Politics

[Cross posted at Global Adaptation Institute] Today I've published the article «Más Acción, Menos Palabras,» in the Madrid-based daily national newspaper, La Razón. One of the goals of the article is that in the wake of no clear path forward on tackling climate mitigation, concrete steps taken by world leaders attending the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting can harness the power of the private sector in helping those most vulnerable adapt to the challenges of climate change and other global forces: The harsh reality is that, after seventeen annual international [UNFCCC COP] conferences, intentions still fall far behind action. The necessary consensus for taking global steps to address climate change becomes lost among competing agendas. They have become business meetings where solutions are not coordinated. Adaptation is a parallel track, and complementary to tackle climate change. The meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos this week brings together over a thousand leaders representing many sectors of the economy that drive its evolution. Not surprisingly, one of the issues at the top of the agenda is climate change and global adaptation to this phenomenon. Read the whole article, in spanish, here. ...

[Cross posted at the Global Adaptation Institute News.] Reporting from Durban, with contributions from Ian Noble watching from the web. In the morning I joined the Climate Communications Day. Attendees were mainly environmental journalists. It is part of a continuing process to assist journalists, especially those from developing countries, to understand both the process of climate change and the state of the negotiations. After all, what society will hear mostly comes from the media, not scientists directly. ...

[Cross posted at the Global Adaptation Institute News.] Development Seed published today an interview we made about the climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa. We discussed the importance of open data in the climate mitigation and adaptation movements. The interview also highlights how the Global Adaptation Index is a groundbreaking tool that utilizes open data to help countries adapt to climate change and other global forces: ...

[More or less a transcription of the speech I gave today] Thank you very much for the invitation to join the Kick-off of the Water Hackathon. The topic at hand is extremely important. Water is essential, yet billions of people face aggravating challenges with water quality, quantity, or even basic access to it. The challenge here is to help solve these real identified problems with pragmatic software-based solutions. And I know, we know, that we can make great contributions. We, participants, as many as we are, we are not alone, as you can see. This event has the support of the World Bank, NASA, governments, Universities and companies around the world. Why? Because it’s working. The growth of this movement is based on its success, which I see is based on 3 ingredients. ...

Last Friday the US State Department hosted its 5th Tech@State, where technologist and diplomats unite to pursue goals in education, health, and welfare worldwide. The topic for this year was Open Source Software. All sessions are available in Ustream. I would especially recommend the one by Maccon Phillips, Dr. Linton Wells and Jeremy Allison. The feeling is that the model has changed. It is not anymore about hiring a company to provide a closed product and give support until they stop providing service or a new one is needed. The model now is to open the data, let everyone access as much information as possible. Anyone can then build (open) products that the agencies can evaluate and use. Every agency has now the power to create such open competitions. Agencies are keen to use open source software, as they realize it has many more benefits and fewer problems. They typically hire a company to adapt the product and provide service. The extra mile comes when they liberate the improvements for everyone to use, when they adopt the winning apps on competitions, when everyone can be engaged in the innovation, and everyone benefits from it. ...

This [free as pdf] NAP book is a report from the 2008 NRC Board of Atmospheric Sciences workshop: “Progress and Priorities of U.S. Weather Research and Research-to-Operations Activities”. Despite the chaotic nature of Weather, scientist are currently able to measure (nowcast) and predict (forecast) weather with unprecedented accuracy. Almost certainty within hours, and maybe a week at best with 50% chance. But: Do we need to improve our capabilities? Can we? The report says yes. What can we do? Once we have the forecast of an impending weather event, are we acting accordingly upon predictions? The report says not really. The U.S.A. has the world´s most sophisticated and well-developed weather forecast infrastructure. The federal government also spends, annually, $5 billion in research and operations only in NOAA, and $6 billion for a dedicated agency on disasters (FEMA). Academia and private partners are also tightly involved. Only the generation of weather forecasts costs overall $5 billion annually, but its benefits are (quoted on the book as) 6 times the cost. Despite these impressive benefits on paper, there is much room for improvement. ...

-Background and authorship info- Part of the Mirzayan fellowship was to propose topics on which to write a policy paper. This is the topic I submitted and 10 other fellows joined. This is the result of 2 weeks of work. Some of the authors requested their authorship to remain internal to NAS. Therefore, I am not including names besides mine. Also you will note many similarities with my individual brief, in which I concentrated into the subtopic of Crowdsourcing development. ...

The National Academies Press publishes more than 200 books a year on a wide range of topics in science, engineering, and health. I am cursed with endless curiosity, so working there is a love-hate relationship. Love because I love what the NAS does, hate because everyday I find I report “I have” to read. Halfway in my fellowship, I decided to highlight some of the ones I find most interesting. For now, this is the one: ...

Harvey A. Averch, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985. 216 p. I found this lost treasure buried at a second hand bookstore. It dates back some few decades, and the USA was certainly different in 1985, when this book was published. Back then, the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam war, the energy crisis, high unemployment, and very high inflation and escalating interest rates, made any political planning difficult. There was even a raised fundamental concern over the future of American prosperity. ...

With such an appealing title, this book (2002, 120 pages, simple formatting, easy read) went straight to the top of my pile of books to read. You can get the pdf for free at the NAS press or the physical version for around 25$. I paid $10 on eBay, but I wish I had my Kindle back then! It is truly an interesting topic. The approach aims to respond on the tricky business of advising science from inside international organizations. The UN, for example, has made several clear calls to qualitatively and quantitatively strengthen science advice across and throughout its structure (e.g. Agenda 21 Chapter 31). The main goal of such an advisory body would be then to increase awareness, rule making, oversight but also local implementation, address emerging issues and coordinate global cooperation and response. ...