Richard Alley may be an internationally recognized scientist, but he’s not above using a light-hearted approach to make a complex subject easier to grasp.
For example, for a lesson in subduction — the movement of plates on the ocean floor — the Penn State professor assumed a Johnny Cash persona, complete with black shirt and guitar, and began to sing.
“Subduction scrapes off mud round a burning ring of fire, takes water down, drives the volcanoes higher, makes light andesite from the ring of fire, from the ring of fire,” he sings while strumming along in a YouTube video, complete with graphic illustrations.
Alley sees his role as a sort of ambassador for science. And while his studies of ice cores and what they reveal about climate change have earned him national recognition, so have his efforts to explain climate science to the public.
“We’re ultimately working on the big questions, which are what is the history of climate in the ice and will the ice fall in the ocean and flood in the coast,” said Alley, 54.
Whether he’s talking to a classroom of college students, community leaders in Centre County or members of Congress, Alley brings a mix of approachability, common sense and humor to a complicated and often controversial subject, trying to make the topic understandable without sacrificing the science.
“He is enthusiastic, dynamic, funny and smart,” said Georgia Abbey, executive director of Leadership Centre County.
For the past few years Alley has given the keynote speech at Leadership’s environment day, one of its monthly topics aimed at educating adults in the community to help them become leaders in volunteer work. Abbey said she likes the approach Alley takes to an often-politicized subject.
“What I appreciate about his presentation style is that he challenges people’s thinking and yet he’s willing to let you have your own space for your own beliefs,” she said.
“He’s definitely not there just to make you feel badly about the outcome of his research,” Abbey said. “He’s there to teach you and help you see, if man made it, man can fix it.”
Alley said he’s often asked what people should do about climate change. But he doesn’t see making behavior and policy recommendations as his place.
“I’m not a policy person,” he said. “I’m a geologist who does ice.”
He compared being a climate scientist to being a weather forecaster — both provide information that is useful and heavily relied upon, but not perfect.
“When the weather forecaster comes on and says, ‘This is what we expect,’ that does not tell you what to do,” he said. “It doesn’t tell you whether to take the umbrella or not. You decide, but the information is useful.”
He said information about climate science can be brought to the table along with all the other concerns such as jobs and security. Governments, he said, make many policy decisions whose effects can be predicted with much less confidence than the warming effect of CO2.
“When you’re addressing what’s a wise energy policy and a wise tax policy and a wise military policy, we have useful information and it may be known with even more confidence than some of the other things,” he said.
Alley’s work includes studying ice cores and what they can tell us about temperature changes: More CO2 turns up the dial on the Earth’s thermostat. Usually, if you turn the thermostat up just a little, you get a small response.
“Occasionally, something funny will happen and you’ll get a big response.We don’t really expect we’re going to get a big response, but we’re not sure,” he said.
“The glib line would be, the less you trust me, the more worried you should be about CO2,” Alley said. “We have some estimate of what we face and things may end up better than that. CO2 may not be as bad as we think, that’s really possible. It may end up better, it may end up worse. It may end up a lot worse. But we don’t see any way that just turning the dial makes it a lot better.”
Along with research and public appearances, Alley continues to teach. This semester’s classes are one on ice physics and another titled geology of national parks. The latter is an online class with 1,100 students. Alley said all classes can’t be taught that way, but such classes have their place.
He earned a bachelor’s in geology from Ohio State University and a master’s after working in the field for about a year. He went on to earn a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Byron Parizek, an assistant professor of mathematics and geosciences, had Alley as his adviser when he was earning a doctorate. He now works with him. He said Alley, as an adviser, treats his graduate students as equals, letting them explore their own ideas but guiding them back if they’re spinning their wheels.
“He’s one of the most intelligent people I know and is able to take all the different fields and synthesize them in a tangible way for students from all backgrounds,” Parizek said.
Parizek said Alley also keeps track of what other researchers are doing and has the ability to bring those ideas together to come up with the best direction for research in the future.
“It’s all about this exciting science that we’re all interested in understanding better — how can we best use our resources to educate the next generation of scientists and lead them to discovery,” Parizek said.
Alley and his wife, Cindy, live in the Centre Hills neighborhood. Both of their daughters have followed their father’s example to some degree. Janet, the oldest, is a teacher. Their younger daughter, Karen, is a senior studying geology at Colgate University.
The energy he brings to his job, including travels around the world, research and writing, continues when he’s off the clock. He’s a kayaker and cyclist, typically pedaling 17 miles before arriving at his office on campus.
He said State College is a great college town and being on the faculty at Penn State means “you get a chance to do a little bit of everything.”
“I probably would not be teaching geology of the national parks online to someone on a Navy ship at some schools,” he said.
An important part of his job, he said, is to share what he knows.While keeping up with the latest in specialized topics in their fields, scientists“have to find ways to get lots of information at lots of different levels to lots of people.”
Along with a long list of publications and research that led him to become a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the panel that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore — Alley has made a foray into TV entertainment.
He is the host of “Earth: The Operators’Manual,” a three-part program on climate change that is airing on PBS. In it, he and his film crew did acrobatics at all ends of the earth.
In one example, program writer and director Geoff Haines-Stiles noted that the crew lowered Alley into a crevasse on the Franz Josef Glacier in New Zealand “to explain how layers in snow and ice and bubbles in ancient ice allow us to know what Earth’s climate was like in the past.”
“He’s got a way with words, uses specific and colorful metaphors that communicate with nonspecialists and has learned to translate what works in classrooms to the very different requirements of TV cameras,”Haines-Stiles said.
Above all, he said, Alley took to all locations the same enthusiasm he brings to local outreach efforts, such as his talks to Leadership Centre County.
“He really seems to enjoy communicating climate science to one and all, comes to life when answering questions in ways that people find both intelligible and intelligent, and has stretched beyond his former academic specialties of geology and glaciology to embrace issues of renewable energy,” Haines-Stiles said.
The first part of “Earth” aired in April, with the second and third parts expected to air early next year. Alley also wrote a book that goes with the series.
Alley will go to Washington, D.C., this month to pick up the $100,000 Heinz Foundation Award, recognizing his work in climate and polar ice studies. And in December, he’ll go to San Francisco to become the first recipient of the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication, which recognizes his research and ability to communicate it.
