obvious question of "who else?" I feel like it's our moral obligation. I just don't know the appropriate approach.

It's hard for me to definitively comment on where the public perception is in relation to the scientific one. The scientific position (on the level-zero climate change issue) is quite clear and easy to gauge, but the general public's position is very difficult for me to understand. I'm on the internet a lot which is heavily biased to extremists, so I read a lot of the vocal "deniers" arguments (which can SO totally and easily be debunked point by point - so tiresome ... check here if you don't believe it. BIG yawn.) Despite that, the fact is that there seems to be a not-insignificant number of normal folks who still think there are valid questions about whether humans are causing climate change. Am I wrong? Is my perception skewed because of where I live and from spending a lot of time on the internet?
I've had a few intelligent people articulate very wrong perceptions about climate change to me recently, and *that* scares me more than the extremists. (e.g., no it's NOT arrogant of us to think that humans could change the climate. It has nothing to do with arrogance and everything to do with understanding the facts behind what factors have contributed to the climate over the last century. And no, this current change is NOT driven by natural causes - we have , in fact, investigated all this and found those contributions to be well below what the observed temperature changes have been)

It's always strange and hard for me to move between this uncertainty in "normal life" and my scientific life, where everyone is so solidly and scientifically on the same page. Damned politics. Or whatever it is that has made "people" distrust science suddenly.

On a totally personal level, this meeting was a lot less fun than previous meetings. I *worked* 99.5% of the time. I was either trying to put together my talk or was recoding our model to constrain HONO for a student I'm helping, or was checking the NO to NO2 photochemical balances compared to measurements in response to "issues" from Harvard, etc. etc. One one hand I felt very useful. On the other, I was tired and ready to collapse.

One night (after my talk), GC and I did take a break and sat up at the lounge at the top of our hotel. I got there early enough to grab a table right by the windows overlooking the Bay Bridge and the SF Bay at sunset. Nice. We bought a $65 bottle of wine and enjoyed the view and talked and talked (about lots o' things). I needed that, and so did he, since he's going through some personal stuff that's very tough.

Oh. My presentation, you ask? There are two distinct components to it. The content was great. I got mobbed afterwards by several researchers who wanted to discuss future work we could do. There was a lot of positive interest. Made me feel great. I've got lots of stuff to think about and work on. The second component: the delivery? I get a solid D- or an F. My voice was shaky (even *I* could tell), and the little red laser pointer I used? It's only lucky that I didn't blind someone with my shaky hand. I sucked. Yes really. I did. Big time sucked. I have a phobia of public speaking. I admit it freely. Everyone in that room knows it now, too.

Don't try to make me feel better. I really did suck. As a scientist, I'm OK, or at least passable. As a public speaker I totally suck. I could HEAR it as it was happening. It's a sad, sad thing, and helpless to stop. It's like I was an observer and I could tell I was crashing but was helpless to stop it. Train wreck.

But it's OK. That's my personal little demon to learn to get along with. Plus, that nice bottle wine and the sunset over the bay helped. All in all, I'm really very glad to be home.