Mark Ronchetti on Global Warming

Aug 23

Talking to Family and Friends about Climate Change

Mark Ronchetti encouraged action on global warming and climate communication in his presentation to science students and researchers in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences at the University of New Mexico on March 21, 2019. The workshop, "“Talking to Family and Friends about Climate Change” was organized by UNM undergraduate student Holly Olivarez, who gave a presentation on climate science communication and literacy. The workshop also featured UNM Earth and Planetary Science department chair Prof. Peter Fawcett, a paleoclimatologist. The event was hosted by several UNM student science, education, and conservation groups, including March for Science Albuquerque, Advancing Women in Science, Geology and Environmental Science Club, UNM Environmental Coalition, Environment New Mexico UNM, 350 UNM and the UNM Environmental Law Society. The following is a complete transcript of Ronchetti’s presentation, which is available on Youtube. All three presentations are also available on Youtube.

Profile in courage

I would love to stand in front of you all right now and tell you, you’re about to hear a profile in courage.

You’re about to hear a profile in reality, in hope, and in a way forward. Because I am not the person who should walk up here and tell you what’s going on with climate change, or how I’ve been on board for twenty years.

Right off the bat, I’m a Christian conservative who used to be a Republican until the “Orange One”, and then things… I’m afraid that has taken a part of my soul and that’s not coming back.

But, where I am concerned and I do believe in… go get yourself, my parents always raised me you pull up by your boot straps... you want something you go do it yourself. Right, and if you want to buy something well then you buy it. If you want to get in that SUV, that big old SUV that gets four miles to the gallon well then you do it. Because that’s what its right that’s what you want to do.

That is not my world

Well, as we’ve gone through time and as I went through meteorology school not a whole lot changed in my perspective. There were a lot of guys like me who just, and women especially who were like, “all right let’s learn about the atmosphere let’s go through this process.”

So the way television works is especially, you go through meteorology school, and then you start in a small market, and you learn about weather in that small market, and you care about two to four weeks out. That’s most of what you care about. OK, you are laser focused on that.

I talk to people all the time and I’ve talked to climatologists and people that will ask me about climate and many times I’m like “look, that is not my world.” I can barely get a seven-day forecast right and I’m fingernails, right?

And then, a lot of you guys are doing stuff we’re looking way, way back. And now way, way ahead projecting what’s going to happen with climate. Well, that is not the world I live in. I live in a very condensed world, and so do many television meteorologists. And that world does not lend itself well to the way that the climate change argument has unfolded.

There is really compelling data out there

It has unfolded in a way that is political, and it has unfolded in a way that in many cases, many people have been obstinate and not wanting to believe in it. And now that’s now changing. You saw the numbers we’ve been talking about here. Those numbers or going away, ok? So that problem is starting to be solved with information.

But—the political portion of it and the low-hanging fruit of weather events. What do I mean by this? When you grab individual weather events, and you wrap around the neck of climate change—many meteorologists look at that and bristle. You look at it and you go “whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa.”

We’ve had floods for a long time we’ve had these issues so that’s where that low-hanging fruit, that quick grab, is something I would encourage you not to do. There is really compelling data out there. We’ve seen some of that data here. Metadata is incredibly compelling. And you start seeing meteorologists, especially on-air meteorologists starting to say, “we’ve got to pay attention to this.”

Mark Ronchetti speaks to students and scientists at UNM, March 21, 2019

That is a big number

So, how’s that process going? In the year 2000 a study was done of on-air meteorologists. 20% believed in anthropogenic global warming. 20%. We got to 2008 and we’re about 45%. Right now, we’re at 80%, with 90% believing that their viewers care about it. Which is important, that’s a big number, ok? That is a big number.

So, meteorologists I think have sort of been slow to the game. And I look at myself in that same vein because I wasn’t someone who was an early adopter of saying “what’s going on here?” I was an early adopter of “well, these things happen there’s so many different things, there’s so many different inputs into the system.”

There’s so many things like moisture. So many things like the sun and everything. You get so many different things that go into weather. And they go into climate and it’s easy to push it off, right? It’s easy to say, “no, no, no, that’s not what’s happening, there’s got to be another solution.” It’d be much better if there was another solution, right? It’s be much better if this was a natural cycle and next week her comes the other side of the cycle.

I’m not going to do that

But as you look at the long-term metadata, it’s very hard to make that case. Unless we’re going to start cranking up some volcano. Which there are people who’ve who have made that case too, but that’s not realistic, right?

So where does television go? Where do we go from here, ok? And you see some of it. You’re starting to see some of it leak in. So I’ll give you an example of what we’re starting to do now. If I tell you that smoking’s bad for you, you shouldn’t do it, and it gives you cancer, how many people would have a problem with your..? Probably not right? We all hear that. What if I get on the air and tell you, “you shouldn’t smoke. It’s disgusting, don’t smoke.”? Well I have a problem. Yeah, I’m gonna have a problem, right? Everybody knows smoking’s bad for you so we’re adopting a slow roll here where we’re starting to unfurl data. And it’s not going to be data that tells you “Get rid of the SUV homeboy. You don’t need it. You got one kid and you don’t need to seat 16 people>” Right? I mean you don’t need to do that. So I’m not going to do that.

I was scared to death when I saw that number

What we’re starting to do is to take overall data and start to introduce it. So what does it mean? Where does that data take this? Well, many of you who know climate science and know what’s going on here in New Mexico, you’ve got to localize it. Right? I can tell you about this, you know. Here’s how much we’re warming up and everything else people are going to blaze over. But if I tell you, we did the data over the past 80 years our overnight lows are up between three and four degrees.

Does that concern you? It concerns me. My number one—I mean I was scared to death when I saw that number. That’s the number got in hand and we’re waiting again. Now a lot of this we have to time out right so we’re going do this during--we tend to be quieter weather-wise so after the spring storms before the monsoons—that’s when we’re going to start to do some of this.

Maybe you didn’t want to know, but now you do

Daytime highs you don’t see as much of a direct correlation from what we’ve got. Hundred-degree days you don’t see as much but overall, what we’re talking about here is grabbing some of those data points and introducing them. And I will tell you that it will not be, when I talk about not a profile in courage, this is some of what I mean. Walking out and trying to make those suggestions to people--or at least bringing them the information—his where we’re going to go. We’re going to lay out the information. You’re probably not going to see from us, “do this, don’t do that.” We have restrictions. We have huge ownership groups. We have people that want to fight because that’s the world where in right now, right? This is the country. That everything is a fight.

And I would tell you—and I made this point to Holly and I think it’s so true. There are many of you that have been at the party for a long time. And guys like me walking like “So I hear there’s a party!” You guys are like, “There’s a been a party here for years, and you just showed up, and there’s the… did you bring dip, did you bring anything?” And I’m like “Nope, just here,” right? But, there’s a place for grace, and there’s a place to say, look, you haven’t been here since the beginning. You’ve, in many cases just kind of sat it out silently. Mainly because maybe you just didn’t feel like it was your job. Or maybe you didn’t want to know, but now you do.

We all live in a state that is funded by oil and gas… so we have to replace that

So I would encourage people like you guys, who are here for a reason, to engage in those conversations that Holly’s talking about. Engage in those conversations where with some people you think, “I don’t have anything in common with this person. There’s nothing for us to talk about. There’s no way. They’re going to annoy me, bug me, it’s going to mess me up.” I would encourage you to have those conversations. Because I think things are sliding in the direction of being more aware of these things.

But we do have another step here that’s going to be a very big deal in this state. Which is, we all live in a state that is funded by oil and gas. That’s a fact. I mean you can look at what the governor’s done over the past three months. She’s not doing any of that without huge oil and gas revenue. So we have to replace that. And we can’t take that burden and shove it on New Mexicans who don’t have the ability to pay. So we have one of the most dependent states on oil and gas and we have some of the poorest populations in the country. So we have to find the solution. That’s not easy.

OK but at the same time, if we can find some of those avenues to replace some of that revenue, we can do it. We can absolutely do it. But it’s hard. And it’s the same thing when we look at TV. When you see what you see on TV at night, our number one goal is our owner’s goals and revenue, right? And to inform the public. They’re all balancing acts, right? To inform people you want to give them a good forecast. You want to apparently tell about whatever’s happened that day. Some of it, you don’t want to know about. And then you want to produce a product that keeps you employed. Right? I mean because if I don’t—If I just get up there, I’m going to start making my statements and doing everything else, I’m not going to be employed very long. These are all balancing acts.

We are past the tipping point

So I just encourage you guys to think about some of those things that are into it. But I will tell you. We are past the tipping point. So the question now becomes, what role do we play? What role do I play versus what the role you guys play? My role is going to be information. Get information out there. Get people the information. And you’re right they’ve got to make the choise. They’ve got to make the choice but the more of you to bring that information out to them and open it up. And I know you do not live in a country now where that’s easy. Right? It’s gotten a lot harder and it bums me right out. Right? Because you know we don’t talk any more. You only hang around with people that are of your same thought process. That’s the way a lot of people do it. And I’d just encourage you not to do that.

And where were headed is, I think you’re going to see more and more of the kind of content which isn’t necessarily going to be Earth shattering but it is going to be slowly over time just giving people as much information as we possibly can as that fits with what we’re doing now. There are groups out there who now provide information for television weathercasts. They’ll give you the data. They’s say hey here we did the numbers. Groups like that scare me to death. Ok because I didn’t do the numbers. So it’d be like you guys going and doing a paper on something you just didn’t know how the data was gathered. So that, I don’t love. However, when they hand you this piece of data, it’s great because it can give you an avenue to say, “all right, go cross check the data.” If you cross check the data and like what you get, then you put it on the air. Then you do it. So that’s some of what’s happening too. So that’s basically where we are.

And I would encourage all of you, if you get a chance to reach out, to.. there are meteorologists now who are talking about it more and more and I think that’s happening in this market too. And it will continue to happen. But you also have to understand that the job of a meteorologist on TV here is that daily forecast. Get that thing right. Get it nailed down. But we have enough days where there is nothing going on that we can sprinkle that information in. It can be sprinkled in. And it will be. And you know and talking to Mark on Twitter and some other people just have helped me kind of just kind of pique my interest too. And it’s probably been about five years I’ve been like “this is not good, I do not like what I see in this state” so it’s like you know, “what are you going to believe, what you were raised hearing, or your lying eyes?” Right?

And so that’s where we are.

On media

The difference in reach is astronomical between on-the-air and on Twitter or on Facebook.

On wildfires

My biggest fear for this state is wildfires by far. We start raising that snow level and all of a sudden you’re getting rain at 10,000 feet in January, which scares the hell out of me. Because then, we’re talking about a fire season in this state that goes from April to July. And then.. the way you look at our forests and you go “oh my gosh”. These things are going to explode. We’re toast. Right? That’s the scariest thing to me.

On effective climate communication

Localize other words, take information that absolutely happens right here. 95% of the time we don’t do a map that doesn’t include New Mexico... So if you’re talking about... some of the abstract data that’s interesting but hard to wrap your mind around, polar bears and anything from that. But if you’re talking about, hey the average growing season in New Mexico is increased three weeks from where it was, you know that means something. That’s tangible to me. So to me it’s about grabbing those individual data points and saying “these happen right here in your back yard right now”. So that to me is the most important way to communicate anything. You know as far as temperature, and also you know how quickly we melt off the snowpack. Things like that, those dates are shrinking down on us too, in a big way. I spend all my time (when I’m not working here) in the mountains. Like that’s what I do. And that’s where we’ve noticed, I mean you’re seeing these seasons shrink down. You’re seeing things that just never, you know, didn’t happen before.

For more information visit Holly Olivarez’s Climate Change Talks page.

Mark Boslough