“More and more people are building in funding from the private sector,” says Mutter, not only because it diversifies one's financial support, but also because people see the potential for a career in the private sector. While Lamont's partnerships have traditionally been dominated by the oil industry, “if we spoke two or three years from now, I'd [probably] be telling you about valuing climate information”, says Mutter. With few exceptions, the industries most affected by climate have no research culture to enable them to understand it.
The winds of change that blew around Chris Barton, a research geologist with the US Geological Survey since 1985, may not have been hurricane force, but they were strong enough to make him a G. K. Gilbert Fellow at IBM with Benoit Mandelbrot, the ‘father of fractals’. He followed this up with another fellowship at Lamont. These fellowships helped Barton's research to evolve from studying the physical phenomena of climate catastrophes to studying the magnitude of financial losses from these events, which in turn has affected the way reinsurance companies and the Federal Emergency Management Association evaluate risk. (Reinsurers insure major corporations and primary insurance providers.)
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