Clayton Page Aldern

About

Clayton Aldern is a writer and data scientist interested in science and society. Based in the Pacific Northwest, he's currently working on a book about the effects of climate change and environmental degradation on neurochemistry, behavior, decision-making, and mental and emotional health.

His writing has been published by The Guardian, The Atlantic, The Economist, Scientific American, Logic, Grist, Sierra Magazine, Geographical, Crosscut, UN Dispatch, and others. His reporting and data visualization have been syndicated or otherwise republished by The New Republic, Mother Jones, Vox, Newsweek, Salon, Canada's National Observer, The Texas Observer, Moyers & Company, Yes! Magazine, AlterNet, Truthout, Fusion, CityLab, Business Insider, and elsewhere.

Previously, Clayton has worked in computational neuroscience, environmental journalism, and homelessness policy. Most recently, he led the data analysis and program evaluation team for homelessness programs at Pierce County, Washington. These days, he's building out a data-journalism unit at the national environmental magazine Grist. He also directs a data-science and machine-learning consultancy, serves as a research affiliate of the University of Washington's Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, and is a co-founding partner of the standards lab Standards International. Some of his recent projects in data science and policy evaluation are available here.

He holds a master's in neuroscience and a master's in public policy from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He is a Reynolds Journalism Institute Fellow, a Salzburg Global Fellow, a Seattle CityArtist, and a Climate Reality Leader, among other honors. He has contributed to reporting teams that have won various awards, including a national Edward R. Murrow Award, multiple Online Journalism Awards, multiple Sigma Awards, and the Breaking Barriers Award from the Institute for Nonprofit News. He conducted his undergraduate work in neuroscience at Brown University. He is originally from Minnesota.

You can get in touch via his contact page or on Twitter @compatibilism.

Selected Writing

Clayton's essays and journalism have appeared in several print and digital outlets. A reasonably complete list is automatically compiled at Muck Rack, and most of his academic work is available on ORCID. Selected works follow below.

Investigative reporting

• "Waves of Abandonment: The Permian Basin is ground zero for a billion-dollar surge of zombie oil wells." (Grist/The Texas Observer, co-reported with Naveena Sadasivam and Christopher Collins; winner of a national Edward R. Murrow Award for Investigative Reporting and an Online Journalism Award for Investigative Data Journalism)
• "Misplaced Trust: Stolen Indigenous land is the foundation of the land-grant university system. Climate change is its legacy." (Grist, co-reported with Tristan Ahtone, Robert Lee, Amanda Tachine, An Garagiola, Audrianna Goodwin, Maria Parazo Rose)
• "Any Way the Wind Blows: A Koch-owned chemical plant in Texas spent years running from the Clean Air Act. New evidence suggests it bent the law until it broke." (Grist/Houston Chronicle/Beaumont Enterprise, co-reported with Naveena Sadasivam; winner of a global Sigma Award)
• "Road to Ruin: The Roadless Rule is supposed to protect our wild places. What went wrong in the Tongass National Forest?" (Grist/CoastAlaska, co-reported with Jacob Resneck, Eric Stone, and Edward Boyda; winner of an Online Journalism Award for Feature Writing)
• "Toxic Churn: How the legacy of former industrial sites pollutes American cities today." (Grist, co-reported with Yvette Cabrera; winner of the Breaking Barriers Award from the Institute for Nonprofit News and a global Sigma Award)

Environmental and political journalism

• "‘Everybody has a breaking point’: how the climate crisis affects our brains" (The Guardian)
• "Climate change won’t just make the world a hotter place — it will make it a more violent one, too" (The Globe and Mail)
• "Climate change is radically affecting our brain health" (Geographical)
• "Mountaintop-removal country's mental health crisis" (Grist)
• "Hunting for the neuroscience of heat and violence" (Grist)
• "The art of repeal: illustrating Trump's toxic legacy — and Biden's daunting task ahead" (Grist)
• "Has Fannie Mae’s $95 billion in green bonds made anything greener?" (Grist, co-reported with Naveena Sadasivam)
• "Counties that voted for the president get more in disaster relief" (The Economist)
• "Cartographers Without Borders" (Logic)

Selected interviews and video

• Actor Alec Baldwin, on climate justice and the Equator Prize
• Neuropsychologist Aaron Reuben, on air pollution and dementia
• "The Paris climate negotiations, explained" (Grist/Mother Jones)
• "Can climate change cause war?" (Grist)

His current writing project is THE WEIGHT OF NATURE, a book about the effects of climate change and environmental degradation on neurochemistry, behavior, decision-making, and mental and emotional health. It is forthcoming from Dutton (Penguin USA) and Allen Lane (Penguin Press/Penguin UK).

Other Selected Projects

Clayton is active as a data scientist and public-policy researcher. A research affiliate of the University of Washington's Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, his current interests include stochastic-process modeling of public-policy interventions (especially in housing and homelessness), the governance and ethics of artificial intelligence (especially with respect to AI fairness and accountability), and the neurobiological impacts of rapid environmental change. Some relevant projects follow below.

In homelessness policy

• Homelessness is a housing problem. (Monograph and data visualization with Gregg Colburn; UC Press, 2022)
• A simulation of coordinated entry. (Statistical model and D3.js visualization, inspired by Nathan Yau's work on time use)
• A probabilistic graphical modeling approach to racial equity analysis in coordinated entry systems. With C Aylward Guilmette. (Intro slides)
• Communicating homelessness and crisis-response system performance. (Tableau visualization)

In machine learning and artificial intelligence

• Certified Artificial: a certification service for AI companies and thought-leaders. With Tim Hwang. (Website)
• Verify: a Chrome extension leveraging the public CAT-L database. (Chrome store)
• Applying statistical learning models in social services to identify systemic racial disparities. (Example slides)

Other

• Caldern LLC: consulting services in data science, machine learning, and policy analysis and evaluation. (Website)
• Post-Katrina FEMA trailer maps. With Heather Smith and Nick Shapiro. (Article)
• A bot that generates and tweets a chart illustrating current global CO₂ levels. (GitHub repo)
• Reynolds Journalism Institute blog on data journalism fundamentals and institutional change. (Profile)

He has also worked with the Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour and the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Oxford; the Burwell Laboratory of Memory and Attention, the International Health Institute, the School of Public Health, and the School of Professional Studies at Brown University; and organizations like Building Changes, Passle, WTFJHT, The Resistance Manual, Marblar, and Social Justice Fund NW.

Press and
media mentions

Clayton's reporting has been cited in several recent books, including Leslie Davenport’s clinician’s guide Emotional Resiliency in the Era of Climate Change (Jessica Kingsley), Charles Harper and Monica Snowden’s textbook Environment and Society: Human Perspectives on Environmental Issues (Routledge), Andreas Karelas' Climate Courage: How Tackling Climate Change Can Build Community, Transform the Economy, and Bridge the Political Divide in America (Beacon Press), and Julie Rehmeyer’s popular science memoir Through the Shadowlands (Rodale). His data visualization has been presented on the floor of the U.S. Senate by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).

Other work has been featured, excerpted, or pointed to by various organizations, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Economist, The Los Angeles Times, The Sunday Times, The Seattle Times, USA Today, Quartz, IEEE Spectrum, Democracy Now!, Smithsonian, NRDC, Sightline, the U.S. Climate and Health Alliance, the Tableau Foundation, KNKX (NPR), Covering Climate Now, New Climate Economy, Daily Kos, Real Clear Science, Real Clear Energy, Treehugger, This Changes Everything, the American Geophysical Union, the Climate Justice Project, the Center for Creative Ecologies, the Lowy Institute, Renewable Energy Watch, the Intentional Endowments Network, Marine Science Today, the TerraMar Project, and various law reviews.

Due to a completely inconsequential email subscription on John Podesta's behalf, Clayton also technically appears in the Podesta Emails by way of a message conspicuosly titled "Paris and the wolfpack."

Contact

This form is not secure. If you need to send a secure message or tip, you should use the PGP fingerprint BC5E 04BD 14E0 5D28 88C5 C0C8 C37B A328 3BD8 90B2 or email aldern [at] pm [dot] me. Consulting queries should be addressed to Caldern LLC.

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