As a lay person, I find this material very interesting, and thank you for making it accessible. Our human society urgently needs to gain the fitness to see climate in the way Millan sees it, and you see it.
Re fitness, and species survival, I've just started to read Donald D Hoffman's book, _The Case Against Reality: How evolution hid the truth from our eyes_ . I need to read more of the book before endorsing Hoffman's work (or not). For now, I am drawn to his metaphor of reality as a process that is co-created by all living and non-living beings, deciding and doing things in their virtual reality headsets.
And I'm overdoing the metaphors here, but I cannot resist returning to the bicycle as encountered in Rob Lewis's Ode to the Bicycle. For me, the bicycle can be a tandem: it has two wheels, driven by as many legs as we earth-beings can muster, as we go on heading -- we hope -- for survival.
This is great, informative and entertaining. I was very happy to read about the history of how Millan Millan got to where he got to, I was curious about this, having interviewed and written about him myself, and I couldnt find too much information about his background.... A point here, Millan Millan seems to think he is on a bit of an island in the climate world, being one of the few people who are saying land change affects climate, but I found a lot of papers about this in the climate science literature. It seems to me there is a whole sector in the climate science world looking at this issue, they just dont get the press.... Manabe, who won the Nobel for his work in the carbon greenhouse gas model, was also looking at how the land and soil and vegetation affected the rain back in 1969. And Yale Mintz, who developed one of the first three general circulation models, and Shukla were doing modelling of land effects on rainfall. [shukla 1982]
Yeah, Millan's story just gets more interesting as you get into the details, especially his association with Ted Munn, who was quite wary of how modelling, especially in European countries, was taking over traditional meteorological methods, with specific land conditions getting lost. Millan tells the story of testifying to the Canadian government in the mid 1970's concerning a proposed nuclear plant, and how the modelling was missing the finer points of the local topography and its effect on air flows. From the government's standpoint, the modelling was a lot cheaper, less need for instrumentation and people to operate it, and that's the way they leaned. After the testimony, Munn told him something along the lines of: "Do you know what this means, people like us will be replaced by modelers in the future."
Millan also tells about how during their monitoring campaigns they would rent the top floor of the highest building in town so they could visually see how the pollution plumes were behaving. It was not unusual for the provincial government modelers to declare impossible what Millan could see with his own eyes out the window.
I understand your "island" comment. I think for Millan the island was in the context of the Spanish government and later the IPCC. No one wanted to hear what he was saying. And yet modelers at the University of Wageningen adopted many of his ideas, and even his language, without citing him.
Yes, I think observational work should probably play a larger role in climate science....... How did you find all this information about Millan's background? Did you interview him?
Yes. I've had a long running email correspondence with him, which he has been most gracious with. He has also sent me chapters to a book he is working on which covers his career and work in detail. Most of the details came from reading these chapters.
This is absolutely wonderful stuff. A kind of Grand Unified Theory for climatic science. We all knew about pavement and urban heat islands as well as deforestation creating areas of less rain, so we had parts of the puzzle, but I at least never considered that the surface level activities of human population growth: increased paved surfaces, increased road construction, decreased forestation (to make room for us, etc, were such strong drivers.
In the "fly over" states of the Midwest, if you look out your window seat window, you'll see enormous circles of green geometrically laid out in the land below as you fly west past the cross-timbers. These are irrigated crops and they cool the surface air above them. The water that creates them isn't piped in or from rivers but is from aquifers I believe. The aquifers are lowering steadily and I can see the slow disappearance of these green circles over the years causing agricultural operations to grazing. Net warming will be the effect, as well as perhaps less rainfall. Perhaps more validation to Millan' GUT.
As a lay person, I find this material very interesting, and thank you for making it accessible. Our human society urgently needs to gain the fitness to see climate in the way Millan sees it, and you see it.
Re fitness, and species survival, I've just started to read Donald D Hoffman's book, _The Case Against Reality: How evolution hid the truth from our eyes_ . I need to read more of the book before endorsing Hoffman's work (or not). For now, I am drawn to his metaphor of reality as a process that is co-created by all living and non-living beings, deciding and doing things in their virtual reality headsets.
And I'm overdoing the metaphors here, but I cannot resist returning to the bicycle as encountered in Rob Lewis's Ode to the Bicycle. For me, the bicycle can be a tandem: it has two wheels, driven by as many legs as we earth-beings can muster, as we go on heading -- we hope -- for survival.
Thanks, Kathryn. I'll have to check out that book. Yes, the more legs on the bicycle the better.
This is great, informative and entertaining. I was very happy to read about the history of how Millan Millan got to where he got to, I was curious about this, having interviewed and written about him myself, and I couldnt find too much information about his background.... A point here, Millan Millan seems to think he is on a bit of an island in the climate world, being one of the few people who are saying land change affects climate, but I found a lot of papers about this in the climate science literature. It seems to me there is a whole sector in the climate science world looking at this issue, they just dont get the press.... Manabe, who won the Nobel for his work in the carbon greenhouse gas model, was also looking at how the land and soil and vegetation affected the rain back in 1969. And Yale Mintz, who developed one of the first three general circulation models, and Shukla were doing modelling of land effects on rainfall. [shukla 1982]
Thanks, Alpha.
Yeah, Millan's story just gets more interesting as you get into the details, especially his association with Ted Munn, who was quite wary of how modelling, especially in European countries, was taking over traditional meteorological methods, with specific land conditions getting lost. Millan tells the story of testifying to the Canadian government in the mid 1970's concerning a proposed nuclear plant, and how the modelling was missing the finer points of the local topography and its effect on air flows. From the government's standpoint, the modelling was a lot cheaper, less need for instrumentation and people to operate it, and that's the way they leaned. After the testimony, Munn told him something along the lines of: "Do you know what this means, people like us will be replaced by modelers in the future."
Millan also tells about how during their monitoring campaigns they would rent the top floor of the highest building in town so they could visually see how the pollution plumes were behaving. It was not unusual for the provincial government modelers to declare impossible what Millan could see with his own eyes out the window.
I understand your "island" comment. I think for Millan the island was in the context of the Spanish government and later the IPCC. No one wanted to hear what he was saying. And yet modelers at the University of Wageningen adopted many of his ideas, and even his language, without citing him.
Yes, I think observational work should probably play a larger role in climate science....... How did you find all this information about Millan's background? Did you interview him?
Yes. I've had a long running email correspondence with him, which he has been most gracious with. He has also sent me chapters to a book he is working on which covers his career and work in detail. Most of the details came from reading these chapters.
Rob,. Please communicate to us by hook or crook when that book becomes available. I will certainly purchase a copy or two.
Fascinating! This series was recommended to me by Prof. Nikos Giannakis, and I'm glad he did. Looking forward to the other two parts.
This is absolutely wonderful stuff. A kind of Grand Unified Theory for climatic science. We all knew about pavement and urban heat islands as well as deforestation creating areas of less rain, so we had parts of the puzzle, but I at least never considered that the surface level activities of human population growth: increased paved surfaces, increased road construction, decreased forestation (to make room for us, etc, were such strong drivers.
In the "fly over" states of the Midwest, if you look out your window seat window, you'll see enormous circles of green geometrically laid out in the land below as you fly west past the cross-timbers. These are irrigated crops and they cool the surface air above them. The water that creates them isn't piped in or from rivers but is from aquifers I believe. The aquifers are lowering steadily and I can see the slow disappearance of these green circles over the years causing agricultural operations to grazing. Net warming will be the effect, as well as perhaps less rainfall. Perhaps more validation to Millan' GUT.
Sorry for all the typos!
Yes, we've resurfaced the earth and completely altered the flows of heat and energy. Thanks for commenting!
Love how you’ve written this in a very approachable tone, looking forward to the rest of the story, thank you Rob!
Thanks, Leon. Appreciate the feedback.