Chris Justice was the co-chairman of a recent NRC Committee which has
 just published its report on the US Climate Change Science Program.

 One of the most important aspects of the report is the recommendation
 that much more effort should be placed on research into Adaptation,
 Mitigation and Vulnerability, in assessing the risks and costs of
 climate change impacts and options to respond.  Of course this is what
 we call human dimensions of global change.

 This was the lead story on the University home page.

 The full story can be found at

 http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/scitech/release.cfm?ArticleID=1836

Chris made the following comments about the report

"As our nation organizes itself to respond to climate change there is
an ever greater need for scientific research on how the climate is
changing and the associated impacts but also to address the questions
that are responsive to the urgent needs of society. The NRC Committee
which I co-chaired was asked to identify the priorities for the federal
climate change science program and identify any changes in program
emphasis. The first report released in 2007 identified that good
progress was being made in the natural sciences but less so in the
social sciences and noted with some alarm that the observing systems
providing the data to feed the science are in decline. In this report,
the committee recommended that the program needs to be broadened to
address the human dimensions of climate change, with an emphasis on the
underpinning research needed to address question of adaptation and
mitigation. Funding for the program has decreased since 1995 and
significant new funding is now needed to develop a US Climate Observing
System, to develop a new generation of climate models at regional and
decadal scales, to deliver climate services and support a comprehensive
research effort on mitigation, adaptation and societal vulnerability.
People are an involved in contributing to climate change and will be
impacted by climate change. Societies will need to adapt to and be
involved in efforts to mitigate climate change and in some cases are
already doing so. Understanding this human dimension, for example by
studying differential vulnerabilities and adaptive capacities, human
behaviors and policy preferences and economic costs will require
research in the social and behavioral sciences. A recommendation was
made to reorganize the program around science / societal themes, such as
seal level rise, food and water security, human health, ecosystem
management and economic impacts, to promote end to end research
addressing both the basic science and strengthen user driven research
aimed at providing useful information to resource managers and decision
makers. The climate is changing and there is an increasing demand for
scientific research better understand what is happening and to inform
policy and decision-making. This is both a challenge and a real
opportunity for researchers in both the natural and behavioral sciences. "

 Here is the ClimateWire story:

 */CLIMATE:/**/ More research needed on warming's societal impacts --
 NAS/* (02/26/2009)

 *Lauren Morello, E&E reporter*

 The federal government's main climate change research program has not
 paid enough attention to how the changing environment will affect
 society, the National Academy of Sciences said today.

 Climate change is likely to disrupt food and freshwater supplies, spur
 the spread of diseases and create new national security threats by the
 end of the century, even with a global effort to curb greenhouse gas
 emissions, the report says.

 Nearly 80 percent of U.S. states have responded to those threats by
 pursuing policies to slash emissions and adapt to unavoidable effects
 of global warming -- but many of those programs are being developed
 "without the science support that could help shape better outcomes,"
 the report cautions.

 The federal Climate Change Science Program, a $1.7 billion effort that
 draws on the expertise of 13 agencies, should fill that vacuum, the
 academy says.

 During the Bush administration, the program issued a controversial
 series of 21 narrowly focused reports on different aspects of climate
 change science, from projections of sea level rise to global warming
 in the Arctic. But over the last seven years, 3 percent of the
 program's budget was used to examine the "human dimensions" of climate
 change, the science academy's new report says.

 "What we need is a strong research program to support the sort of
 decisions we're going to have to make in terms of society adapting to
 climate change," said Christopher Justice, the University of Maryland
 geography professor who served as vice-chairman of the National
 Academy of Sciences committee that produced the new report.

 Among the steps recommended by the panel:

 ·       Creating new climate models that can accurately depict climate
 change on a regional or local scale, instead of relying on the global
 climate models that now predominate.

 ·       Beginning a national study of "the risks and costs of climate
 change impacts on the United States" and potential policy responses,
 with input from state and local governments, businesses and
 environmental groups.

 ·       Establishing a new "climate observing system" that would
 include data on environmental conditions gathered by satellites and
 measuring stations on Earth.

 Here is a link to the  report itself

 http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12595

 And you can hear Chris talking about the report at the following:

 You can also download the interview and read the transcript.

 http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=09-P13-00009&segmentID=2