To: Atmospheric Sciences faculty, students, and staff.
   From: Greg Hakim.
Subject: 2010 UCAR Members Meeting.

On 5-6 October I attended the UCAR Annual Members Meeting as a
representative of the University of Washington. In accordance with my
responsibilities as a Members Representative, I am sending this email
to report to you on the activities of this meeting.

As I have done in previous reports, I'll preface my summary with a
little background for those of you not familiar with UCAR; you may skip
to the next paragraph if you're familiar with UCAR. UCAR (University
Corporation for Atmospheric Research) is a non-profit corporation that
has, among other things, a term contract with the NSF to oversee
NCAR. UCAR has a board of directors, called Trustees, that manage the
business of UCAR by interacting with the executives of the
corporation. These Trustees are elected by representatives of the
stakeholders, who are the member institutions that pay dues for these
privileges. The annual meeting provides the opportunity for members to
elect Trustees and receive briefings on the activities of UCAR and NCAR
during the past year.

The meeting started early this year, and since I traveled directly from
another meeting, I missed the reports portion of the meeting. The topic
of the Members' Forum this year was "Innovative Ways to communicate
science research to the public," and was presented in the form of a
keynote speaker followed by two panel discussions. Seattle artist Chris
Jordan gave the keynote address. My initial skepticism of using art to
communicate science was quickly reversed by the powerful imagery and
strategy described by Mr. Jordan. If you have not experienced his
artwork, which includes photographs capturing our consumptive throw-away
society, I highly recommend visiting his webpage (chrisjordan.com). Two
themes of his presentation involved (1) the inability of humans to
grasp the large numbers associated with things like climate change, and
(2) the "tragedy of the commons" where the collective behavior of large
numbers of people doing seemingly innocuous things, like throwing away
an aluminum soda can, has enormous implications for the planet. His art
attempts to portray the impact of these large numbers by allowing one
to visualize them through everyday throw-away items, like cell phones
and paper bags. I've attended few presentations more powerfully
compelling than this one.

The panel discussion following Chris Jordan's talk concerned presenting
scientific information to the public. A "how to" guide on communicating
science to the public, produced by Columbia University and entitled
"The Psychology of Climate Change Communication" was distributed to the
members, and I am happy to share it with you. It is also available
online at cred.columbia.edu/guide. Among many issues, the panelists
discussed the problem of lost objectivity for scientists turning to
advocacy. One suggestion was for scientist to be part of a team,
providing an explanation of the facts, that provides the foundation for
the advocate members of the team to build upon. One panelist was a
NCAR's artist in residence, Marda Kirn, who suggested that scientists
engage local artists in a partnership for presenting issues related to
climate change in local artwork for the public.

A dinner banquet was held to celebrate the 50th anniversary of
UCAR. The latest building acquired by UCAR at the Foothills Lab (the
Wild Oats building) was named the "Richard A. Anthes building" in
recognition of Rick's 25 years of service to the community. Among the
many luminaries present at the celebration was former NCAR director and
UCAR President Francis Bretherton.

The second panel discussion involved innovative ways to communicate
climate change science in the classroom. One pair of instructors from
CU involved a collaboration between a performing artist and a climate
scientist. One particularly captivating aspect of their presentation
concerned the use of sex to describe radiative absorption in an
interpretive dance. I'm not sure everybody was on board with this idea,
but they definitely had the attention of the audience.  Anecdotal
information suggests that having students produce art as performance
pieces leads to greater retention of lecture concepts, although it's
not clear if this is more effective than demonstrations, for
example. Another pair of English professors found it surprisingly easy
to assemble an interdisciplinary lecture series devoted to climate
change. They have collected their experiences in a webpage entitled "100
views of climate change" (http://changingclimates.colostate.edu/). The
last panelist was a Native American philosophy professor who contrasted
the Native American worldview emphasizing integration and connections
against the European worldview emphasizing deconstruction.

The final panel of the meeting involved the views of early-career
scientists on the future of interdisciplinary research. Among this
panel of next-generation leaders was UW alumnus Brian Ancell. The
challenges of interdisciplinary science were emphasized, particularly
with respect to funding and promotion for junior faculty.

Dennis Hartmann was elected to serve a second term as UCAR Trustee, and
I was re-elected to the PACUR (President's Advisory Committee on
University Relations) as Chair. You may find several of the meeting
presentations at http://www.ucar.edu/governance/meetings/oct10/ along
with other information about the meeting; other presentations will
appear in a few days on a follow-up web page that will be linked from
this page. As always, I welcome your comments, and issues that you
would like me to address in the future.