Nature:
In a
Nature opinion column, Ryan Meyer, a science
integration fellow at the California Ocean Science Trust in
Oakland, discusses the revamping of a government agency's
strategic plan. For the past 20 years, the
US Global Change
Research Program has spent more than $30 billion on
climate change studies. Although the program has improved our
understanding of climate systems, Meyer writes, it has been
less successful at providing decision makers with useful
information. So the program has added three more objectives: to
inform decisions, to sustain assessments, and to communicate
and educate. Meyer points out that problems may arise regarding
the reallocation of funds among the new priorities and that
there may be tradeoffs between the increasing complexity of
climate models and the need of policymakers for simplicity.
Nevertheless, he applauds the program administrators for
"taking such an important conceptual step in the right
direction."
