The current paper is a collaboration of a practitioner, a recent graduate student who is motivated by the need to be involved in the creation of strategies to mitigate and adapt to climate change challenges and a professor whose main question is: what, exactly are you going to do and how will I know that it matters? This tension creates the dynamic within this paper – against the unintelligible noise field evident from the garbled academic and professional and contemporary practice, we frame a discussion that focuses on two non-trivial questions: what is the knowledge base about the ‘‘challenge’’ ?; and, what are the appropriate responses of local governments? Both are critical to moving beyond chatter. Both are critical to provide a context for placing the Broward County response in context. Both provide a framework for a formative (as opposed to a critical) evaluation of the Broward County experience.