- [Narrator] Production and distribution of City Club Forums on Ideastream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.

(energetic music) (gong dinging) - Good afternoon and welcome to The City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, November 3rd, and I'm Kyle Dreyfuss-Wells, CEO of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District.

I'm pleased to welcome Richard Spinrad, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as our featured guest for The City Club of Cleveland's 2023 State of the Great Lakes.

So the year is not over, but across the country and here at home, we are all experiencing wetter, warmer, wilder weather.

In the Great Lakes, climate change has led to increased rainfall, reduced water quality, and rising temperatures.

The climate crisis is a top priority for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA.

And the organization is working with the business community, academia, and other federal, state, and local agencies to help our nation respond.

As the undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator, Dr. Spinrad is responsible for the strategic direction of the agency.

This includes developing NOAA's products and services to address the climate crisis, enhancing environmental sustainability, fostering economic development, and creating a more equitable and diverse NOAA workforce.

Prior to coming to NOAA, Spinrad was senior advisor to the Vice President of Research and Professor of Oceanology at Oregon State University.

Dr. Spinrad served as NOAA's chief scientist from 2014 to 2016, and led NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research and National Ocean Service from 2003 to 2010.

He also held leadership positions for the Office of Naval Research and the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command.

Also joining us on stage is Cleveland's own Betsy Kling, chief meteorologist for WKYC.

Kling has spent over two decades at WKYC and received multiple Emmys for her work, and most importantly was named Best of Cleveland Weather Forecaster for the last nine years straight.

(audience cheering and applauding) Woohoo!

If she tells you it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain.

So if you have a question for our speaker, you can text the 330-541-5794.

That's 330-541-5794.

You can also text a question @TheCityClub and City Club staff will work it into the second half of the program.

So members and Friends of The City Club of Cleveland, please join me in welcoming Dr. Richard Spinrad and Betsy Kling.

(audience applauding) - Thank you.

Thank you all so much for being here today.

Obviously climate is kind of a big deal here in Cleveland, as is the weather.

Yes, they are two different things.

Very closely related, but two different sciences.

And so we have the guy here who can kind of help us with where things are possibly going.

I don't think people understand how big the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is.

How big is NOAA?

- Well, thank you for that, Betsy.

Let me start first by saying thanks for inviting me to The City Club of Cleveland on this gorgeous day.

And oh, by the way-- - It's like this all the time.

- I know, but as far as today, I will just simply say on behalf of the National Weather Service, you're welcome.

(audience laughing) And we like to point out that on days like this, we take a lot of credit at NOAA, but actually we are only in charge of marketing the weather, not production.

In collaboration with our broadcast meteorologists.

- I like to say these are five finger wave days.

- Yes, right.

So NOAA, NOAA in a nutshell, if I had to put it in a bumper sticker, I tell folks that we are your environmental intelligence agency.

If you think about that, I came from the Navy, a Navy background where we talked about all sorts of different kinds of intelligence, right?

Signals intelligence, electronic intelligence.

What we do at NOAA is we collect information, we collect data for every aspect of the environment.

When I say every aspect, we have responsibilities for activities from the surface of the sun, think space weather, to the bottom of the ocean.

That's a pretty big portfolio.

We take that information, and as the only federal agency that has prediction explicitly called out in our mission, it's about being able to tell industry, communities, individuals what's going to happen.

So we like to think about a three-legged stool of science, service and stewardship.

We can't do what we do without the scientific background, the leading edge capability, whether it's with satellites or buoys or other sensors, radars.

Translate that to a service, a product, something you can use to make a decision like a forecast, should I bring a coat, should I bring an umbrella?

And then stewardship is that conservation element.

And hopefully in the course of the next few minutes, I'll be able to talk about how we balance the stewardship and the service piece.

The other way that I think about what we do at NOAA, I could walk through the wiring diagram and tell you, we've got the National Weather Service, the National Ocean Service, the fishery service, our satellites and all that.

But it's probably better to realize, to think about it as the areas of emphasis that we've got around things like becoming a climate-ready nation.

And that means as much for the fishing community in the state of Alaska as it does for the shipping communities here in the Great Lakes, as it does for the farmers in the bread belt of the country.

So being ready for the changes that we're gonna see in in climate.

The other element is balancing environmental stewardship and economic development.

That's another pillar.

And equity, making sure that what we're doing is serving all communities, underserved, unserved communities who may not have gotten those products in the past.

And at the end of the day, I like to think that as the environmental intelligence agency, we are about lives, we are about livelihoods, and we are about lifestyles.

It's as much about ensuring the productivity of the United States, the commercial transportation, agriculture, energy as it is about making sure people are healthy because they are not being adversely affected by changes in the weather or changes in the climate.

And just to kind of close out that thought in terms of what does that mean for the Great Lakes, by the numbers we are a 12,000 person agency.

We have a budget of about $7 billion.

But of those 12,000 employees, plus about another 10,000 contractors, the vast, vast majority of them are outside of the DC area, including probably about 1000 here in the Great Lakes and other several thousand scattered around the country in our weather forecast offices, in our Sea Grant offices, in our climate offices, in our fisheries management offices.

And we have laboratories around the country.

We have the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab in Ann Arbor.

We have sanctuaries, we have two here in the Great Lakes, hopefully two more in just a few years.

And so our footprint, if you will, is such that I can pretty much look out on the audience here and guarantee that not one of you is more than probably about 30 miles from a NOAA office or a NOAA employee at any given time.

- Yeah, well, we certainly appreciate our National Weather Service office here in Cleveland.

They do a bang up job for us.

They have a great, you know, relationship with the community.

And it's really important because the little bird on your shoulder there, the NOAA logo, that's what a lot of people see of NOAA is that National Weather Service side of things.

So in the whole of NOAA, with your $6.8 billion line item budget that you've submitted for 2024, sitting in the Department of Commerce, going from the surface of the sun to Challenger Deep, where does Cleveland fit into all that?

- Right in the middle.

- That's what we like to hear.

- Yeah, no, I mean, I said that because it's the right thing to say, (all laughing) but I also wanna point out that all of these aspects of what we do fit into the economy of Cleveland, the educational system, the financial system.

If you think about it, how much of Cleveland, first of all, is influenced by trade through the city?

Well, 95% of trade depends on understanding the environmental dynamics.

What about the energy security here?

What about water security?

Let's talk about water for a minute.

You know, back in 2006, this city had a really dramatic event with hypoxia.

And I'm sure many of you remember that here.

That directly affected water supply, it affected health, it affected any number of different things in the city.

For us at NOAA, it came down to, do we have a capability working with Cleveland water to figure out how to observe these kinds of events, figure out what was it that caused that?

And then develop that predictive system.

So the beauty of your question, Betsy, is I could take, fill in any part of the country and there's a specific applicability for what we do.

How much, let's talk about lake effect snow and how that might change.

Is that relevant to the people in this audience?

I think it probably is.

How can we, for your personal lives, for the infrastructure here in Ohio, how much can we work with local municipalities to be able to understand, what do you want in terms of predictability?

What do you need?

What does the school district here in Cleveland need?

So when I say it's right in the middle, it's because the products and services that we develop are immediately relevant.

It's not like there's some sort of esoteric link of what we do, we do great science and ultimately we publish that and then down the line, I can justify it.

Every single day we're doing things, we're developing products that immediately impact industry, communities and individuals here in Cleveland.

- Weather predictability, we have a very good track out to about three days.

Seven days, we're doing a lot better.

10 days, okay.

Climate wise, three months, six months, a year, 10 years down the road, that's where things get, in my opinion, a little sketchy.

There's a lot of variability that goes into that.

However, the trends are clear, the extremes are getting more extreme.

So what does that mean in terms of climate change for a Great Lakes system, of which our beautiful lake is just one part?

- So let's put it in the context that you just did.

And I'll share with you that back in the 1980s, we've been tracking billion dollar disasters, which could be a flood, it could be a hurricane, it could be a winter storm.

And back in the 1980s, it was roughly one billion dollar disaster every three months.

This year, and this is inflation adjusted.

This year we just had our 24th billion dollar disaster in the United States.

So we're gonna see more of that in a variety of different forms.

And oh, by the way, I would say that it doesn't just mean the winter storms may get worse for reasons we can talk about, or flooding may get worse.

But you think about the fact that just last year we saw a tropical cyclone hit the northern Bering Sea, Merbok.

It started as a tropical cyclone and it kept going and kept going and ended up hitting the northern coast of the Bering Sea, coast of Alaska.

So we're gonna see things change fundamentally here in Cleveland and elsewhere.

We're gonna see things change with respect to lake levels.

We're gonna see things change in terms of ice cover.

I mentioned the lake effect snow.

That's an interesting manifestation of how if you have less ice, you have more moisture available to seed the snowfall.

And so we are undoubtedly going to be seeing more and more of that as well.

And you know, the other thing is the kinds of things that we used to think were isolated in certain parts of the country, like wildfires, those are starting to happen all over the country as well.

So droughts, I hate to sound biblical in this sense, but we're putting more energy into the system.

That's what climate change is all about.

It has to come out somehow.

It's gonna come out in the form of these storms and they're gonna have great impact.

So at the end of the day, what does that mean?

Well, it means that a city like Cleveland in its planning needs to be thinking about what is this gonna do?

Are we prepared?

Is our infrastructure, our snow removal infrastructure prepared for the changes we're gonna see in lake effect snow?

Are we prepared for changes in things like harmful algal blooms in the lake or hypoxia in the lake?

And that's where I wanna come back to your point about, we're pretty good at the three day forecast.

The rule of thumb, which I know you know, Betsy, is that we're actually improving about 24 hours every 10 years.

So that three day forecast now, or I would say the four day forecast is as good as the three day was 10 years ago similarly.

On climate, we do have a lot of uncertainty, although that also is improving.

The El Nino forecast, there's no doubt.

We've got El Nino now, it's gonna continue through the winter.

10 years ago, I don't think I could have said that at this point.

And we certainly didn't get a six month lead time on being able to predict El Nino.

But we got a lot of work to do.

We got a lot of work to do with respect to improving our ability to collect data and also to use the models more effectively.

And oh, by the way, front page news from the White House, AI is in this space as well.

So we will be seeing artificial intelligence, I believe, dramatically improving our capability.

And not just for weather, but for climate forecasts too.

- Yeah, and I think the big thing that, you know, we have changed as far as the messaging that we are putting on events, 'cause if it's an event, it's a big deal in the weather world, specifically surrounding rain and heavy rain, it's not so much how much rain, it's how fast.

Rain intensity is changing.

Our infrastructure is built for a certain amount of rainfall in a certain amount of time.

We are overdoing the capacity consistently and we just don't have the infrastructure to be able to keep up.

And so that's where we start to get into more and more issues with pollution getting into the lake, with, you know, city streets becoming inundated.

What was it, 2010, we had 10 inches of rain in downtown Cleveland, you remember?

we had flooding all over downtown Cleveland.

We couldn't believe it.

So as these extremes keep getting more extreme and it is changing the way the system works and the capabilities of the system, and when we start to specifically look at the impacts of that on something like pollution in the lake, knowing that our little lake, our little friend out there and foe sometimes has an average residency time of water moving through it just over two and a half years.

We're not the only ones dealing with this.

We've got the other lakes with their water coming our way.

So we're getting Detroit's pollution, we're getting Mackinac City's pollution, Chicago's, the way that it moves through the system.

As far as the health of the lakes, where is that heading?

- So I'm an optimist, I should start by saying that.

And I think you've characterized the causes of the problems very well.

But the runoff from agriculture, we have a much better understanding now of that dynamic.

Years ago, well, you think about it, even as recently as the big harmful algal bloom in 2014 in Toledo, a lot of the community didn't understand why that happened, how big it was gonna be.

We're much better off now.

In fact, you talked about the Cleveland Weather Forecast Office, which now predicts harmful algal blooms, we used to call 'em red tides, harmful algal blooms, much better than we could before.

So I am optimistic we're in a better place to be able to predict some of the consequences here.

We're also improving the models, the hydrologic model.

So there's a big water center that we run down in Alabama.

They'll be putting out the next generation of the national water model, which will allow us to get down to a finer degree of resolution.

So I'm comfortable that whereas in the past we might've said, hey, the whole, you know, we have a sort of average impact on the lake, now we can start necking it down and saying, this is where the impact is gonna be, here, here and here.

We're doing incredible things with observational capabilities.

That's 9/10, I would say, of the ability to forecast is knowing what the conditions are.

You know that for a weather forecast, you better know what the conditions are now in order to predict it.

And there's some amazing technology there for making measurements under ice.

We can't say we're only gonna measure the Great Lakes when there's no ice.

Now we're developing capabilities for underwater ice.

So my answer to your question is we have a better understanding of impacts of activities, industrial activities, agricultural activities.

Those are critical, critical sectors for society.

Now we can start working with policy makers to advise as to, you know, maybe we ought to have an adaptive management policy with respect to the use of insecticides or herbicides or fertilizer in the agricultural community.

And by doing that, we can dramatically reduce the pollutants, the agriculturally derived pollutants going into the lakes.

So I'm confident we're in a much better place than we were even 10 years ago in terms of our ability to understand the dynamics, the chemistry, the impacts on the ecosystem.

- It's so encouraging to hear, because you know, that's our baby out there, we like to think of it.

And it's always interesting, you know, when we hear about other places eyeballing our baby as their resource, it's like, wait a minute, you know, we have 60 million, 40 million people who depend on the Great Lakes for drinking water, so let's just keep it close to home, most certainly.

Interestingly enough, a media entity known as Great Lakes Now in 2022 published a very interesting article.

And they said, we know more about the surface of Mars than the bottom of the Great Lakes.

I was fascinated about that.

And interestingly enough, in 2022, the NOAA ship Thomas Jefferson did a hydrographic survey to find the bathymetry of Lake Erie.

So we had a little ship out there doing sonar mapping of the bottom of Lake Erie.

We're learning more about our lake, which is so important.

And the more we learn, the more we'll be able to protect it.

Talk to me about the sanctuaries.

This is a new thing, and I know that there's one that's being proposed close to home.

- Well, the sanctuaries have actually been around for over 30 years.

The concept has been around for over 30 years.

And the best way to think about it is sanctuaries, we call them marine sanctuaries, that's the way the program started.

But I wanna make sure we include the fresh coast in the marine definition.

- Thank you.

- As evidenced by the fact that we do have two of the, I think we have 15 on us in portfolio right now are in fact in the Great Lakes.

So I'm getting ahead of myself.

Think of the sanctuaries like the wet national parks, okay?

And so if I said to you, do you think it's worth us preserving Yellowstone National Park, I'd like to think most taxpayers would say, yeah, that's a good use of our resources, to preserve the ecosystem, to use it as an educational tool.

The same is true for marine and lake sanctuaries.

So we have a program, a national program that looks at unique ecosystems.

And that can be not just the environmental considerations, it can be cultural.

So we're looking at designation, for example, of a Native American section of the California coast that should be designated as a sanctuary.

And there are very specific reasons why we do this.

Those are called out in an executive order that President Biden signed two years ago that said that we will conserve 30% of our lands and waters by 2030.

For us, that means the marine sanctuary.

So we have the Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary.

My very first trip as NOAA administrator two years ago was to designate that sanctuary.

And we also have sanctuary in Alpena, the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

And as you've said, the Lake Erie Quad Sanctuary is under consideration for designation.

And Lake Ontario is also under consideration for a sanctuary.

I wanna make one really important point about sanctuaries.

Conservation, yes, that's a critical aspect of designating these very special areas.

There are two other points, and that is for fisheries, whether it's in Great Lakes or in the ocean, we need to have the protected habitats for maintaining those fisheries.

And so a lot of these sanctuaries are designated for the purposes of sustaining the fish populations.

And the third, so there's conservation, there's fisheries, preservation.

The third is a really interesting one.

And that is that a lot of these areas actually serve as carbon sinks.

And if we are not developing them but preserving the natural environment, we can actually draw down atmospheric carbon dioxide and contribute towards the objectives of reducing carbon in the atmosphere.

So the last thing I'll say is it's a long, intensive, very engaged process.

It takes a few years to designate a sanctuary, as it should, because we wanna make sure every impacted entity, whether it's in industry, whether it's a tribe or tribal communities or individuals in the community, have the chance to weigh in.

Share with you a quick story if I've got a second.

About Alpena, about Thunder Bay.

I was just up there two months ago.

So when we designated that sanctuary 23 years ago, I wanna say, there was a lot of opposition.

In fact, there were buttons printed up that said No to NOAA.

And there was a lot of opposition.

Alpena, like so many cities back then was suffering economically.

I went back there three months ago.

I met with the mayor, several real estate developers, several other businesses there.

And three of them said to me, I'm not blowing smoke, they said, NOAA saved Alpena.

And it was because through the sanctuary designation, the tourism industry went way up.

One of the big shipping lines now stops into Alpena.

So there was that aspect.

The aspect I love about this story is one of the reasons Thunder Bay was established as a sanctuary is there are a number of shipwrecks that are perfect for diving, for dive tourism.

The administrator of the hospital told me that back then, 23 years ago, he was trying so hard to get a hyperbaric chamber to treat diabetics and couldn't, didn't have the resources, was not high enough on the list.

By putting that sanctuary in there and starting a diving industry there, there immediately became an extraordinarily high demand for hyperbaric chambers to treat people who might get the bends.

- Their lake's a little deeper.

- Their lake, I understand that, but it was a story I had to share with this audience because people think, oh, you're gonna designate a sanctuary, it's gonna be off limits, it's not gonna do anything for us except protect an area from development.

No, that's that balanced stewardship and economic development I was talking about.

It really works.

Go to Alpena, you'll see it.

- Yeah.

Well, the Lake Erie designation area that's being considered is literally the chimney of Pennsylvania straight out.

That's it.

I'll leave it at that.

(all laughing) Why not us?

Anyway, you know, I think as we're we're talking up here and you're kind of laying out, this is the where things are right now.

What do you, in your opinion, as the admin of this amazing organization, what do you think is the greatest challenge for our Great Lake?

- It's, I would say, elevating the importance and the very existential nature of what we are talking about here.

Obviously based on the work I do and the organization I lead, I feel that the issues we're talking about, in particular the impacts of climate change on pick your favorite topic, temperature of the lake, chemistry of the lake, ice cover of the lake, weather over the lake, I think that's gonna influence economy's health, infrastructure, not just around Erie, around all of the Great Lakes, in very impactful ways.

And we better be prepared for it.

The fact that we were able to, we, our nation, was able to pass two major pieces of legislation, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, which allow us, now in NOAA we've received $6.3 billion above our $7 billion appropriation to work on these issues I think is a good signal.

But I still think if you walk out the street here in Cleveland and ask people to list the top three or four things they're concerned about, you might be lucky to hear, I'm worried about what environmental change, climate change is gonna do for my kids and for me.

We need to elevate that.

The numbers are good when you look at polls across the country.

People are more concerned about it now than they were.

And I think that's 'cause we're all feeling it.

Before it was this sort of theoretical, scientific thing.

Now we're all feeling it, but now we need to elevate that.

And so the more we can get knowledgeable people aware of the seriousness of the threats, the more it will become an issue of the day.

- Yeah, well, you'll find the extremes, as they are getting more extreme, get all of the attention.

And especially here in northern Ohio, it's the subtle changes that are kind of the scary part of it to me.

Our low temperatures on average are going up.

That changes your growing season.

Elsa said it best, water has memory.

When the lake doesn't freeze, that means it's set up to be warmer the next summer.

And then the next winter it's harder to cool it down.

And so we are getting kind of this trend line that everything is going up.

And in all of the climate studies that are being done, yes, those trend lines going up are a factor in these climate studies and everything is based on that.

But I don't think people understand that personal impact of these giant studies and these subtle things.

I don't know if anybody's a gardener here.

Suddenly we are able to grow bushes that were only in southern Ohio 10, 15 years ago.

Now it's, I have petunias that will winter over.

I'm an amazing gardener, obviously!

But no, actually it's 'cause things are getting a little bit different.

- And everybody has a story like that.

One of my favorite stories about coming back into the government was, I used to, so if you followed my bio, I tried retiring twice and failed twice.

But in my last stint, back from 2014, 2017, when I was asked to come up on the Hill, talk about climate, nine times outta 10, it was what we call the attribution argument.

Whose fault is this?

Who do we tax?

The first week I came back to this job in 2021, I was asked to come talk with a member of congress, a very conservative member from a very conservative state and a very conservative district.

And I kind of held my breath and I thought, okay, you know, here we go again.

And he started by saying, I am a fifth generation farmer.

I can't farm the way my grandfather did.

And I almost jumped up and did a touchdown sign.

(Betsy laughing) Because yes, we do need to have the attribution argument, but we actually need to focus on adaptation.

We need to focus on what's gonna happen right now.

So even if we got to net zero tomorrow through all the renewables use and every other initiative that we've got, we would still have things like acidification.

We would still have the weather patterns changing.

In the oceans we'd still be seeing sea level rise.

These things have momentum.

You talked about the lake, water having memory, environment has momentum and climate is part of that.

So our ability to recognize the changes, I often say the wolf is in the house.

Climate change is now impacting so much, and oh, by the way, you're all paying for it.

If you, take a show of hands, how many of you buy insurance?

But I suspect it's gonna be everyone.

We're all paying for it because the insurance companies now realize, they gotta mitigate some of these losses.

And so they're distributing those.

Rightfully, I mean, it's a business model we've had for years and years.

And the insurance companies, incidentally, are one of our closest partners in trying to develop some of these better predictive capabilities.

- Yeah, sure.

And they want to cover their losses too.

And they have quite a bit to account for now.

Well we are about to begin the Q and A portion of the program here.

For those joining on our live stream at cityclub.org or live radio broadcast on 89.7 WKSU Ideastream Public Media, I'm Betsy Kling, chief meteorologist at WKYC and moderator for today's conversation.

We're joined by Dr. Richard Spinrad, administrator for NOAA for The City Club of Cleveland's State of the Great Lakes.

We welcome questions from everyone, City Club members, guests, students, those tuning in as well.

If you'd like to text a question for our speaker, please text to 330-541-5794.

That's 330-541-5794.

And City Club staff will try to work it into the program.

That was my TV voice.

(audience chuckling) May we have our first question please?

- Hello.

Our first question is a text question.

It says, "Congress appropriated billions of dollars to address climate change and fishery disasters through the American Rescue Plan Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

How is NOAA conducting consultation with Great Lakes tribal nations and ensuring that these nations have access to this once in a generation funding streams?"

- Yeah, thank you for that question.

I was hoping I would get a question about our engagement with tribes and tribal consultation.

And first I'll say, well, it's the law.

And there is direction that we have to make sure we consult, there are over 550 federally recognized tribes in the country.

When we put these kinds of programs out, we engage in formal consultations.

So the questioner alluded to the several new programs, including the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act.

We conducted a series of formal consultations, sometimes trying to do it in a geographically specific manner.

So for example, for the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act, we actually had two separate consultations, one focused on Alaska and the northwest 'cause it was very fisheries focused and then one focused on basically east coast and Great Lakes to make a determination about how to spend the resources.

That dramatically affected our spend plan, resulting in specific dedicated funds for supporting tribal activities, either in habitat restoration, hatchery renovation, or fundamental fisheries research.

A few of those dollars are going to some like flood mitigation and drought mitigation studies as well.

We just announced one such program with the upper Missouri Basin, for example, that's dedicated to tribal activities.

So I will tell you, again, comparing when I worked for NOAA some 10, 12 years ago and even before that, the attention to tribal needs and tribal concerns has dramatically increased and I would say improved.

My concern actually now is less about whether we've gotten into that sort of cadence of working with tribes, and more the issue of what some call tribe or consultation fatigue, that many of these tribes are small, all of a sudden all of us feds are coming in, saying we wanna have a consultation.

And how do we ensure we can hear the voices of the tribes, but at the same time not make this into an inundation of consultations?

Thank you for that question.

- Next?

- The summer of 2022, I had the pleasure of visiting the Jefferson when it was here in Cleveland.

And I want to compliment your crew and the whole staff of the great work they were doing and their hospitality when we visited.

It was a great experience.

My question has to do with your ability to push your science up onto Capitol Hill, as opposed to have to having to wait for them to ask for your science.

And do you have much opportunity to push the science forward?

- So the first thing I'm gonna do is embarrass one of my staff.

Because since you called out the TJ, the Thomas Jefferson, one of the officers on the TJ during that session is now my aide, and that is Lieutenant Michelle Levano.

Michelle, will you stand please?

(audience applauding) So thank you for that recognition.

I'll also point out it had been 35 years since we had one of our mapping and charting vessels in the Lakes.

We were able to work Erie and Ontario.

Your question about bringing the science to the Hill, the short answer is yes, we don't wait until we're dragged up on the Hill to testify.

We actually are trying to build a very aggressive communications activity of setting up briefings.

My staff typically does, I would say, two to three briefings a week to Hill staff on any subject, space weather, commercial remote sensing, fisheries, underwater acoustics.

So we try to do that.

Part of the problem I would say, quite candidly, is oftentimes we're preaching to the choir, to those factions on the Hill that are already very supportive of the scientific information.

The way I believe to get the science into the hands of those who are not necessarily quite as receptive or open to it is through their constituents, in my opinion, exactly what we were just talking about.

That farmer, that owner of a commercial shipping corporation, that trucking company owner, that municipal or emergency manager, they are very strong supporters of the science and they also have access and audience to members of Congress.

So we try to work that connection as well.

Thank you.

- Next.

- Hi, my name is Ellie.

Thank you for being here today.

I'm a proud volunteer with the Cleveland Metro Parks Watershed Volunteer Program.

Shout out to that staff.

I'm also an ambassador with the Alliance for the Great Lakes, which I'm throwing out there if people were looking for some other way to be involved.

My question is, I was in Toronto this summer and I learned a little bit about Toronto's deep lake water cooling where they pull water out of Lake Ontario to cool downtown buildings, including arenas and otherwise.

It seems like a stunningly fantastic renewable energy program or model.

And I'm wondering if the obstacle to exploring that for US Great Lake cities is only political and fiscal, or whether there are environmental things I didn't hear about that would make that an unappealing choice.

- So I'm probably not the best person to address that.

That would tend to be the kind of thing my colleagues at the Department of Energy would typically engage in.

But they, I guarantee you, would rely on us to get the information about, is that even feasible?

I'm not aware of us working that issue on this side.

We do do extensive observations in the Great Lakes through the Great Lakes Observation System, part of a large integrated ocean observing system.

But beyond that, I couldn't comment on the feasibility.

My question, of course, would be the overall impact on the ecosystem, and it's a question of where is the water going after it's been used to cool?

And what are the impacts of that?

But, sorry I don't have a more satisfactory answer.

It's, again, something I think our Department of Energy would probably be all over.

- Next.

- Thank you so much firstly for coming out to Cleveland and speaking with us all today.

I'm a little bit curious if you can talk about the sort of dueling roles of both acting as a scientist and a public servant, versus the responsibilities that come from being a political appointee of the Biden administration.

How do you rationalize the two together in the work that you're doing in NOAA?

- Different rules of engagement.

(all laughing) First, I've gotta say how absolutely honored I was to be asked to take this position, and how delighted I am to be the 11th NOAA administrator, 10 of whom have been environmental scientists.

I think that's a really good sign.

And I jokingly said that the rules of engagement are different.

Quite honestly, the sort of principles of operation are different in the two.

I deal, on the one hand, with the laws of physics when we start talking about things like circulation in the lakes or the oceans.

And in the political world, it's about, in the best of times it's about what's the best way to use that information, for which communities and how?

I actually don't find it to be that hard a bridge to cross.

I think from our standpoint, I've mostly been talking about our operational responsibilities.

Because here in the Great Lakes, that's what we have.

We don't have a lot of regulatory authority in the Great Lakes.

We do on things like marine fisheries.

That's where that political and science piece gets really rough, because a lot of times the political agenda is perhaps in the short term to address economic needs, economic development.

And in the long term, as an environmental scientist, I'm saying yeah, but there's a long term consequence here to the environment.

So the best I feel I can do is express the scientific issues in terms of the impacts on the ecosystem as they might relate to economic development in that case.

But again, it's mostly in the regulatory domain where that becomes the biggest challenge.

- [Betsy] Next?

- Hello, my name is Jason Tout.

I'm a science teacher at MC Squared STEM High School.

Shout out to the Maniacs here.

(Betsy laughing) (audience applauding) My question is, through my life choices, clearly I think our students are the future.

And I'm curious if there is a percentage of the monies that we've talked about today that are going towards partnering with some of the amazing institutions that try to get our kids to these sanctuaries.

And providing just opportunities to try to help, you know, students and schools get over the hurdles of just getting kids to those spaces and other learning opportunities, you know, to make them more informed voters, so.

- So first, thank you for being a teacher.

(audience applauding) I can say unequivocally, I am in this job because of my eighth grade science teacher.

And I don't know, I'd be glad to talk with you about it after lunch.

We have a whole portfolio of programs, scholarships, internships, fellowships at all levels, Teachers at Sea, Students at Sea, opportunities for young people, high school students, undergrads, graduates to come work at NOAA for a summer, take on a project.

And I would just say I would encourage you to take a look at our education site on our website and you'll see a lot of opportunities there.

We have a wonderful opportunity through our Sea Grant network.

There are eight Sea Grant college programs here in the Great Lakes.

And that also serves as a way of getting more senior people, master's candidates back in DC.

But I wanna make a comment on engagement of youth because as my staff knows, I feel very deeply about this as the oldest NOAA administrator ever, (all chuckling) I will point out that I feel strongly about the kind of programs you alluded to.

How do we get these young people aware of environmental issues?

I don't really care if they become environmental scientists or not.

I'd like to know that the politicians, doctors, lawyers, and municipal workers of the future are much better informed about environmental issues.

But I also believe that many of these young people are so passionate, well-informed, intelligent, and well-organized about these issues, I want them at the table when I'm making strategic discussions.

So we have a program we've just started called Young Changemakers, where we're trying to take high school age kids, get them familiar with some of the tough policy challenges, and then actually have them in what is my equivalent of a boardroom, advising on what policies should be.

Stay tuned.

It's an experiment I have not seen done in government.

And if it works, we will both inculcate the youth interest but also get that voice at the table.

'Cause let's be honest, they're the ones who are gonna have to deal with many of these issues 20, 30, 40 years from now.

- [Betsy] And what's that program called again?

- The Young Changemakers Fellowships.

- Young Changemaker Fellowships for those Googling at home.

Next question.

- I'm Bob Heath with the Cleveland Water Alliance.

First of all, thank you so much for your very thoughtful and informative presentation.

My question is that because of the ready availability of clean, fresh water here in northeast Ohio, it's reasonable to expect that this will be one of the growth spots of the nation as environmental migrants come here for water.

I'm wondering, when you're projecting this, you know, when you're doing this strategic planning for the climate change, do you include these demographic changes in your projections?

- That's a great question.

One of the advantages of being in the Department of Commerce is the Census Bureau is in this department as well.

It's also a question that we discuss with the Council on Environmental Quality, because we don't understand what some of the issues are in terms of demographics and impacts on populations.

So the short answer to your question is we contribute to the great interagency discussion that does incorporate those kinds of demographics in terms of what changes can we expect to see in the future.

And I would say there's another side to the coin too, because where are those people going to be coming from?

And this is the whole climate refugees argument.

So is it because of sea level rise on the Outer Banks in Virginia and North Carolina?

Are those the people that are gonna be coming here to northeast Ohio?

Or is it others that are gonna be moving around?

So it is a big active discussion in the policy arena.

And I'm proud of the fact that in an all of government dialogue, we are developing those.

And if you look at strategic plans, not just among the US federal agencies, but certainly with our agreements with Canada, for example, here in the Great Lakes, that's part of the dialogue as well.

So thank you for that.

- I read the other day that the Panama Canal was cutting down on the number of ships being allowed to pass through it because due to the drought in Central America, they literally don't have enough water to keep on refilling the locks.

Not that I want to give you additional work to do, but what is your agency doing to coordinate with other similar agencies around the world to come up with a unified plan to deal with these obviously regional issues?

- That is a really insidious problem.

It's one example of a relatively local drought having a global impact.

There are others.

There are international dialogues.

I'm going on two international trips here in the next month.

I'm going to South Africa tomorrow in fact to talk with my compatriots in what's called the Group on Earth Observations.

So part of the answer to your question is do we have the observations in place among all the nations?

So our Japanese colleagues have satellites, our European Union colleagues have satellites, to be able to predict better the drought and also when that drought might break.

Part of it is having agreements about observations.

And that sounds trivial, but believe me, agreeing on standards for observations and how we will trade data is non-trivial.

The other thing is, and the other meeting is the big climate meeting in Dubai in a month, where some of this will be discussed in the context of how are we gonna avoid these kinds of problems in a longer future?

The other thing I'd say is there are standing international organizations, the World Meteorological Organization, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission where those discussions are ongoing right now.

I think the problem you alluded to is that we just simply didn't have good enough models to predict this was gonna happen.

'Cause I've asked if we knew this was going to happen to this extreme, are there answers?

And the shipping companies have said yes, there are.

They would've been expensive, but they could have changed their mode of operations.

And so it's, in my opinion, it's about having international agreements on observations and international agreements on who provides what service.

And make sure the industries are involved as well.

That's a great question.

I wish I had a more clear, succinct answer, but that's how we're gonna try to get to the clear, succinct answer.

- [Betsy] It's always a challenge to get water to go uphill.

- Right.

- Next question.

- Hi, I'm Allison Lukacsy-Love from the Greater Cleveland Partnership.

And thank you for doing so much community engagement last summer.

I was also able to go on the NOAA ship.

I wanna frame my question in the context of erosion and erosion mitigation, which has just become a necessity for us here on the southern shoreline of Lake Erie.

And there are many projects underway and NOAA's been instrumental in funding or giving some advocacy and best practices to those projects.

But can you talk more about water level change and that cycle, and how we should be planning for coastal resiliency in the long term so that the projects we're doing now are protecting us from having to do this again 10, 20, 30 years down the road?

- So you're not gonna like my first statement.

It's gonna get worse.

And I think if you just look at the last 20 years, in all of the Great Lakes, the extremes we have seen in low levels and high lake levels are more extreme than we've seen before.

And the sort of cycles Betsy was talking about, the pace of change, that's gonna change, that's gonna accelerate as well.

On the other hand, I am encouraged by the fact that at least we are starting to put resources into resilience and adaptation.

So you know that as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, you may have submitted a proposal.

We carved out $600 million for resilience and did it as a challenge.

That's the good news.

The not so good news is that $600 million was carved out.

We got $16 billion worth of proposals.

So help me.

The message there is there is a demand signal.

You know, it's kind of like going into the supermarket and saying, I'm gonna buy the best steak I possibly can and I've got $3.

You know, no, you haven't quite figured out, to do that you're gonna need more like $20 or $30.

And so we need to get the message across that you've got that project, somebody else has a project just to the east or just to the west of you.

We're gonna make the tough decisions and support what we can, but we have to sustain the investment in adaptation resilience.

And the science is there.

That's the beauty of it.

We now know the kinds of things years ago we would've just said, yeah, put riprap in there and you won't have a problem anymore.

That's not the answer, we know that.

So help us make the argument that the demand signal for coastal resilience is huge.

And the return, incidentally, by some estimates, you put a $1 into resilience, you'll get a $6 return over the long run.

So it's a good investment.

Thank you for that.

- We only have five minutes left in our time today.

We have time for one more quick question.

- Roy Larick, Bluestone Conservation in Euclid.

Thank you for being here, Dr. Spinrad.

We have here a very interesting organization, the Cleveland Water Alliance, a representative of which just asked a question.

And it is an alliance that brings together tech and IT people from all over the region to develop monitoring and interconnected systems for understanding various measures here.

If it happens in Cleveland, it must happen other places.

My question is, how much do you depend on homegrown monitoring to understand change in the Great Lakes?

- Okay-- - And while I'm, excuse me, while I'm up here, back in 1963 as a kid in Euclid, I lost an outboard motor off the shoreline.

Can you send the TJ to help me find it?

(all laughing) - The answer to your second question is yes, if you're willing to pay for it.

(audience chuckling) So homegrown monitoring, there's a real advantage to that, obviously.

It falls into, sometimes we call it citizen science, cooperative observations.

We do that a lot.

In fact, the Weather Service relies on cooperative observations, and there's a formal program in the Weather Service for providing observations.

And it basically, we have to ensure the quality of the data.

But there's ways to do that if you're using us and such a system and send it in.

The focal point for us for our observation systems, the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab, Dr. Debbie Lee is here with us, the director of the lab, is the place where we develop the technology and also do the operational maintenance of the Great Lakes Observing System.

That's great.

But the Great Lakes are big.

We have a lab focusing on this.

We don't have anywhere near the observational capacity.

I think I would welcome a well thought out approach to doing more, if you will, citizen science or contributed observations.

But the first thing I would do is I would call up Debbie and I would say, does this comport with our standards?

Does this fill a need?

I'll just share with you a very quick-- - Very quick!

- Very quick.

Years ago, a bunch of wealthy yacht owners in the Atlantic said, we want to provide data for you.

We said, great.

We need data near Greenland, Iceland and the North Sea.

(Betsy laughing) They said, no, no, no, we're going to the Bahamas.

(audience laughing) We said, no, we don't need data there.

So part of it also is knowing where the data are gonna be collected.

- Good data in, good data out.

- In the right place.

- That's always a very important part of it.

Well, thank you so much Dr. Spinrad.

- Thank you, my pleasure.

- I thank you all for your questions, really great group here.

The City Club today, of course, is so happy to have everybody here in the new digs.

And today's forum is the Stanley and Hope Adelstein Endowed Forum on the Environment.

The State of the Great Lakes is also part of our sustainable NEO series, sponsored by the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District.

The City Club would like to welcome guests at the tables hosted by Capital Partners, the Cleveland Metro Parks, Cleveland Water, Friends of Euclid Creek, Great Lakes Energy Institute at Case Western Reserve University, Greater Cleveland Partnership, Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, Ohio Environmental Council, the Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation, Trust for Public Land, and the Watershed Stewardship Center.

Thank you all for being here today and for listening today.

The City Club has some great forums coming up next week, starting with The State of the Schools at the Huntington Convention Center on Thursday, November 9th.

Dr. Warren Morgan, the new CMSD CEO will provide his inaugural State of the Schools address.

And then on Friday, November 10th, The City Club will welcome Her Excellency Geraldine Byrne Nason, Ambassador of Ireland to the United States.

Of course, our Ireland connection is just getting started.

You can learn more about these forums and others at cityclub.org.

And that brings us to the end of today's City Club Forum.

Thank you once again to Dr. Spinrad, of course.

And thank you members, friends, and patrons of The City Club.

I'm Betsy Kling, and our forum is now adjourned.

And I get to hit the gong!

(gong dinging) (audience laughing, clapping) - [Narrator] For information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of The City Club, go to cityclub.org.

(resonant music) - [Narrator] Production and distribution of City Club Forums on Ideastream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.