Steve Pierson

Four members of the ASA Advisory Committee for Climate Change Policy (ACCCP) went to Washington, DC, in early February to participate in the fifth annual Climate Science Day (CSD) on Capitol Hill. Sponsored and organized by the Climate Science Working Group—which is comprised of some 20 professional associations and other scientific organizations—the event brings scientists of many disciplines together to meet with members of Congress or their staff to discuss climate change and how it may affect a particular state or congressional district. The principal goals are for members or their staff to discuss climate science with scientists from their state with expertise on the topic and for them to contact the scientists should questions come up related to climate science.

Leonard Smith of the London School of Economics and Pembroke College, Oxford, who has participated in each of the five CSDs, noted how his experience this year was different than years past: “This year, we had Republican members openly discussing the challenges posed by climate change and suggesting common political ground could be found; that is a big change from previous years.” He added, “On CSD in 2011, the House was still trying to get a budget together, making it difficult to have a conversation. This year, a member of Congress had to pop out of our meeting to vote on the Keystone XL pipeline and our next meeting was delayed as the member was returning from the same vote. This seemed to actually lead to a more relaxed discussion of the science and direct, well-targeted questions about climate from the member.”

2013 CSD veteran Michael Stein of The University of Chicago, like Smith, also found a greater willingness among some Republican staffers to acknowledge that anthropogenic climate change is an issue Congress will need to address, and sooner rather than later. A highlight of Stein’s visit was the opportunity to meet with Bill Foster, an Illinois representative and physicist who engaged in fairly detailed discussions about the storage challenges related to renewable energy.

The Ohio State University’s Peter Craigmile—also a returning CSD participant—observed, “As in previous years, staffers on Capitol Hill were very interested in learning about local impacts of climate change, especially from extreme storms. We also had many discussions about the role that understanding climate has to play in energy policy.”

The fourth ASA participant was Bruno Sanso of the University of California, Santa Cruz, chair of the ACCCP and a first time CSD participant.

This year’s CSD had 22 participants sponsored by the American Chemical Society; American Geophysical Union; American Meteorological Society; Ecological Society of America; and the agronomy, crops, and soil societies, among others. The 11 teams of scientists of different disciplines each had 6–10 meetings with personal offices and committee staff.

To prepare CSD participants for their day on the Hill, the participants spent the previous afternoon hearing from professional society staff and congressional Hill staff about how to have successful meetings on the Hill and about the objectives of CSD. They also were given time to meet with their teammates to plan for each of their scheduled meetings. Three of the ASA participants—all authors of the ASA whitepaper “Statistical Science: Contributions to the Administration’s Research Priority on Climate Change”—also met with program directors at the National Science Foundation to share the whitepaper, learn more about how to get statisticians involved in NSF-funded climate research, and make the case that such engagement would contribute to the science.