We are not asking the right questions - about science, disasters, and being human

Sorry, this is blunt. On #disasters and #ClimatePolicy and #meteorology

“What is safe for me?” is a question many National Weather Service forecasters and television weathercasters fielded over the past week about #Florence (and so many other natural disasters). But that’s the first wrong question. Or, “Should I stay or should I go?”

These are the wrong questions. The responsible meteorologist can give you forecasts and likely impacts, with appropriate levels of uncertainty. Emergency management can provide guidance on what actions to take. Communities and individuals have a shared responsibility on this one. But fundamentally, we have to make our own decisions. In life or death situations, it is critical that they be well-informed.

The pulmonologist can’t tell you which cigarette you smoke will cause the lung cancer that may kill you.

The #publichealth community can’t fingerprint which air pollution episode was the one that permanently damaged your lungs.

The gastroenterologist may not be able to tell you which contaminant you ingested was the one that made you ill.

These are also the wrong questions.

Doctors can tell you that these things are bad. Similarly, climate scientists can see the symptoms of a warming world in real and modeled storms. Increased heat & liberated water vapor --> more rain. And now, new information shows how rapidly the ocean is warming.

The right question is, “What is safe for humanity?” [Or, how can we rid our ecosystems of the worst invasive species on the planet, industrialized humans?]

Our exposure limits are set too high for the 6 (and only 6) categorical #airpollutants. Industry resists each and every change or addition, and #EPA is now self-crippled. The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 (2007!, defying the Bush Administration!) that EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases as air pollutants from tailpipes. And in spite of 10 years of effort, the #GOP (largely, but not exclusively) continues to ignore it, or fight any attempt to do so, or to extend such regulation to the other major pollutant source, fossil fuels used for power generation. And mercury and others are problems, too!

Now, about #hurricanes and #climate.

Was #Florence caused by #climatechange? The other biggies? No. 

Are hurricanes and other storms changed as a result of warming? Yes! 

Globally? Yes! Locally? Yes! 

Are impacts worse? They can be! How do we know this? Because we build models that are testable based on physical and dynamical heat and energy exchange mechanisms that we can measure.

#ClimateChangeIsReal

Scientists continue to study complex feedback mechanisms on storm energetics. You can’t supercharge a heat engine such as the Earth system without creating consequences. Jim Hansen once imagined a landscape filled with 1 or 2 Watt light bulbs covering every square meter of Earth's surface, and did a rather simple calculation of what that would mean for heating the atmosphere. It is still a very instructive example of a system that is out of balance. Excess heat must be redistributed or dissipated. In the ocean and atmosphere and pedosphere and cryosphere and biosphere. And we don’t fully measure or understand any of these. Yet. But scientists are learning more and making successful predictions as to root effects. And they are not favorable to species, globally.

Fingerprints are being detected. Nevertheless, they are still easier to detect and predict than human behavior. And fundamentally, humans have made bad decisions in planning, preparation, and response. At the community level and individually. That’s tragic.

What is the right question?

What can we as a society do to fix things? Some suggestions:

• Stop the political/free-market interference with scientific determinations of which pollutants should be regulated and at what levels.
• Move as quickly as possible to a carbon-free energy/transportation system.
• Ensure all residents have access to shelter, power, comfort after tragedy.
• Educate the public about the importance of clean air and water.
• Support independent scientific research.
• Don’t hire a power company from Whitefish, Montana to fix a broken power grid in Puerto Rico. (How’d that one get in there?)
• Improve public education re: disaster risks.
• Honor the heroes but do what you can to keep them from undue risk.
• Don’t shame the victims.
• Demand accountability.
• Reduce waste.
• Fossil fuels? Stop government supports (corporate welfare subsidies). They just line the pockets of the companies that extract, move, and deliver them. Washington I-1631 will be interesting to watch roll out if it passes, too.

And finally, we can all be that better human being. You know the one. The ones that your parents or older siblings, aunts or uncles, or grandparents read to you or told you about when they tucked you into bed.

I see you, Florida! I have a love letter. Sort of.

Hi, Florida. It's been a while since I've been back. I was introduced to Florida when as a child we traveled by train from New York City to Daytona Beach to visit my grandparents who had just moved to New Smyrna Beach. The first thing I saw when I got off the train that March 1962 day was a water fountain with a sign above it that said Whites Only. 

We had just moved from our small house in Hartsdale up to the new house my family had  built in Katonah, after my maternal grandparents decided to leave the city and stop being snowbirds. That spring break trip was my awakening to the idea that there was racism in America. I am still concerned about that, but more about that later. 

I write you now from the "left" coast where most people regardless of party still respect the environment and do not necessarily enrich themselves from the bounty that nature provides. 

I write to you from a perspective of having taught roughly 8,000 of your students when I was a professor at Florida State University. Also having taught nearly 1,000 of your public and private school educators through professional development and outreach. And finally having taught many of you in my science classes. 

In Miami Dade County alone I taught over 200 of your practicing teachers and helped them to receive either Masters degrees or certificates which enabled them to enhance their teaching portfolio to middle grade and/or high school math or science. I served on their graduate committees, I met them face-to-face and we taught them how science is done and how science could be taught in different ways. 

I worked with an array of amazing colleagues from 2006 to 2008 in statewide educational reform, writing the Florida State sunshine standards in science. I worked with some amazing politicians and their staff in the Florida legislature to talk about K-12 reforms in education. Most of the time I was impressed with their dedication to doing what was right. 

For the 25 years that I lived in Florida, I worked with state agencies such as the Florida Division of Forestry, Division of Emergency Management and the Department of Environmental Protection on issues of importance to all of state residents, in my work which was almost completely done as a volunteer.

 I worked on improving public health understanding of pollution through environmental education and on protection from and response to natural disasters. As a meteorologist and an asthma sufferer I have always been very concerned about public health, particularly with regard to air quality. 

For several of my years teaching at FSU I taught a graduate course in atmospheric chemistry. I also worked with federal agencies including NOAA, FEMA, United States Geological Survey & the Corps of Engineers and I sent many of my own students to the state and federal agencies after having taught them the best I could about the meaning and practice of science in the role of science and society.

In those years as a professional, I taught scientists, future scientists, nonscientists, and science educators the value and importance of science that would help them to understand their value as an educator, scientist or citizen. I also volunteered with my County 4-H extension office in which I joined with a Florida Marine Patrol officer to teach kids about marine and environmental science, taking kids to the springs, to the rivers, to the coast and helping them understand the idea of ecological balance and natural preservation.

During my time in Florida I watched government moves from a sometimes efficient role to one that became blindingly partisan to the extreme. The GOP took over the Senate and the House, the Governor’s Mansion and decimated the functionality of many of the Florida agencies that were responsible for environmental protection and preservation. I witnessed my own students who joined some of these agencies depart, disgusted by what they were being ordered to do, or not say.

In some ways, the Florida of the first decades of the third millennium has been a test laboratory for federal government today. We have now witnessed the obliteration of individual rights, particularly for women and people of color by the patriarchy. In Florida in 2018 all voters have a chance to take a critical look at what good government may mean. I worked among the team of scientists at FSU and other institutions on the Deepwater Horizon tragedy providing scientific perspective that was often largely ignored by a Democratic administration and by the companies that were responsible for the catastrophe and it's follow up. We were muted intentionally. And it was only through the efforts of Florida’s own Senator Bill Nelson and Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and their staff that we were able to get a visual confirmation that provided the proof of what we were saying - that the oil that was billowing from the Gulf floor was far more voluminous then had been reported by the companies and agencies involved. That and other affronts to the environment and wisdom of science hurts, yes. But what hurts more is the enabling of the white patriarchal supremacy that is taking over this nation. It shakes me to the core to see women who cry out for justice and young black men cry out to be treated as human beings and refugee children ripped from their parents arms and imprisoned. Racism, classism, religious persecution, and misogyny never left, but now they all feel somehow accepted.

Every Floridian should vote by Tuesday vote. Restore felons’ voting rights, please; what Rick Scott has done with the parole commission is reprehensible. I’ll believe the nation (or at least, Florida) is reversing course if Rick Scott and Al DeSantis do not win. I’m reasonably sure that the GOP will lose the House, but that Mitch will remain in charge for two more years. But if Scott & DeSantis win, I’ll be disappointed. I suspect I won’t be alone. Make me proud! A blue wave in Florida would be welcome at this point in time, at least the rising tide begins to float all of the boats in dry dock due to sea level rise. Let the sunshine disinfect the hatred and greed that has become ubiquitous. Make me proud.

Dr. Paul Ruscher is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and now serves as Science Dean at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon.