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.