Sustainability Videos & Lecture Series

Rick Shangraw: Hi, good afternoon. We’re gonna get started here. I see that there are a couple people in the back. What do we got back there? Anything good? Cookies? Juice? Juice, all right, all right. Well, something good.

My name’s Rick Shangraw, I’m the Senior Vice President for Knowledge Enterprise Development here at ASU. More importantly I’m the Director of the Global Institute of Sustainability at ASU. I’d like to welcome you to this forum. This is an idea that I think all three universities have been talking about for some time. That’s an attempt to get our three institutions together to talk about, in this case, climate which is an important topic.

We had a good reason to do that. Form time to time, and this has happened a number of times actually over the last seven years I’ve been here at ASU, we find that we have faculty members and staff move back and forth between University of Arizona and ASU and NAU. We just had one of those moves. We were sorry to lose Jim Buizer here at ASU, but we are certainly glad he ended up down south so we can keep working with him and talking with him.

Today is mostly about getting together to talk about the issues around climate adaptation and climate change. Also a chance for us to celebrate Jim’s role here at ASU and then his new role down at University of Arizona. How many of you out in the audience know Jim Buizer; have interacted with Jim? Okay, Jim you’ve got a good following here.

I don’t wanna go through all the technical details. I have a list of all the appointments he’s held at ASU. He was a professor of practice in some different programs here. He started the sustainability–Office of Sustainability Initiatives out of the President’s Office when he first came here. He built, basically, the sustainability program out of the President’s Office and was instrumental on how we have organized the Global Institute of Sustainability as well as the School of Sustainability.

He played a very important role here at ASU in terms of bringing our faculty together around these topics. Also in promoting us both nationally and globally in terms of sustainability. He has a new role at University of Arizona; Director of Climate Adaptation and also a professor down at University of Arizona. We’re very excited for his new role down there.

I’ll be saying a little bit more about Jim at the conclusion of the program. Making sort of a little more formal presentation. I’ve got some device up here and I’m supposed to give to him; save a little bit towards later. Today I really wanna jump into this particular topic of climate.

We couldn’t be more fortunate to have first, some great panel members but more importantly, good friend and one of my co-director members Dr. Sander van der Leeuw who is going to be moderating the panel. To get started, Sander, all yours.

Sander Van der Leeuw: All right. Oh, this is probably better like that. I will add my welcome, of course, to all of you and I see more and more people coming in. Come on up front and try and find a seat rather than stand out there in the back. There’s plenty of seats up here. Please do that so we don’t have any disturbances later on.

Thank you Rick, and thank you all for joining us. We’re, of course, extremely fortunate to have with us today this special panel and to be looking in front of all of you. Then I hope, in the second part, very much with you at the issue of climate change. Not so much from the long-standing sort of topic of how could we mitigate climate change, but to get a lot closer to how are we going to live with climate change? How are we going to adapt to climate change?

The three experts that I would like to introduce with you is, first of all, Jim Buizer himself. I could add a long set of stories. He was about the first ASU employee I ever met. That became a very interesting and very fruitful friendship; not only in climate and sustainability, but also in other areas of the university. At least many of you know him and Rick has just said a number of things about him.

I’d like to shift immediately to Jonathan Overpeck who is the founding co-director of the Institute of the Environment as well as a professor of geosciences and a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona. He’s published over 130 papers–and that’s quite a lot–in climate and in the environmental sciences and recently served as the coordinating lead author for the Nobel Price winning UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it’s fourth assessment.

He’s also been awarded the US Department of Commerce’s bronze and gold medals as well as the Walter Orr Robert’s Award of the American Meteorological Society for his interdisciplinary research. Overpeck has also been a Guggenheim Fellow and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Abe Springer who is sitting to his left is the Director of the School of Earth Sciences and Environmental Sustainability as well as a long-time professor at Northern Arizona University. Since he joined that university in 1994 he and his students have been actively researching Arizona’s finite ground water resources and searching for critical answers to the region’s growing challenges in that and other demands

He studies local and regional groundwater flow systems and human impacts on them. The application of the principles of sustainability to aquifer management through models and quantifies the hydrological function of groundwater dominated ecosystems.

He has collaborated with ecologists, botanists, plant physiologists, foresters, land managers, engineers and many other different kinds of professions partly as sub-disciplines within the earth systems and earth sciences; partly outside that.

Then I would also like to thank Laura Huenneke to join us to provide closing remarks at the conclusion of this discussion. Laura is Vice President for Research of Northern Arizona University. She came to the university as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and she is a professor of biological sciences. She joined NAU in 2003 and then served three years as Dean of Engineering and Natural Sciences, becoming Vice President in 2006

She earned her PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology from Cornell. Her research interest pertain to the influence of biological diversity on ecosystem structure–on ecosystem function. She is also committed to the effective communication, very importantly, of scientific and ecological understanding to the public to K through 12 educators and to students and policy makers.

That is just to present the people that you see in front of you. Now the issues that we are having to deal with in the next “N” decades, and we don’t know how long, how, and how far all of these things will change. What we do know, as people who are now beginning to get used to the sustainability debate, but it is important to begin to think about what–how those issues are going to affect us.

Just to sort of remember for a moment–I think one of the first climate conferences I went to was actually in Europe so I can cite it without doing any harm to anybody. We had three days of presentation and I remember one presentation where we had five climate models in 25 minutes. All the issues were about well, do we have one half degree more or one half degree less in this year or that year?

When my turn came I sort of asked well, you know, have you thought about how we might actually react to that instead of simply asking what the temperature would be? That almost got me whistled out of the room. It’s the only time–and this was in the mid-90s–that a paper that I presented at a conference was not admitted in the official publications.

It gives you a sense of how quickly over the last 15 years the climate debate has actually evolved. How importantly it has evolved into recognizing that all of this is ultimately something we, as humans, have to deal with. I think that is a lot of what this afternoon is all about.

What would we like to do, first with the people introducing and later with all of you, is get a sense of where you think that impact is going, what some of the consequences might be. Maybe, even more importantly at least for the moment, what kind of questions are going to be that we need to ask?

What kind of opportunity we actually have in our knowledge of where the climate is going and how it is going to affect us. After talking to Jim and talking to others I would propose that we take that as the central topic of this afternoon’s discussion. I will first ask each of the lead people in the panel to give a little bit of their own view on that. Then open it up to all of you because we would very much like to collect the opinions of many of you in this respect.

There is a couple of more seats up front here if you want to come up here. No? You don’t, do you? All right, okay.

With all of that let me then ask Jonathan Overpeck to start this off. He is the real sort of climate guru of this. He will start this off from the climate perspective. Thank you very much.

Overpeck: Thank you, Sander. Thank you all for coming today. I think it’s great to have this kind of conversation because when you really come down to it the real issue isn’t just the science. The science is actually really well known. The real issue is communicating the science and building understanding in society, in the public, in schools, in work places so people really understand what’s going on. That’s a job we all have to do.

It’s also very important to realize the scientists can only inform what’s happening, why, what it means for the future. Scientists don’t tell people what to do about it. They don’t tell us what decisions to make, what policies to develop. Instead that’s the role of a democracy; that’s the role of all of us. By having a big discussion like this I think it’s really fruitful.

I actually thought today’s event was gonna be a roast of Jim Buizer, so I didn’t prepare any comments at all. I have some things to say. Then I was told I have to talk about climate, and that’s unfortunate because I was really ready to talk about Jim.

The main thing I wanna say, though, is it’s probably sad for many in the room to see Jim leaving Phoenix, but Tucson’s only two hours away and he still has a home here; I think you’ll have that for a while.

[Laughing]

Overpeck: Thanks to the recession. The most important thing for us is this is a guy who’s incredibly passionate about global sustainability. Those of you at ASU know that. He’s also very passionate about sustainability of our own state. I think what’s really important to us is to think about sustainability on those two dimensions; from the scale of our community, all the way to the scale of the globe. If you have a passion for it there’s a lot to do.

This is a good guy to talk to and work with because he certainly wants to see things get done before he’s done. I think a lot of us share that.

We’ve had kind of a crappy monsoon. Everyone in the room knows we get most of our rainfall in Arizona in the winter or in the summer. It’s bi-modal and we get a lot of our water through the Central Arizona Project and other water infrastructure. A lot of that is snow turning into water that we drink.

Because we had such a lousy monsoon so far over the state we haven’t had a lot of clouds, a lot of rain to cool things, that’s contributed to the unusual heat we’ve all had. I was surprised; it was like going back a couple weeks for me to get out of my car here in Phoenix. It’s been hot in Tucson; we’ve been breaking records awfully frequently. Then things were just starting to cool off and I had to come here.

It’s still really hot and I know–I’ve heard you guys are breaking the most days above 110 records. The warmest low temperature record for August and my heart goes out to you. Because this whole year has been one of very–as a climate scientist–just unbelievable extremes in the United States and around the globe. Particularly in the United States; it’s just amazing when you start racking it up.

I’m teaching a class on global change and I taught a–yesterday a freshman class on what’s going on with the climate. You just can’t talk about anything without talking about extremes. It all started out with the drought that developed starting about the beginning of the water year last October and just got worse and worse. Really started to perk up and get more extreme about April time.

This drought goes all the way from our fair state all the way to Georgia and into parts of Florida. Of course it’s worse in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma. The big fires I heard on the news coming up here; 114 homes now burned in a fire outside of Austin. The fires.

That is this unprecedented drought. What makes it unprecedented? It’s been dry; it’s been a La Nina year. That’s usually when the southern tier of the United States is dry. Jim pointed out to me before one of the things we’re talking about in the science community is how we might get a double dip La Nina. Meaning we might go back into a La Nina this winter and that will be pretty interesting from an academic point of view, but pretty scary too.

We’ve had less precip, but the thing that’s really made this drought the worst drought ever in recorded instrumental, thermometer, rain gauge record in Oklahoman, Texas and parts of New Mexico, hasn’t been the rainfall deficit. It’s been the temperature. It’s been hot, okay?

What we’re seeing in that extreme, what we’re seeing in our wild fires–biggest wild fire ever in Arizona and New Mexico both this year. Both of those fires and other fires in our fair states were dwarfed by the fires that occurred in Texas. They’ve been going on for the whole fire season. What we’re seeing in the news now are ones that are close to Austin.

These are all unprecedented and it’s really being driven by elevated temperatures. Then we had the floods and the tornadoes. Then we had the hurricanes. What’s interesting on all of the–you know, the tornadoes are the only ones where it’s difficult, as a climate scientist, to say anything about human causation. We just don’t know enough about tornadoes.

We do know that as the Earth warms the atmosphere can hold more moisture. Long ago, when I was just a grad student, scientists were saying it will probably rain more hard because of the warming. Now, of course, it’s becoming true. We can see it in a statistically significant way. That’s one of the reasons we’re seeing a lot more flooding now.

One of the very interesting things in this debate about hurricanes; oh, we’re gonna get more, no probably not. We’re gonna get more intense ones. Yes, but we’ve probably not seen that yet. Or maybe we’re just starting to see more intense. The thing we’re seeing with hurricanes and when they hit it’s not the winds that are doing all the damage, it’s all the water. They’re just raining out much harder.

We’re getting some bad luck this year. Getting tropical storm Lee right on top of Irene and there are a bunch more brewing. All of this is interesting. The big question is: is this due to global warming, is this due to human activity, or is it just natural variability? You can read in the blogs anything you want, but in the science community the answer is the Earth is warming. It’s clear that humans have taken the Earth, both in terms of its atmosphere, composition and its temperature and many other things that all fit the big puzzle together. We’ve taken this Earth out of its normal, natural state and we’re propelling it somewhere else.

Everything that happens on this Earth now has to have some element of human causation. It’s just a question of can you see it in big, glaring lights like with the fires and the drought, being so darn hot, maybe these floods? Or is it more mysterious like the tornadoes? We don’t know if you can get–we do–I actually wrote a paper; you can get more convection, more big storms, that should give you bigger tornadoes.

You’ve gotta sheer. Is climate change gonna give you more or less sheer to give you these tornadoes? These things are going to play out over our lifetimes but we’re gonna see more and more of these extremes. There’s no doubt about it.

I’ve already commented on the role of scientists. We’re only supposed to say what’s happening, why and what it means for the future. We’re supposed to inform. The thing that’s really upsetting me now, I don’t like seeing climate events occur that kill people, that put people out of business, that do all this damage. I think, like all of us, that is just disheartening as all get-out.

I don’t like to see a nuclear power plant on the Missouri River getting surrounded by flood waters and getting this close to being, perhaps, a big disaster. These things are troubling to me. What’s really troubling is what’s going on in public discourse now. Did I use the right word?

[Laughing]

Overpeck: Public discourse. You know, the denial of climate science. The denial of science. Are you noticing this? It’s not just an attack on climate science; it’s an attack on science. The scientific method is a really well established method that’s been around for a long time. Some of the pundits are trying to turn this into it’s a belief system. Science is not a belief system.

It really troubles me that this is gonna be the–what is gonna cloud the ability of us as citizens in this country and in this state, in this town and my town down the road to have an open, unbiased discussion of what’s going on and what to do about it. I think we all can’t just sit idly by, scientists and non-scientists alike. We have to be clear.

We, as citizens, wanna know what the science is, what it means for the future, and then debate what to do about it. As a society that’s what we should be debating. Not whether you believe in global warming or not. What a stupid idea. You don’t believe in something like that, okay?

In ending, I think the reason I’m in Arizona and not off in some other state basking in a flood or something. I was on a teleconference with guys in Washington. They were like halfway through the teleconference, “I gotta go now, we’re getting flood warnings and we’re not gonna be able to get home.”

I’m out here because we are, in part, because we’re on the front edge of climate change. No other part of America outside of Alaska is seeing it so clearly. I think it’s interesting that not only do we have potentially these huge problems, it’s gonna get a lot warmer. You don’t like 110 degrees, wait for a few decades and it’s 120 degrees in the summer. Wait until your kids are having their kids and it’s gonna be getting maybe extremes up 120, 130. All right?

Droughts are gonna be more plentiful. We’re gonna see less moisture. The climate science is pretty clear that we’re gonna see less moisture, less water in the state. That doesn’t trouble me so much because getting us–we’re already focused, thanks to guys like this, we’re focused on how do we conserve water? How do we use it wisely?

It bothers me that a lot of people in our state are saying now climate science; I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. yet, not only do we have the biggest problem, potentially, in the nation, we also have the best, most to gain by dealing with that problem, all right? We have all of this abundant sunlight. In the last couple weeks I’ve been driving up near Snowflake I went by a huge wind farm. Could be a lot bigger.

I was just out in Deming Hatch Highway, southern New Mexico wind farm there. It’s not all solar. It’s wind and solar. We can be a big export of that energy California’s right next to us. They’re committed to switching to renewable energy; they need sources of renewable energy. We could be selling bucket-loads of energy to them, all right?

Are we really embracing renewable energy in this state? We are a little, that’s good news. I have a feeling the forces that play are saying let’s stop embracing it. Let’s just go back to good old times. Maybe, yes, if you decide to curb fossil fuel emissions, if we decide that you’ll lose jobs there. It’s stupid to say, though, that you’re gonna lose jobs. Net jobs would be probably zero if anything because we’ll have more jobs here. We’ll be the winner, okay? There’ll be lots of other winners across the state and nation.

We’ll also get cleaner air. Polls, Republicans, Democrats, you name it; across the whole political spectrum they all want cleaner air. That’s why they support renewable energy. It’s not just for climate. Okay, I’m gonna stop in just a second, but the last thing is right now we’re gonna have a water problem. How do we generate most of our energy in this state? With thermal energy. Whether it’s a nuclear reactor or a series of them just outside of town here, or coal fire plants up on the Plateau or elsewhere, those all consume water. They consume water that we just don’t need to consume. Renewable energy, solar and wind, doesn’t consume the water.

There are lots of co-benefits to doing this. I just hope that we, in our three universities, and we as people of the state can get together and convince people to have an honest, open dialog and decide together what to do free of the BS.

Thank you.

[Applause]

Van der Leeuw: There is one microphone that is missing. I’m gonna sort of shout, but if you can’t hear me in the back listen to Abe, what he’s going to follow-up on this story and insert the water more deeply in it.

Springer: Thanks Sander and I wanna follow-up and echo a lot of what Peck just said. To start off with I was lured here too that this was a Jim Buizer roast.

[Laughing]

Van der Leeuw: I didn’t want to be roasted, that’s why it isn’t.

Van der Leeuw: No one told me it was, that’s why I’m here.

Springer: I would just offer, up front, my thanks to Jim for being a friend and a colleague. Jim is, as many of you may not know, especially the student’s here cuz enough time’s already passed under it that Jim was instrumental in helping build a three university partnership in regards to water in the state of Arizona. An entity called the Arizona Water Institute. It’s an entity that we like to think was way ahead of its time. Because of that it will come back.

Unfortunately, as I’ve seen, what’s happened after the Water Institute’s demise is the state of Arizona has lost its ability to translate the results of science research to the public. I spend most of my time in the state in Arizona engaged in rural and land-resource management issues. In those rural areas a lot of science is being done by agencies and entities that are actually prohibited by mission from interpreting the results of their work to the people that they’re doing it for.

The universities hold a unique position in our ability to serve that role to translate science for the use of society. I share Peck’s concerns that maybe our Regents would like us not to do that, but I believe that is an important role that we have in the state. The mechanisms that we built in the Arizona Water Institute are part of what’s actually got us here today. Was building strong ties and collaborative relationships between the water scientists across our three universities.

It’s over 400 scientists across the three universities in Arizona. Not only are we a powerhouse in renewable energy, but we’re a powerhouse in knowledge about how to work with and adapt to and understand not just climate change, but specifically water resource management and planning issues. The types of knowledge and information that’s used in Arizona is exported substantially around the country and around the globe. We’re seen as an innovator. People emulate a lot of the practices, policies, procedures and managements that we’ve developed.

I just wanted to touch on a couple of items real quick opening to get you to think about some direct implications that climate change has brought to bear on the water resources of the State of Arizona. How that’s impacting each and every citizen of the state and why they should be concerned about it. As Peck mentioned, this past summer we’ve passed from the era of measuring the size of forest fires in acres to measuring them in the size of square miles as Wally Covington has indicated frequently.

That’s a really important distinction to recognize it now where 500, 700, 1,000 square miles we’re getting less and less concerned about these as they’re growing more and more every year. We only have 2.4 million acres of ponderosa pine forest in Arizona. It’s only a matter of time, unless we take immediate and quick reaction to mitigating these types of catastrophic fires we have.

Most people in Arizona, though, especially in the urban areas who derive most of the benefits from these forested portions of the state don’t recognize that most of their water comes from forested catchments; either in the upper Colorado River Basin or from forested catchments within the State of Arizona. They’re extremely important for our water supplies, our water security and our water future.

In the over 100 years since we’ve been suppressing fires and allowing our forest to become unhealthy and over-dense, not only have we diminished the amount of water that runs off from those forests and supplies our streams as runoff downstream, but we’ve significantly decreased the amount of water which naturally recharges the aquifers underneath those forests.

The response of our streams and our springs in the state has been a gradual decline in the amount of flow that they are receiving from our regional and local aquifers of the state. There is a real good opportunity we have now, which I’m sure is not as familiar to most of you down here in the Valley, but there’s a very innovative and unique partnership occurring called the Four Forest Restoration Initiative which is a public/private partnership which is formed to province mechanical thing of the forest and return a more natural fire regime to the upland forests of Arizona.

There are a number of benefits from that type of large-scale landscape restoration treatment. What I would focus on here immediately would be the hydrologic effects of that and it’s likely to have, with our best available information, at least a 10 to 20 percent enhancement of the water yield from our watersheds both in surface water and groundwater yield. We’ve seen that through looking at the impacts that our streams have had over the previous 100 years of diminishment of flow from the increase of density of forest over those watersheds.

The other issue I would indicate with regards to water and climate change is the growing importance of finding and securing future water supplies for our future growth and management in the state. You folks hosted a wonderful panel here a couple weeks ago for NBC Learn that included some very good experts to talk about this. I would just like to really focus this down to a couple of issues real quick in looking at the future of water.

In the valley you’re pretty comfortable in your future water supplies by being able to reallocate how water’s distributed between municipal use and agricultural use. Outside of the major urban areas of the states that luxury does not exist. We do not have irrigation uses for water supplies. It’s almost all municipal and industrial outside of there. There are serious discussions occurring in the state now of looking for how to secure future water supplies in addition to just conversion of water between municipal or agricultural use.

The rural areas of the state are seriously being looked at as places where there are potentially untapped reserves for future water supplies in the state. Their intimate connection, because they get so little rainfall which is projected to diminish into the future, is that we’re likely to have the potential for increasing the amount of mining that we have of rural groundwater in portions of the state. Which would impact the groundwater dependant streams and base flows that we have in the state as well.

The other thing I was gonna indicate briefly about climate change which I think is an impact that you would see more in the rural portions of the state, especially with our tribal neighbors to the north. In Flagstaff we’ve experienced, last year, an unprecedented number of closures of Interstate 40 just east of Flagstaff due to dust storms coming off of dry lake bed. Something we’ve never had before; I40 just closed, I think it was 5 days last year.

Traffic had some pretty significant reroutings around that which is indicative of a much larger concern of the landscapes of northern Arizona of a conversion to desert landscapes. This is a significant issue of concern for the Navajo Nation as landscapes are becoming more arid and we’re getting conversion of vegetation types across those landscapes. Those were just a few items I wanted to highlight. I know NAU has been more actively engaged in that issue than U of A on those rural management planning and landscape issues with forested–and tribal issues. I’ll pass it back to you Sander.

Van der Leeuw: Thank you very much.

[Applause]

Van der Leeuw: Well, Jim you have been looking at these issues in many ways from yet other angles and maybe the easiest way for me to get out of saying much about this is to hand it over to you right now to actually say–try and point to some of the other angles that climate is becoming more and more important in the state and what we might be thinking and doing about that.

Buizer: Okay, thanks. Yeah, so I was told that this was gonna be a roast of Jim Buizer.

[Laughing]

Buizer: First of all I wanna thank Rick and Sander and the rest of you who put this on. This was really a great excuse and great chance to get together with my colleagues from NAU. Peck, we almost drove up together.

Moderator: Put the mic a little bit closer cuz I think there’ll be not much hearing in the back.

Buizer: I can’t. It’s not long enough. Can I borrow yours? Yeah. Certainly, Laura, for coming down. All of you for being here, this is just a lot of fun for me. I’m gonna tell a little story. I think that the primary challenge --- and to back up to something that Peck said–primary challenge is one of communication. We know a lot about the climate system. In fact, I don’t know, is Bob Balling out there?

Those of you who know Bob Balling will know why I’m going–I’m about to say what I’m going to say. Bob, it is going to be hotter and drier in Arizona in the years to come. How about–how’s that for communication? That’s not equivocal. In fact, I’m not the one saying that. Climate science is saying that. This is not about a belief system as Peck just said. It’s about knowing.

It turns out that more–that there’s greater consensus amongst climate scientists that the climate is changing and, in fact, the humans are causing this to change than there is amongst medical professionals that second-hand smoke causes cancer. Yet, where is that debate? We don’t have it. Because that argument has already been won and passed.

Sander, I think it’s about communicating. It’s about a better job of communicating what we know. It’s not just about that, it’s about courageous leadership on the part of our government. Frankly, this is not a political statement by any means, but we don’t have it. There isn’t the courageous leadership on the part of whether it’s at the national level or at our state level to do the right thing in the face of this impending climate disruption.

We can communicate, yes. We can communicate in all the ways that we know. In fact, we’ve got some superb communicators in this room that do a really nice job at communicating - Sean. Nevertheless where is the leadership? Where are our political leaders when it comes to making the tough choices that must be made in order to preserve the quality of life, improve the quality of life and the wellbeing–actually allowing Arizonans to be able to live in the future climate? Because the future climate isn’t going to look like the past.

I connected on a flight through Houston getting to Washington DC. It was hot; I got on the plane late, sat down. The air wasn’t on; it was really hot in there. As I was sitting down the fellow next to me, clearly from Houston, was having a conversation with the fellow next to him. I knew I wasn’t going to talk to him about climate because it was clear to me within 30 seconds that he and I weren’t gonna agree.

[Laughing]

Buizer: I reached up to try and turn the air on and he said, “Oh!” He said, “Oh, it’s just terribly hot. It’s not gonna get any cooler. In fact, there’s nowhere in Texas that you can go to get it–for it to be any cooler. We’ve had–,” I don’t remember the number, 43 days of over 110 degrees; it’s hot everywhere.

At which point to him, I said, “Yes, it sure is a good thing that that global warming thing is a hoax. Because can you imagine how hot it’d be if it were not.”

[Laughing]

Buizer: Well, he quickly realized–oh, and then he said, “Yeah.” Then he realized what had happened and we didn’t have a conversation the rest of the time.

[Laughing]

Buizer: It is and, in fact, people decide ahead of time whether or not the climate is changing or not. Science, the informing has some role, but unfortunately not the traditional role that we might think in being able to inform and change the way people behave and the perceptions that they have.

Not only at the state level but at the national level there’s a big exercise that I’m involved in called the National Climate Assessment. It’s a two-year exercise assessing the state of knowledge of the science; about the impacts and what we might do about it. That is what we call adaptation options. I would argue that if we can get people away from the greenhouse gas reduction debate and for a moment to start focusing on the “what are we gonna do about living in this future climate?”

Let’s not even argue for a moment about how it got there or what we might do to prevent even greater future climates. Let’s just focus on what we would, in a science community, call the adaptation side of things. Then if we frame it in the form of sustainability it’s not so difference from sustainability framing except that now we’re saying we need to do it in the face of a changing climate, not a static climate. Sustainability is a relevant framing even if the climate were not changing.

I’d say we need to move beyond this anti-science; I would say the anti-science politics and the politics of big oil and move directly into informing about what are we going to do about this?

Here in Arizona we’re very, very well equipped to–we have some of the best scientist in the country. Certainly we have some of the best scientists in the world right here in Arizona. Four hundred or so working on water which is, of course, about climate and then countless others. We have both volume and quality and, in fact, on the national level the entire Southwest which is defined as California, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico–help me out.

That’s about it? For the National Climate Assessment, Arizona scientists are taking the lead in helping define that. In fact, because I’m on a national committee I can tell you that they are–that what’s happening in the Southwest climate assessment; this exercise that Arizona scientists are leading is being put forward as the exemplar of how to do an assessment. We’re very, very well equipped scientifically. I think we’re quite well equipped when it comes to the communication side. we need to do a better job but frankly, Sander, I think it has to–we have to–if we’re gonna toss that pass we have to have someone catching it at the other end. That, I would argue, is a gap in our political leadership in this state. Again, I’ll repeat it; I think we’re seeing it just so you know that this is not a political statement. I think that we don’t have the courageous leadership at the national level as well.

Van der Leeuw: Thanks, Jim.

[Applause]

Van der Leeuw: All of you have carefully avoided another aspect of all of this. Okay, we get people to believe that all of this is going on. How do we get them to change their behavior because they probably, in many ways, won’t know what they can do and what they can’t do? With that I want to throw open yet another point in this debate. That is the whole debate of education; of education of us as universities but of our community at all levels. General education for the general public, education on K through 12, education in high schools; we need to be using the power and the leverage of the universities to actually begin not only to think about how we can respond to these challenges that have been just thrown out, but how we are going to get people to be educated enough to start working on them. To actually start implementing the kinds of solutions that is necessary.

Fortunately I’m not here to deny that I want to roast Jim. I basically am here to throw it open to all of you and to ask your contribution to this debate and this discussion. Because, as I said at the beginning, we depend on you as much as anybody else. Certainly a large part of the audience here are among these 4, 5, 600 people who are the core of the science community in Arizona, in this domain. We would welcome any and all reactions, any and all suggestions. With that, it’s over to you. Yes, please?

Audience: I’m relatively new here. In the last couple months I’ve noticed a tendency to–we’re scientists, we’re here to study, research and provide knowledge. We’re not here to implement solutions. My thought is if you’re in private sector you get R&D people that not involved in the prior development and the manufacturing and use of focus groups and what’s working, what’s not working. Then you have inadequate product. You need that feedback loop.

Our problems are very complex and so a lot of time they require iterative solutions where you go out and you try something and then you get feedback. Then, by the way, it’s like the Heisenberg Principle, you’ve groomed reality. Now you need to go and change your solution to adapt it to the new reality. You need to be constantly engaged.

I just feel a sense around here from some folks that hey, I’m here to study and develop the solutions. It’s other people’s job to go out and communicate that solution. A lot of times I’m not studying, developing a solution, I’m just here to study the problem. You also need to develop the solutions and then go out there and do them. Because it’s like an architect building or designing a building that never–its builder, he’s never around building this building. You never learn anything from it; professional development.

My personal perspective is that what we can do as a university is get much more involved in designing the solutions, but then also not necessarily be the key person in the implementation cycle, but be there during the implementation, study what’s happening. Feed that back, refine the solution, and we have to stay engaged through the whole process. It’s gotta be an iterative approach.

Van der Leeuw: Thank you.

Overpeck: Can I respond?

Van der Leeuw: Please.

Overpeck: I think I was a little misleading because right now I’m a little frustrated by what I’m watching on the TV in the morning. I am a scientist, okay? This whole enterprise is far more than climate scientists. Arizona’s fortunately rich in also engineers who are working with scientists and with social–physical scientists and social scientists to not only figure out what possible solutions exist, but to prototype them and experiment with them. To interact on their–you know, with the public and understand how open the barriers of implementation; all that kind of thing. It’s outside my field.

We do have a lot of people doing this, I think, at our three universities. I would agree whole-heartedly that we have to be involved in that whole cycle and trying to bring the public and the private sector in to experiment with us and to move forward with solutions. But, at the same time I’m really tired of the perception that the scientists are telling us we must cap and trade, or we must do this. Scientists aren’t telling us we have to do anything.

Our job is not just to provide choices but is to do as you say, which is try to demonstrate the pros and cons of different choices. Certainly not to tell our policy makers how to invest–you know, to usurp what our democracy should be doing.

Springer: Yeah, let me address that a couple different ways. In water resources management respect to climate change we’re partly a victim of our own success. Because we’ve largely buffered the public from understanding the role of the hydrologic system and we buffered them from seeing large-scale droughts or floods for the most part on the systems. The good story that’s always relayed and Sean would remember this back in 2002 the citizens of Phoenix didn’t realize we were in the throes of a very big drought until the tubing season on the Salt River was delayed that year.

That was the media story that got everyone’s attention. Oh my god, we’re in a drought. Partly we’ve got to do a better job at looking at how we convey some of that information to the public. I would say that we have done, even though there maybe a state of denial and a lack of leadership at a political level, I can tell you that at the water manager level there is significant investment in study in climate change.

The Salt River Project, Central Arizona Projects, the City of Phoenix and other water providers have invested heavily in understanding the response of their water supply systems to climate change over the last couple thousand years. Investing in climate research in the U of A and ASU and understand how their water delivery systems will respond to potential future climate change. Again, that’s partly success of the strength of our managers in trying to plan for that.

Van der Leeuw: Yes, please?

Audience: How do you find the utilities in the state as far as cooperating with the scientist? My public perceptions are pretty good that they wanna reduce their power that they sell to people and improve the water and other things. Do you interface much with them and how do you find them?

Springer: Yeah, a lot of my work is largely in rural areas. They’ve been at water crisis for a very long time. A lot of rural areas have difficulty in meeting peak summer demand and have for a long time. They become significantly more efficient and better water managers by necessity for a very long time. The community pace is at a per capita use of 75 gallons per person per day right now. Flagstaff’s about 110. Actually, the residential per capita water use in Flagstaff’s actually 55 gallons per person per day.

We don’t give a lot of our communities credit for how innovative they have been and proactive they have been. What a lot of rural areas have done is the conversion from a water company to a water utility has allowed the citizens to be engaged and active in being better stewards and managers of their resources; more actively engaging in planning.

Van der Leeuw: Over there?

Audience: This climate adaptation problem is kind of a classic example of an environmental system interacting with a social system. We have scientific knowledge production, we have public policy deliberation; you’ve placed a lot of–all of you, and I agree–blame at the foot of the political system. Is this a failure of the scientific knowledge system, the political decision making system, or is it a failure of linking those two systems together? What’s the solution for better linking those if that’s the case?

Buizer: Wouldn’t you be talking, David, about foundry organization?

Audience: Well, that’s a hot topic of mine and I know of yours. I don’t wanna pre-suppose the answer but I just–we do, I think, have strong consensus on the science side of the issue. There’s fairly strong consensus on what is causing the political inaction. Where is the solution out of that intractable problem?

Buizer: For me it’s all of the above. What I mean is we can do better across the board. I focused on my frustrations at the–sort of the national and state leadership level because of where–here we are in a university knowing what we do and how we do it. Back to your earlier point but related is I think there’s some pretty interesting efforts that are solution orientation by each of the three universities. I know that the Sustainability Institute has as its mantra; Solution Orientation.

I know that the extension service and the climate–the Climas at U of A and some of the work that’s happening at NAU is very focused on solutions. In fact, I would argue even more so than in many other places. If we take the three major universities in the state and even improve a little bit on that. It’d be great if we could imagine sort of Arizona of all places as the exemplar of science to solutions or research to action kind of exemplar.

David, there’s still better, more work that we can do. We come a long ways considering our 300 plus year history of reductionism and moving away, particularly in these universities, I’d say moving away from the sort of quest for basic knowledge because we don’t know stuff to what some call use inspired research. Yes, there’s still some work that has to happen. I would argue, and I don’t know my other two colleagues would agree, but I would argue that we’ve come quite a long ways. There’s still work to be done. At this point the frustration that you’re hearing from at least Peck and I–and Abe’s just nicer than the two of us–is that with the broader system is that we’ve been pounding away for decades on this message. It just isn’t–doesn’t seem to be going as quickly as possible.

Springer: I’ll give–

Van der Leeuw: Young lady in the front there–

Springer: Actually, if I could–

Van der Leeuw: Yeah, go ahead.

Springer: Let me make a real quick comment on that. Another approach we’ve been examining and looking at pretty carefully is looking at the ecosystem services concept. I’ll give a specific example; forest management. How many of you in here who are members of the Salt River Valley Water Users Authority or get water delivered from that are willing to pay for watershed restoration in your forested uplands on your monthly water bill?

Should you be paying for that in your monthly water bill? Or should the federal government be paying for it? I mean these are the debates I think we should have is who should be paying for it and how should we be paying for it? It should be paid for by somebody somehow. The question is: as us helping a system what are the right institutions and mechanisms to make sure that’s happened to make sure our adequate water quality and quantity for the future.

Van der Leeuw: Okay, you’re first and then you.

Audience: I’m going to the intersection of politics and policy; I work for one of the elected commissioners at Corporation Commission. It’s worth mentioning because we’re one of only seven states where the commission, which has authority over energy policy has what’s called planning reform. In other words you don’t need the legislature, thank god, and you don’t need the governor to change energy policy.

Last year we had a fantastic chair, now Professor Chris Mays who really was able to do some remarkable things and pass one of the most forward-thinking energy efficiency’ programs in the country. It’s really–what I’ve seen in the years that I’ve seen us change from men like Chris Mays, brilliant, hardworking young Republican women to–led by basically the Tea Party. Global warning deniers is a lack of information.

Just to give you an example. Arizona imports almost all of its fossil fuels; 90 percent of our fossil fuels. We spent 3 billion dollars a year importing coal, natural gas and uranium from outside of Arizona. We spend 150 million dollars a year on renewable energy; 150. I would ask people who in this room–we spent 20 times more on fuel than we do on renewable. Especially young people, how many people think that the cost of fuel’s gonna remain flat? Cuz that is the gamble that utilities make.

To your question about the utilities. APS sells us 3.2 billion dollars worth of electricity every year. Utilities have an odd business model where their sales go down a little bit their profits go on enormously. Two percent loss of sales, 25 percent loss of profits; five percent loss of sales, 50 percent loss of profits. You have disruptive technologies and energy efficiency coming in and eating away at the business model of utilities. I would venture that every state in this country and the ones that I’ve worked in, the utilities own the legislature. They own most of the politicians, and I’ll say that. Apparently they do.

They have enormous, enormous influence. They have a lot to lose from a decentralized [coughing disrupts 0:57:36]. We are fifth in the country in solar. We’re 24th in the country in renewable. Yet we have more solar insolation than any other state in the country and Germany which gets half or even less of the kilowatt hours that we would for solar just has a staggering amount more of solar than we do on a per capital basis. Forget the fact that they’re 83 million people.

I would say that it’s a lot of power and politics. Not power as in electricity but power as in [too soft 0:58:14].

Audience: One of the things you have to take into consideration is that when dealing with the government is dealing with a disreputable group of people.

[Laughing]

Audience: Until you can get confidence in what the government is telling you you’re never going to be able to convince them of your argument. We have I think, in general, have no confidence in what the government tells us. It would appear to me that you’re going to have to find an institution outside of government to present your message. The institution is going to have to be like Caesar’s wife in order to maintain your credibility.

When you expect government to advocate for you, nobody trusts government. Nobody. Because they have a long history of telling whoppers.

[Laughing]

Van der Leeuw: One person there and then moving on to that side.

[Laughing]

Audience: Yes, I was wondering to what extent this is an educational issue. In the 70’s the National Academy talked about a cooling problem. Now, in 2000 we’re talking about a global warming problem. If it’s true of global warming then why are we talking here about global change? It seems like we should be clear on what the message is.

Overpeck: I’d like to say that. I mean that is one of those things that’s being framed by these climate denialists. When I was a graduate student I was at the university–one of the three only ones that were working on what causes the Ice Age; I mean the big powerhouses. Yes, they were working on what is causing the ice ages. If nature was left to their own we would be going into an ice age. The same scientists were saying we also have a problem with global warming. Global warming negates, eliminates the chance that we’ll go back into an ice age any time soon.

Even back in the 1970’s they were saying this. I mean you can go and look at journals; special issues of journals that were published at that time on these issues. They’ll have the whole discussion of the ice age problem concatenated with articles about hey, you know, that’s interesting but we’re gonna warm not cool. It’s all framed by the climate denalists. They like to bringing up these old stories. If enough people in the blogosphere and on talk radio say them the public starts to believe them.

We all–I mean, perfectly normal people start to believe them. I think that’s one of the problems which we’re talking about. We need to work harder on the communication.

Audience: I’ve been frustrated for many decades also. Really going back to the 70s that you are referring to. When you look at that time as we’ve discussed or if you’re going through 8 presidents; 19 or so congresses you’re not seeing things. Again, as we see the cause and effect and we see that the symptoms of the–what’s occurring for your last case. Maybe that’s not the best path.

We had a situation where with President Richard Nixon we were able to get a certain climate elements passed. Certainly EPA and some elements like that that were wonderful but can we depend upon our “elected” political public servant leadership to drive this in this direction? I think the answer’s no at this point. That’s what–that’s what I submit to you.

What do we need to do? I think really the challenge is to find a way to engineer market transformation, right? At the highest level -- make things happen, change people’s behavior. We have the capabilities and knowledge assessed through the three universities. The 400 scientists in the water, et cetera will sustain that extremely well.

What is market transformation? To me it’s three simple elements. Create awareness, educate and build demand. Much like [inaudible 1:02:37] simple which means study with your life not really understand it. Create awareness, educate, build demand. How do you do that?

Well, okay it can be difficult. If we feel that we have to wait for elected public servant leaders to come through and do something for us. Or if we assume public utilities that would have a profit motive or are going to all of a sudden engage in this 100 percent, well it’s not gonna happen. Each of these different entities has a stake in the game. They have a certain stake in the game.

There’s some sort of a partnership; some sort of an elegant relationship that needs to be formed, okay? You can’t depend upon political leaders to do it themselves or on our best interests. You can’t depend upon research scientists to come up with marvelous research and all of a sudden snap their fingers and make things change. You need to become aware and educated and all of a sudden they change. They move down to 55 and less gallons per person.

What is it gonna take? This sort of hit me some weeks ago. It was actually another ASU event. The content was I think it was being proposed that we needed some sort of a fad that would run energy. What they missed, there’s no way that’s gonna happen, personally. I think that’s pipe dream.

What would, and I’m thinking what could occur, I thought the concept of Linux; how was Linux developed. This open source operating system that’s ultimately a “bullet proof” system and it was created open source by experts from various areas and backgrounds. What if there were a way that we could leverage the web, leverage the tools that exist there, leverage the knowledge sets that these different groups to create, in a sense, an elegant path; a road map, a plan. Not wait for somebody else to do it. This is what we need to start to generate.

Overpeck: You know, I’m not a political scientist so I can’t really–or I’m not a scholar in this area; someone who knows enough to really respond. Certainly we have to try, I think, different approaches. The big thing here’s you gotta think out of the box. I mean the idea that we’ll find a sliver bullet isn’t gonna work. It’s gonna be some kind of buckshot; copper buckshot if it’s Arizona.

Springer: I’ll maybe answer your question with a few more questions. These are ones that I think the state of Arizona has, in theory, articulated through their legislatures. The State of Arizona has said that they don’t want their state tax dollars to go to State Water Resources Department. The citizens of the State of Arizona I believe have recognized that there needs to be someone who manages the water resources of the State of Arizona. Therefore a new fending mechanism has been developed to fund the Department of Water Resources in the state of Arizona.

You’re all still paying for it, but you’re just doing it through your city government instead of through state tax dollars. If that works that’s fine. I think there are many other ways that we have to concern–we’re concerned with looking at this. I think one of the main concerns we should have as scientists studying the climate right now is that’s considered discretionary funding in Washington right now. I think we should all be concerned about how do we fund this basic and applied science in the future and figure out who does it and who benefits from that.

This is where we found that this ecosystem services concept to be one model that’s out there to help inform that discussion and think of how it happens. It’s not sexy for congressmen to bring back and use new stream flow gauging for the Arizona. How could we–our flood monitoring network, our water supply network, all of our planning exists without that stream flow gauging station. What’s the appropriate way to pay for that and fund for that? What’s the appropriate way to pay for our climate–or our weather satellites that are up in the atmosphere now and are about ready to be defunded; the next generation of those?

I think those are real serious questions we have as a society on what we value is important and how do we come up with the mechanisms to support that into the future.

Overpeck: That’s just one element of the road map.

Van der Leeuw: The sitting person in the last row over there.

Audience: Me, Sander?

Moderator: Yes.

Audience: As a scientist–earth scientist and a recent mover to Arizona I share and echo your frustrations. I wonder, and as an individual at a university I echo the frustration of being able to connect with a politician. What about the three of you and this–an outcome; a tangible outcome of a panel like this drawing up a manifesto or a statement that is shared by the three universities–the scientists of the three universities that goes to our politicians, that goes to our newspapers, that expresses our completely unequivocal view on climate change?

To actually put it into the news, to actually put it onto the politician’s doorsteps. If I did that as an individual I’d get spanked for using my ASU.edu email, right? If we did it as a broad community of scientists; of 400 scientists working across 3 universities it would actually make an impact. The newspapers would pick it up; the politicians would have it delivered on their doorsteps. We might actually reengage them, just a thought.

Overpeck: Well, I think we should at least, like my last response think of all these options and see what we can do as universities. How can we play a role in this? We have an extension service at University of Arizona and in every county in the state and many of those counties as stakeholders. It’s not just agricultural are interested in climate. We’ve been trying to bring climate scientists into these communities when we’re invited to discuss issues. I think that’s something that’s working well.

We also have these large climate outreach programs that are funded by various sources and private and federal in particular. We’re trying to use those. At some point the universities do have to stand up and take a stand. It’s happened at the University of Arizona where there’ve been call for some of the scientists to be fired. You know, tenure track faculty because they study climate. It’s nice to see that in contrast–you know, with the McCarthy era where the universities sort of keeled over and just fired people, faculty, that our university at least is standing tall and saying “no.” This is why we have tenure.

They’re speaking the truth but I don’t know whether it’s politically realistic to think our university’s gonna get together and the presidents are gonna have this joint declaration. You never know, though. Yeah, I think work it up from the grass roots.

Van der Leeuw: Grass roots I think is really important to all of this, but it’s not up to me to talk here. The lady at the back standing before the black part of the board.

Audience: I don’t even think we can simplify things with one phrase, but all the research you all have done [inaudible] in global warming and climat