Imagine you go to graduate school for a bunch of years, conscientiously studying the nuanced interactions of the variables that underlie the globe's climate. Then, as you publish findings that demonstrate what's happening to our planet, you hear your work debated and unheeded by legislators across the country who couldn't tell a stratospheric temperature profile from a hole in the wall. This week on Sea Change Radio we speak with climate scientist, Adam Sobel, a professor at Columbia University, to get a glimpse into the mind of a climate scientist. We learn about the difference between climate adaptation and climate mitigation, talk about extreme weather events in the context of climate change, and look at ways the science community can fight back against political hemming and hawing.

Narrator 0:01  This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

Adam Sobel  0:17  The question we have to ask ourselves is, did we make this article or this TV news segment or whatever, better and more accurate by participating than it would have been otherwise? Rather than asking ourselves, did they get it completely right like in my peer reviewed paper, because if you ask the second question, you're always going to be disappointed and, and you won't ever do it and you're doing everybody a disservice.

Narrator  0:39  Imagine you go to graduate school for a bunch of years, conscientiously studying the nuanced interactions of the variables that underlie the globe's climate. Then, as you publish findings that demonstrate what's happening to our planet, you hear your work debated and unheeded by legislators across the country who couldn't tell a stratospheric temperature profile from a hole in the wall. This week on Sea Change Radio we speak with climate scientist, Adam Sobel, a professor at Columbia University, to get a glimpse into the mind of a climate scientist. We learn about the difference between climate adaptation and climate mitigation, talk about extreme weather events in the context of climate change, and look at ways the science community can fight back against political hemming and hawing.

Alex Wise 1:40  I'm joined now on Sea Change Radio by Adam Sobel. Adam is a professor and climate scientist at Columbia University. Adam, welcome back to Sea Change Radio.

Adam Sobel  1:48  Thanks, Alex. Pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Alex Wise 1:51  So you have a paper in Climatic Change, which is entitled "Usable Climate Science is Adaptation Science." It's a great jumping off point to talk about the problems that we're facing in the climate science arena and trying to apply those into real world solutions. This was one of your pet projects over that your sabbatical? Why don't you explain the inspiration behind it?

Adam Sobel  2:16  Right, I guess you could call it inspiration. Maybe frustration is a better term. Sure. This paper grows out of what I've been calling a midlife crisis. Although it's a professional one, not a personal one. I'm not getting a divorce or a sports car, or anything like that. But what it is, is, you know, I've been working in climate science, or atmospheric science for my whole career. I've been a faculty member here at Columbia for over 20 years now. And although a lot of my work is on the basic science of how the atmosphere works, increasingly course it's about climate change. And I've been doing a lot of communicating publicly about that in the last 10 years. If you'd asked me, at any point, including many years ago, and I was young, I would have expressed great concern about the state of the climate and the direction of it, and also about US politics, I would have all through my career, I've been concerned about those things. But yet,