August 6, 1998
Walter Orr Roberts Distinguished
Lecture
From Slide Rule to Supercomputer:
A 30-Year Review of Atmospheric Science and Public Policy
The National Center for
Atmospheric Research
August 10, 1998
I am very appreciative of Dr.
Shirley Malcolm coming from Washington DC to introduce me and to talk to this
years’ SOARS students. Shirley has and continues to have an impressive impact
on the science education at all levels from preschool through graduate school.
She is tireless and relentless in her efforts and very successful with her
leadership of educational activities at the American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS), which have had profound effect on science
education and inclusion of underrepresented groups.
I want to thank my colleagues,
friends, and, especially, my family for coming to this event. I know that you
do not want a long speech by me at this point so I will just try to briefly
cover my career with a few anecdotes and touch on the past and future of
atmospheric science and science in general. Part of this talk will be to help
the young people here understand that there is excitement in taking part in the
scientific and engineering enterprise.
Each of us has an interesting
story about how we got to where we are in our lives. My “scientific career
started early by reading and being interested in science as a grade school
student. My high school science teacher was instrumental to turning me on to
science by having me figure out why egg yolks are yellow. That is a bit of a
long story but it demonstrated to me that I could find out on my own something
about how nature works. That is an important lesson to learn. The UCAR SOARS
program is such a hands-on program that has already demonstrated impressive
success.
By my high school senior year, I
had been, especially, turned on to physics. During my last two years of high
school I worked 6 days a week as a dishwasher at a Portland, Oregon Hospital.
Through that connection I got a job at the same hospital chain in Corvallis
where Oregon State University was located. I washed dishes and studied physics
all the way through undergraduate and my first year of graduate school. This is similar to that story that “old
people” say their grandchildren that they had to walk “to school both ways up
hill 10 miles in blinding snow storms.”
Things began to happen quickly for my career in graduate
school. The first job I had was to operate research weather radar on the
highest mountain on the Coast Range in Oregon. Being alone on the top of the
mountain in the midst of five or six-foot overnight snowstorms quickly
convinced me that I should get into theory and mathematical studies. I spent a summer at Stanford Research
Institute working on a project dealing with atmospheric dynamics, which lead to
going to graduate school for a Ph.D. at Penn State University. After getting a
graduate assistantship at Penn State University, I worked under the direction
of Professor Hans Panofsky. When I finished my thesis research I came to NCAR
at the end of summer in 1963. Almost
from the start I began working on problems in dynamics and collaborated with
Akira Kasahara on building an atmospheric model in 1964. Walt Roberts, Phil Thompson, Will Kellogg and
John Firor were wonderful early directors who gave much wise advice to younger
scientists like me. Also, Chester Newton, Harry Van Loon, Julius London,
Bernhard Haurwitz and Askel Wiin Nielsen and many other who guided my career.
Involvement in Science Policy and
Advocacy
In 1969, Walt continued is spirit
of innovator, dreamer and doer, which is well reported in the book, published
by UCAR entitled “Remembering Walt Roberts.” He was elected the president of
the American Association of Science (AAAS) and had asked me to join him for a
Board of Directors meeting in which each of the board members asked a young
colleague to join them to critique AAAS. This was during time of the Viet Nam
war and there was much student unrest even at the AAAS Annual meeting. The
board quickly responded overnight and appointed me the chairman of a Youth
Council at the tender age of 33 and gave us a budget to study how to bring the
society up to date. This led to my active involvement in helping modernize the
AAAS. Out of that the Committee of Opportunities in Science was born and other
changes in the AAAS.
A few years later in 1977
President Carter appointed me to the National Advisory for Oceans and
Atmosphere. Which lead me to a reappointment for a second term and confirmation
by the Senate on the night before Carter left office. So I served during the Ronald Reagan administration, which is
something in which I take a perverted satisfaction. I had to resign that
responsibly because my wife, Jo, became a breast cancer victim. This struggle
led to a tough year in which the family lost both Jo and a son Marc.
About that time my involvement on
the American Meteorological Society (AMS) began which later led to me be
elected President. During that year the AMS the society celebrated its 75th
anniversary with a grand annual meeting that took stock of its history and the
future.
My other activities lead me to be
working close to the Bush Administration and a “semi-secret” advisory role to
John Sununu who was President Bush’s Chief of Staff. It was felt that the
public and science community would wonder why the Chief of Staff would want to
run a climate model in his office on his personal Compaq 386 computer with a
FORTRAN compiler. For those of you that have watched Crossfire on television,
Sununu does not come across as a person who suffers from lack of confidence. He
was very proud of his computer capability and prowess even to the point of becoming
a climate modeler. NCAR put together a “modeling team” to put a climate model
on a floppy disk. I delivered to the President’s Science Advisor at a Global
Warming White House meeting.
After President Clinton was
elected I asked to be part of the science transition team to help in the NOAA
change of administration. President
Clinton later nominated me for appointment to the National Science Board for a
six-year term. I now have two more years to serve. My duties have increased
after being elected to the Executive Committee of the Board and I am now chair
of the Polar Task group, which oversees all the National Science Foundation
(NSF) Arctic and Antarctic programs.
For over twenty years I have been
working with many wonderful and close colleagues with Department of Energy and
NSF support. Our team was able to
continue to work on climate modeling and we carried out some of the earliest
studies with three-dimensional fully active coupled computer climate models.
Present day climate models have more fully interactive atmosphere,
land/vegetation, ocean and sea ice global components. In the early days, Akira
Kasahara and I struggled with programmers such as Bernie O ‘ Lear to get an
atmosphere to run on early computers. It was painful. Today with the large climate
modeling efforts at NCAR and elsewhere it is easy to see enormous progress has
been make and that we are closer to have a climate in a supercomputer that
works much like the real climate system.
One of the most important things to do with such models is to examine
how past climates worked as well as how future climate may change. Although, we
must remain open minded about our uncertain knowledge, it is important to
realize that the research is pointing to significant global warming during the
next century due to man’s influence on the climate system. Others and I feel at
time under attack by some parts of society much as is seen by those who have
taken on the tobacco industry. That should and will not deter us from doing
work on this important societal problem.
I would like to shift briefly to
broaden my talk and offer views about atmospheric science and science in
general. In this new budgetary environment, we need new rationales for why
something gets funded. The search for priorities is being actively be pursued
by many players, the executive branch, the congress, the National Science
Board, and many advisory committees such as those of the National Academy of
Sciences. It is clear that science-funding
priorities will have to contribute more to the national and international well-being.
That is not to say that innovative research should not be pursued. Last week
for example Rep. Mark Sanford wanted to cut the NSF budget hundreds of millions
of dollars because we funded a proposal that addressed “the application of
geometry to billiards”, “the social organization through poker” and a study of
ATMs. We had to explain to congress how these proposals contribute to the
larger picture of science. Stanford’s amendment was defeated on the House floor
after more informed congressman such as Vern Elhers stepped in to explain what
these grants were trying to achieve. This illustrates many things but most
importantly that we need to explain much better to the policy makers and public
of what the investment is contributing to the nation’s scientific and
technological future. In a similar manner, a few in congress does not
understand that we need to support a National Weather Service and that seeing
the weather displays on CNN should be sufficient. We have a lot of educating to
do. I see a future in which distance learning will change our educational
institutions. As part of the information age explosion will continue to grow
influence the entire educational establishment. Universities are learning how to
adjust to the New World with increased attention to teaching and life long
learning process. Students will need to have educational programs that are less
disciplinary and more flexible for the skills needed in the future. Already at
the National Science Foundations we have changed the criteria for funding of
research beyond just scientific excellence but to include explicit statements
about how the research contributes to broader aspects of the field or
education. As the chair of this effort, I must say that is strongly tied in
with justification of research priorities that I discussed earlier. Atmospheric
and climate research is without question closely tied into high national and
international priorities. Hopefully, this will translate into increasing emphasis
on environmental research at a time when the federal government tries to stay
with new budget guidelines.
Moving to the last few years, I
have found wonderful happiness in a new marriage to my wife Mary. She has
helped me achieve a feeling of well being in my personal life. I am blessed
with a very large extended family that included 16 grandchildren at last count.
Yes, I know all their names….with help.
Part of this occasion is that fact
that I have been selected by the National Academy of Sciences to be part of
their Portrait Collection of African Americans in Science, Engineering, and
Medicine. I join 35 others such as Mary
McLeod Bethune, Ralph Bunche, George Washington Carver, Charles Drew, William
E.B. Dubois, Percy Julian, Ernest Just, Louis W. Sullivan, Daniel Hale
Williams, and William J. Wilson. To
those that know a bit about black history these are heroes. As the others have
said, hopefully, such portraits can help inspire others to look to a career in
science, engineering, or medicine. To the students in the audience, it is
important that you aspire to what you want to me. There is no limit. The other
lesson is to be prepared so that you can take advantage of the unknown future
by being well prepared to change careers, perhaps, several times in your
lifetime.
Let me end with quote from Walt
Roberts that is in the book Remembering Walt Roberts…”To be what we can be, we
must first and foremost know what we want to be.” Without question Walt Roberts
has had a major effect on my career and he should share in any achievements
that have occurred in my career.
I again thank all of you for
coming.