- Prometheus: Author: Pielke Jr., R. Archives

Roger Pielke, Jr. former director of the University of Colorado's Center for Science and Technology Policy Research and is also an associate professor of environmental studies.

Contents:

January 30, 2008

Witanagemot Justice And Senator Inhofe’s Fancy List

Anyone interested in the intersection of science and politics has to be watching with some amusement and more than a little dismay at the spectacle of professional immolation that the climate science community has engaged in following the release of Senator James Inhofe’s list of 400+ climate skeptics.

The amusement comes from the fact that everyone involved in this tempest in a teapot seems to be working as hard as possible in ways contrary to their political interests.

From the perspective of Senator Inhofe, by producing such a list he has raised the stakes associated with any scientist going public with any concerns about the scientific consensus on climate change. Not only would announcement of such concerns lead one to risk being associated with one of the most despised politicians in the climate science community, but several climate scientists have taken on as their personal responsibility the chore of personally attacking people who happen to find themselves on the Senator’s list. What young scholar would want to face the climate science attack dogs? Of course, those sharing the Senator’s political views may not mind being on such a list, but this does nothing more than further politicize climate science.

And this leads to the repugnant behavior of the attack dog climate scientists who otherwise would like to be taken seriously. By engaging in the character assassination of people who happen to find themselves on Senator Inhofe’s list they reinforce the absurd notion that scientific claims can be adjudicated solely by head counts and a narrow view of professional qualifications. They can’t. (See this enlightening and amusing discussion by Dan Sarewitz of leading experts arguing over who is qualified to comment on climate issues.) But by suggesting that knowledge claims can be judged by credentials the attack dog scientists reinforce an anti-democratic authoritarian streak found in the activist wing of the climate science community. Of course, from the perspective of the activist scientists such attacks may be effective if they dissuade other challenges to orthodoxy, but surely climate scientists deserving of the designation should be encouraging challenges to knowledge claims, rather than excoriating anyone who dares to challenge their beliefs.

I recently chatted with Steve Rayner and Gwyn Prins, authors of the brilliant and provocative essay The Wrong Trousers (PDF), who found themselves , somewhat bizarrely, on Senator Inhofe’s list. Neither has expressed anything resembling views challenging claims of human-caused climate change, however they are (rightly) critical of the political approach to climate change embodied by Kyoto. I asked them what they thought about being on the Senator’s list. Steve Rayner asked if there was some way to sue the Senator for defamation, tongue only partly in cheek. Gwyn Prins offered the following gem:

I think that pointing out that the mere fact of this funny headcounting is worthy of note: In the Anglo-Saxon witanagemot justice was achieved by oath-swearing so the number and the status of your oath-swearers mattered more than the facts of the matter; and this issue is being adjudicated on both sides – denialists and climate puritans – in just such a manner.

He is right of course, and this brings us to the dismay. The climate science community – or at least its most publicly visible activist wing – seems to be working as hard as possible to undercut the legitimacy and the precarious trust than society provides in support of activities of the broader scientific community. Senator Inhofe is a politician, and plays politics. If activist climate scientists wish to play the Senator’s game, then don’t be surprised to see common wisdom viewing these activists more as political players than trustworthy experts. If this is correct then maybe the Senator is a bit more astute than given credit for.

Ultimately, the mainstream climate science community might share with their activist colleagues the same sort of advice Representative Jim Clyburn (D-SC) offered to former President Bill Clinton – "chill."

Posted on January 30, 2008 01:15 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

January 29, 2008

Eugene Skolnikoff on The Honest Broker

It is really an honor to see MIT's Eugene Skolnikoff review The Honest Broker in the January Review of Policy Research of the Policy Studies Organization. Professor Skolnikoff has been a leading scholar of science and technology policy for more than four decades. He served on the staff of Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, and as a consultant to President Carter, in addition to playing many other roles in the academic and applied communities.

He has these nice things to say about the book:

. . . Pielke’s book is a primer that can be a valuable introduction to clarifying the wide roles scientists can and do play, and can be useful in explaining what lies behind some of the controversies so evident today.
The bulk of the book is devoted to elaborating these four roles [of Pure Scientist, Science Arbiter, Issue Advocate, and Honest Broker], providing some background on what earlier scholars have written, elaborating the roles with illustrative issues, and discussing the important underlying elements of values and uncertainty. Pielke clearly has been through the wars on science policy issues and shows his experience and, by implication, his frustration with those scientists who advocate policies they argue are dictated by the scientific facts, without recognizing (or admitting) that their views are a result of their commitment to certain policy outcomes. He demonstrates a solid grasp of science and policy interactions, a sophisticated knowledge of U.S. science policy and institutions, and can write and express important ideas clearly and convincingly. For those reasons, the book is a valuable addition to the science and policy scene.

Professor Skolnikoff takes issue with several aspects of the book, such as its lack of discussions of engineers and technology. More importantly he suggests that I am "arguing that all scientists who call for action, some action, to deal with what they see as possible consequences of emerging evidence have become advocates, whose scientific views can thereby be considered to be politicized." This is indeed what I have argued. He concludes that "Pielke appears to tar all scientists who have strong views on a controversial issue, notably climate change again, with the claim they have simply become advocates and thus closed to alternative evidence."

I actually do not assert that advocates are closed to alternative evidence nor do I cast advocacy in such a pejorative light. In fact, I make a strong case for the importance of advocacy in democratic politics. It is not "tarring" someone to identify them as participating in advocacy, which I define as working to reduce the scope of political choice. What I do take strong issue with is what I call "stealth issue advocacy" in which an expert claims to be focused only on science (or more generally, truth), while really working to advance a specific agenda. Unfortunately, Professor Skolnikoff does not discuss this distinction among advocacy activities.

Overall, it is a thoughtful review, in which Skolnikoff describes the book as "generally valuable and occasionally provocative," which sounds pretty good to me.

Posted on January 29, 2008 12:29 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

January 28, 2008

Two New Blogs to Check Out

Like anyone needs a longer personal blogroll, but here are two that might be worth a look.

William Briggs is a statistician, a delightful writer, and provocatively skeptical about all sort of subjects in exactly the way that scientists should be skeptical. His new blog is extremely thoughtful. For example, he has a post up today titled, "Is climatology a pseudoscience?" and provides a nuanced, and yes, provocative answer.

A new group blog called Science Policy Development has just started up on the heels of the recent NAS Science and Technology Policy Graduate Student Forum. There is plenty of room in the blogosphere for more discussions of science policy and I am hopeful that this group maintains an active presence in science policy discussions.

Posted on January 28, 2008 03:22 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge | Science Policy: General

January 26, 2008

Updated IPCC Forecasts vs. Observations

Carl Mears from Remote Sensing Systems, Inc. was kind enough to email me to point out that the RSS data that I had shared with our readers a few weeks ago contained an error that RSS has since corrected. The summary figure above is re-plotted with the corrected data (RSS is the red curve). At the time I wrote:

Something fishy is going on. The IPCC and CCSP recently argued that the surface and satellite records are reconciled. This might be the case from the standpoint of long-term linear trends. But the data here suggest that there is some work left to do. The UAH and NASA curves are remarkably consistent. But RSS dramatically contradicts both. UKMET shows 2007 as the coolest year since 2001, whereas NASA has 2007 as the second warmest. In particular estimates for 2007 seem to diverge in unique ways. It'd be nice to see the scientific community explain all of this.

For those interested in the specifics, Carl explained in his email:

The error was simple -- I made a small change in the code ~ 1 year ago that resulted in a ~0.1K decrease in the absolute value of AMSU TLTs, but neglected to reprocess data from 1998-2006, instead only using it for the new (Jan 2007 onward) data. Since the AMSU TLTs are forced to match the MSU TLTs (on average) during the overlap period, this resulted in an apparent drop in TLT for 2007. Reprocessing the earlier AMSU data, thus lowering AMSU TLT by 0.1 from 1998-2006, resulted in small changes in the parameters that are added to the AMSU temperatures to make them match MSU temperatures, and thus the 2007 data is increased by ~0.1K. My colleagues at UAH (Christy and Spencer) were both very helpful in diagnosing the problem.

It is important to note that the RSS correction does not alter my earlier analysis of the IPCC predictions (made in 1990, 1995, 2001, 2007) and various observations. Thanks again to Carl for alerting me to the error and giving me a chance to update the figures with the new information!

Posted on January 26, 2008 01:10 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Prediction and Forecasting | Scientific Assessments

January 23, 2008

The Authoritarianism of Experts

Have you ever heard anyone make the argument that we must take a certain course of action because the experts tell us we must? The issue might be the threat of another country or an environmental risk, but increasingly we see appeals to authority used as the basis for arguing for this or that action.

In a new book, David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith take the appeal to experts somewhat further and argue that in order to deal with climate change we need to replace liberal democracy with an authoritarianism of scientific expertise. They write in a recent op-ed:

Liberal democracy is sweet and addictive and indeed in the most extreme case, the USA, unbridled individual liberty overwhelms many of the collective needs of the citizens. . .
There must be open minds to look critically at liberal democracy. Reform must involve the adoption of structures to act quickly regardless of some perceived liberties. . .

We are going to have to look how authoritarian decisions based on consensus science can be implemented to contain greenhouse emissions.

On their book page they write:

[T]he authors conclude that an authoritarian form of government is necessary, but this will be governance by experts and not by those who seek power.

So whenever you hear (or invoke) an argument from expertise (i.e., "the experts tell us that we must ...") ask if we should listen to the experts in just this one case, or if we should turn over all decisions to experts. If just this one case, why this one and not others? If a general prescription, should we do away with democracy in favor of an authoritarianism of expertise?

Posted on January 23, 2008 06:25 AM View this article | Comments (8)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics | The Honest Broker

January 20, 2008

I'm So Confused

Last week I received an email from our Chancellor, Bud Peterson, warning me and my CU colleagues of the perils of engaging in political advocacy activities as a university employee. Here is an excerpt:

TO: Boulder Campus Teaching & Research Faculty, Staff, Deans, Directors, Dept Chairs
FROM: Office of the Chancellor

SENDER: Chancellor G.P. "Bud" Peterson

DATE: January 18, 2008

SUBJECT: Guidelines on Campaign-Related Activities by Members of the University Community

Dear Colleagues:

In light of the many political campaigns currently, or soon to be, underway at the national, state and local levels, I would like to provide you with a set of guidelines we, as members of the University community, should keep in mind as we consider our own activities and level of involvement. The guidelines were developed by the Office of the University Counsel, and if you have questions, I urge you to contact Counsel's office at 303-492-7481.

GUIDELINES ON CAMPAIGN-RELATED ACTIVITIES BY MEMBERS OF THE UNIVERSITY
COMMUNITY

IN GENERAL, UNIVERSITY EMPLOYEES MAY NOT:

* Engage in any activity during working hours designed to urge electors to vote for or against any campaign issues, which include campaigns for public office, state-wide campaign issues or referred measures, and local campaign issues or levies.

* Employees wishing to participate in a campaign activity should take personal leave.

* Use office supplies or equipment, including computers, telephones, printers or facsimile machines to create materials urging electors to vote for or against a campaign issue.

* Use their University email accounts to urge electors to vote for or against a campaign issue, or to forward materials that urge electors to vote for or against a campaign issue.

* Use University-hosted websites to urge electors to vote for or against a campaign issue.

At the same time Chancellor Peterson has endorsed faculty participation in a January 31 political advocacy effort called "Focus the Nation," which seeks to motivate action on climate change.

Here is how The Colorado Daily describes the activity:

There's also a hint of politics involved: the teach-in is scheduled for Jan. 31, shortly before statewide primaries and caucuses, and is timed to place pressure on political candidates. [Colorado's caucus is Feb. 5].
"We wanted to do it right in the height of the early primaries to ensure that climate change is at the forefront of the issues," [Garrett] Brennan [media director for Focus the Nation] said.

After all, raising awareness about climate change is one thing, he said. Actually solving it is another.

"The solutions are pretty cut and dry," Brennan said. "You're not going to create an art installation and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Raising awareness - making it personal to people - is multidisciplinary. The solutions are policies that are going to get passed."

That could be one reason that voter-registration group New Era Colorado will be on campus that day, displaying poster-board profiles that detail each candidate's stance on environmental issues.

The website for Focus the Nation lists the policy actions that it wishes to focus our nation's attention on and for me to discuss in the classroom, and here are a few of the options that I am supposed to provide to my students:

To stabilize global warming at the low end of the possible range (3-4 degrees F) will require deep cuts in global warming pollution beginning in about 2020. In the US, reductions in emissions of roughly 15%-20% per decade will be needed.
Place a tax on each ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) embodied in fossil fuels. Set the tax high enough to initially stabilize nationwide emissions, and then have the tax rise over time, generating steady cuts in pollution. Use tax revenue to (1) compensate lower income Americans for higher energy prices, and (2) to assist impacted workers, especially in coal mining.

To the extent that coal use is unavoidable, only allow coal plants that capture and permanently sequester their emissions in geologic formations.

Cap total carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution emitted in the US through a system of a fixed number of permits; auction the permits to emitters; use auction revenue to (1) compensate lower income Americans for higher energy prices, and (2) to assist impacted workers, especially in coal mining.

By 2030, require by law that all new buildings in the US be "carbon neutral" (no net emissions of global warming pollution from fossil fuel combustion).

Set the emerging biofuels sector on a sustainable basis through: (1) A Low Carbon Fuel Standard that sets a goal for reducing carbon intensity in the total light and heavy duty vehicles fuels mix by10 percent by 2020, and (2) Mount a major effort to research, develop, demonstrate and deploy sustainable biofuels feedstocks and technologies.

Prevent CO2 emissions and remove atmospheric CO2 through forest conservation, management and restoration. Include forests in cap & auction system, allowing the trade of forest emissions reductions that are real, additional, verifiable, and permanent.

For the United States as a whole, adopt California’s standards requiring a 23% reduction in global warming pollution from new vehicles sold by 2012, and a 30% reduction in global warming pollution from new vehicles sold by 2016.

I am so confused.

Focus the Nation is unadulterated political advocacy. But my campus forbids me to use my official time, paid for by taxpayers, to advocate for particular campaign issues. But global warming is so important. But my Chancellor forbids me to engage in political advocacy as part of my job. But my Chancellor is the keynote speaker for our Focus the Nation activities. But my job is to teach not indoctrinate. But I actually agree with many of the proposed policies. But it is not my job to use my platform as a professor to tell students what to think; I am supposed to teach them how to think and come to their own conclusions. But if I don't go along I'll be castigated as one of those bad guys, like a Holocaust denier or slave owner. But doing the right thing is so obvious.

Thank goodness I am on sabbatical.

Posted on January 20, 2008 03:10 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Education | Science + Politics

January 18, 2008

Temperature Trends 1990-2007: Hansen, IPCC, Obs

The figure below shows linear trends in temperature for Jim Hansen's three 1988 scenarios (in shades of blue), for the IPCC predictions issued in 1990, 1995, 2001, 2007 (in shades of green), and for four sets of observations (in shades of brown). I choose the period 1990-2007 because this is the period of overlap for all of the predictions (except IPCC 2007, which starts in 2000).

temp trends.png

Looking just at these measures of central tendency (i.e., no formal consideration of uncertainties) it seems clear that:

1. Trends in all of Hansen's scenarios are above IPCC 1995, 2001, and 2007, as well as three of the four surface observations.

2. The outlier on surface observations, and the one consistent with Hansen's Scenarios A and B is the NASA dataset overseen by Jim Hansen. Whatever the explanation for this, good scientific practice would have forecasting and data collection used to verify those forecasts conducted by completely separate groups.

3. Hansen's Scenario A is very similar to IPCC 1990, which makes sense given their closeness in time, and assumptions of forcings at the time (i.e., thoughts on business-as-usual did not change much over that time).

The data for the Hansen scenarios was obtained at Climate Audit from the ongoing discussion there, and the IPCC and observational data is as described on this site over the past week or so in the forecast verification exercise that I have conducted. This is an ongoing exercise, as part of a conversation across the web, so if you have questions or comments, please share them, either here, or if our comment interface is driving you nuts (as it is with me), then comment over at Climate Audit where I'll participate in the discussions.

Posted on January 18, 2008 11:54 AM View this article | Comments (8)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Prediction and Forecasting | Scientific Assessments

Worldwatch Wants You to Think

prius v nano.png

Worldwatch asks a challenging question:

One car gets 46 miles per gallon, features fancy accessories, and sports two engines with a combined 145 horsepower. The other car reportedly gets 54 miles per gallon, runs on a diminutive 30-horsepower engine, and is positively spartan in its interior trimmings. The first is a darling of the environmentally conscious. The latter is reviled as a climate wrecker. These two vehicles are the Toyota Prius and the newly unveiled Tata Nano, dubbed "the people’s car." Is there a double standard?

Posted on January 18, 2008 07:24 AM View this article | Comments (7)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Energy Policy | Technology and Globalization

January 17, 2008

New Paper on Normalized Hurricane Damages

Normalized Hurricane Damage.png

Our paper on normalized hurricane damages 1900 to 2005 has now been published. By "normalized" we mean taking damages as recorded in the year that they occurred in that year's dollars, and adjusting them to account for societal changes such as population growth, building stock, tangible wealth, and inflation. The figure above shows the results of one of the two approaches to normalization presented in our paper.

The full paper can be found at the link below and an Excel dataset can be found here.

Pielke, Jr., R. A., Gratz, J., Landsea, C. W., Collins, D., Saunders, M., and Musulin, R., 2008. Normalized Hurricane Damages in the United States: 1900-2005. Natural Hazards Review, 9:29-42. (PDF)

A few brief comments follow.

For those who might be interested in the debate over hurricanes and global warming, there is nothing added to the debate from this paper. Here is what we say that is most relevant:

Pielke and Landsea (1998) found no trends in normalized losses, a finding subsequently replicated by Katz (2002). Recent analyses of longitudinal geophysical data find that there are no trends on hurricane frequency and intensity at U.S. landfall (see, Landsea 2005; Emanuel 2005; Landsea 2007). Because the normalization methodology is subject to assumptions, differences in which can lead to significant changes in results, there is general agreement that normalized data are in general not the best first place to look for changes in underlying geophysical variables, and such changes are best explored using the geophysical data directly (cf. Höppe and Pielke 2006). However, when climate trends or variability have sufficiently large effects on losses, they can be detected in damage data (e.g., Pielke and Landsea 1999).
The two normalized datasets reported here show no trends in either the absolute data or under a logarithmic transformation: the variance explained by a best fit linear trend line = 0.0004 and 0.0003 respectively for PL05, and 0.0014 and 0.00006 respectively for CL05. The lack of trend in twentieth century normalized hurricane losses is consistent with what one would expect to find given the lack of trends in hurricane frequency or intensity at landfall. This finding should add some confidence that, at least to a first degree, the normalization approach has successfully adjusted for changing societal conditions. Given the lack of trends in hurricanes themselves, any trend observed in the normalized losses would necessarily reflect some bias in the adjustment process, such as failing to recognize changes in adaptive capacity or misspecifying wealth. Because we do not have a resulting bias suggests that any factors not included in the normalization methods do not have a resulting net large significance.

Below is an image showing the top 50 storms for one of the normalization methods. For the details on the methods and a whole bunch of analysis, please see the paper.

Normalized Damage Top 50.png

Posted on January 17, 2008 02:54 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

January 16, 2008

UKMET Short Term Global Temperature Forecast

UKMET Short Term Forecast.png

This figure shows a short-term forecast of global average temperature issued by the UK Meteorological Service, with some annotations that I've added and described below. The forecast is discussed in this PDF where you can find the original figure. This sort of forecast should be applauded, because it allows for learning based on experience. Such forecasts, whether eventually shown to be wrong or right, can serve as powerful tests of knowledge and predictive skill. The UK Met Service is to be applauded. Now on to the figure itself.

The figure is accompanied by this caption:

Observations of global average temperature (black line) compared with decadal ‘hindcasts’ (10-year model simulations of the past, white lines and red shading), plus the first decadal prediction for the 10 years from 2005. Temperatures are plotted as anomalies (relative to 1979–2001). As with short-term weather forecasts there remains some uncertainty in our predictions of temperature over a decade. The red shading shows our confidence in predictions of temperature in any given year. If there are no volcanic eruptions during the forecast period, there is a 90% likelihood of the temperature being within the shaded area.

The figure shows both hindcasts and a forecast. I've shaded the hindcasts in grey. I've added the green curve which is my replication of the global temperature anomalies from the UKMET HADCRUT3 dataset extended to 2007. I've also plotted as a blue dot the prediction issued by UKMET for 2008, which is expected to be indistinguishable from the temperature of years 2001 to 2007 (which were indistinguishable from each other). The magnitude of the UKMET forecast over the next decade is almost exactly identical to the IPCC AR4 prediction over the same time period, which I discussed last week.

I have added the pink star at 1995 to highlight the advantages offered by hindcasting. Imagine if the model realization begun in 1985 had been continued beyond 1995, rather than being re-run after 1995. Clearly, all subsequent observed temperatures would have been well below that 1985 curve. One important reason for this is of course the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, which was not predicted. And that is precisely the point -- prediction is really hard, especially when conducted in the context of open systems, and as is often said, especially about the the future. Our ability to explain why a prediction was wrong does not make that prediction right, and this is a point often lost in debate about climate change.

Again, kudos to the UK Met Service. They've had the fortitude to issue a short term prediction related to climate change. Other scientific bodies should follow this lead. It is good for science, and good for the use of science in decision making.

Posted on January 16, 2008 02:15 AM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Prediction and Forecasting | Scientific Assessments

January 15, 2008

Verification of IPCC Sea Level Rise Forecasts 1990, 1995, 2001

Here is a graph showing IPCC sea level rise forecasts from the FAR (1990), SAR (1995), and TAR (2001).

IPCC Sea Level.png

And here are the sources:

IPCC Sea Level Sources.png

Observational data can be found here. Thanks to my colleague Steve Nerem.

Unlike temperature forecasts by the IPCC, sea level rise shows no indication that scientists have a handle on the issue. As with temperature the IPCC dramatically decreased its predictions of sea level rise in between its first (1990) and second (1995) assessment reports. It then nudged down its prediction a very small amount in its 2001 report. The observational data falls in the middle of the 1990 and 1995/2001 assessments.

Last year Rahmstorf et al. published a short paper in Science comparing observations of temperature with IPCC 2001 predictions (Aside: it is remarkable that Science allowed them to ignore IPCC 1990 and 1995). Their analysis is completely consistent with the temperature and sea level rise verifications that I have shown. On sea level rise they concluded:

Previous projections, as summarized by IPCC, have not exaggerated but may in some respects even have underestimated the change, in particular for sea level.

This statement is only true if one ignores the 1990 IPCC report which overestimated both sea level rise and temperature. Rahmstorf et al. interpretation of the results is little more than spin, as it would have been equally valid to conclude based on the 1990 report:

Previous projections, as summarized by IPCC, have not underestimated but may in some respects even have exaggerated the change, both for sea level and temperature.

Rather than spin the results, I conclude that the ongoing debate about future sea level rise is entirely appropriate. The fact that the IPCC has been unsuccessful in predicting sea level rise, does not mean that things are worse or better, but simply that scientists clearly do not have a handle on this issue and are unable to predict sea level changes on a decadal scale. The lack of predictive accuracy does not lend optimism about the prospects for accuracy on the multi-decadal scale. Consider that the 2007 IPCC took a pass on predicting near term sea level rise, choosing instead to focus 90 years out (as far as I am aware, anyone who knows differently, please let me know).

This state of affairs should give no comfort to anyone: over the 21st century sea level is expected to rise, anywhere from an unnoticeable amount to the catastrophic, and scientists have essentially no ability to predict this rise, much less the effects of various climate policies on that rise. As we've said here before, this is a cherrypickers delight, and a policy makers nightmare. It'd be nice to see the scientific community engaged in a bit less spin, and a bit more comprehensive analysis.

Posted on January 15, 2008 12:59 AM View this article | Comments (4)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Prediction and Forecasting | Scientific Assessments

January 14, 2008

James Hansen on One Year's Temperature

NASA's James Hansen just sent around a commentary (in PDF here) on the significance of the 2007 global temperature in the context of the long-term temperature record that he compiles for NASA. After Real Climate went nuts over how misguided it is to engage in a discussion of eight years worth of temperature records, I can''t wait to see them lay into Jim Hansen for asserting that one year's data is of particular significance (and also for not graphing uncertainty ranges):

The Southern Oscillation and the solar cycle have significant effects on year-to-year global temperature change. Because both of these natural effects were in their cool phases in 2007, the unusual warmth of 2007 is all the more notable.

But maybe it is that data that confirms previously held beliefs is acceptable no matter how short the record, and data that does not is not acceptable, no matter how long the record. But that would be confirmation bias, wouldn't it?

Anyway, Dr. Hansen does not explain why the 2007 NASA data runs counter to that of UKMET, UAH or RSS, but does manage to note the "incorrect" 2007 UKMET prediction of a record warm year. Dr. Hansen issues his own prediction:

. . . it is unlikely that 2008 will be a year with an unusual global temperature change, i.e., it is likely to remain close to the range of (high) values exhibited in 2002-2007. On the other hand, when the next El Nino occurs it is likely to carry global temperature to a significantly higher level than has occurred in recent centuries, probably higher than any year in recent millennia. Thus we suggest that, barring the unlikely event of a large volcanic eruption, a record global temperature clearly exceeding that of 2005 can be expected within the next 2-3 years.

I wonder if this holds just for the NASA dataset put together by Dr. Hansen or for all of the temperature datasets.

Posted on January 14, 2008 04:27 PM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Prediction and Forecasting | Scientific Assessments

Updated Chart: IPCC Temperature Verification

I've received some email comments suggesting that my use of the 1992 IPCC Supplement as the basis for IPCC 1990 temperature predictions was "too fair" to the IPCC because the IPCC actually reduced its temperature projections from 1990 to 1992. In addition, Gavin Schmidt and a commenter over at Climate Audit also did not like my use of the 1992 report. So I am going to take full advantage of the rapid feedback of the web to provide an updated figure, based on IPCC 1990, specifically, Figure A.9, p. 336. In other words, I no longer rely on the 1992 supplement, and have simply gone back to the original IPCC 1990 FAR. Here then is that updated Figure:

IPCC Verification 90-95-01-07 vs Obs.png

Thanks all for the feedback!

Posted on January 14, 2008 02:46 PM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Prediction and Forecasting | Scientific Assessments

Pachauri on Recent Climate Trends

Last week scientists at the Real Climate blog gave their confirmation bias synapses a workout by explaining that eight years of climate data is meaningless, and people who pay any attention to recent climate trends are "misguided." I certainly agree that we should exhibit cautiousness in interpreting short-duration observations, nonetheless we should always be trying to explain (rather than simply discount) observational evidence to avoid the trap of confirmation bias.

So it was interesting to see IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri exhibit "misguided" behavior when he expressed some surprise about recent climate trends in The Guardian:

Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the U.N. Panel that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, said he would look into the apparent temperature plateau so far this century.
"One would really have to see on the basis of some analysis what this really represents," he told Reuters, adding "are there natural factors compensating?" for increases in greenhouse gases from human activities.

He added that sceptics about a human role in climate change delighted in hints that temperatures might not be rising. "There are some people who would want to find every single excuse to say that this is all hogwash," he said.

Ironically, by suggesting that their might be some significance to recent climate trends, Dr. Pachauri has provided ammunition to those very same skeptics that he disparages. Perhaps Real Climate will explain how misguided he is, but somehow I doubt it.

For the record, I accept the conclusions of IPCC Working Group I. I don't know how to interpret climate observations of the early 21st century, but believe that there are currently multiple valid hypotheses. I also think that we can best avoid confirmation bias, and other cognitive traps, by making explicit predictions of the future and testing them against experience. The climate community, or at least its activist wing, studiously avoids forecast verification. It just goes to show, confirmation bias is more a more comfortable state than dissonance -- and that goes for people on all sides of the climate debate.

Posted on January 14, 2008 08:02 AM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Prediction and Forecasting | Scientific Assessments

Verification of IPCC Temperature Forecasts 1990, 1995, 2001, and 2007

Last week I began an exercise in which I sought to compare global average temperature predictions with the actual observed temperature record. With this post I'll share my complete results.

Last week I showed a comparison of the 2007 IPCC temperature forecasts (which actually began in 2000, so they were really forecasts of data that had already been observed). Here is that figure.

surf-sat vs. IPCC.png

Then I showed a figure with a comparison of the 1990 predictions made by the IPCC in 1992 with actual temperature data. Some folks misinterpreted the three curves that I showed from the IPCC to be an uncertainty bound. They were not. Instead, they were forecasts conditional on different assumptions about climate sensitivity, with the middle curve showing the prediction for a 2.5 degree climate sensitivity, which is lower than scientists currently believe to the most likely value. So I have reproduced that graph below without the 1.5 and 4.5 degree climate sensitivity curves.

IPCC 1990 verification.png

Now here is a similar figure for the 1995 forecast. The IPCC in 1995 dramatically lowered its global temperature predictions, primarily due to the inclusion of consideration of atmospheric aerosols, which have a cooling effect. You can see the 1995 IPCC predictions on pp. 322-323 of its Second Assessment Report. Figure 6.20 shows the dramatic reduction of temperature predictions through the inclusion of aerosols. The predictions themselves can be found in Figure 6.22, and are the values that I use in the figure below, which also use a 2.5 degree climate sensitivity, and are also based on the IS92e or IS92f scenarios.

IPCC 1995 Verification.png

In contrast to the 1990 prediction, the 1995 prediction looks spot on. It is worth noting that the 1995 prediction began in 1990, and so includes observations that were known at the time of the prediction.

In 2001, the IPCC nudged its predictions up a small amount. The prediction is also based on a 1990 start, and can be found in the Third Assessment Report here. The most relevant scenario is A1FI, and the average climate sensitivity of the models used to generate these predictions is 2.8 degrees, which may be large enough to account for the difference between the 1995 and 2001 predictions. Here is a figure showing the 2001 forecast verification.

IPCC 2001 Verification.png

Like 1995, the 2001 figure looks quite good in comparison to the actual data.

Now we can compare all four predictions with the data, but first here are all four IPCC temperature predictions (1990, 1995, 2001, 2007) on one graph.

IPCC Predictions 90-95-01-07.png

IPCC issued its first temperature prediction in 1990 (I actually use the prediction from the supplement to the 1990 report issued in 1992). Its 1995 report dramatically lowered this prediction. 2001 nudged this up a bit, and 2001 elevated the entire curve another small increment, keeping the slope the same. My hypothesis for what is going on here is that the various changes over time to the IPCC predictions reflect incrementally improved fits to observed temperature data, as more observations have come in since 1990.

In other words, the early 1990s showed how important aerosols were in the form of dramatically lowered temperatures (after Mt. Pinatubo), and immediately put the 1990 predictions well off track. So the IPCC recognized the importance of aerosols and lowered its predictions, putting the 1995 IPCC back on track with what had happened with the real climate since its earlier report. With the higher observed temperatures in the late 1990s and early 2000s the slightly increased predictions of temperature in 2001 and 2007 represented better fits with observations since 1995 (for the 2001 report) and 2001 (for the 2007 report).

Imagine if your were asked to issue a prediction for the temperature trend over next week, and you are allowed to update that prediction every 2nd day. Regardless of where you think things will eventually end up, you'd be foolish not to include what you've observed in producing your mid-week updates. Was this behavior by the IPCC intentional or simply the inevitable result of using a prediction start-date years before the forecast was being issued? I have no idea. But the lesson for the IPCC should be quite clear: All predictions (and projections) that it issues should begin no earlier than the year that the prediction is being made.

And now the graph that you have all been waiting for. Here is a figure showing all four IPCC predictions with the surface (NASA, UKMET) and satellite (UAH, RSS) temperature record.

IPCC Verification 90-95-01-07 vs Obs.png

You can see on this graph that the 1990 prediction was obviously much higher than the other three, and you can also clearly see how the IPCC temperature predictions have creeped up as observations showed increasing temperatures from 1995-2005. A simple test of my hypothesis is as follows: In the next IPCC, if temperatures from 2005 to the next report fall below the 2007 IPCC prediction, then the next IPCC will lower its predictions. Similarly, if values fall above that level, then the IPCC will increase its predictions.

What to take from this exercise?

1. The IPCC does not make forecast verification an easy task. The IPCC does not clearly identify what exactly it is predicting nor the variables that can be used to verify those predictions. Like so much else in climate science this leaves evaluations of predictions subject to much ambiguity, cherrypicking, and seeing what one wants to see.

2. The IPCC actually has a pretty good track record in its predictions, especially after it dramatically reduced its 1990 prediction. This record is clouded by an appearance of post-hoc curve fitting. In each of 1995, 2001, and 2007 the changes to the IPCC predictions had the net result of improving predictive performance with observations that had already been made. This is a bit like predicting today's weather at 6PM.

3. Because the IPCC clears the slate every 5-7 years with a new assessment report, it is guarantees that its most recent predictions can never be rigorously verified, because, as climate scientists will tell you, 5-7 years is far too short to say anything about climate predictions. Consequently, the IPCC should not predict and then move on, but pay close attention to its past predictions and examine why the succeed or fail. As new reports are issued the IPCC should go to great lengths to place its new predictions on an apples-to-apples basis with earlier predictions. The SAR did a nice job of this, more recent reports have not. A good example of how not to update predictions is the predictions of sea level rise between the TAR and AR4 which are not at all apples-to-apples.

4. Finally, and I repeat myself, the IPCC should issue predictions for the future, not the recent past.

Appendix: Checking My Work

The IPCC AR4 Technical Summary includes a figure (Figure TS.26) that shows a verification of sorts. I use that figure as a comparison to what I've done. Here is that figure, with a number of my annotations superimposed, and explained below.

IPCC Check.png

Let me first say that the IPCC probably could not have produced a more difficult-to-interpret figure (I see Gavin Schmidt at Real Climate has put out a call for help in understanding it). I have annotated it with letters and some lines and I explain them below.

A. I added this thick horizontal blue line to indicate the 1990 baseline. This line crosses a thin blue line that I placed to represent 2007.

B. This thin blue line crosses the vertical axis where my 1995 verification value lies, represented by the large purple dot.

C. This thin blue line crosses the vertical axis where my 1990 verification value lies, represented by the large green dot. (My 2001 verification is represented by the large light blue dot.)

D. You can see that my 1990 verification value falls exactly on a line extended from the upper bound of the IPCC curve. I have also extended the IPCC mid-range curve as well (note that my extension superimposed falls a tiny bit higher than it should). Why is this? I'm not sure, but one answer is that the uncertainty range presented by the IPCC represents the scenario range, but of course in the past there is no scenario uncertainty. Since emissions have fallen at the high end of the scenario space, if my interpretation is correct, then my verification is consistent with that of the IPCC.

E. For the 1995 verification, you can see that similarly my value falls exactly on a line extended from the upper end of the IPCC range. This would also be consistent with the IPCC presenting the uncertainty range as representing alternative scenarios. The light blue dot is similarly at the upper end of the blue range. What should not be missed is that the relative difference between my verifications and those of the IPCCs are just about identical.

A few commenters over at Real Climate, including Gavin Schmidt, have suggested that such figures need uncertainty bounds on them. In general, I agree, but I'd note that none of the model predictions presented by the IPCC (B1, A1B, A2, Commitment -- note that all of these understate reality since emissions are following A1FI, the highest, most closely) show any model uncertainty whatsoever (nor any observational uncertainty, nor multiple measures of temperature). Surely with the vast resources available to the IPCC, they could have done a much more rigorous job of verification.

In closing, I guess I'd suggest to the IPCC that this sort of exercise should be taken up as a formal part of its work. There are many, many other variables (and relationships between variables) that might be examined in this way. And they should be.

Posted on January 14, 2008 01:57 AM View this article | Comments (18)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Prediction and Forecasting | Scientific Assessments

January 11, 2008

Real Climate's Two Voices on Short-Term Climate Fluctuations

Real Climate has been speaking with two voices on how to compare observations of climate with models. Last August they asserted that one-year's sea ice extent could be compared with models:

A few people have already remarked on some pretty surprising numbers in Arctic sea ice extent this year (the New York Times has also noticed). The minimum extent is usually in early to mid September, but this year, conditions by Aug 9 had already beaten all previous record minima. Given that there is at least a few more weeks of melting to go, it looks like the record set in 2005 will be unequivocally surpassed. It could be interesting to follow especially in light of model predictions discussed previously.

Today, they say that looking at 8 years of temperature records is misguided:

John Tierney and Roger Pielke Jr. have recently discussed attempts to validate (or falsify) IPCC projections of global temperature change over the period 2000-2007. Others have attempted to show that last year's numbers imply that 'Global Warming has stopped' or that it is 'taking a break' (Uli Kulke, Die Welt)). However, as most of our readers will realise, these comparisons are flawed since they basically compare long term climate change to short term weather variability.

So according to Real Climate one-year's ice extent data can be compared to climate models, but 8 years of temperature data cannot.

Right. This is why I believe that whatever one's position of climate change is, everyone should agree that rigorous forecast verification is needed.

Post Script. I see at Real Climate commenters are already calling me a "skeptic" for even discussing forecast verification. For the record I accept the consensus of the IPCC WGI. If asking questions about forecast verification is to be tabooo, then climate science is in worse shape than I thought.

Posted on January 11, 2008 09:25 AM View this article | Comments (4)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Prediction and Forecasting | Scientific Assessments

January 10, 2008

Verification of 1990 IPCC Temperature Predictions

1990 IPCC verification.png

I continue to receive good suggestions and positive feedback on the verification exercise that I have been playing around with this week. Several readers have suggested that a longer view might be more appropriate. So I took a look at the IPCC's First Assessment Report that had been sitting on my shelf, and tried to find its temperature prediction starting in 1990. I actually found what I was looking for in a follow up document: Climate Change 1992: The Supplementary Report to the IPCC Scientific Assessment (not online that I am aware of).

In conducting this type of forecast verification, one of the first things to do is to specify which emissions scenario most closely approximated what has actually happened since 1990. As we have discussed here before, emissions have been occurring at the high end of the various scenarios used by the IPCC. So in this case I have used IS92e or IS92f (the differences are too small to be relevant to this analysis), which are discussed beginning on p. 69.

With the relevant emissions scenario, I then went to the section that projected future temperatures, and found this in Figure Ax.3 on p. 174. From that I took from the graph the 100-year temperature change and converted it into an annual rate. At the time the IPCC presented estimates for climate sensitivities of 1.5 degree, 2.5 degrees, and 4.5 degrees, with 2.5 degrees identified as a "best estimate." In the figure above I have estimated the 1.5 and 4.5 degree values based on the ratios taken from graph Ax.2, but I make no claim that they are precise. My understanding is that climate scientists today think that climate sensitivity is around 3.0 degrees, so if one were to re-do the 1990 prediction with a climate sensitivity of 3.0 the resulting curve would be a bit above the 2.5 degree curve shown above.

On the graph you will also see the now familiar temperature records from two satellite and two surface analyses. It seems pretty clear that the IPCC in 1990 over-forecast temperature increases, and this is confirmed by the most recent IPCC report (Figure TS.26), so it is not surprising.

I'll move on to the predictions of the Second Assessment Report in a follow up.

Posted on January 10, 2008 07:03 PM View this article | Comments (7)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Prediction and Forecasting | Scientific Assessments

Radio Interview with Radio Radicale

You can hear a 12 minute interview with me on my book The Honest Broker with Radio Radicale (Rome, Italy) here.

Posted on January 10, 2008 02:51 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

January 09, 2008

Forecast Verification for Climate Science, Part 3

By popular demand, here is a graph showing the two main analyses of global temperatures from satellite, from RSS and UAH, as well as the two main analyses of global temperatures from the surface record, UKMET and NASA, plotted with the temperature predictions reported in IPCC AR4, as described in Part 1 of this series.

surf-sat vs. IPCC.png

Some things to note:

1) I have not graphed observational uncertainties, but I'd guess that they are about +/-0.05 (and someone please correct me if this is wildly off), and their inclusion would not alter the discussion here.

2) A feast for cherrypickers. One can arrive at whatever conclusion one wants with respect to the IPCC predictions. Want the temperature record to be consistent with IPCC? OK, then you like NASA. How about inconsistent? Well, then you are a fan of RSS. On the fence? Well, UAH and UKMET serve that purpose pretty well.

3) Something fishy is going on. The IPCC and CCSP recently argued that the surface and satellite records are reconciled. This might be the case from the standpoint of long-term liner trends. But the data here suggest that there is some work left to do. The UAH and NASA curves are remarkably consistent. But RSS dramatically contradicts both. UKMET shows 2007 as the coolest year since 2001, whereas NASA has 2007 as the second warmest. In particular estimates for 2007 seem to diverge in unique ways. It'd be nice to see the scientific community explain all of this.

4) All show continued warming since 2000!

5) From the standpoint of forecast verification, which is where all of this began, the climate community really needs to construct a verification dataset for global temperature and other variables that will be (a) the focus of predictions, and (b) the ground truth against which those predictions will be verified.

Absent an ability to rigorously evaluate forecasts, in the presence of multiple valid approaches to observational data we run the risk of engaging in all sorts of cognitive traps -- such as availability bias and confirmation bias. So here is a plea to the climate community: when you say that you are predicting something like global temperature or sea ice extent or hurricanes -- tell us is specific detail what those variables are, who is measuring them, and where to look in the future to verify the predictions. If weather forecasters, stock brokers, and gamblers can do it, then you can too.

Posted on January 9, 2008 08:12 AM View this article | Comments (9)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Prediction and Forecasting | Scientific Assessments

January 08, 2008

Forecast Verification for Climate Science, Part 2

Yesterday I posted a figure showing how surface temperatures compare with IPCC model predictions. I chose to use the RSS satellite record under the assumption that the recent IPCC and CCSP reports were both correct in their conclusions that the surface and satellite records have been reconciled. It turns out that my reliance of the IPCC and CCSP may have been mistaken.

I received a few comments from people suggesting that I had selectively used the RSS data because it showed different results than other global temperature datasets. My first reaction to this was to wonder how the different datasets could show different results if the IPCC was correct when it stated (PDF):

New analyses of balloon-borne and satellite measurements of lower- and mid-tropospheric temperature show warming rates that are similar to those of the surface temperature record and are consistent within their respective uncertainties, largely reconciling a discrepancy noted in the TAR.

But I decided to check for myself. I went to the NASA GISS and downloaded its temperature data and scaled to a 1980-1999 mean. I then plotted it on the same scale as the RSS data that I shared yesterday. Here is what the curves look like on the same scale.

Well, I'm no climate scientist, but they sure don't look reconciled to me, especially 2007. (Any suggestions on the marked divergence in 2007?)

What does this mean for the comparison with IPCC predictions? I have overlaid the GISS data on the graph I prepared yesterday.

AR4 Verificantion Surf Sat.png

So using the NASA GISS global temperature data for 2000-2007 results in observations that are consistent with the IPCC predictions, but contradict the IPCC's conclusion that the surface and satellite temperature records are reconciled. Using the RSS data results in observations that are (apparently) inconsistent with the IPCC predictions.

I am sure that in conducting such a verification some will indeed favor the dataset that best confirms their desired conclusions. But, it would be ironic indeed to see scientists now abandon RSS after championing it in the CCSP and IPCC reports. So, I'm not sure what to think.

Is it really the case that the surface and satellite records are again at odds? What dataset should be used to verify climate forecasts of the IPCC?

Answers welcomed.

Posted on January 8, 2008 05:55 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Prediction and Forecasting | Scientific Assessments

January 07, 2008

Forecast Verification for Climate Science

Last week I asked a question:

What behavior of the climate system could hypothetically be observed over the next 1, 5, 10 years that would be inconsistent with the current consensus on climate change?

We didn’t have much discussion on our blog, perhaps in part due to our ongoing technical difficulties (which I am assured will be cleared up soon). But John Tierney at the New York Times sure received an avalanche of responses, many of which seemed to excoriate him simply for asking the question, and none that really engaged the question.

I did receive a few interesting replies by email from climate scientists. Here is one of the most interesting:

The IPCC reports, both AR4 (see Chapter 10) and TAR, are full of predictions made starting in 2000 for the evolution of surface temperature, precipitation, precipitation intensity, sea ice extent, and on and on. It would be a relatively easy task for someone to begin tracking the evolution of these variables and compare them to the IPCC’s forecasts. I am not aware of anyone actually engaged in this kind of climate forecast verification with respect to the IPCC, but it is worth doing.

So I have decided to take him up on this and present an example of what such a verification might look like. I have heard some claims lately that global warming has stopped, based on temperature trends over the past decade. So global average temperature seems like a as good a place as any to provide an example.

I begin with the temperature trends. I have decided to use the satellite record provided by Remote Sensing Systems, mainly because of the easy access of its data. But the choice of satellite versus surface global temperature dataset should not matter, since these have been reconciled according to the IPCC AR4. Here is a look at the satellite data starting in 1998 through 2007.

This dataset starts with the record 1997/1998 ENSO event which boosted temperatures a good deal. It is interesting to look at, but probably not the best place to start for this analysis. A better place to start is with 2000, but not because of what the climate has done, but because this is the baseline used for many of the IPCC AR4 predictions.

Before proceeding, a clarification must be made between a prediction and a projection. Some have claimed that the IPCC doesn’t make predictions, it only makes projections across a wide range of emissions scenarios. This is just a fancy way of saying that the IPCC doesn’t predict future emissions. But make no mistake, it does make conditional predictions for each scenario. Enough years have passed for us to be able to say that global emissions have been increasing at the very high end of the family of scenarios used by the IPCC (closest to A1F1 for those scoring at home). This means that we can zero in on what the IPCC predicted (yes, predicted) for the A1F1 scenario, which has best matched actual emissions.

So how has global temperature changed since 2000? Here is a figure showing the monthly values, indicating that while there has been a decrease in average global temperature of late, the linear trend since 2000 is still positive.

But monthly values are noisy, and not comparable with anything produced by the IPCC, so let’s take a look at annual values.

The annual values result in a curve that looks a bit like an upwards sloping letter M.

The model results produced by the IPCC are not readily available, so I will work from their figures. In the IPCC AR4 report Figure 10.26 on p. 803 of Chapter 10 of the Working Group I report (here in PDF) provides predictions of future temperature as a function of emissions scenario. The one relevant for my purposes can be found in the bottom row (degrees C above 1980-2000 mean) and second column (A1F1).

I have zoomed in on that figure, and overlaid the RSS temperature trends 2000-2007 which you can see below.

AR4 Verification Example.png

Now a few things to note:

1. The IPCC temperature increase is relative to a 1980 to 2000 mean, whereas the RSS anomalies are off of a 1979 to 1998 mean. I don’t expect the differences to be that important in this analysis, particularly given the blunt approach to the graph, but if someone wants to show otherwise, I’m all ears.

2. It should be expected that the curves are not equal in 2000. The anomaly for 2000 according to RSS is 0.08, hence the red curve begins at that value. Figure 10.26 on p. 803 of Chapter 10 of the Working Group I report actually shows observed temperatures for a few years beyond 2000, and by zooming in on the graph in the lower left hand corner of the figure one can see that 2000 was in fact below the A1B curve.

So it appears that temperature trends since 2000 are not closely following the most relevant prediction of the IPCC. Does this make recent temperature trends inconsistent with the IPCC? I have no idea, and that is not the point of this post. I'll leave it to climate scientists to tell us the significance. I assume that many climate scientists will say that there is no significance to what has happened since 2000, and perhaps emphasize that predictions of global temperature are more certain in the longer term than shorter term. But that is not what the IPCC figure indicates. In any case, 2000-2007 may not be sufficient time for climate scientists to become concerned that their predictions are off, but I’d guess that at some point, if observations don’t match predictions they might be of some concern. Alternatively, if observations square with predictions, then this would add confidence.

Before one dismisses this exercise as an exercise in randomness, it should be observed that in other contexts scientists associated short term trends with longer-term predictions. In fact, one need look no further than the record 2007 summer melt in the Arctic which was way beyond anything predicted by the IPCC, reaching close to 3 million square miles less than the 1978-2000 mean. The summer anomaly was much greater than any of the IPCC predictions on this time scale (which can be seen in IPCC AR4 Chapter 10 Figure 10.13 on p. 771). This led many scientists to claim that because the observations were inconsistent with the models, that there should be heightened concern about climate change. Maybe so. But if one variable can be examined for its significance with respect to long-term projections, then surely others can as well.

What I’d love to see is a place where the IPCC predictions for a whole range of relevant variables are provided in quantitative fashion, and as corresponding observations come in, they can be compared with the predictions. This would allow for rigorous evaluations of both the predictions and the actual uncertainties associated with those predictions. Noted atmospheric scientist Roger Pielke, Sr. (my father, of course) has suggested that three variables be looked at: lower tropospheric warming, atmospheric water vapor content, and oceanic heat content. And I am sure there are many other variables worth looking at.

Forecast evaluations also confer another advantage – they would help to move beyond the incessant arguing about this or that latest research paper and focus on true tests of the fidelity of our ability to forecast future states of the climate system. Making predictions and them comparing them to actual events is central to the scientific method. So everyone in the climate debate, whether skeptical or certain, should welcome a focus on verification of climate forecasts. If the IPCC is indeed settled science, then forecast verifications will do nothing but reinforce that conclusion.

For further reading:

Pielke, Jr., R.A., 2003: The role of models in prediction for decision, Chapter 7, pp. 113-137 in C. Canham and W. Lauenroth (eds.), Understanding Ecosystems: The Role of Quantitative Models in Observations, Synthesis, and Prediction, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J. (PDF)

Sarewitz, D., R.A. Pielke, Jr., and R. Byerly, Jr., (eds.) 2000: Prediction: Science, decision making and the future of nature, Island Press, Washington, DC. (link) and final chapter (PDF).

Posted on January 7, 2008 05:12 PM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Prediction and Forecasting | Scientific Assessments

Deja Vu All Over Again

The Washington Post had a excellent story yesterday by Marc Kaufman describing NASA’s intentions to increase the flight rate of the Space Shuttle program. This is remarkable, and as good an indication as any that NASA has not yet learned the lessons of its past.

According to the Post:

Although NASA has many new safety procedures in place as a result of the Columbia accident, the schedule has raised fears that the space agency, pressured by budgetary and political considerations, might again find itself tempting fate with the shuttles, which some say were always too high-maintenance for the real world of space flight.

A NASA official is quoted in the story:

"The schedule we've made is very achievable in the big scheme of things. That is, unless we get some unforeseen problems."

The Post has exactly the right follow up to this comment:

The history of the program, however, is filled with such problems -- including a rare and damaging hailstorm at the Kennedy Space Center last year as well as the shedding of foam insulation that led to the destruction of Columbia and its crew in 2003. . . "This pressure feels so familiar," said Alex Roland, a professor at Duke University and a former NASA historian. "It was the same before the Challenger and Columbia disasters: this push to do more with a spaceship that is inherently unpredictable because it is so complex."

John Logsdon, dean of space policy experts and longtime supporter of NASA, recognizes the risks that NASA is taking:

Every time we launch a shuttle, we risk the future of the human space flight program. The sooner we stop flying this risky vehicle, the better it is for the program.

Duke University’s Alex Roland also hit the nail on the head;

Duke professor Roland said that based on the shuttle program's history, he sees virtually no possibility of NASA completing 13 flights by the deadline. He predicted that the agency would ultimately cut some of the launches but still declare the space station completed.
"NASA is filled with can-do people who I really admire, and they will try their best to fulfill the missions they are given," he said. "What I worry about is when this approach comes into conflict with basically impossible demands. Something has to give."

It is instructive to look at the 1987 report of the investigation of the House Science Committee into the 1986 Challenger disaster, which you can find online here in PDF (thanks to Rad Byerly and Ami Nacu-Schmidt). That report contains lessons that apparently have yet to be fully appreciated, even after the loss of Columbia in 2003. Here is an excerpt from the Executive Summary (emphasis added, see also pp. 119-124):

The Committee found that NASA’s drive to achieve a launch schedule of 24 flights per year created pressure throughout the agency that directly contributed to unsafe launch operations. The Committee believes that the pressure to push for an unrealistic number of flights continues to exist in some sectors of NASA and jeopardizes the promotion of a "safety first" attitude throughout the Shuttle program.
The Committee, Congress, and the Administration have played a contributing role in creating this pressure. . . NASA management and the Congress must remember the lessons learned from the Challenger accident and never again set unreasonable goals which stress the system beyond its safe functioning.

One would hope that the House Science Committee has these lessons in mind and is paying close attention to decision making in NASA. It would certainly be appropriate for some greater public oversight of NASA decision making about the Shuttle flight rate and eventual termination. Otherwise, there is a good chance that such oversight will take place after another tragedy and the complete wreckage of the U.S. civilian space program.

For further reading:

Pielke Jr., R. A., 1993: A Reappraisal of the Space Shuttle Program. Space Policy, May, 133-157. (PDF)

Pielke Jr., R.A., and R. Byerly Jr., 1992: The Space Shuttle Program: Performance versus Promise in Space Policy Alternatives, edited by R. Byerly, Westview Press, Boulder, pp. 223-245. (PDF)

Posted on January 7, 2008 12:21 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Risk & Uncertainty | Science Policy: General | Space Policy

January 05, 2008

My Comments to Science on Hillary Clinton's Science Policy Plans

I was recently asked by Eli Kintisch at Science to comment on Hillary Clinton's recent discussion of science policies. Eli quotes a few of my comments in this week's Science, which has a special focus on the presidential candidates. My full reaction to Eli is below:

Hi Eli-
The document seems typical for this early stage of the campaign -- that is, it blends a heavy dose of political red meat, with the entirely vacuous, with hints of some innovative and perhaps even revolutionary new ideas, accompanied with a range of budget promises that almost certainly can't be met. But most significantly is the fact that she has put some science policy ideas forward to be discussed, which is far more than most other candidates of either party have done related to science.

*The red meat is all of the "I'm not George Bush" type statements, such as the stem cell proposal and re-elevation of the science advisor position.

*The vacuous includes the comment that you starred on political appointees. The meaning of this statement depends entirely on the definition of "legitimate basis" and "unwarranted supression" -- well, what is "legitimate" and "unwarranted"? -- as written it is a political Rorschach test, which can be good politics but certainly does nothing to clarify the specific science policies she would enact. Also, the idea that civil servants and scientists are free from politics in regulatory decision making probably needs more thinking through -- but balancing accountability and expertise probably requires more wonky discussion than a campaign sound bite can provide.

*The most innovative idea is the $50 billion strategic energy fund, which is short on details, but promises real money to an area desperately in need of support. This stands out as something really new and potentially very exciting.

*The promises that probably can't be met include keeping the Shuttle contractors in business while pursuing a new human spaceflight program, while at the same time fully funding earth sciences research and a new space-based climate research program, while putting NIH on a doubling trajectory over the next 10 years, not to mention a bit for aeronautics and the $50 billion for energy research. Good luck finding room in the R&D budget for all of that. But again, more politics than science policy, this time aimed at more specific constituencies looking to see that their concerns get some play.

The biggest criticism I have is the comment about the NIH budget, which her husband set on a doubling trajectory and which was completed under Bush. To suggest that NIH has suffered a lack of support is not a great argument. Also, a minor criticism, the part about the U.S. national assessment on climate change says that Bush hasn't released one for 6.5 years, but Clinton/Gore took more than 7 years to release theirs. The national assessment is more political red meat, and probably tangential to where the action is on climate issues anyway.

Hope this helps, please follow up if clarification is needed . . .

Best regards,

Roger

Roger Pielke, Jr.
University of Colorado

Posted on January 5, 2008 10:16 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics | Science Policy: General | Technology Policy

January 02, 2008

Technology ,Trade, and U.S. Pollution

At the Vox blog Georgetown's Arik Levinson asks:

Since the 1970s, US manufacturing output has risen by 70% but air pollution has fallen by 58%. Was this due to improved abatement technology or shifting dirty production abroad?

He answers the question with some very nice empirical research. Here are his conclusions:

What is the bottom line? Increased net imports of polluting goods account for about 70 percent of the composition-related decline in US manufacturing pollution. The composition effect in turn explains about 40 percent of the overall decline in pollution from US manufacturing. Putting these two findings together, international trade can explain at most 28 percent of the clean-up of US manufacturing.

Why should we care?

If the 75% reduction in pollution from US manufacturing resulted from increased international trade, the pundits and protestors might have a case. Environmental improvements might be said to have imposed large, unmeasured environmental costs on the countries from which those goods are imported. And more importantly, the improvements in the US would not be replicable by all countries indefinitely, because the poorest countries in the world will never have even poorer countries from which to import their pollution-intensive goods. The US clean-up would simply have been the result of the US coming out ahead in an environmental zero-sum game, merely shifting pollution to different locations. However, if the US pollution reductions come from technology, nothing suggests those improvements cannot continue indefinitely and be repeated around the world. The analyses here suggest that most the pollution reductions have come from improved technology, that the environmental concerns of antiglobalization protesters have been overblown, and that the pollution reduction achieved by US manufacturing will replicable by other countries in the future.

Posted on January 2, 2008 09:07 AM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Technology and Globalization

Natural Disasters in Australia

Here (in PDF) is an interesting analysis by researchers at Macquarie University in Australia:

The collective evidence reviewed above suggests that social factors – dwelling numbers and values – are the predominant reasons for increasing building losses due to natural disasters in Australia. The role of anthropogenic climate change is not detectable at this time. This being the case, it seems logical approach that in addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent investments be made to reduce society’s vulnerability to current and future climate and climate variability.

We are aware of few policies explicitly developed to help Australian communities adapt to future climate change (Leigh et al., 1998). One positive example is improved wind loading codes introduced in the 1980s as part of a National Building Code of Australia. These codes have been mentioned already and were introduced for all new housing construction following the destruction of Darwin by Tropical Cyclone Tracy in 1974. As a result, dramatic reductions in wind-induced losses were observed following Tropical Cyclones Winifred (1986) and Aivu (1989) (Walker, 1999) and most recently, Larry (2006) (Guy Carpenter, 2006). While these measures were introduced in response to the immediate threat from current climatic events, the benefits will hold true under any future.

An increased threat from bushfires under global climate change is often assumed. However, our analyses suggest that while the prevalence of conditions leading to bushfires is likely to increase, the impact is unlikely to be as dramatic as the combined changes of all of the other factors that have so far failed to materially affect the likelihood of bushfires losses over the last century. This is not to ignore the threat posed by global climate change, but, at least in the case of fire in Australia, the main menace will continue to be the extreme fires. The threat to the most at-risk homes on the bushland-urban interface can only be diminished by improved planning regulations that restrict where and how people build with respect to distance from the forest. Again these are political choices.

Posted on January 2, 2008 02:17 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

January 01, 2008

Is there any weather inconsistent with the the scientific consensus on climate?

Two years ago I asked a question of climate scientists that never received a good answer. Over at the TierneyLab at the New York Times, John Tierney raises the question again:

What behavior of the climate system could hypothetically be observed over the next 1, 5, 10 years that would be inconsistent with the current consensus on climate change? My focus is on extreme events like floods and hurricanes, so please consider those, but consider any other climate metric or phenomena you think important as well for answering this question. Ideally, a response would focus on more than just sea level rise and global average temperature, but if these are the only metrics that are relevant here that too would be very interesting to know.

The answer, it seems, is "nothing would be inconsistent," but I am open to being educated. Climate scientists especially invited to weigh in in the comments or via email, here or at the TierneyLab.

And a Happy 2008 to all our readers!

Posted on January 1, 2008 10:26 AM View this article | Comments (7)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Scientific Assessments

December 26, 2007

End-of-2007 Hurricane-Global Warming Update

There are a few new papers out on hurricanes (or more generally, tropical cyclones) and global warming that motivate this update.

Before sharing these new papers, let me provide a bit of background.

Regular readers will know that I began studying hurricanes during my post-doc years at NCAR, and even co-authored a book on them (PDF) with my father. I've been fortunate to get to know many of the people in the science community who study hurricanes and also to become familiar with the literature on hurricanes and climate change.

Let me also remind readers that I believe that there is little policy significance in the debate over hurricanes and global warming. Why not? Because no matter who is right, it won't do much to alter the ranking of alternative policies focused on addressing future storm impacts. This is an argument I make in this recent paper, which I'll point to for interested readers:

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 2007. Future Economic Damage from Tropical Cyclones: Sensitivities to Societal and Climate Changes, Proceedings of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 365:2717-2729.(PDF)

But from a political perspective, the issue remains of considerable importance, as those advocating action on energy policies based on stemming the impacts from future cyclones place themselves far out on a thin limb. As tempting as it is to invoke the impacts of hurricanes as a justification for action on climate-related energy policies, it really should be a "no go zone."

In 2004, I along with Chris Landsea, Max Mayfield, Jim Laver, and Richard Pasch decided to prepare a short, accessible summary on the state of the debate over hurricanes and climate change, which ultimately was published as a peer-reviewed paper in 2005 in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (PDF). In that paper we concluded that the debate over hurricanes (and their impacts) and climate change would not be resolved anytime soon, and we provided three reasons for this:

First, no connection has been established between greenhouse gas emissions and the observed behavior of hurricanes (Houghton et al. 2001; Walsh 2004). Emanuel (2005) is suggestive of such a connection, but is by no means definitive. In the future, such a connection may be established [e.g., in the case of the observations of Emanuel (2005) or the projections of Knutson and Tuleya (2004)] or made in the context of other metrics of tropical cyclone intensity and duration that remain to be closely examined. Second, the peer-reviewed literature reflects that a scientific consensus exists that any future changes in hurricane intensities will likely be small in the context of observed variability (Knutson and Tuleya 2004; Henderson-Sellers et al. 1998), while the scientific problem of tropical cyclogenesis is so far from being solved that little can be said about possible changes in frequency. And third, under the assumptions of the IPCC, expected future damages to society of its projected changes in the behavior of hurricanes are dwarfed by the influence of its own projections of growing wealth and population (Pielke et al. 2000). While future research or experience may yet overturn these conclusions, the state of the peer-reviewed knowledge today is such that there are good reasons to expect that any conclusive connection between global warming and hurricanes or their impacts will not be made in the near term.

If I might pat ourselves on our collective backs for a moment, these conclusions that we reached in 2005 were echoed in 2006 by a much more comprehensive assessment report prepared by the World Meteorological Organization:

A consensus of 125 of the world’s leading tropical cyclone researchers and forecasters says that no firm link can yet be drawn between human-induced climate change and variations in the intensity and frequency of tropical cyclones.

And then in 2007 by the IPCC. IPCC lead author Neville Nicholls characterized the report's conclusions on hurricanes and climate change as follows:

We concluded that the question of whether there was a greenhouse-cyclone link was pretty much a toss of a coin at the present state of the science, with just a slight leaning towards the likelihood of such a link.

So our 2005 paper has held up really well. Did we get some recognition from the IPCC for providing an accurate assessment of the state of the scientific debate and its relevance? Well, no. But maybe we at least could point to a citation in the relevant IPCC chapter, which of course summarized all of the peer-reviewed literature? Actually the IPCC ignored our review. It is not that they were unaware of it. The lead author for the relevant chapter (Chapter 3 of WG 1), Kevin Trenberth, said of our paper at the time it was released:

I think the role of the changing climate is greatly underestimated by Roger Pielke Jr. I think he should withdraw this article. This is a shameful article.

So, despite providing an accurate assessment of hurricanes and global warming in 2005 which was ultimately backed up by WMO and IPCC, given Kevin Trenberth's obvious bias against our views, we weren't really surprised to see our paper go uncited by the IPCC chapter that Kevin was lead author on. I did notice that Trenberth was somehow able to find room to mention his own work 95 times in that chapter, but I digress.

So our assessment of the state of the hurricane-global warming has held up really well. And in fact, I'd say that our assertion of the lack of a conclusive connection seems even stronger today. Over recent weeks I have become aware of 4 significant new papers on hurricanes and climate change that raise important questions about many aspects of the debate. I highlight these four papers not because they point toward certainty in the debate, quite the opposite: they indicate that the debate is alive and well, and uncertainty continues to reign on this subject. And unless you are paying attention to the literature, you'll probably never hear of these papers.

The first paper is one I mentioned a few weeks ago by Vecchi/Soden published in Nature . That paper suggested that identifying the signal of global warming in tropical cyclone behavior would be challenging in the context of ongoing climate variability. I wondered why that paper escaped media attention, despite being published in Nature and being a major contribution to the ongoing debate. Here are three other papers that will probably also escape media attention.

Statistician William Briggs has two new papers. One is in press with the Journal of Climate, and is titled "On the changes in number and intensity of North Atlantic tropical cyclones" (PDF). That paper concludes:

We find that to conclude that there has been an increase in the number of tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic basin depends on from what date you start looking. Looking from 1900 gives strong evidence that an increase has taken place; however, data early from that period are certainly tainted by inadequate and missing observations, so the confidence we have in this evidence is greatly reduced. Starting from (the years around) 1966 does not give evidence of a linear increase, but starting from (the years around) 1975 does. These potential increases are noted after controlling for the effects of CTI, NAOI, and the AMO. These differences due to start date could be real, perhaps because of some underlying cyclicity in the data that coincidentally bottomed out around 1975 (after controlling for AMO etc.), or it may just be a good lesson that it's possible to pick and choose your starting date to argue either way: yes, there's been an increase, or no, there hasn't been.

Briggs is presenting a second paper at the upcoming AMS meeting in which he applies the same technique to other basins, in a paper titled, "Changes in number and intensity of tropical cyclones" (PDF). That paper concludes:

We find little evidence that the mean of the distribution of individual storm intensity, measured by storm days, track length, or individual storm PDI, has changed (increased or decreased) since 1975 over all the oceans. Again, there were certain noted increases in the Indian oceans, which may be real or may be due to flaws in the data: this is evidenced by the posteriors from these oceans being very sensitive to the priors used. We did, however, find an unambiguous increase in the variance of the distribution of storm intensity over all oceans. We also found that two components of intensity, storm days and track length, have likely decreased since 1990 over most oceans. Thus, we conclude that mean intensity has not been increasing, at least since 1975, and certainly not since 1990.

A fourth paper has just been published in the journal Risk Analysis by Kenneth Bogen, Edwin Jones, and Larry Fischer, titled, "Hurricane Destructive Power Predictions Based on Historical Storm and Sea Surface Temperature Data." That paper concludes:

Results obtained clearly challenge recent hypotheses about the effect of rising SST on future hurricane destructive potential . . .In contrast to a significant post-1970 positive trend in NAO SST and previous claims that this trend is linked to increased hurricane activity (Goldenberg et al., 2001; Emanuel, 2005; Trenberth, 2005; Webster et al., 2005; Hoyos et al., 2006; Santer et al., 2006; Trenberth & Shea, 2006), this study found little evidence of APDI trend or of a substantial APDI correlation with SST.

These papers suggest that the science of hurricane and global warming is healthy and new voices are bringing new ideas and methods to the debate. This is all good news. But it should also be apparent that the issue remains highly uncertain and contested. If anything, uncertainties have increased since we published our 2005 paper.

So I am going to stand pat with our conclusions first presented in 2005 in that shameful (but accurate) article:

[T]here are good reasons to expect that any conclusive connection between global warming and hurricanes or their impacts will not be made in the near term.

That is where things stand on this subject at the close of 2007.

Posted on December 26, 2007 05:22 AM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

December 21, 2007

On the Political Relevance of Scientific Consensus

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) has released a report in which he has identified some hundreds of scientists who disagree with the IPCC consensus. Yawn. In the comments of Andy Revkin's blog post on the report you can get a sense of why I often claim that arguing about the science of climate change is endlessly entertaining but hardly productive, and confirming Andy's assertion that "A lot of us live in intellectual silos."

In 2005 I had an exchange with Naomi Oreskes in Science on the significance of a scientific consensus in climate politics. Here is what I said then (PDF):

IN HER ESSAY "THE SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS on climate change" (3 Dec. 2004, p. 1686), N. Oreskes asserts that the consensus reflected in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) appears to reflect, well, a consensus. Although Oreskes found unanimity in the 928 articles with key words "global climate change," we should not be surprised if a broader review were to find conclusions at odds with the IPCC consensus, as "consensus" does not mean uniformity of perspective. In the discussion motivated by Oreskes’ Essay, I have seen one claim made that there are more than 11,000 articles on "climate change" in the ISI database and suggestions that about 10% somehow contradict the IPCC consensus position.
But so what? If that number is 1% or 40%, it does not make any difference whatsoever from the standpoint of policy action. Of course, one has to be careful, because people tend to read into the phrase "policy action" a particular course of action that they themselves advocate. But in the IPCC, one can find statements to use in arguing for or against support of the Kyoto Protocol. The same is true for any other specific course of policy action on climate change. The IPCC maintains that its assessments do not advocate any single course of action.

So in addition to arguing about the science of climate change as a proxy for political debate on climate policy, we now can add arguments about the notion of consensus itself. These proxy debates are both a distraction from progress on climate change and a reflection of the tendency of all involved to politicize climate science.

The actions that we take on climate change should be robust to (i) the diversity of scientific perspectives, and thus also to (ii) the diversity of perspectives of the nature of the consensus. A consensus is a measure of a central tendency and, as such, it necessarily has a distribution of perspectives around that central measure (1). On climate change, almost all of this distribution is well within the bounds of legitimate scientific debate and reflected within the full text of the IPCC reports. Our policies should not be optimized to reflect a single measure of the central tendency or, worse yet, caricatures of that measure, but instead they should be robust enough to accommodate the distribution of perspectives around that
central measure, thus providing a buffer against the possibility that we might learn more in the future (2).

ROGER A. PIELKE JR.
Center for Science and Technology Policy Research,
University of Colorado, UCB 488, Boulder, CO
80309–0488, USA.

References
1 D. Bray,H. von Storch, Bull.Am.Meteorol. Soc. 80, 439 (1999).
2. R. Lempert, M. Schlesinger, Clim. Change 45, 387 (2000).

December 20, 2007

Laboratories of Democracy? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Laboratories of Democracy

Yesterday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency denied a request from the state of California for permission to exceed national standards on automobile emissions. It was the first such denial since the Clean Air Act was originally passed, marking a departure from 50-some such waivers previously granted.

It was not so long ago that the State Department's Harlan Watson spoke at the 2003 Ninth Session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change on The Bush Administration's enthusiasm for state-level initiatives on climate policy:

I would like to highlight the efforts being made by State and local governments in the United States to address climate change. Geographically, the United States encompasses vast and diverse climatic zones representative of all major regions of the world -- polar, temperate, semi-tropical, and tropical -- with different heating, cooling, and transportation needs and with different energy endowments. Such diversity allows our State and local governments to act as laboratories where new and creative ideas and methods can be applied and shared with others and inform federal policy -- a truly bottom-up approach to addressing global climate change.
At the State level, 40 of our 50 States have prepared GHG inventories, 27 States have completed climate change action plans, and 8 States have adopted voluntary GHG emissions goals. In addition, 13 States have adopted "Renewable Portfolio Standards" requiring electricity generators to gradually increase the portion of electricity produced from renewable resources such as wind, biomass, geothermal, and solar energy. And, at the local level, more than 140 local governments participating in the Cities for Climate Protection Campaign are developing cost-effective GHG reduction plans, setting goals, and reducing GHG emissions

Yesterday, EPA's Steven Johnson explains why the Bush Administration is now opposed to state by state efforts to innovate:

"The Bush administration is moving forward with a clear national solution — not a confusing patchwork of state rules," Mr. Johnson told reporters on a conference call. "I believe this is a better approach than if individual states were to act alone."

Climate policy needs more not less opportunities to learn from implementation. The Bush Administration's inconsistent actions are not only ham-handed politics, but just bad policy, whatever one's views on climate change, energy policy, or partisan politics.

H/T DotEarth

Posted on December 20, 2007 02:06 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Energy Policy

December 19, 2007

Rajendra Pachauri, IPCC, Science and Politics

The current issue of Nature has a lengthy profile of Rajendra Pachauri, its "Newsmaker of the Year." In the profile Dr. Pachauri discusses his personal views on the politics of climate change and his responsibilities as IPCC chair. Here is how he characterizes his own efforts, as quoted in the Nature profile:

We have been so drunk with this desire to produce and consume more and more whatever the cost to the environment that we're on a totally unsustainable path. I am not going to rest easy until I have articulated in every possible forum the need to bring about major structural changes in economic growth and development.

AP Pachauri Gore.jpg

In recent weeks and months, Dr. Pachauri, and other representatives of the IPCC, have certainly not been shy in advocating specific actions on climate change, using their role as IPCC leaders as a pulpit to advance those agendas. For instance, in a recent interview with CNN on the occasion of representing the IPCC at the Nobel Prize ceremony, Dr. Pachauri downplayed the role of geoengineering as a possible response to climate change, suggested that people eat less meat, called for lifestyle changes, suggested that all the needed technologies to deal with climate change are in the marketplace or soon to be commercialized, endorsed the Kyoto Protocol approach, criticized via allusion U.S. non-participation, and defended the right of developing countries to be exempt from limits on future emissions.

Dr. Pachauri has every right to these personal opinions, but each of the actions called for above are contested by some thoughtful people who believe that climate change is a problem requiring action, and accept the science as reported by the IPCC. These policies are not advocated by the IPCC because the formal mandate of the IPCC is to be "policy neutral." But with its recent higher profile, it seems that the IPCC leadership believes that it can flout this stance with impunity. The Nature profile discusses this issue:

The IPCC's mandate is to be 'neutral with respect to policy' — to set out the options and let policy-makers decide how to act. The reports themselves reflect this. Every word is checked and double-checked by scientists, reviewers and then government representatives — "sanitized", as Pachauri puts it. But Pachauri is the face of the IPCC, and he often can't resist speaking out, despite a few "raps on the knuckles" for his comments. He insists that he always makes it clear he is speaking on his own behalf and not for the IPCC. "It's one thing to make sure that our reports are sanitized. It's another for me as an individual to talk about policies that might work. I feel I have responsibility far beyond being a spokesman for the IPCC. If I feel there are certain actions that can help us meet this challenge, I feel I should articulate them."
"I think Patchy needs to be careful," says Bert Metz, a senior researcher at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency in Bilthoven, who is one of the co-chairs of the IPCC's working group on greenhouse-gas mitigation. "One of the things about the IPCC is that it lays down the facts. If you start mixing [that] with your own views that's not very wise. But he gets away with it because of his charm." Steve Rayner, director of the James Martin Institute at the University of Oxford, UK, and a senior author with the same working group, feels that Pachauri's personal statements place too much stress on lifestyles and not enough on technologies. But he also concedes that a certain amount of outspokenness is an essential part of the job. "I don't think you can provide inspirational leadership in an enterprise like this unless you are passionate. That's something Bob [Watson] and Patchy have in common. They are both very passionate about the issue and I think that's appropriate."

In general, those who agree with the political agenda advanced by Dr. Pachauri will see no problem with his advocacy, and those opposed will find it to be problematic. And this is precisely the problem. By using his platform as a scientific advisor to advance a political agenda, Dr. Pachauri risks politicizing the IPCC and turning it (or perceptions of it) into simply another advocacy group on climate change, threatening its legitimacy and ultimately, its ability to serve as a trusted arbiter of science.

On this point reasonable people will disagree. However, before you decide how you feel about this subject, consider how you would feel if the head of the International Atomic Energy Association responsible for evaluating nuclear weapons programs were to be an outspoken advocate for bombing the very country he was assessing, or if the head of the CIA with responsibility to bring intelligence to policy makers also was at the same time waging a public campaign on certain foreign policies directly related to his intelligence responsibilities. For many people the conflation of providing advice and seeking to achieve political ends would seem to be a dangerous mix for both the quality of advice and the quality of decision making.

The IPCC is riding high these days, but as Burt Metz says, they need to be very careful. Saying that your organization is "policy neutral" while behaving quite differently does not seem to be a sustainable practice. Policy makers will need science advice on climate change for a long time. The IPCC politicizes its efforts with some risk.

Posted on December 19, 2007 02:39 PM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics | Scientific Assessments | The Honest Broker

A Follow Up on Media Coverage and Climate Change

Last week I asked a few reporters and scholars why it is that a major paper in Nature last week on hurricanes and global warming received almost no media coverage whereas another paper released last summer received quite a bit more. Andy Revkin raised the issue on his blog which stimulated many more responses. With this post I’d like to report back on what I’ve heard, and what I’ve concluded, at least tentatively, on the role of the media in the climate debate.

First, there are a wide range of explanations for the differences in media coverage of the two papers. Here is a summary of what I heard (warning: not all explanations are consistent with each other):

*The media is biased toward sensational stories, and Vecchi/Soden was not sensational.
*The relevant media was distracted by the Bali climate meeting.

*The relevant media was distracted by the AGU meeting.

*The relevant media had an interest in stories that added to pressure to act on climate change in Bali.

*The media has (recently) begun to downplay research that suggests uncertainty in climate science.

*Nature did not promote the Vecchi/Soden paper, whereas NCAR aggressively promoted Webster/Holland.

*Vecchi/Soden buried their main message, so the news value was hard to see.

*The hurricane/climate change issue is “s/he said-s/he said” and not interesting.

*Hurricane season is over.

One question I asked of several people is the apparent paradox between the recent "balance as bias" thesis which holds that skeptical voices are given too much play in debate over climate change with the claims from several people I spoke to that the media tends to favor alarming stories in the climate debate. The best answer I got to this came from a reporter:

In general, news coverage favors the sensational rather than the mundane. For example, there were tons of stories this year on the arctic sea ice extent. Next year, if the sea ice doesn’t set a record, the coverage will be less by orders of magnitude.
However, within stories on global warming, there is a great pressure to be balanced. So if we have scientists saying human activity is causing the melting, there’s a desire to represent another viewpoint, no matter how much in the minority it may be.

So there’s an overall bias for sensationalism (or alarmism, when it comes to global warming). The simple reason is this attracts eyeballs. But within stories there’s an effort for balance.

To test this out the hypothesis of a general bias against skeptical voices I searched Google News for references (2004 to present) to "climate change" and "hurricanes" for both "William Gray" who advocates no discernible effect of global warming on hurricanes and "Kerry Emanuel" who advocates a very strong effect. There were 268 stories quoting Emanuel and 297 quoting Gray. This would suggest that, on the hurricane issue at least, there is no indication that the media has disfavored skeptical voices. These data don’t say much about the media favoring the sensational, as Gray’s presence in news stories might just be "balance" in a sensationalized story. More work would need to be done to say anything on that.

Looking to the academic literature Mullainathan and Shleifer (2002, full cite and link below) provide the best piece of research that I have seen on media bias. They focus on ideological biases and also what they call "spin." which is the same thing as favoring (or creating) sensational stories as suggested above. They suggest that (emphasis added):

. . . competition is an important argument for free press: despite the ideological biases of individual news suppliers, the truth comes out through competition. We show that, with Bayesian readers, this is indeed the case: competition undoes the biases from ideology. With readers who are categorical thinkers, however, the consequences of competition are more complex. We show that, in the absence of ideology, competition actually reinforces the adverse effects of spin on accuracy. Not only do the media outlets bias news reporting, but the stories reinforce each other. As each paper spins stories, it increases the incentives of later outlets to spin. This piling on of stories means non-ideological competition worsens the bias of spin. Moreover, spin can exacerbate the influence of one-sided ideology. When the first news outlet that uncovers the story is ideological and later ones are not, the first one sets the tone and later ones reinforce this spin. This can explain why and how inside sources leak information to news outlets: their principal motivation is to control how the story is eventually spun.
Our theory of news reporting falls between two extremes. The traditional view is that readers demand, and media outlets supply, pure information about political and economic markets, and thereby facilitate better consumer and voter choice (Coase 1974, Besley and Burgess 2001, Besley and Prat 2002, Djankov et al. 2002, Stromberg 2001, Dyck and Zingales 2002). The opposite but also plausible view, pursued by Mencken (1920) and Jensen (1976), sees the media as entertainment, with no obvious grounding in reality. The perspective of this paper is that media outlets provide neither unadulterated information, nor pure entertainment. News outlets may be biased for ideological reasons. And consumers, while not desiring pure entertainment as might be the case with sensational or human interest stories, do indirectly affect news content because of how they process information. So for reasons of ideology news outlets may bias information to please their owners, and for reasons of consumer psychology they may bias the information to please their readers.

These results have significant implications for media accuracy. They explain, in particular, how the media in the aggregate are likely to get to the bottom of a news story with significant ideological dimension. Ideological diversity serves as a safeguard against spin. Our results are consistent with Richard Posner's (1999) highly favorable assessment of the press in the coverage of the Clinton affair. Our results also show why media bias is most severe in the cases where no or little ideological diversity bears on the story, such as the investigation of Wen Ho Lee. In this case, the bias comes from spin, and spin causes the followers to pile on. Competition among media outlets is not a solution to the problem of spin - indeed, it makes the problem worse. Our paper makes the case for extreme ideological diversity in the media - in such diversity lies the best hope against spin.

If these findings are anywhere close to the mark, then they offer a powerful counterargument to the "balance as bias" thesis. The climate issue is characterized by a wide range of ideological perspectives, and it seems hard to justify why any of those perspectives should not be represented by the media. That means reporting on a wide range of political perspectives and the justifications for those views offered by those holding those perspectives, even if the reporter, or the vast majority of scientists or other groups, happens to disagree with either the politics or justifications. Where there is diversity balance is not bias, but bias is bias.

S. Mullainathan and A. Shleifer. 2002. Media Bias, NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES, Working Paper 9295 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138, October 2002, © 2002 by Sendhil Mullainathan and Andrei Shleifer. http://www.nber.org/papers/w9295

For further reading, see this New York Times book review on media bias by Richard Posner.

Posted on December 19, 2007 01:31 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Journalism, Science & Environment

December 18, 2007

New Data on the Global Economy

The World Bank has released a valuable new dataset with data on the global economy calculated as PPP and MER. In 2005 the global economy was about $44 trillion (MER) and $55 trillion (PPP). The slide below is taken from the press briefing presentation (ppt).

world economy.png

Posted on December 18, 2007 10:39 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | International

Climate Policy as Farce

According to The Telegraph to deal with the issue of climate change the UK's Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Sir David King, has encouraged a "cultural change" among women to prefer men who save energy, rather than hog it, such as by driving Ferrari's. And for those of you unfamiliar with UK newspapers, it is important to point out that The Telegraph is not the UK's version of The Onion.

Here is an excerpt:

Professor Sir David King said governments could only do so much to control greenhouse gas emissions and it was time for a cultural change among the British public.
And he singled out women who find supercar drivers "sexy", adding that they should divert their affections to men who live more environmentally-friendly lives.

His comments were greeted with anger by sports car drivers who insisted that their vehicles' greenhouse gas emissions were tiny compared with those from four-wheel-drive vehicles.

Sir David, who is due to retire as the UK's Chief Scientific Adviser at the end of the year, said individuals needed to change their behaviour.

"I was asked at a lecture by a young woman about what she could do and I told her to stop admiring young men in Ferraris," he said.

"What I was saying is that you have got to admire people who are conserving energy and not those wilfully using it."

Sir David, who persuaded the Government to start using the Toyota Prius, a hybrid car that claims to have lower emissions than most conventional cars, added: "Government has so many levers that it can pull - when it comes to the business sector it is quite effective.

"As soon as you come to the individual, however, they will buy a Ferrari, not because it is cheap to run or has low carbon dioxide emissions, but because young women think it is sexy to see men driving Ferraris. That is the area where a culture change is needed."

Meanwhile, Europe is divided about strengthening regulations on emissions from autos:

Emergency talks aimed at setting EU targets to reduce CO2 car emissions are being held today amid fears that bitter wrangling between car manufacturing countries could delay or even derail the process entirely.
The European Commission is due to adopt a draft regulation tomorrow on reducing carbon emissions from passenger cars to 120 grams per kilometre within five years, but a bitter fallout between European heavyweights has plunged the key negotiations into crisis. Member states with car manufacturers that traditionally produce heavy, energy-hungry cars are concerned that the emission targets will unfairly benefit those businesses that make lighter, more efficient vehicles.

France and Germany, in particular, are believed to be at loggerheads over the Commission's proposals. French manufacturers such as Peugeot-Citroen have already reduced their carbon emissions to 140g for their cars, whereas German companies such as BMW, Mercedes and Daimler still lag behind on emission targets because their vehicles are heavier and higher performance models. Sweden, which also tends to make larger cars, is also thought to be unhappy about the proposals, while Italy is backing France.

What is lost among this empty moralizing and trade disputes is that a zero-emission Ferrari would require no need to change the libidinal desires of young women (granting Prof. King's dubious premise), nor an embarrassing trade dispute between countries committed to reducing emissions.

These anecdotes -- frustrating and farcical as they may be -- illustrate a serious underlying point: Much of climate debate is exactly backwards. Advocates are spending far too much time arguing over how important that it is that others change their behavior, usually in ways that those doing the advocating would want regardless of climate change. In this way climate change becomes not a problem to be solved but a political weapon in service of other goals. The alternative to the dominant approach to climate change would be to initiate those steps that will actually make a difference, thus enabling political compromise. As Dan Sarewitz and I have often argued it is often technological advances that enable compromise rather than vice versa. And in the case of climate change those steps that will actually make a difference begin with making the costs of producing alternative energy cheaper than fossil fuels (as Shellenberger and Nordhaus have argued, and now Google), and working to make people and ecosystems more resilient/less vulnerable to climate impacts. Of course many groups are doing exactly this, but they are certainly not those leading the charge on climate policy.

Posted on December 18, 2007 09:32 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Technology Policy

Technology Assessment and Globalization

My latest column for Bridges is out, and it is titled "Technology Assessment and Globalization". This is a subject that I'll be devoting a lot more time to in 2008.

Here is an excerpt:

When my parents brought home our first color television in the early 1970s, they could not have envisioned that they were contributing in a small but significant way to forces of globalization that 30 years later have resulted in their grandchildren asking me for sushi as a treat from our local grocery store.

Read it here and listen to the podcast here.

Posted on December 18, 2007 02:32 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Technology and Globalization

December 17, 2007

Shellenberger on Bali

Over at the Breakthrough blog, Michael Shellenberger offers some straight talk on the outcome of the Bali meeting.

Posted on December 17, 2007 03:00 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Energy Policy | International

A Second Reponse from RMS

A few weeks ago I provided a midterm evaluation of the RMS 2006-2010 US hurricane damage prediction. RMS (and specifically Steve Jewson) responded and has subsequently (and graciously) sent in a further response to a question that I posed:

Does RMS stand by its spring 2006 forecast that the period 2006-2010 would see total insured losses 40% above the historical average?

The RMS response appears below, and I'll respond in the comments:

Yes, we do stand by that forecast, although I should point out that we update the forecast every year, so the 2005 forecast (for 2006-2010) is now 2 years out of date. Apart from questions of forecast accuracy, there's no particular reason for any of our users to use the 2005 forecast at this point (that would be like using a weather forecast from last week). It is, of course, important to understand the correct mathematical interpretation of the forecast. In your original post you interpreted the forecast incorrectly in a couple of ways. Over the last 2-3 years we've issued this forecast to hundreds of insurance companies, and discussed it with dozens of scientists around the world, and none of them have misinterpreted it, so I don't think our communication of the intended meaning of the forecast is unclear. However, some explanation is required and I realise that you probably haven't had the benefit of hearing one of the many presentations we've given on this subject. The two things that need clarifying are: 1) This forecast is a best estimate of the mean of a very wide distribution of possible losses. Because of this no-one should expect to be able to verify or falsify the forecast in a short period of time.
This is a typical property of forecasts in situations with high levels of uncertainty. I think it's pretty well understood by the users of the forecast.

One curious property of the loss distribution is that it is very skewed. As a result the real losses would be expected to fall below the mean in most years. This is compensated for in the average by occasional years with very high losses.

In fact the forecast that we give to the insurance industry is a completely probabilistic forecast, that estimates the entire distribution of possible losses, but it's a bit difficult to put that
kind of information into a press release, or on a blog.

2) Your conditional interpretation of the forecast is not mathematically correct. Neither RMS, nor our clients, expect the losses to increase in 2008-2010 in the way you suggest just because they were low in 2006-2007. I can't think of any reason why that would be the case. To get the (roughly) correct interpretation for 2008-2010 you have to multiply the original 5 year mean values by 0.6. That's what the users of our forecast do when they want that number.

I hope that clarifies the issues a bit.

Posted on December 17, 2007 01:36 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters | Prediction and Forecasting | Scientific Assessments

December 16, 2007

China's Growing Emissions

According to this paper by two researchers at the University of California carbon dioxide emissions in China are projected to grow between 11.05% and 13.19% per year for the period 2000-2010. What does this mean? I hope you are sitting down because you won’t believe this.

In 2006 China’s carbon dioxide emissions contained about 1.70 gigatons of carbon (GtC) (source). By 2010, at the growth rates projected by these researchers the annual emissions from China will be between 2.6 and 2.8 GtC. The growth in China's emissions from 2006-2010 is equivalent to adding the 2004 emissions of Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia to China's 2006 total (source). The emissions growth in China at these rates is like adding another Germany every year, or a UK and Australia together, to global emissions. The graph below illustrates the point.

Think about that.

China Emissions.png

Posted on December 16, 2007 05:44 PM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Energy Policy

Parable About the Precariousness of Monoculture

In today's New York Times magazine there is an interesting article by Michael Pollan on the consequences of technological innovation in pursuit of ever more efficiency in agricultural production. Here is an excerpt:

To call a practice or system unsustainable is not just to lodge an objection based on aesthetics, say, or fairness or some ideal of environmental rectitude. What it means is that the practice or process can’t go on indefinitely because it is destroying the very conditions on which it depends. It means that, as the Marxists used to say, there are internal contradictions that sooner or later will lead to a breakdown.
For years now, critics have been speaking of modern industrial agriculture as "unsustainable" in precisely these terms, though what form the "breakdown" might take or when it might happen has never been certain. Would the aquifers run dry? The pesticides stop working? The soil lose its fertility? All these breakdowns have been predicted and they may yet come to pass. But if a system is unsustainable — if its workings offend the rules of nature — the cracks and signs of breakdown may show up in the most unexpected times and places. Two stories in the news this year, stories that on their faces would seem to have nothing to do with each other let alone with agriculture, may point to an imminent breakdown in the way we’re growing food today.

The stories that he discusses are pig farming and bee pollination. The bottom line according to Pollan?

Whenever we try to rearrange natural systems along the lines of a machine or a factory, whether by raising too many pigs in one place or too many almond trees, whatever we may gain in industrial efficiency, we sacrifice in biological resilience. The question is not whether systems this brittle will break down, but when and how, and whether when they do, we’ll be prepared to treat the whole idea of sustainability as something more than a nice word.

Posted on December 16, 2007 08:42 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Technology and Globalization

December 14, 2007

Chris Green on Emissions Target Setting

Chris Green, an economist from McGill University (Canada), has written an op-ed for the Global and Mail explaining why he thinks that the setting of long-term emissions targets just kicks the can down the road. This is sure to be an unpopular opinion among many in the climate debate, but ultimately I think he is right. Here is an excerpt:

It is not difficult to set forth the outlines of a potentially effective climate policy. Unfortunately, what may be effective is not necessarily politically acceptable. It now seems that the main barrier to an effective climate policy is the obsession with emission targets — a legacy of the Kyoto Protocol. Emission targets stand in the way of concentrating on actions whose payoff is mainly beyond the targeted time frame. Worse, because of an effective effort by climate-change "campaigners" to portray the Kyoto Protocol as humankind's last best hope on climate change, emission targets have now taken on a life of their own, particularly in political arenas susceptible to grandstanding behaviour. The evidence is all around us.
The fundamental problem with mandated emission reduction targets is that they focus on ends rather than on the technological means of achieving those ends. Because targets are assessed only rarely in terms of what is doable but usually in terms of what pressure groups think ought to be done, target-based policies lack credibility in virtually the same proportion in which they are politically popular. The Conference of the Parties session in Bali will indicate whether there is a sufficient number of countries prepared to say that the target-setting emperor has no clothes, and are ready to put a moratorium on this failed approach to climate policy.

The op-ed is distilled from a longer piece from the magazine Policy Options, and a PDF of that essay can be found here. It is well worth a read regardless of your views on the climate issue.

Posted on December 14, 2007 12:31 PM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Energy Policy | Technology Policy

A Question for the Media

I've generally thought that the media has done a nice job on covering the climate issue over the past 20 years. There are of course leaders and laggards, but overall, I think that the community of journalists has done a nice job on a very tough issue. However, there are times when I am less impressed. Here is one example.

news.stories.png

Nature magazine, arguably the leading scientific journal in the world, published a paper this week by two widely-respected scholars -- Gabriel Vecchi and Brian Soden -- suggesting that global warming may have a minimal effect on hurricanes. Over two days the media -- as measured by Google News -- published a grand total of 3 news stories on this paper. Now contrast this with a paper published in July in a fairly obscure journal by two other respected scholars -- Peter Webster and Greg Holland -- suggesting that global warming has a huge effect on hurricanes. That paper resulted in 79 news stories stories over two days.

What accounts for the 26 to 1 ratio in news stories?

December 13, 2007

Reality Check

From Alan Zarembo writing in the LA Times today, this dose of reality:

Here's a recipe to head off the worst effects of global warming:
1. Start with 30 new nuclear power plants around the world.

2. Add 17,0000 wind turbines, 400 biomass power plants, two hydroelectric dams the size of China's Three Gorges Dam, and 42 coal or natural gas power plants equipped with still-experimental systems to sequester their carbon dioxide emissions underground.

3. Build everything in 2013. Repeat every year until 2030.

It's an intentionally implausible plan presented this week by the International Energy Agency to make a point: For all the talk about emissions reductions, the actual work is way beyond what the world can achieve.

As delegates from 190 countries gather here on the Indonesian island of Bali to negotiate a "road map" for the successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming, some experts are wondering whether the meeting has lost touch with the reality of tackling climate change.

So far, the thousands of delegates have been consumed by a debate over caps on emissions of greenhouse gases that are the primary cause of global warming.

The United States and China -- the two biggest carbon polluters, each accounting for about 20% of worldwide emissions -- have opposed any hard caps.

But while the debate continues, the most fundamental question of what it will take to achieve meaningful reductions has gone largely forgotten.

Posted on December 13, 2007 09:08 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Energy Policy | International

December 12, 2007

Fun With Carbon Accounting

Dieter Helm of Oxford has a very interesting paper (PDF) on trends in carbon dioxide emissions in the UK (via Climate Feedback) when they are measured from a consumption basis versus the production basis used under the Kyoto Protocol. Here is an excerpt from the paper:

On the UNFCCC basis, UK greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by 15% since 1990. In contrast, on a consumption basis, the illustrative outcome is a rise in emissions of 19% over the same period. This is a dramatic reversal of fortune. It merits an immediate, more detailed and more robust assessment. It suggests that the decline in greenhouse gas emissions from the UK economy may have been to a considerable degree an illusion. Trade may have displaced the UK’s greenhouse gas appetite elsewhere. . .
The UK’s record against the UNFCCC greenhouse gas indicator is impressive, achieving a fall in emissions between 1990 and 2005. It has already beaten its Kyoto target of 12.5% by 2008–12. Against its own domestic goal of a 20% CO2 reduction by 2010, progress has been
less impressive. The UK’s CO2 emissions have risen slightly recently, and last year lay only 5.3% below 1990 levels. This is despite the fact that the UK’s climate change policy programme focuses effort on tackling CO2.

All of the above figures were produced on a territorial accounting basis. When the account is extended to the Office for National Statistics’ residents’ basis, by including international transport and overseas activities, the picture looks worse. Emissions fell by only 11.9%, as shipping and international aviation boomed. Furthermore, airline passengers and firms from the UK consumed more greenhouse gases during their visits and activities abroad than overseas visitors and firms did in the UK, weakening the UK’s overall performance when these trade activities are included. The trend is an adverse one.

Yet, even this extended scope of measurement does not represent the true picture of the UK economy’s impact on the climate. To understand the UK’s true impact, the greenhouse gas accounts should be reported on a 'consumption basis'. On this basis, all greenhouse gases embodied in UK consumption are counted, and by adding greenhouse gases embedded in imports and subtracting greenhouse gases embedded in exports, the crude calculations presented here suggest that UK emissions have been rising steeply. Between 1990 and 2003 the crude calculation indicates a rise of 19%.

Posted on December 12, 2007 04:55 PM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Energy Policy

Waxman's Whitewash

One of the themes that I have tried to develop on this blog is that policy arguments should be well founded. So along these lines I have on a number of occasions taken issue with the approach of Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) to issues associated with how the Bush Administration manages scientific information and scientists in pursuit of its political agenda.

In my view Mr. Waxman's investigative approach has been sloppy and unsophisticated, meaning that in some respects his investigation has come to embody those very same characteristics that he has complained about in the Bush Administration, namely, cherry picking of information, selective reliance on friendly experts, and misrepresenting facts. Some people who have heard my complaints naively assume that I am defending the Bush Administration. Nothing could be further from the truth, as I am a strong critic of many (or more likely most) Bush Administration policies, including how they have handled issues of science communication. My critique of Mr. Waxman's efforts stems from my frustration that it has fallen far short of its potential to improve policies involving science, and instead, represents only so much political red meat, furthering partisan differences and serving to reduce that very small space in political discussions for policy analyses.

Here is a perfect example of Mr. Waxman's sloppiness.

In his report he points to a few emails -- including those from Republican staffer in the Senate, and political appointees in NOAA -- expressing an interest in making FEMA look bad and also "killing" the hurricane-climate issue. From this Mr. Waxman sees that then-director of the National Hurricane Center Max Mayfield (with whom I have collaborated on the issue of hurricanes and global warming) testifies before Congress that he see no evidence of linkage of hurricanes and climate change and thus assumes that natural variability still dominates. Mr. Waxman assumes correlation-is-causation and writes in his report, "this political motivation seems to have impacted NOAA testimony and talking points."

Well, it turns out that they did not talk to Max Mayfield to ask his views, but ABC news did:

For example, Mayfield's written testimony read in part: "the increased activity since 1995 is due to natural fluctuations/cycles of hurricane activity driven by the Atlantic Ocean itself along with the atmosphere above it and not enhanced substantially by global warming."
Mayfield, however, denies that anyone told him to alter his testimony as the Waxman report suggests.

"I want the record to show that no one forced me to say anything on the subject of climate change and tropical cyclones that I didn't believe at the time," Mayfield told ABC News.

"I accept the fact that global warming is real," Mayfield said. "Most meteorologists with knowledge of tropical cyclones think that there will be some impact from global warming on hurricanes. The debate is over how much of an impact."

He says he never heard from anyone on the committee about the incident. "No one ever asked me about the context in which my testimony was given. No one from this committee or any other Congressional committee ever asked me if I was improperly pressured to change my testimony," Mayfield said.

What does Mr. Waxman's committee do? They went back and quietly re-wrote the report after it was released and incorporated Max Mayfield's comments to ABC news. (Link to most recent version in here in PDF.) On the one hand, it is good to see that Mr. Waxman's Committee has corrected the factual record. But on the other hand it is sloppy, at best, to try to cover up your mistakes by rewriting history, which included removing the false claims by the Oversight Committee in the original release of its report. A more appropriate approach would have been to issue a correction or a new press release.

Is the bumbling by the Waxman Committee proportionate to the missteps by the Bush Administration? Certainly not. But they embody the exact same dynamics of manipulating information for political gain. If Congressional oversight is only about scoring political points, then it will do little to improve actual decision making in government. And on that basis, Mr. Waxman has let slip a perfect opportunity to improve science policies. And that is why I am so critical.

Posted on December 12, 2007 11:31 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics | The Honest Broker

December 10, 2007

AGU Powerpoint with Steve McIntyre

Here is a link to a PPT file providing an overview of a paper by Steve McIntyre and I titled, "Changes in Spatial Distribution of North Atlantic Tropical Cyclones," which he will be presenting this week at the AGU meeting.

Here are our conclusions:

Spatially descriptive statistics can contribute to analysis of controversial hurricane issues.
There has been no statistically significant increase in cyclone activity in the western Atlantic basin; the entire increase in measured storm and hurricane activity has taken place in the mid-Atlantic;

Lack of trend in landfall and normalized damage reconciles perfectly with lack of trend in western quartile storm and hurricane indices

The eastward shift cannot be attributed merely to earlier detection.

The shift could be technological or climatological or some combination; there is no plausible statistical basis for saying that the shift to the mid-Atlantic is not as important or relevant as the overall increase.

If the trend only occurs in the mid-Atlantic, should policy-makers care?

Comments welcomed.

Posted on December 10, 2007 11:16 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters | Risk & Uncertainty

Chutzpah

This comment from former Bush Administration official John Bolton is telling, reported in the LA Times,

U.S. intelligence services attempted to influence political policy by releasing their assessment that concludes Iran halted its nuclear arms program in 2003, said John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Der Spiegel magazine quoted Bolton on Saturday as alleging that the aim of the National Intelligence Estimate, which contradicts his and President Bush's position, was not to provide the latest intelligence on Iran.

"This is politics disguised as intelligence," Bolton was quoted as saying in an article appearing in this week's edition.

When new information does not provide support for policy justifications that you have been making, it simply must be politicized. When it provides support for your arguments, of course, it is free from political influence. It was not long ago that intelligence, according to Mr. Bolton's standards, was apparently unpoliticized (ahem). From the archive of The New York Times:

Now John R. Bolton, nominated as United Nations ambassador, has emerged as a new lightning rod for those who saw a pattern of political pressure on intelligence analysts. And this time, current and former officials are complaining more publicly than before. . .
Some of them are prompted by antipathy to Mr. Bolton, some by lingering guilt about Iraq. Some, perhaps, are nervous about the quality of current intelligence assessments at a time of new uncertainties about North Korea's nuclear program, and ambiguous evidence about whether it is moving toward a nuclear test.

One of those critics, Robert L. Hutchings, the former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, made the point in an e-mail message, even as he declined to discuss Mr. Bolton in specific detail. "This is not just about the behavior of a few individuals but about a culture that permitted them to continue trying to skew the intelligence to suit their policy agenda - even after it became clear that we as a government had so badly missed the call on Iraqi W.M.D.," Mr. Hutchings said. The most recent criticism of Mr. Bolton to emerge comes from John E. McLaughlin, the former deputy director of central intelligence, who has told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Mr. Bolton's effort to oust a top Central Intelligence Agency analyst from his position in 2002 breached what should be a barrier between policy makers and intelligence analysts.

Now I have no idea whether the newest National Intelligence Estimate from the U.S. on Iran is politicized or not, but I do know that its reception reflects a disturbing tendency to substitute criteria of political efficacy for information quality in making judgments about the quality of guidance provided by experts, an argument I develop in The Honest Broker.

It is of course one thing for a die-hard partisan like John Bolton to engage in such behavior, but it is quite another, and of greater concern, when the experts themselves start playing that game.

Posted on December 10, 2007 04:29 AM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics | The Honest Broker

Hillary for President

After this wise move, what more could you possibly need to know?

Posted on December 10, 2007 03:25 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

December 08, 2007

Prins and Rayner in the WSJ

In the weekend WSJ there is a thoughtful op-ed by Gwyn Prins and Steve Rayner, presenting the argument that they discuss at length in their essay The Wrong Trousers (PDF). Here is how the WSJ op-ed begins:

This week in Bali, Indonesia, delegates are considering climate policy after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. We will witness a well-known human response to failure. Delegates will insist on doing more of what is not working: in this case more stringent emissions-reduction targets, and timetables involving more countries. A bigger and "better" Kyoto will be a bigger and worse failure.
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol was a symbolically important expression of concern about climate change. It sought to manipulate a basket of diverse greenhouse gases and all their sources. It required its signatories to show demonstrable progress toward a 5% emissions reduction over 1990 levels by 2005. It did so partly through an international cap-and-trade system, and also by establishing a Clean Development Mechanism that would enable big greenhouse-gas emitters to claim credit for reducing emissions which they secured by buying reductions elsewhere, in developing countries.

None of this has worked. Nevertheless, support for "Kyoto" has become the test by which individuals and nations demonstrate whether they are for or against the planet and its poor.

Kevin Rudd's Australian government just showed this. It will ratify the Protocol to show that it is serious about climate change. But Australia, like other countries already signed up to Kyoto, will produce no demonstrable reductions in emissions or even in anticipated emissions growth as a result of doing so.

Where emissions reductions have happened, notably in eastern Europe, re-unified Germany and the United Kingdom, they were the result of unrelated policies -- such as the collapse of communism, and with it the shutdown of highly inefficient and polluting industries, or Margaret Thatcher's smashing of union power by destroying the British coal industry, which meant the substitution of coal by cleaner North Sea gas.

Strip out Germany and the U.K. from the EU-15, and European emissions actually increased 10% between 1990 and 2005. In five countries, emissions rates rose more than in the U.S. Without the collapse of Russia and Ukraine, the Kyoto Protocol's "all signatory total" registers rises since 1990. Even in Japan, emission levels are rising. Kyoto's supporters blame nonsignatory governments, especially the U.S. and, (until last week) Australia.

Read the whole thing.

Posted on December 8, 2007 03:27 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

December 06, 2007

Precipitation and Flood Damage

I was just contacted by a reporter who is doing a story based on a news release put out by a group called Environment Colorado. The news release says that Colorado has seen a 30% increase in extreme precipitation over the past 60 years, based on a new study called "When it Rains, It Pours" (PDF).

The thing is, there has been no increase in flood damage in Colorado (from 1955-2003 in our dataset), as can be seen in the following graph.

CO Flood.png

This data has only been adjusted for inflation. Given the pace of growth and development in Colorado, one could make a strong case that flood impacts have gone down pretty sharply in per capita or per unit wealth terms. So it may very well be the case that extreme precipitation has increased, but these measures of precipitation are not well correlated with flood damage, which is what Mary Downton and I found in a 2000 study.

Just for fun I also looked at California, which was the subject of a different press release put out by Environment California, and guess what? Extreme precipitation is up 26% in California, and there is no statistically significant trend in damage, even without considering population growth and development.

CA Flood.png

So while human caused climate change may be responsible for changes in "extreme" precipitation, these measures are not well correlated with damaging floods.

Posted on December 6, 2007 08:02 AM View this article | Comments (4)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

Why Action on Energy Policy is Not Enough

When in the comments on Tom's post about the recent scientists petition for action on climate change I complained that 200 scientists calling for action on climate change had ignored adaptation, Todd Neff, a local reporter from here in Boulder, helpfully explained to me why climate change is only about energy policy and not human development, and how a focus on the latter implies "pooh-poohing" the former:

Lots of things kill human beings and make them miserable. Poverty and income inequality is real, and 50-1 ratios and 7.3s versus 0.15s should be addressed with real vigor. But that's not what's being talked about in Bali. Pooh-poohing efforts to transform the energy system because poverty remains a problem despite Lyndon Johnson's best efforts strikes me as diverting from the point. These climate scientists are completely ignoring Tay-Sachs disease, too, not to mention tooth decay and this nefarious hiphop prisoner jeans-at-the-knees look that clearly risks widespread tripping among America's male teens.

The view that adaptation is not a part of climate change does seem to be widely shared among environmentalists who would like the climate issue to be narrowly looked at as only an energy issue. Not everyone agrees, particularly folks who work in developing countries. OXFAM for example (PDF) has a different perspective, reflected in this call for action in Bali:

To enable poor countries to adapt successfully, change needs to occur at many levels. Communities must be at the heart of efforts to build resilience, whether through improving economic choices, diversifying livelihoods, protecting eco-systems, or strengthening food and water security. Ministries must be able to integrate climate risk management into their overall planning and budgeting, and must also integrate adaptation into development-planning processes, restructure and strengthen institutions, and provide early-warning systems. In addition, they must ensure that climate risks are integrated into national and local disaster-risk reduction plans, so that they can tackle the underlying vulnerabilities that put communities at risk in the face of the increasing number of climate-related disasters.
Given rich countries' historic role in causing climate change, they now have two clear obligations: to stop harming, by cutting their greenhouse gas emissions hardest and fastest; and to start helping, by providing compensatory finance so that poor countries can adapt before they suffer the full impacts of climate change. . .

In 2005, the G8 countries promised to increase annual aid levels by $50bn by the year 2010. This finance would be a crucial step towards achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets, which aim to halve poverty by 2015. But it is still only 0.36 per cent of rich countries’ incomes – just half of the 0.7 per cent target they signed up to in 1970. Importantly, it is also a target that does not account for the costs of climate change. Two years on, aid to poor countries is falling, not rising and, if current trends continue, Oxfam calculates that the G8 will miss their promised increase by a staggering $30bn. This funding deficit would be a major concern even without climate change.

On top of this deficit, climate change will make it harder to realise the MDGs because it threatens the prospects of reaching every one of them. As the Stern Review states, the scale of additional funding needed for adaptation 'makes it still more important for developed countries to honour both their existing commitments to increase aid sharply and help the world’s poorest countries adapt to climate change.'

Mitigation and adaptation as complements, what an idea! The continued opposition to adaptation among advocates for action on climate change -- whether scientists or members of the media -- remains as baffling as ever to me.

Posted on December 6, 2007 03:42 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | International

Revisiting The 2006-2010 RMS Hurricane Damage Prediction

In the spring of 2006, a company called Risk Management Solutions (RMS) issued a five year forecast of hurricane activity (for 2006-2010) predicting U.S. insured losses to be 40% higher than average. RMS is an important company because their loss models are used by insurance companies to set rates charged to homeowners, by reinsurance companies to set rates they charge to insurers, by ratings agencies for evaluating risks, and others.

We are now two years into the RMS forecast period and can thus say something preliminary about their forecast based on actual hurricane damage from 2006 and 2007, which was minimal. In short, the forecast doesn't look too good. For 2006 and 2007, the following figure shows average annual insured historical losses (for 2005 and earlier) in blue (based on Pielke et al. 2008, adjusted up by 4% from 2006 to 2007 to account for changing exposure), the RMS prediction of 40% more losses above the average in pink, and the actual losses in red.

RMS Verification.png

The RMS prediction obviously did not improve upon a naive forecast of average losses in either year.

What are the chances for the 5-year forecast yet to verify?

Average U.S. insured losses according to Pielke et al. (2008) are about $5.2 billion per year. Over 5 years this is $26 billion, and 40% higher than this is $36 billion. A $36 billion dollar insured loss is about $72 billion in total damage, and $26 billion insured is about $52 billion. For the RMS forecast to do better than the naive baseline of Pielke et al. (2008) total damage in 2008-2010 will have to be higher than $62 billion ($31 billion insured). That is, losses higher than $62B are closer to the RMS forecast than to the naive baseline.

The NHC official estimate for Katrina is $81 billion. So for the 2006-2010 RMS forecast to verify will require close to another Katrina-like event to occur in the next 3 years, or several large events. This is of course possible, but I doubt that there is a hurricane expert out there willing to put forward a combination of event probability and loss magnitude that will lead to an expected $62 billion total loss over the next 3 years. Consider that a 50% chance of $124 billion in losses results in an expected $62 billion. Is there any scientific basis to expect a 50% chance of $124 billion in losses? Or perhaps a 100% chance of $62 billion in total losses? Anyone wanting to make claims of this sort, please let us know!

From Pielke et al. (2008) the annual chances of a >$10B event (i.e., $5B insured) during 1900-2005 about 25%, and the annual chances of a >$50 billion ($25 billion insured) are just under 5%. There were 7 unique three-year periods with >$62B (>$31B insured) in total losses, or about a 7% chance. So RMS prediction of 40% higher than average losses for 2006-2010 has about a 7% chance of being more accurate than a naive baseline. It could happen, of course, but I wouldn't bet on it without good odds!

So what has RMS done is the face of evidence that its first 5-year forecast was not so accurate? Well, they have declared success and issued another 5-year forecast of 40% higher losses for the period 2008-2012.

Risk Management Solutions (RMS) has confirmed its modeled hurricane activity rates for 2008 to 2012 following an elicitation with a group of the world's leading hurricane researchers. . . . The current activity rates lead to estimates of average annual insured losses that will be 40% higher than those predicted by the long-term mean of hurricane activity for the Gulf Coast, Florida, and the Southeast, and 25-30% higher for the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast coastal regions.

For further reading:

Pielke, R. A., Jr., Gratz, J., Landsea, C. W., Collins, D., Saunders, M. A., and Musulin, R. (2008). "Normalized Hurricane Damages in the United States: 1900-2005." Natural Hazards Review, in press, February. (PDF, prepublication version)

December 05, 2007

How to Get Good Intelligence

In The Honest Broker I have a chapter that evaluates the role of intelligence in the decision to go to war in Iraq. I argue that intelligence was used by the Bush Administration as a tool of political advocacy rather than policy insight. With the release earlier this week of a new intelligence estimate on Iran, it may be that the intelligence community is regaining some of its credibility. The New York Times today explains some changes that have taken place:

Over the past year, officials have put into place rigorous new procedures for analyzing conclusions about difficult intelligence targets like Iran, North Korea, global terrorism and China.
Analysts from disparate spy agencies are no longer pushed to achieve unanimity in their conclusions, a process criticized in the past for leading to "groupthink." Alternate judgments are now encouraged.

In the case of the 2007 Iran report, "red teams" were established to test and find weaknesses in the report's conclusions. Counterintelligence officials at the C.I.A. also did an extensive analysis to determine whether the new information might have been planted by Tehran to throw the United States off the trail of Iran's nuclear program.

One result was an intelligence report that some of the intelligence community's consistent critics have embraced.

"Just possibly, the intelligence community may have taken a major step forward," Senator Rockefeller said.

Posted on December 5, 2007 07:31 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

November 26, 2007

It Will Take More than Holocaust Analogies

Andy Revkin reports on a spat between NASA's James Hansen and Kraig R. Naasz, the president of the National Mining Association. You can go read the details at Dot Earth. After you do that you might mull over the following factoids (emphasis added). . .

From the International Energy Association's 2007 World Energy Report (PDF):

In line with the spectacular growth of the past few years, coal sees the biggest increase in demand in absolute terms, jumping by 73% between 2005 and 2030 and pushing its share of total energy demand up from 25% to 28%. Most of the increase in coal use arises in China and India. . . Higher oil and gas prices are making coal more competitive as a fuel for baseload generation. China and India, which already account for 45% of world coal use, drive over four-fifths of the increase to 2030 in the Reference Scenario. In the OECD, coal use grows only very slowly, with most of the increase coming from the United States. In all regions, the outlook for coal use depends largely on relative fuel prices, government policies on fuel diversification, climate change and air pollution, and developments in clean coal technology in power generation. The widespread deployment of more efficient power-generation technology is expected to cut the amount of coal needed to generate a kWh of electricity, but boost the attraction of coal over other fuels, thereby leading to higher demand.

From some excellent reporting by the Christian Science Monitor:

In all, at least 37 nations [in Asia, Americas, EU, and elsewhere] plan to add coal-fired capacity in the next five years – up from the 26 nations that added capacity during the past five years. With Sri Lanka, Laos, and even oil-producing nations like Iran getting set to join the coal-power pack, the world faces the prospect five years from now of having 7,474 coal-fired power plants in 79 countries pumping out 9 billion tons of CO2 emissions annually – out of 31 billion tons from all sources in 2012.

One can understand why Stanford's David Victor offers a less-than-optimistic view of the issue, here is part of his comment posted at Dot Earth:

The reason coal matters so much is that it offers the best route for getting leverage on emissions–because coal is used mainly in large central generating stations that are managed by professionals and where economies of scale favor the installation of carbon storage, etc.
That means that simple-sounding solutions like shutting coal plants or passing moratoria are politically impractical and also probably will set back the cause. For example, some existing stations may offer cheaper routes for controlling emissions (such as through installation of post combustion capture) than building brand new units. We don’t know which routes will work, and until we know some more–which requires a much larger effort–it is hard to know what exactly to recommend.

Our group at Stanford has started tracking CCS projects, and what’s striking to us is that if you add up ALL the projects you get to an effort that is perhaps 1/100 of what is actually needed to halt emissions. The whole policy effort, so far, is Potemkin–it looks nice on the surface, but there’s little behind the facade. And to pin all that on coal isn’t right. The problem is us.

The reality is that energy from coal is here to stay. That David Victor sees coal plants as part of the solution to limiting greenhouse gas emissions and James Hansen does not illustrates how widely experts who agree on the need to limit emissions disagree on energy policy.

Posted on November 26, 2007 04:34 PM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Energy Policy

John Quiggin on Adaptation

Last week I took strong issue with a view of climate adaptation put forward by Australian economist John Quiggin. After some discussion, John has graciously provided an extended and considerably more nuanced view of his thoughts on adaptation, which we are happy to highlight here. (Thanks, John!):

There is no reason to expect too little adaptation in developed countries, assuming that individuals and firms act in their own interests, and that governments follow standard policy procedures aimed at selecting policies that promote the welfare of their constituents. To the extent that these things don’t happen, international negotiations won’t help.
There is a big reason to expect excessive emissions by all countries (and the excess is much greater for the rich countries) because of the externality problem. Those making the emissions don’t bear more than a tiny fraction of the costs.

Finally, poor countries won’t have enough adaptation because they don’t have enough of anything. The best solution to this is to increase aid (and access to trade) across the board. Given sufficient resources, poor countries can their own decisions on how to allocate them.

Climate change negotiations provide a chance to put pressure on rich countries to compensate poor countries for the damage caused by climate change, or to pay them to participate in mitigation. In the former context, it may be possible to get finance for adaptation projects as part of the global negotiation process and if so, I welcome it.

Taking all of that together, this means the primary focus of international negotiations should be on emissions reductions and mitigation. But if aid for adaptation can be included in the package, that would be a good thing.

While I disagree with John, I can appreciate that his view is identical to that espoused in the Framework Convention on Climate Change, and a logical consequence of its Article 2.

My own view is that Article 2 leads to a devaluing of sustainable development; specifically, it makes little sense in practice to try to separate "climate change adaptation" (where climate change is narrowly defined as those changes resulting from greenhouse gas emissions) from the more general challenge of sustainable development. I argue this point in the following paper:

Pielke, Jr., R.A., 2005. Misdefining "climate change": consequences for science and action, Environmental Science & Policy, Vol. 8, pp. 548-561. (PDF)

I suspect that the tensions between rich world countries wanting to focus on emissions and developing countries focusing on development will be a central feature of the upcoming FCCC Bali negotiations.

Posted on November 26, 2007 06:09 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

November 25, 2007

Promises, Promises

Three interesting news stories shared by Benny Peiser:

First on adaptation from The Guardian:

A group of rich countries including Britain has broken a promise to pay more than a billion dollars to help the developing world cope with the effects of climate change. The group agreed in 2001 to pay $1.2bn (£600m) to help poor and vulnerable countries predict and plan for the effects of global warming, as well as fund flood defences, conservation and thousands of other projects. But new figures show less than £90m of the promised money has been delivered. Britain has so far paid just £10m. . .
The vast majority of the promised money was expected to be channelled through funds run by an organisation called the Global Environment Facility (GEF) in Washington DC, which was to distribute it through programmes run by the World Bank and United Nations. But accounts presented to a GEF council meeting last week show that only $177m (£86m) had been paid into the funds by September 30 this year, much less than the $1.2bn due by the end of 2007 under the Bonn agreement. Another $106m (£51m) has been pledged to the GEF by specific countries, but not yet paid. Britain has pledged to pay another £10m over the next three years, which makes it among the largest donors, but still below its promised level of commitment.

Saleem Huq, head of the climate change group at the International Institute for Environment and Development, said Britain should have paid between a fifth and a quarter of the £600m promised to date, based on past contributions to international aid. He said: "Most people in the climate change debate focus on how to cut emissions and how to bring the US, China and India into an agreement. The impact of climate change on poor countries, and the responsibilities of rich countries to help them, gets much less attention." The Department for International Development insisted Britain's share was closer to £30m a year, and that it had "fully met its commitments". It said Britain had given an extra £100m since 2005 to climate change work in the developing world through routes outside the GEF, such as bilateral aid given directly to poor countries.

Huq said this money cannot be counted towards the Bonn agreement because it was part of general overseas aid. "The Bonn agreement is clear that the money paid to help developing countries cope with climate change must be additional. Just counting overseas development aid as money for climate change adaptation cuts no ice and is double counting."

Next on emissions from EU autos:

European Union governments look set to reject calls for taxing cars based on their contribution to climate change.
At a Dec. 4 meeting, finance ministers from the EU’s 27 member states are scheduled to discuss a proposal for reshaping taxes imposed on cars so that they take account of the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main climate-changing gas, they emit.

But Portugal, the current holder of the EU’s rotating presidency, has conceded that a breakthrough on this plan is unlikely. This is despite a pledge made by the EU governments earlier this year that they would lead international efforts to fight climate change.

In an internal paper, seen by IPS, the Lisbon government says there is "opposition from a considerable number" of EU countries to "an obligation to introduce a CO2 element into national car taxes."

. . . Angela Merkel, now Germany’s chancellor, advocated in 1994 that a maximum legal limit of 120 grams of carbon dioxide emissions per kilometre should be established for cars. Merkel was her country’s environment minister at the time.

Although EU policy-makers have discussed that target ever since then, the Commission suggested earlier this year that a less stringent goal of 130g/km should be set. Ironically, it agreed to that measure after Merkel and the German car industry lobbied the Commission not to opt for the 120g/km limit.

And on that third runway at Heathrow:

Isn't politics wonderful? Within days of Gordon Brown's address to the conservation group WWF, in which he pledged eye-wateringly tough reductions in British emissions of Co2, the Government has announced its support for the construction of a third runway at Heathrow Airport. "This time he really gets it," Greenpeace's executive director had enthused after the Prime Minister's "Let's save the polar bear" speech. Yesterday, following the Transport Secretary's endorsement of BAA's expansion plans, Greenpeace was back to its default position, spitting ecological tacks.
You might think this is a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing (or possibly the left hand not knowing what the left hand is doing) especially given the Government's growing reputation for administrative chaos. In fact it is entirely deliberate. The Government both wants to claim "leadership in the fight against climate change" while at the same time it – quite understandably– does not want to do anything which might reduce this country's international competitiveness. It knows that these two objectives are incompatible – very well, then: it will contradict itself. . .

It has been written often enough that any likely reduction in Co2 emissions from our own generation of electricity is not just sub-microscopic in terms of any measurable effect on the climate: the People's Republic of China is now opening two new coal-fired power stations every week. Real "climate change leadership" would be developing "clean coal" technology and selling it to the Chinese – but for some reason that does not fascinate politicians in the way that targets do. It is insufficiently heroic.

We can see the same national self-obsession in the debate over the environmental consequences of opening a third runway at Heathrow: last year China announced plans to expand 73 of its airports and build 42 new ones. Yes, the British government could demonstrate "increased climate change leadership" by blocking BAA's plans to build another runway at Heathrow. Does anyone seriously imagine that the consequence of further congestion and delays will be something other than a transfer of traffic from that airport to others in the immediate vicinity, such as Charles de Gaulle, which already has much more capacity?

Posted on November 25, 2007 08:43 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

November 20, 2007

Optimal Adaptation?

Thomas Henry Huxley once described science as "organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact." The same can be said of economics.

In a unpublished letter to Nature posted as a comment on the Nature Climate Feedback blog Australian economist John Quiggin responds to the recent Prins/Rayner piece in Nature. He explains how economics theory indicates that we really have no reason to worry about adaptation to climate change, because economics theory says so:

Prins and Rayner also assume that because adaptation is as important as mitigation, it should receive equal attention as a focus of public policy. But emissions of greenhouse gases represent a market failure. No individual or nation has a strong incentive to reduce their own emissions. Hence, mitigation requires a global policy response so that this externality is taken into account. By contrast, private parties, in deciding how to adapt to climate change, will, in the absence of policy intervention, bear the costs and receive the benefits of their decisions in most cases. There is no reason to expect too little adaptation.

I suppose one could argue that this thesis is supported by the obvious fact that the world today does indeed have an optimal level of climate adaptation.

But then again, one might also take a look at Bangladesh and the effects of Cyclone Sidr over the past week to see that such an argument is not only wrong but wrongheaded, and perhaps even morally bereft. The two "private parties" in the photo to the left (courtesy of The Boston Herald) are obviously practicing "optimal adaptation" in the "absence of policy intervention."

Yeah, right.

Posted on November 20, 2007 10:32 AM View this article | Comments (10)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

November 19, 2007

IPCC and Policy Options: To Open Up or Close Down?

With the release of the IPCC AR4 Synthesis report last week, the IPCC made a dramatic statement that has thus far escaped notice. The IPCC has endorsed the Kyoto Protocol process, at once discarding its fig leaf of being "policy neutral" and putting its scientific authority on the line by supporting a policy approach that many people think simply cannot work.

The IPCC Synthesis Report states:

There is high agreement and much evidence that notable achievements of the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol are the establishment of a global response to climate change, stimulation of an array of national policies, and the creation of an international carbon market and new institutional mechanisms that may provide the foundation for future mitigation efforts. Progress has also been made in addressing adaptation within the UNFCCC and additional international initiatives have been suggested.

The IPCC has never really been "policy neutral" despite its claims, so such openness in its political advocacy is a welcome change (an "emboldened" stance is also noted by the NYT's Elisabeth Rosenthal).

However, its claims that there is "high agreement" and "much evidence" of the success of the Kyoto Protocol approach are simply wrong, unless one restricts those claims to a fairly narrow group of experts. The ability of the Kyoto Protocol approach to effectively deal with the challenge of climate change is hotly debated (for instance, PDF). And there is considerable evidence that it has done little (or less) in practice. The claim by the IPCC that the UNFCCC has contributed to progress on adaptation is laughable (PDF).

In short, the IPCC appears to be using the language and concepts of a scientific consensus to suggest that there is also a consensus on the policy effectiveness and political worth of the Kyoto approach. This is a perfect example of how science becomes pathologically politicized. There are a wide range of approaches to climate change policy that are consistent with the work of the IPCC working groups. For an example of such an approach, see my congressional testimony from last May which synthesizes the 3 IPCC reports (here in PDF) in a way that suggests that it is future development paths that matter much more than Kyoto-like attempts to limit emissions.

Ultimately, it is fair to ask of the IPCC what its role in climate policy actually is -- is it to provide an assessment of the views of a wide range of experts on questions of relevance to decision makers? Or perhaps it is to survey a wide range of policy options to facilitate decision making by governments? Or is it to pick a "winner" in climate politics and advocate for its agenda above all others?

Is it to open up debate on climate policy or close it down? Judging by the AR4 Synthesis Report the IPCC has chosen the latter path.

The risk is that the IPCC has chosen a losing policy option to advocate for -- "the wrong trousers" to borrow a metaphor -- and thus is more likely to work against the adoption of effective climate policies than it would by presenting policy makers with a wide range of options to chose from, including but not limited to Kyoto. Climate policy debates will be ongoing for years and probably decades. We will need honest brokers if we are to made good decisions about climate policy.

The more that the IPCC resembles an advocacy group with a narrow political agenda tied to the Kyoto Protocol, the more it risks its credibility, legitimacy, and ultimately, its sustainability.

Posted on November 19, 2007 10:21 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Prins and Rayner - The Wrong Trousers

Gwyn Prins and Steve Rayner have released the full version of their analysis of the failure of the Kyoto Protocol. It is available as a PDF here. They write:

The idea that the Kyoto Protocol approach to climate change mitigation is the only solution compounds the problem of finding viable responses for real problems. Another solution must be found—or rather other solutions.

It is a thoughtful, hard-hitting, and on target assessment of the current state of climate policy debate. It deserves to be read carefully and broadly discussed. Have a look.

Posted on November 19, 2007 10:15 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

November 16, 2007

Neal Lane and Roger Pielke, Jr. on NPR Science Friday

Presidential Science Advisors (broadcast Friday, November 16th, 2007)

How important are a president's advisors when it comes to making decisions that deal with science and technology? Scientist Roger Pielke, Jr. interviewed seven of the fourteen most recent Presidential Science Advisors, who served under presidents from Lyndon Johnson to George W Bush. In this segment, Ira talks with Pielke about what he learned from the interviews, and about how future administrations might try to manage the massive amounts of scientific advice available.

3PM EST on NPR!!!

Posted on November 16, 2007 08:38 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics

November 15, 2007

The Science Advisor at 50

I've got a Commentary in this week's Nature on the President's science advisor. Here is a link to the PDF.

Tomorrow I'll be appearing on NPR's Science Friday to discuss the piece and the past 50 years of presidential science advice. Please tune in at 3PM EST!

Posted on November 15, 2007 02:07 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding | Science + Politics | Science Policy: General

November 14, 2007

Not Ambitious Enough

In today’s New York Times, Thomas Friedman has a column lamenting the failure of politicians to enact a gasoline tax following 9/11. I am a strong supporter for a dramatically increased gasoline tax in the United States. The problem with Friedman’s proposed gasoline tax is that it is not ambitious enough.

Here are some data:

Sources:

U.S. gasoline prices
U.S. gasoline usage
U.S. GDP

On September 11, 2001 U.S. gasoline averaged $1.15 per gallon. By May 1, 2006 it was $2.90 per gallon. The difference of $1.75 per gallon is larger than the gasoline tax proposed by Friedman, and thus allows for a natural experiment on the effects on consumption.

US gasoline consumption in September, 2001 was 8.6 million barrels per day. In May, 2006 it was 9.3 million barrels per day. This does not suggest a strong relationship between price and consumption, although it is certainly possible to argue that consumption would have been higher with lower prices. Clearly, the $1.75 increase per gallon did not lead to reduced consumption.

One can look at the figures from the standpoint of the overall economy as well. In 2001 the US economy generated $3.22 of economic activity for every gallon of gasoline burned. In 2006 it generated $3.91 of economic activity for every gallon of gasoline burned. This does not suggest a strong relationship of gasoline use and economic growth. This is good news because it suggests that gasoline prices might be able to increase considerably without large negative economic effects.

One might argue that the $1.00 per gallon tax would be on top of the supply/demand fluctuations in price. But even gasoline at $4 or $5 dollars is unlikely to lead to dramatic changes in behavior or innovation.

Consider that a gasoline tax of $1/per gallon would have raised only about $3.4 billion in tax revenue in 2006, which is small in relation to overall U.S. incomes taxes, which in 2006 were more than $1 trillion (PDF). Thus it is very (!) misleading when Friedman quotes Philip Verleger in his column as saying, "We could have replaced the current payroll tax with a gasoline tax." Well, I suppose that if the gasoline tax was about $300/gallon under present levels of consumption then that statement would be accurate!

What does the literature say?

There is a very nice review paper on the elasticity of gasoline demand based on a wide range of studies by Graham and Glaister (2002)(PDF). This paper concludes:

There are differences between the short- and long-run elasticities of fuel consumption with respect to price. . . Therefore, it may be right to say that "it won’t make much difference" or "people will use their cars just the same", but only in the short run. The evidence is clear and remarkably consistent over a wide range of studies in many countries that in the long run there is a significant response, albeit a less than proportionate one. . .

So the effects of a gasoline tax are important and take place over the long term. However, the tax would have to be significant enough to generate significant responses, lest it be more symbolic than effective. I am not sure what that is in the United States, but I am sure that $1 per gallon is only a step in the right direction; it is not all that is needed by a longshot.

Both long- and short-term effects of gasoline prices on traffic levels tend to be less than their effects on the volume of fuel burned. . . Raising fuel prices will therefore be more effective in reducing the quantity of fuel used than in reducing the volume of traffic. . .

Anyone who has driven at rush hour in the UK where gasoline costs a lot more than the U.S. will be well aware of this reality. It is therefore misleading to suggest that a higher gasoline tax will reduce congestion, as some have suggested. It won’t. To reduce congestion would require other strategies.

The demand for owning cars in heavily dependent on income. . . The implication is that fuel prices must rise faster than the rate of income growth, even to stabilise consumption at existing levels.

Consider the difference between dollars of GDP per gallon in 2001 and 2006. US GDP increased over this period by 30% while gasoline prices increased by about 90%, and gasoline consumption still increased by 7%.

If goals of energy policy are to dramatically reduce the U.S. reliance on foreign sources of oil and to rapidly accelerate the decarbonization of the energy system, then a gasoline tax can certainly contribute to that end. However, it is misleading at best to suggest that $1 per gallon can do the job, or make a big step in that direction, when it can’t. Achieving a gasoline tax in the United States would be a monumental political achievement. It would be a shame to see such an achievement undercut by getting the policy wrong by reaching for too little. Of course, that might just be a good characterization of current debates on U.S. energy policy generally.

Posted on November 14, 2007 09:34 AM View this article | Comments (11)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Energy Policy

November 12, 2007

Geotimes Interview

Geotimes has an interview with me online about The Honest Broker.

The interviewer, Nicole Branan, has this to say about the book:

Any scientist would benefit from reading this book, as it is an eye-opener about the scientist-policymaking relationship.

Buy one for yourself and as the holiday season approaches, don't forget all of your scientist friends!

Posted on November 12, 2007 09:10 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

November 07, 2007

Sokal Revisited - I Smell a Hoax

Benny Peiser sent around on his CCNet list a link to the following paper:

Carbon dioxide production by benthic bacteria: the death of manmade global warming theory? Journal of Geoclimatic Studies (2007) 13:3. 223-231.

It has the following statement within the text:

Moreover we note that there is no possible mechanism by which industrial emissions could have caused the recent temperature increase, as they are two orders of magnitude too small to have exerted an effect of this size. We have no choice but to conclude that the recent increase in global temperatures, which has caused so much disquiet among policy makers, bears no relation to industrial emissions, but is in fact a natural phenomenom.
These findings place us in a difficult position. We feel an obligation to publish, both in the cause of scientific objectivity and to prevent a terrible mistake - with extremely costly implications - from being made by the world's governments. But we recognise that in doing so, we lay our careers on the line. As we have found in seeking to broach this issue gently with colleagues, and in attempting to publish these findings in other peer-reviewed journals, the "consensus" on climate change is enforced not by fact but by fear. We have been warned, collectively and individually, that in bringing our findings to public attention we are not only likely to be deprived of all future sources of funding, but that we also jeopardise the funding of the departments for which we work.

We believe that academic intimidation of this kind contradicts the spirit of open enquiry in which scientific investigations should be conducted. We deplore the aggressive responses we encountered before our findings were published, and fear the reaction this paper might provoke. But dangerous as these findings are, we feel we have no choice but to publish.

Shocking, it seems. But call me a skeptic skeptic - I'm calling this a hoax.

Posted on November 7, 2007 12:32 PM View this article | Comments (11)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

NAS Student Forum on Science and Technology Policy

Full details here . . .

On January 4-5, 2008, the National Academies are sponsoring a two-day public forum intended for students, postdoctoral fellows, and recent graduates interested in studying and careers in science and technology policy.

The forum will feature both invited presentations and interactive discussions that will bring together a cross-section of government, academia, and industry to address practice and opportunities of the science and technology profession.

Apply here!

Have questions or comments? Email us at studentforum@nas.edu

Posted on November 7, 2007 06:50 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

November 02, 2007

Confronting Disaster Losses

From today's Science:

L. M. Bouwer, R. P. Crompton, E. Faust, P. Höppe, and R. A. Pielke Jr. 2007. Confronting disaster losses, Science 318, 753.

Here is an excerpt from the Supporting Online Material:

Societal change and economic development are mainly responsible for increasing losses in recent decades, as convincingly shown in analyses of long-term records of losses (S1). After adjusting for societal changes, resulting time series accurately reflect documented trends (or lack thereof) and variability consistent with the observed climatological record of weather events (S1, S5). This implies that the net result of the adjustments has to a significant degree successfully removed the signal of societal change from the loss record. . .
Within the next 20 years projected changes in the intensity and frequency of extreme events—depending on the time scale and hazard—remain uncertain. The most severe effects of human-caused climate change are expected in the second half of the century
(S6). In the immediate future, disaster losses will increase as a result of societal change and economic development, independent of climate change.

We'll provide the full text as soon as it is posted on our site. Meantime, subscribers to Science can find it here.

UPDATE: Full text here in PDF.

Posted on November 2, 2007 07:59 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

October 30, 2007

A Range of Views on Prins/Rayner

Here are a few reactions, and my comments in response, to the Prins/Rayner piece in Nature last week, which has generated a good deal of healthy discussion on climate policies.

At his new DotEarth blog Andy Revkin notes perceptively that debate over greenhouse gas reduction policies is emerging between those who think that setting a price for carbon is the most important action to be taken, versus others who think that setting a price for carbon can only have modest effects on efficiency, and by itself will not stimulate a transition to a post-fossil fuel world. Most everyone nowadays, including Prins/Rayner, would seem to agree that putting a price on carbon makes good sense. The debate is over the degree to which setting such a price will lead to a significant change in the trajectory of emissions paths. Prins/Rayner are not optimistic (and I agree), and others are more sanguine.

At Nature’s Climate Feedback, a number of informed commenters respond to Prins/Rayner by raising questions about the effectiveness of Kyoto mechanisms. Prins/Rayner emphasize the symbolic importance of Kyoto, but criticize its practical results. They suggest that more of the same – feel-good symbolism over actual, large emissions reductions – is not what the world needs at this point. On this point reasonable people will disagree, but ultimately atmospheric concentrations will arbitrate the debate.

The Wall Street Journal Energy Blog does a nice job identifying where Prins/Rayner agree with and disagree with the policies of the Bush Administration. Unfortunately, the role of technology in the climate debate has been caught up in partisan bickering. Some argue that all of the technologies that are needed to stabilize emissions (or at least make a big forward step in that direction) are already available. I find this argument unconvincing at best, and more likely just plain wrongheaded. Others, such as Nordhaus/Shellenberger suggest that a massive investment in new technologies are needed, a point on which I, and Prins/Rayner, agree. Many environmentalists do their arguments (and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions) no favors by taking an anti-technological investment stance, which seems more like a reflexive reaction to be against anything that the Bush Administration might be for -- Note however that while the Bush Administration often uses the word "technology" in the context of climate change policy, they have never advocated the sort of investment advocated by Prins/Rayner/Nordhaus/Shellenberger.

There will be more to discuss when Prins/Rayner release the long version of their analysis, hopefully soon. We’ll link to it here when available.

Posted on October 30, 2007 07:05 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Energy Policy

October 24, 2007

Prins and Rayner in Nature

Gwyn Prins, of the London School of Economics, and Steve Rayner, of Oxford University have a brave and challenging piece in the current issue of Nature on why we need to rethink climate policy. Here is how it begins:

The Kyoto Protocol is a symbolically important expression of governments' concern about climate change. But as an instrument for achieving emissions reductions, it has failed. It has produced no demonstrable reductions in emissions or even in anticipated emissions growth. And it pays no more than token attention to the needs of societies to adapt to existing climate change. The impending United Nations Climate Change Conference being held in Bali in December — to decide international policy after 2012 — needs to radically rethink climate policy.
Kyoto's supporters often blame non-signatory governments, especially the United States and Australia, for its woes. But the Kyoto Protocol was always the wrong tool for the nature of the job. Kyoto was constructed by quickly borrowing from past treaty regimes dealing with stratospheric ozone depletion, acid rain from sulphur emissions and nuclear weapons. Drawing on these plausible but partial analogies, Kyoto's architects assumed that climate change would be best attacked directly through global emissions controls, treating tonnes of carbon dioxide like stockpiles of nuclear weapons to be reduced via mutually verifiable targets and timetables. Unfortunately, this borrowing simply failed to accommodate the complexity of the climate-change issue.

Kyoto has failed in several ways, not just in its lack of success in slowing global warming, but also because it has stifled discussion of alternative policy approaches that could both combat climate change and adapt to its unavoidable consequences. As Kyoto became a litmus test of political correctness, those who were concerned about climate change, but sceptical of the top-down approach adopted by the protocol were sternly admonished that "Kyoto is the only game in town". We are anxious that the same mistake is not repeated in the current round of negotiations.

The Kyoto Protocol was always the wrong tool for the nature of the job.

Already, in the post-Kyoto discussions, we are witnessing that well-documented human response to failure, especially where political or emotional capital is involved, which is to insist on more of what is not working: in this case more stringent targets and timetables, involving more countries. The next round of negotiations needs to open up new approaches, not to close them down as Kyoto did.

Read the whole thing free on the Nature site.

Posted on October 24, 2007 02:13 PM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

September 29, 2007

Late Action by Lame Ducks

I have a new column out in Bridges on a scenario for the climate policy end game by the Bush Administration -- read it here.

Posted on September 29, 2007 07:23 AM View this article | Comments (4)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Energy Policy

September 20, 2007

The Honest Broker 20% Off!!

Cambridge University Press is offering The Honest Broker at 20% off -- for the coupon code visit the CUP site here.

Posted on September 20, 2007 04:09 PM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

September 14, 2007

Breakthrough Blog

I'll be blogging on climate policy over at the Breakthrough blog, check it out, my first post is up!

Posted on September 14, 2007 05:50 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Site News

August 23, 2007

The Honest Broker Reviewed in Nature

Some quotes from the 23 August 2007 issue of Nature, which has a review of The Honest Broker by Andrew A. Rosenberg from the University of New Hampshire (subscribers can see it here).

Happily, the book by Roger Pielke, Jr. on the engagement of scientists in policy offers a pithy, insightful basis for discussing the contributions scientists can make to advising policy makers. . .
This is a clear, thought-provoking book that helps move us away from thinking of science as 'pure' and distinct from policy. It would make an excellent basis for a graduate seminar. It isn't a textbook, but a think-piece, and we all need to consider carefully our responsibility to engage as scientists in policy making.

Buy your copy today!

Posted on August 23, 2007 10:16 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

August 17, 2007

The Honest Broker Reviewed in Science

Some quotes from the review of The Honest Broker by Georgetown University's Nathan Hultman appearing in the 17 August 2007 issue of Science:

"In The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics, Roger Pielke Jr. successfully illuminates these challenges to science and scientists."

"Pielke's framework provides a helpful starting point for investigating factors that complicate the science-society relationship. . . Pielke deftly shows how scientists selections among these options can affect outcomes."

"[T]he book's direct language and concrete examples convey the concepts to a wide audience. By categorizing different roles in the often vexed but necessary relations between scientists and their social world, Pielke clarifies choices not only for scientists but also for the diverse members of democratic society, for whom scientific perspectives are an essential component of better policy."

Buy your copy today!

Posted on August 17, 2007 10:40 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

New Publication

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 2007. Mistreatment of the economic impacts of extreme events in the Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change, in press, corrected proof.

Full text here in PDF.

Posted on August 17, 2007 12:55 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters | Scientific Assessments

June 25, 2007

Normalized US Hurricane Damages

The following paper has now been peer reviewed and accepted for publication in the journal Natural Hazards Review:

Pielke, Jr., R.A., Gratz, J., Landsea, C.W., Collins, D., Saunders, M., and Musulin, R., 2007. Normalized Hurricane Damages in the United States: 1900-2005. Natural Hazards Review (accepted) Accepted Version in PDF

The dataset is available here.

Posted on June 25, 2007 04:12 PM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

May 16, 2007

End of the Line . . .

After three years of blogging, I have decided to take an extended break that just-so-happens to coincide with my sabbatical leave. Oh, I'll be promoting my book here and there, but I won't be posting regularly. It has been a fun experience, even with the obvious downsides, but it is time to close this chapter.

Prometheus, I hope, will continue to provoke and irritate, as is our custom, so don't go far!

Posted on May 16, 2007 02:05 PM View this article | Comments (12)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Site News

The Importance of the Development Pathway in the Climate Debate

Today I am testifying before the House Committee on Science and Technology of the U.S. Congress. In my testimony I argue that we should pay attention to development paths in addition to the mitigation of greenhouse gases. You can see my testimony in full here in PDF.

A full reference:

Pielke, Jr., R.A., 2007. Statement to the House Committee on Science and Technology of the United States House of Representatives, The State of Climate Change Science 2007: The Findings of the Fourth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Working Group III: Mitigation of Climate Change, 16 May.

Posted on May 16, 2007 03:01 AM View this article | Comments (6)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Sustainability

May 15, 2007

Upcoming Congressional Testimony

I will be testifying before the House Committee on Science and Technology on Wednesday of this week. I'll post my written testimony here beforehand.

Posted on May 15, 2007 12:42 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Preview of The Honest Broker

Google provides a limited preview of The Honest Broker.

Posted on May 15, 2007 12:29 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

May 11, 2007

State of Florida Rejects RMS Cat Model Approach

According to a press release from RMS, Inc. the state of Florida has rejected their risk assessment methodology based on using an expert elicitation to predict hurricane risk for the next five years. Regular readers may recall that we discussed this issue in depth not long ago. Here is an excerpt from the press release:

During the week of April 23, the Professional Team of the Florida Commission on Hurricane Loss Projection Methodology (FCHLPM) visited the RMS offices to assess the v6.0 RMS U.S. Hurricane Model. The model submitted for review incorporates our standard forward-looking estimates of medium-term hurricane activity over the next five years, which reflect the current prolonged period of increased hurricane frequency in the Atlantic basin. This model, released by RMS in May 2006, is already being used by insurance and reinsurance companies to manage the risk of losses from hurricanes in the United States.
Over the past year, RMS has been in discussions with the FCHLPM regarding use of a new method of estimating future hurricane activity over the next five years, drawing upon the expert opinion of the hurricane research community, rather than relying on a simplistic long-term historical average which does not distinguish between periods of higher and lower hurricane frequency. RMS was optimistic that the certification process would accommodate a more robust approach, so it was disappointed that the Professional Team was "unable to verify" that the company had met certain FCHLPM model standards relating to the use of long-term data for landfalling hurricanes since 1900.

As a result of the Professional Team’s decision, RMS has elected this year to submit a revised version of the model that is based on the long-term average, to satisfy the needs of the FCHLPM.

This is of course the exact same issue that we highlighted over at Climate Feedback, where I wrote, "Effective planning depends on knowing what range of possibilities to expect in the immediate and longer-term future. Use too long a record from the past and you may underestimate trends. Use too short a record and you miss out on longer time-scale variability."

In their press release, RMS complains correctly that the state of Florida is now likely to underestimate risk:

The long-term historical average significantly underestimates the level of hurricane hazard along the U.S. coast, and there is a consensus among expert hurricane researchers that we will continue to experience elevated frequency for at least the next 10 years. The current standards make it more difficult for insurers and their policy-holders to understand, manage, and reduce hurricane risk effectively.

In its complaint, RMS is absolutely correct. However, the presence of increased risk does not justify using an untested, unproven, and problematic methodology for assessing risk, even if it seems to give the "right" answer.

The state of Florida would be wise to err in the decision making on the side of recognizing that the long-term record of hurricane landfalls and impacts is likely to dramatically understate their current risk and exposure. From all accounts, the state of Florida appears to be gambling with its hurricane future rather than engaging in robust risk management. For their part, RMS, the rest of the cat model industry, and insurance and reinsurance companies should together carefully consider how best to incorporate rapidly evolving and still-uncertain science into scientifically robust and politically legitimate tools for risk management, and this cannot happen quickly enough.

Posted on May 11, 2007 01:14 PM View this article | Comments (8)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters | Prediction and Forecasting | Risk & Uncertainty

May 10, 2007

Reorienting U.S. Climate Science Policies

Last week the House Committee on Science and Technology held an important hearing on the future direction of climate research in he United States (PDF).

The major scientific debate is settled. Climate change is occurring. It is impacting our nation and the rest of the world and will continue to impact us into the future. The USGCRP should move beyond an emphasis on addressing uncertainties and refining climate science. In addition the Program needs to provide information that supports action to reduce vulnerability to climate and other global changes and facilitates the development of adaptation and mitigation strategies that can be applied here in the U.S. and in other vulnerable locations throughout the world.

This refocusing of climate research is timely and worthwhile. Kudos to the S&T Committee.

For a number of years, Congressman Mark Udall (D-CO) has led efforts to make the nation's climate research enterprise more responsive to the needs of decision makers (joined by Bob Inglis (R-SC)). Mr. Udall explained the reasons for rethinking climate science as follows:

The evolution of global science and the global change issue sparked the need to make changes to the 1978 National Climate Program Act, and gave us the Global Change Research Act of 1990. It is now time for another adjustment to alter the focus of the program governed by this law.
The debate, about whether climate change is occurring and about whether human activity has contributed to it, is over. As our population, economy, and infrastructure have grown, we have put more pressure on the natural resources we all depend upon. Each year, fires, droughts, hurricanes, and other natural events remind us of our vulnerability to extreme weather and climate changes. The human and economic cost of these events is very high. With better planning and implementation of adaptation strategies these costs can be reduced.

For all of these reasons, we need the USGCRP to produce more information that is readily useable by decision makers and resource managers in government and in the private sector. People throughout this country and in the rest of the world need information they can use to develop response, adaptation, and mitigation strategies to make our communities, our businesses, and our nation more resilient and less vulnerable to the changes that are inevitable.

We must also move aggressively to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if we are to avoid future increases in surface temperature that will trigger severe impacts that we cannot overcome with adaptation strategies. We need economic and technical information as well as information about system responses and climate responses to different concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The USGCRP should be the vehicle for providing this information.

The hearing charter (PDF) is worth reading in full.

Posted on May 10, 2007 03:50 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | R&D Funding | Scientific Assessments

May 09, 2007

Should the Gates Foundation fund Policy Research?

Well, according Hannah Brown writing in BMJ the answer is "yes" (h/t SciDev.net). It turns out that simply investing money in scientific research or technology development is not sufficient to realize benefits on the ground. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has already changed he world for the better, and has much future potential, so it is good that it is learning the limitations of the so-called "linear model" of science and society sooner rather than later. Here is an excerpt from Brown's commentary:

Ask anyone with a passing interest in global health what the Gates Foundation means to them and you'll likely get just one answer: money. In a field long fatigued by the perpetual struggle for cash, the foundation's eagerness to finance projects neglected by many other donors raised high hopes among campaigners that its impact on health would be swift and great. And with the commitment last June by America's second richest man, Warren Buffet, to effectively double the foundation's $30bn (£15bn; {euro}22bn) endowment,1 hopes of substantial health achievements grew higher still.
But despite Bill Gates's prediction at a press conference to mark Buffet's pledge that there was now "No reason why we can't cure the top 20 diseases"2 observers are starting to question whether all this money is reaping sufficient rewards. For although the foundation has given a huge boost to research and development into technologies against some of the world's most devastating and neglected diseases, critics suggest that its reluctance to embrace research, demonstration, and capacity building in health delivery systems is worsening the gap between what technology can do and what is actually happening to health in poor communities. This situation, critics charge, is preventing the Gates's grants from achieving their full potential.

Read the whole thing.

May 07, 2007

Policy Research? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Policy Research

From today's New York Times a tale of incredible myopia all too common in the Bush Administration:

When Jon Oberg, a Department of Education researcher, warned in 2003 that student lending companies were improperly collecting hundreds of millions in federal subsidies and suggested how to correct the problem, his supervisor told him to work on something else.
The department "does not have an intramural program of research on postsecondary education finance," the supervisor, Grover Whitehurst, a political appointee, wrote in a November 2003 e-mail message to Mr. Oberg, a civil servant who was soon to retire. "In the 18 months you have remaining, I will expect your time and talents to be directed primarily to our business of conceptualizing, competing and monitoring research grants."

For three more years, the vast overpayments continued. Education Secretary Rod Paige and his successor, Margaret Spellings, argued repeatedly that under existing law they were powerless to stop the payments and that it was Congress that needed to act. Then this past January, the department largely shut off the subsidies by sending a simple letter to lenders — the very measure Mr. Oberg had urged in 2003.

Posted on May 7, 2007 02:31 PM View this article | Comments (7)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

May 05, 2007

Hans von Storch on The Honest Broker

Hans von Storch interprets The Honest Broker in the context of the climate debate in the Swiss newspaper Berner Zeitung. The review is in German. Info on The Honest Broker can be found here.

Posted on May 5, 2007 06:04 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

May 04, 2007

You Must be a Creationist

Academic blogging is an interesting medium. On the one hand it "flattens" the world of communication and facilitates the public engagement of experts with everyone else. But it also has some strong negatives, on display this week over at Chris Mooney's blog.

Chris, and fellow blogger American University's Matt Nisbet, recently wrote two pieces for Science and The Washington Post, in which they engaged in a little Science Studies 101, pointing out that how issues are framed influences how they are received. Seems pretty straightforward. But in their piece they suggested, correctly in my view, that how some atheists advance their agenda on the back of science may actually backfire in political debates. For their trouble Chris and Matt have been lambasted by the agitprop blogosphere.

One particularly clueless commentator -- a professor with a Harvard degree -- went so far as to suggest that Mooney and Nisbet are in fact creationists! This strategy of allowing absolutely no nuance is the main tool in the agitprop toolbox. Why else would Matt and Chris criticize Richard Dawkins unless they are really creationists at heart?! Such drivel is extremely irritating, as Chris and Matt's reactions indicate and there is really no effective response to it. Here at Prometheus I routinely hear from trolls and others with bad intent and that I must be a Republican (or a Republican sympathizer) since I have advanced some views that some Republicans think make sense. (Outside the blogosphere actually convincing people of the merits of your arguments is viewed in a positive light!;-)

The issue, not surprisingly, is one of framing. The professor alleging the creationist in Mooney and Nisbet describes religious people as his "enemies" suggesting that we are at war with them. Mooney for his part disavows such nonsense:

"Attack"? Those are your words.
"Enemies"? Those are also your words.

I don't see it that way.

We were trying to make a very serious point about how scientists need to rethink communication strategies. We saw Dawkins as a prominent example to use. He is, after all, prominent.

In political debates the agitprop partisans always have the upper hand, as they can level personal attacks, misrepresent your work, make mountains out of molehills, and nanny-nanny-boo-boo call you names all day long. For academic bloggers who don't want to themselves become mindless partisans there are only a few choices, develop a thick skin or get out of the fray. David Brooks' column yesterday on how to handle such people is worth a read (of course, my citing it must be an indicateion my conservative tendencies;-):

. . . they’ll never be open-minded toward you. But the other three-quarters are honorable, intelligent people. If you treat these people with respect, and find places where you can work together, they will teach you things and make you more effective. If you treat them the way you treat the partisans, they’ll turn into partisans and destroy you.

So here at Promethues, until the blogging negatives outweigh the positives, we will stomach those with ill-intent and simply correct the record when necessary and let nonsense stand on its own. The good news, for Matt and Chris and others who find themselves under attack from people who seek to distract from the substance of their arguments is that their arguments must be pretty strong on their merits to attract such passionate attention. So Matt and Chris, keep up the good work, and don't get too exercised about the noise. Not much you can do about that!

Posted on May 4, 2007 06:57 AM View this article | Comments (8)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

Review of Useless Arithmetic

In the current issue of Nature I review Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can’t Predict the Future by Orrin Pilkey & Linda Pilkey-Jarvis. Here is my review in PDF. The book's home page can be found here.

Posted on May 4, 2007 01:35 AM View this article | Comments (11)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Prediction and Forecasting

May 03, 2007

I'm Outta Here . . .

Only sort of . . . Nature has set up a new blog on climate science and policy and the opportunity to join a blog community of people with very diverse views has proven too good to pass up.

The new blog is call Climate Feedback. It has just gone live with a new post by yours truly on climate variability and trends, plus posts by Hans von Storch and Eduadro Zorita on how the scientific process worked in the case of the "hockey stick". Kevin Vranes will also be blogging there.

As the website gets up to full speed I plan on concentrating my climate-related posts at the Nature blog and more general science policy stuff here. We'll see how it goes.

Have a look!

Posted on May 3, 2007 10:29 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Site News

New Landsea Paper in EOS

Chris Landsea has shared his just-out paper from EOS (PDF) and send the following capsule summary:

The link between the frequency of tropical cyclones [hurricanes and tropical storms] and anthropogenic global warming has become an emerging focus. However, an analysis of the data shows that improved monitoring in recent years is responsible for most, if not all, of the observed trend in increasing frequency of tropical cyclones.

Comments, criticisms, alternative perspectives welcomed!

Posted on May 3, 2007 08:58 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

May 02, 2007

Bob Ward Responds - Swindle Letter

In fairness to Bob Ward, lead author of the "Swindle Letter" we thought it important to highlight comments that he submitted under that thread. -Ed.]

Click through for his comments . . .

Some interesting comments here about the letter. I thought it might be helpful to clarify a few points.

First, I would encourage Russell Seitz not to continue to spread the entirely false rumour that I was sacked by the Royal Society. It is a shame that he is using Prometheus as a platform for his personal smear campaign against me - or perhaps this is an example of him exercising his cherished right to "freedom of speech"?

Some have tried to characterise the letter as a violation of the right to free speech. It is not. The UK's Broadcasting Code specifies that "Views and facts must not be misrepresented". When 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' was broadcast on Channel Four on 8 March, and subsequently repeated on More 4, I believe it violated the Broadcasting Code because it contained major misrepresentations of views and facts. I have submitted a complaint to both the broadcaster and to Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator.

Ofcom and Channel Four have yet to rule on the complaints from me and about 200 other people. However, Wag TV, the programme's producers are not obliged to reflect that ruling at all in the DVD version of the programme, and indeed it is being marketed partly on the basis that it was broadcast on Channel Four.

It seems to me and the other 36 signatories that viewers are just as likely to be misled by the misrepresentations within the programme regardless of whether it is watched on DVD or on a TV channel. We wrote to ask the programme-maker to remove the misrepresentations before distributing the DVD. He has so far admitted just one of the seven major misrepresentations, but has steadfastly refused to make any changes.

Free speech comes with responsibilities, and in the UK at least there are regulations that are designed to ensure that the media do not knowingly mislead the public. The letter does not complain about the the airing of different opinions on climate change, and I'm not arguing that the programme-maker shouldn't be able to tell porky pies at dinner parties with his mates from the media. But I do think that programme-makers should take their responsibilities seriously and to consider the public interest.

It remains to be seen whether the confident predictions that the letter will have the opposite effect to that intended will be right. To me, success would be for everybody who is exposed to the misrepresentations in the programme to at least be aware of them.

Posted on May 2, 2007 02:43 PM View this article | Comments (28)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics

April 30, 2007

The Swindle Letter

Some of you will be aware that a TV film entitled "The Great Global Warming Swindle" was produced by a company called Wag TV and shown on UK TV. The show, which I have not seen, purportedly debunks the science behind climate change. When aired it generated the sort of tempest in a teapot reaction that so often characterizes these sorts of things.

But subsequently, Bob Ward, formerly a spokesperson for the Royal Society and now in a similar role for a catastrophe modeling firm, RMS, Inc., organized a open letter calling for Wag TV, and the film's producer Martin Durkin, to cease and desist plans to disseminate the show via DVD. The letter has stirred up a debate about free speech and the role of scientists in political debates. Mr. Ward explained the letter as follows:

"Free speech does not extend to misleading the public by making factually inaccurate statements. Somebody has to stand up for the public interest here."

This episode is similar in some ways to Mr. Ward's efforts when employed by the Royal Society to silence ExxonMobil using the same strategy.

I have a different reaction to this episode than I did to the Royal Society letter to ExxonMobil. Then I argued that the Royal Society was acting inappropriately, given its mission. In this case I take no issue with the appropriateness of Mr. Ward's actions, I just think that they are wrongheaded. The difference is that the scientists organized by Mr. Ward in this case are speaking on their own with the support of a number of advocacy groups. They are not using the authority of the Royal Society, or any other public interest group, to advance their special interests. This is power politics pure and simple in the public arena.

And from that standpoint, I think that Mr. Ward's letter will prove ineffective with respect to the goals that he seeks, and most likely will have the opposite effect to that intended. In such circumstances, I recall how sales of Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist quadrupled after it was criticized by scientists. A link in the comments here in a previous thread from Francis Sedgemore, who I have not met perviously, points to some of his strong, but on target comments, which I stitch together from his two relevant blog posts:

You can take it that I have little time for Mr Durkin or his junk science film, and there should be no need for me to rehash the arguments against it. . .
Ward’s open letter is a very bad mistake, in my opinion. As well as indicating a contempt for free speech, the signitories display a lack of political nous, and I fear that Durkin will run rings around them. . . what annoys me most about all this is how public scientific discourse on climate change is fast degenerating to a level set by the worst elements of the scientifically-illiterate media. . .

What we need is not calls for censorship, but more scientists and science communicators aggressively putting the case for good science. Stern letters and articles in the broadsheets make us all look ridiculous by association. . . if this is to be our response to inaccurate material in the public domain, and the ravings of lunatics, where do we start? How about the bible? "See you in court, Dr Ratzinger. We have ways of making you shut up!"

This is spot on. When members of the scientific community call for silencing of others in political debates, at best it demonstrates that they believe that they cannot win arguments on their merits, and at worst is demonstrates a complete disregard for democracy and the ability of the public to participate in important political debates. Positioning oneself n opposition to fundamental principles of democracy is always a losing proposition.

Posted on April 30, 2007 10:53 AM View this article | Comments (21)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics | The Honest Broker

April 26, 2007

The Battle for U.S. Public Opinion on Climate Change is Over

We've argued here that it has been over for a while, but this survey from the New York Times should make it obvious:

Americans in large bipartisan numbers say the heating of the earth’s atmosphere is having serious effects on the environment now or will soon and think that it is necessary to take immediate steps to reduce its effects, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll finds.
Ninety percent of Democrats, 80 percent of independents and 60 percent of Republicans said immediate action was required to curb the warming of the atmosphere and deal with its effects on the global climate. Nineteen percent said it was not necessary to act now, and 1 percent said no steps were needed.

Recent international reports have said with near certainty that human activities are the main cause of global warming since 1950. The poll found that 84 percent of Americans see human activity as at least contributing to warming.

The poll also found that Americans want the United States to support conservation and to be a global leader in addressing environmental problems and developing alternative energy sources to reduce reliance on fossil fuels like oil and coal.

For those still looking to play the skeptic game there is also good news as there are still a few left: 4% said recent strange weather was caused by "God/end of world/bible" and 2% said "space junk." ;-) In all seriousness, I don't expect the skeptic game to end any time soon, despite the overwhelming consensus of public opinion.

Posted on April 26, 2007 08:47 PM View this article | Comments (25)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

Swing State Al

This 2008 presidential race poll by Quinnipac University provides some evidence in support of our hypothesis that climate change can prove to be a powerful wedge issue for Al Gore in the 2008 election. Key point:

But former Vice President Al Gore, who is not yet a candidate, runs better against Republican challengers in most Swing State matchups than Sen. Clinton or Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. . . "Mayor Rudolph Giuliani remains the front-runner, but he and the entire Democratic field should wonder if Al Gore will become an inconvenient truth in the 2008 presidential race and go for the biggest Oscar of them all," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

Posted on April 26, 2007 01:23 PM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics

The Politics of Air Capture

A while back we prepped our readers to get ready for air capture. This article from a New Jersey newspaper, the Star-Ledger, describes how one air capture technology is progressing and how different interests are already taking political positions on its merits:

Klaus Lackner's invention has been called many things -- a wind scrubber, a synthetic tree, a carbon vacuum, even a giant fly swatter.
The energy guru, inventor and professor at Columbia University prefers to call it an "air extractor." By any name, however, Lackner predicts that the giant machines he is building will one day stop global warming in its tracks.

After three years of intensive experiments, Lackner and scientists at Global Research Technologies LLC, in Arizona, have produced a working model of the device, which can sop up carbon dioxide, the dreaded greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere.

"Look, it's one arrow in the quiver," said Lackner, reached by telephone. "This begins to offer a solution to an overwhelming problem."

Others were more expansive.

"This significant achievement holds incredible promise in the fight against climate change," said Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia. "The world may, sooner rather than later, have an important tool in this fight."

Here is one reaction to the technology:

"There's no magic bullet to save us from the problem of global warming," said Kert Davies, an energy expert for Greenpeace USA in Washington, D.C. Removing greenhouse gases so readily will not encourage people to develop alternate, renewable technologies, he said, and strive for energy efficiency.
Such techno-fixes also miss the point of the environmental degradation brought on by the use of fossil fuels, he said.

Carbon scrubbers won't stop oil spills, habitat-destroying strip mining and ozone, he said. "It's like having cancer and putting a Band-Aid on it," he added.

Besides, Davies said, the devices, which will in principle be larger than the prototype, will be eyesores. "Can you imagine thousands of acres of giant fly swatters across the land?"

If reducing fossil fuels is not really about carbon dioxde, as the Greenpeace spokesman suggests but also about many other benefits, then why shouldn't these benefits play a more central role in energy policy debates? And being so quick to abandon the carbon dioxide argument is not an effective strategy for compelling action on carbon dioxide. Greenpeace has come out in favor of wind power and the required acres of windmills across the land. This is hard to square with CO2-removal technologies as eyesores, unless one recognizes that the aesthetics of a technology appear to be a function of its political role.

I have no idea if Professor Lackner's ideas will prove to have technical merit or not. However, I do believe that all options should be on the table, and we should resist efforts to limit choice prematurely.

April 25, 2007

Gliese 581

This fascinating discovery portends all sorts of interesting ethical, political, and policy questions. I do wonder how much thinking governments, the Vatican, and others have put into developing a response plan for when life is discovered beyond Earth. It'd be surprising if there were no thinking along these lines, then again, maybe not.

Posted on April 25, 2007 12:05 PM View this article | Comments (16)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

April 23, 2007

What does Consensus Mean for IPCC WGIII?

The IPCC assessment process is widely referred to as reflecting a consensus of the scientific community. An AP news story reports on a leaked copy of the forthcoming Working Group III report on mitigation.

"Governments, businesses and individuals all need to be pulling in the same direction," said British researcher Rachel Warren, one of the report's authors.
For one thing, the governments of such major emitters as the United States, China and India will have to join the Kyoto Protocol countries of Europe and Japan in imposing cutbacks in carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases emitted by industry, power plants and other sources.

The Bush administration rejected the protocol's mandatory cuts, contending they would slow U.S. economic growth too much. China and other poorer developing countries were exempted from the 1997 pact, but most expected growth in greenhouse emissions will come from the developing world.

The draft report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose final version is to be issued in Bangkok on May 4, says emissions can be cut below current levels if the world shifts away from carbon-heavy fuels like coal, embraces energy efficiency and significantly reduces deforestation.

"The opportunities, the technology are there and now it's a case of encouraging the increased use of these technologies," said International Energy Agency analyst Ralph Sims, another of the 33 scientists who drafted the report.

As we've often discussed here, human-caused climate change is a serious problem requiring attention to both mitigation and adaptation. While I can make sense of a consensus among Working Group I scientists on causes and consequences of climate change, and even a consensus among Working Group II on impacts, how should we interpret a "consensus" among 33 authors recommending specific political actions? All of the movement toward the "democratization of science" and "stakeholder involvement" and "public participation" that characterizes science and technology issues ranging from GMOs to nanotechnology to nuclear waste disposal seems oddly absent in the climate issue in favor of a far more technocratic model of decision making. Is climate change somehow different?

Posted on April 23, 2007 07:01 PM View this article | Comments (11)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics | Scientific Assessments

April 20, 2007

New GAO Report on Climate Change and Insurance

At the request of Congressman Joseph Lieberman (ID-CT), the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a research arm of Congress, has just released a report on climate change and insurance (PDF). The report is excellent and well worth reading for anyone with interest in the subject. Now whether or not an excellent report makes a positive difference in policy making is another matter . . . Here are a few excerpts and my commentary:

On trends in losses:

Taken together, private and federal insurers paid more than $320 billion in claims on weather-related losses from 1980 through 2005. In constant dollars, private insurers paid the largest part of the claims during this period, $243.5 billion (about 76 percent); followed by federal crop insurance, $43.6 billion (about 14 percent); and federal flood insurance, $34.1 billion (about 11 percent). Claims varied significantly from year to year—largely due to the incidence and effects of catastrophic weather events such as hurricanes and droughts—but generally increased during this period. In particular, the years with the largest insured losses were generally associated with major hurricanes, which comprised well over one-third of all weather-related losses since 1980. The growth in population in hazard-prone areas, and resulting real estate development and increasing real estate values, have increased federal and private insurers’ exposure, and have helped to explain the increase in losses. In particular, heavily-populated areas along the Northeast, Southeast, and Texas coasts have among the highest value of insured properties in the United States and face the highest likelihood of major hurricanes. Due to these and other factors, federal insurers’ exposures have grown substantially. Since 1980, NFIP’s exposure has quadrupled, nearing $1 trillion, and program expansion has increased FCIC’s exposure nearly 26-fold to $44 billion. These escalating exposures to catastrophic weather events are leaving the federal government at increased financial risk. FCIC officials told us, for example, that if the widespread Midwest floods of 1993 were to occur today, losses would be five times greater. [p. 4]

How much would that be? The 1993 Midwest floods resulted in $1.3 billion in federal flood insurance costs (Source: PDF). Five times this amount is $6.5 billion, in 1993 dollars. Adjusting for inflation to 2005 dollars gives a total of $8.5 billion, which is about half the costs of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, and more than four times the premiums taken in by the program annually (Source: PDF).

The conclusion? Regardless of climate change federal flood insurance is of questionable financial sustainability without an expectation of major and frequent subsidies. So perhaps greater attention to adaptation might be needed:

Federal insurance programs, on the other hand, have done little to develop the kind of information needed to understand the programs’ long-term exposure to climate change for a variety of reasons. The federal insurance programs are not oriented toward earning profits like private insurers but rather toward increasing participation among eligible parties. Consequently, neither program has had reason to develop information on their long-term exposure to the fiscal risks associated with climate change.
We acknowledge the different mandate and operating environment in which the major federal insurance programs operate, but we believe that better information about the federal government’s exposure to potential changes in weather-related risk would help the Congress identify and manage this emerging high-risk area—one which may not constitute an immediate crisis, but which does have significant implications for the nation’s growing fiscal imbalance. Accordingly, GAO is recommending that the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of Homeland Security direct the Under Secretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services and the Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness to analyze the potential long-term fiscal implications of climate change for the FCIC and the NFIP, respectively, and report their findings to the Congress.

Another factor not mentioned here is the bias against adaptation in climate policy. For example, in yesterday's Wall Street Journal (by subscription), Senator Lieberman (mis)used the report to justify changes in energy policies, saying that it:

presents another strong argument -- this one fiscal -- for adopting an economywide, cap and trade, anti-global-warming law.

But the report offers absolutely no information on how changes in energy policies will affect disaster losses. The report certainly offers no recommendations on energy policies. In fact, to the contrary, it cites our Hohenkammer workshop which clearly explained that the most effective responses over coming decades will be adaptive in nature. And as we've discussed on occasion here, there is good reason for concern not just in the public sector about adaptive capacity -- the so-called "catastrophe models" used by private insurers may not leave them as prepared to manage risk as they might think.

Finally, there is this very interesting nugget found in the response by the USDA (Appendix 5, p. 59), which runs the federal crop insurance progam:

The increase in crop insurance indemnities over time reflects the rapid growth of the crop insurance program, not an increase in either the frequency and/or severity of catastrophic weather events. In fact, the severity of loss for the crop insurance program, as measured by the loss ratio, has been generally lower in the 1990's and 2000's than in the 1980's. Thus, if anything, the frequency and severity of catastrophic loss events for the crop insurance program appears to be decreasing.

Interesting, huh?

Posted on April 20, 2007 07:42 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

April 19, 2007

Media Reporting of Climate Change: Too Balanced or Biased?

Cherries ripe for the picking:

Too balanced

Biased

Put me in neither camp. I actually think that the media -- in toto -- has done a good job of covering a challenging and protean issue.

Posted on April 19, 2007 08:59 PM View this article | Comments (19)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

A Little Testy at RealClimate

Based on my most recent interaction, the folks at RealClimate seem less interested than ever on an open exchange of views on scientific topics. But I guess that is what might be expected when one points out that the they are spreading misinformation.

A commenter on a thread on ocean temperatures asked an innocuous question about the new paper by Vecchi and Soden which was discussed here by Chris Landsea . The always cordial Michael Mann replied:

I have no knowledge of (or frankly, interest in) what Chris Landsea may be saying about the paper . . . In short, the Emanuel (2005) study continues to stand on its merit, and I don't see where this paper puts even a dent in it.

I don't much read RealClimate anymore, but when a commenter on the Landsea thread pointed to this exchange in the comments here, I surfed over to find this blatantly false assertion by Michael Mann in response to a follow up comment:

Emanuel (2005) shows that the warming SSTs are behind the increased TC intensity in the Atlantic. No impartial reading of that paper could come to any other conclusion.

Being a science site and all, I assumed that the RealClimate folks would be happy to engage in a discussion of, you know, science. Boy was I was mistaken. Here is my submitted response:

Mike-
You are simply incorrect when you assert: "Emanuel (2005) shows that the warming SSTs are behind the increased TC intensity in the Atlantic. No impartial reading of that paper could come to any other conclusion."

Here is what Emanuel actually says:

"Tropical cyclones do not respond directly to SST, however, and the appropriate measure of their thermodynamic environment is the potential intensity, which depends not only on surface temperature but on the whole temperature profile of the troposphere. . . The above discussion suggests that only part of the observed increase in tropical cyclone power dissipation is directly due to increased SSTs; the rest can only be explained by changes in other factors known to influence hurricane intensity, such as vertical wind shear."

Misrepresenting Emanuel is bad enough, but for a site that often underscores the importance of consensus, your favoring of one single study (on a thread about not favoring one single study) when consensus perspectives exist (WMO, IPCC) does a disservice to your readers.

Here is what RealClimate allowed:

Mike-
You are simply incorrect when you assert: "Emanuel (2005) shows that the warming SSTs are behind the increased TC intensity in the Atlantic. No impartial reading of that paper could come to any other conclusion."

What are they so worried about that they have to protect their audience from the comments of a political scientist?

Here is Michael Mann's (always cordial) response:

Response: Roger, we're not about cherry-picking sentences and out of context quotations here at RC, so you should take that somewhere else. Anybody who has studied the scientific issues involved well knows that SSTs in this context are a proxy for a more complex set of interconnected atmospheric environmental variables which tend to covary with it. We hardly need you to quote Emanuel for us. Figure 1 in Emanuel (2005) comparing SST and TC Power Dissipation in the tropical Atlantic speaks for itself, you might want to take another look. If we do an article on Hurricanes in the near future, you're free to engage in the discussion. But that's not the topic of this post, so we're going to close it out with this. -mike

Heaven forbid a discussion of actual substance over there. If we did we might have to discuss Kossin et al. and how SSTs don't covary with intensity in all basins, and the fact that Emanuel signed on to the WMO consensus, and well, a whole bunch of stuff that is fair game to discuss in scientific circles, but not apparently at RealClimate. In my view the issue of hurricanes and climate remains uncertain and contested and is well worth discussing.

Posted on April 19, 2007 07:48 PM View this article | Comments (34)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

April 18, 2007

Some Views of IPCC WGII Contributors That You Won't Read About in the News

I was surprised to read in E&E News today a news story on yesterday's hearing held by the House Science Committee suggesting that the take-home message was that adaptation would be difficult, hence mitigation should be preferred (for subscribers here is the full story). My reading of the written testimony suggested a very different message, and not one I've seen in the media. Below are some relevant excerpts from IPCC WG II authors who testified yesterday (emphasis added). I know both and respect their views.

Roger Pulwarty (PDF)

Climate is one factor among many that produce changes in our environment. Demographic, socio-economic and technological changes may play a more important role in most time horizons and regions. In the 2050s, differences in the population projections of the four scenarios contained in the IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios show that population size could have a greater impact on people living in water-stressed river basins (defined as basins with per-capita water resources of less than 1000 m3/year) than differences in emissions scenarios. As the number of people and attendant demands in already stressed river basins increase, even small changes in natural or anthropogenic climate can trigger large impacts on water resources.
Adaptation is unavoidable because climate is always varying even if changes in variability are amplified or dampened by anthropogenic warming. In the near term, adaptation will be necessary to meet the challenge of impacts to which we are already committed. There are significant barriers to implementing adaptation in complex settings. These barriers include both the inability of natural systems to adapt at the rate and magnitude of climate change, as well as technological, financial, cognitive and behavioral, social and cultural constraints. There are also significant knowledge gaps for adaptation, as well as impediments to flows of knowledge and information relevant for decision makers. In addition, the scale at which reliable information is produced (i.e. global) does not always match with what is needed for adaptation decisions (i.e. watershed and local). New planning processes are attempting to overcome these barriers at local, regional and national levels in both developing and developed countries.

Shardul Agrawala (PDF)

The costs of both mitigation and adaptation are predominantly local and near term. Meanwhile, the climate related benefits of mitigation are predominantly global and long-term, but not immediate. Owing to lag times in the climate system, the benefits of current mitigation efforts will hardly be noticeable for several decades. The benefits of adaptation are more immediate, but primarily local, and over the short to medium term.
Given these differences between mitigation and adaptation, climate policy is not about making a choice between adapting to and mitigating climate change. Even the most stringent mitigation efforts cannot avoid further impacts of climate change in the next few decades, which makes adaptation essential, particularly in addressing near term impacts. On the other hand, unmitigated climate change would, in the long term exceed the capacity of natural, managed, and human systems to adapt.

Posted on April 18, 2007 01:57 PM View this article | Comments (4)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Scientific Assessments

April 17, 2007

Bridges Column on The Honest Broker

My latest column for Bridges is out and in it I provide an overview of my new book. Here is how it begins:

When former US Vice President Al Gore testified before Congress last month he used an analogy to describe the challenge of climate change:
If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say, "Well, I read a science fiction novel that told me it's not a problem." If the crib's on fire, you don't speculate that the baby is flame retardant. You take action.

With this example Al Gore was not only advocating a particular course of action on climate change, he was also describing the relationship between science (and expertise more generally) and decision making. In Mr. Gore's analogy, the baby's parents (i.e. "you") are largely irrelevant to the process of decision making, as the doctor's recommendation is accepted without question.

But anyone who has had to take their child to a doctor for a serious health problem or an injury knows that the interaction between patient, parent, and doctor can take a number of different forms. In my new book The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics (Cambridge University Press), I seek to describe various ways that an expert (e.g., a doctor) can interact with a decision maker (e.g., a parent) in ways that lead to desirable outcomes (e.g., a healthy child). Experts have choices in how they relate to decision makers, and these choices have important effects on decisions but also the role of experts in society. Mr. Gore's metaphor provides a useful way to illustrate the four different roles for experts in decision making that are discussed in The Honest Broker.

The Honest Broker can be found at Amazon US, Amazon UK (and Amazon.ca has it at 40% off) and also through Cambridge University Press.

And as always, OSTINA has produced an excellent issue of Bridges, this one focused on innovation, read the whole thing.

Posted on April 17, 2007 11:09 AM View this article | Comments (6)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

Laurens Bouwer on IPCC WG II on Disasters

In the comments, Laurens Bouwer, of the Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, who served as an expert reviewer for the IPCC WGII report, provides the following perspective (Thanks Laurens!):

Thanks Roger, for this discussion. It clearly points the fact that IPCC has not done enough to make an unambiguous statement on the attribution of disaster losses in their Working Group 2 Summary for Policymakers (SPM). This now leaves room for speculation based on the individual statements and graphs from underlying chapters in the report, in particular Figure TS-15, Chapters 1, 3 and 7, that all have substantial paragraphs on the topic.
As reviewer for WG2 I have repeatedly (3 times) asked to put a clear statement in the SPM that is in line with the general literature, and underlying WG2 chapters. In my view, WG2 has not succeeded in adequately quoting and discussing all relevant recent papers that have come out on this topic -- see above-mentioned chapters.

Initial drafts of the SPM had relatively nuanced statements such as:

Global economic losses from weather-related disasters have risen substantially since the 1970s. During the same period, global temperatures have risen and the magnitude of some extremes, such as the intensity of tropical cyclones, has increased. However, because of increases in exposed values ..., the contribution of these weather-related trends to increased losses is at present not known.

For unknown reasons, this statement (which seems to implicitly acknowledge Roger's and the May 2006 workshop conclusion that societal factors dominate) was dropped from the final SPM. Now the SPM has no statement on the attribution of disaster losses, and we do not know what is the 'consensus' here.

Posted on April 17, 2007 07:51 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters | Scientific Assessments

April 16, 2007

On Framing . . .

Recent discussion of Nisbet/Mooney's presentation of "framing" in the blogosphere has been interesting, to say the least. I completely agree with the basic theoretical propositions being shared by Matt and Chris, though perhaps in framing framing in terms of a political battle over religion in modern society they may have misframed their argument -- at least if selling scientists on the inescapable reality of framing dynamics in public discourse was their goal.

In 1997 I wrote the following on the subject:

The characterization of a particular set of circumstances as a "problem" requires attention to who is claiming that a problem exists, their perspectives, and their ability to act (cf. Lasswell 1971). From the standpoint of effective practical action, it is important that a problem be appropriately framed and presented to those with authority and ability to act. There are many examples of modern-day Cassandras who identify important problems that fail to either reach or be understood by decision makers. Hence, the existence of information related to a problem is not a sufficient condition for addressing the problem; attention to a healthy process that actively links that information with a decision maker’s needs is also necessary.

For the full context, have a look at this paper, especially beginning at page 258:

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 1997: Asking the Right Questions: Atmospheric Sciences Research and Societal Needs. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 78:255-264. (PDF)

Posted on April 16, 2007 07:30 PM View this article | Comments (6)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics

Frank Laird on Peak Oil, Global Warming, and Policy Choice

Frank Laird, from the University of Denver and also a Center affiliate, has the lead article in our latest newsletter. His topic is peak oil, climate change, and policy choice. Here is an excerpt:

A recent spate of books and articles proclaim the end of oil and an imminent crisis for the world. Likewise, global warming alarms sound from almost every corner of the press. What are policy makers to do? How should policy analysts help decision makers frame the debate and assess the alternatives? Many advocates are trying to do exactly the wrong thing: narrow policy makers’ options through a rhetoric proclaiming that policy makers will have no choice but to adopt their favored technology, so the sooner they get to it, the better. This approach both misunderstands how policy making works and does a disservice to policy makers. . .
Ironically, both renewable and nuclear energy advocates see themselves as possessing the key to an energy-abundant and climate-safe future. Both advocacy communities have been around for decades, have a history of mutual hostility, and think their time is nigh. Yet both groups are using a language of inevitability that suggests a naïveté about public policy, short-changes the policy process, and makes it all the harder to have intelligent, nuanced discussions of the difficult policy choices that lie ahead.

Their central point is that society or governments will have “no choice” but to adopt their preferred solution. They believe that the problems of peak oil and climate change present such severe problems to our society that policy makers will realize that they must adopt nuclear or renewable energy, that the lack of choice will be plain.

This language distorts the reality of policy making and short-changes society by trying to close off debate over the many and possibly creative solutions that policy could bring to bear on these problems. The central fact of policy making is that governments always have a choice. No circumstance, no matter how dire, leaves them with only one choice. To be sure, not all choices are equally good, and anyone familiar with history will know that sometimes governments make bad, even disastrous, choices. But they always have choices to make. Pretending otherwise just misunderstands all we know about public policy.

Read the whole thing.

Posted on April 16, 2007 07:15 AM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Energy Policy | Technology Policy

April 12, 2007

New Peer-Reviewed Publication on the Benefits of Emissions Reductions for Future Tropical Cyclone (Hurricane) Losses Around the World

I have a paper accepted for publication that projects into the future a range of possible scenarios for increasing losses related to tropical cyclones around the world.

Pielke, Jr., R. A. (accepted, 2007). Future Economic Damage from Tropical Cyclones: Sensitivities to Societal and Climate Changes, Proceedings of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. (PDF)

The factors that comprise the different scenarios include changes in population, per capita wealth, tropical cyclone intensity, and also damage functions as a function of intensity. [Note: Tropical cyclone frequency is not included as scientists presently do not expect frequencies to increase. However, even if frequencies do increase it is possible in the scenarios to equate the effects of frequency in terms of intensity, as discussed in the paper.] The goal of the paper is to delineate a scenarios space as a function of permutations in these variables in order to assess the robustness of mitigation and adaptation responses to future losses. Here is the abstract:

This paper examines future economic damages from tropical cyclones under a range of assumptions about societal change, climate change, and the relationship of climate change to damage in 2050. It finds in all cases that efforts to reduce vulnerability to losses, often called climate adaptation, have far greater potential effectiveness to reduce damage related to tropical cyclones than efforts to modulate the behavior of storms through greenhouse gas emissions reduction policies, typically called climate mitigation and achieved through energy policies. The paper urges caution in using economic losses of tropical cyclones as justification for action on energy policies when far more potentially effective options are available.

Nothing new here for regular Prometheus readers, but now this analysis has been formalized and has gone through peer review. Here are the paper’s conclusions:

This paper finds that under a wide range of assumptions about future growth in wealth and population, and about the effects of human-caused climate change, in every case there is far greater potential to affect future losses by focusing attention on the societal conditions that generate vulnerability to losses. Efforts to modulate tropical cyclone intensities through climate stabilization policies have extremely limited potential to reduce future losses. This conclusion is robust across assumptions, even unrealistic assumptions about the timing and magnitude of emissions reductions policies on tropical cyclone behavior. The importance of the societal factors increases with the time horizon.
This does not mean that climate stabilization policies do not make sense or that policy makers should ignore influences of human-caused climate change on tropical cyclone behavior. It does mean that efforts to justify emissions reductions based on future tropical cyclone damages are misleading at best, given that available alternatives have far greater potential to achieve reductions in damage. The most effective policies in the face of tropical cyclones have been and will continue to be adaptive in nature, and thus should play a prominent role in any comprehensive approach to climate policy.

Posted on April 12, 2007 01:24 PM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters | Energy Policy

April 11, 2007

This is Just Embarassing

The Figure below is found in the IPCC WG II report, Chapter 7, supplementary material (p. 3 here in PDF). I am shocked to see such a figure in the IPCC of all places, purporting to show something meaningful and scientifically vetted. Sorry to be harsh, but this figure is neither. [Note: The reference (Miller et al. 2006) is not listed in the report (pointers from readers would be welcomed).]

I am amazed that this figure made it past review of any sort, but especially given what the broader literature on this subject actually says. I have generally been a supporter of the IPCC, but I do have to admit that if it is this sloppy and irresponsible in an area of climate change where I have expertise, why should I have confidence in the areas where I am not an expert?

Addendum, a few of the many problems with this figure:

1. Global average temperatures do not cause disaster losses, extreme events cause disasters, mostly floods and tropical cyclones.

2. if you can't attribute disaster losses regionally to changes in extremes, then you can't do it globally with a metric only loosely (at best) related to extremes.

2. A 9-year smoothing in a 35 year record?

3. The IPCC has said that 30 years is not sufficient for such an attribution analysis, a 35 year record with 4 degrees of freedom probably isn't either.

4. The Muir-Wood global dataset (if that is what is used) has huge error bars not noted here. Any global analysis should be matched with a regional summation.

5. The Muir-Wood dataset, without error bars, leads to opposite conclusions using a longer record to 1950. Why didn't they show that? I wonder . . .

6. Studies of floods and hurricanes at the regional level, around the world, do not support a relationship of average global atmospheric temperature and disaster losses.

7. A consensus conference with experts around the world came to very different conclusions. What happened to the importance of consensus?

A more comprehensive synthesis can be found here:

Pielke, Jr., R.A., 2006. Seventh Annual Roger Revelle Commemorative Lecture: Disasters, Death, and Destruction: Making Sense of Recent Calamities, Oceanography, Special Issue: The Oceans and Human Health, Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 138-147. (PDF)

Posted on April 11, 2007 11:48 AM View this article | Comments (17)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

Here We Go Again: Cherry Picking in the IPCC WGII Full Report on Disaster Losses

The IPCC WGII full report is available (hat tip: ClimateScienceWatch). I have had a look at what they say about disaster losses, and unfortunately, the IPCC WG II commits the exact same cherry picking error as did the Stern report.

Here is what IPCC says about catastrophe losses (Chapter 1, pp. 50-51):

Global losses reveal rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s. One study has found that while the dominant signal remains that of the significant increases in the values of exposure at risk, once losses are normalised for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend.

The one study? Muir-Wood et al. 2006 that was prepared as the basis for our workshop last year with Munich re on Disaster Losses and Climate Change. Here is what we said when the Stern Report cherry picked this same information:

The source is a paper prepared by Robert Muir-Wood and colleagues as input to our workshop last May on disasters and climate change. Muir-Wood et al. do report the 2% trend since 1970. What Stern Report does not say is that Muir-Wood et al. find no trend 1950-2005 and Muir-Wood et al. acknowledge that their work shows a very strong influence of 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons in the United States. Muir-Wood et al. are therefore very cautious and responsible about their analysis. Presumably this is one reason why at the workshop Robert Muir-Wood signed on to our consensus statements, which said the following:
Because of issues related to data quality, the stochastic nature of extreme event impacts, length of time series, and various societal factors present in the disaster loss record, it is still not possible to determine the portion of the increase in damages that might be attributed to climate change due to GHG emissions . . . In the near future the quantitative link (attribution) of trends in storm and flood losses to climate changes related to GHG emissions is unlikely to be answered unequivocally.

The Stern Report’s selective fishing out of a convenient statement from one of the background papers prepared for our workshop is a classic example of cherry picking a result from a diversity of perspectives, rather than focusing on the consensus of the entire spectrum of experts that participated in our meeting. The Stern Report even cherry picks from within the Muir-Wood et al. paper.

The full discussion by the IPCC WG II has a bit more nuance, but it is clear that they are reaching for whatever they can to support a conclusion that simply is not backed up in the broader literature. Can anyone point to any other area in the IPCC where one non-peer-reviewed study is used to overturn the robust conclusions of an entire literature? Here is the full discussion:

Economic losses attributed to natural disasters have increased from US$75.5 billion in the 1960s to US$659.9 billion in the 1990s (a compound annual growth rate of 8%) (United Nations Development Programme 2004). Private sector data on insurance costs also shows rising insured losses over a similar period (Munich Re Group 2005; Swiss Reinsurance Company 2005). The dominant signal is of significant increase in the values of exposure (Pielke and Hoppe 2006).
However, as has been widely acknowledged, failing to adjust for time-variant economic factors yields loss amounts that are not directly comparable and a pronounced upward trend through time for purely economic reasons. A previous normalization of losses, undertaken for United States hurricanes by Pielke and Landsea (1998) and US floods (Pielke et al., 2002) included normalizing the economic losses for changes in wealth and population to express losses in constant dollars. These previous national US assessments, as well as those for normalized Cuban hurricane losses (Pielke et al., 2003), did not show any significant upward trend in losses over time, but this was before the remarkable hurricane losses of 2004 and 2005.

A ‘global’ catalogue of catastrophe losses was constructed (Muir Wood et al., 2006) normalized to account for changes that have resulted from variations in wealth and the numbers and values of properties located in the path of the catastrophes, using the method of Pielke and Landsea (1999). The global survey was considered largely comprehensive from 1970–2005 for countries and regions (Australia, Canada, Europe, Japan, South Korea, US, Caribbean, Central America, China, India and the Philippines) that had centralized catastrophe loss information and included a broad range of peril types: tropical cyclone, extratropical cyclone, thunderstorm, hailstorm, wildfire and flood, and that spanned high and low latitude areas.

Once the data were normalized a small statistically significant trend was found for an increase in annual catastrophe loss since 1970 of 2% per year (see Fig. SM1.1). However, for a number of regions, such as Australia and India, normalized losses show a statistically significant reduction since 1970. The significance of the upward trend is influenced by the losses in the US and Caribbean in 2004 and 2005 and arguably biased by the relative wealth of the US, in particular relative to India.

More on the figure that they reference in the next post . . .

Posted on April 11, 2007 10:51 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

April 09, 2007

Turn the Trade Balance Around

It is not a prescription drug, but The Honest Broker can be found at Amazon Canada for less than US$20, which is almost US$11 less than at Amazon U.S.. Go figure.

Posted on April 9, 2007 02:40 AM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

April 07, 2007

A Comment on IPCC Working Group II on the Importance of Development

Implicit in the work of the IPCC, and almost explicit in the report released yesterday, is the overriding importance of how the world choses to develop in the future. In the analysis in the IPCC lies the inescapable fact that how the world chooses to develop, independent of how the world responds to climate change, will modulate future global per capita GDP by a factor of up to 4.7 (the differences between the lowest and highest in the IPCC storylines for the future). By contrast, how the world chooses to respond to climate change, independent of how the world develops, will modulate future global per capita GDP by a factor of 1.05 to 1.20 (i.e., the conclusions presented in the IPCC WG II and the Stern Report).

To put this another way, from the standpoint of global GDP decisions that the world makes that make one storyline more likely to occur than another are between 19 and 74 times more important than decisions that are made about greenhouse gas emissions, under the assumptions provided by the IPCC!

So long as the IPCC, the Stern report, and others use GDP as a metric to advocate action on climate change, then this result is unavoidable. This is the main reason why some people have concluded that decisions about development, otherwise known as adaptation, must be front and center in any discussion of climate change. Yet the IPCC continuously tries to deemphasize the importance of adaptation as development, for instance writing that,

there are formidable environmental, economic, informational, social, attitudinal and behavioural barriers to implementation of adaptation.

Of course the exact same thing could be said about mitigation (but is not said), and by contrast the IPCC always frames mitigation in a positive light:

Many impacts can be avoided, reduced or delayed by mitigation.

It is well past time that the community openly and forthrightly discusses the importance of development pathways as the primary determinant of the future welfare of people and the environment. Carbon dioxide should be a part of that discussion, but not a substitute for it. The IPCC WG II is a small step in the right direction, but there remains a long way to go.

The background and calculations which provide the startling numbers above can be found below.

The IPCC effort is based on a range of plausible scenarios of the future:

Scenarios are images of the future, or alternative futures. They are neither predictions nor forecasts. Rather, each scenario is one alternative image of how the future might unfold. . . . They represent pertinent, plausible, alternative futures.

The IPCC uses four families of scenarios comprised of 40 different scenarios:

*The A1 storyline and scenario family describes a future world of very rapid economic growth, low population growth, and the rapid introduction of new and more efficient technologies. Major underlying themes are convergence among regions, capacity building and increased cultural and social interactions, with a substantial reduction in regional differences in per capita income. The A1 scenario family develops into four groups that describe alternative directions of technological change in the energy system.
* The A2 storyline and scenario family describes a very heterogeneous world. The underlying theme is self-reliance and preservation of local identities. Fertility patterns across regions converge very slowly, which results in high population growth. Economic development is primarily regionally oriented and per capita economic growth and technological change are more fragmented and slower than in other storylines.

* The B1 storyline and scenario family describes a convergent world with the same low population growth as in the A1 storyline, but with rapid changes in economic structures toward a service and information economy, with reductions in material intensity, and the introduction of clean and resource-efficient technologies. The emphasis is on global solutions to economic, social, and environmental sustainability, including improved equity, but without additional climate initiatives.

*The B2 storyline and scenario family describes a world in which the emphasis is on local solutions to economic, social, and environmental sustainability. It is a world with moderate population growth, intermediate levels of economic development, and less rapid and more diverse technological change than in the B1 and A1 storylines. While the scenario is also oriented toward environmental protection and social equity, it focuses on local and regional levels. (link)

The IPCC went to great efforts to suggest that any of the scenarios are possible future outcomes:

The broad consensus among the SRES writing team is that the current literature analysis suggests the future is inherently unpredictable and so views will differ as to which of the storylines and representative scenarios could be more or less likely.

And importantly, the scenarios do not consider any policies specific to human caused climate change:

The SRES storylines do not include explicit policies to limit GHG emissions or to adapt to the expected global climate change.

The IPCC concludes that:

All four SRES "futures" represented by the distinct storylines are treated as equally possible.

The role of policy making is to shape the future in preferred ways. The IPCC scenarios suggest different global outcomes based on decisions that societies around the world make, independently and jointly, starting today. Let’s consider such decisions with respect to one metric used by The Stern Report and the IPCC: wealth as measured by global per capita GDP. Let me acknowledge up front that GDP is not the only metric that matters, but it is one proposed by both Stern and IPCC, so I use it here.

The IPCC Working Group II report released yesterday (PDF) concluded that "global mean losses could be 1-5% Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 4 degrees C of warming." This conclusion is consistent with the conclusion of the Stern Report which concluded that business as usual could lead to economic losses of 5% to 20% of per capita GDP. In the analysis below we will therefore use both 5% and 20% as the possible impacts of climate change.

The IPCC finds global per capita GDP to be $4,000 in 1990. Under each of its four storylines it describes global per capita GDP for 2100 as follows (in constant 1990 dollars):

A1: $74,900
A2: $16,100
B1: $46,600
B2: $22,600

Under each storyline people around the world are significantly wealthier than they are today. The IPCC SRES report is careful to avoid a judgment of whether or not this is desirable. But because both Stern and IPCC WGII identify losses in GDP as being problematic, and a cause for action, we can safely conclude that both reports identify a higher GDP as being a better societal outcome than a lower GDP.

Now what happen when we factor in the effects climate change? For a 4 degree increase according to IPCC WGII these values would decrease by 5%:

A1: $71,200
A2: $15,300
B1: $44,300
B2: $21,500

And unmitigated BAU, according to Stern could reduce these values by as much as 20%:

A1: $59,900
A2: $12,900
B1: $37,300
B2: $18,100

So how the world chooses to respond to climate change, independent of how the world develops, will modulate future GDP by a factor of 1.05 to 1.20 (i.e., 5% to 20% found in IPCC WG II and Stern).

But implicit in the IPCC storylines, is how the world chooses to develop, independent of how the world responds to climate change, will modulate future GDP by a factor of up to 4.7 (i.e., the GDP in A1 divided by the GDP in A2). To put this another way, from the standpoint of global GDP decisions that the world makes that make one storyline more likely to occur than another are between 19 and 74 times more important than decisions that are made about greenhouse gas emissions, under the assumptions provided by the IPCC! [19 ~= 3.7/0.2 and 74 = 3.7/0.05]

This is the main reason why some people have concluded that decisions about development, otherwise known as adaptation, must be front and center in any discussion of climate change.

The IPCC WG II report acknowledges this point when it writes:

An important advance since the IPCC Third Assessment has been the completion of impacts studies for a range of different development pathways taking into account not only projected climate change but also projected social and economic changes. Most have been based on characterisations of population and income level drawn from the IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES). [2.4]
These studies show that the projected impacts of climate change can vary greatly due to the development pathway assumed. For example, there may be large differences in regional population, income and technological development under alternative scenarios, which are often a strong determinant of the level of vulnerability to climate change. [2.4]

To illustrate, in a number of recent studies of global impacts of climate change on food supply, risk of coastal flooding and water scarcity, the projected number of people affected is considerably greater under the A2-type scenario of development (characterised by relatively low per capita income and large population growth) than under other SRES futures. [T20.6] This difference is largely explained, not by differences in changes of climate, but by differences in vulnerability.

The unavoidable conclusion: we should be discussing development pathways, and not simply carbon dioxide.

Posted on April 7, 2007 09:24 AM View this article | Comments (12)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

April 05, 2007

NOAA’s New Media Policy: A Recipe for Conflict

The Department of Commerce, the parent agency of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has released a new media policy for its employees (thanks to an alert Prometheus reader for pointing us to it). The new policy was prepared in response to criticisms levied against the agency for its media policies related to agency scientists which some viewed as over-bearing and too politicized. Unfortunately, the new policy does little to address the challenges of public communication in highly politicized contexts, and probably makes things worse.

The new media policy can be found here in PDF. It seeks to draw dark lines between different activities and information. For instance, the policy seeks to distinguish a "Fundamental Research Communication" from an "Official Communication." A FRC is defined as:

means a Public Communication that relates to the Department's programs, policies, or operations and takes place or is prepared officially (i.e., under Section 6.03a. 1-4) and that deals with the products of basic or applied research in science or engineering, the results of which ordinarily are published and shared broadly within the scientific community, so long as the communication does not contain information that is proprietary, classified, or restricted by federal statute. If a communication also includes matters of policy, budget, or management, then it is not a Fundamental Research Communication.

By Contrast, an OC is defined as:

any Public Communication by an employee that relates to the Department's programs, policies, or operations and takes place or is prepared:
1. At the direction of a superior of the employee;

2. Substantially during the official working hours of the employee;

3. With the substantial use of U.S. Government resource(s); or

4. With substantial assistance of U.S. Government employee(s) on official duty. All news releases and similar documents are Official Communications.

This effort to distinguish research from other activities sets up a first point of inevitable conflict:

Although, by definition, an Official Communication is not a Fundamental Research Communication, for an Official Communication that deals with the products of basic or applied research in science or engineering, the role of the public affairs office is to assist with presentation, style, and logistics of the science or engineering information, not to alter its substance in any way.

It is impossible to preserve the precise substance of a scientific paper in a press release, unless one simply reprints the entire scientific paper. Even the choice of what to present and what not to present will alter the meaning in some manner, and the job of a press release is to simplify. In this circumstance, if a scientist does not like how their work has been presented, they need only cry that their work has been altered in some way, which of course will be true. If the Public Affairs official complains, then the dispute could wind up on the pages of the New York Times. This may or may not be desired, but NOAA should recognize that conflict is the inevitable result.

Or consider a research paper on NOAA's forecast process in the National Weather Service, is this an FRC or an OC? And who decides? There will be considerable overlap between the two, setting the stage for conflict.

Another inevitable point of conflict is found in the description of how communications are to be approved:

Based on the operating unit's internal procedures, all written and audiovisual materials that are, or are prepared in connection with, a Fundamental Research Communication must be submitted by the researcher, before the communication occurs, to the head of the operating unit, or his or her designee(s), for approval in a timely manner. These procedures may not permit approval or non-approval to be based on the policy, budget, or management implications of the research.

The guidelines do not explain how the agency will enforce the prohibition against using criteria of policy, budget, or management as criteria for approval or nonapproval. This is because this directive in unenforceable. Consider the simple example of a scholar doing work on the policy implications of hurricane evacuation planning. If the policy research element of this work is flawed – say, it doesn’t reflect the realities of interagency communication -- does this directive prohibit using criteria of “policy” to request that the author rethink his/her work?

The guidelines then have an odd passage suggesting that individual units within the agency will have accepted scientific positions:

Department researchers may draw scientific conclusions based on research related to their jobs, and may, subject to Section 7.01, communicate those conclusions to the public and the media in a Fundamental Research Communication. However, if such a conclusion could reasonably be construed as representing the view of the Department or an operating unit when it does not, then the researcher must make clear that he or she is presenting his or her individual conclusion and not the views of the Department or an operating unit.

Scientists always have their individual views, which they publish in the literature. Whether or not they conform with an agency perspective would seem to be irrelevant. In fact, while agencies do have to have clear views on policies, why should an agency even have its own views on scientific conclusions?

The following passage might have been the core of a more sensible media policy:

Only spokespeople designated by the Appropriate Public Affairs Office are authorized to speak for the Department or its operating units in an official capacity regarding matters of policy, budget, or management.

The following is bizarre:

If, in the course of the Official Communication, an unexpected topic arises that is not the intended subject matter, the employee shall promptly notify the head of the operating unit or Secretarial office, or their designee(s).

In the FAQ explaining the policy, DOC makes matters worse when they try to cleanly separate fact from opinion:

It is not acceptable for government employees to use government resources to promote personal activities or opinions. Department researchers may draw scientific conclusions based on fundamental research related to their jobs and may communicate such information. Personal opinions that go beyond scientific conclusions based on fundamental research related to their jobs are personal communications. If employees wish to publicize their personal opinions, they may do so on their own time, as long as it doesn’t violate federal law.

This is simply unenforceable. Consider that several NOAA scientists signed a joint statement last year on hurricane policies. Their views certainly included their personal opinions. Had they provided their views from their office, on their phone, or identified as a government employee, they would be in violation of the policy. This is nonsense.

I could go on. DOC will, in my opinion, inevitably have to revisit this fundamentally flawed policy. When they do, they should take another look at NASA’s communication policy for some guidance (PDF). When creating such policies, sometimes less is more. The key distinctions to be made are not about what can be said, as drawing bright lines between science and policy, fact and opinion, which are doomed to fail in practice. The key distinctions are to be made between those who are authorized to represent agency policies and those who are not. And any government employee who feels that they cannot support the policies of the agency has opportunities to motivate change from within, and ultimately if they feel strongly enough the chance to resign and seek change from the outside.

Any government employee who uses their position to subvert government performance risks their job. If they lose their job for such a reason, then their supervisor, politically appointed or not, will experience public and political scrutiny. Recent goings on in the Department of Justice speak to this issue.

DOC and NOAA should let the mechanisms of the U.S. government work, rather than trying to over-proceduralize the communications process. Their efforts have likely created the conditions for more not less conflict.

Disclaimer: I am a fellow of CIRES here at University of Colorado. CIRES is a NOAA joint institute. I have benefited from NOAA support of my research over the past 15 years.

Posted on April 5, 2007 08:34 AM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics | The Honest Broker

April 03, 2007

The Honest Broker Available in UK and EU This Week!

For our readers across the pond, you'll get it first (available here and here). We look forward to comments and criticisms!

Posted on April 3, 2007 07:37 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

April 02, 2007

A Few Comments on Massachusetts vs. EPA

We discussed the lawsuit in depth here at Prometheus not long ago (here and here). Now the Supreme Court has rendered a judgment. The outcome is along the lines that we anticipated (see Office Pool 2007), with the Supreme Court deciding 5-4 that EPA has authority to regulate carbon dioxide, but seemingly withholding judgment on whether EPA must regulate CO2. But a close reading of the majority opinion (warning: by this non-expert) suggests that the ruling in fact leaves EPA little alternative other than to promulgate regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.

First there is a science error in the majority opinion, though it seems clear that it would not change their judgment of injury. It states:

. . . global sea levels rose somewhere between 10 and 20 centimeters over the 20th century as a result of global warming.

According to the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report this value is more like 3 to 5.5 centimeters (from figure 11.10b here) with the rest of the 10 to 20 centimeters total due to natural causes. The Supreme Court has attributed all sea level rise to global warming which is incorrect. I had argued in earlier discussions that missing from this case, in arguments by both sides, was some evidence that the 3 to 5.5 centimeters of increase over the 20th century due to human-caused climate change can be related to some injury. However, given the line of argument taken by the majority opinion it appears that what would matter is that this number is quantifiable at all, not its relative magnitude, hence my opinion that an accurate reporting of actual 20th century sea level rise due to global warming would not have affected the reasoning. In footnote 21 the majority opinion explains this point as follows:

Yet the likelihood that Massachusetts’ coastline will recede has nothing to do with whether petitioners have determined the precise metes and bounds of their soon-to-be-flooded land. Petitioners maintain that the seas are rising and will continue to rise, and have alleged that such a rise will lead to the loss of Massachusetts’ sovereign territory. No one, save perhaps the dissenters, disputes those allegations. Our cases require nothing more.

The majority opinion also notes that redressability of harms also does not need to be precisely quantified or large:

That a first step might be tentative does not by itself support the notion that federal courts lack jurisdiction to determine whether that step conforms to law.

The bottom line?

Here is the SC take home message:

We need not and do not reach the question whether on remand EPA must make an endangerment finding, or whether policy concerns can inform EPA’s actions in the event that it makes such a finding. . . We hold only that EPA must ground its reasons for action or inaction in the statute.

In other words, if EPA wants to continue to avoid promulgating regulations on greenhouse gases, then it needs to come up with a better excuse than than those used so far under the Bush Administration. However, it seems clear from the text of the opinion that the majority does in fact render an opinion on whether EPA must make an endangerment finding. I am not an expert on Supreme Court rulings, but the following passage goes pretty far down the path of prescribing exactly what regulatory action EPA should take:

The alternative basis for EPA’s decision—that even if it does have statutory authority to regulate greenhouse gases, it would be unwise to do so at this time—rests on reasoning divorced from the statutory text. While the statute does condition the exercise of EPA’s authority on its formation of a “judgment,” 42 U. S. C. §7521(a)(1), that judgment must relate to whether an air pollutant “cause[s], or contribute[s] to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare,” ibid. Put another way, the use of the word “judgment” is not a roving license to ignore the statutory text. It is but a direction to exercise discretion within defined statutory limits. If EPA makes a finding of endangerment, the Clean Air Act requires the agency to regulate emissions of the deleterious pollutant from new motor vehicles. Ibid. (statingthat “[EPA] shall by regulation prescribe . . . standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class of new motor vehicles”). EPA no doubt has significant latitude as to the manner, timing, content, and coordination of its regulations with those of other agencies. But once EPA has responded to a petition for rulemaking, its reasons for action or inaction must conform to the authorizing statute. Under the clear terms of the Clean Air Act, EPA can avoid taking further action only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether they do.
EPA has refused to comply with this clear statutory command. Instead, it has offered a laundry list of reasons not to regulate. For example, EPA said that a number of voluntary executive branch programs already provide an effective response to the threat of global warming, 68 Fed. Reg. 52932, that regulating greenhouse gases might impair the President’s ability to negotiate with “key developing nations” to reduce emissions, id., at 52931, and that curtailing motor-vehicle emissions would reflect "an inefficient, piecemeal approach to address the climate change issue," ibid.

Although we have neither the expertise nor the authority to evaluate these policy judgments, it is evident they have nothing to do with whether greenhouse gas emissions contribute to climate change. [emphasis added]

The language here suggests that if greenhouse gases contribute to climate change, then EPA has no other choice other than to regulate. The majority opinion states that they have neither expertise not authority to make policy judgments, but do so anyway. I’d welcome Supreme Court experts weighing in on this. Is this sort of prescriptive language common? Is it actionable in future lawsuits?

If my interpretation is correct (big if) then regardless of what excuse for inaction that EPA under President Bush comes up with, the language of this opinion gives considerable latitude for a subsequent lawsuit suing EPA for its failure to regulate. I doubt that there is enough time left in the Bush Administration for this to occur. Nonetheless it will be a trump card to hold over the next president, Democrat or Republican. A similar lawsuit helped break the gridlock over ozone depletion leading to a negotiated settlement resulting is U.S. participation in the Vienna Convention (details here in PDF). Would there be a similar agreement possible on climate change? If so, what would petitioners ask for and what would a president agree to? Could all of this be trumped by Congress?

Posted on April 2, 2007 04:22 PM View this article | Comments (20)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

April 01, 2007

Sea Level Rise Consensus Statement and Next Steps

In a paper by Jim Hansen that we discussed last week, he called for a consensus statement to be issued on global warming, West Antarctica and sea level rise, from relevant scientific experts. A group of scientists have beat him to the punch issuing a consensus statement last week:

Polar ice experts from Europe and the United States, meeting to pursue greater scientific consensus over the fate of the world’s largest fresh water reservoir, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, conclude their three-day meeting at The University of Texas at Austin’s Jackson School of Geosciences with the following statement:

Read the whole thing, but the take home point is that there remain substantial uncertainties, as indicated in the following parts of the consensus statement:

*Satellite observations show that both the grounded ice sheet and the floating ice shelves of the Amundsen Sea Embayment have thinned over the last decades.
*Ongoing thinning in the grounded ice sheet is already contributing to sea-level rise.

*The thinning of the ice has occurred because melting beneath the ice shelves has increased, reducing the friction holding back the grounded ice sheet and causing faster flow.

*Oceanic changes have caused the increased ice-shelf melting. The observed average warming of the global ocean has not yet notably affected the waters reaching the base of the ice shelves. However, recent changes in winds around Antarctica caused by human influence and/or natural variability may be changing ocean currents, moving warmer waters under the ice shelves.

*Our understanding of ice-sheet flow suggests the possibility that too much melting beneath ice shelves will lead to "runaway" thinning of the grounded ice sheet. Current understanding is too limited to know whether, when, or how rapidly this might happen, but discussions at the meeting included the possibility of several feet of sea-level rise over a few centuries from changes in this region.

What is the policy significance of this statement?

1. Decisions about climate change will have to be made is the face of considerable uncertainties as those related to sea level rise will not be reduced anytime soon.

2. There is the "possibility of several feet of sea-level rise over a few centuries from changes in this region." This contrasts strongly with Jim Hansen's assertion that

"Spatial and temporal fluctuations are normal, short-term expectations for Greenland glaciers are different from long-term expectations for West Antarctica. Integration via the gravity satellite measurements puts individual glacier fluctuations in proper perspective. The broader picture gives strong indication that ice sheets will, and are already beginning to, respond in a nonlinear fashion to global warming.There is enough information now, in my opinion, to make it a near certainty that IPCC BAU climate forcing scenarios would lead to disastrous multi-meter sea level rise on the century time scale" (PDF).

Who will eventually be proven correct? I have no idea. Nor do I think that it matters at all from the perspective of policy (compare Naomi Oreskes' views on this subject here) . The significance of this difference in views has more to do with issue of scientific advice than sea level rise itself -- if scientists create an expectation that our decision making should be guided by consensus views of relevant experts, then they should take care when abandoning that approach to scientific advice when less politically convenient.

3. Bottom line: Sea level rose about 20 cm over the past century. The IPCC expects that it may rise from less than that amount to about 60 cm over the next century. RealClimate says they see another 40 cm possible in the IPCC report. And there is a long thin probability tail of higher amounts with low probability and high consequences.

So, What are the Next Steps?

**Mitigation actions can have only a small effect on sea level rise in the short term (e.g., from no impact decades hences to small impacts a century out) and thus respond primarily to the longer term threats of sea level rise more than a century in the future.

**The most (and only) effective responses to sea level rise over the century timescale will be adaptive. So once again we see that mitigation and adaptation respond to fundamentally different aspects of the climate issue. Mitigation and adaptation should occur in parallel.

**Mitigation and adaptation policies to in response to sea level rise have been looked at (notably in the work of Richard Tol, e.g., here), but far more needs to be done (e.g., as argued here in PDF and here in PDF). Sea level rise has, like so many aspects of the climate issue, fallen into the trap of the "prediction game" at the expense of research on the possible consequences of alternative policies in response to that which we already know. The sea level rise issue risks becoming simply a "poster child" for mitigation rather than an issue deserving more attention itself.

So my recommendation is: Rather than arguing over which predictions of the climate future (or which scientists) are correct, we know enough about the general trend in sea level rise and the possibility of a large increase to begin thinking and talking in far more depth about a wide range of possible policy responses, especially adaptation. Such discussions have to go beyond the simplistic use of future sea level rise as a argument to mitigate. Under any scenario of mitigation the adaptation challenge remains essentially the same, and similarly under any adaptation efforts the mitigation challenge does not change. Absolutely no science on the prediction of future sea level rise will alter this basic reality.

Posted on April 1, 2007 04:58 PM View this article | Comments (10)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Risk & Uncertainty

No Joke: 25 to 1

Andy Revkin has a piece in today's New York Times on the challenges facing climate adaptation. He reports that money being spent on human-caused climate change in developing countries under the Framework Convention on Climate Change is biased in favor of mitigation over adaptation by a factor of 25 to 1:

But for now, the actual spending in adaptation projects in the world’s most vulnerable spots, totaling around $40 million a year, “borders on the derisory,” said Kevin Watkins, the director of the United Nations Human Development Report Office, which tracks factors affecting the quality of life around the world.
The lack of climate aid persists even though nearly all the world’s industrialized nations, including the United States under the first President Bush, pledged to help when they signed the first global warming treaty, the Framework Convention on Climate Change, in 1992. Under that treaty, industrialized countries promised to assist others “that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change in meeting costs of adaptation.” It did not specify how much they would pay.

A $3 billion Global Environmental Facility fund maintained by contributions from developed countries has nearly $1 billion set aside for projects in poorer countries that limit emissions of greenhouse gases. But critics say those projects often do not have direct local benefits, and many are happening in the large fast-industrializing developing countries — not the poorest ones.

This situation exists despite the following consensus view from the IPCC:

In its most recent report, in February, the [IPCC] panel said that decades of warming and rising seas were inevitable with the existing greenhouse-gas buildup, no matter what was done about cutting future greenhouse gas emissions.

My former colleague (and boss) at NCAR, Mickey Glantz aptly sums up where this leaves climate policy:

Michael H. Glantz, an expert on climate hazards at the National Center for Atmospheric Research who has spent two decades pressing for more work on adaptation to warming, has called for wealthy countries to help establish a center for climate and water monitoring in Africa, run by Africans. But for now, he says he is doubtful that much will be done.
"The third world has been on its own," he said, "and I think it pretty much will remain on its own."

Posted on April 1, 2007 04:31 PM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

March 30, 2007

Response to Nature Commentary: Insiders and Outsiders

Three leaders in the adaptation community submitted a letter to Nature responding to our commentary published last month (here in PDF). Nature won't be publishing their letter, but we are happy to reproduce it here. Below is the letter and our response to it, followed by a bit more commentary from me.

We take issue with the commentary by Pielke et al. (Nature 445: 597). The authors accuse mitigation advocates of incorrectly arguing that efforts on adaptation detract from mitigation. We agree that the argument is spurious. Yet, the authors make the opposite argument which we also take issue with: that mitigation detracts from adaptation. The notion that the UNFCCC allows investments in adaptation to be reduced by investments in mitigation is unfounded.
Both mitigation and adaptation are needed. Global warming threatens to destabilize ice sheets, causing sea level rise to rise for centuries. It also threatens to cause widespread disruption of ecosystems and loss of biodiversity. It is not clear how adaptation will offset these impacts. Thus, mitigation is needed to slow down global warming and avoid its worst effects.

As the authors note, adaptation is also needed because climate change is underway and further warming is inevitable. The climate change adaptation community has long recognized that effective adaptation has to address shortcomings in natural resource management as well as addressing the added risks introduced by climate change. This is not a diversion, but a necessary response to an unprecedented threat facing humanity.

Joel B. Smith
Stratus Consulting Inc.
Boulder, CO USA

Ian Burton
University of Toronto
Toronto

Saleemul Huq
International Institute for Environment and Development
London

And here is our response, which we shared with the authors by email:

A criticism from arguably the three leading voices on adaptation for our not paying sufficient attention to mitigation underscores our point. You letter fails to acknowledge our main point -- that two views of adaptation are present in the current discourse. Of course, you are all well aware of this because it is you who has done the most to introduce the broader definition!
The narrow view of adaptation that we describe is indeed linked tightly to mitigation (as for instance reflected in the Stern Report) and does indeed compete with the broader view of adaptation as sustainable development (this tension is reflected in the IPCC reports which use both definitions inconsistently). Some of your own work arguing for the broader definition makes this absolutely clear. Our article was about how these two framings of adaptation compete with one another.

To fail to recognize this distinction is I think to mischaracterize our piece. If every response to advocacy for a greater emphasis on adaptation as sustainable development is countered by a criticism that describes the importance of mitigation, it is fair to ask who is creating the perception of a trade-off.

In response to climate change, we can (and must) do more than one thing at once. But to do so requires that we stop defending mitigation reflexively every time someone makes a strong argument for adaptation. Our piece argued that these agendas should be decoupled which is what the broad definition of adaptation helps to achieve. By not acknowledging this distinction, your letter in response brings them together again and creates ambiguity.

We do appreciate the feedback and it is indeed a sign of progress on this issue if we can begin debating the dimensions of adaptation, rather than if we should be adapting at all.

And I would further point to a recent Pew Center report co-authored by Joel Smith and Ian Burton (PDF) which included the following argument indicating that adaptation is indeed tightly tied to mitigation under the FCCC:

. . . .the adaptation effort has suffered from ambiguities in the [FCCC] regime. One concerns the very definition of adaptation, which is nowhere explicit in the Convention. In that adaptation is referenced only in the context of climate change, the implication is that support under the Convention must be directed to activities addressing primarily if not exclusively human-induced impacts. Yet, as noted earlier, and in expert meetings convened under the Convention, adaptation strategies often are most effective when addressing the full continuum of climate risk. In addition, there appears significant confusion over the terms for adaptation funding through the GEF. As the GEF was established to address global environmental issues, projects supported through its principal trust fund must deliver a "global environmental benefit." In the area of adaptation, most funding flows through the separate dedicated funds established under the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol. Although guidance from the parties is not explicit on the point, the GEF’s position is that the "global environmental benefits" test does not apply to these funds. Yet there remains a widespread perception among potential recipients that it does.

This is identical to the argument that we made in the Nature commentary and that I analyze in depth in this paper (in PDF)!

And Saleemul Huq (with Hannah Reid) write:

For example, the six case studies on adaptation to climate change undertaken under the auspices of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (see Agrawala, this Bulletin) define adaptation to climate change narrowly so that it refers to only those climate change impacts that are deemed to be directly attributable to human-induced climate change, rather than to adaptation to the broader range of impacts associated with "climate variability". A narrow definition of climate impacts would tend to then only produce a small range of adaptation responses as being necessary and hence requiring funding – in essence addressing only a very narrow set of examples of adaptation development linkages (i.e. the "tip of the iceberg" in Figure 2) and hence missing the much larger set of relevant adaptation-development linkages where there are additional co-benefits.

It is difficult for me to see how these perspectives differ at all from our own expressed in Nature as follows:

The focus on mitigation has created policy instruments that are biased against adaptation. Under the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC, rich countries pay costs that poor countries incur by adapting to the marginal impacts of climate change — but they can in principle avoid these costs through enhanced mitigation efforts. This provision of the Protocol exemplifies the failure to take adaptation seriously: not only are the funds involved provided on a voluntary basis by rich countries but they are held hostage to mitigation. The logic is that greenhouse-gas reductions will, in turn, reduce marginal adaptation costs. In practice, this means that the UNFCCC will pay "costs that lead to global environmental benefits, but not those that result in local benefits". To those experiencing devastating losses from climate impacts in developing countries, such logic must sound surreal: policy 'success' means not investing in adaptation even as climate impacts, driven mainly by non-climate factors, continue to mount.

The only difference that I can see between Smith, Burton, and Huq and Pielke, Prins, Rayner, and Sarewitz is that we are a bit less polite about discussing the big fat elephant in the room. And that just might be attributed to a difference between insiders and outsiders in the FCCC community.

Posted on March 30, 2007 11:16 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Interview at ClimateandInsurance.Org

I am interviewed by the website ClimateandInsurance.org, check it out here.

Posted on March 30, 2007 08:00 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Site News

March 29, 2007

Now I've Seen Everything

NASA's Jim Hansen has discovered STS (science and technology studies, i.e., social scientists who study science), and he is using it to justify why the IPCC is wrong and he, and he alone, is correct on predictions of future sea level rise and as well on calls for certain political actions, like campaign finance reform.

In a new paper posted online (here in PDF) Dr. Hansen conveniently selects a notable 1961 paper on the sociology of scientific discovery from Science to suggest that scientific reticence can be used to predict where future research results will lead. And he finds, interestingly enough, that they lead exactly to where his views are today.

What evidence does Dr. Hansen provide to indicate that his views on sea level rise are correct and those presented by the IPCC, which he openly disagrees with, are wrong? Well, for one he explains that no glaciologist agrees with his views (as they are apparently reticent), suggesting that in fact his views must be correct (a creative use of STS if I've ever seen one;-). If holding a minority view is a standard for predicting future scientific understandings then we should therefore apparently pay more attention to all those lonely skeptics crying out in the wilderness, no?

I find it simply amazing that Dr. Hansen has the moxie to invoke the STS literature to support his scientific arguments when that literature, had he looked at maybe one more paper, indicates that Bernard Barber's 1961 essay, while provocative is not widely accepted (see, e.g., this book or this paper). And even if one accepts Barber's article at face value which argues that scientists resist new discoveries (Thomas Kuhn, hello?), what Dr. Hansen doesn't explain (as he is throwing out the IPCC model of scientific consensus) is why his views are those that will prove to be proven correct in the future rather than those other scientific perspectives that are not endorsed by the IPCC. (Dr. Hansen appears to ignore Barber's argument in the same paper suggesting that older scientists are more likely to be captured by political or other interests when presenting their science.)

If we can use the sociology of science to foretell where science is headed, we could save a lot of money not having to in fact do the research. The climate issue is full of surprises and this one just about takes the cake for me. Now I've seen everything!

Posted on March 29, 2007 03:12 AM View this article | Comments (30)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Prediction and Forecasting

Cashing In

At least one IPCC lead author appears to be trying to cash in on concern over climate change. With the help of several University of Arizona faculty members, including one prominent IPCC contributor, a company called Climate Appraisal, LLC is selling address specific climate predictions looking out as far as the next 100 years. Call me a skeptic or a cynic but I'm pretty sure that the science of climate change hasn't advanced to the point of providing such place-specific information. In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest that if such information were credible and available, it'd already be in the IPCC. The path from global consensus to snake oil seems pretty short. I wouldn't deny anyone the chance to make a buck, but can this be good for the credibility of the IPCC?

Posted on March 29, 2007 02:57 AM View this article | Comments (6)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Prediction and Forecasting

March 28, 2007

Why is Climate Change a Partisan Issue in the United States?

Several people asked me to comment on this Jonathan Chait essay from the L.A. Times last week in which he sought to explain the partisan nature of the climate issue. While I think there are some elements of truth in Chait's perspective, I think that he misses the elephant in the room.

Climate change is indeed a partisan issue. This is confirmed time and again by opinion polls, most recently this poll released last week.

Chait seeks to explain this partisanship as follows:

How did it get this way? The easy answer is that Republicans are just tools of the energy industry. It's certainly true that many of them are. Leading global warming skeptic Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Texas), for instance, was the subject of a fascinating story in the Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago. The bottom line is that his relationship to the energy industry is as puppet relates to hand.
But the financial relationship doesn't quite explain the entirety of GOP skepticism on global warming. For one thing, the energy industry has dramatically softened its opposition to global warming over the last year, even as Republicans have stiffened theirs.

The truth is more complicated — and more depressing: A small number of hard-core ideologues (some, but not all, industry shills) have led the thinking for the whole conservative movement.

Your typical conservative has little interest in the issue. Of course, neither does the average nonconservative. But we nonconservatives tend to defer to mainstream scientific wisdom. Conservatives defer to a tiny handful of renegade scientists who reject the overwhelming professional consensus.

National Review magazine, with its popular website, is a perfect example. It has a blog dedicated to casting doubt on global warming, or solutions to global warming, or anybody who advocates a solution. Its title is "Planet Gore." The psychology at work here is pretty clear: Your average conservative may not know anything about climate science, but conservatives do know they hate Al Gore. So, hold up Gore as a hate figure and conservatives will let that dictate their thinking on the issue.

Chait's suggestion that non-conservatives defer to the scientific mainstream while conservatives do not gets the cart and horse mixed up. Chait falls victim to the idea that for some people -- those rational beings in the reality-based community -- political perspectives flow from a fountain of facts. And if one's entire view of the relationship of science and politics is grounded in very recent Republican-Democrat conflict it is easy to see how this perspective might be reinforced. On the very hot-button issues of climate change and the teaching of evolution, Republican political agendas require confronting current scientific consensus.

But a broader look at science and politics shows that challenges to a current scientific consensus occurs across the ideological spectrum. Consider genetically modified agricultural products and the European Union. The EU has strongly opposed these products for political and cultural reasons (sound familiar?) in the face of a scientific consensus that indicates little risks. Consider also smoking, where a robust scientific consensus exists, yet far more people smoke in left-leaning Europe than in the United States. When I testified before Congress last February I pointed out that the Democrats organizing the hearing had decided not to invoke a recent consensus statement on hurricanes and global warming in favor of relying on a few selected studies most convenient to their political agenda. The reality is that we all filter facts through our pre-existing values and biases, and each of use is perfectly capable of ignoring or selectively interpreting facts as is convenient. Those who stubbornly refuse to accept the previous sentence would be a good example of these dynamics.

The blindingly obvious and somewhat banal answer to the question why climate change is a partisan issue is that climate change is a partisan issue because it has evolved as a partisan issue. The fact that at some point the issue took on partisan characteristics has led to a reinforcement of the partisanship. The important question to ask is how it is that climate change became a partisan issue. There are several answers to this question.

1. George W. Bush. Everything George Bush touches becomes a partisan issue (and seems to break). George Bush squandered an opportunity to become a great president in the aftermath of 9/11 and instead will be remembered as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. In this context, his early-2001 decision to unceremoniously abandon the Kyoto process and flip the bird at Europe more than anything fed the partisan nature of the climate debate. In the 1992 presidential election climate change first became a high-level partisan issue as Al Gore and George H. W. Bush used the issue to score political points, with GHWB calling Gore "ozone man" and promising to counter the greenhouse effect with the "White House effect." Of course the deeper history, back to the 1970s, involves the Republicans as the party of the extractive resources industries and the Democrats as the party of alternative energy. These debates conveniently mapped right onto the 1980s emergence of climate change as Dan Sarewitz and I documented in 2000 in the Atlantic Monthly. Of course, if one were to go back to the 1950s and 1960s these partisan roles were somewhat reversed, as Frank Laird documents in his excellent book on the history of solar energy.

2. Al Gore. Long before George W. Bush was in politics Al Gore was in the business of politicizing the climate issue. I have no doubt that he feels strongly about climate change, but his actions for several decades bely his oft-stated claim that climate change is not a partisan issue. Today Al Gore's leadership on this issue is by its very nature a partisan issue:

Appearing before a Congressional Committee, Gore said that Global Warming is "not a partisan issue; it’s a moral issue." However, polling data suggests that among the general public it’s a very partisan issue. By a 65% to 9% margin, Democrats say that Gore knows what he’s talking about. By a 57% to 11%, Republicans say he does not. Those not affiliated with either party are evenly divided.

So long as the main protagonists in the U.S. climate issue are the opponents from the overwhelmingly partisan 2000 presidential election, how in the world can the climate issue be anything other than partisan?

3. The Chorus. Given the dynamics described above, it is entirely natural that the climate debate attracts participants ranging from experts to the lay public, who together I call the chorus. And people are attracted to the issue because of its partisan nature, and the nature of blogs and media coverage amplify the voice of the chorus. And in turn the chorus reinforces the partisan nature of the debate through several forms of dynamics.

First, climate change is a perfect issue for the scientization of politics. This refers to the tendency to characterize political debates in terms of technical disputes -- remember the Hockey Stick? There is an endless supply of climate science to debate and discuss and always the presence of irritating skeptics who challenge the current consensus (see discussion at RealClimate). This situation elevates the authority of subject matter experts in political debates, which makes it appealing for some experts, but also inevitably politicizes the expert community as they self-segregate according to political perspectives.

Second, self-segregation is not unique to experts. A short tour around the web reveals the truth of Cass Sunstein's notion of internet-based "echo chambers" in which people talk only with those who share their views and lambaste as evil subhumans those who they disagree with. It is a rare discussion on climate change that involves a thoughtful exchange of ideas from people who hold fundamentally different political views. The self-segregation has the effect of increasing the partisan nature of the debate as people come to believe more strongly of the absolute truth in their views and the absolute lack of morals in their opponents.

Third, forced segregation. For those who do not fit easily into the partisan nature of the climate debate, partisans go to great effort to force these perspectives into a partisan framework. For instance, here at Prometheus we've consistently advanced views on climate policy (held long before George Bush came around) that emphasize the importance of adaptation and immediate, no-regrets mitigation to occur in parallel (see my 2006 Congressional testimony for the full spiel), and we've experienced a steady effort by some to frame our views as "right-leaning" simply because they are not "left-leaning." The repeated attacks on us from the environmental Gristmill blog are a case in point, despite the fact that there appears to be an enormous substantive agreement in our views. Of course, if the political right actually accepted the views on policy that we have been advocating then those on the political left would probably be rejoicing! On the climate issue, because the chorus has little stomach for perspectives that deviate in any sense from the partisan framing, it is any surprise that the partisan framing dominates?

The bottom line is that climate change is a partisan issue. It will likely remain so in the United States for a long time. Political action will happen nonetheless simply because the Democrats have succeeded in making it a political issue during a time of their ascendancy. If Al Gore runs for president, as I suspect he will, it will further increase the partisan nature of the debate. To the extent that Democrats continue to raise expectations that climate change is central to their agenda, action will inevitably occur. Republicans will eventually accept that action will occur and will do the best to use it as a vehicle to advance their own interests, as typically occurs in all political situations. For those interested in effective policy action, as opposed to scoring political points real or symbolic, there will be a continuing need to keep a focus on policy options and their likely consequences. Die hard partisans will do there best to make that task difficult as discussion of options requires the sort of nuance not present in political horse races.

Soon climate politics in the United States will come to resemble the current dynamics in the EU, in which the issues will be messier and more complicated. When that occurs, like old Cold Warriors the climate partisans will long for the days of good guys and bad guys, and will likely hang on too long to the past.

Posted on March 28, 2007 08:30 AM View this article | Comments (25)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

So Long as We Are Discussing Congressional Myopia . . .

I had a chance to meet Congressman Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD) last year at an informal dinner at the home of Thomas Lovejoy, head of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. In my conversations with Mr. Gilchrest I found him to be extremely thoughtful and exactly the sort of person that anyone would welcome representing them in Congress, Republican or Democrat. My views were reinforced when I saw Mr. Gilchrest sitting with Congressional committees looking into global warming even though he wasn’t on those committees but was attending simply to educate himself, one time when I was testifying.

So it was with some surprise that I read the following about Mr. Gilchrest in a news story last week:

House Republican Leader John Boehner would have appointed Rep. Wayne Gilchrest to the bipartisan Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming — but only if the Maryland Republican would say humans are not causing climate change, Gilchrest said.
"I said, 'John, I can't do that,'" Gilchrest said in an interview.

Gilchrest didn't make the committee. Neither did other Republican moderates or science-minded members, whose guidance centrist GOP members usually seek on the issue. Republican moderates, called the Tuesday Group, invited Boehner to this week's meeting to push for different representation.
. . .
Gilchrest expressed his interest in the committee several times to Boehner and Minority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri, telling them the best thing they could do for Republican credibility was to appoint members familiar with the scientific data.

"Roy Blunt said he didn't think there was enough evidence to suggest that humans are causing global warming," Gilchrest said. "Right there, holy cow, there's like 9,000 scientists to three on that one."

The fact that the Republican leadership seeks to ensure political unanimity via a litmus test on the science of climate change should be a surprise to no one. More troubling is the fact that the participation of one of our most thoughtful public servants on an important select committee is a casualty of such political myopia. Not only will policy discussions be impoverished by such actions, but it is also hard to see how it works in the favor of the Republican political agenda.

Posted on March 28, 2007 01:29 AM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

March 27, 2007

Pay No Attention to Those Earmarks

According to a column in the Wall Street Journal Congress, in its wisdom, has decided to prohibit the ability of its Congressional Research Service (CRS) to publish reports documenting congressional earmarks, or targeted spending inserted in appropriations bills (aka "pork-barrel spending"). This is a bad decision.

The thinking in Congress must be that if they don't report the existence of earmarks then no one will know what is going on. As has been documented time and again here we see an effort to shape political outcomes by manipulating the availability of information. In this case the incentives are not partisan, but institutional, as members of both political parties in Congress have a shared incentive to keep earmarks out of the public eye. Earmarks are often associated with irresponsible public spending (e.g., the Alaska "bridge to nowhere") and are especially problematic in the R&D enterprise, as I've discussed here previously.

Congress is doing the public a disservice by seeking to aggressively limit information on spending that it makes available to the public. This behavior is likely to be counterproductive when at the same time several Congress committees are conducting useful investigations of the Executive branch's heavy-handed information management strategies. In general, openness and transparency are good principles, and that is the case here as well.

Here is an excerpt from the WSJ column:

Nothing highlighted Congress's spending problem in last year's election more than earmarks, the special projects like Alaska's "Bridge to Nowhere" that members drop into last-minute conference reports leaving no opportunity to debate or amend them. Voters opted for change in Congress, but on earmarks it looks as if they'll only be getting more smoke and mirrors.
Democrats promised reform and instituted "a moratorium" on all earmarks until the system was cleaned up. Now the appropriations committees are privately accepting pork-barrel requests again. But curiously, the scorekeeper on earmarks, the Library of Congress's Congressional Research Service (CRS)--a publicly funded, nonpartisan federal agency--has suddenly announced it will no longer respond to requests from members of Congress on the size, number or background of earmarks. "They claim it'll be transparent, but they're taking away the very data that lets us know what's really happening," says Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn. "I'm convinced the appropriations committees are flexing their muscles with CRS."

Indeed, the shift in CRS policy represents a dramatic break with its 12-year practice of supplying members with earmark data. "CRS will no longer identify earmarks for individual programs, activities, entities, or individuals," stated a private Feb. 22 directive from CRS Director Daniel Mulhollan.

When Sen. Coburn and Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina submitted earmark inquiries recently, they were both turned down. Each then had heated conversations with Mr. Mulhollan. The director, who declined to be interviewed for this article, explained that because the appropriations committees and the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) were now preparing their own lists of earmarks, CRS should no longer play a role in the process. He also noted that both the House and Senate are preparing their own definitions of earmarks. "It is not appropriate for us to continue our research," his directive states.

That is sophistry. The House rule making earmarks public, which was passed in January, doesn't apply to earmarks for fiscal year 2007, the year Mr. Coburn wanted his report on. There is no Senate rule, and a proposed statute defining earmarks hasn't become law. OMB's list of earmarks applies only to fiscal year 2005.

And in any case, CRS works for Congress, so it is bizarre for it to claim work being done by the executive branch as a reason to deny members information it was happy to collect and release in the past. When I asked a CRS official if the new policy stemmed from complaints by appropriations committee members, she refused to answer the question, citing "confidentiality" concerns. . .

Today squeeze plays on CRS are not uncommon, and they have come from both parties. In the 1990s, GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey was so angry with a CRS report questioning the workability of a flat tax that he temporarily zeroed out the agency's budget. Rep. Henry Waxman, as a member of a Democratic minority, demanded and got revisions to CRS reports on how prescription drug pricing rules in his bills would work. "Everyone expects Waxman and others to be even more insistent on getting what they want now [that he's in the majority]," says another CRS staffer.

Posted on March 27, 2007 09:52 AM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Democratization of Knowledge | The Honest Broker

Unpublished Letter to the San Francisco Chronicle

A few weeks ago Henry Miller had an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle that discussed our recent commentary in Nature on adaptation (PDF). We sent in a letter in response that for whatever reason the Chronicle decided not to publish. So we have reproduced it here:

Dear Editor-
We appreciate that Henry Miller (Sunday, March 11, 2007) highlighted our recent commentary in Nature magazine which called for greater attention to adaptation in climate policy. In that article we argue that advocates of mitigation (i.e., reducing greenhouse gas emissions) frequently go too far when they present energy policies as an alternative to societal adaptation to the impacts of a changing climate. Unfortunately, Dr. Miller commits an equally grave mistake by suggesting that adaptation can take the place of mitigation. Any effective approach to climate policy will require that we both mitigate and adapt. The urge to present adaptation and mitigation as somehow in opposition is a reflex shared by those on opposing sides of the debate over greenhouse gas emissions. On climate policy we must walk and chew gum at the same time.

Roger Pielke, Jr., University of Colorado
Gwyn Prins, London School of Economics and Columbia University
Steve Rayner, Oxford University's James Martin Institute
Daniel Sarewitz, Arizona State University

Posted on March 27, 2007 12:44 AM View this article | Comments (14)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

March 26, 2007

Whose political agenda is reflected in the IPCC Working Group 1, Scientists or Politicians?

Recent discussion here on Prometheus and elsewhere has indicated two very different perspectives on who controls the IPCC’s Working Group I on the science of climate change. The different views reflect various efforts to legitimize and delegitimize the IPCC. However, the different perspectives cannot be reconciled for reasons I describe below, placing scientists in an interesting double bind.

The first view is that the IPCC is subject to governmental control at the start and at the finish, and thus is an overtly political document. It is after all the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. From this perspective the IPCC is very much a political document with political officials setting its agenda in the form of of the questions that it is to address and political officials also acting as gatekeepers on the resulting scientific report.

This view on the back end was expressed by Michael Mann, of Penn State University and RealClimate, who commented in New Scientist earlier this month:

Allowing governmental delegations to ride into town at the last minute and water down conclusions after they were painstakingly arrived at in an objective scientific assessment does not serve society well.

On the front end of the report, Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M, suggested that this too was controlled by politicians and not scientists, writing in the comments on another Prometheus post:

. . . you have to conclude that the [IPCC chapter] outline represents the questions member gov'ts want to know in order to respond to climate change.

The second view is that the IPCC is squarely in the control of the scientific community with governmental officials having a right to approve the IPCC report on the front and back ends but with no authority to alter it’s substance in any way for political purposes. Twenty distinguished climate scientists who participated in drafting of the recent IPCC Summary for Policymakers wrote a letter objecting vehemently to an article in the New Scientist suggesting that political officials had any influence whatsoever on the report.

At all stages, including at the final plenary in Paris, the authors had control over the text . . In particular, our co-chair Susan Solomon is robustly independent and has been determined to maintain the credibility of the science throughout the four-year process. . . The wide participation of the scientific community, the scientific accuracy and the absence of any policy prescription in this report are the characteristics that render this report so powerful. . . Another related misconception, promulgated by [New Scientist], is that the Summary for Policymakers was written by and for the government delegations, and changes were made to the scientific conclusions before and during the Paris plenary for political purposes. In fact, the Summary for Policymakers was written by the scientists who also wrote the underlying chapters. The purpose of the Paris plenary was to make clarifications in order to more succinctly and accessibly communicate the science to the policy-makers. The scientists were present in Paris to ensure scientific accuracy and consistency with the underlying report. Those of us also involved in previous assessments were pleasantly surprised that there were far fewer alterations made to the text at this final meeting, and that there were very few attempts at political interference.

So here is the double bind that scientists find themselves in: Some scientists, like Andrew Dessler (cited above), wish to assert that the IPCC is essentially value-free reflecting the revealed truths of the climate system as discerned by objective climate scientists with no political agenda. From this perspective, the only political agenda that the IPCC reflects is that imposed upon it by governments on the front end in the form of questions that they would like to see answered. It is otherwise scientifically pure. Other scientists, like Michael Mann (cited above), hold a very different view seeing the IPCC as reflecting a political agenda of member governments who have in fact corrupted the objective views of the climate scientists. From this perspective, the IPCC does in fact reflect a political agenda that shaped it on the back end.

If governmental representatives in fact have no influence on content of the IPCC only an ability to approve, as suggested by the twenty authors of the letter to the New Scientist, then all decisions made by the IPCC about what information to present in the report reflect the values and judgments of the scientists participating. Many scientists do not like this assertion because it suggests that the IPCC is not accountable to anyone, and stands as a technocratic exercise far from any sort of democratic governance of science. If instead governmental officials do in fact have influence, then the IPCC has some greater accountability and perhaps meets some criteria of democratic governance, but at the same time many scientists do not like this assertion because then the IPCC risks losing its legitimacy as its conclusions would then reflect the political agendas of its overseers. So does the IPCC Working Group I reflect a political agenda or not?

The only way that this double bind could be broken would be for the IPCC to do two things. First, on its front end it would need to have a formal, transparent, and systematic process for eliciting the demands for information from policy makers in the forms of questions asked and information sought. (Dan Sarewitz and I describe such a process in this paper: PDF.) There was in fact no such process on the front end.

Second, on the back end the IPCC would need an accepted process that allowed member governments to ask questions seeking to clarify and focus the report, opposed to changing its content. The IPCC authors suggest that this is in fact what happened, but its critics assert the opposite. So whatever the reality, it seems clear that the following statement from the twenty IPCC letter-writers holds up: "A legitimate criticism perhaps is the poor communication to the general public of IPCC procedures."

Everyone seems to agree that the IPCC reflects a political agenda, the question is who’s political agenda? Is it that of the participating scientists? Do participating scientists in fact have a "political agenda" or instead do they have many competing political agendas? Or is the political agenda of the IPCC that of the participating governments? But do participating governments in fact have a "political agenda" or many competing political agendas?

The answers to the questions are all unclear. The IPCC tries to have things both ways by asserting governmental participation without governmental influence. This makes no sense, and participation is meaningless absent influence. As a result, how people view the legitimacy of the IPCC will therefore most likely be an inkblot test on their views of governance by experts versus the democratization of knowledge. One thing seems clear, global governance of the IPCC would be much more straightforward, and its role far easier to understand, with some explicit answers to who controls the IPCC, scientists or governments?

Posted on March 26, 2007 07:45 AM View this article | Comments (13)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Democratization of Knowledge | The Honest Broker

March 24, 2007

Praise for The Honest Broker

Three people who I have a lot of respect for have read my book and offered some kind (far too kind, actually) words:

With an analytical honesty unmarred by hidden agendas, Roger Pielke brilliantly brings the murky interface of science and politics into perfect focus. Scientists and policy makers alike need to read this book, and need to absorb its wisdom.
Michael M. Crow, President, Arizona State University

Roger Pielke Jr. has produced a beautifully clear account of the often murky relationship between scientific advice and the policy process. While his distinction between pure scientist, science arbiter, issue advocate, and honest broker may not fully satisfy purists in Science and Technology Studies (STS), it ought to be compulsory reading for every science graduate and all decision makers in government, business, the judiciary, or campaigning groups who claim that their decisions are rooted in scientific evidence. It is also an invaluable guide to the ordinary citizen who just wants to navigate through the confusion and contradiction that often seems to surround the use of science in policy debates.

Steve Rayner, James Martin Professor of Science and Civilization, University of Oxford

Decision-making can be an important problem, both in everyday life and when science, politics and policy are involved. The Honest Broker broadens the options of decision-making by going beyond the traditional roles of the 'pure scientist' or the 'issue advocate'. Scientific knowledge can be integrated with stakeholder concerns if the policy context is taken into account in an adequate way. Based on extensive experience in the analysis of decision-making relating to scientific and technological issues, Roger Pielke Jr. goes a long way to be an honest broker himself: between science and democracy.

Helga Nowotny, Vice-President of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council and Fellow at Wissenschaftszentrum Wien

Should be available in a week or so, here is the Amazon link to order the paperback version.

Posted on March 24, 2007 11:55 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

March 12, 2007

We Interrupt this Spring Break . . .

. . . to bring you a link to an article titled "The Convenient Truth" by Jonathan Rauch in the National Journal on climate policy. Now back to the blogging break . . .

Posted on March 12, 2007 03:43 PM View this article | Comments (4)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

March 01, 2007

. . . Meantime, Buy This Book!

Out any day now:

Posted on March 1, 2007 02:23 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Site News

Spring Break . . .

I'll be taking a spring blogging break . . . back in April! But stay tuned, Kevin is in charge while I'm offline.

Posted on March 1, 2007 02:19 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Site News

February 28, 2007

Spinning Science

We have had a lot of discussion here about the process of producing press releases. Last month, I participated in a congressional hearing in which several scientists argued strongly that official press releases should be faithful to the science being reported. A press release put out by the University of Wisconsin today is a case of a press release completely misrepresenting the science in the paper that it is presenting. I am going to speculate that because the press release errs on the side of emphasizing a global warming connection where there is in fact none indicated in the paper that there will be little concern expressed by the scientific community about its inaccuracies.

UPDATE: NSF issues its own release "New Information Links Atlantic Ocean Warming to Stronger Hurricanes" compounding the misrepresentation. The NSF release (like the UW version) contradicts its own headline:

The Atlantic is also unique in that the physical variables that converge to form hurricanes--including wind speeds, wind directions and temperatures--mysteriously feed off each other to make conditions ripe for a storm. But scientists don't understand why, Kossin adds.

The press release is titled: "New evidence that global warming fuels stronger Atlantic hurricanes." The first paragraph of the release says:

Atmospheric scientists have uncovered fresh evidence to support the hotly debated theory that global warming has contributed to the emergence of stronger hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean.

The paper, by Jim Kossin and colleagues appears in today's Geophysical Research Letters and actually says nothing like this (paper here in PDF). It does say the following:

**Over the past 23 years there are no global trends in tropical cyclone activity in any basin except the Atlantic. This is an important finding because it contradicts the findings presented in 2005 by Webster et al. that there have been global trends. Kossin et al. call into question a straightforward relationship of SST and tropical cyclone activity. This is news.

**The paper does find the Atlantic to be more active over the past 23 years. No one in the world has ever questioned whether or not the Atlantic has been more active over the past 3 decades. Any assertion that the Atlantic has become more active is hardly "fresh evidence." This is not news.

*The paper does not engage in attribution, and openly admits that a 23-year record is too short for attribution studies (i.e., that indicate causes of trends).

Here is what Kossin et al. say in their conclusion:

Efforts are presently underway to maximize the length of our new homogeneous data record but at most we can add another 6–7 years, and whether meaningful trends can be measured or inferred in a 30-year data record remains very much an open question. Given these limitations of the data, the question of whether hurricane intensity is globally trending upwards in a warming climate will likely remain a point of debate in the foreseeable future. Still, the very real and dangerous increases in recent Atlantic hurricane activity will no doubt continue to provide a heightened sense of purpose to research addressing how hurricane behavior might change in our changing climate, and further efforts toward improvement of archival data quality are expected to continue in parallel with efforts to better reconcile the physical processes involved. If our 23-year record is in fact representative of the longer record, then we need to better understand why hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin is varying in a fundamentally different way than the rest of the world despite similar upward trends of SST in each basin.

The University of Wisconsin press release is either a cheap publicity grab or a deliberate attempt to spin the paper's results 180 degrees from what it actually says.

Posted on February 28, 2007 10:19 AM View this article | Comments (24)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters | Science + Politics

Success-Oriented Planning at NASA

NASA is delaying the next launch of the space shuttle due to a hail storm that damaged the external tank. However, according to NASA this delay won't cause any problems meeting their launch schedule this year:

[N. Wayne Hale Jr., the shuttle program manager, in a briefing from Cape Canaveral, Fla.] said that despite the latest delay he believed that the launching schedule had enough flexibility to allow the five flights that are planned for this year.

Anyone want to bet that NASA will in fact launch the shuttle 5 times in the last 7 months of 2007? Consider the following data from a paper we did in 1992 (PDF):

NASA is either fooling themselves or fooling us. Neither is a particualrly good way to run the nation's space program.

Posted on February 28, 2007 08:35 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

February 27, 2007

Science, Politics, Variability, Change, Learning, Uncertainty

The issue of floodplain management in the city of Boulder reflects in microcosm many of the themes that we discuss on this site. Here is an excerpt from an article in the Daily Camera today:

Boulder's water board approved a flood plan Monday that predicts hundreds more homes and businesses will be inundated in a 100-year flood than previously believed.
But the new flood study predicts the University of Colorado's South Campus property will stay dry in a 100-year flood, worrying residents who don't want to see the former gravel mine developed.

The city's current map places 363 structures in the flood plain. The new study predicts more than three times as many buildings — 1,137 — would take on some level of water in a 100-year flood, which has a 1 percent chance of occurring in any year.

Some issues raised by this circumstance:

1. The climate varies and changes faster than the built environment. Yesterday's "100-year flood" is today's "50-year flood." Any flood policy based on the assumption of long-term stasis in climate is bound to fail.

2. Scientific understandings change faster than the built environment. Policies should be flexible to the possibility that we may learn more in the future, and such learning may result in revisions to our expectations for risks and vulnerabilities. Any policy that is based on an assumption that we know all we are going to is likely to fail.

3. People have different vested interests in particular scientific outcomes. In Boulder, people with different views about development have strong feelings about how the floodplain should be designated, based on how they think that will affect the chances of development. It would be foolish to think that such considerations can be ignored or kept separate from the political process of designating floodplain restrictions.

4. All important decisions are characterized by some degree of uncertainty. An important analytical question is not whether we can remove uncertainty (we can of course by chose to ignore it), but to design decision processes that are robust in the face of uncertainties.

The case study of flood policy in Boulder, Colorado reflects all of these issues.

Posted on February 27, 2007 07:19 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Risk & Uncertainty

University of Colorado Sustainability Initiatives

Not long ago we raised some questions about how well the University of Colorado's commitment to sustainability was actually being reflected in actions. Recent remarks by our Chancellor, G.P. "Bud" Peterson, at a conference on sustainability last week suggest that our campus leadership is in fact now taking this issue seriously. Here is an excerpt:

First, on behalf of CU-Boulder I have pledged to participate in the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment (PCC), which will solidify our goal of reducing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. CU-Boulder will begin immediately, a detailed inventory of our current emissions; then, within two years, the campus will outline short and long-term strategies for emission reductions to reach the PCC goal of "climate neutrality" - zero net GHG.
This is a bold challenge, but CU-Boulder has an excellent record to build upon. Today, the University purchases 10 percent of the campus's electricity from renewable sources, and we have reduced our electrical consumption by 13 percent per square foot since 2001. In addition, CU-Boulder has helped to generate 3.2 million rides per year on RTD buses through participation in RTD's Ecopass program, created a recycling program that is diverting 1600 tons from landfills annually (and has saved the campus about $2.4 million in avoided costs over the past three years alone) and pioneered water conservation programs that save over 110 million gallons annually on campus.

Most of all, our students are to be credited for their leadership in helping to make the recently completed ATLAS building at CU-Boulder the first public building in the state of Colorado to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold Certification - one of only seven buildings statewide to achieve such a designation.

With the need for a centralized heating and cooling facility to be built, we must take new and stronger measures to offset our purchase of electricity from sources that increase our carbon output. To assist in this process, I am pleased to announce that in the next fiscal year, we will begin investing $250,000 annually in projects to reduce campus energy consumption, particularly electrical consumption. At some point in the near future, we expect we may seek new funds or a reallocation of a portion of the $250,000 for renewable energy production systems on campus properties or close to the campus.

I am also asking that investments beyond the $250,000 per year be considered for future funding as a pressing campus priority in order to aggressively pursue options for greatly reducing CU-Boulder's GHG emissions. To offset our carbon output in the meantime, our campus has committed to spending an additional $50,000 per year for the purchase of renewable wind energy.

Finally, I am pleased to announce one more measure that I believe will lay the groundwork for even more progress toward sustainability. That is the establishment of the Chancellor's Committee on Energy, Environment and Sustainability (CCEES), a working group to be led by Vice Chancellor for Administration Paul Tabolt, charged with setting sustainability goals for the campus and advising the university on all environmental matters.

Posted on February 27, 2007 06:52 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education | Sustainability

February 26, 2007

State Climatologists Redux

Let's start by acknowledging that the position of "State Climatologist" is problematic simply because it is federally designated role and not an official state government position. So there is ample room for confusion as to who the person in the position actually speaks for, and NOAA should indeed address this -- which could easily be done by changing the title to "NOAA-designated climate services extension officer" or something inscrutable like that. Even so, a statement like the following should concern anyone, regardless of their views on climate change:

Your views on climate change, as I understand them, are not aligned with those of my my administration.

. . . from a 13 February 2007 letter (PDF) from Delaware Governor Ruth Ann Minner to Delaware's State Climatologist, as designated by the federal government and approved by the State of Delaware (PDF), David Legates.

It seems fairly obvious to me that if Governor Minner is truly concerned about the confusion between the federal designation and the Delaware executive branch, then she should be discussing with NOAA options for changing its use of the designation "State Climatologist" rather than telling Mr. Legates not to use the federal designation, which the state has previously approved under her own signature. The letter she has written to Mr. Legates makes it look like her concern is in fact not possible confusion about the designation, but instead the fact that David Legates holds different views on policy than those of her administration. If she wants to have advisers on climate change determined by political criteria, that is of course her right.

I can imagine that if the Bush Administration sent the exact same letter to Jim Hansen, there might be some greater reaction than we have seen to Ms. Minner's letter.

My reactions to this letter, and (non) reactions to it, echo my concerns with the approach that Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has take to overseeing the issue of the politicization of science. If the concern is really procedural -- that is, who gets to speak what information under what designation -- then the response should be focused on improving those procedures. The selective focus on certain individuals and certain perspectives instead makes these complaints about the "politicization of science" themselves politicized. While this might work to the short-term advantage of certain agendas in political debate, what won't be addressed by this approach are those processes that foster the pathological politicization of science.

Posted on February 26, 2007 07:24 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics

Science and the Developing World

At SciDev.net, David Dickson has a thoughtful editorial on how the scientific community and others advocating increased investments in S&T in the developing world should temper expectations on what these investments in alone can achieve. Here is an excerpt:

The current danger lies in promoting policies that see S&T as drivers of social progress and economic development, rather than components of innovation programmes in which other factors — from regulatory policy to education and training — are just as important.
The scientific community is particularly prone to this one-dimensional approach. Arguing that heavy investment in research and development is enough to promote economic growth naturally appeals to those keen to see scientific laboratories flourish across the developing world.

But experience has shown that such investment is only part of the solution. The real challenge lies in embedding science in all spheres of government policy, and introducing educational, regulatory and fiscal measures to enable innovation to flourish across the economy.

Until this happens, demands for more money for science will inevitably be seen as little more than self-interested pleading from the scientific community. [emphasis in original]

Posted on February 26, 2007 05:47 AM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | International | R&D Funding

February 23, 2007

IPCCfacts.org Responds

Here is the prompt and satisfactory response I received late today:

We regret that your views were misrepresented on IPCCfacts.org, and have removed the post.
The intent of the site is to follow the conversation around the IPCC
report and, where mischaracterizations about the report are made,
clearly and directly present the IPCC findings. We stand behind our
presentation of the IPCC report findings.

We regret the error.

Sincerely,

Joel Finkelstein

Posted on February 23, 2007 08:15 PM View this article | Comments (4)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

IPCCfacts.org has its Facts Wrong

There is a webpage called IPCCfacts.org that is grossly misrepresenting my views on hurricanes and climate change, which is bizarre given my strong endorsement of the recent IPCC report. Anyone wanting to get "facts" on the IPCC should look elsewhere than IPCCfacts.org, like to the actual IPCC. Here I set the record straight and request that IPCCfacts.org correct their mistakes.

It is always nice to know who is misrepresenting one’s views and it this case the group’s origins are a bit hard to discern, but it is connected to Fenton Communications, which coincidentally is also associated with RealClimate. IPCCfacts.org receives funding from the United Nations Foundation.

Anyway, IPCCfacts.org misrepresents my views on the recent IPCC report on the subject of hurricanes and climate change. As anyone who reads Prometheus knows, I was quite complementary of the IPCC’s judgment on this issue. Nonetheless, IPCCfacts.org sees fit to cite my views as representing a "myth":

Myth: The report shows that the overall number of hurricanes is expected to decline, undercutting the argument that global warming produces extreme weather events.
"So there might be a human contribution [to increased hurricanes] ... but the human contribution itself has not been quantitatively assessed, yet the experts, using their judgment, expect it to be there. In plain English this is what is called a ‘hypothesis’ and not a ‘conclusion.’ And it is a fair representation of the issue." –Roger Pielke Jr. climate scientist, University of Colorado, Blog post, February 2, 2007.

First, the report indicates that there is little confidence in estimates of how the number of hurricanes will change—up or down.

Second, the really important issue is not frequency, but intensity and damage potential. Hurricanes and other tropical cyclones draw their energy from warm ocean waters, which typically, under the right conditions, lead to increases in the size and intensity of hurricanes. The warmer ocean waters that result from global warming thus provide an environment suitable to the generation of larger hurricanes.

And larger hurricanes are characterized by all the elements that increase potential destructiveness: higher wind speed, greater intensity of rainfall and higher storm surges in advance of landfall.

In response, first a minor point -- they call me a "climate scientist" which is only accurate if one includes climate impacts under that designation, which is typically not done. I don’t characterize myself as such. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) certainly does not.

Second, the quote from me that they suggest represents a "myth" comes from this blog post. The part that they ellipsis out is the following parenthetical:

(and presumably this is just to the observed upwards trends observed in some basins, and not to downward trends observed in others, but this is unclear)

At no point (in the post that they reference or anywhere else) do I suggest that there will be less hurricanes, nor do I suggest that such a decline undercuts the argument for an increase in extreme events in the future. Where they get this impression I have no idea. This is simply a gross misrepresentation. In fact, my writings say much the opposite, such as the following (PDF):

For future decades the IPCC (2001) expects increases in the occurrence and/or intensity of some extreme events as a result of anthropogenic climate change.

Peer-reviewed papers I have co-authored (here in PDF and here in PDF) that survey the literature on tropical cyclone science, impacts, and policy are actually 100% consistent with the IPCC SPM.

And of the blog post of mine that they cite summarizing the IPCC SPM, here is what one of the scientists on the U.S. delegation had to say:

Thank you for your thoughtful and balanced assessment of what the IPCC SPM says. You have got it right. Your careful analysis on what the report says and how it compares to the WMO consensus statement is most appreciated.

Then IPCCfacts.org start talking about the size of hurricanes, a discussion which is nowhere to be found in the IPCC SPM. In short, IPCCfacts.org have got their facts wrong and are spinning some "myths" of their own.

Posted on February 23, 2007 09:00 AM View this article | Comments (12)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

Al Gore on Adaptation

From the International Herald Tribune,, Al Gore reiterates that despite many efforts to characterize adaptation and mitigation as complementary, he prefers to persist in viewing them as competing:

Trying to prevent global warming is certainly worthwhile, said Roger Pielke, Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado.
But he said capable people are not adequately putting their minds to the challenge of adapting to climate change, which is inevitable in coming decades because of continuing emissions and because of the damage done already.

"If all we do is try to mitigate we're going to miss a big part of the challenge," Pielke said.

The world's leaders also need to address other problems that are likely to be aggravated by global warming, such as tropical diseases, drinking water supply and increasing storm vulnerability, Pielke and several colleagues argued in the scientific journal Nature.

Many global warming activists are suspicious of such recommendations. They feel that too much reliance on adaptation will lull the world into a false sense of security, decreasing the motivation to reduce greenhouse gases.

"We really have to focus on prevention," Al Gore said on Tuesday during a question-and-answer session at Columbia University in New York City.

He warned that if we fail to avert the worst of global warming, the dire environmental consequences will overwhelm any adaptive measures.

We've had a number of prominent people react in private to our recent article on adaptation in Nature (PDF) by suggesting that we really should have emphasized mitigation instead.

I wonder how many criticisms of Mr. Gore's exclusive focus on "prevention" (sorry, prevention is not in the cards, ask the IPCC) we will hear about. My guess is not more than one -- and you're looking at it. Lots of inconvenient truths to go around, it seems.

Posted on February 23, 2007 01:56 AM View this article | Comments (39)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Catastrophic Visions

The last time that we pointed to an essay by Brad Allenby of ASU it generated much thoughtful discussion. I expect no different from this provocative piece in the latest CSPO Newsletter from ASU titled Dueling Elites and Catastrophic Visions. Here is an excerpt:

. . . consider two of the primary dialogs of our times that, while superficially quite different, are in fact disconcertingly similar in intent and tone. One is the current U.S. Administration’s insistence on a continuing and inescapable threat of ubiquitous and unpredictable terrorism, a campaign which appears designed to create on-going fear and insecurity in the population. (That the cultural animosity underlying increases in anti-US attitudes is to a significant degree a result of Administration choices and policy is either supreme irony or Machiavellian brilliance, depending on who one listens to.) This campaign is characterized by constant reference to worst case scenarios (e.g., nuclear attack on an American city), patterns of government intervention in common activities that reinforce a siege mentality while providing no obvious additional protection against threats (e.g., certain TSA procedures and requirements at airports), few public details regarding actual threats or specific situations, and the implicit message that the current state of affairs will persist for the indefinite future.
The second is the significant acceleration in stories and publicity regarding predictions of planetary disaster as a result of human activities, especially global warming. This challenge is characterized in remarkably similar terms as the terrorist threat: ubiquitous and uncertain with a potential for unexpected disaster, an emphasis on worst case scenarios, and suggestions that extraordinary government intervention is required and justified because all other values pale in comparison to the threat. So, for example, Vice President Gore recently stated that global warming was "infinitely" worse than the Iraq quagmire, while UK environment secretary David Miliband suggests issuing all British adults with annual carbon allowances. Indeed, the UK government has formed a study group to report back on the idea; Nature (442:340) reports that researchers favor such quotas as "a sensible way to extend emissions trading to the personal level." The connection between social engineering and environmental disaster as lever could scarcely be clearer. Similarly, a recent report in Science notes the reluctance of some climate scientists to consider geoengineering solutions to global climate change not because they don’t work, but because they don’t require social engineering (314:401-403). As one European climate scientist complains, "You’re papering over the problem [by even considering geoengineering options] so people can keep inflicting damage on the climate system without having to give up fossil fuels." Whether scientists should arrogate to themselves the responsibility for deciding for everyone that fossil fuels should be given up, as opposed to other alternatives to managing climate change, is apparently not to be subject to dialog.

Posted on February 23, 2007 01:30 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Risk & Uncertainty

February 22, 2007

Where Stern is Right and Wrong

The Christian Science Monitor adds a few interesting details to Nicolas Stern's recent U.S. visit. On mitigation Stern explains why the debate over the science of climate change is in fact irrelevant:

Even if climate change turned out to be the biggest hoax in history, Stern argues, the world will still be better off with all the new technologies it will develop to combat it.

If mitigation can indeed be justified on factors other than climate change, which I think it can, then why not bring these factors more centrally into the debate?

Stern also dismissed two other arguments for inaction: that humans will easily adapt to climate change and that its effects are too far in the future to address now. Putting the burden of dealing with climate change on future generations is "unethical," Stern said.

Once again adaptation is being downplayed as somehow being in opposition to mitigation. Stern may in fact believe that we need to both adapt and mitigate, but that is certainly not what is conveyed here. The Stern Review itself adopted a very narrow view of adaptation as reflecting the costs of failed mitigation. When framed in this narrow way there is no alternative than to characterize adaptation and mitigation as trade-offs, and in today's political climate guess which one loses out?

Posted on February 22, 2007 07:19 AM View this article | Comments (10)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Risk & Uncertainty | Technology Policy

February 21, 2007

Mike Hulme in Nature on UK Media Coverage of the IPCC

Nature published a letter in its current issue on media coverage of the recent IPCC report. The book he refers to is co-edited by our own Lisa Dilling. Here is an excerpt from the letter:

Nature 445, 818 (22 February 2007) | doi:10.1038/445818b; Published online 21 February 2007
Newspaper scare headlines can be counter-productive

Mike Hulme
Tyndall Centre, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK

. . . Communicating science to wider, public audiences, however — in this case on matters of important public policy — is an art that requires careful message management and tone setting. It seems that confident and salient science, as presented by the IPCC, may be received by the public in non-productive ways, depending on the intervening media.

With this in mind, I examined the coverage of the IPCC report in the ten main national UK newspapers for Saturday 3 February, the day after the report was released. Only one newspaper failed to run at least one story on the report (one newspaper ran seven stories), but what was most striking was the tone.

The four UK 'quality' newspapers all ran front-page headlines conveying a message of rising anxiety: "Final warning", "Worse than we thought", "New fears on climate raise heat on leaders" and "Only man can stop climate disaster". And all nine newspapers introduced one or more of the adjectives "catastrophic", "shocking", "terrifying" or "devastating" in their various qualifications of climate change. Yet none of these words exist in the report, nor were they used in the scientists' presentations in Paris. Added to the front-page vocabulary of "final", "fears", "worse" and "disaster", they offer an insight into the likely response of the 20 million Britons who read these newspapers.

In contrast, an online search of some leading newspapers in the United States suggests a different media discourse. Thus, on the same day, one finds these headlines: "UN climate panel says warming is man-made", "New tack on global warming", "Warming report builds support for action" and "The basics: ever firmer statements on global warming". This suggests a more neutral representation in the United States of the IPCC's key message, and a tone that facilitates a less loaded or frenzied debate about options for action.

Campaigners, media and some scientists seem to be appealing to fear in order to generate a sense of urgency. If they want to engage the public in responding to climate change, this is unreliable at best and counter-productive at worst. As Susanne Moser and Lisa Dilling point out in Creating a Climate for Change: Communicating Climate Change and Facilitating Social Change (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007), such appeals often lead to denial, paralysis, apathy or even perverse reactive behaviour.

The journey from producing confident assessments of scientific knowledge to a destination of induced social change is a tortuous one, fraught with dangers and many blind alleys. The challenging policy choices that lie ahead will not be well served by the type of loaded reporting of science seen in the UK media described above.

Posted on February 21, 2007 03:02 PM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Risk & Uncertainty

Have We Entered a Post-Analysis Phase of the Climate Debate?

The New York Times today has an interesting summary of a debate between Sir Nicolas Stern and Professor William Nordhaus of Yale University on the economics of climate change. The article raises the question, for me at least, at what point do policy analyses cease to matter? In the language of my forthcoming book -- The Honest Broker -- has climate politics become "abortion politics"? The answer to my own question is that, yes, we may indeed be in a situation where analysis is viewed as being more useful as a tool of persuasion than clarifying the consequences of a wide range of alternative courses of action. In such a situation policy analyses will be far less important than the political dynamics.

A recent example of such a situation that will be familiar to most readers is when the Bush Administration decided to invade Iraq and then fixed the intelligence to meet the policy. Any analysis that supported invasion, regardless of its intellectual merits, then became "right" even if for the "wrong reasons." Sure, some policy analyses were still needed after that decision, for instance, to determine whether 110,000 versus 130,000 troops would be needed. But I view this as a far different sort of analysis than focusing analytical attention on the broad question of what might have been done about Saddam Hussein. In that situation, once the politics were settled, then such wide-ranging analyses became completely irrelevant. But arguably that is exactly the sort of analysis that mattered most of all and for the lack of which were are suffering today Climate change, of course some will say, is different.

Here is an excerpt from the Times article, which describes these dynamics:

Technically, then, Sir Nicholas’s opponents win the debate. But in practical terms, their argument has a weak link. They are assuming that the economic gains from, say, education will make future generations rich enough to make up for any damage caused by climate change. Sea walls will be able to protect cities; technology can allow crops to grow in new ways; better medicines can stop the spread of disease.
No one knows whether this is true, let alone desirable, because no one knows what life will be like on a planet that is five degrees hotter. "If ever there was an example where there was uncertainty, this is it," said Martin L. Weitzman, a Harvard economist who attended the debate.

While sitting there, I was reminded of the speeches that Alan Greenspan gave a few years ago about the risks of deflation. It wasn’t the most likely outcome, he said, but the consequences of it could be so bad that policy makers had to take steps to prevent it. Focusing attention on this point — the catastrophic risks of climate change — is Sir Nicholas’s biggest accomplishment, whatever you think of his math.

As Mr. Weitzman puts it, the Stern Review is "right for the wrong reasons."

Even its critics seem open to this idea. When Mr. Nordhaus and Sir Nicholas were exchanging e-mail messages before the debate — to their credit, some academics keep their arguments from becoming personal — Mr. Nordhaus sent a note that summed up his view. “I think it’s a great study, but it’s 50 years ahead of its time,” he recalled writing. "Since everybody else is 50 years behind the times, if you average the two, you might come out just right."

In other words, it’s time for a tax on carbon emissions.

Once your have the political answer in hand, analysis then ceases to be a tool that provides insight on alternatives and then becomes a tool of marketing, and sometimes a way to limit debate. Harvard's Martin Weitzman acknowledges this explicitly in the review paper (here in PDF) on Stern cited in the Times article:

The Stern Review is a political document –in Keynes’s phrase an essay in persuasion –as much as it is an economic analysis, and in fairness it needs ultimately to be judged by both standards. To its great credit the Review supports very strongly the politically- unpalatable idea, which no politician planning to remain in office anywhere wants to hear, that the world needs desperately to start confronting the reality that burning carbon has a significant externality cost that should be taken into account by being charged full-freight for doing it. (This should have been, but of course was not, the most central “inconvenient truth”of all in Al Gore'’s tale about inconvenient climate-change truths.) As the Review puts it, “establishing a carbon price, through tax, trading, or regulation, is an essential foundation for climate-change policy.” One can only wish that U.S. political leaders might have the wisdom to understand and the courage to act upon the breathtakingly-simple relatively-market-friendly idea that the right carbon tax could do much more to unleash the decentralized power of greedy, self seeking, capitalistic American inventive genius on the problem of developing commercially-feasible carbon-avoiding alternative technologies than all of the command-and-control schemes and patchwork subsidies making the rounds in Washington these days. As I have made clear here, a generous interpretation might also credit the Stern Review with intuiting the greater significance of insuring against catastrophic uncertainty than of consumption smoothing for the climate problem, even if this intuition remains subliminal and does not formally enter the analysis through the front door.
To be honest about the economic-analysis side, the Stern Review predetermines the outcome in favor of strong immediate action to curtail greenhouse gas emissions by creating a very low value of r ~1.4% via the indirect route of picking parameter values p ~ 0 and n~ 1 1that are more like theoretically-reasoned extreme lower bounds than empirically-plausible estimates of representative tastes. In this sense, it must be said staightforwardly that the subconsiously-reverse-engineered output of PAGE and the goal-oriented formal economic analysis of the Review are not worth a great deal. But we have also seen that a fair recognition of the truth that we are genuinely uncertain about what interest rate should be used to discount costs and benefits of climate changes a century from now brings discounting rates down from conventional values r 6% to much lower values of perhaps r ~ 2-3%, which would create a more intermediate sense of urgency somewhere between what the Stern
Review is advocating and the more modest measures to slow global warming advocated by its mainstream critics. The important remaining caveat is that such an intermediate position is still grounded in a conventional deterministic consumption-smoothing approach to the
economic analysis of climate change that, at least formally, ignores the issue of what to do about catastrophe insurance against the possibility of rare disasters.

On the political side of the Stern Review, my most charitable interpretation of its urgent tone is that the report is an essay in persuasion that is more about gut instincts regarding the horrors of uncertain rare disasters whose probabilities we do not know than it is about economic analysis as that term is conventionally understood. Although it is difficult enough to analyze people’s motives, much less the motives of a 600-page document, I can’'t help but think after reading it that the strong tone of morality and alarm is mostly reflecting a fear of what is potentially out there with greenhouse warming in (using ponderous terminology here to make sure the thought is exact) “the inherently-thick left tail of the reduced-form posterior-predictive probability distribution of the growth rate of a comprehensive measure of consumption that includes the natural environment.” I have argued that this inherently- thick left tail of g is an important aspect of the economics of climate change that every analyst –Stern and the critics of Stern –might do well to try to address more directly. History will judge whether the economic analysis of the Stern Review was more wrong or more right, and, if it was more right, whether as pure economic analysis it was right for the right reasons or it was right for the wrong reasons.

Posted on February 21, 2007 06:47 AM View this article | Comments (11)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

February 20, 2007

Al Gore 2008, Part 3: Washington Post on California Energy

The Washington Post has an excellent article on California’s energy policies (Thanks BK!), which adds some context to our ongoing analysis explaining why Al Gore will be the next president of the United States. Here are several key excerpts:

Do 2004 Blue states in fact have higher energy costs?

The reason for California's success is no secret: Electricity there is expensive, so people use less of it. Thanks to its use of pricey renewables and natural gas and its spurning of cheap coal, California's rates are almost 13 cents a kilowatt hour, according to the Energy Information Administration. The other most-energy-frugal states, such as New Jersey and New Hampshire, charge about 12 cents and 14 cents a kilowatt hour, respectively. Hawaii, which relies on oil-fired plants, tops EIA's list at about 21 cents.
"If the history of energy consumption in the U.S. has taught us anything, it is that cost drives conservation," says Chris Cooper, executive director of the Network for New Energy Choices.

Three of the nation's most profligate users of energy -- Wyoming, Kentucky and Alabama -- have one thing in common: low prices. Their electricity prices range from 5.25 cents a kilowatt hour to 7.06 cents, according to the EIA.

"What's dirt cheap tends to get treated like dirt," Rosenfeld says.

The District, also a wasteful user of energy, has a rate of 10.70 cents a kilowatt hour, only after recent rate increases. Virginia charges average 6.78 cents, and Maryland is at 10.03 cents.

Answer: Yes, consider:

CA, NJ, NH, HI, MD = Blue
WY, KY, VA, AL = Red

What are some of the effects of increasing energy prices?

Many manufacturers complain that the high electricity prices make the state an unappealing place to do business. Since 2001, California has lost 375,000 manufacturing jobs, a 19.9 percent drop that slightly exceeded the nationwide decline of 17 percent. Some firms -- such as Buck Knives, with 250 jobs, or bottle manufacturer Bomatic, with 100 jobs -- moved to states such as Idaho or Utah, where they said expenses, including energy, were lower.
Gino DiCaro, a spokesman for the California Manufacturers and Technology Association, says manufacturing investment is also "stalled" because of uncertainty about how the new legislation authorizing limits on greenhouse gases will affect energy costs.

"We've lost a lot of manufacturing jobs and we can't replace them," says DiCaro. While it's hard to blame the state's high energy costs alone, he says, "we know that . . . energy is one of the largest portions of a manufacturer's operating budget."

But at some point do high prices become a virtue?

But for those homeowners and businesses staying in California, the high prices have provided a big incentive for greater efficiency.
Laura Scher, chief executive of Working Assets, a wireless, long distance and credit card company that donates part of its revenue to socially progressive organizations, said she checked her home's meter every week during the electricity crisis in the summer of 2001 and unplugged her family's second refrigerator. "Part of it is our prices got really high," she said. But she added that California's habits go back much further. "It's sort of a culture to be an energy conserver here," she said.

Posted on February 20, 2007 05:43 PM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Energy Policy | Science + Politics

Prediction in Science and Policy

In the New York Times today Corneila Dean has an article about a new book by Orrin Pilkey and Linda Pilkey-Jarvis on the role of predictions in decision making. The book is titled Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can’t Predict the Future.

Here is an excerpt from the book’s description at Columbia University Press:

Writing for the general, nonmathematician reader and using examples from throughout the environmental sciences, Pilkey and Pilkey-Jarvis show how unquestioned faith in mathematical models can blind us to the hard data and sound judgment of experienced scientific fieldwork. They begin with a riveting account of the extinction of the North Atlantic cod on the Grand Banks of Canada. Next they engage in a general discussion of the limitations of many models across a broad array of crucial environmental subjects.
The book offers fascinating case studies depicting how the seductiveness of quantitative models has led to unmanageable nuclear waste disposal practices, poisoned mining sites, unjustifiable faith in predicted sea level rise rates, bad predictions of future shoreline erosion rates, overoptimistic cost estimates of artificial beaches, and a host of other thorny problems. The authors demonstrate how many modelers have been reckless, employing fudge factors to assure "correct" answers and caring little if their models actually worked.

A timely and urgent book written in an engaging style, Useless Arithmetic evaluates the assumptions behind models, the nature of the field data, and the dialogue between modelers and their "customers."

Naomi Oreskes offers the following praise quote:

Orrin H. Pilkey and Linda Pilkey-Jarvis argue that many models are worse than useless, providing a false sense of security and an unwarranted confidence in our scientific expertise. Regardless of how one responds to their views, they can't be ignored. A must-read for anyone seriously interested in the role of models in contemporary science and policy.

In an interview the authors comment:

The problem is not the math itself, but the blind acceptance and even idolatry we have applied to the quantitative models. These predictive models leave citizens befuddled and unable to defend or criticize model-based decisions. We argue that we should accept the fact that we live in a qualitative world when it comes to natural processes. We must rely on qualitative models that predict only direction, trends, or magnitudes of natural phenomena, and accept the possibility of being imprecise or wrong to some degree. We should demand that when models are used, the assumptions and model simplifications are clearly stated. A better method in many cases will be adaptive management, where a flexible approach is used, where we admit there are uncertainties down the road and we watch and adapt as nature rolls on.

I have not yet read the book, but I will.

Orrin participated in our project on Prediction in the Earth Sciences in the late 1990s, contributing a chapter on beach nourishment. The project resulted in this book:

Sarewitz, D., R.A. Pielke, Jr., and R. Byerly, Jr., (eds.) 2000: Prediction: Science, decision making and the future of nature, Island Press, Washington, DC.

Our last chapter can be found here in PDF.

Posted on February 20, 2007 10:20 AM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Prediction and Forecasting

February 18, 2007

Al Gore 2008, Part 2: A Comparison with the 2004 Evangelical Wedge

Last Friday I speculated that Al Gore will win the 2008 presidency in no small part due to the emergence of climate change as a wedge issue. A wedge issue well used in a political campaign will serve to split your opposition's base and lead to a turn-out advantage among those motivated to vote. As a Pew Research analysis explained:

In electoral politics, however, what often matters most in measuring an issue's potential impact is not whether a great many people care about it, but whether even a relatively small number care about it enough to base their vote on it. Indeed, the classic "wedge issue" is one that draws more of one kind of partisan than another to the polls.

So to explore this issue further I thought I'd compare the climate issue to evangelicals in the population. In the 2004 election the mobilization of evangelical voters was widely attributed as a successful strategy for George W. Bush. Here is what I found.

First, I gathered data on the self-described proportion of voters who call themselves 'evangelical" from a poll taken in 2003-200 by the Annenberg Center (here in PDF). The following graph, left panel, compares the ranking of Evangelical voters with rank in percentage of 2004 presidential vote received by George W. Bush. Note that data was available for only 34 states. The right panel repeats the graph I presented in the earlier Gore post comparing the ranking of per capita CO2 emissions with rank in percentage of 2004 presidential vote received by George W. Bush.

The rank correlation between evangelicals and Bush vote is 0.69. Recall that it was 0.67 between per capita CO2 and Bush vote. Very interesting! (Note Ohio and Florida in that swing-state zone.)

Now compare the distribution of states in the following chart, color coded to represent the vote outcome in the 2004 election.

So what should you take from this comparison? If evangelical issues did indeed serve as a "wedge issue" in 2004 to the benefit the Republicans and George W. Bush, then the baseline conditions for the climate issue leading to 2008 suggest that it is equally amenable to exploitation for political gain among the Democrats, but particularly (and perhaps uniquely) for Al Gore.

Posted on February 18, 2007 10:10 AM View this article | Comments (14)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics

Some Sunday NASA News Vignettes

A few items on NASA stitched together . . .

In a Q&A with the New York Times Sunday Magazine, NASA’s Drew Shindell predicts that we’ll know less about the climate system if his group at NASA doesn’t get more funding:

If your department is that politicized, how does that affect research? Well, five years from now, we will know less about our home planet that we know now. The future does not have money set aside to maintain even the current level of observations. There were proposals for lots of climate-monitoring instruments, most of which have been canceled.

To understand NASA’s budget priorities doesn’t require one to be a rocket scientist. This Reuter’s news story contains what may be the most laughable cost estimate from NASA that I’ve seen in a long time, for deflecting a killer asteroid from hitting the Earth.

[Former NASA astronaut Rusty] Schweickart wants to see the United Nations adopt procedures for assessing asteroid threats and deciding if and when to take action.
The favored approach to dealing with a potentially deadly space rock is to dispatch a spacecraft that would use gravity to alter the asteroid's course so it no longer threatens Earth, said astronaut Ed Lu, a veteran of the International Space Station.

The so-called Gravity Tractor could maintain a position near the threatening asteroid, exerting a gentle tug that, over time, would deflect the asteroid.

An asteroid the size of Apophis, which is about 460 feet long, would take about 12 days of gravity-tugging, Lu added.

Mission costs are estimated at $300 million.

NASA’s track record of cost and schedule performance does not lead one to optimism about any projection of costs, as indicated by this report from the Seattle Times:

Boeing received a bonus of $425.3 million — 92 percent of the potential award — for work on the international space station that ran eight years late and cost more than twice what was expected, according to federal auditors.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report set for release today that the fee was paid on a $13.4 billion so-called "cost-plus" contract where NASA reimburses all costs and pays a bonus for exceptional performance. Raytheon and Lockheed Martin received similar bonuses for troubled programs.

"NASA paid most of the available fee on all of the contracts we reviewed — including on projects that showed cost increases, schedule delays and technical problems," the GAO said in its report for U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., who chairs the House Science Committee.

Maybe they should have instead sent that bonus money to Dr. Shindell’s lab. Alternatively, if in fact we’ll know less in five years, maybe we should stop climate research altogether, as it seems like we know a lot right now . . .

Posted on February 18, 2007 08:08 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

Should I Care About Cognitive Misers Fighting Over My Wikipedia Biography?

Some time ago a few of my students emailed me (from a bar somewhere I believe) to alert me to the fact that I had a Wikipedia biography page. I had known this already because one of the site administrators had emailed me for a photo. I never though much of it, but my students seemed to think it was cool (or maybe they were laughing at me, it is sometimes hard to tell;-).

It has recently come to my attention that over the past few months some folks are engaged in a minor skirmish over my biography, something I assume is fairly common on biographies, and elsewhere in Wikipedia (Politicization of knowledge? Go figure). It appears that some anonymous people are using the biography to try to paint me as a . . . Republican (cue breaking glass!;-). (Perhaps they are some of the less thoughtful Grist readers, as opposed to most who comment there, where character assassination in mainline posts appears to be accepted behavior.)

First, let’s state for the record that such insinuations are simply wrong. I suppose they are advanced by the disingenuous for the benefit of a small set of cognitive misers for whom such labels are useful shortcuts that help to avoid actually engaging in the substance of my academic policy work. Apparently some feel threatened enough by my work enough to try to influence how I am publicly perceived. To get a sense of the sort of juvenile editorial changes taking place over there, one recent edit removed references to liberal-leaning groups who had favorably cited my work.

I typically don’t pay much attention to such things because the folks who care only about assigning political labels in litmus-test fashion are probably not the ones who are going to be too interested in policy analyses anyway. After all, why spend the time understanding nuances of a complex topic when a pejorative political label is available as a convenient mental shortcut? We saw some of this from the rabid right in the (mostly deleted) comments here on my recent post about Al Gore.

I have also recently learned that Wikipedia frowns upon an individual editing their own biography, which seems fair, so rather than seek to create a more accurate page myself, I have decided to ask Prometheus readers if this is an issue I should even be concerned about, and if so, what to do about it.

I don’t have much quibble about the details of the specific facts presented in the current entry. But the facts selected for highlighting do cherry pick one of literally hundreds of media appearances (i.e., Fox News) and one of hundreds of articles (i.e, Regulation), I suppose the selectivity is to make the point that I have at times interacted with people on the political right. (Shock! Horror!) For the record, I was happy to accept an interview with Fox News (as I do with most all requests from the media) as their viewers (in my opinion) would benefit from hearing about the stuff we do, just like CNN viewers (for whom I have also appeared). And I also happily accepted an invitation to rework one of my peer-reviewed articles for Regulation (published by the libertarian Cato Institute) as their readers (in my opinion) would also benefit from hearing about the stuff we do, just like The New Republic readers (for whom I’ve also published).

To be absolutely clear, as a policy scholar I am happy to have people from any political persuasion show in interest in our work, and I’ll continue to write for and speak with people who are interested that come from a range of perspectives -- Democrat, Green, Libertarian, Republican, Socialist, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Conservative, etc. etc.. I won't give in to efforts to intimidate by casting perjorative political labels. Ideally, members of all of these political parties will see the inescapable wisdom is our work, though I won't hold my breath;-) And for the most part I’ll also continue to ignore the more inane criticisms.

So my question, Prometheus readers, is: should I care about the Wikipedia biography?

Posted on February 18, 2007 01:50 AM View this article | Comments (34)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics

February 16, 2007

Why Al Gore Will be the Next President of the United States

Al Gore will be the next president of the United States. He will win with at least 293 electoral votes, and perhaps in a landslide. This post explains why.

Last week I posted up a graph from The Economist that I found intriguing. The graph showed how California’s electricity usage was about half the national average and even less than the average in the "Red States" (i.e., those that voted Republican in the 2004 Presidential election). In the comments astute Prometheus readers pointed out some important issues, and this motivated me to look at some data a bit more closely and here is what I found and why I think it is important. This post is intended to motivate discussion and comment. My students can tell you how well I predicted the last presidential election;-)

The difference in per capita carbon dioxide emissions between Red and Blue states (from the 2004 elections) is startling (data on CO2 emissions expressed in million metric tons available here in xls. and state population data available here in .xls, and in this analysis I use 2003 values. Election data is from CNN.com).

Red State

Mean (state): 31.7
Median (state): 24.4

Blue State

Mean (state): 15.2
Median (state): 14.4

This means that in 2004 the per-state carbon dioxide emissions in states that voted for George Bush were about twice as large on a per capita basis than those in states that voted for John Kerry. The figure below shows a scatter plot of where each of the 50 states ranks (from 1 to 50) on per capita carbon dioxide emissions and the share of the popular vote won by George W. Bush in 2004. The correlation is a stunning 0.67.

Global climate change was a non-issue in the 2004 elections, so this relationship was a correlate of other factors that determined the election and therefore not a direct factor in the election outcome. It does however provide a baseline for understanding the role of carbon dioxide emissions in the politics of the 2008 election.

2008 will be different than 2004. Elites have decided that global climate change is an issue worth politicizing, that is to say, worth making an issue in politics. Therefore, carbon dioxide emissions will be an issue in the 2008 election.

Obvious point #1: Policy proposals focused on reducing carbon dioxide emissions all involve placing a cost on carbon. Proposals that have been advanced include a cap (on total emissions) and trade (of permits to emit under the cap), a carbon tax, incentives to adopt renewables (e.g., RPS), and others. The specifics matter less than the fact that all involve adding costs to emissions that today are not present (other than as externalities).

Obvious point #2: Additional costs on carbon dioxide emissions will disproportionately hit those voters (and businesses that employ voters) in states with high carbon emissions per capita. Now individual voters may not be so sensitized to this issue. But industry, professional associations, state elected officials and agency officials, national politicians, and others whose careers are based on the provision and use of energy will surely be aware of this issue and its consequences. It is true that some in industry, even in the energy industry, have joined the calls for action on carbon dioxide. But it seems reasonable to think that the smaller the cost (or perceived cost) of policies on carbon dioxide, the more likely that such policies will be accepted. Similarly, the higher the costs, the greater the likelihood of opposition.

Consider the following table which shows the 50 states listed with highest per capita carbon dioxide emissions at the top to the lowest at the bottom, shaded to indicate how they voted in the 2004 presidential election. With few exceptions the higher per capita emitting states voted Republican and vice versa.

It is likely that no matter what happens, in 2008 the reddest red states will likely stay red and the bluest blue states will stay blue. This leaves two categories of states to consider, outliers and swing states.

The outliers include Idaho (50th in per capita CO2 emissions, 2nd highest in 2004 vote share to George Bush), Pennsylvania (19 and 33), Florida (40 and 15), Arizona (37 and 25), Delaware (22 and 39), and Virginia (35 and 23). I am going to assume that ID, DE, and PA are unlikely to change in 2008, and while FL, AZ, and VA may be in play, they don’t have to be in the scenario I am here developing.

This leaves the swing states, defined as the states in which the difference between Republican and Democrat in 2004 was less than 5%. These states and their per capita CO2 emissions are (bold indicates a 2004 Red State):

Oregon 11.3
New Hamp. 15.8
Michigan 18.1
Wisconsin 18.9
Nevada 19.1
Colorado 19.5
Minnesota 19.7
Pennsylvania 21.6
Ohio 22.8
Iowa 26.3
New Mexico 30.3

If climate change is a major issue in 2008 then there is a decided advantage in these states to the Democrats, both for holding on to the 2004 state victories and for changing the others from Red to Blue. Colorado and Nevada are below the national average for carbon dioxide emissions and Ohio and Iowa stand to benefit immensely from an ethanol bidding war (already underway). New Mexico has less to gain but also less to offer in terms of electoral votes.

If it seems a stretch to use per capita carbon dioxide emissions as a factor in thinking about electoral politics, consider the following in the aftermath of the 2006 mid-term congressional election:

States with 2 Republican Senators

Average CO2 emissions 36.3 (median = 28.4)

States with 2 Democratic Senators

Average CO2 emissions 14.7 (median = 14.4)

States with 1 Democratic and 1 Republican Senator

Average CO2 emissions 23.1 (median = 22.2)

How will Al Gore win the presidency?

He will continue to take actions that will keep climate change an important issue that cannot be neglected in political discourse. This will involve congressional testimony, a book release, a global set of coordinated concerts, and other actions. He has been nominated for an Oscar and a Nobel Prize. He'll get some help, whether intended or not as the international community is focused on climate change and even the Bush Administration is now helping to keep the topic in play. These factors together will ensure that the issue remains salient and Mr. Gore remains at the fore. He will enter the race late and dramatically. The "will he or won't he" story will overshadow his competition. And on the major campaign issue of the Iraq War he is exceedingly well positioned.

Hillary Clinton cannot compete with Mr. Gore on climate change (and she has an Iraq vote to explain, plus other issues), and is probably weaker on this issue than John McCain, and not much different than other Republicans who might gain the nomination, especially those who still have time to articulate an aggressive position of climate change. By comparison, consider how the three parties in the U.K. are falling over each other to be viewed among voters as the more aggressive on climate change. For John Edwards and Barak Obama, climate change is just not their gig. If Al Gore can win his party’s nomination, which is certainly not guaranteed, the general election would be his to lose.

If he does run, and he does win his party’s nomination, then as of right now I predict that he will get at least 293 electoral votes, comprised of the 2004 blue states plus NV, CO, OH, and IA. Add in a surprise or two (e.g., FL – two hurricane seasons between now and the 2008 election, AZ, VA) and it is then a landslide.

2008 will be the climate change election and Al Gore will be the next president of the United States.

Posted on February 16, 2007 02:36 AM View this article | Comments (35)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

February 15, 2007

Another Reason to View Adaptation as Sustainable Development

This news story from Reuters highlights the consequences of neglecting certain areas of research and policy:

One billion poor suffer from neglected diseases: WHO
Last Updated: 2007-02-14 9:44:10 -0400 (Reuters Health)

JAKARTA (Reuters) - One billion people in tropical countries are still suffering from debilitating and disfiguring diseases associated with poverty, but many remain untreated due to official neglect, health officials said on Wednesday.

Despite the existence of inexpensive and safe treatment, those who suffer from diseases such as leprosy, elephantiasis and yaws remain untreated due to a lack of resources and political will, said Jai Narain, South East Asia director of communicable diseases at the World Health Organization (WHO).

"These tropical diseases have been neglected by policy makers, by the research community and also by the international community," Nairan told a news conference at the start of an international meeting to tackle tropical diseases.

"But at the same time these diseases cause considerable amount of suffering, disability, disfigurement and even social economic impact, particularly for populations which are extremely marginalised," he said.

Nairan said the fact that the diseases were not in the headlines and not global problems like polio, HIV/AIDS and malaria contributed to the lack of attention.

"These diseases are closely related to poverty. The elimination of such diseases would be a significant step toward poverty reduction," he said. Many who contract the diseases suffer from discrimination and are shunned by their communities, said Nyoman Kandun, director general for communicable disease control at the Indonesian health ministry. . . .

Posted on February 15, 2007 07:03 AM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health

February 14, 2007

Final Chapter, Hurricanes and IPCC, Book IV

Two years ago NOAA's Chris Landsea resigned from participating in the IPCC citing concerns that the chapter on hurricanes had been politicized, specifically citing the role that Kevin Trenberth, IPCC convening lead author for the chapter that covered hurricanes, had playing in an October, 2004 media event hyping a hurricane-global warming connection.

With this post we'd like to follow up and in the process close the book on this particular dispute -- at least for us here at Prometheus. The "hurricane wars" are probably far from over, but we should acknowledge that both Chris Landsea and Kevin Trenberth both come out of this situation looking pretty good. Both can and should feel vindicated. Read on if you are interested in a few final details from the last chapter in this story.

The first signs that there might be a happy ending to this saga were evident in June, 2005 when Kevin Trenberth authored a commentary in Science in which he wrote:

[T]here is no sound theoretical basis for drawing any conclusions about how anthropogenic change affects hurricane numbers or tracks, and thus how many hit land.

This led me to conclude at the time:

Landsea and Trenberth are scientifically on the same page, and the perspectives now being espoused by Trenberth [in Science] are (in my interpretation) entirely consistent with what Landsea argued at the time he stepped down from the IPCC.

So it shouldn't have been too surprising when the IPCC accurately reported the state of scientific understandings of tropical cyclones and climate change in its recent summary for policy makers, despite some last-minute concerns. (Of course, the WMO Consensus Statement was probably the most significant factor shaping the IPCC's final judgments.) When the full IPCC WG I report comes out, I have no doubts there will be some room for quibbling about the details on this subject, but the big picture presented in the SPM appears to me to be just about right.

Yesterday in an online Q&A with the public organized by the Washington Post Kevin Trenberth addressed an explicit question about this issue:

Washington, D.C.: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Chris Landsea resigned a year ago from the IPCC and leveled charges that the IPCC, and you in particular, had a overly-politicized view of global warming trends. (link to washingtonpost.com here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29397-2005Jan22.html). Specifically, I believe that Landsea objected to the fact that some on the IPCC would "utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming." I assume that you disagree with Mr. Landsea. Do you believe that recent hurricane patterns have been negatively affected by global warming?
Kevin Trenberth: This is what the IPCC says in the Policy Makers Summary: "There is observational evidence for an increase of intense tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic since about 1970, correlated with increases of tropical sea surface temperatures. There are also suggestions of increased intense tropical cyclone activity in some other regions where concerns over data quality are greater. Multi-decadal variability and the quality of the tropical cyclone records prior to routine satellite observations in about 1970 complicate the detection of long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity. There is no clear trend in the annual numbers of tropical cyclones. " This was agreed to by the US Govt and crafted by the lead authors present (including me). Landsea's comments were not correct.

Dr. Trenberth stuck to what the IPCC concluded and did not take the bait offered by this questioner. He was also taking the high ground in claiming that the IPCC SPM accurately reflected the current state of the science. But Chris Landsea should feel good as well because there can be no doubt that his actions helped to ensure that the IPCC got things right in the end.

Kudos to both, but it's time to move on.

Posted on February 14, 2007 03:56 PM View this article | Comments (7)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

Words of Wisdom in The Daily Camera

There is an excellent letter to the editor in today's Daily Camera (our local newspaper) by Robert Davis, who comments favorably in reaction to a recent op-ed by Chris Mooney and Alan Sokal. Mr. Davis wisely distinguishes advice as policy analysis, and underscores the importance of honest brokers of policy alternatives. Here is Mr. Davis' letter in full:

Your editorial pages for Feb. 11 contained an abundance of thoughtful and relevant writing. In particular, the piece by Mooney and Sokal offers a welcome defense of science as evidence-based reasoning that deserves protection from ideologues ("Taking the spin out of science," Feb. 11).
As a policy analyst who worked as a civil servant in the office of one of the president`s cabinet secretaries through three administrations, I would offer the caution that scientists themselves can become ideologues and need to be reminded of their roles in the decision-making apparatus of a government.

Effective and helpful policy analysis for the head of an agency includes laying out all of the alternatives for addressing a particular problem and exploring the consequences of each alternative. It is in this phase that scientists make their most valuable contribution.

In the case of global warming, we need desperately to know the consequences of the actions we might take. I include costs as one of the consequences, and, of course, probabilities must be addressed, because, in any policy-making, certainty is the rarest of commodities.

Scientists are least helpful when they try to short-cut the policy analysis by prescribing what we must do. At this point, they stop being scientists and the most visible among them become pontificating celebrities. Any government has an obligation to keep its scientists from making fools of themselves, but it is a fine line to hoe.

Certainly, we want the opinions of scientists at the appropriate point in the process of making policy. Without judging the Bush administration or its critics, I would maintain that we have a right to expect that scientists be held to the rules of rational, effective and disciplined policy analysis.

ROBERT DAVIS
Boulder

Posted on February 14, 2007 12:32 PM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

February 13, 2007

An Evaluation of U.S. Self-Evaluation on Climate Policy

The Bush Administration has provided the most substantive presentation of its climate policies (that I have seen at least) in the form of a speech yesterday by Kurt Volker, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs before the German Marshall Fund in Berlin, Germany. With this post are a few reactions to this self-evaluation of U.S. climate policies presented by the Bush Administration. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I come to a different conclusion than the Bush Administration when evaluating U.S. climate policies.

The speech begins by acknowledging that the US policies on climate change are not so warmly received in Europe, with Mr. Volker suggesting that the U.S. is "misunderstood." Then there is this unfortunate spin:

As all of you know, President Bush devoted a significant portion of his State of the Union address last month to the subject of climate change-and to what the U.S. intends to do about it.

Here is that "significant portion" in full:

America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil. And these technologies will help us be better stewards of the environment, and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change.

The Bush Administration seems yet to appreciate that being well understood requires a basis in trust, a condition that is hard maintain in the face of constant spin and heavy-handed information management. Those still following Mr. Volker after this statement were treated to an in depth self-evaluation of U.S. policies, well worth reading.

Mr. Volker starts out with "some clear, simple statements":

*The United States, and this Administration, care deeply about climate change.
*We agree that human activity contributes to global warming.

*We support the recent IPCC report, in which U.S. scientists played a leading role.

*We are committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

*We have made tremendous investments in reducing emissions.

*We are working multilaterally to do so.

*We are continuing these efforts.

*These efforts are producing results that stand up favorably against anyone in the world.

Just because we haven't joined the Kyoto Protocol doesn't make any of these statements less true.

Mr. Volker then directly confronts the U.S.-Europe split on climate change:

Now, I know there is a deeply held view among many in Europe that the U.S. Government doesn't get it. That we don't care about climate change, that we are doing nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and that Europe, while perhaps not perfect, is doing a far better job of tackling the issue than the United States. This proposition--no matter how simple, no matter how widely held, and no matter how much it fits a pop-culture "blame-the-United States" paradigm--is completely wrong, on every point.

This statement (remember, delivered in Germany) is quite bold and aggressive. What accounts for this new-found self-confidence and aggressiveness? Mr. Volker does not make his audience wait long for the answer:

Let me start first with the data, because it is important to have the facts on the table. No question: The United States is the world's largest emitter of CO2. Everybody in the room knows this. But this fact says no more about the United States, than the fact that Germany leads Europe in emissions says about Germany.
The United States is number one in greenhouse gas emissions primarily because it is the number one economy in the world. With 5% of the world's population we produce 25% of global wealth. And despite being relatively clean and green, Germany leads Europe in emissions, because it is Europe's largest economy. Our emissions are not out of line with the size of our economy. And it's worth noting: the International Energy Agency is forecasting that China, with a smaller economy, is expected to surpass U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2009.

More important than current emissions is the trend line. What is actually happening to emissions? Are they being reduced? This, after all, is what Kyoto is supposed to address.

According to data from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, from 2000-2004--the most recent period for which we have good, comparative data--U.S. greenhouse gas emissions increased by 1.3 percent. This is an increase, but a very modest increase. The EU-25, on the other hand, increased collective emissions by 2.1 percent.

And, no, this is not because the new EU members added since the 2004 expansion run dirtier economies than the previous 15 members, and this then bumps up the numbers. Actually, the new members have the opposite effect. Those nations--by moving away from some older energy technologies like brown coal--are part of the good news story. If the new EU members did not bring down the average, the old EU-15 would get a worse report card--having increased emissions by 2.4 percent during this same time period.

Germany, I should state, had an admirable record of actually cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 0.7 percent during this time period--but Germany's efforts were overshadowed by increases in most other EU economies.

Now let's be honest--even a 2.4 percent increase for the EU-15 is a very modest increase. But given the way this issue gets talked about publicly in Europe, I would venture to say that few people in Europe know that from 2000 to 2004, EU-15 emissions grew at nearly double the U.S. rate, and that Europe, at least during this period, has been moving away from-not towards-its Kyoto target of an 8 percent cut.

The Bush Administration has finally, clumsily, begun moving toward a realpolitik approach to climate change, one that I recommended almost three years ago:

. . . consider this amazing fact: if President Bush in 2001 had, instead of pulling out of the Kyoto process, simply committed the United States to participate and then did nothing else differently since that time, then the United States would be closer to meeting its Kyoto targets than EU members Ireland, Spain, Austria, Portugal, and about even with Denmark.
Ironically, expressing support for the Kyoto process but not taking dramatic action to implement it is the exact climate policy pursued by the Administration of Bill Clinton whose approach to climate policy is substantively very similar to the approach of the Bush Administration. But the two administration's approaches to climate politics could not be more different.

Of course, success in international politics does not necessarily mean good policy will result. . .

The Bush Administration’s new, aggressive approach is based on the surprising discovery that European greenhouse gas emissions have increased faster than those in the United States. Mr. Volker’s talk is even suggestively titled "Post-Kyoto Surprise: America's Quiet Efforts to Cut Greenhouse Gases Are Producing Results." Because the United States over 2000-2004 did relatively better than Europe in the rate of greenhouse gas emissions growth, this has apparently given the Bush Administration the sense that they can thumb their nose at the Europeans and say "nya-nya-nya." An approach more politically effective (from the perspective of the Bush Administration) might have instead been to share in the difficulties of reducing emissions, rather than presenting the US-EU as being opposed to one another. I have doubts that the Bush Administration will ever learn the merits of diplomacy.

What goes unsaid by Mr. Vokler is that a more relevant metric of policy success (as compared, say, to political posturing) in reducing greenhouse gas emissions is not the level of emissions of the EU, but rather the absolute amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And on this count both the United States and Europe are performing quite poorly, the small differences between the two over 2000-2004 is pretty much irrelevant.

More fundamentally, a reduction in the growth rate of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions has occurred not by policy design, but by happenstance. To be fair, the Bush Administration has always emphasized reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions per unit of economic output, but its targets have been no more aggressive than the long-term rate of transformation of the economy to being less energy intensive. The Bush Administration would be on more solid ground claiming policy success for reductions in emissions intensity greater than the background trend if it had actually presented such outcomes as policy goals at sometime in the past. Instead, it has stumbled upon an outcome that it never actually sought and claimed it as the result of intentional policy action.

It surely must be uncomfortable for the EU to see the Bush Administration trumpeting its greenhouse emissions reductions "successes" after rudely pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol in 2001. And on the count the Bush Administration once again demonstrates its utter incompetence in international relations to the detriment of its own political agenda. Upon learning that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions were less than that of the EU over a short 4-year period, rather than rubbing the European’s noses in their own struggles over climate policy, the Bush Administration might have instead taken a more conciliatory approach. It has once again favored playing politics rather than focusing on the real policy challenges presented by climate change. Ironically, those favoring a more aggressive approach to emissions reductions should welcome the Bush Administration’s ham-handedness in helping to keep the issue alive. A more politically sophisticated approach might not have the same results.

Finally, the notion of adaptation does not appear in the Bush Administration’s self-evaluation. Any climate policy that purports to be comprehensive but does not discuss adaptation must be considered incomplete at best and more likely a failure.

Posted on February 13, 2007 09:04 AM View this article | Comments (21)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

February 12, 2007

An Inconvenient Survey

Last Friday I visited Savannah, Georgia to participate in a viewing and discussion of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” This is the second time I have had a chance to participate in such an event, and it was a pleasure to participate in this event (including getting to see a thoughtful talk by Georgia Tech’s peter Webster).. This time I thought I’d collect a bit of data. So like the college professor that I am I gave a pop quiz right after the movie. After watching a documentary on climate change one should have the basic facts down, right? Unfortunately, no. Here is the pop quiz I gave with answers on the other side.

1. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its 4th Assessment Report last Friday. It projects a likely global average temperature increase for 2100 of (degrees C):

A. 1.1 to 6.4
B. 1.5 to 4.5
C. 5.0 to 11.5
D. 7.0 to 9.0

2. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its 4th Assessment Report last Friday. It projects a (mid-range) global average sea level rise for 2100 of:

A. 16 inches
B. 48 inches
C. 10 feet
D. 70 feet

3. If the Kyoto Protocol is fully implemented, including US participation, the effects on global average temperatures in 2080 would be:

A. Undetectable
B. Reduce the projected increase by 0.5 degrees
C. Reduce the projected increase by 1.0 degrees
D. Reduce the projected increase by 2.0 degrees

4. If the global greenhouse gas emissions magically stopped right now global average temperatures would:

A. Stop increasing immediately
B. Continue increasing for many decades

5. In order to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide requires that net global emissions be reduced from today’s levels:

A. to 1990 levels
B. by 20%
C. by 50%
D. by 100%

Answers:

1. A
2. A
3. A
4. B
5. D

No one in the audience of about 200 people admitted to getting all 5 correct. Judging by the show of hands very few came close to the correct answers on 1, 2, 3 or 5. Most people did get #4 correct. In fact, on 1, 2, and 3 the overwhelming answers were C and D and 5 it was A and B. And this was a very educated, engaged audience. I would venture that a scientific survey would find that Mr. Gore’s movie is more apt to mislead than bring the viewer to a clear understanding of the center of gravity of scientific opinion on climate change.

Is it alarmist? By effect on its uninformed audience, I'd hypothesize based on this nonscientific data set that it is.

What was most troubling was the comments of a few people in the audience who reacted pretty negatively to my remarks. One person commented (paraphrase):

We are here to talk about the end of the world and you want to talk about hurricanes. It is energy policy only we need to talk about, not disasters.

Of course Mr. Gore’s movie is chock full of references to disasters, most notably Katrina. The amazing thing to me is that about 6 people from Savannah that I spoke to in some depth, including taxi drivers and lawyers, mentioned to me that Savannah is fortunate to be in a hurricane shadow – it can’t be hit. The reality is that it can and will be hit, and hit hard. And to the extent that the focus on climate change distracts from hurricane preparation, when that fateful day occurs, the resulting disaster will inevitably be worse.

And if you don’t think that the focus on climate-change-as-energy-policy distracts from the need to adapt to climate change, consider this amazing admission from a state official in New Mexico, reacting to our recent paper in Nature:

The problem, Pielke said, is that advocates fear efforts to adapt to climate change will blunt calls to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
That fear has affected New Mexico's ambitious governmental climate change effort.

A report last year from the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer concluded that "adaptation" is critical to coping with climate change and population growth.

But most of the state's climate change effort has focused on cutting greenhouse gas emissions rather than on coping with the collision between a growing population and a changing climate.

Jim Norton, one of the state officials heading up the effort, agrees with Pielke that adaptation is critical. But there was a fear, Norton said, that too much emphasis "could sort of divert attention away from solving the problem of growing greenhouse gas emissions." [emphasis added]

Reducing emissions is a challenge well worth undertaking. But when it becomes such an overwhelming focus that nothing else is allowed, especially adaptation in mal-adapated communities, then a virtue becomes a vice. An Inconvenient Truth mislead because it suggests that we only need do one thing to respond to the threat of climate change. The reality is that we must do many things, among which we must evaluate tradeoffs, costs and benefits, risks and uncertainties. And that is a real inconvenient truth.

Posted on February 12, 2007 02:44 AM View this article | Comments (26)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Risk & Uncertainty

February 11, 2007

The Honest Broker

The Honest Broker is soon going to the printer with Cambridge University Press. Amazon has the cover up, here it is:

If you are qualified (an editor, in the media, a popular blogger, etc.) and you would like a review copy, please email me at pielke@colorado.edu with your details and I will add you to the list I am sending to CUP. Others can pre-order the book here and here. Thanks!

Posted on February 11, 2007 11:54 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

February 10, 2007

So This is Interesting

Bjorn Lomborg writing in The Guardian 7 February 2007:

Imagine if the director of the CIA published a new assessment of Iran, saying: "I hope this report will shock people, governments into taking more serious action."

We wrote here on Prometheus 25 January 2007:

Imagine, by contrast, if the Director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, another organization with an agenda to be "policy neutral," were reported in the media to say of the agency’s latest assessment on Iran, "I hope that the report will shock people, governments into taking more serious action."

Not a huge deal, and maybe just a simple coincidence, but we academics tend to notice and be a bit prickly about such things . . .

Posted on February 10, 2007 01:32 PM View this article | Comments (7)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

February 09, 2007

Quote from Nelson Polsby

Nelson Polsby, a political scientist widely respected for his pioneering studies of Congress and political parties, died earlier this week. This interesting quote is from an interview with Prof. Polsby in his obituary in

"There are often too many facts and not infrequently too many different versions of the facts. Rather than speaking for themselves, various facts have what we have come to refer to as spokespersons."
Posted on February 9, 2007 02:08 PM View this article | Comments (8)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics

Air Capture Prize

This prize looks to raise the stature of air capture technologies that we have discussed here before (Hat tip: James Annan).

Posted on February 9, 2007 04:28 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Technology Policy

February 08, 2007

New Blog at CU!

Tom Yulsman, an occasional contributor here and professor of Journalism here at CU, along with colleagues have started a new weblog focused on Environmental Journalism. Check it out here!

Posted on February 8, 2007 09:27 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

February 07, 2007

Clarifying IPCC AR4 Statements on Sea Level Rise

The statements in the IPCC’s AR4 SPM released last week on sea level rise have led to some confusion and conflict over what exactly they said and how it compares to the 2001 IPCC TAR. The IPCC could have made it easier for all of us by presenting the data in a comparable manner. This post reflects my efforts to make sense of this situation. I hope that experts on the subject will weigh in on my initial thoughts.

I conclude that the IPCC has indeed lowered its top end estimates of sea level rise over the 21st century relative to 1990, in contrast to the conclusions at RealClimate which suggest that this has in fact not occurred. For details, please read on.

First, what did the IPCC 2001 TAR say about sea level? It reported:

For the complete range of AOGCMs and SRES scenarios and including uncertainties in land-ice changes, permafrost changes and sediment deposition, global average sea level is projected to rise by 0.09 to 0.88 m over 1990 to 2100, with a central value of 0.48 m

Some information was not included:

In addition, Warrick et al. included an allowance for ice-dynamical changes in the WAIS. The range we have given does not include such changes. The contribution of the WAIS is potentially important on the longer term, but it is now widely agreed that major loss of grounded ice from the WAIS and consequent accelerated sea-level rise are very unlikely during the 21st century.

and

The range we have given also does not take account of uncertainty in modelling of radiative forcing, the carbon cycle, atmospheric chemistry, or storage of water in the terrestrial environment.

This is quite similar to the just-released IPCC AR4 (PDF) which says:

Models used to date do not include uncertainties in climate-carbon cycle feedback nor do they include the full effects of changes in ice sheet flow, because a basis in published literature is lacking.

The IPCC AR4 does apparently incorporate information from Greenland and Antarctica:

The projections include a contribution due to increased ice flow from Greenland and Antarctica at the rates observed for 1993-2003, but these flow rates could increase or decrease in the future.

It suggests that on the increasing side that:

For example, if this contribution were to grow linearly with global average temperature change, the upper ranges of sea level rise for SRES scenarios shown in Table SPM-3 would increase by 0.1 m to 0.2 m. Larger values cannot be excluded, but understanding of these effects is too limited to assess their likelihood or provide a best estimate or an upper bound for sea level rise.

Over at RealClimate they seem to have added to the confusion by asserting incorrectly:

Note that some media have been comparing apples with pears here: they claimed IPCC has reduced its upper sea level limit from 88 to 59 cm, but the former number from the TAR did include this ice dynamics uncertainty, while the latter from the AR4 does not

As documented above the TAR did not include such uncertainties, writing of its Figure 11.12:

Note that this range does not allow for uncertainty relating to ice-dynamical changes in the West Antarctic ice sheet.

I asked RealClimate about this, and they responded:

The TAR range included mass-balance estimates for the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets (though did not include dynamical changes - i.e. changes due to changes in ice streams, calving, grounding line movement, etc which were then thought to be small). Recent observations point to the vital importance of such terms in assessing the net mass balance, thus since they are highly uncertain, it was thought more prudent to not include the mass-balance terms this time around. Our statement above should probably state that "the former number from the TAR did include some ice-sheet mass balance uncertainty, while the latter from the AR4 does not"

What RealClimate fails to acknowledge is that because the TAR did not consider dynamical uncertainties, then a similar uncertainty range would have to be added on top of the TAR top end estimate to make it apples-to-apples with the top end uncertainty in the AR4. So in effect they cancel out and are not relevant to this discussion.

Presumably when the IPCC AR4 says "a basis in published literature is lacking" it is indeed prudent not to speculate. I would assume that there is also no basis in the published literature to conclude that sea level rise might stop instantaneously next year, so they didn’t include that either;-)

So what then do we get when comparing the two reports? The following figure shows the TAR and AR4 estimates on the same graph, taken from the TAR with the AR4 values superimposed. The AR4 ranges are delineated using the same color scheme as the TAR, but with rounded ends. The AR4 values are for 2090-2099, which I have presented as 2095. There is, as noted above, some error term on the upper end of the range. But it should be applied to both the TAR and AR4 estimates, so for comparative purposes they basically cancel out.

Thus, I conclude that the top end estimate has indeed come down from the TAR to the AR4, and those making this observation are accurately representing the AR4. Why didn't the IPCC just say so?

Posted on February 7, 2007 03:18 PM View this article | Comments (23)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Risk & Uncertainty

Lifting the Taboo on Adaptation

Our article is online with Nature. A copy of the full text can also be found here in PDF. Comments welcomed.

Pielke, Jr., R.A., Prins, G., Rayner, S. and Sarewitz, D., 2007. Lifting the taboo on adaptation. Nature, 7 February.

Posted on February 7, 2007 01:05 PM View this article | Comments (12)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Scientific Integrity and Budget Cuts

I am watching the Senate Commerce Committee's hearing this morning on "Climate Change Research and Scientific Integrity." I note in this hearing a conflation of allegations of Bush Administration interference in science communication with research budgets for climate scientists. Both Rick Piltz's testimony and that of Rick Anthes emphasized science budgets. Seems to me that such claims are crassly opportunistic. Here are some actual climate science budget facts that should give some pause to such arguments:

From 1995 to 2001:

Climate science funding was cut from $2.234B to $1.886B (constant dollars), representing a cut of 15.6%. With respect to climate science funding as a proportion of domestic discretionary spending the cut is 23%.

From 2002 to 2006:

Climate science funding was cut from $1.792B to $1.674B (constant dollars), representing a cut of 6.6%. With respect to climate science funding as a proportion of domestic discretionary spending the cut is 20%.

Data from Rick Piltz's testimony and the Congressional Budget Office. Note that funding in 2000 and 2001 are virtually identical.

If the Bush Administration's cuts represent an assault on scientific integrity, then why wouldn't the larger cuts by the Clinton Administration also fall under that same category?

In my mind, conflating research budgets with heavy-handed Bush Administration communication policies is a mistake.

Posted on February 7, 2007 09:09 AM View this article | Comments (12)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

Understanding US Climate Politics

This graph from the 25 January 2007 issue of The Economist says a lot about the politics of energy policy in the United States. According to the article, "California's greenhouse-gas emissions per person are on a par with those of Denmark. Relative to the size of its economy, they are lower."

Posted on February 7, 2007 08:32 AM View this article | Comments (31)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Energy Policy

Should A Scientific Advisor be Evaluated According to Political Criteria?

Consider NASA’s James Hansen who complained that he was being interfered with by the Bush Administration which saw Mr. Hansen’s views as inconvenient with respect to their policies on climate change. Dr. Hansen is, by his own admission, outside of the scientific consensus on climate change, as reflected by the IPCC. Should Dr. Hansen’s ability to speak or even hold his job be a function of the political views of the officials who happen to be in office? Hold on to your answer for a moment and click through . . .

Now consider the State of Oregon and its state climatologist:

In an exclusive interview with KGW-TV, Governor Ted Kulongoski confirmed he wants to take that title [of state climatologist] from Oregon State’s George] Taylor. The governor said Taylor's contradictions interfere with the state's stated goals to reduce greenhouse gases, the accepted cause of global warming in the eyes of a vast majority of scientists.
"He is Oregon State University's climatologist. He is not the state of Oregon's climatologist," Kulongoski said.

Taylor declined to comment on the proposal other than to say he was a "bit shocked" by the news. He recently engaged in a debate at O.M.S.I. and repeated his doubts about accepted science.

In an interview he told KGW, "There are a lot of people saying the bulk of the warming of the last 50 years is due to human activities and I don't believe that's true." He believes natural cycles explain most of the changes the earth has seen.

A bill will be introduced in Salem soon on the matter.

Sen. Brad Avakian, (D) Washington County, is sponsoring the bill. He said global warming is so important to state policy it's important to have a climatologist as a consultant to the governor. He denied this is targeted personally at Taylor. "Absolutely not," Avakian said, "I've never met Mr. Taylor and if he's got opinions I hope he comes to the hearing and testifies."

Kulongoski said the state needs a consistent message on reducing greenhouse gases to combat climate change.

The Governor says, "I just think there has to be somebody that says, 'this is the state position on this.'" [emphasis added]

Whatever one thinks about the science of climate change, one should have concern about scientific advisory positions being determined by purely political criteria, as described in the interview with Oregon's governor. Imagine if George Bush said what the Oregon governor said above in regards to James Hansen -- "I just think there has to be somebody that says, 'this is the U.S. position on this.'" We saw exactly this sort of treatment of intelligence expertise with the Bush Administration's shenanigans leading to the Iraq War.

One should also be concerned about double standards among observers. Both Hansen and Taylor are admittedly outside the IPCC's scientific consensus on climate change and both are inconvenient for the elected officials for whom they serve. Do we really want to go down a path where politicians are able to manipulate governmental advisors to suit their policy preferences? Do the rest of us need any semblance of intellectual coherence on this issue? Or should we instead have of scientific advice simply reflect a convenient political litmus test?

Posted on February 7, 2007 02:10 AM View this article | Comments (35)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

February 06, 2007

Post-IPCC Political Handicapping: Count the Votes

The National Journal has updated its poll of opinions on climate change among members of the U.S. Congress, which it first presented last April. The results, with a few exceptions, are much the same. What the poll indicates are that while there are indeed partisan differences on how members of congress view the science of climate change, there is nonetheless a strong majority of members who accept that "it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made pollution." Given this finding, one might wonder what marginal value exists in continuing to debate the science (one answer found below). Here are a few further details.

In its February 3, 2007 issue the National Journal finds (PDF) that 97% of Democrats and 16% of Republicans answered yes (or "consensus" or "part of cause") to the question: "Do you think it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made problems?"

Let’s assume, for the present discussion, that "beyond a reasonable doubt" is interpreted identically to the IPCC’s "very likely" (meaning >90% certainty, the NJ poll was taken before IPCC's release last week). Let’s also assume that the poll of 72 members is in fact representative of the 535 total. Finally, let’s set aside the debate of whether partisanship drives views on science or vice-versa.

What does this poll signify?

It means that in the Senate there are 57 members who believe that there is no "reasonable doubt" on the cause of global warming, and in the House this number is 258. These are strong majorities.

With respect to the policy questions asked by the National Journal here is how the numbers break out for those favoring various policies:

Mandatory CO2 Limits:

House 243
Senate 54

Carbon Tax

House 123
Senate 27

Cap and Trade

House 290
Senate 65

These counts (again, if an accurate reflection of members’ positions) suggest a few important conclusions.

1. The issue of science is no longer relevant to debate in Congress. A majority in both chambers accepts the human role in climate change, and further a majority accepts the need for action, including mandatory caps on carbon dioxide.

2. A carbon tax is largely unrelated to debate over the science. Even if the entire House were to be comprised of members who accept the science of climate change, as this factor alone drove voting behavior, the vote would be even. However, among Democrats only 50% favor a carbon tax, indicating that there are significant factors at play beyond just views of the science. If one posits that Republican views on a carbon tax are different than Democrats (big stretch), let’s say half as favorable (to be generous) with respect to their views of the science, then this would mean that Congress would have to be at least 75% Democratic to get a majority favoring a carbon tax. Under the present political landscape – not gonna happen.

Bottom line – the votes for action appear to be there. So too is broad public acceptance of the reality of climate change and a need for action. Why then is not action happening more quickly?

There are probably a few answers:

1. When push comes to shove. It may be the case that among many people global warming is an issue with more emotional affect than implications for action. In the U.K. for instance, where climate change is squarely on the agenda, only 11% of respondents to a recent poll indicated that they would fly less to reduce their emissions. The current debate in Europe reflects the difficulties of actually reducing emissions even in the context of apparent strong political and public support.

2. Political overreach. Some who want action on climate change have suggested that it might be best for the 110th Congress not to act in order to wait for a Democratic president to be elected in 2009 (or a least someone who is not GWB). The thinking is that even stronger legislation will be possible under those conditions. This might be wishful thinking. A good rule in politics is to take what you can when you can get it.

3. Those skeptics. Just when you thought that we’d seen the end of the debate over climate skeptics, it turns out that some scientists are busy trying to keep them in the limelight. Yes, you read that right. Consider that immediately upon release of the IPCC Summary for Policy Makers the RealClimate blog immediately followed up its 1,280 word review of the IPCC SPM with a 1,585 word essay on some anti-IPCC statement from a group of self-appointed climate skeptics. Without RealClimate’s generous lavishing of attention and imputed significance, the anti-IPCC document would probably have gone unnoticed by most folks. Like old Cold Warriors longing for the Soviet Union the complete and utter domination of the IPCC consensus view seems difficult for some to accept. This issue runs far deeper than bloggers worried about being out of a job, as it will no doubt manifest itself in debates over climate change research budgets. A strong case can be made that now that the science is settled, at least from the standpoint of justifying mitigation, that there is ample room to downsize significant aspects of the climate research enterprise. After all, plate tectonics is not a big area of research.

4. Fighting is more fun than winning. The dynamics of debate over climate change in the blogoshpere might be a good indication of the broader political dynamics for many. It is easy to transform the issue into skeptic vs. nonskeptic in order to debate science, or Republican vs. Democract to debate politics, or environmentalist vs. capitalist to debate the economy/environment, or any of a number of wedge issues that people find fun and exciting to discuss. We see that achieving pragmatic action on real issues -- which might involve moving beyond the science or reaching a political compromise with one's sworn enemies seems pretty tame and unexciting for many. I have little doubt that for some people, climate change is all about the fight, not the victory, so preserving conflict is paramount.

Bottom line from this post: The votes are there. What is lacking, as I’ve often asserted, are a wide range of policy options to exploit the current political receptivity. In the absence of good options, it is likely that we’ll continue see symbolic action (at best) and loud exhortations, as the battle over climate change continues.

Posted on February 6, 2007 08:31 AM View this article | Comments (38)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

February 05, 2007

Upcoming This Week . . . [UPDATED]

A preview of what to expect this upcoming week here on Prometheus:

On Wednesday Nature will be publishing a commentary that I co-authored with Gwyn Prins (University College London/Columbia University), Steve Rayner (Oxford University’s James Martin Institute), and Dan Sarewitz (ASU). The piece is titled "Lifting the Taboo on Adaptation." We’ll post it here as soon as it is available.

This just in from the House Science and Technology Committee staff:

I just now got out of a meeting with the senior Republican Members of the Science Committee and they decided they want to go in a different direction for Thursday's IPCC hearing. Rather than have you testify, they want me to find a witness from industry for the hearing.

So no testimony for me this week . . .

On Thursday, I have been invited by the House Committee on Science and Technology to testify at a hearing along with leading IPCC scientists. I’ve been asked to discuss the relationship of scientific advice and policy making. This week’s testimony will be straight out of The Honest Broker. Despite my occasional comments about sausage factories, it is an honor to have a chance to present some of our work to policy makers, and I welcome the attention being given to the challenge of connecting science to decision making. Tune in here later this week for my prepared testimony, oral remarks, and reactions. Do note that your favorite "perfidious corporate lapdog"/"closet Republican" (to pick two of my favorite quotes from last week;-) was once again invited by the congressional minority. As always your comments and reactions are welcomed – positive, negative, or indifferent.

On Friday, I’ll be appearing in Savannah, Georgia at an event with Georgia Tech’s Peter Webster where we’ll watch a screening of An Inconvenient Truth and then give short presentations on science and policy issues of climate change immediately after. Here is how a local Savannah paper described the upcoming event:

The film will be followed by a discussion led by Georgia Tech climatologist Peter Webster, who Bonnell said "truly believes we're about to fry," and Roger Pielke Jr., a political scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, who stands in the middle of the climate change debate, calling himself a "nonskeptical heretic."
"I'd say don't be put off by the person speaking, just look at the ideas," Bonnell said. "We're hoping people will be engaged by what they say."

Should be an interesting week.

Posted on February 5, 2007 03:39 PM View this article | Comments (4)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Loose Ends -- IPCC and Hurricanes

Just a few loose ends that may be of interest to those following this issue:

1. The International Institute for Sustainable Development continues their invaluable tradition of providing a window into the negotiations with first-hand reports. Here is what their report says about the negotiations over hurricanes in the IPCC:

Regarding tropical cyclones, the US drew attention to a consensus statement produced at a recent WMO cyclone workshop about the difficulties of detecting cyclone trends, and cautioned that using the terms "global" and "trend" to describe an increase in the intensity of tropical cyclones could open the IPCC to criticism. The Netherlands and the Philippines agreed that the proposed language, "satellite records suggest a global trend toward more intense tropical cyclones since about 1970, correlated with observed warming of tropical sea surfaces temperatures," was too strong. Germany and Kenya disagreed, deferring to the judgment of the Coordinating Lead Authors in assessing the scientific literature. The Coordinating Lead Authors clarified that the WMO workshop participants were hurricane scientists and not climate scientists, and that this statement, released six months after the WGI AR4 underlying report was submitted, was not peer-reviewed or open to comment. The issue was referred to a contact group, where participants discussed variability in the data and shortcomings in the modeling approaches, highlighted the importance of reflecting the main conclusions of the underlying chapter, and noted recent studies in support of both sides. As there was common ground on the robustness of evidence within the North Atlantic, the agreed text focused on the “observational evidence for an increase of intense tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic” and included a more detailed discussion of the factors that complicate identification of long-term patterns. A row in the table on extreme weather events (Table SPM-1) on "intense tropical cyclone activity increases" was modified to reflect the text agreed in the contact group, adding "in some regions." [emphasis added]

Of all groups I would think the IPCC Coordinating lead Authors could do better than offer a critique suggesting that the relevant experts were not "climate scientists." (Close readers will recall that we've seen that argument made here at times.) In any case, the team that wrote the WMO statement was populated by many leading researchers who by any definition are indeed "climate scientists," including luminaries like Tom Knutson and Kerry Emanuel.

2. Randy Dole, a member of the U.S. delegation to the IPCC sent in this nice comment referencing my interpretation of the SPM statements on tropical cyclones:

Thank you for your thoughtful and balanced assessment of what the IPCC SPM says. You have got it right. Your careful analysis on what the report says and how it compares to the WMO consensus statement is most appreciated.

Thanks Randy!

Posted on February 5, 2007 02:22 AM View this article | Comments (4)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters | Science + Politics

February 02, 2007

Follow Up: IPCC and Hurricanes

The IPCC report is out (PDF) and here is what it says about hurricanes (tropical cyclones). Kudos to the scientists involved. Despite the pressures, on tropical cyclones they figured out a way to maintain consistency with the actual balance of opinion(s) in the community of relevant experts.

Here is the discussion of observed changes:

There is observational evidence for an increase of intense tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic since about 1970, correlated with increases of tropical sea surface temperatures. There are also suggestions of increased intense tropical cyclone activity in some other regions where concerns over data quality are greater. Multi-decadal variability and the quality of the tropical cyclone records prior to routine satellite observations in about 1970 complicate the detection of long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity. There is no clear trend in the annual numbers of tropical cyclones.

Interestingly, in a table that discusses attribution of trends to anthropogenic causes it reports that there are some trends observed in some regions in tropical cyclone behavior, writing that these trends "more likely than not" represent the "likelihood of a human contribution to observed trend." But then this statement is footnoted with the following qualification:

Magnitude of anthropogenic contributions not assessed. Attribution for these phenomena based on expert judgement rather than formal attribution studies.

So there might be a human contribution (and presumably this is just to the observed upwards trends observed in some basins, and not to downward trends observed in others, but this is unclear) but the human contribution itself has not been quantitatively assessed, yet the experts, using their judgment, expect it to be there. In plain English this is what is called a "hypothesis" and not a "conclusion." And it is a fair representation of the issue.

The projections for the future are as frequently represented in the literature:

Based on a range of models, it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense, with larger peak wind speeds and more heavy precipitation associated with ongoing increases of tropical SSTs. There is less confidence in projections of a global decrease in numbers of tropical cyclones. The apparent increase in the proportion of very intense storms since 1970 in some regions is much larger than simulated by current models for that period.

This comment on the process was offered by Australia's Neville Nicholls, who was one of the authors responsible for drafting the language on tropical cyclones:

"I was disappointed that after more than two years carefully analysing the literature on possible links between tropical cyclones and global warming that even before the report was approved it was being misreported and misrepresented. We concluded that the question of whether there was a greenhouse-cyclone link was pretty much a toss of a coin at the present state of the science, with just a slight leaning towards the likelihood of such a link. But the premature reports suggested that we were asserting the existence of much stronger evidence. I hope that when people read the real report they will see that it is a careful and balanced assessment of all the evidence."

The open atmosphere of negotiations in the IPCC is probably something that should be revised. How anyone can deny that political factors were everpresent in the negotiations isn't paying attention.

Posted on February 2, 2007 05:37 AM View this article | Comments (15)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters | Science + Politics

February 01, 2007

Report from IPCC Negotiations

From NOAA's Randy Dole in Paris, lifted from the comments:

Roger and all,

I generally stay out of blogs, but as a member of the US delegation here I would strongly counsel against premature judgment. Once the final document is out, I hope that you and others will fairly compare what the final report says with the WMO consensus statement. I suspect that an objective analyst who carefully reads both the IPCC and WMO documents - that is, does not cherry pick - will find far more common ground than might now be anticipated.

The two reports are not identical of course, nor should they be, but in the end the careful reader will see far more areas of agreement than current reports might suggest. For those who are relying on press reports or any earlier drafts of the IPCC SPM, you will simply be misled.

In short, wait for the report, look carefully at what it says, and then evaluate and critique. This would be the fair process.

See you back in Boulder,

Randy Dole

P.S.: A little after midnight here in Paris, still at UNESCO, but the final draft has been approved. Just waiting for one final review to ensure all agreed upon changes have been made.

Posted on February 1, 2007 05:47 PM View this article | Comments (10)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters | Science + Politics

IPCC on Hurricanes

The IPCC Summary for Policy Makers is not out yet, but if this report in the Washington Post is in fact true, then we are in store for some controversy:

Global warming has made stronger hurricanes, including those in the Atlantic such as Katrina, an authoritative panel on climate change has concluded for the first time, participants in the deliberations said Thursday.

This will be controversial for several reasons. First, the WMO consensus was written by a range of scientists, including Kerry Emanuel and Greg Holland, who have argued that there is a strong global warming signal, but who have also accepted that their colleagues have valid arguments as well. Second, the IPCC cannot consider recent studies since it has a publication deadline (exactly what that is I don’t know but it was spring-ish 2006). Thus, the IPCC is a bit like a time machine telling us what the literature said about a year ago. The WMO statement incorporates more recent literature. However the IPCC is being presented as new. Third, the IPCC’s lead man on hurricanes and climate change is a fervent partisan in the debate itself. Whether his views are correct or not, it does not help the legitimacy of the process to see a carefully constructed consensus statement among 120 scientists with diverse views overturned by a very (very) narrow set of participants that may be only a few people.

This issue no doubt will become even more politicized than before, with partisans on both sides rejoicing or attacking. For my part, the IPCC overturns the WMO statement with some considerable risk to its own credibility. Of course, we’ll have to wait until May to actually find out the basis for this rejection.

Posted on February 1, 2007 08:09 AM View this article | Comments (18)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters | Science + Politics

Does the Truth Matter?

Here are seven paragraphs from the conclusion to Alan Mazur’s excellent book True Warnings and False Alarms: Evaluating Fears about the Health Risks of Technology, 1948-1971 (Resources for the Future, 2004, pp. 107-109, buy a copy here)-- the concluding subsection is titled "Does the Truth Matter?" .

Mazur distinguishes between a "knowledge model" and a "politics model" for understanding public debates involving science. These distinctions are somewhat (but not entirely) related to the concepts of the "linear model" and "interest group pluralism" that I discuss in my forthcoming book, which is really about how to reconcile the fact that there are elements of both models in the reality of decision making. Neither of Mazur’s models accurately describes how the world works, we need both. Some of the more useful debates and discussions following my testimony his week reflected a paradigm clash between those who view the world through the lens pf the "knowledge model" and those – like me – who accept that the "politics model" also reflects some fundamental realities as well. Here is the excerpt:

In a democracy, the people or their representatives are free to spend public money as they see fit. Interest groups compete to channel funding to their favorite causes. If U.S. society chooses to allot far more money to cleaning up toxic waste sites, which harm few people, than to prevent teenagers from smoking, which creates an enormous health burden, that is our privilege as a nation.
Still, many risk analysts are disturbed when we fail to maximize the number of lives save per dollar of risk remediation. They point out that actions taken by government to avoid the consequences of an alleged hazard are often unrelated to the severity or scientific validity of the hazard (EPA 1982; Breyer 1993; Graham and Wiener 1995; Mazur 1998). The inference is that policy should be better aligned with science, and that irrational or inefficient elements of policymaking should be eliminated (but see Mazur 1995 and Driesen 2001 for limitations on this positions).

Yet public policy does not always flow directly from scientific knowledge. A value-laden subject decision is always involved, one that requires weighing pros and cons, costs and benefits, winners and losers. A wise policy choice for one party with certain interest may not be the wisest choice for a party with different interests. These considerations raise a question: does scientific evaluation of a warning matter at all?

Essentially two models show how science is applied to public policy. The first – call it the "knowledge model" – assumes that scientists can obtain approximately true answers to their research questions with methods that are fairly objective. This knowledge is used to inform public policy. For example, scientists can determine the health risks from exposure to fluoride at levels adequate to prevent cavities. Policy makers then use this finding as one factor in deciding whether to add fluoride to community drinking water. Such decisions cannot follow from facts alone, but facts ought to influence outcomes. If health risk is high, that should help shift the decision against fluoridation; if low, that should encourage fluoridation. The model makes no sense to anyone who denies that science can find correct answers.

The second model – the "politics model" – can be applied whatever one’s view concerning the objectivity of science. Here partisans use scientific findings as political capital to sway policy in the direction they prefer. If such partisans favor fluoridation, they will claim there is little health risk; if they oppose it, they claim a high health risk. I makes no difference if the findings are correct, objective, or honest as long as they are persuasive. The actors bury findings that work against their position, or attack them as invalid or inapplicable. In the politics model, scientific claims are used polemically, just like any other kind of political argumentation (Mazur 1998; Brown 1991).

The politics model has many proponents. Partisans in a particular controversy often see their goal as sufficiently important to justify any interpretation of scientific data that is favorable to their cause. During breaks from writing this final chapter, I am reading John McPhee’s (1971) laudable biography of David Brower, a major environmentalist of the postwar period. McPhee repeatedly describes Brower’s habit of making up “facts” to support his arguments against industrialists and developers. The biographer seems to regard this as an endearing tactic of the "archdruid" in his advocacy for wilderness preservation. Like McPhee, we sympathize with those who fight the good fight, accepting their argumentation when in other contexts it would be vexing.

But the politics model loses its appeal if applied to the entire array of technical controversies affecting policy. Science that is sufficiently malleable to serve any position in one controversy can serve any position in all controversies, and in that event science does not matter at all. The famous parable of “the tragedy of the commons” tells how each shepherd maximized his own herd’s grazing on the village green until no grass remained for anyone (Hardin 1968). In the same way, if each technical expert interprets data for his or her own convenience, with no attempt at objectivity, there will be no experts left with unimpeachable credibility, and we will all suffer for it. [emphasis added]

Posted on February 1, 2007 07:48 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Risk & Uncertainty | Science + Politics | The Honest Broker

January 31, 2007

The Cherry Pick

I am doing a lot of travel this week, and that means lots of time in airports with a wireless connection. So apologies for the bloggarea . . . all this discussion of cherry picking has led me to think it would be worth pointing to an earlier essay on this topic:

The Cherry Pick, May, 2004

Do note that this essay was written almost three years ago before I really figured out the language of "honest brokers of policy alternatives" that you'll see in my new book.

Posted on January 31, 2007 12:14 PM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics

Even More: Mr. Issa’s Confusion and a Comment on Budget Politics

At the Waxman hearing yesterday one of the more unproductive exchanges was between Mr. Issa and Dr. Brifo of the Union of Concerned Scientists. The UCS released a report chronicling responses to a request for information from climate scientists about their perceptions about politics and science. Mr. Issa focused on the statistical power of the survey, which is the wrong way to look at it. The responses were the responses. They are not evidence of a larger population – the responses ARE the population. That being said the UCS supports my own contention that politics and science are inherently intermixed.

The UCS survey does have its own problems. For instance it lumped in budget issues as political interference. Dr. Shindell also did this at the end of the hearing. If not giving scientists enough money is evidence of political interference then what isn’t? Here are some representative examples cited in the UCS report about how to improve climate science “integrity” (p. 22):

”I believe that climate research at NASA is being undermined by the current administration. This is accomplished not through direct threats of intimidation, but through lack of funding. . .”
“The U.S. Climate Change Science Program has not received sufficient funding . . .”

“Problems with climate research in the federal government mainly have to do with funding . . .”

“I have not worked directly on climate change since funding was eliminated in my area. Other areas of much less importance have been emphasized as a result.”

“Funding for climate research is a factor of 5-10 below critical mass to develop a designed climate observing system.”

[This last one is my favorite - $10-$20 billion, right!]

By adding the politics of the budget process into the mix the UCS has revealed that climate science is indeed very political indeed.

Posted on January 31, 2007 07:58 AM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

Additional Reactions – Waxman Hearing

Here are a few additional thoughts on yesterday’s hearing and reactions to it.

Here are some impressions – and they are just speculations -- on the politics of the issue of "science suppression" and where it might be headed. First, one notable feature of yesterday’s hearing that you only would have noticed if you were there or watched was the reaction of Rep. Christopher Shays, a moderate Republican. He seemed pretty ticked off at the hearing at the testimony of Rick Piltz in particular and gave him a brief hard time. Mr. Shays commented that he came to the hearing expecting to hear about science suppression but that he had instead heard minor complaints about report edits in a partisan context. He may have been posturing (always possible), but if he was indeed sincere, then Mr. Waxman may have to engage in a bit of logrolling to maintain/retain any sense of bipartisanship in this area of oversight.

Second, the hearing has received a lot of media attention; it even overshadowed the Senate hearing the same day on climate policy. This is of course good for Mr. Waxman and increases pressures on the Bush Administration. But it also raises the bar for future attention pretty high. What does the committee do next? They could invite a few more agency officials, Jim Hansen comes to mind, but there would be a good chance, from a media perspective, of being the same story, which may not generate the same buzz.

Third, President Bush is a lame (very lame) duck, and the presidential election season is getting closer every day. There is not much time available for oversight investigation of any sort. Meantime, the principle bad guys in the story in the Bush Administration have resigned or moved on (in one case to ExxonMobil). Both NASA and NOAA have changed their media policies (for the better?). The Union of Concerned Scientists continues to release reports indicating that science and politics intermix, but if they don’t watch out, they might do such a good job that people might start thinking that . . . science and politics intermix. The Bush Administration can stonewall Mr. Waxman’s request for documents for a long time, and I wouldn’t bet that Mr. Waxman would issue subpoenas on this issue, since the lack of responsiveness by the Administration is almost certainly just a politically useful as the documents themselves. For all of these reasons it seems like there will be diminishing political returns to the issue of "science suppression" especially in the context of Mr. Waxman’s interest in other areas of oversight with more political traction, like the war in Iraq.

For the above reasons, I speculate – and it is just speculation – that we have seen the high water mark on Congressional attention to the issue of “science suppression.” I hope that I am wrong. It would be very informative and useful for Mr. Waxman to bring in media relations officials from various science agencies to examine what they do and how they do it. But I am not expecting this to happen. It is more likely that some other committee, such as the Science Committee takes up aspects of this issue if only to demonstrate ownership of their own turf. Therefore, for the Waxman committee I will put the over/under on future hearings on science suppression at one (bumped up from 0.5).

Finally, I fully expect that scientists who are exploiting their authority to advance their political views do not appreciate someone pointing out the close relation of science and politics. This also goes for those advocates who argue for their political agenda based on an appeal to objective, impartial authorities. Telling enough is that most public responses to my testimony along these lines have carefully avoided responding to anything that I actually wrote. I expect the loudest public complaints from those scientists most active politically. There is a stark contrast between what I see on the web versus what is in my inbox, which is reassuring.

Posted on January 31, 2007 05:09 AM View this article | Comments (10)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

January 30, 2007

Instant Reaction – Waxman Hearing

There is much I could say about the hearing today. Apparently parts of it were on C-Span and will be replayed, and I think the streaming video is available for anyone who wants to subject themselves to four hours inside the sausage factory . . . .

For me the most interesting set of exchanges illustrated exactly the dynamics I discussed in my prepared testimony (available here in PDF). First, Representative McCollum spent some time getting NASA’s Drew Shindell on record explaining that the views of Soon and Baliunas (two scientists who wrote a controversial paper cited by the White House in opposition to the findings of the IPCC) did not and could not overturn the IPCC consensus. (I completely agree with this point.) Dr. Shidell gave in far to easy (and contributed) to the discussion that because the scientists in question had the wrong degrees, that they need not be taken seriously. (I disagree with that – science should be judged on its merits.)

Then, Rep. Welch, apparently not even appreciating the irony, took issue with my invocation in my testimony of the WMO consensus statement on tropical cyclones, which has recently been endorsed by the AMS Executive Council. I pointed out that the Committee's background memo was highly selective in its presentation of hurricane science, which seems fairly obvious, but which they apparently did not like me doing. He claimed that they had just emailed Judy Curry and Michael Mann, and they had written back, apparently both taking issue with the WMO Consensus! In fact, according to Mr. Welch Dr. CUrry's and Dr. Mann's views are more representative of the state of the science than that expressed by the WMO. (Judy and Mike are welcome to share their emails to the Committee here if they’d like.) Surprise, surprise – they could find some experts who disagreed with the WMO consensus!

Did he not see that he was doing the exact same thing that Rep. McCollum was criticizing the White House for? I tried to point out this irony, not sure if I made the point very well. (Dr. Shindell illustrated that he doesn’t know much about the hurricane community when he asserted that Michael Mann is a leading hurricane/climate scientist whose views should be taken over the WMO, but maybe he misspoke or I misheard.) I stick to my views, as if there is any area of science I know well it is the hurricane/climate debate.

Henry Waxman tried to salvage the exchange by pointing out that I am in fact a "political scientist" so what the hell do I know about hurricanes anyway;-) Hey, if you can’t win on the facts attack the man. I believe that strategy speaks for itself quite loudly.

I am not sure what Mr. Waxman thinks he accomplished with this hearing other further politicizing the issue of science politicization. The whole exercise seems to prove that the politicization of science is endemic, as I argued in my testimony. If Mr. Waxman was interested in actually improving policies governing science he’d haul down agency press officers and those responsible for the process of approving government reports to focus on actual processes. The repeated calls for science and politics to be separate are just empty exhortations without discussion of actual policies.

Posted on January 30, 2007 01:39 PM View this article | Comments (13)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

Waxman Hearing Testimony - Oral Remarks

Here are my remarks as prepared for delivery at 10AM today at the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. They might still change. They are pretty brief, as I only have 5 minutes. Here is the fully referenced written testimony [pdf], which goes into a lot more detail.

I thank the Chairman and the Committee for the opportunity to offer testimony this morning. I am a professor at the University of Colorado and also director of the university’s Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. A short biography with more details can be found at the end of my written testimony.

My main point today is that politics and science cannot in practice be separated. Consequently, policies for the production, promotion, and use of information in decision making should be based on the realities of science in politics, and not on the mistaken impression that they can somehow be kept separate. Efforts to separate them will in most case only contribute to the pathological politicization of science.

Imagine the following situation:

The president has in his administration a range of scientific experts on the most important policy issue of the day. However, the president is denied access to that advice by the manipulative actions of one of his primary advisors, who we’ll call "the Admiral." It turns out that the Admiral has the president’s ear on matters of science but he himself has in fact never had any formal scientific training. He justifies his actions on the belief that United States is engaged in a fundamental religious, political, and economic conflict between good and evil. When two leading government scientists seek to provide advice to the president that differs from that being offered by the Admiral, the Admiral asks the FBI to open investigations of these scientists. One of the scientists subsequently faces hearings to consider his lack of loyalty to the United States and he never again works as a government scientist. The other scientist warns that this case indicated to scientists that

"scientific integrity and frankness in advising government on policy matters of a technical nature can lead to later reprisals against those whose earlier opinions have become unpopular."

One of the nation’s leading scientist writes that the relationship between government and scientists has been "gravely damaged" because the government has given the impression that it would "exclude anyone who does not conform to the judgment of those who in one way or another have acquired authority."

The year? 1954
The President? Dwight Eisenhower
The Admiral? Lewis Strauss
The Scientists? Robert Oppenheimer, Hans Bethe, and Vannevar Bush

This vignette drawn from Benjamin Green’s excellent new book Eisenhower, Science Advice, and the Nuclear Test-Ban Debate, 1945-1963 (Stanford University Press, 2007), along with the other examples recounted in my written testimony discussing issues of science and politics from presidential administrations from Richard Nixon through Bill Clinton, show that science and politics have always been issues of concern for policy makers. And the subject of today’s hearing indicates that today is no different.

There are however reasons why today’s conflicts are receiving more attention from scholars, political advocates, and politicians.

1. There are an increasing number of important issues which are related to science and technology in some way.
2. Policy makers increasingly invoke expertise to justify a course of action that they advocate.
3. Advocacy groups increasingly rely on experts to justify their favored course of action.
4. Congress, at least for the past six years, and perhaps longer has been derelict in its oversight duties, particularly related to issues of science and technology.
5. Many scientists are increasingly engaging in political advocacy.
6. Some issues of science have become increasingly partisan as some politicians sense that there is political gain to be found such as on stem cells, teaching of evolution, and climate change.
7. The Bush Administration has engaged in hyper-controlling strategies for the management of information.

I’ll now give just several very short vignettes which illustrate how fundamentally science and politics are inter-related.

The language of science in public discussions lends itself to politicization. For instance, The New York Times reported last year that scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory had complained because they had been instructed to use the phrase "climate change" rather than the phrase "global warming." A Republican strategy memo did recommend use of the phrase "climate change" over "global warming”" and environmental groups have long had the opposite preference. Another federal scientist, at NOAA, described how he was instructed by superiors not to use the word "Kyoto" or "climate change."

To cite another example, several years ago the Union of Concerned Scientists, as part of its advocacy campaign on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, recommended the use of the word "harbinger" to describe current climate events that may become more frequent with future global warming. Subsequently scientists at NOAA, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and the Fish and Wildlife Service's Polar Bear Project began to use the phrase in their public communication in concert with advocacy groups like Greenpeace. The term has also appeared in official government press releases. Policy makers and their staff are of course intimately familiar with these dynamics : we have just recently seen them in practice as Republicans and Democrats have battled over framing President Bush’s proposed troop increases in Iraq as a "surge" or as an "escalation."

An example of how easy it is to misrepresent science in a political setting, consider the memorandum prepared last week by the majority staff of this Committee to provide background information on this hearing. The memorandum states, quite correctly, that "a consensus has emerged on the basic science of global warming." It then goes on to assert that:

". . . recently published studies have suggested that the impacts [of global warming] include increases in the intensity of hurricanes and tropical storms . . .."

It supports this claim by citing three papers. But what the memorandum does not relate is that authors of each of the three cited studies recently participated with about 120 experts from around the world to prepare a consensus statement under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) which concluded that "no consensus has been reached on this issue."

The WMO Statement was subsequently endorsed by the Executive Council of the American Meteorological Society. Thus, the science cited in the Committee memo is incomplete and misleading. Such cherry picking and misrepresentations of science are endemic in political discussions involving science.

What has occurred in the preparation of this memorandum is in microcosm exactly the same sort of thing that we have seen with heavy-handed Bush administration information management strategies which include editing government reports and overbearing management of agency press releases and media contacts with scientists. Inevitably, such ham-handed information management will backfire, because people will notice and demand accountability. This oversight hearing today is good evidence for that.

My written testimony goes into far more detail on issues of press releases, agency media policies, empanelment of federal advisory committees, and other subjects which I would be happy to discuss with you further,

Thank you.

Posted on January 30, 2007 03:12 AM View this article | Comments (18)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

January 29, 2007

Mike Hulme on Avery and Singer

Over at Post-Normal Times the Tyndall Centre's Mike Hulme has a thought-provoking review of a recent book by Dennis Avery and Fred Singer. Here is an excerpt:

Too often the reasons we disagree about what to do about climate change are framed in this way, as disputes about the truth claims of some aspect of biogeophysical science – is the world warming; are greenhouse gases responsible; will this ice-sheet collapse? This reflects one view of science, the conventional Enlightenment view of science as an objective, disinterested endeavour incrementally leading us closer and closer to a universal and immutable view of reality … past, present and future. This is ‘normal’ science.
But for many years now, around 25 at least, philosophers and practitioners of science have identified a different mode of scientific activity, a mode where stakes are high, uncertainties large and decisions urgent, and where values are embedded in the way science is done and spoken. This is what Silvio Funtowicz labelled in 1993 ‘post-normal’ science. Disputes in post-normal science focus as often on the process of science – who gets funded, who evaluates quality, who has the ear of policy - as on the facts of science. The IPCC is a classic example of a post-normal scientific activity. The IPCC is a large procedural assessment activity involving first of all scientists, but then later entraining a broad range of other experts from government, business, civil society to evaluate the quality of the assessment, before the modified text is presented to government representatives for their amendment and approval.

But there is also a third way of interpreting contemporary science, which is yet one further step removed from the binary truth-falsehood view of Singer and Avery. This third way of seeing science pays more attention to the social and cultural context in which science works and speaks than to the phenomena being studied. Who are the scientists, what are their values, motives and preferences, why are they being asked to study this particular problem rather than some other problem, and who funds them? This understanding of science is what sociologists have termed its social construction.

Read the whole thing.

Posted on January 29, 2007 07:50 AM View this article | Comments (15)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

Congressional Testimony

I am scheduled to testify at this hearing tomorrow on "political interference in the work of government climate change scientists." Should be interesting. My testimony will be posted here tomorrow morning. If we come across a link to the streaming video, we'll post in the comments. Stay tuned . . .

Posted on January 29, 2007 06:47 AM View this article | Comments (6)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

Science and Politics of Food

The New York Times Sunday Magazine has an excellent and provocative article on the science and politics of food by Michael Pollan. Here is an excerpt, but read the whole thing:

Most nutritional science involves studying one nutrient at a time, an approach that even nutritionists who do it will tell you is deeply flawed. “The problem with nutrient-by-nutrient nutrition science,” points out Marion Nestle, the New York University nutritionist, "is that it takes the nutrient out of the context of food, the food out of the context of diet and the diet out of the context of lifestyle."
If nutritional scientists know this, why do they do it anyway? Because a nutrient bias is built into the way science is done: scientists need individual variables they can isolate. Yet even the simplest food is a hopelessly complex thing to study, a virtual wilderness of chemical compounds, many of which exist in complex and dynamic relation to one another, and all of which together are in the process of changing from one state to another. So if you’re a nutritional scientist, you do the only thing you can do, given the tools at your disposal: break the thing down into its component parts and study those one by one, even if that means ignoring complex interactions and contexts, as well as the fact that the whole may be more than, or just different from, the sum of its parts. This is what we mean by reductionist science.

Scientific reductionism is an undeniably powerful tool, but it can mislead us too, especially when applied to something as complex as, on the one side, a food, and on the other, a human eater. It encourages us to take a mechanistic view of that transaction: put in this nutrient; get out that physiological result. Yet people differ in important ways. Some populations can metabolize sugars better than others; depending on your evolutionary heritage, you may or may not be able to digest the lactose in milk. The specific ecology of your intestines helps determine how efficiently you digest what you eat, so that the same input of 100 calories may yield more or less energy depending on the proportion of Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes living in your gut. There is nothing very machinelike about the human eater, and so to think of food as simply fuel is wrong.

Also, people don’t eat nutrients, they eat foods, and foods can behave very differently than the nutrients they contain. Researchers have long believed, based on epidemiological comparisons of different populations, that a diet high in fruits and vegetables confers some protection against cancer. So naturally they ask, What nutrients in those plant foods are responsible for that effect? One hypothesis is that the antioxidants in fresh produce — compounds like beta carotene, lycopene, vitamin E, etc. — are the X factor. It makes good sense: these molecules (which plants produce to protect themselves from the highly reactive oxygen atoms produced in photosynthesis) vanquish the free radicals in our bodies, which can damage DNA and initiate cancers. At least that’s how it seems to work in the test tube. Yet as soon as you remove these useful molecules from the context of the whole foods they’re found in, as we’ve done in creating antioxidant supplements, they don’t work at all. Indeed, in the case of beta carotene ingested as a supplement, scientists have discovered that it actually increases the risk of certain cancers. Big oops.

Posted on January 29, 2007 01:20 AM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Biotechnology | Risk & Uncertainty | Science + Politics

January 27, 2007

Climate change a 'questionable truth'

That is the headline of a lengthy article by Margaret Wente, a columnist for The Global and Mail, on climate policy and politics. The following excerpt introduces the piece:

Is the sky really falling? How fast and how hard? And if the vast majority of scientists agree, then why don't governments act? After all, nobody wants the world to melt.
If you're an average, concerned citizen, no one will blame you for being confused or angry. The global-warming debate has become so shrill, so political and so polarized that it's impossible for even a reasonably well-informed person to figure out who or what to believe. Only one thing is for sure: Science isn't all that is driving this debate. Politics, ideology and scaremongering are too.

Posted on January 27, 2007 12:35 PM View this article | Comments (19)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

January 26, 2007

Richard Benedick on Climate Policy

The always excellent Issues in Science and Technology (and if you don’t subscribe you should) has a great essay in its winter issue by Richard Benedick, former deputy assistant secretary of state and chief U.S. negotiator of the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Protect the Ozone Layer. The essay is titled "Avoiding Gridlock on Climate Change" and appears on pp. 37-40. Mr. Benedick knows something about international environmental agreements. His essay is not yet online, but I have excerpted some key passages below.

He begins by leveling some string criticism at the annual gatherings under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

These UN mega-conferences have by now developed a predictable pattern. Considerable time is occupied by tedious problems of coordinating positions and tactics, both inside the huge national delegations and within blocs of countries such as the European Union and other regional or "like-minded" coalitions. There are the usual dire warnings— fully justifiable—of impending global catastrophe. There are trivial protocol debates and ritualistic ministerial speeches exhorting complicated and unrealistic actions. There are cultural diversions such as boat rides on the Rhine or dance performances in Marrakech. As the end nears, all-night negotiating sessions contribute to a sense of destiny. But despite the customary self-congratulatory finale, the results at Nairobi, as at preceding meetings, were embarrassingly meager. . .

Part of the problem, as he sees it, is a short-term obsession with targets and timetables.

The climate meetings, obsessively focused on short-term targets and timetables applying only to industrialized nations, have become trapped in a process that is unmanageable, inefficient, and impervious to serious negotiation of complex issues that have profound environmental, economic, and social implications extending over many decades into the future. . .

He suggests that that the UNFCCC’s Kyoto Protocol actually serves the interests of industry, oil-producing countries, and the Bush Administration. These views qualify him for instant "non-skeptic heretic" status (sorry, couldn’t resist;-).

The Kyoto Protocol, lamely defended by its proponents as “the only game in town,” now best serves the interests of politicians whose rhetoric is stronger than their actions and of those commercial interests and governments that want no meaningful actions at all—notably, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other Near East oil producers, and the U.S. administration, which is not unhappy with the treaty’s lack of progress. . .

In a crucial passage, Mr. Benedick goes a long way to dispelling some of the myths of the ozone experience. Reading the following closely.

It is worth recalling that the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer, later characterized by the heads of the UN Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization as “one of the great international achievements of the century,” was negotiated by only about 30 nations in nine months, with delegations seldom exceeding six persons and with minimal attention from outside observers and media. I doubt whether the ozone treaty could have been achieved under the currently fashionable global format.
We might draw some useful lessons from the ozone history. In the late 1970s, the ozone science was actually much more disputed than the climate science of today, and the major countries that produced and consumed chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were hopelessly deadlocked over the necessity for any controls at all. In this situation, the first international action on protecting the ozone layer was neither global, nor even a treaty. Rather, it was an informal accord among a loose coalition of like-minded nations, including Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden, and the United States, to individually and separately ban the use of CFCs in aerosol spray cans.

This measure alone resulted in a temporary 30% drop in global CFC consumption (temporary because these “wonder chemicals” were continuing to find new uses in numerous industries.) But the action was nevertheless significant for the future. The resultant technological innovations demonstrated to the skeptics (in this case the European Community, Japan, and the Soviet Union) that controls were feasible, at least for this class of products. It also gave the United States and other proponents of a strong treaty the moral and practical high ground in later negotiations to restrict all uses of CFCs. Yet, if anyone had actually proposed a 30% reduction target, it would surely have been rejected as impossible.

An important lesson here is that a specific policy measure, not an abstract target, could stimulate unanticipated technological innovation. The policy measure drove the agreement on targets in the later ozone protocol, not vice versa. In contrast, the half-hearted performance of most governments with respect to climate policy measures has not matched their political rhetoric about the urgency of targets.

Another important lesson from the Montreal history was that not all countries need to agree in order to take a substantial step forward. It is also relevant to note that, in contrast to Kyoto, developing nations did accept limitations on their CFC consumption, but only when they were assured of equitable access to new technologies. Technology development is the missing guest at the Kyoto feast. . . [Emphasis added. –RP]

He makes a case that climate change needs to be grappled with piecemeal, eschewing the fantasy of a single global agreement that will drive policy and technology. As highlighted above, experience suggest that the direction of causality is precisely backward -- it is the presence of smaller scale agreements and technological innovation that makes global agreements possible. This is the lesson drawn by Pielke and Betsill (1997) (PDF).

The climate problem could be disaggregated into smaller, more manageable components with fewer participants—in effect, a search for partial solutions rather than a comprehensive global model. An architecture of parallel regimes, involving varying combinations of national and local governments, industry, and civil society on different themes, could reinvigorate the climate negotiations by acknowledging the diverse interests and by expanding the scope of possible solutions. To be sure, even here success would require a degree of genuine political will among at least a significant number of key governments. Nonetheless, by focusing on specific sectors and policy measures in smaller, less formal settings with varying combinations of actors and by not operating under UN consensus rules, the possibilities for achieving forward motion would be increased. The process and results could be termed protocols or forums or agreements, but their essential character would more closely resemble a pragmatic working group than a formal diplomatic negotiation. . .

He discusses some details on issue areas where he thinks that subglobal cooperation and coordination might take place. I don’t reproduce any of the details here, other than to list these issue areas:

Energy research and development Transportation Power generation Agriculture, coal, and adaptation technologies Other technology R&D agreements Government procurement policies Regional cooperation

He concludes by observing that we need to be expanding our options, not foreclosing them, a view often advocated here.

There are no easy answers; we could begin by admitting that over a decade of global negotiations has not brought notable progress. We should be open to new ideas.

Ever the diplomat, in the end he offers some conciliatory words to the UNFCCC suggesting that his vision might operate in parallel. My reading of his argument is that the reality is that progress on climate change won’t be made until we break free from the current approach.

Posted on January 26, 2007 08:45 AM View this article | Comments (4)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | International

January 25, 2007

IPCC, Policy Neutrality, and Political Advocacy

We have commented in the past here about how the leadership of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has flouted its own guidance to be "policy neutral" by engaging in overt political advocacy on climate change. The comments by its Director Rajendra Pachauri reported today again highlight this issue:

I hope this [forthcoming IPCC] report will shock people, governments into taking more serious action as you really can't get a more authentic and a more credible piece of scientific work.

Imagine, by contrast, if the Director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, another organization with an agenda to be "policy neutral," were reported in the media to say of the agency’s latest assessment on Iran, "I hope that the report will shock people, governments into taking more serious action." He would be looking for a new job in no time, I am sure. Why should climate change be treated differently?

The past reaction to my comments on political advocacy by IPCC leadership has been mixed. Some who share the IPCC's advocated agenda see no problem in the IPCC leadership engaging in such advocacy. Who wouldn’t want such a group perceived as authoritative and legitimate on their side? (Similarly, I am sure neo-cons would welcome a CIA Director advocating action on Iran!) By contrast some opposed to the advocated agenda have seized upon the obvious inconsistency in the IPCC’s views on "neutrality" to try to impinge the credibility of the organization. From my perspective, while both of these perspectives are to be expected (and I am sure will make their views known in response), there is a third view that matters most -- and that is the question of the appropriate role of organized expertise in decision making, whether it is the CIA or IPCC. This last view is quite independent of (or it should be) what one thinks about the issues of climate policy.

It seems obvious that if the IPCC leadership is inconsistent in its statements on "policy neutrality" then it does risk becoming perceived as an organized interest, not unlike an NGO, which will eat away at its own authority and independence, which derives in no small part from its claims to "neutrality." The IPCC could correct this perception (or reality) of inconsistent behavior by removing its goal of being "policy neutral" and openly admit a political agenda that it is advocating. Alternatively, the IPCC's leaders could eschew public discussions of what they prefer for political outcomes. Neither of these options seems particularly realistic. A formal departure from stated "neutrality" would harm the IPCC’s credibility, so it won’t do that. And the temptation to use scientific authority as a tool of politics is very strong, and won’t stop unless scientific leaders in the IPCC suggest that it should stop.

The best option of all, and which I recognize is fanciful dreaming on my part, would be for the IPCC to present decision makers with a wide range of policy options and their consequences, recognizing that the IPCC is an advisory body, not an advocacy group. There should be room in public discourse on climate change for an authoritative group to comprehensively assess options and their consequences, recognizing that advisors advise and decision makers decide. The tension between the IPCC's stated objective of "policy neutrality" and behavior by its leaders that is decided "non-neutral" is unlikely be sustainable. The IPCC should come to grips with what it means by "policy neutral."

Posted on January 25, 2007 08:40 AM View this article | Comments (34)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics | The Honest Broker

January 24, 2007

AMS Endorses WMO TC Consensus Statement

Full text from action by the American Meteorological Society on the recent consensus statement (PDF) by the World Meteorological Organization on Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change:

The American Meteorological Society endorses the "Statement on Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change" by the participants of the World Meteorological Organization’s 6th International Workshop on Tropical Cyclones (IWTC-VI), released on 11 December 2006.
(Adopted by AMS Council on 14 January 2007)
Bull. Amer. Met. Soc., 87

Posted on January 24, 2007 04:35 PM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

A Report from the Bureaucracy

A report titled "Key Challenges Remain for Developing and Deploying Advanced Energy Technologies to Meet Future Needs"(PDF) from the Government Accountability Office, released last week, should be required reading for anything wanting to understand the challenges of transforming energy policy. Here is the bottom line (p. 53):

It is unlikely that DOE’s current level of R&D funding or the nation’s current energy policies will be sufficient to deploy alternative energy sources in the next 25 years that will reverse our growing dependence on imported oil or the adverse environmental effects of using conventional fossil energy. The United States has generally relied on market forces to determine the nation’s energy portfolio, primarily conventional supplies of oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear energy. In contrast, advanced energy technologies have higher up-front capital costs that make them less cost competitive than conventional technologies. As a result, despite periodic energy price spikes caused by disruptive world events and about $50 billion (in real terms) in energy R&D funding since 1978, the United States has made only steady incremental progress in developing and deploying advanced renewable, coal, and nuclear technologies that can compete with conventional energy technologies. However, continued reliance on conventional technologies leaves the United States vulnerable to crude oil supply disruptions, with economic, energy security, and national security consequences.

And here is what the report recommends to the Congress (p. 54):

To meet the nation’s rising demand for energy, reduce its economic and national security vulnerability to crude oil supply disruptions, and minimize adverse environmental effects, the Congress should consider further stimulating the development and deployment of a diversified energy portfolio by focusing R&D funding on advanced energy technologies.

Posted on January 24, 2007 08:35 AM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Energy Policy

January 22, 2007

Recycled Nonsense on Disaster Losses

If you want an example of the sort of scientific exaggeration that should concern both scientists and advocates involved in the climate debate (but typically goes uncorrected), next week's Newsweek magazine has an article on the growing tab of disaster losses, which it attributes to global warming.

Around the country, [insurance] companies have been racking up record property losses from freakish weather, such as the ice storms last week that paralyzed much of the Great Plains and froze California's citrus crops. In recent years, wildfires in the Northwest, drought and hail in the Midwest, windstorms, lightning strikes on power grids, soil subsidence and other calamities of nature have led to cumulative property losses that exceed those caused by hurricanes. "There's a shift going on to more frequent, extreme weather events," says Evan Mills, an environmental scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "It's as much an issue in the heartland as on the coast."
Global warming is the culprit, claim many—including several insurers who are canceling policies. While scientists cannot determine whether a single weather event is caused by a natural cycle, or is evidence of more permanent, malignant climate change, the pattern of mounting losses is clear. According to Mills, weather-related catastrophe losses have increased from about $1 billion a year in the 1970s to an average of $17 billion a year over the past decade. In 2005, the year of Katrina, that figure reached $71 billion.

We have interacted with Evan Mills before, and despite having his work throughly debunked and the existence of an expert workshop report on the topic cosponsored by Munich Re, he continues to fundamentally misrepresent the state of the science to suggest that comparing disaster losses unadjusted for societal change from the 1970s to the present says something about global warming. It does not. Here are relevant conclusions from our 2006 workshop:

Analyses of long-term records of disaster losses indicate that societal change and economic development are the principal factors responsible for the documented increasing losses to date.
Because of issues related to data quality, the stochastic nature of extreme event impacts, length of time series, and various societal factors present in the disaster loss record, it is still not possible to determine the portion of the increase in damages that might be attributed to climate change due to GHG emissions.

In the near future the quantitative link (attribution) of trends in storm and flood losses to climate changes related to GHG emissions is unlikely to be answered unequivocally.

Posted on January 22, 2007 04:32 PM View this article | Comments (6)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

Pielke’s Comments on Houston Chronicle Story

Kevin Vranes and I are quoted in a Houston Chronicle story today on the "overselling" of climate science. Kevin just posted his reactions. I have a few reactions as well.

First, I was surprised to see the following quote from NAS President Ralph Cicerone, which I had not seen before:

I think we understand the mechanisms of CO2 and climate better than we do of what causes lung cancer. ... In fact, it is fair to say that global warming may be the most carefully and fully studied scientific topic in human history.

Not only is this absurd on its face, it is politically dangerous for those wanting action on climate change. Consider another similar statement along these lines from RealClimate’s Ray Pierrehumbert:

On the subject of controversy and evidence for evolution vs. evidence for CO2-induced global warming, I'd say both are well supported but that in some ways the case for anthropogenic global warming is a bit more straightforward. That's because its mostly physical science rather than biology. We have quantitative mathematical representations of far more of the process, and ways of testing individual bits in a more straightforward way (as in laboratory measurements of infrared absorption by CO2). Evolution proceeds slowly, and while there are definitely cases where it can be observed in action, reading the fossil record presents difficulties that are in some ways more challenging than reading the paleoclimate record. There are cases where the difficulties are comparable (e.g. figuring out Cretaceous CO2 levels, or making sense of satellite measurements of tropical lapse rate trends) but on the whole, we know how to take a reductionist approach to climate better than we know how to take a reductionist approach to biology. [Emphasis added. -Ed.]

The comparisons by Drs. Cicerone and Pierrehumbert to smoking and evolution are of course political comments in the guise of science. The thinking appears to be that if you accept certain political action on smoking and evolution, then you necessarily must accept certain political action on climate change because the scientific cases in smoking and evolution are weaker than in climate change yet we take certain actions in those cases. Talk about overselling . . .

The political danger is of course that it is quite appropriate to take issue with the fundamental premise of these statements and use that to argue that we shouldn't be taking action on climate change until the science is as certain as smoking or evolution. Then one is caught up debating . . . guess what . . . the science of climate change in relation to evolution and smoking, and not policy actions in the face of fundamental uncertainties. I don't care if climate science is or is not more certain than evolution or smoking, it doesn;t matter one bit for the case for action.

Second, it is interesting to see Judy Curry, a frequent commenter here, offering some support for Kevin Vranes’ views about their being some tension in the community. Of course, she is well positioned to know given that the hurricane community has seen more than its fair share of such tensions.

Finally, I’m quoted at the end of the story as follows:

"I can understand how a scientist without tenure can feel the community pressures," says environmental scientist Roger Pielke Jr., a colleague of Vranes' at the University of Colorado.
Pielke says he has felt pressure from his peers: A prominent scientist angrily accused him of being a skeptic, and a scientific journal editor asked him to "dampen" the message of a peer-reviewed paper to derail skeptics and business interests.

"The case for action on climate science, both for energy policy and adaptation, is overwhelming," Pielke says. "But if we oversell the science, our credibility is at stake."

For those wanting more details about pressures I’ve personally experienced, please have a look at this post.

Posted on January 22, 2007 10:49 AM View this article | Comments (46)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

January 20, 2007

Hypocrisy Starts at Home

If you want a sense of how difficult it will be for 6.5 billion people to reduce, much less eliminate, their emissions of fossil fuels, consider this telling vignette from the University of Colorado, my home institution, here in Boulder.

The Daily Camera, our local paper, reports today that the University is going to build a new power plant:

The University of Colorado is making plans for a new plant to replace the aging power facility near the corner of 18th Street and Colorado Avenue.
Originally built in 1909, it's both inefficient and too small to keep up with the university's growth, CU officials say.

The new plant would cost $60 million to $75 million and be running in 2011 at the earliest, said Paul Tabolt, CU's vice chancellor for administration. It is tentatively planned for a spot northeast of the Coors Events Center.

One thing the new power plant wouldn't provide is electricity, which could affect Boulder's ability to adhere to the Climate Action Plan passed by voters in November. That plan involves spending more than $820,000 a year on energy efficiency and other measures to reduce the city's heat-trapping gases 24 percent by 2012 so that Boulder meets Kyoto Protocol goals.

According to the CU Power Plant home page, as recently as 2003 the current power plant, powered by natural gas, not only provided for all campus electricity needs, but it also produced a surplus of power which it provided to the grid.

But due to the high cost of natural gas CU decided to stop using its own natural gas-powered power plant in favor of purchasing power from Xcel Energy. According to a December, 2006 campus study (PDF) of options for providing power:

The recent increase in the price of natural gas along with increasing turbine maintenance costs has forced Utility Services to reconsider the balance of reliability and economics. These increasing costs have compelled Utility Services to shut down both generators except for forced or planned outages.

Why does this matter from the standpoint of the city of Boulder's environmental goals? Again according to the December, 2006 study:

Gross [greenhouse gas] emissions to the environment are increased when the University purchases electricity from Xcel Energy since the electricity comes primarily from coal fired plants instead of the University’s gas fired system. Approximately 80% of Xcel Energy’s electricity is produced by coal fired generating stations, although wind and other sustainable sources are included in their grid areas.Also, Xcel Energy’s new coal fired plant will utilize extensive emission reduction equipment and existing coal fired plants are being retrofitted for emission reduction. These measures will make the emission from coal fired plants nearby equal to the emissions from gas fired plants. Since two alternatives of this study provide for the shutdown of the University’s cogeneration system and the purchase of all electricity from Xcel Energy Utilities, emissions from coal fired plants into the environment may increase under these two alternatives. An alternative is for the University is to purchase all power from wind sources, or Green renewable energy credits (REC’s), which will reduce emissions.
An alternative to this proposal is to maintain the cogeneration system at the University. Maintaining cogeneration capability allows the University the option of offsetting any or all of the coal fired emissions that would be produced if the electricity was purchased from Xcel Energy. This option comes at a significant operational cost on an annual basis, since abandoning the cogeneration system has a cost reduction of nearly $2 million per year.

According to this U.S. EPA website electricity from natural natural gas produces about half of the greenhouse gases that electricity produced from coal. Given the energy needs of the Boulder campus, it is not unreasonable to think that a permanent doubling of its greenhouse gas emissions for electricity will make Boulder's goal of meeting the Kyoto Protocol a moot point.

Here is what The Daily Camera reported about my Environmental Studies compatriot Professor Jim White's description the trade-offs involved, and also the reaction of the Chancellor, Bud Peterson:

Jim White, a CU professor of environmental studies, said generation that doesn't involve renewable energy, such as wind, would take some sheen off CU's reputation as an environmental hotbed. He said CU's national leadership in environmental-science research should be reflected in the university's actions.
"In the end, money drives a lot of what we're talking about," White said. "But I think there's a moral imperative. You've got to balance the money issues with doing the right thing."

CU Chancellor Bud Peterson said the university could buy wind-energy credits for $250,000 a year.

"Given our budget, that's not a lot. We could be bragging about how we're carbon-neutral," Peterson said. "Quite frankly, I'd rather take $250,000 a year and invest it in a way that can make a meaningful difference."

So keep these facts in mind:

*The University will be spending $60-$75 million to build a new power plant for steam.

*The University prides itself on being environmentally conscious.

*The University is about to institutionalize for a decade or longer a doubling of its greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation.

*The city of Boulder has passed a law to meet the Kyoto targets.

*The Chancellor has balked at spending $250,000/year, or 0.3% of the cost of the new power plant on this issue.

Whatever one thinks about climate change or greenhouse gas emissions, this story from the University of Colorado tells you all you need to know about the difficulties of actually reducing emissions even in the context of strong political support, strong public support, and the existence of a law providing a (modest) emissions target and timetable. This is the situation that on a much larger scale Europe is now grappling with, and I suspect, the United States eventually will be as well.

Posted on January 20, 2007 09:09 AM View this article | Comments (27)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Education | Energy Policy

January 18, 2007

Kudos for Explicit Political Advocacy

A number of prominent scientists -- including the well-known James Hansen, Judy Curry, Paul Epstein, and Rita Colwell -- have joined with the National Association of Evangelicals to advocate for political action on climate change. They released a statement (PDF) yesterday which stated:

We believe that the protection of life on Earth is a profound moral imperative. It addresses without discrimination the interests of all humanity as well as the value of the non-human world. It requires a new moral awakening to a compelling demand, clearly articulated in Scripture and supported by science, that we must steward the natural world in order to preserve for ourselves and future generations a beautiful, rich, and healthful environment. For many of us, this is a religious obligation, rooted in our sense of gratitude for Creation and reverence for its Creator.

Here at Prometheus we often call out scientists who hide their political agendas behind science, particularly on climate change. But in this case, there is none of that, to these scientists' credit. These scientists are explicit about their political values and their efforts to use a seemingly "strange bedfellows" association with a major religious group to influence the political process (PDF).

The role of science in policy and politics is much more straightforward when scientists clearly identify when they are advocating for values that they strongly hold, rather than suggesting that it is science that compels particular political outcomes.

Posted on January 18, 2007 03:36 AM View this article | Comments (19)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | The Honest Broker

January 16, 2007

Change the Climate, Plant a Tree?

In today’s New York Times Stanford’s Ken Caldeira has a thought provoking op-ed on the impact of planting trees on the global climate system. His basic argument is that planting trees is not a solution to rising carbon dioxide levels, even though trees remove carbon from the atmosphere. Although perhaps not intentioned, Caldeira’s op-ed indicates that the approach of the Framework Convention on Climate Change may be fatally flawed. Caldeira ends up, as these discussions often do, focused narrowly on reducing carbon dioxide emissions. However, his own argument suggests that a broader perspective is needed. In the end we return to the start -- what is the problem posed by climate change, anyway?

Caldeira begins by observing that trees do indeed remove carbon from the atmosphere:

We add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere every time we use energy from coal, oil or gas; but each tree can remove more than a ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over its lifetime. Based on this logic, it might seem a good idea to go out and plant a tree to slow global heating.

And because of this he notes that many initiatives have sprung up around the world to “offset” emissions by planting trees.

. . . projects have sprung up throughout the world claiming to help cool the earth, ready to accept your money and plant a tree in your name. The computer company Dell will now donate $2 from every laptop sale to planting trees in an effort to offset the carbon dioxide emissions that result from powering their computers. For a 2 percent to 4 percent surcharge on bills, Pacific Gas and Electric will offer to offset its customers’ carbon emissions by helping to preserve California’s carbon-storing forests.

Sounds great, right? Well, not really. Caldeira explains that planting trees may not in fact have the desired effects on the climate system.

While preserving and restoring forests is unquestionably good for the natural environment, new scientific studies are concluding that preservation and restoration of forests outside the tropics will do little or nothing to help slow climate change. And some projects intended to slow the heating of the planet may be accelerating it instead.

This is not a new perspective. It has been present in the literature for years. For example, Marland et al. wrote in 2003:

Changes in land surface can result in emission or removal of CO2 to the atmosphere and thus to changes in the Earth’s radiation balance. Changes in land surface can also change the radiation balance by altering the Earth’s surface albedo. In addition, changes in land surface can alter the fluxes of sensible and latent heat to the atmosphere and thus the distribution of energy within the climate system; and in so doing can alter climate at the local, regional, and even global scale. Mitigation strategies that give credits or debits for changing the flux of CO2 to the atmosphere but do not simultaneously acknowledge the importance of changes in the albedo or in the flows of energy within the Earth system might lead to land management decisions that do not produce the intended climatic results.

Marland, G., Pielke Sr., R.A., Apps, M., Avissar, R., Betts, R.A., Davis, K.J., Frumhoff, P.C., Jackson, S.T., Joyce, L., Kauppi, P., Katzenberger, J., MacDicken, K.G., Neilson, R., Niles, J.O., Dutta, D., Niyogi, S., Norby, R.J., Pena, N., Sampson, N., Xue, Y., 2003. The climatic impacts of land surface change and carbon management, and the implications for climate-change mitigation policy. Climate Policy 3:149–157. (PDF)

Why is it that removing carbon doesn’t have the desired climatic effects? Caldeira explains that there are multiple influences on the climate system, with the radiative forcing of carbon dioxide being only one of them, especially at the higher latitudes. Further, the effects of carbon dioxide are not so large as to overshadow the other effects. In fact Caldeira suggests that the other climate effects are on par with those of the radiative effects of carbon dioxide.

Trees don’t just absorb carbon dioxide — they soak up the sun’s heating rays, too. Forests tend to be darker than farms and pastures and therefore tend to absorb more sunlight. This has a warming influence that appears to cancel, on average, the cooling influence of the forest’s carbon storage. This effect is most pronounced in snowy areas — snow on bare ground reflects far more sunlight back to space than does a snowed-in forest — so forests in areas with seasonal snow cover can be strongly warming.
In contrast, tropical forests appear to be doubly valuable to the earth’s climate system. Not only do they store copious amounts of carbon, the roots of tropical trees reach down deep, drawing up water that they evaporate through their leaves. In the atmosphere, this water may form clouds that reflect sunlight back to space, helping to cool the earth.

As usual, it is when discussing the significance of science for policy that things get tricky. Caldeira first highlights (but does not explicitly say so) that the Framework Convention on Climate Change is incapable of dealing with the broad range of forcings that are important in the climate system.

These findings have important policy implications. It has been suggested that agreements to limit climate change should consider carbon stored in forests. If so, they would need to consider the direct climate effects of forests so as to avoid perverse incentives to plant warming forests in places like the United States, Canada, Europe and the former Soviet Union. However, tropical forests, which are generally found in developing countries, may be due a double climate credit — one for their carbon storage and another for their cooling clouds.

However, as we have detailed here on many occasions, the Climate Convention is focused only on a narrow subset of forcings relevant to the climate system. Its Article 1 makes this explicit when it defines “climate change” as:

a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.

The albedo effects of forests are not in fact covered under this definition – nor are other effects of land use, the biogeochemical effects of carbon dioxide, or other human-caused effects on climate change (for an overview of these aspects of climate science, see my father’s excellent blog). Caldeira’s perspective suggests that the Framework Convention offers too narrow a perspective on climate change if it is to be used as a policy instrument to actively manage the climate. Caldeira wisely reminds us that the goals of slowing carbon dioxide growth or stopping climate change are not the primary reason for concern about climate change, even though policy is often presented in that manner. Emissions reductions are means, not ends:

The broadest goal is neither to slow the growth of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere nor to slow climate change, but rather to preserve the irreplaceable natural balance that sustains life as we know it on this planet.

But here is where Caldeira’s argument falls apart. Despite acknowledging that the goals of climate policy must be broader than simply slowing emissions, he suggests in the end that that is exactly what we should be doing.

But the notion that we can save the planet just by planting trees is a dangerous illusion. To preserve our environment, we must drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and this will require a major transformation of our energy system. A primary goal for the next half-century should be to transform our energy system to one based on clean, safe and environmentally acceptable energy sources like wind, solar and perhaps nuclear. This means solving the real problems involved with storing and distributing power, providing energy for transportation, and using nuclear plants.

He says nothing about what we should do about the effects of land use that he believes have a local or regional influence that rivals the radiative effects of carbon dioxide. He explains how this might occur in California.

Consider Pacific Gas and Electric’s surcharge plan [Described above. Ed.]. While the carbon soaked up by California’s forests reduces atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations everywhere, cooling Crete, Cancún and Calcutta, the sunlight they absorb warms the state and the surrounding region.

My reading of this statement is that unless there is attention to the effects of local/regional land use on climate in California under some scenarios of afforestation the effects greenhouse gas emissions on climate would be counteracted. Because land use change occurs all over the world it could have similar effects in other places (and of course different or opposite effects elsewhere, and everything in between). Caldeira completely ignores these effects in his discussion of advocating policy focused only on carbon dioxide. In fact, he goes so far as to advocate the planting of trees,

We want to avoid climate change so that we might pass these diverse natural riches on to future generations. In this light, preserving and restoring forests is a valuable activity, regardless of its impact on climate — we need more trees, not fewer.

Huh? Climate change resulting from greenhouse gases is bad, but the exact same climate change resulting from more trees is good? This is logically inconsistent. If society should indeed be concerned about future climate change because of its impacts on things that people care about, say on California snowpack and water resources, then the specific cause of climate change should not matter for deciding whether or not a problem exists. It is inconsistent to suggest that carbon dioxide-caused climate change is a problem, but land use-caused climate change is not.

Caldeira concludes as follows:

We cannot afford to indulge ourselves with well-intentioned activities that do little to solve the underlying problem. Instead, we must demand that our political leaders do more to revolutionize our energy system and preserve our environmental inheritance for future generations.
And then we can plant a tree.

All of this boils down to how we define the problem. Is it in fact dealing with the impacts of climate on things we care about? Or is it about transforming energy systems and preserving the environment? The difference matters because defining the problem in these different ways lead to very different portfolios of policy alternatives and justifications for them.

Posted on January 16, 2007 08:43 AM View this article | Comments (33)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

January 15, 2007

Common Sense in the Climate Debate

Here is a column by Cathy Young in the Boston Globe that (obviously) I think is pretty much on target.

Ms. Young cites a blog post by Mark Kleiman, a professor of public policy studies at UCLA and a blogger (two appealing characteristics, if I say so myself) which can be found here.

Posted on January 15, 2007 08:32 AM View this article | Comments (52)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

January 10, 2007

Received Wisdom

The folks at Demos (my favorite think tank) in London have done it again. Alan Irwin, Kevin Jones, and Jack Stilgoe have produced a magnificent, readable, and erudite report on the role of expertise in decision making titled The Received Wisdom. Their report complements nicely (rather than makes obsolete before release, whew!) my forthcoming book, The Honest Broker. Below I’ve provided a set of lengthy excerpts on points I thought interesting and/or exceptionally well made. Anyone interested in the role of experts in democratic decision making should read this report carefully. I’ll be adding it to my syllabus for the spring.

Experts are woven into the fabric of government. But they tend to be talked about only when things go wrong. They are a resource, we are told – "on tap, not on top", according to Churchill. Behind the veneer of their advice, they are normally portrayed as neutral. And yet their authority is codified in the legislative process. They are often asked to speak beyond their immediate area of specialist knowledge, but their status as scientists – usually independent university scientists – gives them rhetorical power. Like expert witnesses in court, their evidence resists challenge because of their status. In the last 20 years, however, the politics of expertise have been exposed all too dramatically. Rather than making the best use of expert knowledge, politicians were seen relying on expert authority, shedding their own responsibility for making decisions. (p. 17)
. . . . . .

Governments rely on committees of experts rather than individuals because the committee will have a collectively wider range of knowledge and the committee’s discussion will strengthen their advice. However, we need to ensure that these committees do not fall into the trap of groupthink. When a new disease is discovered or a new technology brings a new set of concerns, it may not be clear what sorts of expertise are relevant. Experts in any particular area will ask certain questions. But other questions will remain unanswered and unasked. New issues demand cognitive diversity – different ways of looking at things. Opening-up needs to mean more than showing people how expert advice works. Opening-up needs to mean open-mindedness, it needs to mean asking new questions and it needs to mean listening to a much wider range of perspectives. (p. 22)

. . . . . .

In November 2006, a report from the Commons Select Committee on Science held a mirror to the fashion for evidence-based policy. In some areas, the committee argued, "evidence-based" has become a way to justify policy rather than a way to make policy – the evidence is found to suit the decision. Evan Harris, a committee member and
Liberal Democrat science spokesman, said that the way some policies claimed to be evidence-based was a "fraud which corrupts the whole use of science in government".

Unfortunately for civil servants, far from providing easy answers, the rise of evidence-based policy forces more questions to the surface. As we have seen in the last few years, controversies involving expertise frequently involve questions such as: What counts as evidence? Whose evidence? Evidence of what? Evidence for whom? What do we still not know? As Arie Rip puts it: "There are deep problems, with "evidence", with "-based", and with "policy"." The inescapable paradox is that "policy is about the future, and evidence is about the past".23 As BSE reminded us, by accentuating the positive – what is known – evidence-based policy often overlooks the uncertainties that come to define our problems. (p. 23)

. . . . . .

Far from taking power away from experts, we are suggesting that they contribute more, in a role that extends beyond evidence to wisdom. Experts should be encouraged to speak up, to contribute to debate and challenge its terms. We are taking the first steps towards a new social contract between experts and society. This means rethinking science – as a process rather than as a body of facts. It means looking at "the public" more respectfully. And it means appreciating the complexity of policy-making. (p. 25)

. . . . . .

As one civil servant told the inquiry: "One was aware of slightly leaning into the wind . . . we tended to make more reassuring sounding statements than might ideally have been said."39 According to a quip attributed to Bismarck, there are two things that it is better not to see in the making – laws and sausages. The assumption at the time of BSE was that expert advice should be a third. The then chief scientific adviser described the instinct "to hold the facts close" so that a "simple message can be taken out into the market place". But BSE had taught him that ‘the full messy process whereby scientific understanding is arrived at, with all its problems, has to be spilled out into the open’.40 The Phillips report stressed several points that, in the wake of BSE, have become central to the UK policy mantra when dealing with matters of risk and science:

Trust can only be generated by openness.

*Openness requires recognition of uncertainty, where it exists.
*The public should be trusted to respond rationally to openness.
*Scientific investigation of risk should be open and transparent.
*The advice and reasoning of advisory committees should be made public. (p. 34)

. . . . . .

The new rhetoric of open expertise has been widely heard. But there is a real question of how and to what extent such messages can be translated into governance practice. How do we spill "the full messy process" of scientific practice "out into the open" while continuing to make effective decisions about science, technology and society? As Sir William discovered, while it is important to talk about uncertainty, judgements must be made about how much uncertainty to acknowledge and in what form. And there is a risk that the acknowledgement of uncertainty is seen as a collapse of leadership and responsibility. (pp. 38-39)

. . . . . .

Blair describes himself as "evangelical" when it comes to science.80 The last thing experts need is moral certainty. The spirit of science is sceptical, exploratory and uncertain. The place of political leadership is not "standing up for science"81 – a model of science that few scientists would recognise. Science is not one thing. And it does not need defending; it needs debating. In the last ten years, with a move towards public dialogue about science, we have seen how vibrant such debates can be. Scientists who get involved are often surprised and enthused by the questions that people ask.82 These new questions are not a threat. They can help us build better scientific advice. There can be many reasons why technical experts and policymakers struggle to hear the voices of outsiders. Science is comfortable with universal statements expressed without obvious emotion or personality. "Non-experts" can shout too loudly, ignore professional codes of behaviour and make it clear that they care very deeply about the issues. Public groups will define the issues in their own way: what’s at stake can appear very different from varying social standpoints. The exchange of expertise and experience may not be straightforward. It is all too easy for insiders to become dismissive, to think that the public is failing to recognise the real issues or that the quality of debate is too low, that we knew all this already and so on. Learning to listen means suspending the tendency to dismiss what appears irrelevant, anecdotal or ill-informed until a real effort has been made to hear how the issues appear from a different point of view and to see what lessons might be learnt. This will also involve a willingness to acknowledge critical messages about how scientific institutions currently operate and not to become defensive in the face of criticism. Rather than trying to fit other voices into already established ways of thinking and acting, it means seeing things through different eyes. (p. 52)

. . . . . .

Issues involving science do not arrive with a script. And they do not bring with them a body of relevant evidence. Knowledge and wisdom must be marshalled to make sense of new challenges. Hard decisions will have to be made on the basis of pretty soft science. Facts will be hard to come by and uncertainty is likely to be rife.101 In such cases, experts and policy-makers need to be open-minded and intellectually humble. As they make sense of issues, they need to explore rather than assume. We have learnt from experience that, as well as shedding light on problems, expertise can blind us to our ignorance. We still need to learn how to take decisions openly in these situations. This exploratory, adaptive mode of expertise involves, as the Chief Scientific Adviser suggests, listening to new voices and seeking out diverse areas of expertise. And it also involves changing how we see science in policy. We cannot expect that science has all the answers. Theoretical models and predictions therefore need to be augmented by monitoring and research focused on answering specific questions. This provisional mode casts experts differently. It asks them to broaden their remits, to question, challenge and apply their wisdom. Policy-makers should expect what Andy Stirling calls "plural and conditional advice" as opposed to recommendations that are "monolithic and prescriptive".102 Minority reports from committees should be considered part of the process of making robust decisions rather than a dangerous break from unanimity. Scientific uncertainty does not mean that "anything goes". But recent debates do tell us that we need to find new ways to talk about uncertainty, as part of a richer conversation about expertise. (p. 70)

. . . . . .

Expert uncertainty does not have to sit uneasily with policymaking. Governance is a process of negotiating ambiguity, a messy business consisting of compromises, partial decisions and continuous renegotiation. But the problem with facts is that they are easy to hide behind. Complexities are obscured by discussions of evidence and knowledge. Uncertainty isn’t just about the limits of knowledge. It is also about the untidiness of policy. Buzzwords like openness and transparency need to be extended to the ways in which advice is used, or disregarded, in policy.

Putting the politics back into policy means politicians and policymakers taking greater responsibility for decisions. It means restoring legitimacy to the decision-making powers of government. It means being honest with the public about why decisions were made. And it means being open to criticism and conflict. (p. 73)

Posted on January 10, 2007 12:39 AM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

January 09, 2007

New Literature Review: Hurricanes and Global Warming

J. Marshall Shephard, a professor at the University of Georgia, and Tom Knutson, NOAA GFDL, have just published a review paper titled "The Current Debate on the Linkage Between Global Warming and Hurricanes" with the journal Geography Compass, which publishes review articles. The full text of the paper can be found here in html and it is also available from that page in PDF.

The paper reinforces the conclusions of the recent consensus statement of the World Meteorological Organization (note that T. Knutson was a lead author of the WMO statement), concluding:

Significantly more research – from observations, theory, and modeling – is needed to resolve the current debate around global warming and hurricanes.

Posted on January 9, 2007 03:19 PM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

January 08, 2007

An Update: Faulty Catastrophe Models?

Last April we discussed at length the profound significance to hurricane risk estimation of changes made by a leading company, Risk Management Solutions or RMS, to the implementation of catastrophe models used by insurance, reinsurance, among others in the risk management business. A news story from yesterday’s Tampa Tribune provides a perspective that underscores our original analysis.

Last April we wrote:

It does not seem to me that RMS recognizes how profoundly revolutionary this perspective is, or its potential consequences for their own business. What they are say is that the historical climatology of hurricane activity is no longer a valid basis for estimating future risks. This means that the catastrophe models that they provide are untethered from experience. Imagine if you are playing a game of poker, and the dealer tells you that the composition of the deck has been completely changed – now you don’t know whether there are 4 aces in the deck or 20. It would make gambling based on probabilities a pretty dodgy exercise. If RMS is correct, then it has planted the seed that has potential to completely transform its business and the modern insurance and reinsurance industries.

Yesterday’s Tampa Tribune has an article on the changes to the RMS model, which includes comments from scientists consulted by RMS who suggest that the changes to the model are scientifically unsupportable. Here is an excerpt from the news story:

The leading computer model used by the insurance industry to justify huge rate increases in coastal areas nationwide relies on faulty science, says an expert credited with helping develop it.
"I think it points to a problem with the way these modeling groups are operating," said Jim Elsner, a professor of geography at Florida State University.

Elsner was one of four experts on a panel assembled in late 2005 to provide input for the computer model by Risk Management Solutions of Newark, Calif.

He said the results, details of which were brought to his attention by the Tribune, contain assumptions that are "actually unscientific."

The flaws identified by Elsner and another panelist have nationwide implications. The expert input was used to justify loss estimates that have prompted major insurance companies to request homeowners rate increases of up to 40 percent.

The problem: RMS took a consensus of experts that there will be more storms across the Atlantic, then added its own projections about which U.S. regions would be most affected.

In an interview Saturday, Gov. Charlie Crist called RMS's actions "apparent misrepresentations" that are stunning and appalling, but in a way, part of a pattern.

"It almost doesn't shock me because this industry has been taking remarkable advantage of our people," Crist said. "Big insurance is about to face a new day in Florida."

The article reveals that the changes made by RMS apparently did not reflect what they were told by a panel of scientists that they convened to provide an informal expert elicitation:

In March, RMS surprised the insurance industry with a dramatic change in the benchmark catastrophe software model it sells access to. Instead of using historical models based on more than 100 years of storm data, RMS announced a "medium-term" five-year model for 2006 through 2010.

The models contain specific data on tens of millions of homes, allowing insurers to estimate risk based on computer simulations of possible storms.

Based on the new model, RMS said hurricane losses would increase by 40 percent over the Gulf Coast and 25 percent to 30 percent in the other regions.

Consumer advocates tried to raise alarms at the time, with little success.

Robert Hunter, a former Texas insurance commissioner now with the Consumer Federation of America, said the primary reason for the change to the five-year model appeared to be pressure from the insurance industry.

Thomas R. Knutson, a research meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Princeton, N.J., and another RMS expert panelist, said the five-year timeline didn't come from the experts.

"I think that question was driven more by the needs of the insurance industry as opposed to the science," he said.

In March, RMS said the five-year model was developed in cooperation with the expert panel that included Elsner and Knutson, and that based on their perspective: "Increases in hurricane frequency should be expected along the entire U.S. coast, but will be highest in the Gulf, Florida, and the Southeast, while lower in the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast."

"I didn't make any such statement of that type," Knutson said Friday.
Elsner said he warned RMS about flaws in the model. "I said that's not a good way of doing it," he recalled, and said RMS exaggerated the basic science "well beyond what we expected."

Though RMS said in March that the expert panel "agreed unanimously that a forward-looking view of risk should reflect a higher probability of landfalling hurricanes," Elsner said there was no consensus.

It doesn’t sound like we’ve heard the end of this issue:

Other experts in the catastrophe-modeling business have questions, too.
Long-term historical data are still the most credible, given the sparse data available for projecting the next five years, Karen Clark, chief executive officer of AIR Worldwide, said in a speech in the summer. Her company is an RMS competitor. Clark encouraged insurance companies not to replace the long-term model with the short-term one. Still, AIR has launched its own version of a five-year program for customers.

The details of how RMS arrives at its projections are considered a trade secret.

"We have never been able to get what they call the information out of the black box to review their models," said Bob Lotane, a spokesman for Florida's Office of Insurance Regulation. He said a public modeling system the state is working on should provide a way to verify the RMS projections.

Crist said information from RMS might be subpoenaed.

As we concluded last April,

From the perspective of the basic functioning of the insurance and reinsurance industries, the change in approach by RMS is an admission that the future is far more uncertain than has been the norm for this community. Such uncertainty may call into question the very basis of hurricane insurance and reinsurance which lies in an ability to quantify and anticipate risks. If the industry can’t anticipate risks, or simply come to a consensus on how to calculate risks (even if inaccurate), then this removes one of the key characteristics of successful insurance. Debate on this issue has only just begun.

Posted on January 8, 2007 12:31 PM View this article | Comments (15)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters | Risk & Uncertainty

The Steps Not Yet Taken

Dan Sarewitz and I have a new chapter in press on climate policy:

Sarewitz, D. and R. Pielke, Jr., (2007, forthcoming), The Steps Not Yet Taken, Controversies in Science and Technology, Volume 2, edited by Daniel Lee Kleinman, Karen Cloud-Hansen, Christina Matta, and Jo Handelsman (publisher TBA). (prepublication version here in PDF)

Here is how we start off the chapter:

The climate system of the planet earth, and the energy system built by those who inhabit the earth, are today seen as the integrated elements of a single problem: global warming. In turn, scientific inquiry, public concern, and policy prescription have given rise to an international regime for controlling the behavior of the climate through management of the global energy system. In this chapter we explain why this regime, and in particular its codification through the Kyoto Protocol, is a failure. Our central point is simple: protecting people and the environment from the impacts of climate is a different problem from reducing greenhouse gas emissions to combat global warming. The policies that have resulted from combining these two problems are, as a consequence, failing to meaningfully address either problem. Policies to reduce global warming must be pursued independently of policies to reduce climate impacts.
First we explain why the Kyoto Protocol is not achieving its environmentally modest goals, a failure that has no connection to the refusal of the United States to sign onto the treaty, but rather reflects the complexity of energy systems and their management. We then consider the impacts of climate on society through the lens of Hurricane Katrina. Such impacts are unrelated to global warming, and cannot be addressed by emissions reductions. Instead, they require policies specifically focused on reduction of socioeconomic vulnerability to climate.

But emissions reductions are a key societal goal, and next we discuss the role of technological innovation in pursuing that goal. Current policies, embodied in Kyoto, are inappropriate and insufficient for making the necessary progress. A cornerstone of our argument is that much of the failure to date of climate change policy originates in a misunderstanding of the appropriate roles of science and technology in social and political change. Proponents of action on global warming have treated scientific evidence as the central catalyst for motivating necessary change, while technological advance has been viewed as a second-order consequence of such change. We argue that this reasoning is backwards, and that technological innovation is a much more effective scaffolding upon which to address energy policies than scientific knowledge.

The Kyoto Protocol is not effectively addressing the climate impacts problem or the energy technology problem. Although Kyoto is often portrayed as only a first step toward establishing an effective international climate change regime, we conclude that it is a step in the wrong direction.

You can read a prepublication version of the whole chapter here in PDF. Comment welcomed!

Posted on January 8, 2007 01:03 AM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters | Energy Policy

January 07, 2007

The End of Research?

Also from today's NYT, William Broad covers angst in the research community over the year-long continuing resolution. Here is an excerpt:

The failure of Congress to pass new budgets for the current fiscal year has produced a crisis in science financing that threatens to close major facilities, delay new projects and leave thousands of government scientists out of work, federal and private officials say.
"The consequences for American science will be disastrous," said Michael S. Lubell, a senior official of the American Physical Society, the world’s largest group of physicists. "The message to young scientists and industry leaders, alike, will be, ‘Look outside the U.S. if you want to succeed.’ "

Last year, Congress passed just 2 of 11 spending bills — for the military and domestic security — and froze all other federal spending at 2006 levels. Factoring in inflation, the budgets translate into reductions of about 3 percent to 4 percent for most fields of science and engineering.

Representative Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat and a physicist, said that scientists, in most cases, were likely to see little or no relief. "It’s that bad," Mr. Holt said. "For this year, it’s going to be belt tightening all around."

Congressional Democrats said last month that they would not try to finish multiple spending bills left hanging by the departed Republican majority and would instead keep most government agencies operating under their current budgets until next fall. Except for the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, the government is being financed under a stopgap resolution. It expires Feb. 15, and Democrats said they planned to extend a similar resolution through Sept. 30.

Some Republicans favored not finishing the bills because of automatic savings achieved by forgoing expected spending increases. Democrats and Republicans alike say that operating under current budgets, in some cases with less money, can strap federal agencies and lead to major disruptions in service.

Scientists say that is especially true for the physical sciences, which include physics, chemistry and astronomy. When it comes to federal financing, such fields in recent years have fared poorly compared with biology. The National Institutes of Health, for instance, spend more than $28 billion annually on biomedical programs, five times more than all federal spending for physical sciences.

For 2007, Congress and the Bush administration agreed that the federal budget for the physical sciences should get a major increase. A year ago, in his American Competitiveness Initiative, President Bush called for doubling the money for science over a decade. That prompted schools and federal laboratories to prepare for long-deferred repairs and expansions, plans that appear now to be in jeopardy.

Posted on January 7, 2007 11:21 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding

Meantime, Back in the News Section

The NYT's Elisabeth Rosenthal has a very interesting article today on Europe's "car boom." She writes:

Since 1990, emissions from transportation in Ireland have risen about 140 percent, the most in Europe. But Ireland is not alone.
Vehicular emissions are rising in nearly every European country, and across the globe. Because of increasing car and truck use, greenhouse-gas emissions are increasing even where pollution from industry is waning.

The 23 percent growth in vehicular emissions in Europe since 1990 has “offset” the effect of cleaner factories, according to a recent report by the European Environment Agency. The growth has occurred despite the invention of far more environmentally friendly fuels and cars.

“What we gain by hybrid cars and ethanol buses, we more than lose because of sheer numbers of vehicles,” said Ronan Uhel, a senior scientist with the European Environment Agency, which is based in Copenhagen. Vehicles, mostly cars, create more than one-fifth of the greenhouse-gas emissions in Europe, where the problem has been extensively studied.

The few places that have aggressively sought to fight the trend have taken sometimes draconian measures. Denmark, for example, treats cars the way it treats yachts — as luxury items — imposing purchase taxes that are sometimes 200 percent of the cost of the vehicle. A simple Czech-made Skoda car that costs $18,400 in Italy or Sweden costs more than $34,000 in Denmark. . .

High taxes on cars or gasoline of the type levied in Copenhagen are effective in curbing traffic, experts say, but they scare voters, making even environmentalist politicians unlikely to propose them. When Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, revealed his “green” budget proposal, it included an increase in gas taxes of less than two and a half cents per quart.

Other cities have tried variations that require fewer absolute sacrifices from motorists. Rome allows only cars with low emissions ratings into its historic center. In London and Stockholm, drivers must pay a congestion charge to enter the city center. Such programs do reduce traffic and pollution at a city’s core, but evidence suggests that car use simply moves to the suburbs.

But Dublin is more typical of cities around the world, from Asia to Latin America, where road transport volumes are increasing in tandem with economic growth. Since 1997, Beijing has built a new ring road every two years, each new concentric superhighway giving rise to a host of malls and housing compounds.

In Ireland, car ownership has more than doubled since 1990 and car engines have grown steadily larger. Meanwhile, new environmental laws have meant that emissions from electrical plants, a major polluter, have been decreasing since 2001.

Urban sprawl and cars are the chicken and egg of the environmental debate. Cars make it easier for people to live and shop outside the center city. As traffic increases, governments build more roads, encouraging people to buy more cars and move yet farther away. In Europe alone, 6,200 miles of motorways were built from 1990 to 2003 and, with the European Union’s enlargement, 7,500 more are planned. Government enthusiasm for spending on public transportation, which is costly and takes years to build, generally lags far behind.

On energy at least, European and Americans (and Chinese and Indians) seem to share more in common than is commonly assumed in the debate over climate and energy.

Posted on January 7, 2007 08:26 AM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Energy Policy

Climate Determinism Lives On

Andy Revkin of the New York Times has an article in today’s paper which suggests that the different political outcomes on on climate change in the United States and Europe might be explained to some degree by their different climates – positing that Europe has one climate and the United States has many. Somewhat bizarrely on this sociological and political question Andy quotes a number of physical scientists, and the results are about what one would expect. For instance, Penn State’s Michael Mann opines:

[Mann] has another theory about why Washington, particularly, has lagged even as some states and cities have moved ahead to limit such emissions. "The East Coast of the United States, and particularly the mid-Atlantic region, did not warm nearly as much as rest of globe over the 20th century," Dr. Mann said. "And that’s where the decision-making is going on."

Perhaps someone at Penn State’s political science department might share with Professor Mann the fact that our elected representatives actually come from all over the United States. More generally, had Andy Revkin spoke to relevant experts like Bill Travis, Nico Stehr, or Mickey Glantz he might have learned that climate determinism – the idea that regional climate differences can explain social and political outcomes -- has been completely discredited for decades in the social sciences. Some even called the idea racist. He might have simply queried Wikipedia:

The fundamental argument of the environmental determinists was that aspects of physical geography, particularly that of climate, influenced the psychological mind-set of individuals, which in turn defined the behaviour and culture of the society that those individuals formed. For example, tropical climates were said to cause laziness, relaxed attitudes and promiscuity, while the frequent variability in the weather of the middle latitudes led to more determined and driven work ethics. Because these environmental influences operate slowly on human biology, it was important to trace the migrations of groups to see what environmental conditions they had evolved under.
Between 1920 and 1940, environmental determinism came under repeated attacks as its claims were found to be severely faulted at best, and often dangerously wrong. Geographers reacted to this by first developing the softer notion of "environmental possibilism," and later by abandoning the search for theory and causal explanation for many decades. Later critics charged that determinism served to justify racism and imperialism. The experience of environmental determinism has left a scar on geography, with many geographers reacting negatively to any suggestion of environmental influences on human society.

The climate community, and those that cover it, have a blind spot when it comes to social science.

Posted on January 7, 2007 01:58 AM View this article | Comments (17)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

January 06, 2007

Who Said This? No Cheating!

One day, anthropologists, sociologists, and maybe even psychoanalysts will look back on the early-twenty first century debate on climate change with incredulity and bafflement. Consider the following statement as a weekend pop quiz – no Googling if you wan to play along!

I worry a little bit about what you might call the Tyranny of the IPCC. . . That gives me some slight willies. . . Sure, IPCC is confident about the existence and cause of recent warming . . . But there are other areas -- mainly around the effects of climate change -- where the IPCC says, in effect, "we don't know for sure yet." Does that mean all respectable people must stay silent about those effects until the IPCC ratifies a consensus conclusion? Yes, we have to leave science to the scientists. But science is not a priesthood that can or should impose quietude on the rest of us. Our informed gut feelings about how things will turn out are legitimate. People make statements beyond what's strictly supported by the peer-reviewed evidence all the time.

Was this statement made by:

(a) A Republican U.S. Senator from a Midwestern state with a panhandle in a Senate floor speech
(b) A scientist formerly associated with the IPCC responding to being labeled a "skeptic" by his peers
(c) An environmentalist writer defending Al Gore’s scientifically unsupportable statements
(d) A prominent NASA scientist defending his work projecting rapid future sea level rise
(e) A conservative blogger explaining why the notion of scientific consensus is really cover for a political agenda

Click through for the answer (click on Comments now to reply before reading the answer):

The answer is (c). The author is Dave Roberts at Grist magazine. He writes these views over at the Gristmill blog. To best serve the pop quiz we did cut out some of what Dave wrote to preserve ambiguity, so please do go and read the whole thing. We have every respect for Dave as a passionate advocate for causes that he believes in (check him out on TWC, also a music recommendation for Dave;-). But at the same time his willingness to forgive departures from scientific standards in support of causes and people that he believes in makes him no different from his opponents who do the exact same thing.

In the comments on Dave’s post climate scientist Andrew Dessler tries to gently make this exact same point:

I am very leery letting Al Gore or anyone "supplement" the IPCC. If we let Al Gore inject his scientific expertise, then why shouldn't we let James Inhofe also make pronouncements on the science. Gore and Inhofe are both advocates, and their interpretation of the science clearly reflects their preferred policy choices. I would therefore argue that science should be left to the professionals. I know that sounds elitist and I'll probably get flamed for it, but so be it.

This pop quiz should be interpreted as a lesson in the politicization of science. It is very easy to hold different standards for representations of science as a function of different political or policy commitments. Some, like Prof. Dessler will say that the antidote to this is to focus on getting the best scientific assessments possible. Others, like me, recognize that scientists who produce assessments are people with values and political agendas. So I argue that the only way to move beyond this situation is to of course seek the best science but to also discuss policy options explicitly, rather than orienting the climate debate solely with respect to science. Science is comfortable, and allows some a convenient excuse not to discuss policy (or worse a way to smuggle politics under the cover of "science"). But we should remember that we talk, debate, and argue about climate change because it matters, and because the decisions that we take matter as well. The answer to this is not to pretend that science can be discussed in a vacuum, or to suggest that politicians are legitimate voices on where future science is going.

The answer lies in explicitly discussing policy – what should we do, when, at what cost, with what effects, etc.? Everything else is a distraction.

Posted on January 6, 2007 02:47 AM View this article | Comments (12)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Scientific Assessments

January 04, 2007

Progressive Radio Network Interview, Today 1PM MST

Later today I'll be discussing climate change with Steve Barnett on his show "Paradise Parking Lot" on the Progressive Radio Network. You can tune in live at 1:00 PM (Mountain Time) today here.

Posted on January 4, 2007 10:21 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

January 03, 2007

RealClimate Comment

RealClimate has not always decided to post my comments. So here is what I just submitted on their thread reacting to Andy Revkin's piece this week:

Nice post.

When I first presented the idea of a third "tribe" in the climate debate, partly tongue-in-cheek, I did so to recognize a another political position on climate change. Not science. That political position is characterized by people who accept the IPCC (hence, non-skeptic, i.e., "skeptic" as a noun, as often used in derogatory fashion on this site) but reject the targets and timetables approach that is codified in the Framework Convention. This includes a variety of different, even mutually inconsistent approaches proposed by people as diverse as Steve Rayner, Bjorn Lomborg, Dan Sarewitz, and Gregg Easterbrook. (And in some quarters -- maybe here -- simply mentioning the name Lomborg is enough to be labeled a heretic, ;-) )

Now, as far as I know you guys have no views on the Framework Convention one way or the other, or at least that is what you say. So this political debate has nothing to do with what you present here, and this third way should not be relevant, right? The reality is that if climate policy is going to move forward, it has to break out of (a) positioning everything in terms of science, and (b) framing everything in terms of alarmists and skeptics/contrarians. And like it or not, RealClimate is a big player in keeping this Manichean view alive, such as with your recent "year in review" and incessant skeptic obsession.

I don't care if this third way on climate policy is called the middle, top, bottom, left, or right. And I have no affinity for the NSH tag. What I do care about is that people engage in serious discussions of actual policy options in manner that is far more diverse that has existed to date. If that is something that RC wants to venture into, we'd all benefit.

Happy 2007!

Posted on January 3, 2007 07:14 PM View this article | Comments (26)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Climatic Change Special Issue on Geoengineering

The August, 2006 issue of the journal Climatic Change has some interesting commentary reacting to Paul Crutzen’s idea that climate change might be dealt with by injecting aerosols into the atmosphere. Here are a few excerpts from these commentaries on Crutzen:

Ralph Cicerone, National Academy of Sciences, Wasington, DC (PDF, subscription required)

I am aware that various individuals have opposed the publication of Crutzen’s paper, even after peer review and revisions, for various and sincere reasons that are not wholly scientific. Here, I write in support of his call for research on Geoengineering and propose a framework for future progress in which supporting and opposing viewpoints can be heard and incorporated. I also propose that research on geoengineering be considered separately from actual implementation, and I suggest a path in that direction. . .
A commonly held view is that commitment to geoengineering would undercut human resolve to deal with the cause of the original problem, greenhouse gases in the case of climate change; Crutzen states such concerns as did Cicerone et al. (1992), Schneider (1996), and Schelling (1996). There is a widespread, perhaps universal belief that humans must first attempt to limit these emissions. Crutzen notes that worldwide agreements may not prove to be effective. Most scientists believe that there is also a danger from ignorance of harmful side effects, and there are other reservations against geoengineering on ethical grounds. While some people fear that research will lead to direct experimentation and to geoengineering interventions, I believe that we should encourage research, and separate research from actual interventions (see below). Research is needed to reduce ignorance, and it is likely that gaining an acceptable amount of knowledge before intervention will take many years. Freedom of inquiry itself has moral value.

Jeffrey Kiehl, NCAR, Boulder, CO (PDF, subscription required)

It is important to note that Crutzen argues that this idea be studied in depth and openly before any large scale action is taken. A basic assumption to this approach is that we, humans, understand the Earth system sufficiently to modify it and ‘know’ how the system will respond. . . .
We have already ‘chosen’ to geoengineer our climate system through our use of fossil fuels, where the engineering of the climate system is an inadvertent by product of our values around forms of consumption. Proposals to consciously alter the climate system to treat the symptom of our behaviors imply we understand all of the complexities of Earth as a system. At times Earth performs a stratospheric albedo enhancement experiment through the eruption of volcanoes. As pointed out by Crutzen, the Earth does cool due to this experiment, but this experiment also provides ample evidence of the non-local and non-linear response of Earth’s climate system, e.g. winter NH warming. This example exhibits how Earth’s climate system is far more complex than a simple energy balance picture. For this reason, I support Crutzen’s argument that more detailed and comprehensive modeling studies be carried out with regards to experiments. But my concern is that all models have their limitations (e.g. note the inability of models to predict the appearance of the Antarctic ozone hole before it was observed). When will we know a model is ‘good enough’ to go out and perform a real experiment?

On the issue of ethics, I feel we would be taking on the ultimate state of hubris to believe we can control Earth. We (the industrially developed world) would essentially be telling the (rest of the) world not to worry about our insatiable use of energy. In essence we are treating the symptom, not the cause. Our species needs to begin to address the cause(s) behind the problem. For example, an analysis of the U.S. contribution to CO2 emissions indicates that these emissions in part arise from three factors: the large number of SUVs, the size of homes, and distance we drive to work. I would argue that the first two of these factors are ones of choice, and not necessity. Yet, the American public chooses to buy SUVs and build large homes. Why? It seems that we need to address the fundamental issue of value, before tinkering with a system that we do not completely understand.

Lennart Bengtsson, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany (PDF, subscription required)

Here I will bring up three major issues, which must be more thoroughly understood before any geo-engineering of climate could be considered, if at all. The three issues are (i) the lack of accuracy in climate prediction, (ii) the huge difference in timescale between the effect of greenhouse gases and the effect of aerosols and (iii) serious environmental problems which may be caused by high carbon dioxide concentration irrespective of the warming of the climate. . .
. . . our understanding of the effects on aerosols on climate is less well understood than the greenhouse gases. Aerosols are not well mixed and interact with clouds in a complex way, where many questions are still open as we lack detailed empirical data. In addition, the role of clouds in regulating the climate under changed forcing conditions is not yet known with sufficient details. Present climate models are highly parameterized and the processes regulating the interaction of clouds, aerosols and radiation through the depth of the atmosphere are highly tuned. We do not yet know for sure to what extent we overestimate the feedback effect from the greenhouse gases and thus need the aerosols as compensation or whether we underestimate the effect of the greenhouse gases and thus the effect of aerosols is less significant (Rodhe et al., 2000). . .

So in conclusion, I do consider it more feasible to succeed in solving the world’s energy problem, which is the main cause to the present concern about climate change, than to successfully manage a geo-engineering experiment on this scale and magnitude, which even if it works is unable to solve all problems with the very high concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Michael McCracken, Climate Institute, Washington, DC (PDF, subscription required)

. . . if greenhouse gas emissions are not going to be reduced, there will not only need to be an increasingly aggressive geoengineering effort to counter-balance the radiative influences, but the effort also would need to be continued virtually indefinitely. Although it might be conceivable for one nation to actually commit to such a program, it seems rather unlikely that a global coalition of nations could be kept together to sustain such a diversion of resources for a task that would seem, to the typical citizen, to generate no immediate or direct benefits . . .
In addition to the political, ethical, and economic issues that such a long-term commitment would raise, there is also a potential legal impediment. Reacting to the attempts at weather modification during the Vietnam War, the nations of the world agreed in 1978 to the UN Convention on the Prohibition of Military or any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques4 (Fleming, 2004), which essentially prohibits weather modification that any nation would consider hostile or environmentally damaging. In that “climate” is really a mathematical construct created by averaging over the weather, it would not be far-fetched to argue that this treaty might well not permit geoengineering schemes to be used for the purpose of climate change, or counterbalancing it (indeed, changing climate patterns is specifically mentioned as being covered in one of the understandings of the treaty). The notion of one or a few countries proceeding on some geoengineering approach without the permission of all countries would almost certainly be considered hostile by some nation. . .

There has already been some experience with political consideration of geoengineering, and in this case additional considerations arose. In its initial formulation in mid 2001, President Bush’s Climate Change Technology Initiative included consideration of geoengineering as one of the possible approaches, and indeed a meeting was held in the fall of 2001 and a draft report prepared (Ehsan Khan, personal communication). A powerful argument against proceeding emerged, namely that if a viable and low cost geoengineering alternative really were available, economic analysis would then seem to argue against continuing to try to reduce CO2 emissions. As such, geoengineering would really be, in essence, an enabler for undiminished addiction to fossil fuels, roughly equivalent to foregoing fire insurance based on an assurance that the fire department was right next door and could quickly put out any blaze. In addition to adding to the perception that the Administration’s emission reduction program was not serious, relying on Geoengineering came across as only conceivable if one had an unrealistically complete understanding of all the possible situations that could lie ahead (i.e., could be absolutely assured it would work in all cases for an indefinite time).Without such knowledge, particularly regarding the potential for surprises and abrupt change, full reliance on geoengineering to counterbalance the climate-changing effects of greenhouse gases would, over time, not only compound the necessity of sustaining the Geoengineering option, but also mean that stopping might well result in even greater consequences than if one had not pursued the geoengineering approach at all, especially in comparison to devoting the resources to reducing the costs of non-fossil energy technologies. . .

What is clear from review of the various options is that it is easier to warm the climate than to cool it. For this reason, continued and increasing emissions of greenhouse gases merit very serious control efforts.

Mark Lawrence, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany (PDF, subscription required)

An intriguing dichotomy has developed within the field of atmospheric and climate research. On the one side, it has become common practice to examine pessimistic future scenarios of anthropogenic pollutant emissions and their environmental impacts. Not surprisingly, compared to the alternative "best guess" or "maximum feasible reduction" emissions scenarios, the pessimistic scenario simulations tend to predict large changes in the climate system and air quality. These scenarios can certainly attract attention to the possibly disastrous consequences of a careless environmental stewardship. However, they can also backfire politically, being seen as "unrealistic scare tactics" or "Hollywood horrors" put forth by scientists with environmentalist agendas. Furthermore, each simulation can only show one potential outcome among many possible states for a strongly perturbed climate. The predicted extreme outcomes of pessimistic scenarios will tend to vary widely from model to model. Unless this is communicated effectively, it can lead to confusion among policy makers, and can reduce confidence in such predictive studies. Nevertheless, such pessimistic scenario calculations are not only allowed, but are strongly condoned, for instance by the IPCC (2001), which employs these types of pessimistic scenarios as a central part of its regular assessments. This is well justified, given the most important outcome of these scenario calculations: scientists learn, and they learn a lot about the behavior of the earth system. The key is ensuring that the results are reported to the public and policy-making sectors as clearly and responsibly as possible, which is part of the purpose of the intense IPCC review procedure.
On the other side of the dichotomy, serious scientific research into Geoengineering possibilities, such as discussed in the publications by Crutzen (2006) and Cicerone (2006), is not at all condoned by the overall climate and atmospheric chemistry research communities. Quite the contrary, according to Cicerone, “refereed publications that deal with such ideas are not numerous nor are they cited widely”. In the discussions that surrounded the drafting of Crutzen’s article, there was a passionate outcry by several prominent scientists claiming that it is irresponsible to publish such an article focused on a particular geoengineering proposal. . .

I deeply hope that we will never see an era where widespread geoengineering like that discussed by Crutzen is being practiced, but there is no way to guarantee that this will be the case. Crutzen expresses the sincere concern that we may eventually reach the state of extreme climate change where the overall international sentiment is in favor of applying geoengineering. If we do not conduct careful research now, we will not be prepared to advise politicians on how to best approach large-scale geoengineering applications – including providing sound information on the various risks involved, and on which ideas should not be pursued further. . .

Many concerns have been expressed about the possible future application of widespread geoengineering. Especially worrisome is that it could end up being used as an excuse for not needing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in which case it follows that the intensity of any geoengineering efforts (e.g., the amount of sulfur injected into the stratosphere per year) would also need to increase to keep pace with accumulating, long-lived greenhouse gases. Nevertheless, geoengineering is being discussed intensely, at least outside of the formal scientific literature, and it is not going to go away by ignoring it or refusing to discuss it scientifically. Thus, I would argue that it is our responsibility to do what scientists do best: explore it, understand it deeply, and eventually describe the key points of this understanding in terms accessible to the educated public and policy-making communities, in order to support well-informed decisions on geoengineering in the future.

Posted on January 3, 2007 12:01 PM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

January 02, 2007

Profiling Frank Laird

Andy Revkin’s article in the New York Times yesterday suggested that there are an untapped set of views on climate policy that might be worth hearing from. We thought it might be worth profiling some of these voices periodically. One such perspective is provided by Frank Laird, a professor in the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver. Frank is also a friend and a faculty affiliate at our Center at CU.

One of Frank’s areas of expertise is energy policy, and specifically renewable energy policies. His excellent 2001 book Solar Energy, Technology Policy, and Institutional Values, (Cambridge University Press), was a finalist (one of the top 3) 2004 Don K. Price Award for the best book in science and technology policy or politics, awarded by the American Political Science Association. I reviewed his book in 2002 for the journal Policy Sciences and you can see my review here in PDF. Frank's book illustrates how technologies become objects onto which political partisans map their valued ends and means. While values don’t always change quickly, a technology – in this case solar energy and nuclear energy -- can be favored at different times for difference reasons by different political camps. Politics does make strange bedfellows. Consequently we should be careful in linking a particular technology with a political perspective. In the case of solar energy, Laird argues, success in making such a linkage is one factor which arguably held back the further expansion of solar technologies in the 1970s. Laird also shows quite convincingly how energy policy decisions made in the 1950s and 1960s have shaped where we are at today.

Frank has written on climate change as well. In 2000 he wrote Just Say No to Greenhouse Gas Emissions Targets in Issues in Science and Technology. In that article he wrote:

The critiques in this paper are not based on skepticism about the nature and seriousness of climate change, and they are not intended to give aid and comfort to the diminishing band of greenhouse skeptics. I assume for this analysis that the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are correct. . . . Although the science still contains substantial uncertainty, as climate scientist Stephen Schneider and others remind us, that uncertainty cuts both ways, so that the effects of climate change could be significantly worse than the models predict. That downside potential is all the more reason why we need policies that will actually help us to put off and cope with whatever changes will come. The Kyoto Protocol emissions targets will only hinder our collective ability to do that.

His critique remains current today:

Effective international actions to cope with climate change should be based on three principles. First, the international institutions that will implement climate change treaties must be understood as catalytic, not regulatory. Second, actions on climate change need to make effective use of the substantial institutional developments already in place around the globe. Third, the goals of the treaty must be process-oriented, not descriptions of some final outcome. . .
The Protocol requires a major overhaul. It is based fundamentally on the monitoring, reduction, and trading of GHG emissions: a foundation that guarantees stiff political opposition and years of arcane technical arguments, absorbing the time, energy, and money of many participants. Nations, the UN, and NGOs organizations have so many diplomatic, financial, and technical resources tied up in Kyoto that it would be tragic for it to fail now; such a failure would set back international climate change efforts for years. It is time to let go of the failed emissions targets and seek new paths that will better serve everyone's needs.

I encourage everyone to read the whole article. It is short essay but prescient. Frank is current studying renewable energy policies in the United States and Germany.

Posted on January 2, 2007 06:53 PM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Energy Policy | Technology Policy

January 01, 2007

Nonskeptical Heretics in the NYT

Andy Revkin has a well-done article on the "middle ground" in the climate change debate. I fully expect that many of the usual suspects on the extremes of the debate (both sides) will respond to this story by saying that they've been in the middle all along. A two-sided debate rarely welcomes a third view, especially one that makes as much sense as that espoused in the NYT article. Here is an excerpt:

Amid the shouting lately about whether global warming is a human-caused catastrophe or a hoax, some usually staid climate scientists in the usually invisible middle are speaking up.
The discourse over the issue has been feverish since Hurricane Katrina. Seizing the moment, many environmental campaigners, former Vice President Al Gore and some scientists have portrayed the growing human influence on the climate as an unfolding disaster that is already measurably strengthening hurricanes, spreading diseases and amplifying recent droughts and deluges.

Conservative politicians and a few scientists, many with ties to energy companies, have variously countered that human-driven warming is inconsequential, unproved or a manufactured crisis.

A third stance is now emerging, espoused by many experts who challenge both poles of the debate.

They agree that accumulating carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe gases probably pose a momentous environmental challenge, but say the appropriate response is more akin to buying fire insurance and installing sprinklers and new wiring in an old, irreplaceable house (the home planet) than to fighting a fire already raging.

"Climate change presents a very real risk," said Carl Wunsch, a climate and oceans expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It seems worth a very large premium to insure ourselves against the most catastrophic scenarios. Denying the risk seems utterly stupid. Claiming we can calculate the probabilities with any degree of skill seems equally stupid."

Many in this camp seek a policy of reducing vulnerability to all climate extremes while building public support for a sustained shift to nonpolluting energy sources.

They have made their voices heard in Web logs, news media interviews and at least one statement from a large scientific group, the World Meteorological Organization. In early December, that group posted a statement written by a committee consisting of most of the climatologists assessing whether warming seas have affected hurricanes.

While each degree of warming of tropical oceans is likely to intensify such storms a percentage point or two in the future, they said, there is no firm evidence of a heat-triggered strengthening in storms in recent years. The experts added that the recent increase in the impact of storms was because of more people getting in harm’s way, not stronger storms.

There are enough experts holding such views that Roger A. Pielke Jr., a political scientist and blogger at the University of Colorado, Boulder, came up with a name for them (and himself): "nonskeptical heretics."

"A lot of people have independently come to the same sort of conclusion," Dr. Pielke said. "We do have a problem, we do need to act, but what actions are practical and pragmatic?"

Posted on January 1, 2007 10:44 AM View this article | Comments (31)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

December 30, 2006

2007 Office Pool

Happy New Year everyone! A 2007 office pool for your enjoyment:

1. In 2007 the space shuttle will fly (a) once, (b) twice, (c) 3 or more times, (d) its last mission.

2. Academic earmarks on non-defense discretionary spending for FY2007 will (a) be held to near zero as Democrats hold steadfast to their year-long continuing resolution, (b) will quietly creep up to their FY2006 levels as supplemental spending bills are laden with pork, (c) will not formally appear in appropriations or reports but will somehow appear out of existing agency appropriations as agency officials seek to keep congressional appropriators happy.

3. The number of hurricanes in the North Atlantic will be (a) less than 10, (b) between 10 and 15, (c) 16 to 20, (d) more than 20.

4. The IPCC will be released in three installments in the first half of 2007. The big news story from the IPCC will be (a) actually nothing, as nothing new will be reported, (b) a change in the IPCC and its leaders to an explicit advocacy role, (c) that it spells the end of the climate convention as it presents “dangerous interference” as inevitable, (d) provides much fodder for those wanting to “go slow” on climate policy by presenting an image of climate change far more conservative than found in the media, (e) will totally botch the issue of economic losses from extreme events, and especially hurricanes.

5. Al Gore will enter the 2008 presidential race (a) in the spring with his speech accepting the Oscar for best documentary, (b) in the late summer or early fall following the devastation of southern Florida by Hurricane Jerry, (c) not at all and Roger will owe Lisa lunch, (d) in 2008.

6. The U.S. budget for R&D in FY2007 will (a) represent the first cut in decades as Democrats hold fast to their year-long continuing resolution, (b) increase from FY2006 level through several targeted supplemental appropriations bills, most notable passage of some version of the ACI/PACE legislation, (c) so frustrate some scientists that they will begin speaking of a “Democratic war on science”.

7. The most notable S&T legislation to be passed by Congress in 2007 and vetoed by President Bush will be focused on (a) federal funding for stem cell research, (b) mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions, (c) prohibition of the transfer of nuclear technologies to India, (d) repeal of certain aspects of the Patriot Act focused on surveillance

8. The Supreme Court will rule in EPA vs. Massachusetts that (a) Massachusetts in fact has no standing to file the lawsuit, (b) that EPA has authority to regulate carbon dioxide and leave to EPA’s discretion whether regulation is required, (c) EPA must regulate emissions under the Clean Air Act, (d) that some call greenhouse gases a “pollutant” while others simply call it “life”

9. Internationally, the biggest news of 2007 will be (a) the introduction and then termination of carbon rationing cards in the U.K., (b) Germany’s withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol, (c) the announcement by Hugo Chavez that Venezuela will conduct a nuclear test, (d) China’s devaluation of its currency sending the dollar into a tailspin

10. In 2007, here at Prometheus we will see (a) an angel bequeathing a massive endowment to our Center, (b) the blog reinvented at another university far, far away, (c) new authors and new contributors, and an ever-expanding readership (d) enough on climate change already, .and a shift to The Honest Broker.

My guesses below.

1. (a) 30%, (b) 60%, (c) 10%, (d) 50%
2. (c)
3. (a) 10%, (b) 50%, (c) 30%, (d) 10%
4. all of the above
5. (b), but maybe (d), (c) no way
6. (b), (a) is possible but unlikely
7. (a), almost certainly
8. (a) or (b), probably (b)
9. none of the above
10. (a) were still waiting on this one;-), (b), (c), and (d) – stay tuned!

Happy New Year!

Posted on December 30, 2006 11:06 AM View this article | Comments (7)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

December 28, 2006

Draft Paper for Comment: Decreased Proportion of Tropical Cyclone Landfalls in the United States

Below you will find a short, draft paper on the decreasing proportion of U.S. hurricane landfalls to total North Atlantic hurricanes from 1851-2006 that I will soon submit for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. I am not worried about pre-publication on the web and the policies of the big journals as Nature has already declined to send it out for review, suggesting that the specialty journals are a more appropriate venue. I have shared earlier versions of the paper with a range of different scientists inside (and outside of) the tropical cyclone research community, and I thank those who have so far responded for their helpful suggestions. I welcome any comments readers here may have as well.

Decreased Proportions of Tropical Cyclone Landfalls in the United States: Data Artifact, Blind Luck, Natural Variability, and/or Global Warming?

Roger A. Pielke, Jr.
28 December 2006
DISCUSSION DRAFT

Introduction

This short note is motivated by several recent studies that examine Atlantic tropical cyclone statistics over the past century and a half finding a significant upward trend (Holland and Webster, 2007; Mann and Emanuel, 2006). Both studies attribute an observed increase in North Atlantic (NATL) tropical cyclone activity to anthropogenic causes. This paper uses a simple approach to examine trends in U.S. hurricane landfalls 1851-2006. The annual number of U.S. hurricane landfalls has remained remarkably constant over this period exhibiting no trend. However, out of the total NATL storm activity, the proportion of landfalling storms making landfall in the United States has exhibited a marked decrease. These trends raise important but heretofore largely unexamined research questions about tropical cyclone landfall theory, data, and analyses.

North Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Data

Two datasets in this analysis are kept by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The first dataset includes all tropical cyclones of at least tropical storm strength (i.e., maximum winds >17 meters/second) in the NATL 1851-2006 (1). The second dataset includes all such storms that affected the U.S. coastline at hurricane strength (i.e., maximum winds of >33 meters/second) (2). It is widely accepted that the number of landfalling storms is among the most accurate metrics available for tropical cyclones in the Atlantic (Landsea 2005, Emanuel 2005).

Issues about data quality are at the center of a vigorous and scientifically productive debate within the tropical cyclone research community (e.g., Landsea et al. 2006, Kossin et al. in press). This paper proceeds under the same assumptions on data quality used by Holland and Webster (2007),

Before 1945 the overall statistic of total tropical cyclones numbers contains useful information . . . In summary, we consider that the veracity of the NATL tropical storm data base is sufficient to enable the broad brush analysis that we undertake in this study. Prior to 1945 we concentrate on the total number of tropical cyclones, irrespective of intensity.

And also Mann and Emanuel (2006),

A reasonably reliable record of annual North Atlantic tropical cyclone counts is thus available back into the late nineteenth century.

The point here is not that these conclusions about data quality are necessarily correct, but to argue that if one accepts the analyses in these studies predicated on the fidelity of long-term counts of NATL tropical cyclones, then it follows logically that one also has to accept the analysis presented here using the exact same data.

Analysis

Figure 1 shows the total number of United States hurricane landfalls 1851-2006.

There is no trend in the data. This finding is generally accepted, and is supported by the lack of trend in normalized U.S. hurricane damage over the past century (Pielke, et al. under review). Figure 2 shows the percentage of total storms that affected the United States as hurricanes from 1851-2006 (3).

There is a decrease in the proportion of storms striking the United States from any starting point prior to about 1970. This decrease increases in statistical significance as the record is extended further into the past. A linear trend line is presented on the graph for both the raw data and the 9-year moving average (4). Apparent in Figure 2 starting in 1944, which is considered to be the most accurate data period in the Atlantic (Neumann et al. 1999, Landsea et al. 1999), is a decrease in the proportion of storms striking the coast over this time period as well (statistics discussed below). Holland and Webster (2007) identify three climatic regimes, 1905-1930, 1931-1994, and 1995-2005. The proportion of landfalling storms for each of the three eras indicates a steady decline, respectively at 31.8%, 17.0%, and 14.6%.

Figure 3 shows for 1950-2006 the relationship of the percentage of landfalling storms and NATL August-September-October (ASO) sea surface temperatures (5).

On this time scale at least there is no significant relationship, though perhaps a more comprehensive statistical analysis that goes beyond the present focus may yet reveal a relationship (cf. Jagger et al. 2007).

Discussion

The data presented here suggests some interesting possibilities which cannot be resolved based on the data presented here.

First, it is possible that the decreasing trend in U.S. landfalls as a percentage of total storms is a statistical artifact resulting from an undercount of historical storms. The number of landfalling storms is certainly known with much higher certainty than the total number of storms. Thus, an undercount of the total number of storms would artificially increase landfalling storms as a percentage of total storms. This first interpretation is consistent with a view that the NATL record is most accurate since 1970, and that inaccuracies exist prior to that time. This view on data quality would also be inconsistent with those who argue that the NATL record is complete since 1944 (cf. Landsea et al. 1999). If the decreasing trend is an artifact of the datasets, then it would obviously call into question any analysis of trends based on the total number of storms over thuis time period.

Second, it is possible that the decreasing trend in U.S. landfalls as a percentage of total storms is (at least in part) a reflection of the actual behavior of the climate system. That is, if one accepts the trends reported by Holland and Webster (2007) and Mann and Emanuel (2006), then logically, it follows that one also has to accept the trends reported here. In this case, if NATL tropical cyclone activity has indeed increased, then there has also been a significant decrease in the proportion of storms that strike the U.S. coast.

Under this second possibility there is then the question of attribution. Figure 3 indicates that, at least since 1950, there is in fact no obvious relationship between NATL ASO SST and the proportion of total storms that make landfall. Given this finding, if SSTs are indeed the principle factor explaining increasing tropical cyclone activity, as some studies have suggested (e.g., Holland and Webster (2007), Mann and Emanuel (2006), Hoyos et al. (2006)) and SSTs are largely forced by greenhouse gases (Santer et al. 2006), then it follows that explaining the decreasing proportion of landfalling storms requires further investigations of climate processes beyond trends in SSTs. In other words, if global warming is increasing the incidence of NATL tropical cyclones, then the same dataset that indicates this result also suggests that global warming, and/or some other factors, are acting to diminish the proportion of total storms that strike the United States.

Emanuel (2005) raises the possibility that simple randomness might explain the lack of a trend in landfalling storm intensities in the presence of such a trend in the entire NATL. This may very well be the case (Pielke 2005); however, Emanuel’s point was made with respect to an integrated index of power dissipation, for which the landfalling component was only about 1% of the total NATL data. In the case of total storms, about 20% of the total storms make landfall over the entire dataset. It is therefore quite unlikely that randomness alone explains these results.

This conclusion is unavoidable if one accepts the results of Holland and Webster (2007) that "data errors cannot explain the sharp, high amplitude transitions between the climatic regimes in the North Atlantic, each with an increase of around 50% in cyclone and hurricane numbers." With an increase of 50% in total hurricane numbers in two transitions among three climate regimes, and landfalling storms representing approximately 20% of the long-term total, it is statistically improbable that these changes would not manifest themselves in increased landfalls, all else being equal. Consider that that 31.8% of all storms that made landfall during 1905-1930 (Holland and Webster’s first NATL TC climate regime). Under a binomial distribution the probability of subsequently observing 131 or fewer landfalls out of 788 in the period 1931-2006 (i.e., the actual observations) at the earlier period’s probability of landfall is less than 0.00001. Thus, it necessarily must be true that either the data is flawed or there are real changes in the landfall characteristics of NATL climatology.

More recently, from 1944 to 1974 17.9% (31 years, 55/307) of total NATL storms made landfall in the U.S., and from 1975-2006 (31 years, 51/360) 14.2% of total NATL storms made landfall in the U.S.. The probability of observing 51 or less landfalls in the second period at the earlier period’s landfall rate is 0.054. Thus, there is reason to believe that even in the most recent half century where storm counts have been assumed to be most accurate there are either data problems or real changes have occurred in the climatology of NATL tropical cyclone landfalls.

Conclusion

This short note has revisited trends in U.S. landfalling hurricanes both as annual totals and as a proportion of total North Atlantic tropical cyclone activity from 1851-2006. The data indicate that there are no trends in landfall numbers but a marked decrease in the proportion of storms that make landfall. There are several possibilities for this decrease.

•One explanation is that earlier data fails to accurately represent the total actual number of tropical cyclones, thereby artificially increasing landfalling storms as a proportion of the total.

•A second explanation is that the trends in the total number of storms are in fact reflective of increasing Atlantic activity and the decreasing proportion that make landfall results from some yet unknown climate process that may or may not have a relationship to human activity. There is no obvious relationship between SSTs and landfall proportions.

•A third possibility, that the remarkable stability of landfall numbers over time is due to randomness, is highly unlikely simply for basic reasons of probability if one assumes that landfall proportions are constant over the long run.

Scientists are nonetheless in agreement that the coming decades will see landfall numbers that exceed the average from 1970-1994. Decision makers should take care not to overlook the possibility that future landfall rates may exceed that observed in the historical record, whether due to global warming, randomness, natural causes, or some combination. A lack of knowledge about the future means that surprises should be expected. Given the importance of landfalling storms to decision makers, a concluding recommendation is that the research community should place even greater attention to the challenging and important scientific questions of hurricane landfall climatology.

Footnotes

1. http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Storm_pages/Atl/ATLdate.dat

2. http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/ushurrlist18512005-gt.txt See the NOAA WWW page for a discussion of "affected the U.S. coastline."

3. The use of a ratio based on total storms follows the similar use of a ratio by Holland and Webster (2007) to examine trends in storm intensity.

4. Note that a 9-year moving average is used simply because this is the smoothing used in Holland and Webster (2007).

5. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center provides NATL SST indices by month from 1950 here: http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/data/indices/sstoi.atl.indices

References to be added

Posted on December 28, 2006 01:14 PM View this article | Comments (12)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

December 24, 2006

Calling Carbon Cycle Experts

We'd welcome an explanation of the possible (or non) significance of this new paper in Science for understandings of the global carbon cycle. A news story contained the following interesting paragraph (italics added):

Scientists say the discovery could bear on estimates of the pervasiveness of exotic microbial life, which some experts suspect forms a hidden biosphere extending miles underground whose total mass may exceed that of all surface life.

Posted on December 24, 2006 06:58 AM View this article | Comments (10)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Biotechnology | Climate Change

December 22, 2006

Happy Holidays Prometheus Readers!

All of us here at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado/CIRES would like to send our readers best wishes for the holiday season and a happy new year!

We greatly value the excellent feedback, comments, suggestions, and contributions from the readers/commentors on our blog, who we believe are the best you will find on any blog on any subject. We look forward to 2007 and a chance to continue to learn from our many substantive interactions with our knowledgeable readers. For our part you can expect that we'll continue to provide analysis and commentary in the new year, and you can expect that some things you'll agree with, some you won't, and sometimes we'll make really excellent arguments and sometimes we won't!

Over the holidays we'll be paying attention, and maybe blogging if the occasion is right. So during the next 10 days or so, if your comment gets held up, just drop us an email and we'll get it online as soon as we can.

Happy Holidays!!

Posted on December 22, 2006 03:30 PM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

Swiss Re on 2006 Disaster Losses

It was a good year to be in the insurance and reinsurance industries. Swiss Re has released their preliminary assessment of 2006 catastrophe losses which are spectacularly low.

According to one industry official, "will see further rate increases even though 2006 has been a remarkably catastrophe-free year. 2005 was so bad that catastrophe rates must rise further."

According to our analysis, 2006 ranks 18th in terms of normalized hurricane damage years since 1987. According to Swiss Re, "Among the last 20 years, 2006 has produced the third-lowest insured losses, after 1997 and 1988. This is attributable mainly to the quiet hurricane season in the US and surrounding countries." But there were remarkably few other disasters as well.

Posted on December 22, 2006 02:10 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

And I'm focused on adaptation?

An excellent and eye-opening story from Keith Bradsher in yesterday's NYT provides a new angle on the economics of the Kyoto Protocol:

Foreign businesses have embraced an obscure United Nations-backed program as a favored approach to limiting global warming. But the early efforts have revealed some hidden problems.
Under the program, businesses in wealthier nations of Europe and in Japan help pay to reduce pollution in poorer ones as a way of staying within government limits for emitting climate-changing gases like carbon dioxide, as part of the Kyoto Protocol.

Among their targets is a large rusting chemical factory here in southeastern China. Its emissions of just one waste gas contribute as much to global warming each year as the emissions from a million American cars, each driven 12,000 miles.

Cleaning up this factory will require an incinerator that costs $5 million — far less than the cost of cleaning up so many cars, or other sources of pollution in Europe and Japan.

Yet the foreign companies will pay roughly $500 million for the incinerator — 100 times what it cost. The high price is set in a European-based market in carbon dioxide emissions. Because the waste gas has a far more powerful effect on global warming than carbon dioxide emissions, the foreign businesses must pay a premium far beyond the cost of the actual cleanup.

The huge profits from that will be divided by the chemical factory’s owners, a Chinese government energy fund, and the consultants and bankers who put together the deal from a mansion in the wealthy Mayfair district of London.

It seems that mitigation pays.

Posted on December 22, 2006 01:43 AM View this article | Comments (12)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Energy Policy

December 19, 2006

Ryan Meyer in Ogmius

Ryan Meyer, whose letter to Science we highlighted a few days ago, also has the cover story in our Center's latest newsletter which has just been put online. Ryan's article is titled, "Arbitrary Impacts and Unknown Futures: The shortcomings of climate impact models" and be found here.

The newsletter, called Ogmius, can be found here in html and here in PDF. Have a look!

Posted on December 19, 2006 02:05 AM View this article | Comments (15)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Prediction and Forecasting

December 18, 2006

Misrepresenting Literature on Hurricanes and Climate Change

Greg Holland and Peter Webster have a new paper accepted on the statistics of Atlantic hurricanes. While there are many interesting questions that might be raised about the data and statistics in the paper, here I comment on the paper’s treatment of the existing literature, some of which involves work I have contributed to. In this instance I find their characterization of the literature to grossly misrepresent what the existing research actually says. I have shared my comments with Drs. Holland and Webster, to which I received the following reaction from Greg Holland: "We shall not be modifying the paper as a result of your comments."

Below I present their original text and my comments. We think that readers can judge for themselves whether a mischaracterization of the literature has occurred. I promised Peter Webster that I wouldn’t speculate on their motivations, and so I’ll stick to the facts in what I present below. I do know that when scientists misrepresent each others work, it is likely to stymie the advancement of knowledge in the community, and thus should be of general concern. When such misrepresentations are missed in the peer review process this also should raise some concerns. In this case I find the misrepresentations obvious to see and egregious, occurring in just about every sentence in the relevant paragraph.

Do note that the comments below do not get into their statistical analysis, which is worth considering separately on its own merits, but which goes beyond the focus of this post. Both Drs. Holland and Webster are widely published and respected scientists with admirable track records. They are welcome to respond here if they’d like. And I do note that different people can interpret the literature in different ways, so the below is my reading only.

Holland and Webster’s new paper can be found here in PDF and the text I have excerpted below in bold comes from their pp. 5-6. My comments are interlaid within their text.

Questions have been raised over the quality of the NATL data even for such a broad brush accounting. For example, a recent study by Landsea et al (2006) claimed that long-term trends in tropical cyclone numbers and characteristics cannot be determined because of the poor quality of the data base in the NATL even after the incorporation of satellite data into the data base. Landsea et al. also state unequivocally that there is no trend in any tropical storm characteristics (frequency or intensity) after 1960, despite this being established in earlier papers by Emanuel (2005) and Webster et al. (2005), and more recently by Hoyos et al. (2006).
Here is what I read in Landsea et al. (2006) (PDF): "There may indeed be real trends in tropical cyclone intensity . . ." Holland and Webster report the opposite of what Landsea et al. (2006) actually says. Landsea et al. (2006) state that they do not believe that the data record is of sufficient quality to definitively detect trends. They do not say that there are no trends. Holland and Webster ascribe a claim to Landsea et al. that they do not make.

Figure 1 shows a strong statistically significant trend since the 1970s similar to that found by Hoyos et al. (2006) and Curry et al. (2006). The overall Landsea et al. analysis is curious and is based on the premise that the data must be wrong because the models suggest a much smaller change in hurricane characteristics relative to the observed SST warming (e.g., Henderson-Sellers et al 1998).

Here is what Landsea at al. (2006) actually say: "Theoretical considerations based on sea surface temperature increases suggest an increase of ~4% in maximum sustained surface wind per degree Celsius (4, 5). But such trends are very likely to be much smaller (or even negligible) than those found in the recent studies (1-3)." Landsea et al. (2006) are reporting a finding accepted in the community. Indeed, the recent WMO statement (written and signed by Greg Holland) states, "The more relevant question is how large a change: a relatively small one several decades into the future or large changes occurring today? Currently published theory and numerical modeling results suggest the former, which is inconsistent with the observational studies of Emanuel (2005) and Webster et al. (2005) by a factor of 5 to 8 (for the Emanuel study)." Holland and Webster do not cite the WMO statement.

In contrast, Michaels, Knappenberger and Landsea (2005) argue the opposite, that the models must be wrong because they do not agree with the data. We shall show later that there are factors not included in the models that may explain some of the differences between model and observed trends.

Michaels et al. (2005) do not say that "the models must be wrong because they do not agree with the data." They say that if you run the models with different inputs you get different results. They write (PDF), "when [Knutson and Tuleya’s model is] driven by real-world observations rather than unrealistically parameterized and constrained model conditions, the prospects for a detectable increase in hurricane strength in coming decades are reduced to the noise level of the data." Michaels et al. are not comparing data with models, but looking at modeled output using different inputs.
Further, noticeable by omission is that Holland and Webster ignore relevant work that discusses the relationship of models, theory, and observations that includes Landsea as an author (which seems to be the focus of this paragraph). In particular the following paper discusses this subject explicitly:

Pielke, Jr., R. A., C.W. Landsea, M. Mayfield, J. Laver, R. Pasch, 2006. Reply to Hurricanes and Global Warming Potential Linkages and Consequences, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 87, pp. 628-631. (PDF)

It particular Pielke et al. (2006) responds to a statement in a related paper (Anthes et al., Greg Holland included in the et al., PDF), that says that there is "broad consistency between observations, models, and theory." This statement is contradicted by Pielke et al. (2006) and WMO (2006), the latter is actually signed by Holland.

Of greater concern is that the conclusions in the Landsea et al. paper are at odds with several previous publications that include the same authors (e.g. Owens and Landsea 2003, Landsea et al. 1999), without introducing any additional evidence. These papers state clearly that the author’s considered that the period of reliable and accurate NATL records commenced in 1944 with the implementation of aircraft reconnaissance.

I coauthored Landsea et al. (1999) (PDF) and in that paper there are indeed statements on concerns about post-1944 hurricane data (e.g., at p. 94). Further, Landsea et al. (2006) cite a range of post-1999 studies acknowledging new uncertainties in data and methodologies, (e.g., C. Velden et al., Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., in press.; J. A. Knaff, R. M. Zehr, Weather Forecast., in press). To say that there has been no additional evidence cited by Landsea et al. (2006) (when Holland and Webster’s work is key to that new evidence) is simply misleading and wrong.

The bottom line here is that while this is just one paragraph in one paper, there is perhaps reason to be concerned about the fidelity of the literature, whatever the underlying causes may be. We have documented other shortfalls in the literature on several occasions on this site. To the extent that these data points are representative of broader problems in the climate literature, scientists should redouble their efforts to exert high standards of quality control. For if I can spot these misrepresentations in the literature, then others will as well.

Posted on December 18, 2006 04:54 PM View this article | Comments (14)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters | Scientific Assessments

December 16, 2006

Climate Change Hearings and Policy Issues

Ryan Meyer, a PhD student at ASU's Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes and collaborator in our SPARC project, has a letter in the current issue of Science.

Here is Ryan's letter:

The Random Samples item "As earth warms, Congress listens" (6 Oct., p. 29) ends with a proclamation by the National Resources Defense Council's David Doniger that climate change hearings "don't do anything." Although Doniger's frustrations are understandable, his lament misses a crucial point: In fact, it is precisely what climate hearings actually do that so badly hinders policy progress.
Climate change hearings are held because the issue is deeply divisive. As Nobelist Herbert Simon reminded us, "when an issue becomes highly controversial--when it is surrounded by uncertainties and conflicting values--then expertness is very hard to come by, and it is no longer easy to legitimate the experts" (1). Studies of discourse in these settings, including my own analysis of examples from the last 15 years (2-4), show, for example, that discussions of uncertainty have had the dual effect of justifying increased research funding while delaying policy decisions--a win for both the scientists and the politicians!

Scientists must recognize that when they testify at such hearings, they are participating in a political event, not a scientific one. When issues are highly polarized, a hearing may be a useful tool for adding to the public record or building support for a particular policy position, but it should not be seen as a way to impose scientific rationality on politics.

Ryan M. Meyer
Consortium for Science Policy and Outcomes
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-4401, USA

References

1. H. A. Simon, Reason in Human Affairs (Stanford Univ. Press, Stanford, CA, 1983), p. 97.
2. S. Shackley, P. Young, S. Parkinson, B. Wynne, Clim. Change 38, 159 (1998).
3. J. van der Sluijs, J. van Eijndhoven, S. Shackley, B. Wynne, Social Stud. Sci. 28, 291 (Apr. 1998).
4. R. Meyer, Perspect. Public Affairs 3, 85 (Spring 2006).

The article of Ryan's that he refers to is titled, "Intractable Debate: Why Congressional hearings on climate fail to advance policy" and can be found here in PDF. Do pay attention. Ryan is someone I expect that we'll be hearing much more from.

Posted on December 16, 2006 05:48 PM View this article | Comments (4)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

December 15, 2006

Useable Information for Policy

Twenty-two members of Congress have written a letter to the head of the Climate Change Science Program observing that the program is failing to fulfill its mandate under Public Law 101-606 to deliver useable information for policy makers. This is good news.

The letter observes that the Bush Administration has failed to produce an assessment as required by the law, which is supposed to be delivered every four years. This situation is analogous to the behavior of the Clinton Administration which produced a single assessment in 2000, which was six years overdue. The assessment produced by the Clinton Administration was produced within OSTP under the nominal leadership of Al Gore which – rightly or wrongly – put a partisan tint on the product. Some – both on the right and the left -- continue to use the 2000 assessment six years later as a political wedge device.

The letter from the members of Congress observes:

. . . the current CCSP [Climate Change Science Program] website acknowledges that the law directs the agencies to "produce information readily useable by policy makers attempting to formulate effective strategies for preventing, mitigating, and adapting to the effects of global change," . . . The failure of the CCSP to produce a National Assessment report within the time frame required by law has made it more difficult for Congress to develop a comprehensive policy response to the challenge of global climate change.

The CCSP is currently producing 20 different assessment reports but according to the program’s previous direction, the CCSP does not engage in discussion of policy options. It is pretty difficult to produce usable information for policy makers without discussing policy options.

Does the Bush Administration want to avoid disucssion of policy options on climate change? Yes. Did the Clinton Administration also want to avoid discussion of policy options on climate change? Yes. Has much of the scientific community also wanted to avoid discussion of policy options on climate change? Yes. Sounds like a perfect situation for congressional oversight.

The policy failures of the CCSP have nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans, and everything to do with the structure of scientific advice implemented under the CCSP and its predecessor organization. Why do I say this? Because in 1994 I defended my doctoral dissertation on implementation of the climate science program under Public Law 101-606, and the exact same issues involving "usable information for policy" identified by the current letter from the 22 members of Congress existed at that time as well.

It is good to see Congress finally invoking the language in P.L 101-606 calling for usable information for policy makers. This is a matter of the effective governance of science in support of decision making, and it should not be dragged into partisan political bickering. The bipartisan letter from 22 members of Congress is a good place to start.

For details see:

Pielke Jr., R. A., 1995: Usable Information for Policy: An Appraisal of the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Policy Sciences, 38, 39-77. (PDF)

Letter from 22 members of Congress to CCSP, courtesy of E&E Daily (PDF)

Posted on December 15, 2006 11:32 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics | Scientific Assessments

Senator Coal and King Coal

A few items on my desk related to coal are worth mentioning.

First, there has been some recent discussion about a letter from Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) to Exxon-Mobil. I saw it and didn’t think much of it. Politicians politicize. I don’t see the letter as an affront to free speech, quashing Exxon’s right to speech, or having much at all to do with science. What I did find interesting however was Senator Rockefeller’s response to a hometown newspaper taking him to task for writing the letter. In the letter Senator Rockefeller makes the following comment:

We didn't "attempt to squelch debate," as the Daily Mail suggested. Rather, our letter was, in fact, an attempt to create and foster greater debate.
And part of that debate, I believe, requires calling attention to Exxon-Mobil's funding of a pseudoscientific community whose purpose is to prevent us from tackling global climate change.

ExxonMobil is out of step even with its own industry. Other oil companies have explicitly acknowledged global climate change and are moving to develop and support new energy technologies and solutions.

Thankfully for West Virginia, clean coal technology is at the heart of these solutions. And I don't intend to allow deliberate misinformation to undermine our push for major national investments in the clean coal research and facilities that can help solve this problem.

The reality is that we need to have a free and honest debate about how we're going to address a problem that threatens to be of epic proportions.

So Mr. Rockefeller is using the issue of scientific integrity as a means to advance the interests of the coal industry over the oil and gas industry. In other words, he is politicizing the politicization of science. Presumably, Exxon doesn’t have too many jobs in West Virginia. Politics makes strange bedfellows, of course, but I do wonder how Mr. Rockefeller’s views play with those who don’t buy into the idea of "clean coal" such as Dave Roberts at Grist Magazine who keeps telling us that "Coal is the enemy of the human race." It seems like the strongest political consensus on climate change these days is that Exxon is bad; after that, it all breaks down.

This brings me to my second point on coal. I have sitting on my desk yet-to-be-read a book titled Sustainable Fossil Fuels: The Unusual Suspect in the Quest for Clean and Enduring Energy (Cambridge, 2007) by Marc Jaccard of Simon Fraser University. The book’s blurbs include positive statements from a crowd of people as varied as Bill Hare (formerly Greenpeace, now PIK) who recommends the book but "remains unconvinced," David Hawkins (NRDC), and the CEO of the World Coal Institute. Spiked-Online has a short essay from Prof. Jaccard, and here is an excerpt:

Some argue that fossil fuels should be abandoned because there are superior alternatives - energy efficiency, nuclear power and renewables such as wind, solar and hydropower. The aggressive pursuit of energy efficiency is desirable. But around the world, humans continue to crave ever-greater access to energy. The global energy system was 16 times larger in 2000 than in 1900. Two billion people today are without electricity and modern fuels, and by 2100 their offspring will be four billion. These people use less than one gigajoule of energy per year while a typical American uses over 300. Even with dramatic energy efficiency gains in wealthier countries, a subsistence level of 30 gigajoules for the planet’s poorer people will still require a three-fold expansion of the energy system during this century. Scale-up is the major challenge for nuclear power and renewable energy. Fossil fuels currently account for 84 per cent of the global energy system. Nuclear is at two per cent and renewables - mostly burning of wood and agricultural residues - at 14 per cent.
The wholesale replacement of fossil fuels in just one century will require a phenomenal expansion. The nuclear industry should grow, but its pace is limited by challenges in siting new facilities, storing radioactive waste and preventing nuclear weapons proliferation. Most renewable energy has low energy density and variable production, which increases land-use conflicts and capital costs.

An essential effort in research and development will decrease the costs of renewables. But zero-emission fossil fuels will remain cost competitive for at least this century. Acceptance of this economic reality means admitting that fossil fuels should be not be regarded as a foe, but rather humanity’s best friend in its quest for a clean, enduring and affordable energy system. Long live the king!

I’ll have more comments after I’ve read his book, but it is safe to say that we’ll be with fossil fuels for a long while.

Posted on December 15, 2006 01:05 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Energy Policy | Science + Politics

The Importance of Evaluation

A story in the New York Times today on the effectiveness of colonoscopy highlights the importance of evaluating the effectiveness of action. One of the biggest areas of study in academic policy research is evaluation, and the federal government has an entire agency that focuses on evaluation in the Government Accountability Office.

But in policy as in medicine – as the colonoscopy case illustrates -- it is amazing how often evaluation of the effectiveness of action is overlooked or simply not done. Evaluation matters because it indicates what is working and what works. In the case of colonoscopy, improved health outcomes are apparently achieved with only a minor change in medical practice.

Posted on December 15, 2006 12:26 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health | Science Policy: General

December 14, 2006

New Bridges Article on 110th Congress

The December issue of Bridges is out, and it includes my column, this time on what we might expect on science and technology policy from the 110th Congress.

But do read the whole issue. Bridges is one of the top publications you'll find anywhere on science and technology policy.

Posted on December 14, 2006 11:12 AM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding | Science + Politics | Science Policy: General

Follow Up to Flood Policy Presentation

I had the opportunity to give a presentation yesterday at the National Flood Risk Policy Summit to an audience which included many national leaders on flood policy. I promised the audience that I’d post a short entry here with links to relevant background papers and other materials. This post provides these links.

First, here are the main points of my presentation:

*The "100-year flood" is not a good basis for a successful national flood policy.
*Losses provide a basis for evaluating long-term policy success.

*Political factors play a large role in the disaster declaration process.

*Population and development drive loss trends.

*As yet, no link established between human-caused climate change and flood/storm damages

EMERGING ISSUES?
OR THE SAME OLD ISSUES?

Here are relevant background links:

We have created a WWW site – www.flooddamagedata.org -- that presents a range of U.S. flood data and analyses. As I mentioned at the talk, we would gladly turn this over to any agency or organization that is interested in keeping it updated, publicly available, and of use to researchers and policy makers. For now it is not being updated.

Several papers of ours are relevant:

On national flood policies:

Pielke Jr., R.A., 1999: Nine fallacies of floods. Climatic Change, 42, 413-438. (PDF)

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 2000. Flood Impacts on Society: Damaging Floods as a Framework for Assessment. Chapter 21 in D. Parker (ed.), Floods. Routledge Press: London, 133-155. (PDF)

On climate and flood damage:

Pielke, Jr., R. A. and M.W. Downton, 2000. Precipitation and Damaging Floods: Trends in the United States, 1932-97. Journal of Climate, 13(20), 3625-3637. (PDF)

On the politics of flood disaster declarations:

Downton, M. and R.A. Pielke, Jr., 2001. Discretion Without Accountability: Politics, Flood Damage, and Climate, Natural Hazards Review, 2(4):157-166. ((PDF)

On disaster losses and flood damage:

Downton, M., J. Z. B. Miller and R. A. Pielke, Jr., 2005. Reanalysis of U.S. National Weather Service Flood Loss Database, Natural Hazards Review, 6:13-22. (PDF)

Downton, M. and R. A. Pielke, Jr., 2005. How Accurate are Disaster Loss Data? The Case of U.S. Flood Damage, Natural Hazards, Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 211-228. (PDF)

On flood disasters related to tropical cyclones:

Pielke, Jr., R. A. and R. Klein, 2005. Distinguishing Tropical Cyclone-Related Flooding in U.S. Presidential Disaster Declarations: 1965-1997, Natural Hazards Review, May 2005, pp. 55-59. (PDF)

On the role of demographics in hurricane losses:

For a global perspective, see the report of our Hohenkammer Workshop, in parthership with Munich Re, GKSS, and the Tyndall Centre.

More along these lines can be found here.

Posted on December 14, 2006 01:26 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters | Risk & Uncertainty

December 13, 2006

Dan Sarewitz - Lies We Must Live With

Dan Sarewitz, a professor at ASU and faculty affiliate at the CU Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, has penned a thought-provoking essay on science and religion in the latest CSPO Newsletter. Here is an excerpt, but do read the whole thing (and bring your thinking cap).

Now the most serious conflicts among humans are all, at root, conflicts about how to balance a variety of moral concerns such as justice, equality, and liberty. So, when scientists argue that the world would be better off without religion, then they are also arguing that humans would be better able to solve their deepest and most vexing problems in the absence of religion. A slightly different way to make the scientific claim is this: Moral discourse among those who don’t believe in ultimate meaning will yield more satisfactory results for society than if such discourse also includes believers.

But what difference does it make if you trace your morals and values to a non-existent supernatural authority, or if you trace them to biochemically and culturally determined cognitive processes? There may be a psychological difference—the difference between delusion and realism—but neither position, according to the scientific perspective, can make a claim to moral authority; both are irrational in the scientific sense. So the key point here cannot be the fact that believers are delusional about the source of their beliefs, rather it must be that, in being delusional, believers’ beliefs are less good than nonbelievers’ beliefs.

Why, then, should scientists expect that the world would be a better place if moral discourse was dominated by people who don’t believe in god than if it was dominated by believers? The answer is obvious: because the scientists making this argument are people who don’t believe in god! So of course they think that if they made all the important choices the world would be better!! They’d be making the choices!!! In other words, this is a political claim, not an a priori statement about rationality. This must be the case because there is, from the serious scientific perspective, no authoritatively rational solution to moral dilemmas, there are only political solutions. Put somewhat differently, science’s claim to ultimate knowledge is precisely what robs it of any legitimate claim to special privilege in public, and moral, discourse.

Dan ends the piece as follows:

The challenge here to scientism is as profound as the challenge to fundamentalism. From a scientific perspective, views rooted in supernatural explanations are views rooted in lies. This may be factually correct, but the rigors of pluralistic discourse demand that these lies have a seat at the table, right along side the neurologically and evolutionarily contingent preferences of the highly rational. This is not a matter of principle but of logic tempered by experience. There is no reason to believe that good moral reasoning derives from the scientific rigor of one’s views of ultimate causation. There are some lies that society cannot do without.

The antidote to irrationality is not its contrary, but its plural. It’s about inclusiveness, pluralism, democracy, not about rationality versus irrationality. The problem with fundamentalists is not God but fundamentalism. Conflating fundamentalism with all of religion is like conflating particle physics with all of science. Fundamentalists and physicists might like to claim that they alone occupy the solid ground of ultimate authority, but the rest of us know differently. A world run by like-thinking scientists is as horrific to contemplate as one run by like-thinking evangelicals.

The only questions I have is, when is this guy going to get a MacArthur Grant already?

Read the whole thing.

Posted on December 13, 2006 02:08 AM View this article | Comments (16)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Religion + Science | Science + Politics

December 12, 2006

WMO Press Release on Hurricanes and Climate Change

This press release (.doc) from the World Meteorological Organization yesterday:

A consensus of 125 of the world’s leading tropical cyclone researchers and forecasters says that no firm link can yet be drawn between human-induced climate change and variations in the intensity and frequency of tropical cyclones.

The WMO is of course one of the parent bodies of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Given this pedigree and the importance of this consensus statement, I'm sure that we'll now see this widely discussed on science-related weblogs and in the media. For details on the consensus statement, see our earlier discussion here.

Posted on December 12, 2006 10:17 AM View this article | Comments (10)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

December 11, 2006

You Just Can't Say Such Things Redux

From today's Rocky Mountain News still more evidence that the climate debate is spiraling out of control:

A federal climate scientist in Boulder says his boss told him never to utter the word Kyoto and tried to bar him from using the phrase climate change at a conference.
The allegations come as federal investigators probe whether Bush administration officials tried to block government scientists from speaking freely about global warming and attempted to censor their research.

The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement - never ratified by the United States and opposed by the Bush administration - that requires nations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming.

Pieter Tans, a senior scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Boulder laboratory, said the ban on using the word Kyoto was issued about four years ago.

"We were under instructions not to use the word Kyoto, which of course is absurd," said Tans, who measures levels of carbon dioxide at NOAA's Global Monitoring Division. He has worked for the agency since 1990.

Tans said the order was issued verbally by his boss, David Hofmann, the division director. Another senior researcher at the Boulder laboratory, NOAA physicist James Elkins, said Hofmann told him the same thing.

Elkins studies greenhouse gases and has worked at NOAA for more than 20 years. He said he can't remember when the directive was issued, but it was "probably in 2000 or 2001."

"When I asked why we weren't supposed to use Kyoto, I was told that we're not supposed to use it in the policy context," Elkins said. "I'm not supposed to be talking about policy."

Hofmann, however, called the allegations "nonsense" and said there was no ban on using the word Kyoto.

"I never said it specifically in those words," Hofmann said. "I probably said that since the Kyoto Protocol is not ratified - is not part of the U.S. program - stay away from talking about Kyoto when you give a presentation."

"It has nothing to do with the science we're doing here," Hofmann said of Kyoto.

The Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997 and went into effect in February 2005, following ratification by Russia.

Elkins said the prohibition against using the word was lifted after Russia ratified the protocol.

"Once Russia signed Kyoto, it was a done deal," he said.

Posted on December 11, 2006 06:01 PM View this article | Comments (9)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

You Just Can’t Say Such Things

Larry Summers learned the hard way that there are some things that you just don’t do in a university setting. Nancy Greene Raine, Chancellor of Thompson River University in Canada who also was a gold medalist skier in the 1960s, is learning the same lessons.

From the Kamloops Daily News last Saturday via a weblog:

University professors outraged by comments from TRU chancellor Nancy Greene Raine, who expressed doubt on climate change in a national media broadcast, met with her in a hastily called session Friday afternoon.
The meeting was arranged by senior administration at Thompson Rivers University following a cascade of e-mails among faculty concerned that her opinion reflects poorly on the university.

Penny Powers, a professor in the school of nursing confirmed earlier Friday she had been called to the meeting with Raine.

'One of the most important goals of a university is to instill in the students an ability to assess the evidence for and against claims of any kind,' she wrote in an e-mail to faculty.

'What kind of role model do we put in place when the chancellor herself gives poorly-considered credence to widely discredited extremist opinions such as these?' . . .

Charles Hays a professor of journalism at TRU, wrote in a message to colleagues that Greene Raine cannot be the symbolic head of the university and make statements that run counter to the overwhelming weight of scientific opinion.

'And as chancellor, she has accepted a role as the symbolic head of the university. In that role, she owes it to the university not to make statements of opinion and expect that they will be perceived as merely the words of a private citizen.'

The Daily News was unable to reach anyone for comment on what took place during the meeting between faculty and Greene Raine.

What was it that the Chancellor said that set off this firestorm?

. . . another big name in Canadian skiing cautioned that people shouldn't push the panic button.
"I am very suspicious now when I see people make blanket statements because there are two sides to every issue," said Nancy Greene Raine, an Olympic gold medallist in the 1960s who has helped develop some of the top skiing resorts in British Columbia since her retirement.

"And in science there's almost never black and white. We don't know what next week's weather going to be. To say in 50 or 100 years, the temperature is going to do this, is a bit of a stretch for me."

Posted on December 11, 2006 05:40 PM View this article | Comments (33)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Education | Science + Politics

Disquiet on the Hurricane Front

[This op-ed by Dan Sarewitz and Roger Pielke, Jr. on the 2006 hurricane season was not published by a number of major newspapers. So we are happy to share it here. Anyone interested in publishing it before a wider audience, please send us an email. -Ed.]

The 2006 hurricane season has ended without a single hurricane landfall along the Gulf or East coasts. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of New Orleans, journalists, politicians, and even some scientists were proclaiming that the catastrophe of global warming was upon us. A quiet year later, perhaps there is some room for clearer thinking about hurricanes, about global warming, and about society’s vulnerability to climate.

Before this year, the last years without a U.S. hurricane landfall were 2000 and 2001, just a blink of an eye in climate terms, but an eternity in the politics of global warming. In all, hurricane behavior over the past century and more has been highly variable, with periods of great intensity followed by lulls. Scientists remain deeply divided about the role of greenhouse gas emissions in hurricane behavior. But scientists have appreciated for decades the inevitability of a Katrina-like hit on New Orleans. The city was doomed for reasons that have nothing at all to do with global warming: it lies on a subsiding river delta in the heart of hurricane country.

Increasing damages from U.S. hurricane landfalls in the U.S. over the past century are entirely explained by growing socioeconomic vulnerability—that is, by coastal development trends that continually expose more people, more infrastructure, and more economic activity, to hurricanes. If one accounts for the effects of socioeconomic change, then there has been no observable increase in U.S. hurricane damage since data were first collected in 1900.

The future may indeed hold more frequent or intense hurricanes. However, the science at this point shows unambiguously that the effects of any such changes in storm behavior will be completely dwarfed by the effects of continued coastal development.

As Katrina made devastatingly clear, the hurricane problem is one of unsustainable coastal development combined with unconscionable socioeconomic vulnerability. Katrina’s blood relatives are the 2004 south Asian tsunami (220,000 dead) and the 2005 Pakistan earthquake (80,000 dead), not the Earth’s slowly warming atmosphere.

Feel-good appeals to buy hybrid vehicles cannot reduce the entrenched social inequities, irresponsible development trends, and inadequate hazard reduction policies that led to the worst of Katrina’s depredations and that are the cause of rising disaster vulnerability worldwide. Neither can the Kyoto Protocol, carbon trading markets, or other energy policies. There is simply no evidence that reductions in greenhouse gas emissions—as important as they are for other reasons—will lead to any discernible reduction in hurricane impacts over the next 50 to 100 years. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is about as relevant to controlling the impacts of hurricanes and other natural disasters as a nuclear non-proliferation treaty is to protecting public health.
Yet many well-tested policies are available to help reduce vulnerability to natural disasters. These range from building codes that can keep structures from collapsing in a storm or earthquake, to land use regulations that limit construction in disaster-prone areas, to environmental laws that preserve natural features, such as wetlands and forested slopes, that act as buffers against extreme events. The rising toll of disasters around the world demonstrates that nations are greatly underinvested in applying such policies, despite the fact that they are known to be effective, and despite the certainty that more disasters will soon occur.

From a political perspective, it is tempting to exploit the tragedy of Katrina and other natural disasters to promote action on greenhouse gas reductions. But no matter how strongly advocates may feel about global warming, if climate policies are based on the false expectation that emissions reductions will reduce hurricane losses, then political failure is inevitable, because the problem will get worse, not better. (To grasp this point, just consider the political impact of falsely linking Iraq to terrorism).

During this quiet hurricane season, more people moved to the coasts and other locations vulnerable to disasters, ensuring that future losses will be larger than those of the past. At the same time, more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases were emitted into the atmosphere. These are separate problems that demand separate solutions. But by turning hurricanes into a greenhouse gas problem, we fail to focus sufficient attention and resources on reducing disaster vulnerability, and thus turn our backs on the victims of future disasters as well.

Posted on December 11, 2006 02:59 AM View this article | Comments (8)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters | Energy Policy

December 08, 2006

Hurricane Trends, Frequency, Prediction

This post is a slightly edited version of some random musings on hurricane science that I have shared with the Tropical Storms discussion list.

A few thoughts come to mind from the latest round of exchanges on the list.

1. Detection of trends

I call your attention to a recent paper by Rob Wilby:

Wilby, R. L. 2006. When and where might climate change be detectable in UK river flows? Geophys. Res. Lett., Vol. 33, No. 19, 14 October. (PDF)

. . .under widely assumed climate change scenarios, expected trends in UK summer river flows will seldom be detectable within typical planning horizons (the 2020s). Even where climate driven changes may already be underway, losses in deployable resources will have to be factored into long-term water plans long before they are statistically detectable.

Specifically, Wilby finds that "Assuming no change in variance, annual mean [river flow] must change by 38-46% by 2025 or 28-33% by 2055 to be detectable." These are huge numbers for changes in means and they assume perfect data quality. Wilby explains this result as "The long detection times for trends in UK river flow are due to the low signal-to-noise ratio of hydro-climatic time series at basin scales."

What does this mean for detection of trends in tropical cyclone intensity?

Assuming as the recent WMO report does that there is a 3-5% increase in windspeed for every degree increase in SST, and given that (a) windspeeds are, to date at least, measured with certainties that are arguably not at this level of precision (sometimes using S/S categories that are up to 5 times as large as these values), and (b) SSTs themselves are a noisy series, see e.g. this paper, this community may be in a situation where the science is fundamentally "underdetermined." I think that everyone in this community would benefit from an understanding of the notion of "underdetermination" in science and what it signifies for scientific debates. For an intro see this brief discussion.

For these reasons I have come to the conclusion that the search for detection of trends in TC activity will no doubt motivate much interesting research, but cannot result in a comprehensive community consensus anytime soon.

2. A Theory of (Maximum Potential) Frequency

If the above points may seem pessimistic (well, they are;-) the community need not throw up its hands. It seems to me that a way out of this quandary is for even greater attention to be paid to the development of a theory of maximum potential frequency to parallel MPI (maximum potential intensity) theory. I may be mistaken, but as an outsider looking in, it seems that much of the community is quite comfortable with existing MPI theory and is largely hopeless about a theoretical understanding of frequency (those working on further exploring MPI and developing a theory of frequency, please forgive, I am making a general point).

It also seems to me, perhaps naively, that intensity and frequency cannot be treated as independent, and continuing to treat TC research in this manner is an obstacle to further advances.

I would be interested in any efforts to develop a basin-by-basin theory of maximum potential frequency. For the Atlantic basin for instance, what is the maximum theoretically possible number of TCs that can develop during a single hurricane season, and why? Even starting with the classic six (?) conditions for development provides an upper constraint on the number of developing systems in a particular season. Inherent in the notion of a "season" are the seeds of an MPF theory. Consider that in the Atlantic 2005 saw 28 named storms, could there be 35? Why or Why not? 40? How about 5? Zero?

How about it?

3. The Importance of Prediction

In recent decades, Bill Gray, and others, have drawn a line in the sand, by arguing that in a particular basin the best that can be done in terms of expecting future activity is not to be found based on theory-based models but based on an understanding of statistical relationships which may not be fully understood from a theoretical standpoint. Debates about statistical vs. dynamical approaches to prediction occur across the sciences, and are no different here.

It seems to me that if this community wants to make progress on the debate over hurricanes and climate, it will necessarily have to engage in predictions of the future to a far greater degree that it does now, much as the ENSO community has done. There will be limited successes at first and successes and failures determined by luck. There will also have to be the careful management of public and policy makers expectations.

By predictions I mean - can anyone devise a methodology that can systematically beat out Gray, Saunders, Elsner, NOAA, climatology etc.? Such predictions might be seasonal, multi-year, or longer, but they should be verifiable by actual data on time scales that allow for feedback into the process of research. The experiences of the ENSO community are very instructive (and somewhat humbling) along these lines. If the long-term climate (i.e., over several years and longer) of TCs is indeed nonstationary, then over time those who base their predictions on historical statistical relationships will produce predictions whose skill should be easily exceeded by those using dynamical methods. In practice, in many fields, achieving such success has been difficult -- compare managed mutual fund performance to the naive baseline of the S&P 500, for instance!

Generic predictions about what will happen under 2XCO2 in 2100 are great, but they are unfalsifiable by experience on research timescales, feeding the problem of underdetermination. The alternative to making scientific predictions is that we perpetuate the state of underdetermination in this community and risk detaching ourselves from the fundamentals of this important aspect of the scientific method.

Posted on December 8, 2006 05:52 PM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

Inside the IPCC's Dead Zone

Climate scientist James Annan has related a tale of angst and suffering as a result of peer reviews that will, in broad terms, sound familiar to most academics. His experience raises a question that I’d like to ask of the folks familiar with the IPCC.

I have no idea what James’ paper is about, except that it argues that very high values of climate sensitivity can be ruled out, which I take it is contrary to the views of some others in the field. This situation leads me to consider several general questions about the IPCC:

How does the IPCC handle information that appears after its deadline for citation of peer-reviewed papers that may contradict literature which appears before that deadline?

Doesn’t this create a potential conflict of interest for contributors to the IPCC who are reviewing papers that appear during the drafting process?

Take hurricanes and climate change for example. Whatever the IPCC reports next March, it certainly won’t be as current as the recent WMO consensus report because the IPCC cannot cite literature that appeared after some point early in 2006, and the WMO can. And I'd bet there will be more studies released between now and march. On hurricanes the IPCC may wind up creating confusion by taking the scientific discussion back to early 2006 when in reality much has happened since. Similarly, its discussion of climate sensitivity and other areas could, in principle, suffer from the same lag effects. Now James’ paper was rejected, and for all I know, correctly. But on highly sensitive topics, I find myself agreeing with the AAAS – trust alone is no longer enough.

Posted on December 8, 2006 09:18 AM View this article | Comments (13)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science Policy: General | Scientific Assessments

December 06, 2006

That Didn't Take Long -- Misrepresenting Hurricane Science

Now that the WMO has issued a consensus statement on the state of climate science, scientists should be careful in how they characterize the overall state of the science. I have complete respect for scientists who have strong views on what the data, models, and theory shows, and fully expect them to make their case to their colleagues and others. However, scientists also should be careful not to represent their own views as in fact representing a consensus of the community when they do not, especially when making arguments for political action.

Here is an example of a scientist involved in the hurricane debate, Michael Mann of Penn State, making a demonstrably incorrect statement about the state of understanding of hurricanes and climate change six days after the WMO issued its consensus statement on tropical cyclones and climate change:

It is the increasingly widespread belief by researchers that increasing sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are leading to increases in various measures of Hurricane activity over time, both globally, and for the tropical North Atlantic region whose storms influence the Gulf coast and East Coast of the U.S..

Here is what the WMO says:

The possibility that greenhouse gas induced global warming may have already caused a substantial increase in some tropical cyclone indices has been raised (e.g. Mann and Emanuel, 2006), but no consensus has been reached on this issue.

And on the existence of trends in storm intensity the WMO says:

This is still hotly debated area for which we can provide no definitive conclusion.

This is a situation that Dr. Mann should understand well, as he has argued strongly for adherence to scientific consensus on his weblog, RealClimate. Dr. Mann's characterization about what researchers increasingly believe about hurricanes and climate change is not backed up by what the researchers themselves are saying. Why does this matter? Because Dr. Mann is using his characterization of the community's views on hurricanes and climate change as a basis for arguing for particular policy actions. As Dr. Mann writes:

We are likely to see only increased warming and increased Hurricane activity, if we continue to increase atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations through fossil fuel burning.

To be clear -- I take no issue with Dr. Mann making an argument that reducing greenhouse gas emissions will reduce hurricane intensity. That is what he believes, and as a scientist conducting research in this area he is someone we should listen to. But when he characterizes the community's views as "widespread" and "increasingly" supporting his perspective, he has engaged in a mischaracterization. Mischaracterizations of science, by themselves, are perhaps of only scholarly interest. But when the mischaracterizations are used as tools of political advocacy they are no longer simply mischaracterizations of science, but instead, they are bad policy arguments.

For scientists wanting to use the notion of consensus as a tool of political advocacy, they risk being perceived as inconsistent when their actions change when they are the ones on the outside looking in.

Posted on December 6, 2006 10:27 AM View this article | Comments (55)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters | Science + Politics

Andy Revkin on Media on Climate Change

[Andy Revkin shares these comments by email on the media and climate change, which I have reproduced here with his permission. He is blogging them here where he has additional comments, including some specific to today's hearing heald by Senator Inhofe on the media and climate change. Our view here at Prometheus is that Senator Inhofe's hearing, which we watched in full, was a dud all around. We appreciate Andy sharing these comments. -Ed.]

I do think the media have sometimes screwed up in covering climate, in three ways. For a long time they ignored the story because they saw it as a "he says, she says" dispute. Then they ignored it as simply too complex and incremental (not good ingredients for a news story).

Lately, some have presumed that because disagreement is gone on the basics (more carbon dioxide will warm the world) there is now no aspect of the problem that is uncertain. That's led to a lot of "be worried" coverage that really, to my eye, has gone way beyond the science.

After covering human influence on climate for 20 years, through more than one cycle of public engagement and disengagement, I stand by my assertions in The Times and public talks and my new book, The North Pole Was Here, that everyone in this polarized discourse is missing the powerful middle.

There is no serious disagreement in the scientific community at all on the main point -- that humans are exerting a growing influence on the thermostat of the home planet.

To me, that's more than enough to justify a lot of attention, while perhaps not amounting to the kind of real-time disaster that the media tend to get excited about.

There is a tendency of some media to try to fit human-driven warming in the old-style template for an environmental crisis that we grew up with in the 20th century. That is a bad fit. It is harder than that. This problem, and possible solutions, all relate to the future.

Old problems that were dealt with effectively were realtime threats to health and welfare (soot, smog, untreated sewage). Add a filter and they go away.

Even if we turned off every engine on Earth today, there would be no discernible impact on climate for many, many years, if not decades. It'd be great if this issue was easier to understand, and write about, but we're stuck with it the way it is.

The best tonic of course: consider giving as a holiday gift The North Pole Was Here, the one book out there that powerfully conveys this, and is the first to do so for everyone 10 and up (a range including Senators!). It was just named one of the Outstanding Science Books of 2006 by the Childrens Book Council & National Science Teachers Assn.

Posted on December 6, 2006 10:16 AM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

December 05, 2006

The Future of Climate Policy Debates

How about this comment from George Monbiot today, a columnist for The Guardian:

[E]very time someone dies as a result of floods in Bangladesh, an airline executive should be dragged out of his office and drowned.

Or this not long ago from NASA Scientist James Hansen (PDF):

. . . a certain shock treatment is needed, but it would best be delivered with a two-by-four as a solid whack to the head of politicians who remain oblivious to fundamental physical facts.

Allusions to murder and beatings kind of puts a chill on discussing options for climate policy, doesn't it? Maybe that is the point. It certainly makes me think.

In my view people who fashion themselves as public intellectuals have an even greater obligation than everyone else to encourage civil debate and discussion. This applies to people on all sides of political debates. It is all too easy for leaders to incite people to actual violence on issues that they are passionate about. Mr. Monbiot and Dr. Hansen (and others, again on all sides) may not have that outcome in mind as they write such statements, but if they don't watch out, that may be what they get.

So how about we all encourage some common civility in public discussions of climate change, especially from (but not limited to) our public intellectuals?

Posted on December 5, 2006 07:00 AM View this article | Comments (16)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

Fiscal Caution on NASA’s New Moon Plans

According to the New York Times NASA has announced that it wishes to return to the moon and set up a permanent base 50 years after its first landing. NASA’s proposal should raise an eyebrow among anyone who understands NASA’s past failures at successfully budgeting human spaceflight programs.

Here is an excerpt from the Times story by Warren E. Leary:

NASA announced plans on Monday for a permanent base on the Moon, to be started soon after astronauts return there around 2020.
The agency’s deputy administrator, Shana Dale, said the United States would develop rockets and spacecraft to get people to the Moon and establish a rudimentary base. There, other countries and commercial enterprises could expand the outpost to develop scientific and other interests, Ms. Dale said.

Ms. Dale and other officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the agency envisioned a base at one of the lunar poles, to take advantage of the near-constant sunlight for solar power generation. It would have an "open architecture" design to which others could add the capabilities they want.

Scott Horowitz, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration, said crews of four astronauts would make weeklong missions to the Moon starting around 2020.

As more equipment was set up, human stays would eventually grow to 180 days, and become permanent by 2024. By 2027, officials said, a pressurized roving vehicle on the surface would take people on expeditions far from the base.

NASA gave no cost estimate for the program and no design details for the base. Ms. Dale said all plans assumed that the agency would continue operating from a fixed budget of about $17 billion a year.

The space shuttle fleet is to be retired by 2010, and the United States plans to scale back its involvement in the International Space Station. The station is still under construction, with a mission by the shuttle Discovery to lift off on Thursday. Ms. Dale said money would be shifted to the lunar exploration program from the shuttle and the station.

It was this last part that caught my attention. Assuming that NASA spends half of its budget on human exploration, and that all of this will be devoted to the new Moon program, this would total about $75 billion by 2020 when NASA plans to return to the moon. This sounds like a lot of money, and it is. But let’s put the planned costs into historical perspective of other human spaceflight programs.

Costs of Human Exploration Programs in 2005 Dollars

Apollo $110-$125 billion (source in PDF)

Mercury, Gemini, Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz $20 billion (source in PDF)

Space Shuttle $150 billion (updated from here)

Space Station $100 billion (cited in NYT article today by John Schwartz)

With its new program NASA is proposing to do far more than Apollo accomplished on a similar timescale, with far less resources, and an annual equivalent expenditure of much less than half of what was spent during the brief Apollo era. On its surface, this sounds like a great bargain. But is it too good to be true?

Consider that NASA in the past promised (in 1984) that the Space Station would be completed by 1994 at the cost of $8 billion ($13.3 in 2005). It missed this estimate by at least 16 years and $90 billion, without discussing the reduction in capabilities. NASA promised (in 1972) that the shuttle would fly 48 flights per year at a cost of $20 million (2005$) per flight. Reality has seen something more like 4 flights per year at a cost of over $1 billion per flight. Numbers like these suggest that NASA can indeed accomplish its moon base plans, perhaps at a cost of $1 trillion and by 2050. And I say this only partially tongue-in-cheek.

NASA’s political strategy in the past has been to win Congressional approval for its desired programs by underestimating costs and schedule, overpromising capabilities, and then complaining to Congress about being underfunded. When reality sets in NASA has reduced planned capabilities and cut other parts of its budget – like science. The entire suite of NASA programs are disrupted, leading to huge inefficiencies and a lack of progress. The NYT today has an article reporting that many experts are asking what the space station is for anyway. The promises made in 1984 no longer have meaning, so NASA wants a do-over.

NASA has purposely created long-term programs with few mid-term milestones, thereby making it difficult for Congress to wield a carrot or stick in the budget process. For instance, most debates about the space station in the 1990s were about termination or continuation. The distribution of lucrative NASA contracts around the country stacks the deck against a drastic approach like termination. One lesson from this should be that NASA must have annual milestones with consequences for budget overruns or cost delays.

Congress by now should be wise to these strategies. It is indeed exciting and visionary to think about human colonization of the solar system. Nonetheless, we should all hope that the next Congress will apply some rigorous oversight to NASA’s planning. The lack of such oversight is one reason why the U.S. human space flight program in only now discussing catching up to where it was 35 years ago.

Posted on December 5, 2006 06:23 AM View this article | Comments (8)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding | Space Policy

December 03, 2006

The Simplest Solution to Eliminating U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions

"Air capture" refers to the direct removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Leading work on this technology has been done by David Keith at the University of Calgary, his recent Ph.D. student Joshua Stolaroff, and separately by Klaus Lackner at Columbia University. Motivated by recent discussions on this site about the Massachusetts vs. EPA lawsuit, I wondered what the costs would be of neutralizing the carbon dioxide emissions of U.S. autos via air capture, and indeed all of U.S. emissions. Here is what I have come up with.

Air capture is a compelling technology because it requires no government regulation, no change in behavior, no international negotiations, and, most importantly from the standpoint of political action, no changes in energy production or use. Politically, it is therefore as simple and straightforward an approach as can be imagined. It is a top down technology in the sense that it can be used to "tune" the atmosphere to a desired concentration level. The downside is that it is expensive, but still far cheaper than the damages projected, for instance, in the recent Stern Review. Its ease in implementation and political simplicity more than offset its higher costs than other approaches to reducing carbon emissions.

In his recent dissertation (of which I have a copy but I am unaware if it is available online), Dr. Stolaroff suggests (his lower realistic estimate) that air capture technologies can remove carbon dioxide at a cost of $140/ton of carbon dioxide (or about $500/ton of carbon). In an interview with PBS earlier this year, Prof. Lackner suggested that the costs of direct air capture might eventually be as low as $30/ton of carbon dioxide (or about $100/ton of carbon). In the thought experiment below I’ll use both $100/ton and $500/ton.

1. US Auto CO2 Emissions

U.S. auto emissions are responsible for about 6% of total global emissions. The U.S. EIA estimates (XLS) total global carbon emissions in 2006 to be 7.45 GtC. Six percent of this is 0.45 GtC. The total costs of air capture to remove this amount of carbon from the atmosphere is $45 billion (at $100/ton) and $224 billion (at $500/ton). There are approximately 250 million passenger vehicles in the United States. The annual cost of air capture per auto is therefore $179 (at $100/ton) and $895 (at $500/ton). By contrast, this web site suggests that drivers can offset their auto emissions for $30-$80 per year per auto.

2. All U.S. CO2 Emissions

By extension, all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions could be offset by air capture for a per capita cost of $600 (at $100/ton) and $3,000 (at $500 per ton). At current use of gasoline (approximately 150 billion gallons per year) this could be achieved with a gas tax of $1.09 per gallon (at $100/ton) or $5.43 per gallon (at $500/ton). This level of taxation is comparable to gas taxes in European countries. If demand decreases as a result of the tax, as it probably would, then the tax would of course have to increase proportionately.

If the policy goal is to reduce total U.S. emissions by 40% then this could be achieved with a gas tax of $0.43 ($2.17). A gas tax of $1.00 would probably be more than enough to get this process started, including the costs of developing the air capture technology. The tax level could certainly be modified in future years based on experience with the actual costs of air capture technology and U.S. fuel usage.

This solution is so simple and straightforward, I wonder why those concerned with global warming aren't trumpeting it as a solution in the United States? Instead, the focus is on complicated and politically intractable approaches with dubious chances for success. Air capture is easy (compared to other solutions that have been proposed) to implement and politically requires only enough motivation to win a $1.00/gallon gas tax. If global warming is indeed going to cost us 5-20% of global GDP, how can we not pursue air capture?

What have I missed?

Posted on December 3, 2006 05:08 PM View this article | Comments (40)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

November 30, 2006

Less than A Quarter Inch by 2100

Following up on earlier discussions on the Mass. vs. EPA Supreme Court oral arguments and specifically on the issue of standing and redressibility, here are some numbers on the effects of the emissions reductions being discussed in the oral arguments and their effects on future sea level rise.

Assume the following:

A. Sea level will at an average of 3 mm/year

B. Of this 1 mm/year is already committed to (e.g., due to non-human causes, human caused due to past GHG emissions)

C. Emissions reductions have an instantaneous effect on sea level rise and that effect if proportional to the total emissions (of course this is not true, but makes this exercise easier, and makes my analysis conservative as emission reductions actually have less than this effect)

Under these assumptions what would the effects of EPA regulation as discussed yesterday be on future sea level rise?

Let’s go out to 2100 and assume that regulations are in place and successful by 2010 (not realistic, but again conservative).

90 years of Business as usual (BAU) * 3 mm/year = 270 mm = 10.63 inches

90 years of BAU minus 2.5% = 90 + 175.5 = 265.5 mm = 10.45 inches

Time delay until 270 mm is reached = 18 months

(If you would prefer to apply the effects of emissions reductions to the full 3 mm/year, then the numbers are 263.25 mm = 10.36 inches = 27 months)

What does this mean?

The maximum effect if reducing global emissions by 2.5% (i.e., as suggested in oral arguments yesterday) would be to reduce projected sea level rise by a less than a fifth of an inch in 2100. In other words, the sea level that would have occurred in January, 2100 would be put off until June, 2101. If you’d prefer to apply the effects of future emissions reductions of 2.5% to the total sea level rise (i.e., ignoring the existing commitment) then the numbers are a quarter inch and March, 2102.

Are these meaningful with respect to redressing damages? In my opinion, no they are not. In fact, I would argue that there is in fact no difference in damages that exists at a difference of less than a quarter inch of sea level.

Seems to me that these numbers might have been raised in the arguments at some point.

Posted on November 30, 2006 10:39 AM View this article | Comments (70)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

November 29, 2006

Quick Reactions to Arguments Today before the Supreme Court on Mass. vs. EPA

The transcript of arguments before the Supreme Court is available here in PDF. A good overview of the hearing from an expert on the Supreme Court can be found here. In what follows I provide some excerpts from the oral arguments and my reactions to them. In my judgment neither side did a particularly effective job on the substantive issues associated with climate impacts, and the issue of redressibility in particular. I do not have any opinions worth considering on the legal aspects of the case, nor do I have any strong views on what will happen. Please read on for my comments on the oral arguments.

People appearing below, in addition to Supreme Court Justices:

JAMES R. MILKEY, ESQ., Assistant Attorney General, Boston, Mass; on behalf of Petitioners [Mass.].

GREGORY C. GARRE, ESQ., Deputy Solicitor General, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.; on behalf of Respondents [EPA].

JUSTICE SCALIA: I gather that there's something of a consensus on warming, but not a consensus on how much of that is attributable to human activity. [p. 5]

This statement is incorrect. The IPCC stated in 2001 that, “There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.” (PDF) Not 100% of scientists agree with this statement of course, and it is very imprecise.

MR. MILKEY: And in any event, it is important to point out that because of the scale of the problem, relatively small percentage deductions in global emissions can lead to real world results. [p. 8]

This statement is incorrect. A relatively small percentage reduction in global emissions will not lead to detectable real world outcomes with respect to sea level rise. What is "small"? In the context of this conversation is it 2.5% of total global emissions.

MR. MILKEY: . . . But it's important that given the nature of the harms, even small reductions can be significant. For example, if we're able to save only a small fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars that Massachusetts parks agencies are projected to lose, that reduction is itself significant.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: That assumes everything else is going to remain constant, though, right? It assumes there isn't going to be a greater contribution of greenhouse gases from economic development in China and other places that's going to displace whatever marginal benefit you get here.

MR. MILKEY: Yes, Your Honor. But reducing domestic emissions will reduce our harm, the harm we would otherwise face regardless of what -

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Not if your harm is the alleged loss of coastline. Not necessarily. It depends upon what happens across the globe with respect to greenhouse emissions.

MR. MILKEY: Your Honor, we would still lose coastline but we would not lose as much because these harms are cumulative, and while reducing U.S. emissions will not eliminate all the harm we face, it can reduce the harm that these emissions are causing.
So it will necessarily reduce our harm and satisfy redressibility.

JUSTICE SCALIA: I mean, do we know that that's a straight line ratio, that a reduction of two-and-a-half percent of carbon dioxide -- well, two and a half overall would save two-and-a-half percent of your coastline? Is that how it works? I'm not a scientist, but I'd be surprised if it was so rigid.

MR. MILKEY: Your Honor, I don't believe it's established it's necessarily a straight line. But I want to emphasize that small vertical rises cause a large loss of horizontal land. For example, where the slope is less than 2 percent, which is true of much of the Massachusetts coastline, every foot rise will create a loss of more than 50 feet of horizontal land. And for example, in the State of New York, the Oppenheimer affidavit projects that New York could well lose thousands of acres of its sovereign territory by the year 2020. So the harm is already occurring. It is ongoing and it will happen well into the future. [pp. 11-13]

Mr. Milkey offers a very misleading and incorrect argument in this instance. Reducing emissions by a small amount will not save parts of the coastline. At best, it will delay the time for which sea level rise will occur, and by only a very small amount of time. At the levels being discussed here, again about 2.5% of global emissions (based on today’s emissions, it will be a smaller percentage in the future), it is unlikely that such a reduction would be discernible in future sea level rise.

This exchange points to an area where the scientific community has been grossly neglectful. There is very little work available that clearly explains the effects of different marginal emissions reductions on future specific climate impacts (e.g., sea level rise, hurricanes, drought, etc. — and not global average temperature as measured in hundredths of degrees). One reason for this oversight is of course that the answer in almost all cases the effects are almost nil on time scales of many decades, if not longer.

JUSTICE SCALIA: Mr. Milkey, I had -- my problem is precisely on the impermissible grounds. To be sure, carbon dioxide is a pollutant, and it can be an air pollutant. If we fill this room with carbon dioxide, it could be an air pollutant that endangers health. But I always thought an air pollutant was something different from a stratospheric pollutant, and your claim here is not that the pollution of what we normally call "air" is endangering health. That isn't, that isn't -- your assertion is that after the pollutant leaves the air and goes up into the stratosphere it is contributing to global warming.
MR. MILKEY: Respectfully, Your Honor, it is not the stratosphere. It's the troposphere.

JUSTICE SCALIA: Troposphere, whatever. I told you before I'm not a scientist.
(Laughter.)

JUSTICE SCALIA: That's why I don't want to have to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth. [pp. 22-23]

Justice Scalia clearly does not understand the science of climate change at a particularly sophisticated level. But that does not make him unique -- Nor apparently does anyone else speaking today.

Note that Justice Scalia does identify carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

JUSTICE STEVENS: I find it interesting that the scientists whose worked on that [2001 NRC] report said [in an amicus brief] there were a good many omissions that would have indicated that there wasn't nearly the uncertainty that the agency described.
MR. GARRE: Your Honor, if you are referring to the amicus brief, Your Honor, there are -- assuming there are amicus briefs on the other side. The Ballunas amicus brief -- I think it is fair for the Court to look at, to look at the document that the agency had before it. That -- that document produced by the National Research -- Research Council, that's the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences. And it's one of the gold standards of research.

JUSTICE STEVENS: But in their selective quotations, they left out parts that indicated there was far less uncertainty than the agency purported to find.

MR. GARRE: Well, Your Honor, I think one thing that we ought to be able to agree on is there is that there is uncertainty surrounding the phenomenon of global climate change. I think the debate is on which areas are more uncertain than the others. But certainly I think the agency was entitled to conclude, particularly if you take into account the deference this Court should give to that kind of determination, that the scientific uncertainty surrounding the issue of global climate change, surrounding issues of the extent of natural variability in climate, surrounding the issues of impact of climate feedbacks like ocean circulation, and low cloud cover, are permissible considerations for the agency to take into --

JUSTICE STEVENS: Is there uncertainty on the basic proposition that these greenhouse gases contribute to global warming?

MR. GARRE: Your Honor, the report says that it is likely that there is a -- a connection, but that it cannot unequivocally be established. I think that -if I could use that to go back to the standing question, Your Honor, which is the fundamental question of whether they've showed not just a connection between greenhouse gas emissions in toto and the phenomenon of global climate change, but the particular class of greenhouse gas emissions at issue in this case. Six percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, at most. That assumes you put all U.S. vehicles off the road or that they are all zero emission cars. So you're talking about emissions – [pp. 29-31]

Mr. Garre does himself no favors with this exchange. A connection between greenhouse gases and climate change has been established. Mr. Garre doesn’t seem to know what he wants to say about uncertainties. This exchange highlights the dangers of cherrypicking. Instead of making his case, Mr. Garre finds himself explaining away the earlier cherrypicking of the NRC report.

JUSTICE SOUTER: Let's assume the rest -let's assume that the rest of the world does nothing. I don't think that's a very reasonable assumption, but let's make that assumption. So that the only thing we're talking is the 6 percent [ie., the total of U.S. auto emissions as a percentage of global emissions]. If the 6 percent can be reduced -- I think the suggestion was over a reasonable period of time, by two and a half percent of the 6, there is, I suppose, reason to expect that there will be, maybe not two and a half percent less coastline lost, but some degree of less coastline lost because there is a correlation between the gas and the loss of the coastline. Why is that an unreasonable assumption to make in order to show causation and redressibility, bearing in mind that redressibility is a question of more or less, not a question of either/or. . .
They don't have to show that it will stop global warming. Their point is that will reduce the degree of global warming and likely reduce the degree of loss, if it is only by two and a half percent. What's wrong with that?

MR. GARRE: Justice Souter, their burden is to show that if the Court grants their requested relief it will redress their injuries. I'm not aware -

JUSTICE SOUTER: Not redress their injury in the sense that it will prevent any global warming or stop global warming and stop coastal erosion; their argument is a different one. It will reduce the degree of global warming and reduce the degree of coastal loss. [pp. 35-36]

Here Mr. Garre faced a hanging curve over the fat part of the plate and fanned. In other words, for our non-baseball literate readers, Mr. Garre had a chance to provide an authoritative answer to Justice Souter’s question which could have addressed Mr. Souter's concern and better made his case, but he did not.

JUSTICE SOUTER: But isn't it intuitively reasonable to suppose that with some reduction of the greenhouse gases, there will be some reduction of the ensuing damage or the ensuing climate change which causes the damage? Isn't that fair? p. 37

Justice Souter, like others, displays his lack of familiarity with the issue of climate change. His statement is logical and reasonable, but wrong. "Some reduction" of greenhouse gases (i.e., of the amounts being discussed in this case) will have no discernible effects on sea level rise. These reductions will not, as Justice Souter suggests, reduce damages. If anyone has a study suggesting the contrary, please share it.

MR. GARRE: That's right, Your Honor. We've got a unique collective action problem, and yet, the reaction experience of the agency in dealing with the issue of stratospheric ozone depletion rate had precisely that situation, where the U.S. initially took steps. The stratospheric ozone depletion worsened, and it was only after international agreement was reached in the Montreal Protocol that a global solution to the problem was reached. [p. 50]

Mr. Garre mischaracterizes the history of the ozone issue and the role of the United States. It was in fact U.S. action that motivated the international response, and the U.S. action was motivated by a lawsuit filed against EPA. However, that precedent is not directly relevant in this case. Why doesn’t he know this? For details, see this post.

Posted on November 29, 2006 01:43 PM View this article | Comments (41)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

AAAS Report on Standards of Peer Review

The AAAS has released a report motivated by several recent fraudulent papers that have been published in Science. The report suggests tightening the review process for certain types of papers. Here is an excerpt from the report (available here in PDF):

Science (and Nature) have reached a special status. Publication in Science has a significance that goes beyond that of 'normal' publication. Consequently, the value to some authors of publishing in Science, including enhanced reputation, visibility, position or cash rewards, is sufficiently high that some may not adhere to the usual scientific standards in order to achieve publication. Thus, the cachet of publishing in Science can be an incentive not to follow the rules. This problem has a significant impact on all of science, since trust in the system is essential, and since Science and Nature are seen to speak for the best in science. Furthermore, false information in the literature leads to an enormous waste of time and money in an effort to correct and clarify the science.
Science as a journal tries to select papers that will have high impact on both science and society. Some papers will be highly visible and attract considerable attention. Many of these papers purport to be major breakthroughs and claim to change fields in a significant way. However, because the content is so new or startling, it is often more difficult to evaluate the quality or veracity of the work than would be the case for a more conventional paper.

Papers in this class, particularly those that will receive public attention, can influence public policy or contribute to personal or institutional financial gain and thus warrant special scrutiny. In the immediate future, examples will likely come from the areas of climate change, human health, and particular issues in commercial biomedicine and nanotechnology. Progress in science depends on breakthroughs and in taking risks, both in research and in publishing. Nevertheless, it is essential to develop a process by which papers that have the likelihood of attracting attention are examined particularly closely for errors, misrepresentation, deception, or outright fraud. This examination should include especially high standards for providing primary data, a clear understanding of all of the authors' and coauthors’ contributions to the paper and a careful examination of data presented in the papers.

There is a major issue in the report left unaddressed, and this has to do with the following statement– "Science as a journal tries to select papers that will have high impact on both science and society." How does this selection process work? What are the criteria of “high impact”? What is the relationship of political positions taken by the Science editorial staff and the selection of papers for peer review and publication? If greater transparency makes sense for authors, then does greater transparency make sense for editors as well?

Posted on November 29, 2006 10:42 AM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics | Science Policy: General

November 28, 2006

Mugging Little Old Ladies and Reasoning by Analogy

[Updated 21:52 28 Nov 06]

Stanford’s Ken Caldeira provides an interesting, and I think unhelpful, analogy for how we might think about climate policy in the 20 November 2006 issue of the New Yorker in an article by Elizabeth Kolbert on carbon dioxide uptake by the oceans:

The term "ocean acidification" was coined in 2003 by two climate scientists, Ken Caldeira and Michael Wickett, who were working at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in Northern California. . . ~~Caldeira told me that he had chosen the term "ocean acidification" quite deliberately, for its shock value. . .~~ [According to Calderia, Kolbert has misquoted him. See comments. RP]
Caldeira said that he had recently gone to Washington to brief some members of Congress. "I was asked, 'What is the appropriate stabilization target for atmospheric CO2?' he recalled. "And I said, 'Well, I think it's inappropriate to think in terms of stabilization targets. I think we should think in terms of emissions targets.' And they said, 'O.K., what's the appropriate emissions target?' And I said, 'Zero.'

"If you’re talking about mugging little old ladies, you don’t say, 'What’s our target for the rate of mugging little old ladies?' You say, 'Mugging little old ladies is bad, and we’re going to try to eliminate it.' You recognize you might not be a hundred per cent successful, but your goal is to eliminate the mugging of little old ladies. And I think we need to eventually come around to looking at carbon-dioxide emissions the same way."

Analogies matter in policy debate. For instance, should we think of Iraq like the Vietnam War, the French in Algeria, or is the situation now a "civil war"? Public debate over contested policy issues often involves different interests seeking to define the policy problem in different ways – and hence limit the scope of acceptable alternatives in response. Analogical reasoning is central to battles over the framing of a policy problem.

For several reasons, Prof. Caldeira’s choice of analogies is less-than-helpful for the cause for which he is advocating. (And for the record, I support action on climate policy, as discussed in my summer, 2006 congressional testimony -- PDF.) Most significantly from the standpoint of framing of the climate problem, mugging little old ladies is a criminal activity while emitting greenhouse gases is not a criminal activity. Juxtaposing the two only adds to the perception of extremism among advocates of action on energy policies.

As an example, of these dynamics, it was not long after the phrase "climate change denier" became in vogue (and also adopted by activist scientists) that we heard an analogy -- which easily followed from the parallel construction to "Holocaust deniers" -- suggesting trials and executions for the climate change deniers. Surely this sort of analogical reasoning did not advance the political cause of those advocating rapid reductions in emissions.

~~Prof. Caldeira also explains that he seeks to "shock" with his terminology of "ocean acidification."~~ Seeking to motivate particular policy actions with scientific results – or a dramatic presentation of scientific results – is rarely effective or good for science, as we discussed last week. As Hans von Storch and Nico Stehr have written,

The costs of stirring up fear are high. It sacrifices the otherwise so highly valued principle of sustainability. A scarce resource - public attention and trust in the reliability of science - is used up without being renewed by the practice of positive examples.

The truth is that the uptake of carbon dioxide by the oceans is something that should capture our attention – whether we call it "ocean acidification" or not. But for the vast majority of people and policy makers there are far more immediate and compelling justifications to provide policy makers for beginning the decades-long challenge of reducing reliance on fossil fuels. Some of these reasons include saving money, increasing efficiency, reducing particulate air pollution, and reducing reliance on foreign sources of energy. Framing problems in terms of what actually matters to people is going to make action more likely that offering up scary science or misleading analogies.

Posted on November 28, 2006 07:23 AM View this article | Comments (45)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

November 27, 2006

The Benefits of Red Wine and the Politics of Science

Saturday’s New York Times had an interesting article (registration required) about scientific stuides finding possible health benefits of red wine, and the political constraints on the wine industry to advertise those benefits. Here is an excerpt from the article:

The wine industry certainly has welcomed the recent disclosures that a compound in red wine improves the health and endurance of laboratory mice. So why isn't the industry crowing about it?
Because it can’t. The industry has long been handcuffed by state and federal laws that discourage promoting the benefits of wine, with some of those restrictions dating back to the repeal of Prohibition in 1933.

"Yes, we’d all like to make hay of this, and we’ll do what we can, but we are very constrained," said Michael Mondavi, founder and president of Folio Fine Wine Partners, a producer and importer of wines here.

As an industry that is closely regulated by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, Mr. Mondavi said, "it is blatantly against the law for any alcoholic beverage producers to make any health claim regardless of the facts or the accuracy."

"Until that regulation is changed or modified in some way so that we can talk about the positive health aspects that are proven," said Mr. Mondavi, the older son of famed winemaker Robert Mondavi, "we have to sit on our hands and wait for others to pick up the story."

Government regulation of alcohol advertising has a long history steeped in American cultural attitudes about drinking. In this regard this issue shares some obvious similarities with, say, medical marijuana or even differences in male-female aptitude (e.g., as raised by Harvard’s Larry Summers not long ago). In other words, political issues involving science are immersed in rich stew of societal values and preferences. It is only when these values are strongly contested in society that issues of science in political debate actually come to the fore -- creating conditions for the pathological politicization of science. We tend to see these issues more starkly when political conflict exists and overlook them when conflict does not. Consisder the brouhaha over federal funding of stem research, yet there isn't similar controversy on federal funding for human cloning research.

When values are widely shared, aspects of science in politics that raise hackles in other contexts go overlooked or are treated as amusing side notes, such as in the NYT article on the potential benefits of red wine. That all issues of science in politics are not treated equally should make the obvious inescapable – when science and politics meet, the values context always matters. There is no such thing as decisions driven by science. Decisions are always driven by values. How, if, and when we wish to consider science in making those decisions is of course where much of the action lies. But we should not pretend that science makes decisions. People make decisions.

Posted on November 27, 2006 07:15 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health | Science + Politics

Why don’t you write about __________?

Over the past week I have received the following two juxtaposed comments about what we focus on here at Prometheus. They are pretty typical of the sort of comments that I have received in the past, hence this response.

What still amazes me is that you can so clearly see [misrepresentations in policy arguments] going on in the area of your expertise and seemingly not recognize the same mischief in other areas of the science, from glaciers to solar variability. If the same people get it so terribly wrong here, why not there?

And also:

Why do you attack [Al Gore] on your site but not climate change deniers Fred Singer or Pat Michaels? Perhaps this tells us something about your own biases. Al Gore may have made a few mistakes but he is far more accurate than the oil industry shills that you seem to conveniently overlook.

Question: Why don’t I write about glaciers, solar variability, Fred Singer, or Pat Michaels?

Answer: I don’t know anything special about glaciers, solar variability, or the issues which are often discussed by Fred Singer or Pat Michaels. By contrast, I do know something about disasters and climate change. In fact, I know a lot, perhaps as much as only a few dozen people.

On disasters and climate change I can speak with authority, because I know the literature deeply and I have conducted a wide range of original studies in this area. When I am asked to comment on other topics my expertise drops off – precipitously. By commenting on these issues I would in effect simply be witnessing to who it is that I trust. So instead of offering inexpert commentary (which can be found in abundance elsewhere on blogs) we often rely on solicited and unsolicited guest weblogs, such as provided by Richard Tol on the Stern Report, and we sometimes invite competing perspectives to share their views here, as we did last year on the policy significance of the "hockey stick" debate. We are also have discussed plans for turning Prometheus into a more consistently multi-authored site with a range of expertise and perspectives on tap.

So lets cut to the chase -- do I trust those wacked alarmists or those nefarious skeptics? By answering this question, some might think, it would be far easier to classify me in a tribal category – "is he with us, or them"?

Truth is, based on my front-row seat view of the science of climate change, I don’t much trust the alarmists or the skeptics and by this I mean both (a) those political advocates couching their arguments in terms of science and (b) those scientists who have taken on the role of political advocates. I have been for many years convinced based on my own academic training and a "dinner table" degree in aspects of climate science that we should indeed be concerned about greenhouse gas emissions and other human influences on climate. But what I have also observed in my years inside the climate community is that it is deeply politicized throughout. This doesn’t mean that we need not be concerned about the human effects on climate. But what it does mean is that we need to take far more care with the relationship of climate science and climate policy, a responsibility that I believe requires the attention of the scientific community.

Question: Who is it then that I do trust?

Answer: Well, many of the non-skeptic heretics. And you should too. When the politics of climate change settles out over coming years and decades, these are the folks whose intellectual policy arguments will be left standing.

Meantime, if you are in fact looking for commentary from me on issues of climate change outside my own expertise, there will undoubtedly continue to be a few such musings that slip through on occasion – such is the nature of blogs. But for the most part (on climate change at least) I plan on generally sticking to what I know. Some of you may wish to see a political signal in this focus (as the two commenters that I opened with did, ironically enough in diffeent directions), which is perhaps unavoidable. As far as those of you interested in my own political leanings, here you go.

Posted on November 27, 2006 06:43 AM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

November 25, 2006

Politicization of Intelligence

The role of military intelligence in policy making is not unlike the role of science in policy making, a point I make in my forthcoming book. In the Los Angeles Times last week Jennifer Glaudmans has an excellent op-ed about the politicization of intelligence under Robert Gates, former CIA director and current nominee to replace Donald Rumsfeld. Her piece provides an interesting lens through which to think about the pathological politicization of science. Here are a few relevant excerpts (emphases added):

. . . we were asked, in 1985, to contribute to the National Intelligence Estimate on the subject of Iran.
Later, when we received the draft NIE, we were shocked to find that our contribution on Soviet relations with Iran had been completely reversed. Rather than stating that the prospects for improved Soviet-Iranian relations were negligible, the document indicated that Moscow assessed those prospects as quite good. What's more, the national intelligence officer responsible for coordinating the estimate had already sent a personal memo to the White House stating that the race between the U.S. and USSR "for Tehran is on, and whoever gets there first wins all."

No one in my office believed this Cold War hyperbole. There was simply no evidence to support the notion that Moscow was optimistic about its prospects for improved relations with Iran. All of our published analysis had consistently been pessimistic about Soviet-Iranian relations as long as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was alive.

We protested the conclusions of the NIE, citing evidence such as the Iranian government's repression of the communist Tudeh Party, the expulsion of all Soviet economic advisors and a number of Soviet diplomats who were KGB officers, and a continuing public rhetoric that chastised the "godless" communist regime as the "Second Satan" after the United States.

Despite overwhelming evidence, our analysis was suppressed. At a coordinating meeting, we were told that Gates wanted the language to stay in as it was, presumably to help justify "improving" our strained relations with Tehran through the Iran-Contra weapons sales.

This is another example of ends-justify-the-means thinking that seem to be behind just about every pathological politicization of science. If your desired policy actions are virtuous, then it shouldn't matter how you cause those actions to occur, right? In the end we will all be better off, right? Glaudmans indicates that this was the thinking on intelligence behind Ronald Reagan's Iran-Contra effort, it was also the thinking behind the neo-conservatives push in Iraq, and it is behind those pushing for immediate and drastic action on curtailing emissions of greenhouse gases such as described in the Stern Review (which we have discussed at some length).

Glaudmans continues:

It's possible that the Reagan administration would have gone ahead and made its overtures to Iran regardless of what was said in the NIE, but having the coordinated assessment of the intelligence community support its views certainly added legitimacy to its rationale. What's more, if the policymakers had received better and more accurate intelligence, perhaps someone would at least have questioned the false sense of urgency. Instead, our intelligence was used as expensive intra-government propaganda. . .
During those years, the government was clearly dominated by people who had a strong ideological view of the Soviet Union. But their conflict was not with people who were "soft" on communism, it was with people who looked at all the available evidence, without much bias one way or another, and who had been to the USSR and witnessed its hollow political and social structure, seeing not an omnipotent superpower but a clumsy, oafish regime often stumbling over its own feet.

What is interesting about this passage is Glaudmans' description of how those people seeking to provide good intelligence found themselves in conflict with the ideologues. This conflict occurs because those seeking to politicize intelligence beyond its limits are not necesarily threatened by their ideological opponents -- indeed such stark contrasts actually make the ideological differences more apparent and thus serve more effectively as a political "wedge." Instead the greatest threat to ideologues seeking to pathologuically politicize intelligence comes from those presenting solid analyses, which have a stubborn tendency to win out in the long run. On such conflicts, see for example a few of my own experiences described here.

Glaudmans concludes:

Is all this ancient history relevant today? It is if you believe that policymakers are poorly served when analysis is concocted to support their preexisting positions. It is relevant if you believe that the failure to learn the lessons from the 1991 Gates hearings harmed U.S. foreign policy when, a decade later, we went to war on false intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It is relevant if you believe that Congress should take its oversight responsibilities seriously.

It is certainly the case that the current Bush Administration has contributed to the pathological politicization of intelligence, economics, and science across a range of areas. Of this there is no doubt. Fortunately, these issues are suffering from no lack of attention. The concern that I have and discuss frequently on this blog, which I see almost every day, is the contributions by scientists (and other experts) to the pathological politicization of science. Once you lose the capability to provide solid policy analyses, pathologically politicized information is all that remains.

Posted on November 25, 2006 07:17 AM View this article | Comments (10)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics | The Honest Broker

November 24, 2006

Tol on Nordhaus on Stern

Whatever you might happen to think about Richard Tol's views, he cannot be criticized for being indirect. The statement below I have elevated from our comments. It is one of seveal gems from Richard in the past few weeks, and provides a cogent summary of why it is that solid policy arguments matter in political discourse -- whether the subject is climate change or WMDs or whatever.

I cannot speak for Nordhaus, but I have known him for many years and carefully read all his papers on climate change.
Nordhaus indeed favours climate policy, specifically greenhouse gas emission reduction. The House of Lords report also seems to favour climate policy -- its main author, David Pearce, was a strong advocate for sure. Indeed, any economist I know who seriously studied climate change, has come out in favour of emission reduction.

That does not imply that there is agreement with Stern.

Nordhaus and others have berated Stern for a number of technical errors and wild exageration. Qualitatively, Stern may be correct -- but quantitatively, Stern is very wrong.

There are several problems with that. Firstly, a supposedly eminent economist made a fool of himself in the public eye. This increases the general distrust of the public. Secondly, anyone who dislikes climate policy can quote Stern to demonstrate what fools climate policy advocates are.

Stern did not provide an argument for climate policy, but ammunition for the skeptics.

Besides, he has forced people like Nordhaus to waste precious time on refuting a silly argument. To the general public, the message of people like Nordhaus must be very confusing: Stern is wrong but right nonetheless.

Really, climate policy would have been in a better place without Nick Stern.

Posted on November 24, 2006 09:31 AM View this article | Comments (24)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Class Copenhagen Consensus Exercise: Feedback Requested

This Post Will Stay at the Top through 24 Nov, New Posts Will Still Appear Below

This semester in my graduate seminar Policy, Science, and the Environment we have spent a good share of the semester replicating and critiquing the Copenhagen Consensus exercise. With this post we’d like to solicit some feedback on the class term projects reporting and justifying their results

For those of you unfamiliar with the Copenhagen Consensus, its homepage describes its efforts as follows:

The Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC) is a center under the auspices of the Copenhagen Business School. Through the commissioning and conveying of research, we work to improve the foundation for prioritizing between various efforts to mitigate the consequences of the World's biggest challenges. In particular we focus on the international community's effort to solve the World's biggest challenges and how to do this in the most cost-efficient manner.
The idea is simple, yet often neglected. When financial resources are limited you need to prioritize your effort. Everyday, from policymakers to business leaders, at all levels, priorities are made between investing in one project and not another. However, many times, and particularly at the political level, decisions on priorities are made not based on facts, science or calculations but on which issue gets the most media coverage or is most politisized. The Copenhagen Consensus approach works to improve the foundation of knowledge, to get an overview of research and facts within a given problem, so that the prioritizing of efforts to solve this problem is based on evidence and is comparable with solutions across problems.

We are focusing on repeating the Copenhagen Consensus analysis in my class. This is the first time I’ve attempted this exercise, so this year I am very fortunate to have an extremely hard-working and thoughtful set of students in my class. Most importantly they have been extremely gracious in playing along as guinea pigs with a complete redesign of this course.

Here is what we’ve done. In our class we divided up into four groups – the Wolfpack, Troika, Great Danes, and the Savvy World Affairs Troubleshooters (SWAT). The first task for each group was to identify the two most important topics that were not on the Copenhagen Consensus list of 10 world problems. Each group presented two subjects and the students then voted among the recommendations to identify the two we would add to the list. We added Energy and Land Degradation.

The next task for the groups was to allocate $50 billion among the now 12 issue areas. Their assignment was to produce an allocation as well as a justification for their allocation. We have spent much of the semester focused on two tasks. One was learning from each other about the substantive issues involved with each problem area. The second was discussing the nature of cost-benefit analysis as a tool for producing information relevant to establishing priorities. We focused in particular on valuing human lives and discounting.

In producing their allocations and justifications, the groups were free to use whatever approach or method that they saw fit. We are posting the group reports here online to stimulate some feedback from our readers to the class on their reports. Note that the ~~dictator~~ professor disallowed efforts to spend the money over time or investing it in hopes of gaining a larger return, among other rules put in place to simplify and standardize the assignement. You will find a range of approaches to the allocation and a range of results.

Great Danes final report webpage
Troika final report webpage
SWAT final report webpage
Wolfpack final report webpage

Here is a spreadsheet summarizing the group allocations and comparing the class averages to three exercises run by the Copenhagen Consensus in 2004, 2006, and by the UN.

Whether or not you agree with their allocations, we would find useful any feedback on the group reports. How understandable are they? Are their arguments well supported and well justified? Are their reports credible?

It is a lot of work to read through the class projects, so we are grateful for whatever responses that our readers provide.

In closing, I wish to emphasize that in posting the reports the class is very interested in feedback but also wanted me to emphasize that many of the students are uncomfortable with the notion of cost-benefit analysis, and a few simply reject it as a legitimate basis for decision making altogether. We use the Copenhagen Consensus exercise as a pedagogical tool, not as an endorsement of the approach as a means of setting priorities. If I had $50 billion to spend, I certainly wouldn’t allocate it using the Copenhagen Consensus approach. Nonetheless, as an exercise for learning about global problems, the challenges of priority setting, and the difficulty of trade-offs, at least from the standpoint of the professor, the Copenhagen Consensus has some worthwhile qualities in the classroom. After the semester I’ll be happy to editorialize a bit more on the class and the Copenhagen Consensus, but for now I’d like the attention focused on the work of our students.

Posted on November 24, 2006 01:50 AM View this article | Comments (28)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education | International

November 22, 2006

William Nordhaus on The Stern Report

Here is a link to Willian Norhaus' review of the The Stern Report (PDF). It is worth reading in full. Prof. Nordhaus provides the following "summary verdict."

How much and how fast should the globe reduce greenhouse-gas emissions? How should nations balance the costs of the reductions against the damages and dangers of climate change? The Stern Review answers these questions clearly and unambiguously: we need urgent, sharp, and immediate reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions.
I am reminded here of President Harry Truman’s complaint that his economists would always say, on the one hand this and on the other hand that. He wanted a one-handed economist. The Stern Review is a Prime Minister’s dream come true. It provides decisive and compelling answers instead of the dreaded conjectures, contingencies, and qualifications.

However, a closer look reveals that there is indeed another hand to these answers. The radical revision of the economics of climate change proposed by the Review does not arise from any new economics, science, or modeling. Rather, it depends decisively on the assumption of a near-zero social discount rate. The Review’s unambiguous conclusions about the need for extreme immediate action will not survive the substitution of discounting assumptions that are consistent with today’s market place. So the central questions about global-warming policy – how much, how fast, and how costly – remain open. The Review informs but does not answer these fundamental questions.

Posted on November 22, 2006 08:45 AM View this article | Comments (7)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

November 21, 2006

Walter Lippmann (1955) on Misrepresentation and Balance

Some things don't grow stale with age. The writings of Walter Lippmann are among them. Here are a few excerpts from Lippmann’s 1955 book The Public Philosophy that remind us that the politicization of information is far from a new concern and the importance of open debate in response.

. . . when the decision is critical and urgent, the public will not be told the whole truth. What can be told to the great public it will not hear in the complicated and qualified concreteness that is needed for a practical decision. When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into the absolute. Even when there is no deliberate distortion by censorship and propaganda, which is unlikely in time of war, the public opinion of masses cannot be counted upon to apprehend regularly and promptly the reality of things. There is an inherent tendency in opinion to feed upon rumors excited by our own wishes and fears. [p. 27]

On balance in the media and in public debates Lippmann is quite clear about maintaining conditions that foster debate and the exchange of perspectives.

. . . when the chaff of silliness, baseness, and deception is so voluminous that it submerges the kernels of truth, freedom of speech may produce such frivolity, or such mischief, that it cannot be preserved against the demand for a restoration of order or of decency. If there is a dividing line between liberty and license, it is where freedom of speech is no longer respected as a procedure of the truth and becomes the unrestricted right to exploit the ignorance, and incite the passions, of the people. The freedom is such a hullabaloo of sophistry, propaganda, special pleading, lobbying, and salesmanship that it is difficult to remember why freedom of speech is worth the pain and trouble of defending it.

What has been lost in the tumult is the meaning of the obligation which is involved in the right to speak freely. It is the obligation to subject the utterance to criticism and debate. Because the dialectical debate is a procedure for attaining moral and political truth, the right to speak is protected by a willingness to debate. . . .

And because the purpose of the confrontation is to discern truth, there are rules of evidence and of parliamentary procedure, there are codes of fair dealing and fair comment, by which a loyal man will consider himself bound when he exercises the right to publish opinions. For the right to freedom of speech is no license to deceive, and willful misrepresentation is a violation of its principles. It is sophistry to pretend that in a free country a man has some sort of inalienable or constitutional right to deceive his fellow men. There is no more right to deceive that there is a right to swindle, to cheat, or to pick pockets. It may be inexpedient to arraign every public liar, as we try to arraign other swindlers. It may be a poor policy to have too many laws which encourage litigation about matters of opinion. But, in principle, there can be no immunity for lying in any of its protean forms.

In our time the application of these fundamental principles poses many unsolved practical problems. For the modern media of mass communication do not lend themselves easily to a confrontation of opinions. The dialectical process for finding truth works best when the same audience hears all the sides of a disputation. . . Rarely, and on very few public issues, does the mass audience have the benefit of the process by which truth is sifted from error – the dialectic of debate in which there is immediate challenge, reply, cross-examination, and rebuttal.

Yet when genuine debate is lacking, freedom of speech does not work as it is meant to work. It has lost the principle which regulates and justifies it – that is to say, dialectic conducted according to logic and the rules of evidence. If there is not effective debate, the unrestricted right to speak will unloose so many propagandists, procurers, and panders upon the public that sooner or later in self-defense the people will turn to censors to protect them. An unrestricted and unregulated right to speak cannot be maintained. It will be curtailed for all manner of reasons and pretexts, and to serve all kinds of good, foolish, or sinister ends.

For in the absence of debate unrestricted utterance leads to the degradation of opinion. By a kind of Gresham’s law the more rational is overcome by the less rational, and the opinions that will prevail will be those which are held most ardently by those with the most passionate will. For that reason the freedom to speak can never be maintained merely by objecting to interference with the liberty of the press, of printing, of broadcasting, of the screen. It can be maintained only by promoting debate.

In the end what men will most ardently desire is to suppress those who disagree with them and, therefore, stand in the way of the realization of their desires. Thus, once confrontation in debate is no longer necessary, the toleration of all opinions leads to intolerance. Freedom of speech, separated from its essential principle, leads through a short transitional chaos to the destruction of freedom of speech. [pp. 96-101]

Posted on November 21, 2006 01:20 AM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics | The Honest Broker

November 20, 2006

Al Gore at His Best, and Worst

In yesterday’s Telegraph (UK) Al Gore has a lengthy article on climate change science and policy. In the piece Mr. Gore includes an egregious and unquestionable misrepresentation of the science of disasters and climate change. This is unfortunate, because it detracts from a compelling argument for action in the same piece.

Mr. Gore starts out, ironically enough, asserting the importance of peer-reviewed science. I call this ironic because the misrepresentation that follows (a) hasn’t been peer reviewed, and (b) the peer-reviewed literature contradicts the misrepresentation. Here is what Mr. Gore says about the peer reviewed literature:

[T]here is a reason why new scientific research is peer-reviewed and then published in journals such as Science, Nature, and the Geophysical Research Letters, rather than the broadsheets. The process is designed to ensure that trained scientists review the framing of the questions that are asked, the research and methodologies used to pursue the answers offered and even, in some cases, to monitor the funding of the laboratories — all in order to ensure that errors and biases are detected and corrected before reaching the public.

Shouldn’t this also apply to the claims that Mr. Gore makes, and not just his opponents? Here is the misrepresentation:

And with regards to some of the financial implications suggested by the Stern report, one need only look to the insurance industry for validation of the potential costs of global warming. On Wednesday, the reinsurance giant Munich Re reported, "driven by climate change, weather related disasters could cost as much as a trillion dollars in a single year by 2040".

We discussed this particular misrepresentation in depth in a post last week and discussed the Stern report’s misrepresentation the week before in this post. As I have said on many occasions, I am neither surprised nor too concerned that a politician would stretch the facts to advance his political agenda. What concerns me is that many scientists have been complicit in advancing such mischaracterizations and remain selectively mute when they are made. In this manner, a large portion of the mainstream climate science community has taken on the unfortunate characteristics of politicians like Mr. Gore, deciding to uphold scientific standards only when politically convenient. This is one way how science becomes pathologically politicized.

Mr. Gore’s misrepresentation is unfortunate because he makes a compelling argument for why action on climate change makes sense based on short-term benefits, a point a made in congressional testimony (PDF) last summer. Here is Mr. Gore’s argument for the short-term benefits for action on climate change:

Some of the policies detailed in the [Stern] report include: increasing global public energy research and development funding, dramatically reducing waste through energy efficiency measures, expanding and linking emissions trading systems and carbon markets, multiplying programmes to reduce deforestation of natural areas such as Amazonia, and continuing to set aggressive domestic and global targets to reduce the pollution that causes global warming. None of these policy measures should cause alarm.
In fact, not only are they rational, but also they have substantial co-benefits, which include increased air quality, improved access to energy among the rural poor in developed countries, further independence from foreign sources of energy in volatile and unstable regions of the world, and, of course, the obvious opportunities in the new markets developing for low carbon technologies.

We need more good arguments like this and less misrepresentation.

Posted on November 20, 2006 01:37 AM View this article | Comments (45)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

November 16, 2006

What is Wrong with Politically-Motivated Research?

This quote from Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen provides a clear example of seeking political ends through science:

Prominent scientists, among them a Nobel laureate, said a layer of pollution deliberately spewed into the atmosphere could act as a "shade" from the sun's rays and help cool the planet.
Reaction to the proposal here at the annual U.N. conference on climate change is a mix of caution, curiosity and some resignation to such "massive and drastic" operations, as the chief U.N. climatologist describes them.

The Nobel Prize-winning scientist who first made the proposal is himself "not enthusiastic about it."

"It was meant to startle the policymakers," said Paul J. Crutzen, of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. "If they don't take action much more strongly than they have in the past, then in the end we have to do experiments like this." [Emphasis added. RP]

In 2004 I characterized (in PDF) the "politicization of science by scientists" as "the use of science by scientists as a means of negotiating for desired political outcomes." Dr. Crutzen's description of his work clearly fits this definition.

I characterized the problem with such a strategy as follws, "many scientists encourage the mapping of established interests from across the political spectrum onto science and then use science as a proxy for political battle over these interests."

Why does this matter? "when politics is played out through science with the acquiescence and even facilitation of scientists, the results can serve to foster political gridlock to the detriment of science and policy alike because science alone is incapable of forcing a political consensus."

Starting with a desired political outcome and then generating the science to support that outcome is not the most effective way for science to support policy, even coming from a Nobel laureate.

Posted on November 16, 2006 12:59 PM View this article | Comments (6)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics | The Honest Broker

November 15, 2006

Looking Away from Misrepresentations of Science in Policy Debate Related to Disasters and Climate Change

For me the most amazing aspect of the repeated misrepresentation of science related to disasters and climate change is not that political advocates look to cherry pick science or go beyond the state of the science. What is most amazing is that in the face of incontrovertible and repeated misrepresentation that the overwhelming majority of scientists, the media, and responsible advocacy groups have remained mute (with a few notable exceptions such as Hans von Storch).

More than anything else, even the misrepresentations themselves, the collective willingness to overlook bad policy arguments unsupported (or even contradicted) by the current state of science while at the same time trumpeting the importance of scientific consensus is evidence of the comprehensive and pathological politicization of science in the policy debate over global warming. If climate scientists ever wonder why they are looked upon with suspicion among some people in society, they need look no further in their willingness to compromise their own intellectual standards in policy debate on the issue of disasters and climate change.

Here are just some of the misrepresentations of science in policy discussions related to disasters and climate change from the Prometheus archives:

Misrepresentation by ABI of UK Foresight flood assessment

Misrepresentation by UNEP of disaster loss trends

Misrepresentation by former head of IPCC of disaster loss trends

Misrepresentation by New York Times of trends in disaster losses

Misrepresentation by editor of Science of detection and attribution of trends in extreme events

Misrepresentation by editor of Science of attribution of Katrina to greenhouse gas emissions

Misrepresentation of literature of disaster trends and climate in article in Science

Misrepresentation by lead IPCC author responsible for hurricane chapter of attribution of Katrina to greenhouse gas emissions

Misrepresentation of ABI report on future tropical cyclone losses

Misrepresentation by Al Gore of state of hurricane science and attribution of Katrina

Misrepresentation by Time of science of hurricanes and attribution of Katrina

Misrepresentation by IPCC WG II of storm surge impacts research

Misrepresentation by AGU of science of seasonal hurricane forecast skill

Misrepresentation by Environmental Defense of attribution of Katrina to greenhouse gases and prospects for avoiding future hurricanes

Misrepresentation in the Washington Post of the science of disaster trends and future impacts

Misrepresentation in Stern report of trends in disaster losses and projections of future costs

Misrepresentation by UNEP of trends and projections in disaster losses

Posted on November 15, 2006 10:42 AM View this article | Comments (25)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters | Science + Politics

November 14, 2006

More Climate and Disaster Nonsense

Debunking nonsense related to disaster losses and climate change is getting to be a full time job. The latest misleading information is uncritically reported by Reuters and comes from a report commissioned by UNEP. Reuters reports:

Losses from extreme weather could top $1 trillion in a single year by 2040, a partnership of the United Nations Environment Programme and private finance institutions (UNEP FI) warned on Tuesday.
Speaking at a major U.N. climate meeting in Kenya, they said the estimated cost of droughts, storm surges, hurricanes and floods reached a record $210 billion in 2005, and such losses linked to global warming were seen doubling every 12 years.

"This is an unequivocal statement by 15 of the largest financial institutions: Climate change is now certain," Paul Clements-Hunt of UNEP FI told a news conference.

The $1 trillion figure comes from a report commissioned by UNEP, released today (PDF). The report states:

The following scenario constructed by Andlug Consulting presents one possible pathway that climatic losses might follow in coming decades, and suggests how the financial sector might be affected. It is NOT a prediction, but like all scenarios, is intended to explore the future so that better plans can be made.
The trend value for economic losses in 2005 is 50 billion USD ( Figure 7). Industry analysts reckon that this is about half the total losses, which therefore are 100 billion USD. The long-term trend of six percent annual growth means the costs double every 12 years, taking them to 800 billion USD by 2041, in 2005 values. However, great disasters always appear in clusters: Figure 7 shows that one year in three, the costs are 50 percent higher than the trend-line. In fact they were more than double the trend value in 1992, 1993 and 2005. Making allowance for such clusters, and for the inclusion of all societal and opportunity costs, it seems very likely that the there will be a “peak” year that will record costs of over 1 trillion USD before 2040. In fact, since so much development is taking place in coastal zones, the figure may arrive considerably before 2040.

The $1 trillion is therefore not linked to global warming but an extension of current loss trends into the future. This is a point that we made at the AGU one year ago and which was reported responsibly by Kenneth Chang of the New York Times 11 December, 2005 (link, registration required). That NYT article said, "With wealth and property values increasing, and more people moving to vulnerable coasts, by the year 2020 a single storm could cause losses of $500 billion -- several times the damage inflicted by Hurricane Katrina." It is no stretch to get from $500B in 2020 to $1 trillion by 2040. Of course, the size of the economy grows over that time frame as well.

Further, the UNEP analysis was prepared by Andlug Consulting, which is run by Andrew Dlugolecki, a participant in our Hohenkammer workshop of last May. At the workshop all participants agreed to the following consensus statements (report):

Because of issues related to data quality, the stochastic nature of extreme event impacts, length of time series, and various societal factors present in the disaster loss record, it is still not possible to determine the portion of the increase in damages that might be attributed to climate change due to GHG emissions . . . In the near future the quantitative link (attribution) of trends in storm and flood losses to climate changes related to GHG emissions is unlikely to be answered unequivocally.

Hence, the projection of the possibility of a $1 trillion disaster year is independent of projected effects of human-caused changes to the climate system on the intensity or frequency of extreme events.

Bottom line: The UNEP report does not say what the representative of UNEP said it did. Nor does it say what has been reported in the major media, including the Reuters report. This is unfortunate because the UNEP-report has some valuable information on the importance of adaptation in the face of continuing growth in vulnerability to disasters. Effective policy on climate is unlikely to develop if the UN and the media are providing misleading or incorrect analyses. As Richard Tol said here last week, unsound analyses only provide fodder for those skeptical of action on climate change.

Posted on November 14, 2006 05:20 PM View this article | Comments (7)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

Naomi Oreskes on Consensus

Naomi Oreskes, of the University of California-San Diego and a leading scholar of the history of science, wrote an excellent article on scientific consensus a few years ago as part of a special issue of Environmental Science & Policy which critiqued the debate over Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist. This is of course the same Naomi Oreskes famous for her short essay reviewing abstracts on "global climate change" in Science (a subject I do not wish to discuss in this thread, thanks!). Below I have reproduced a few lengthy excerpts from Naomi’s paper relevant to recent discussions here, though I encourage you to read the whole paper, especially the three cases that she describes. You can find the entire set of papers in the special issue here.

Oreskes, N., 2004. Science and public policy: what's proof got to do with it? Environmental Science & Policy, 7:369-383 (PDF).

In recent years it has become common for informed defenders of the status quo to argue that the scientific information pertinent to an environmental claim is uncertain, unreliable, and, fundamentally, unproven. Lack of proof is then used to deny demands for action. But the idea that science ever could provide proof upon which to base policy is a misunderstanding (or misrepresentation) of science, and therefore of the role that science ever could play in policy. In all but the most trivial cases, science does not produce logically indisputable proofs about the natural world. At best it produces a robust consensus based on a process of inquiry that allows for continued scrutiny, re-examination, and revision. . .
Most of us realize that proof—at least in an absolute sense—is a theoretical ideal, available in geometry class but not in real life. Nevertheless, many of us still cling to the idea that some set of facts—some body of knowledge—will resolve our problems and make clear how we should proceed. History suggests otherwise: earlier scientific wisdom has been overturned, earlier generations of experts have made mistakes. This is as true in physics and chemistry as in biology and geology. The criteria that are typically invoked in defense of the reliability of scientific knowledge—quantification, replicability, falsifiability—have proved no guarantee. Moreover, experts do not always agree. Even when there is no transparent political, social, or religious dimension to a debate, honest and intelligent people may come to different conclusions in the face of the "same" evidence, because they have focused their sights on different dimensions of that evidence, emphasizing different elements of the evidentiary landscape. Even when a scientific community reaches consensus on a previously contested issue—as earth scientists did in the 1960s over moving continents—there are always dimensions that remain unexplained. In the future, plate tectonics no doubt will be modified, perhaps overturned entirely. Indeed, there are a handful of scientists today who advocate Earth expansion to explain continental separation, and they are of course eager to detail the limitations of plate tectonics theory (e.g. Shieds, 2003). Nevertheless, for now plate tectonics remains the consensus of most Earth scientists: our best basis for understanding the Earth. . .

Scientific consensus is a complex process—involving a matrix of social, political, economic, historical considerations along with the epistemic—and history shows that its achievement typically requires a long time: years, decades, even centuries. But even when a stable consensus is achieved, scientific uncertainty is not eliminated. Rather, once we have deemed the remaining problems as "minor"—which is to say, insufficiently great as to warrant further concern—we simply live with them (Engelhardt and Caplan, 1987). Moreover, the grounds on which scientific communities have concluded that evidence is "good enough" to warrant living with the uncertainties have varied enormously throughout the course of history. A determined individual may choose to pursue these uncertainties, and that determination may successfully destabilize the prior consensus. In a "purely" scientific debate, that determination would, ideally, arise solely from the demands of empirical evidence, but no debate is ever "purely" scientific, given that, at minimum, credibility, reputation, and, perhaps future funding are at stake.

Posted on November 14, 2006 07:15 AM View this article | Comments (16)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Risk & Uncertainty | Science + Politics

November 11, 2006

Interview with Richard Tol

The German magazine WirtschaftsWoche has posted online (auf Deutsch) an interview with economist Richard Tol discussing the economics of climate change. Benny Peiser has provided an English translation which we are happy to re-post here in full.

"WE'VE GOT ENOUGH TIME" - AN INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD TOL

WirtschaftsWoche, 11 November 2006

The eminent climate economist Richard Tol on climate alarmism and the right strategies for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions

WirtschaftsWoche (WiWo): Mr. Tol, You have called the report on the financial consequences of climate change by economics professor Sir Nicholas Stern "alarmist". How did you arrive at this judgement?

Tol: I speak of alarmism because Stern, in the summary of his report, estimated the damage [from climate change] to cost between 5 to 20 per cent of global GDP, but he is basing this on extremely pessimistic scenarios. He ignored other studies that estimate damages to be far below one per cent. This is how he arrives at the scary numbers. At the same time, the summary also gives the impression that the five per cent [of GDP damage] commences immediately and will continue for eternity if noting is done to counter it immediately. In the unabridged version, however, it is stated that the five per cent will be reached in 2075 at the earliest. This procedure is temerarious and an unacceptable way of political advice-giving.

WiWo: Now that the ice caps of the poles melt faster than even the leading sceptics have feared, isn't it essential to ring the alarm bells?

Tol: First of all, the report does not review these developments at all, and secondly any alarm does not help. It will take 50 to 100 years to lower the emission of greenhouse gases to an agreeable level. In order to achieve this goal, soberness is demanded.

WiWo: Why did Nicholas Stern sound the alarm nevertheless? He was the chief economist at the World Bank and is generally considered to be a sober person.

Tol: At the outset, the study was a purely academic exercise. Then the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, who commissioned the Stern Review, discerned that the leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron, put the Labour Party increasingly under environmental pressure by portraying himself greener than the government. In order to raise its [environmental] profile, the government thus strongly influenced the tenor of the study.

WiWo: The fact that the earth is warming up due to human behaviour is scientifically beyond doubt. Isn't it then sensible to forcefully steer against it, as Nicholas Stern suggests?

Tol: We must do something and should now begin, that's where I agree with Stern. But there is no risk of damage that would force us to act injudiciously. We've got enough time to look for the economically most effective options rather than dash into 'actionism' which then becomes very expensive.

WiWo: Stern calculates that a forceful fight against global warming is today twenty times cheaper than doing nothing.

Tol: That is completely exaggerated. Stern has set the costs of damage much too high and the costs of emission reduction much too low. This employment of incorrect numbers makes it easy for opponents of climatic protection to evade accepting a consensus. They correctly assert: What the Stern Review claims is rubbish. You can only have an effective climate policy if everyone takes part. We need a long-term solution, and it has to be global one. The Stern Review perturbs this agreement process to the extent that it performs a disservice to the goals of climate protection.

WiWo: How seriously, according to your estimates, are the economic consequences of global warming?

Tol: The situation is serious, but definitely not as seriously as Stern claims. According to my computations the greenhouse effect can cause annual damage of around 0,5 per cent of global GDP. In the next century, when the impact of global warming will be felt fully, the damage could amount to two to four per cent, if nothing would be done about it.

WiWo: What do you suggest as counter measure?

Tol: The means of my choice would be to raise world-wide taxes on emissions. But that is politically not feasible. Thus, emission trading remains as the second best solution. The state allocates certificates to businesses which - at the outset - permit them free emissions of carbon dioxide, as they do today, and without setting secondary costs. However, if they want to produce more, they must either produce more [energy] efficiently or buy from other businesses (which have reduced their carbon dioxide output) certificates at a kind stock exchange. Such a free market system helps the environment.

WiWo: In Europe, such a regulatory system has been in place since last year. Nevertheless, it hasn't had much of an effect.

Tol: That is because of the fact that too many certificates were allocated. Consequently, little money can be made from the sales of certificates at the moment. Thus there are no incentives for lowering CO2-emissions. In order to have any lasting effect, the certificate trade would have to incorporate traffic, households and agriculture, additional greenhouse gases and the whole world economy. Europe alone cannot save the climate.

WiWo: Why should China and India, whose industries still produce a great deal with outdated technologies, join in the certificate trade?

Tol: It is exactly this outdated technology that makes it possible for China and India to achieve large CO2 reductions by way of relatively small investments. They could sell the emissions they reduce to Europe or the USA and could thus make a lot of money.

WiWo: The United Nations is currently trying to agree a new international climate treaty. How promising are such agreements?

Tol: They don't accomplish much as the Kyoto Treaty has already revealed. Only few countries committed themselves to concrete goals at all, only few uphold their obligations, and some, like Canada recently, simply pull out again. And why not - there is no threat of sanctions!

WiWo: Does that mean that 6000 UN delegates in Nairobi are gathering for a useless chit-chat?

Tol: They should concentrate on organising an international trade with certificates and close co-operation regarding the introduction of low-carbon technologies. Unfortunately neither issue is on the agenda. In fact, according to our calculations, world-wide greenhouse gas emissions could be halved in one fell swoop if the world would employ the best available technologies.

WiWo: Isn't it rather utopian to believe that all the countries in the world would agree on uniform technical standards?

Tol: It would often be sufficient if few market-dominating countries made advances in this direction. All the cars of this world, for example, are manufactured in just ten countries. If these countries would agree to reduce pollution output per HP by half in say ten years, that would relieve the environment enormously. The rest of the world would have no choice than to join in. Something similar applies to power stations, for which even fewer countries possess the technology. A bulk of problems would be solved if we succeeded to decouple energy consumption and emission output by means of modern technologies.

WiWo: Should the governments subsidise certain technologies financially?

Tol: We should certainly prevent civil servants to determine what is good or bad in this respect. Policy should be limited to determine certain goals, just like California, for instance, did with regards to car emissions. This would accelerate research and development most effectively.

WiWo: The German government reinforces the employment of renewable energies such as wind and sun. Wouldn't a rapid expansion of nuclear energy protect global climate substantially better?

Tol: The huge amount of money that is flowing into wind energy in Germany is an off-putting example of what happens when governments select the technology. The people who are now earning very well on account of wind turbines had most excellent relations to the formerly Green [Party run] Department of the Environment. Much money is flowing although wind energy is very unreliable and will never provide more than ten per cent of the total energy requirement. In addition, wind energy is expensive and technical progress already today seems to be exhausted to a large extent. Nuclear power can be a solution. In any case, it is more reliable and, most likely, also cheaper in the long term.

WiWo: Some experts believe that it costs less to adapt to climate change instead of stopping it. Are they right?

Tol: We should do both. In order to prevent that rising sea levels flood coastal areas, the building of dykes is an inexpensive solution. But we should not let global warming proceed unconstrained, otherwise we risk that one day the water in the oceans evaporates.

WiWo: Next year, the IPCC, the scientific committee of the UN in charge of assessing climate change, will issue its next report. Is there sufficient economic expertise readily available in the IPCC?

Tol: Unfortunately, not at all. Over the years, the IPCC has become ever greener and the few economists, who were previously involved, have been pushed out. Obviously, this casts doubt on the quality of the results.

WiWo: On a personal note, how confident are you that the climate can be still salvaged?

Tol: I do not see any reason to panic. We've got enough time to act in response. And, it would appear that the Americans and Chinese, the two biggest climate sinners, will soon invest much more in modes of climate protection. The results of the American elections will strengthen climate activists in the USA so that I envisage new concrete climate programmes in the next three years. The Chinese will follow suit in the next decade, not least because otherwise they will be threatened by catastrophic environmental damage. That will generate a huge drive.

Posted on November 11, 2006 09:29 AM View this article | Comments (8)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Risk & Uncertainty

November 10, 2006

Interview With Chris Landsea

Thomson Scientific has an interesting interview with NOAA's Chris Landsea online here. In the interview Chris discusses our work on normalized hurricane losses as well as the recent debate over hurricanes and global warming. According to Thomson Scientific, Chris is the 2nd most highly cited scientist in the world on tropical cyclones 1996-February 28, 2006, and he also has the 2nd most cites per paper. You can see an interesting map of the most cited papers on tropical cyclones here.

Posted on November 10, 2006 02:24 AM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

Guardian Op-Ed on Adaptation

Last month I wrote an invited op-ed on the importance of adaptation in climate policy for the Guardian Unlimited, the online website of the Guardian newspaper, published in the UK. There won't be much new to frequent readers here. The op-ed can be found here. Comments welcomed!

Posted on November 10, 2006 02:16 AM View this article | Comments (12)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

November 09, 2006

Earmarking at CU-Boulder

For about the past two years I have served on the University of Colorado-Boulder’s Federal Relations Advisory Committee (FRAC). One issue that occupies a lot of the time and attention of the FRAC is the pursuit of congressional earmarks. In the FRAC we have discussed earmarking priorities for the campus, heard from faculty who want to pursue an earmark, and heard status reports from our lobbyists on prospects for earmarks. It is safe to say that federal earmarks have been a pretty high priority of the FRAC, at least during my time on the committee.

Long-time readers of Prometheus may recall these two pieces (here and here) from the past 18 months in which I have discussed the issue of congressional earmarks and my sense that the issue needs some attention here at CU-Boulder. However, aside from these pieces that allude to our discussions in the FRAC, in general I have stayed away from publicizing my concerns with Colorado-Boulder’s approach to academic earmarks and sought to work within the system to create effective change. No more.

Last week I resigned from the FRAC not only because I have found the campus approach to dealing with earmarks far too ad hoc for a major university, but because I viewed the process within the FRAC for potentially improving the approach to earmarking to be ineffective. After two years my patience has run out for working within the system and I have decided to simply make my case in a more public manner. So just like a policy wonk I have written an op-ed for our campus paper, which I am certain will make some people on campus a bit unhappy with me. The op-ed appears in the 9 November 2006 issue of the Silver & Gold Record, the newspaper for faculty and staff at the University of Colorado.

I have reproduced the op-ed in full below, and I have also shared it in advance with various CU administrators and members of the faculty. The op-ed seeks to explain the issues involving earmarking and why I think they matter for our campus. I understand already that there will be a response to the op-ed, which we will be happy to post. As usual, reader comments welcomed!

Academic Earmarking at CU-Boulder

Roger Pielke, Jr.
Director, Center for Science and Technology Policy Research
Professor, Environmental Studies
Fellow, CIRES

9 November 2006
Silver & Gold Record
University of Colorado

What separates a good university from a great university? According to Michael Crow, President of Arizona State University, "The great universities are in charge of their own destinies and they know it. And they advance their ideas to everyone who will listen to them to acquire the resources necessary to implement their ideas." Here at the University of Colorado-Boulder we have many opportunities to serve as a national leader in creating the 21st century university. One such opportunity lies in how we handle academic earmarks. However, on academic earmarks CU-Boulder is a follower rather than a leader, which has the effects of wasting of limited campus resources and contributing to bad policies at the campus and national levels.

Academic earmarks refer to federal funding obtained outside the normal process of proposal and peer review that most researchers are familiar with. The late Congressman George Brown (D-CA), who was a tireless champion of scientific research, described them as follows, "earmarks are the result of an academic institution using its special access to an influential Member of Congress (with access often facilitated by a high-paid lobbyist) using this advantage to gain a cash award without having to compete for the money or bear public scrutiny. The public and the taxpayer are the real losers as a result of this practice."

Why do universities seek federal earmarks? Well, for one, there is big money available. In 2006 almost $2.5 billion dollars of earmarks were distributed to universities. With budgets tight everywhere, and overall federal research funding peaking after years of increases, it is understandable that universities around the country might try for the easy payoff of a congressional earmark. CU-Boulder is no different.

Last week I resigned from the campus' Federal Relations Advisory Committee (FRAC), chaired by Susan Avery, Vice Chancellor for Research, over the campus policy -- or lack thereof -- on academic earmarking. For much of the past year I, along with the support of several colleagues, have pressed the FRAC to develop and seek adoption of a formal policy on academic earmarking in order to clarify what is a murky, behind-the-scenes process that operates in far-too-ad hoc of a manner for a university seeking excellence. The draft policy that we developed does not forbid earmarking, but it does state that "it is the general practice of the University not to seek and/or accept Congressionally directed or "earmarked" funds, except under specific, well-defined circumstances." The "well-defined circumstances" are clearly described in the draft policy. In effect, the policy would change earmarking from a proactive to a reactive process which would occur only in rare instances when exemptions to the general practice are met.

But when I learned last week that the campus was going to ignore this draft policy in hot pursuit of federal earmarks again this year, I decided that it was in the best interests of all involved for me to simply resign and make my case to the university community outside of the FRAC. There are three reasons why I think that the current CU-Boulder approach to academic earmarks is deeply flawed.

First, the obsessive focus on earmarks is a waste of our collective time and resources. Over the past three years, earmark funding represents about 0.2% of externally-supported research on the Boulder campus. This is trivial. From a cost-benefit perspective alone, the focus on earmarks is inefficient. Consider that the campus would receive more additional research funding simply by winning 1-2 additional competitive grants each year. Given the admirable success rates of CU faculty in securing external funding this would only mean submitting a total of 5-10 more grants on an annual basis among its 1,000 faculty members (and 1,500 additional members of its research staff). Our federal relations efforts would be far better spent on activities like ensuring that each member of the Colorado congressional delegation is invited to campus each year and warmly received, on providing grant-writing support and training for faculty who prepare the grant proposals that provide 99.8% of campus sponsored research, and by facilitating the interaction of campus researchers with agency officials in Washington, among many other worthwhile activities.

A second issue is that the focus on earmarks contributes to pathological national science policies. In my short time spent in George Brown's office in 1991 I became convinced of the merit of his views that academic earmarking does far more for members of Congress than for the scientific enterprise. For more than 20 years the American Association of Universities has -- with little success -- sought to stem the tide of academic earmarking. Former Congressman David Minge (D-MN) wrote in 2001 that academic earmarks are "vicious prostitutions of the political process that are practiced on a bipartisan basis," a view widely shared among scholars and observers of science and technology policy. To the extent that CU-Boulder contributes to pathological academic earmarking, we are contributing to federal science policies that eat away at academia’s cherished principles of peer review and accountability. By taking a leadership role CU-Boulder can perhaps help in some small way to correct this policy failure. In any case, the economic benefits of taking a leadership role would far exceed any financial loss resulting from an earmarking policy that limited the ability of CU-Boulder to pursue earmarks. Consider that in 2006 99.98% of academic earmarks went to institutions other than CU-Boulder.

Third, even for the minority who might reject the argument that earmarking is bad science policy, our current on-campus approach is still left wanting. Who among us gets to pursue an earmark? By what criteria are earmark opportunities selected and scarce university resources and political capital devoted to pursuing them? How much time and money is spent on campus to pursue earmarks? If you don't know the answers to these questions, then you are not alone. I have spent the past two years on the FRAC and the answers to these questions still remain unclear to me. Absent transparent policy and procedures for earmarking CU leadership leaves itself open to perceptions of cronyism and favoritism, irrespective of the reality. At a minimum, the lack of a formal campus policy governing earmarking works against equity, accountability, and openness.

CU-Boulder strives for excellence. But excellence is unlikely to result if we are following rather than leading. Achieving greatness demands that we clearly define our values and what those values mean for our actions. On the issue of academic earmarking, CU-Boulder has an opportunity to lead the nation. Or we could follow the crowd simply because it is the easy thing to do. We are in charge of our own destiny, and we know it. But are we a good university or a great university?

-end-

Posted on November 9, 2006 01:53 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education | R&D Funding

November 08, 2006

Some Early Thoughts on the New Congress

These are just a few random thoughts on the morning after a historic U.S. midterm election about the possible consequences for science and technology policies. In an effort to be fair, I should add a disclaimer to note that I had the opportunity to work for the Democrats in 1991 in the House Science Committee under Congressman George Brown (D-CA). Seeing what happened to many of my friends and former colleagues when control of the House changed over in 1994 left a sour taste with me, and not just for the Gingrich Republicans, but more generally for the arrogance of political partisanship. I believe that the seeds of the current Republican loss are found not just in the policies of the Bush Administration (but to be sure, this plays a big part), but more deeply in how Republicans have managed their control over Congress since 1994. So I will admit to some personal satisfaction in seeing the tide turn once again. With that out of the way, here are some thoughts about the 110th Congress.

When I was in graduate school in the early 1990s getting a PhD in political science, it was all the rage to talk about the consequences of "divided government" referring to control of Congress by one party and the presidency by another. For some political scientists, governance under divided government was not only inelegant but also considered to be inefficient. I recall reading many articles emphasizing the importance of united government. Since 2002, with united Republican control of Congress and the Presidency (for the first time since 1953-1955) discussion among political scientists (although I am not as close to these discussions as I once was) of the perils of divided government appears to have been replaced with concerns over the perils of unified government.

As the United States once again enters a period of divided government, what consequences might we expect on issues of science and technology policy?

First and foremost, expect more oversight. One of the greatest challenges of unified government is that there are fewer incentives for effective oversight of the executive branch by congress. Oversight is challenging in the best of circumstances, and this is made worse when political incentives are added to the mix. If there is one thing that we might expect from the 110th Congress it will be greater oversight.

Greater oversight will be a welcome change, as recent Congresses have been derelict in their oversight duties. Much of the Congressional oversight will be directed to U.S. policies related to Iraq, and appropriately so. But there are also areas of science and technology policy where greater oversight should occur, including issues such as the the future of the Space Station, Space Shuttle, and NASA, Administration stem cell policy, energy policy, climate policy, state science policies and federalism, academic earmarking, technology transfer, management of the NPOESS project, drug approval processes, government science advice, K-12 on up through post-graduate education, workforce issues, and the list goes on.

In fact, there is such a need for congressional oversight that it will be very easy for the Democrats to lose focus and completely waste the next two years. The 2008 election will compress the time available to the 100th Congress to conduct effective oversight, creating incentives for more politically-motivated oversight, such as on stem cell policy, to the exclusion of wonky-behind-the-scenes-run-of-the-mill oversight in an effort to create advantage in the 2008 election. A little of this posturing should be expected, but too much will be a wasteful distraction. Arguably the Republicans lost sight of governance during their run in Congress – the Democrats should not do the same.

In the first year of the new Congress there will be those who seek vengeance for the past 12 years of Republican rule (particularly in the House). The transition that followed the 1994 Gingrich revolution left bad feelings with many Democrats, who had ruled continuously for decades (of course creating pent up demands for revenge among Republicans). Acting like the Gingrich Republicans may be emotionally satisfying to the Democrats, but won’t contribute to effective policy making or the future prospects for the Democratic Party in Congress (see, e.g., 2006 midterm elections).

More speculatively, I do not expect to see dramatic changes in specific science and technology policies, or even much progressive legislation emerge from the House or Senate. Both chambers are only narrowly controlled by the Democrats (assuming current Senate results hold), and thus will be governed by the middle, not the extreme. This diminishes the likelihood of significant policy change. On the other hand, it may be that a few pieces of novel legislation emerge simply with the goal of forcing a veto by President Bush – it is never too early to be thinking about the 2008 campaign commercials. Stem cell policy and energy policies are two issues that might fit into this latter category. I would expect that climate change will get a lot of talk, and there likely will be considerable debate over the issue, but I doubt there will be any significant action or realignment on the issue in Congress, and of course the presidential veto precludes significant departure from business-as-usual in any case.

As far as funding for research and development, I do not expect to see much if any change. R&D has always enjoyed strong bipartisan support and this won’t change. The macro-budgetary constraints have not changed, so don’t expect the funding picture to change.

Comments/critiques/other views are welcomed!

Posted on November 8, 2006 06:55 AM View this article | Comments (19)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics

November 07, 2006

Normalized US Hurricane Damage: 1900-2005

We are happy to release a new paper and dataset on normalized U.S. hurricane damages for the period 1900-2005. The paper and dataset can be found here. Please note that we are releasing the paper and the data upon submission for publication, so changes may result from the process of peer review. Comments are welcomed. In particular we are interested in hearing how people are using the dataset. I'll be discussing the data in various future posts. Here is what one of our normalization schemes looks like, 1900-2005.

Posted on November 7, 2006 12:51 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

November 06, 2006

Sarewitz and Pielke (2000)

We wrote this piece (in PDF) for The Atlantic Monthly in 2000. It seems to have held up pretty well since then, though it is true that in this piece we don't talk much about energy policy. If climate policy is to do any better than it present performance-- both with respect to adaptation and mitigation -- than a reframing of the issue is going to be necessary. Right now the approach is simply to turn up the volume on a framing that is fundamentally flawed. It's a bit like talking louder to someone who doesn't speak your language. Sure, you'll get their attention, but eventually they'll tune you out.

Have a look at our paper, comments welcomed.

Posted on November 6, 2006 07:04 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

November 05, 2006

Honest Broker Sighting

Just over the horizon.

I'd like to see if we can push up that 30 April 2007 date. I'll also see if we can swing some sort of discount for Prometheus readers ;-)

Posted on November 5, 2006 06:21 PM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

November 04, 2006

Mike Hulme on the Climate Debate

Mike Hulme, Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, and Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, has written a thoughtful, accurate, and brave op-ed for the BBC on the curent state of the climate debate. Here is how he begins:

Climate change is a reality, and science confirms that human activities are heavily implicated in this change.
But over the last few years a new environmental phenomenon has been constructed in this country - the phenomenon of "catastrophic" climate change.

It seems that mere "climate change" was not going to be bad enough, and so now it must be "catastrophic" to be worthy of attention.

The increasing use of this pejorative term - and its bedfellow qualifiers "chaotic", "irreversible", "rapid" - has altered the public discourse around climate change.

This discourse is now characterised by phrases such as "climate change is worse than we thought", that we are approaching "irreversible tipping in the Earth's climate", and that we are "at the point of no return".

I have found myself increasingly chastised by climate change campaigners when my public statements and lectures on climate change have not satisfied their thirst for environmental drama and exaggerated rhetoric.

It seems that it is we, the professional climate scientists, who are now the (catastrophe) sceptics. How the wheel turns.

His comments about being chastised for not going far enough in his pronouncements on climate change strike a chord very familiar to me. Comments by Mike Hulme echo those made by Steve Rayner, Hans von Storch and Nico Stehr, and others. Could it be that we are seeing the emergence of more responsible leadership on climate change among the scientific community? It sure looks that way.

Thanks Mike for speaking out.

Posted on November 4, 2006 08:30 AM View this article | Comments (25)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Risk & Uncertainty

November 02, 2006

Update on Hurricanes and Global Warming

This news story about an all-too-predictable spat between Kevin Trenberth and Bill Gray reminds me that we are overdue to provide an update on the issue of hurricanes and global warming.

In December, 2005, five of us attempted to summarize the state of the science on hurricanes and global warming, including the science of impacts and the policy significance of current understandings. At that time we concluded (PDF) :

. . . the state of the peer-reviewed knowledge today is such that there are good reasons to expect that any conclusive connection between global warming and hurricanes or their impacts will not be made in the near term.

In May of this year we had a chance to once again address this issue in the form of a response to an extended comment on our earlier paper. We concluded by quoting a statement prepared by the World Meteorological Organization’s Tropical Meteorology Research Program Panel in February, 2006(PDF) :

The research issues discussed here are in a fluid state and are the subject of much current investigation. Given time the problem of causes and attribution of the events of 2004–2005 will be discussed and argued in the refereed scientific literature. Prior to this happening it is not possible to make any authoritative comment.

The WMO statement was meaningful because it was coauthored by many of the big names involved in research on hurricanes and climate change. Thanks to the WMO there has been another update made available on the community’s perspective as a result of background papers prepared for an upcoming workshop on tropical cyclones to be held in Costa Rica at the beginning of December.

Two background papers are particularly relevant to the community’s views on hurricanes and climate change. One presents a draft statement for discussion at the Costa Rica workshop prepared by Dr. John McBride, Dr Jeff Kepert (Australia), Prof. Johnny Chan (Hong Kong, China). Julian Heming (United Kingdom). Dr. Greg Holland, Professor Kerry Emanuel, Dr. Thomas Knutson, Dr Hugh Willoughby, Dr. Chris Landsea (USA). It says (PDF):

Emanuel (2005) has produced evidence for a substantial increase in the power of tropical cyclones (denoted by the integral of the cube of the maximum winds over time) during the last 50 years. This result is supported by the findings of Webster et al (2005) that there has been a substantial global increase (nearly 100%) in the proportion of the most severe tropical cyclones (category 4 and 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale), from the period from 1970 to 1995, which has been accompanied by a similar decrease in weaker systems.
The research community is deeply divided over whether the results of these studies are due, at least in part, to problems in the tropical cyclone data base. Precisely, the historical record of tropical cyclone tracks and intensities is a byproduct of real-time operations. Thus its accuracy and completeness changes continuously through the record as a result of the continuous changes and improvements in data density and quality, changes in satellite remote sensing retrieval and dissemination, and changes in training. In particular a step-function change in methodologies for determination of satellite intensity occurred with the introduction of geosynchronous satellites in the mid to late 1970’s.

The division in the community on the Webster et al and on the Emanuel papers is not as to whether Global Warming can cause a trend in tropical cyclone intensities. Rather it is on whether such a signal can be detected in the historical data base. Also it can be difficult to isolate the forced response of the climate system in the presence of substantial decadal and multi-decadal natural variability, such as the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation.

Whilst the existence of a large multi-decadal oscillation in Atlantic tropical cyclones is still generally accepted, some scientists believe that a trend towards more intense cyclones is emerging. This is a hotly debated area for which we can provide no definitive conclusion. It is agreed that there is no evidence for a decreasing trend in cyclone intensities. [emphasis added]

A second background paper provides a comprehensive literature review, led by Tom Knutson of NOAA, leading an extremely distinguished and diverse working group consisting of K. Emanuel, S. Emori, J. Evans, G. Holland, C. Landsea, K.-b. Liu, R. E. McDonald, D. Nolan, M. Sugi, Y. Wang. It includes the following statement (PDF):

There are substantial roadblocks both in making reliable future projections about TC activity and in determining whether a trend can be detected in historical TC data.

So based on these recent statements prepared by scientists with very different perspectives in the debate over hurricanes and climate change, I am happy to report that our 2005 and 2006 peer-reviewed papers are holding up extremely well. (As an aside, anyone want to offer odds on whether or not our 2005 paper will be cited by IPCC?;-)

As far as hurricane impacts and hurricane policy, the most relevant update is the report of our May, 2006 workshop in partnership with Munich Re, which can be found here. The consensus presented at this workshop was entirely consistent with our papers on hurricanes and climate change published in 2005 and 2006.

Bottom line? If you want a scientifically accurate and comprehensive perspective on the state of the science of hurricanes and global warming, as well as the significance of the science for societal impacts and policy responses, you could do much worse than our 2005 and 2006 papers, which in my view have held up exceedingly well in the context of a rapidly evolving debate.

Pielke, Jr., R. A., C. Landsea, M. Mayfield, J. Laver and R. Pasch, 2005. Hurricanes and global warming, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 86:1571-1575. (PDF)

Pielke, Jr., R. A., C.W. Landsea, M. Mayfield, J. Laver, R. Pasch, 2006. Reply to Hurricanes and Global Warming Potential Linkages and Consequences, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 87, pp. 628-631. (PDF)

Posted on November 2, 2006 01:10 AM View this article | Comments (10)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

November 01, 2006

The World in Black and White

Fred Pearce at the New Scientist apprently thinks that if you are critical of the IPCC, then you must be one of those nasty "sceptics." He writes in a news story:

Some insiders suggest that the IPCC may be more cautious in its upcoming report than it has been in the past, but this is unlikely to placate climate-change sceptics. Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado, Boulder, accuses the IPCC leadership of "seeing their role as political advocates rather than honest brokers".

Of course, as readers here know well, Mr. Pearce is just wrong (I've emailed the New Scientist as well). I accept the results of IPCC Working Group I and have for many years advocated policy action on both adaptation and mitigation. Mr. Pearce's lumping me in with the sceptics is particularly ironic because his entire article is a preemptive defense of IPCC scientists who are "targets of concerted attacks apparently designed to bring down their reputations and careers." If Mr. Pearce wanted to know my views he might have just called, rather than assuming that anyone who puts forth a criticism of the IPCC must be a climate sceptic.

It must be nice to see the world in terms of only good guys and bad guys, with not a shade of grey in sight.

Posted on November 1, 2006 07:35 PM View this article | Comments (19)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

October 30, 2006

Stern’s Cherry Picking on Disasters and Climate Change

The Stern Report has this passage on p. 131:

The costs of extreme weather events are already high and rising, with annual losses of around $60 billion since the 1990s (0.2% of World GDP), and record costs of $200 billion in 2005 (more than 0.5% of World GDP). New analysis based on insurance industry data has shown that weather-related catastrophe losses have increased by 2% each year since the 1970s over and above changes in wealth, inflation and population growth/movement. If this trend continued or intensified with rising global temperatures, losses from extreme weather could reach 0.5 - 1% of world GDP by the middle of the century. If temperatures continued to rise over the second half of the century, costs could reach several percent of GDP each year, particularly because the damages increase disproportionately at higher temperatures.

The source is a paper prepared by Robert Muir-Wood and colleagues as input to our workshop last May on disasters and climate change. Muir-Wood et al. do report the 2% trend since 1970. What Stern Report does not say is that Muir-Wood et al. find no trend 1950-2005 and Muir-Wood et al. acknowledge that their work shows a very strong influence of 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons in the United States. Muir-Wood et al. are therefore very cautious and responsible about their analysis. Presumably this is one reason why at the workshop Robert Muir-Wood signed on to our consensus statements, which said the following:

Because of issues related to data quality, the stochastic nature of extreme event impacts, length of time series, and various societal factors present in the disaster loss record, it is still not possible to determine the portion of the increase in damages that might be attributed to climate change due to GHG emissions . . . In the near future the quantitative link (attribution) of trends in storm and flood losses to climate changes related to GHG emissions is unlikely to be answered unequivocally.

The Stern Report’s selective fishing out of a convenient statement from one of the background papers prepared for our workshop is a classic example of cherry picking a result from a diversity of perspectives, rather than focusing on the consensus of the entire spectrum of experts that participated in our meeting. The Stern Report even cherry picks from within the Muir-Wood et al. paper.

Why does this matter? The Stern Report uses the cherry-picked information as the basis for one of its important conclusions about the projected costs of climate change(on p. 138),

The costs of climate change for developed countries could reach several percent of GDP as higher temperatures lead to a sharp increase in extreme weather events and large-scale changes.

To support its argument the Stern Report further relies on a significantly flawed report from the Association of British Insurers, which we critiqued here. Its presentation of the future costs of disasters and climate change is highly selective to put it mildly.

I haven’t yet read the whole Stern report, but if its treatment of disaster costs and climate change – an area where I do have some expertise – is indicative of its broader analysis, then Richard Tol’s comment in the open thread would appear to be on target.

Posted on October 30, 2006 11:58 AM View this article | Comments (8)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

October 29, 2006

Open Thread on UK Stern Report

The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, focused on climate policy, is going to be released tomorrow and I'm sure, like everyone else, we'll be discussing it. Until then I thought I'd open a space for anyone who is interested in discussing it or offering relevant pointers. The pre-release media coverage is already pretty interesting. When released, the report will be available here.

Posted on October 29, 2006 10:44 AM View this article | Comments (23)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

October 27, 2006

Origin of Phrase --Basic Research--?

I am looking for the earliest reference to the phrase "basic research."

I'll start off the bidding with:

J. Huxley. 1935. Science and Social Needs. Harper & Bros. Publishers, New York.

Posted on October 27, 2006 04:04 PM View this article | Comments (6)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Recap: Atlantic SSTs and U.S. Hurricane Damages

We’ve had an interesting discussion this week on the historical relationship of Atlantic sea surface temperatures and U.S. hurricane damage. I began by asking:

What Does the Historical Relationship of Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature and U.S. Hurricane Damage Portend for the Future?

This post provides a recap of the week’s discussion.

I answered the initial question with two perspectives, one that I prepared and one by Munich Re’s Eberhard Faust. The conversation was quickly joined by noted hurricane expert Jim Elsner from Florida State, who claimed that his preferred approach definitively resolved this question. Jim and I have had a lengthy exchange this week in the comments, including an effort on my part to replicate part of his analysis, successful in the end, but with a mistake along the way. Thanks to Jim for helping make this replication successful

Even with the lengthy exchange, I remain confused about what Elsner is arguing. He has claimed that the signal of SST couldn’t be seen using all historical damage data in a simple regression because of the effects of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Here is how Jim described it:

Sometimes when the Atlantic is warm and hurricanes are strong, the steering flow keeps them from reaching the US and the steering during the season can be predicted to some degree by preseason values of the NAO; thus a simple regression of annual loss on SST is inadequate for understanding the relationship between loss and SST.

This last phrase – "a simple regression of annual loss on SST is inadequate for understanding the relationship between loss and SST." – seems completely consistent with the focus of my original post in which I asserted that a relationship between SSTs and damage "may materialize in the future, but one cannot use the past to project such a relationship, it must be based on some other considerations." Elsner, it would seem, agreed that "other considerations" (e.g., like the NAO) actually matter for the ability to identify a signal. But Jim would have none of this potential agreement. He later made what appears to be the opposite argument, that the future influence of SST on damages would be identifiable independent of the NAO, explaining that "The correlation between tropical SST and NAO is small." Either the NAO masks or does not mask a SST signal, it cannot be both -- hence my confusion.

Lost in these very fine points about very marginal statistical relationships is the fact that Jim and I are pretty close in our views, no matter how aggressively he objects to each point that I make. He writes of his answer to my original question about what the past relationship of SSTs and damage tells us about the future:

If all we know are SST and damages from history, then I would assign a personal probability of 60-70% that over the next 100 years the warm SST years will, on average, have greater annual loss totals compared to the cold SST years.

If I were to modify Jim’s statement to more accurately reflect my own perspective, I’d simply change 60-70% to 50%, which in my view is not a particularly big difference. I therefore don’t see our views as being particularly far off from one another (though I am sure that Jim would strongly disagree;-).

I’ll close by referring the reader back to the first post presented in this discussion, and the two graphs that I presented.

To provide my answer to the question posted in Part 1 that kicked off this discussion. If all you know is SSTs and U.S. damage from the historical record -- that is, the data shown in these graphs – then you have no statistical basis for saying what will happen in the future if SSTs increase. Faust suggests that by looking at a subset of the data a stronger relationship can be seen. Elsner suggests that by introducing other climate variables than those presented here and distinguishing intensity from frequency a stronger relationship can be seen. Both Faust’s and Elnser’s points are fairly made. For reasons that you’ll find in the discussion this past week, I find that accepting their arguments at face value (i.e., setting aside the appropriateness of looking at a limited subset of data or the stability of relationships over time) leads to only marginal relationships (at best) whose existence are dependent upon the data of 2005. Sometimes the simplest analysis tells the whole story.

Future increases in Atlantic SSTs may indeed be accompanied by larger amounts of U.S. hurricane damage. But I find little basis for this conclusion in the overall historical record of SSTs and damage. Others disagree. I respect their views, but remain unconvinced by their analyses. If nothing else this exercise has been a wonderful example of the diversity of the scientific enterprise, and how seemingly simple questions are subject to a range of legitimate perspectives. The good news is that effective hurricane policies need not await consensus on this issue!

[Thanks to those of you who emailed ideas and comments!]

Posted on October 27, 2006 07:57 AM View this article | Comments (12)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

October 26, 2006

Another Policy-Related Faculty Position at CU-Boulder

The Environmental Studies Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder announces that it is recruiting a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Environmental Ethics. We are particularly interested in candidates with strong interdisciplinary interests and the ability to teach graduate and undergraduate courses in environmental ethics and the role of values in environmental policy-making. Candidates specializing in any areas of research and disciplinary background are welcome to apply. An earned terminal degree in the field of research specialization is required. The ability to interact with other departments is desirable. The Program is described at http://www.colorado.edu/envirostudies/ . Applicants should send a dossier that includes a CV and a statement of research and teaching interests, and arrange for three letters of reference to be sent, to Environmental Ethics Search Chair, Environmental Studies Program, 397 UCB, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309-0397. Review of completed applications will begin December 1, 2006, but applications will be accepted until the position is filled. The University of Colorado at Boulder is committed to diversity and equality in education and employment.

Posted on October 26, 2006 12:47 PM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education

Conference for Grad Students on Science Policy

Science & Technology in Society:
An International Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Conference

Sponsored by:
The American Association for the Advancement of Science
Arizona State University, Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes
George Mason University
The George Washington University
Virginia Tech

When: March 31 - April 1, 2007
Where: American Association for the Advancement of Science, Headquarters,
Washington, DC

Abstract Deadline: January 16, 2007

This annual conference provides a venue for graduate students from Science & Technology Studies, Science & Technology Policy, Environmental Studies/Policy and related fields to present and receive constructive feedback on their research. In developing the agenda for the conference, the organizing committee's primary goal is to create a forum that encourages intellectual exchange between STS, S&T Policy and Environmental Studies/Policy by assembling diverse and exciting panels around similar themes. As such, the committee will accept the strongest proposals on issues relevant to either field, and build the agenda around them. The agenda for last year's conference (www.stglobal.org) provides examples of common themes
and topics that may be covered this year. In addition to presenting papers, students will have the opportunity to interact with each other and prominent scholars and professionals related to their field(s) of interest. Every year we invite prominent figures from both STS and S&T Policy to deliver keynote addresses. Because we draw participants from all over the world, this conference is an excellent opportunity for young scholars aspiring to work in academic, governmental, or non-governmental settings to build both national and international networks for future research and collaborations.

The conference organizing committee welcomes submissions of abstracts (up to 250 words) for a 15-minute presentation. Please submit abstracts and contact information to our website at www.stglobal.org by January 16, 2007. Notification of abstract acceptance will be given by February 7, 2007.

Information concerning area lodging and registration is posted on the conference website. Travel funds are available for a limited number of presenters. Indicate your need for travel funds when submitting your abstract. For further information, either e-mail abstract@stglobal.org or visit the conference website at www.stglobal.org.

Posted on October 26, 2006 11:24 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Atlantic SSTs and U.S. Hurricane Damages, Part 5

Widely respected hurricane expert Jim Elsner of FSU has posted a lengthy response to these posts over at his blog. I’d encourage interested readers to have a look. This exchange reminds me of a quote attributed to John von Neumann speaking on statistics, "With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk." It also serves as a good reminder that Dan Sarewitz’s notion of an "excess of objectivity" is alive and well even when one is dealing with 34 data points. Let me start by acknowledging that Jim and I are going to agree to disagree and interested readers will have to judge the merits of our arguments themselves.

Elsner argues that the statistics of loss data are best fit by using a "random sum" that combines the statistics of frequency of losses with those of intensity of losses. This approach was first applied to hurricane damage data by my former colleague at NCAR Rick Katz in his 2002 paper "Stochastic modeling of hurricane damage" (in PDF). In my critique of Elsner’s work, I accept that the "random sum" methodology is indeed useful for deconvolving components of a statistical relationship (see, e.g., the acknowledgements in Rick’s paper). As Katz writes in his 2002 paper, "By enabling the variations in total damage to be attributed to either variations in event occurrence or in event damage, the present modeling approach has an inherent advantage over previous analyses." But such a methodology, or any sophisticated statistics, cannot create a strong relationship in the real world where one does not exist.

I have focused my critique on the intensity part of Elsner’s analysis. With Jim’s help I have successfully replicated this part of their work (Part 4) and I have found that their results are highly unstable -- that is they do not hold for 1950-2004 or for 1950-2006. What they report on large losses has much more to do with one event in 2005 (Katrina) than statistical properties of the dataset that are stable over time. On his blog Elsner suggests that the period 1950-2005 "is not intended to stand by itself." That is good, because it does not stand by itself. Based on the lack of a relationship between SSTs and damage in the subset of data that Elsner claims that there is a strong relationship, I have concluded that there is little reason to expect that Elsner’s model would allow for an accurate prediction of future damage amounts conditional on SST. A question for Jim -- What, for instance, would it have predicted for 2006 before the season?

Let me reassert that reasonable people can disagree on such subjects, as I had stated in Part One. Elsner would in my view make a much better case for his arguments by focusing his replies on the substantive questions, such as the obvious lack of stability in his intensity model or what physical basis there exists between May-June SSTs and damage that occurs within the hurricane season (points which he does not address). He is representing his work as "sound science that will likely have a major impact in the reinsurance industry" and indeed he is selling services to these companies. Thus, he should probably expect that his methods will attract attention (and in my experience in academia, attention means that one’s views are worth considering, which should be a compliment, even if the attention is critical as is often the case in academic discussions). If Jim is confident in his approach then he should welcome such scrutiny and efforts to clarify his methods and their significance. Bluster and invective are not only weak means of argumentation, but also make for poor marketing tools.

Let me also once again acknowledge that I did make a mistake in an earlier post, which was corrected online immediately when Jim pointed it out. In response to Jim’s complaints about a lack of apology I posted the following on Jim’s blog:

Jim- Let me once again formally apologize for making a mistake. It happens from time-to-time ;-) It has been corrected, as you know. As I wrote immediately after you brought the data issue to my attention in a personal email to you, "Thanks Jim for following up. Thanks for catching the data sort mix up, apologies for that."
I'll follow up on the substance next. Thanks!

In closing it is worth remembering the old adage that if one tortures data sufficiently it will confess. In this case, simple and straightforward analyses of the relationship of SST and hurricane damage without deconvolving intensity or frequency indicates that there is no relationship. Elsner and Faust both show that if you segregate the data in various ways you can use the influence of 2005 to attain, at best, a very marginal relationship. We disagree on whether such a relationship is indeed marginal and also the importance of such a relationship. Fair enough. As 2006 provides an excellent example of, scientists have no ability to predict hurricane landfalls with accuracy, much less frequency or intensity at landfall before the season starts. Until such a capability has been demonstrated, efforts to predict damage with accuracy will in my view amount to little more than statistical data mining.

Posted on October 26, 2006 08:32 AM View this article | Comments (19)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

October 25, 2006

Atlantic SSTs vs, U.S. Hurricane Damage, Part 4

I am happy to report that after follow-up by Jim Elsner, I have been able to come close to replicating his results. However, the replication does not add much support to the hypothesis that Atlantic SSTs are related to normalized U.S. hurricane damage. Here is why.

First, in his paper (properly cited as Jagger et al., here in PDF) Elsner reports that their analysis was "able to explain 13% of the variation in the logarithm of loss values exceeding $100 mn using an ordinary least squares regression model." Their analysis focused on insured losses and ours is on total losses. Their analysis is in 2000 US dollars and ours in 2005 US dollars. Because insured damages are roughly half the total economic losses, and inflation, wealth, population increase by about 5-7% per year, it makes sense to use a cut-off of $250 million for our dataset rather than $100 million - thanks to the reader who made this observation. (This has the effect of eliminating about 70% of the data, an important point which I will return to later, but for now we are simply replicating the earlier results). With the dataset parsed in this fashion we get the following results.

You can see that just as is reported in Jagger et al.’s paper, this result also shows an r^2 of 0.13 and I get a p value of 0.03, so the results are significant. I am satisfied that we have faithfully replicated his analysis! But what happens when one looks at the relationship from 1950-2004? The following graph shows this result.

By removing 2005 the r^2 is cut in half and the p value goes up to 0.14, which is not statistically significant! So the results presented by Elsner are entirely a function of 2005, which was indeed an extreme year for both SSTs and damage. The question of whether 2005 is like seasons to come is a fair question, but I submit that the answer cannot be found in the historical data on SSTs and damage, not matter how one parses the data. Consider that if one adds 2006 to the results (damage = $250M, MJ SSTs = 26.88) the r^2 of the linear regression drops to 0.08, and the p value is 0.08, just outside statistical significance.

In short, there are a lot of ways to analyze data, and Elsner and colleagues approach is interesting. But in my view it does not provide much support for the hypothesis that SSTs are a useful or accurate predictor of damage. Anytime you have to remove 70% of the data to find a marginal (at best) relationship, it tells you that whatever relationship might exist cannot be that strong.

To underscore my perspective – future increases in Atlantic SSTs may indeed be accompanied by increases in normalized damages, but it is very difficult to accept this hypothesis based on the historical record of damage and SSTs, no matter how it is parsed. Thanks again to Jim for his continued involvement in these discussions.

Posted on October 25, 2006 09:45 AM View this article | Comments (14)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

October 24, 2006

Atlantic SSTs vs. US Hurricane Damage, Part 3

Following up a continuing conversation with hurricane expert Jim Elsner, this post presents an analysis of Atlantic May-June SSTs versus normalized damage 1950-2005, but only including storms which had >$100 million in damage and storms of hurricane or greater strength, as recommended by Jim. As the graph below shows [10-25-06 update -- analysis superceded by Part 4 here], the results of this analysis show no relationship.

[10-25-06 graph reposted in part 4 with >$250M threshold]

I'd welcome Jim's response, but for now I remain unambiguous in my conclusion that there is no relationship between SSTs and normalized damages. If Jim provides his data, I'd be happy to reconcile the different results, and perhaps my views will change. Until then, I necessarily must go with what the available data shows, which is quite unambiguous.

Posted on October 24, 2006 10:20 AM View this article | Comments (10)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

Atlantic SSTs vs. U.S. Hurricane Damage - Part 2

In the comments of our first post on this subject FSU's Jim Elsner, a widely respected hurricane expert, pointed us to a forthcoming paper (here in PDF) in which he and colleagues looked at the relationship of Atlantic SSTs and U.S. hurricane damage. In the paper Elsner et al. make the following claim:

Using the preseason Atlantic SST, we are able to explain 13% of the variation in the logarithm of loss values exceeding $100 mn using an ordinary least squares regression model. The relationship is positive indicating that warmer Atlantic SSTs are associated with larger losses as expected. The rank correlation between the amount of loss (exceeding $100 mn) and the May-June Atlantic SST is +0.31 (P-value = 0.0086) over all years in the dataset and is +0.37 (P-value = 0.0267) over the shorter 1950–2005 period.

I've looked at our dataset and find nothing remotely close like these numbers. Here is my analysis for 1950-2005:

The following graph [updated 10-25-06] shows the relationship of Atlantic May-June SSTs and U.S. normalized hurricane damage (for years in which damage exceeds $100M).

You can see from this graph there is no relationship; The rank correlation I get is -0.088. So I am curious about the reasons for the different results (leaving aside for the moment other questions). Are we using different data? To facilitate analysis, here is the data that I am using in this analysis (for all years 1950-2005, note that original NATL SST data is available here):

[UPDATED 10-25-06]

Year--MJ SST---Damage----------ln(dmg)
1950 26.11 $5,529,320,501 22.43333077
1951 26.65 $358,069,353 19.69623725
1952 26.66 $114,732,781 18.55811634
1953 26.59 $55,787,059 17.83705248
1954 26.49 $35,671,450,726 24.29761651
1955 26.29 $23,274,260,349 23.87061388
1956 26.18 $577,494,764 20.17420993
1957 26.29 $3,841,822,355 22.06921266
1958 27.30 $509,818,712 20.04956575
1959 26.09 $858,779,107 20.5710223
1960 26.60 $29,970,493,213 24.12347918
1961 26.24 $14,468,733,186 23.39525583
1962 26.79 $92,192,732 18.33939186
1963 26.56 $246,291,959 19.32202822
1964 26.44 $15,693,459,358 23.47650986
1965 26.12 $21,261,254,041 23.78015219
1966 26.65 $336,552,296 19.63426411
1967 26.21 $4,016,468,362 22.11366884
1968 26.21 $657,263,225 20.30359514
1969 26.99 $21,225,180,492 23.77845407
1970 26.75 $5,627,670,656 22.45096146
1971 25.94 $2,083,668,167 21.45739572
1972 26.10 $17,579,304,340 23.58998816
1973 26.32 $145,454,945 18.79537694
1974 25.53 $1,073,783,964 20.79445466
1975 25.75 $2,791,286,883 21.74976857
1976 25.82 $486,444,597 20.00263357
1977 26.43 $53,776,992 17.80035628
1978 26.38 $145,903,706 18.79845741
1979 26.87 $14,096,216,718 23.36917228
1980 27.05 $1,602,040,183 21.19454377
1981 26.77 $171,359,510 18.95927431
1982 26.53 $43,148,911 17.58016773
1983 26.98 $7,469,100,008 22.73404035
1984 26.12 $289,628,417 19.48410934
1985 26.00 $11,068,101,797 23.1273331
1986 25.95 $50,026,988 17.72807318
1987 26.94 $19,011,511 16.76055519
1988 26.73 $172,912,773 18.96829783
1989 25.95 $16,770,856,131 23.54290846
1990 26.62 $126,787,371 18.658022
1991 26.10 $3,044,037,453 21.83645058
1992 26.38 $57,663,865,630 24.77789657
1993 26.48 $126,479,971 18.65559452
1994 25.86 $1,938,752,062 21.38531034
1995 26.91 $7,501,957,030 22.73842976
1996 26.71 $6,537,460,457 22.60081462
1997 26.66 $163,560,186 18.91269159
1998 27.27 $6,021,601,438 22.51861908
1999 26.44 $8,277,977,785 22.83686455
2000 26.26 $36,525,742 17.41352783
2001 26.38 $6,970,450,131 22.66494564
2002 26.31 $1,491,060,293 21.12275331
2003 26.38 $4,212,081,525 22.16122279
2004 26.69 $49,130,243,738 24.61774064
2005 27.62 $107,350,000,000 25.39936036

Posted on October 24, 2006 02:02 AM View this article | Comments (11)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

October 22, 2006

What Does the Historical Relationship of Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature and U.S. Hurricane Damage Portend for the Future?

Every four years the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) holds a workshop that brings together forecasters and researchers from around the world who focus on tropical cyclones (which are called "hurricanes" in the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific). The sixth such workshop is taking place in Costa Rica at the end of November and in preparation for that workshop experts in a wide range of issues related to tropical cyclones have prepared number of background reports (links found below). Supported by an all-star international team, I was in charge of preparing a background report on "Factors Contributing to Human and Economic Losses." The WMO has now posted these background papers online. In this post I’d like to discuss one aspect of our report – the relationship of Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and U.S. hurricane damage.

In particular, our report presents two different perspectives on the relationship of SSTs and damage. One perspective, mine, is that there is absolutely nothing in the historical record that suggests a relationship between SSTs and damage. Such a relationship may materialize in the future, but one cannot use the past to project such a relationship, it must be based on some other considerations. A second perspective is presented by my friend and colleague Eberhard Faust of Munich Re. He argues that there is “remarkable evidence for global warming effects on losses.” Because we disagree on this issue, in our report we presented our two different perspectives.

Our two perspectives are presented on pp. 548-550 (Pielke) and pp. 551-555 (Faust) of our report (available here in PDF), and are together in a final section titled "Differing views of the role of global warming on losses" which falls at the very end of our 23 page report at pp. 547-555. The brevity of these two analyses is such that it might make for a very good case study for students to examine in a course in statistics or atmospheric sciences. Which analysis is more compelling and why?

My argument is based on the following graphs.

In the paper I argue:

Figures 5.2.7a and 5.2.7b shows the lack of meaningful relationship between normalized U.S. hurricane damages (NHC data, transformed with the natural log) and North Atlantic [August, September, October = ASO] sea surface temperatures 1950-2005 and 1950-2004. The r-squared values are low with or without 2005 included, and the regression results are not statistically significant (p = 0.28 and 0.69 respectively). There is consequently no systematic evidence that higher SSTs are systematically associated with larger losses.

Eberhard’s begins with the following graph:

In the paper he argues:

But if analyzed more closely, the normalized loss data show nonetheless systematic changes over time. Fundamental to these changes is the presence of a correlation between normalized annual losses and June-October annual tropical sea surface temperatures. Munich Re analyzed the respective annual SST anomalies and annual normalized losses since 1900. Figure 5.2.8 simply displays the normalized losses against the SST anomalies. Also, the average loss calculated for a running window of 0.2°C in width is displayed (red line). The running average is shown over a range where the 0.2°C windows are populated densely enough (at least 12 data points, i.e. half the maximum population, see the dashed black line). A remarkable general increase in average annual normalized losses with increasing SST can be observed over the -0.4°C to +0.4°C anomaly range. Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, which is independent of the distributions involved, gives 0.26 for the range from -0.4°C to +0.4°C and 0.28 for all of the data.

We both think that our respective analyses will be compelling. If you are interested, please read both analyses in full. Eberhard was a key participant in our workshop held last spring on Climate Change and Disaster Losses, the report of which you can find here. I’d be happy to discuss the two analyses in the WMO report in the comments if there is interest. Do note that neither of our perspectives have yet appeared in the peer-reviewed literature, but stay tuned.

For those of you interested in the other background reports prepared for the WMO workshop, they can be found here. In particular have a look at the Topic 4 "Climate variability and seasonal prediction of tropical cyclone activity/intensity" which includes a comprehensive literature review led by Tom Knutson (Special Topic 4a is also relevant). It is safe to conclude that debate persists on this subject. Topic 5 is relevant to those of you interested in policies related to tropical cyclones. We say it often enough here, but bears repeating -- the debate over human-caused climate change and tropical cyclones is scientifically interesting and has become caught up in the politics of global warming, but there is no evidence that energy policies can ever serve as an effective means of modulating future hurricane damage given that the overwhelming factors responsible for increasing damage have been and will continue to be the ever-increasing vulnerability of people and property.

Posted on October 22, 2006 11:28 AM View this article | Comments (11)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

October 20, 2006

Frank Laird on Teaching of Evolution

Frank Laird, of the University of Denver and a faculty affiliate of our Center, has a thought-provoking essay on the teaching of evolution over at the CSPO website titled, "Total Truth and the Ongoing Controversy Over the Teaching of Evolution." Here is how he starts:

The 2005 legal decision in Dover, PA, and the elections for the Kansas State Board of Education, are only the most visible recent skirmishes in the controversy over teaching alternatives to evolution in public schools. Discussions of this controversy mix and sometimes confuse three distinct and separate, though related, processes: what teachers teach, what students learn, and what citizens believe. In a recent Pew poll (2005, pp. 1-2), 42% of Americans said they believed “that life on earth has existed in its present form since the beginning of time.” Proponents of teaching evolution often point to such data as evidence that evolution needs stronger support in the classroom to ward off anti-science trends in society.
However, thinking that you can change what citizens believe by changing what teachers teach is too big a conceptual leap. While there is certainly a relationship between teaching, learning, and belief, it is by no means simple or linear. By separating those processes out we can better understand them. The study of what citizens believe is a huge social question. Scholars have compiled huge amounts of polling data on what citizens believe, though interpreting that data comes with problems, such as assuming that belief is measured by response to questions instead of processes that get citizens to reflect and deliberate on questions. But in any case we know more about what people believe that why they believe it. While formal high school education may have some influence, so will family background, religious affiliation, occupation, race, income, and a host of unquantifiable cultural beliefs and ways of sorting true from false claims, what Sheila Jasanoff has called civic epistemology (Jasanoff 2005).

The second process, what students learn in biology class is a pedagogical question, one that those who study science teaching and learning are most qualified to answer. Anyone who teaches knows that there is not a simple relationship between what teachers teach and what students learn. Does discussing intelligent design (ID) lead to students learning less or more about evolution?

This Perspective focuses on what teachers teach. This in fact is the nub of the evolution controversy and viewing it as an institutional question can help to clarify the issues surrounding it. Strengthening the institutions that govern what teachers teach is both politically more feasible and ethically more defensible than trying to change what citizens believe.

Read the whole thing here.

Posted on October 20, 2006 11:46 AM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education | Science + Politics

October 17, 2006

Climate Change and Disaster Losses Workshop Report

Last May, Peter Hoeppe of Munich Re and I organized a workshop to bring together a diverse group of international experts in the fields of climatology and disaster research. The general questions to be answered at the workshop were:

* What factors account for increasing costs of weather related disasters in recent decades?

* What are the implications of these understandings, for both research and policy?

We are happy to release our final workshop report. From the workshop home page you can download PDFs of:

*The entire report (8 mb)
*Executive Summary
*Summary Report
*Individual participant white papers from:

* C. Bals
* L. Bouwer
* R. Brázdil
* H. Brooks
* I. Burton
* R. Crompton et al.
* A. Dlugolecki
* P. Epstein
* E. Faust et al.
* I. Goklany
* H. Grenier
* B. R. Gurjar et al.
* J. Helminen
* S. Jun
* C. Kemfert and K. Schumacher
* T. Knutson
* R. Muir-Wood et al.
* R. Pielke, Jr.
* S. Raghavan
* G. Tetzlaff
* E. Tompkins
* H. von Storch and R. Weisse
* Q. Ye
* R. Zapata-Marti

The workshop's major sponsors were Munich Re and the U.S. National Science Foundation, with contributing sponsorship from the GKSS Institute for Coastal Research and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.

Posted on October 17, 2006 02:12 PM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

Café Scientifique Tonite in Denver

Café Scientifique
Tuesday 17 October 2006 6:30PM
Wynkoop Brewery Mercantile Room
1634 18th Street Denver, CO 80202

–SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS IN POLITICIZED DEBATES –
details

Roger A. Pielke, Jr. , Professor of Environmental Studies and Director, Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, CU, Boulder

Scientists have choices about the roles that they play in today's controversial political debates such as on global warming, genetically modified foods, and the Plan B emergency contraception just to name a few. Should scientists ever become advocates for certain policy choices? Is it possible to separate personal moral beliefs from professional scientific findings? Where can politicians get unbiased scientific information? Is the current administration any worse than others in 'cherry-picking' scientific facts? A recent article in the National Journal went so far as to suggest that far from being victims of politicization, the scientific community "is itself contributing to the polarization that afflicts America's political culture." Is this really true? Roger Pielke, Jr. will discuss these questions and more, which are addressed in his forthcoming book on the choices scientists have in policy and politics and how they impact the scientific enterprise as whole.

Posted on October 17, 2006 06:42 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics

October 16, 2006

Facts, Values, and Scientists in Policy Debates

Politics, according to famed political scientist David Easton, is about “the authoritative allocation of social values.” Values refer to desired outcomes which include both the substance of policy and the procedures used to achieve outcomes. For instance, good health is an example of valued substantive outcome. Public participation in the making of policy is and example of a valued procedural outcome. Politics is necessary because people, as individuals and collections of individuals, have different conceptions about what substantive and procedural outcomes, or what rankings of outcomes, are desirable in society.

From this perspective consider this view of the relationship of science and values, written last week by Alan Leshner, CEO of AAAS, in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Credible scientists never contradict or go beyond the available data. We should never insert our personal values into discussions with the public about scientific issues. On the other hand, it is important to recognize that the rest of society is not constrained in that way and can mix facts and values at will.
That is another principle scientists find hard to accept, as they often have strong moral values. When a scientist brings personal views on, say, the beginning of life into a supposedly scientific discussion on the use of embryonic stem cells in research, his or her credibility as a source of neutral facts is automatically diminished. No matter what a scientist believes about moral issues, if an opponent in a debate introduces values or beliefs, the scientist should disclaim any ability to comment on those issues as outside the scientific realm.

Leshner’s perspective has been called the "fact-value distinction," which holds that facts and values can be cleanly separated. Scientists, the argument goes, focus only on facts, and not values. There are of course some situations in which it makes good sense for scientists to focus on narrow technical questions, like “Where is the tornado heading?” But scholars who have studied the roles of science in society have come to a robust consensus that the situations in which policy making is best served by the scientific arbitration of facts are limited to some very unique circumstances.

From the perspective of theory, scholars of science in policy and politics have for many years understood that the fact-value distinction doesn’t hold up. As an example of this research, consider the following excerpts from Shelia Jasanoff's excellent book, "The Fifth Branch: Science Advisors as Policymakers" (1990), (at pp. 230-31). Jasanoff, a leading voice in the discipline of science, technology, and society, focuses on science advisory bodies and organizations that bring science to decision makers and the public,:

Although pleas for maintaining a strict separation between science and politics continue to run like a leitmotif through the policy literature, the artificiality of this position can no longer be doubted. Studies of scientific advising leave in tatters the notion that it is possible, in practice, to restrict the advisory practice to technical issues or that the subjective values of scientists are irrelevant to decision making.

She also writes (at p. 249),

The notion that scientific advisors can or do limit themselves to addressing purely scientific issues, in particular, seems fundamentally misconceived ... the advisory process seems increasingly important as a locus for negotiating scientific differences that have political weight.

In practice, scientists are always introducing their values into public debate. In fact, any effort at public communication is necessarily an expression of a scientist’s values – the procedural value that the public would be better off with whatever information that the scientist is sharing. And in many cases scientists go well beyond procedural values and make public statements to advocate for specific political outcomes. For example, Leshner (along with AAAS president John Holdren) recently wrote (in PDF):

There is a clear message in the growing torrent of studies revealing that impacts of global climate change are already occurring: It is time to muster the political will for serious evasive action. . . The United States -- the largest emitter of carbon dioxide on the planet -- needs to become a leader instead of a laggard in developing and deploying serious solutions.

Leshner may believe that the substantive (action on energy policy) and procedural (U.S. leadership) values that he is expressing are not just his own personal values, but also in support of common interests, but they are an expression of values nonetheless. If Leshner stuck to his own advice about not expressing values "beyond the scientific realm" he would have refrained from calling for certain types of policy action. In fact, if scientists generally followed Leshner’s advice there would be essentially no public views expressed by scientists. This of course is neither realistic nor desirable. Effective policy making requires the integration of science and values, not their separation.

Leshner’s views on facts and values is contradicted by the AAAS, ironically enough in a story on its home page right next to Leshner’s Chronicle piece, containing calls for more scientists to play a role in overt political advocacy.

The important distinction to be made is not whether or not scientists should express values in their public statements. It is how they express those values. They can chose to serve as political advocates by seeking to reduce the scope of choice to some preferred outcomes, or they can seek to expand or clarify choice. In all but the most simple of decision contexts there is simply no option to "disclaim any ability to comment on those issues as outside the scientific realm." Those who give scientists such advice far out of step with robust knowledge of the roles of science in society only contribute to the pathological politicization of science.

Posted on October 16, 2006 02:55 AM View this article | Comments (4)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics | The Honest Broker

October 12, 2006

We Are Hiring! Two Faculty Positions!

Please share this far and wide!

Two Assistant/Associate Faculty Positions in Science and Technology Policy Research, CIRES, University of Colorado at Boulder

The Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder announces that it is recruiting for two faculty positions at the assistant/associate (with tenure) level in science and technology policy research with a focus on decision making under uncertainty. One position would be rostered in the Graduate School and within the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), the parent Institute of the Policy Center. Departmental affiliation for this position is open. The second position will be rostered in the College of Arts & Sciences in its Environmental Studies Program with a formal affiliation with CIRES and the Policy Center. We are particularly interested in candidates with strong interdisciplinary interests and the ability to teach graduate and undergraduate courses in science and technology policy and/or science and technology studies. Area of research specialization and disciplinary background are open. Required qualifications are a PhD in a cognate field. A major commitment to and demonstrated excellence in research and the ability to secure external research funding are expected, as well as commitment to excellence in teaching at both graduate and undergraduate levels.

Applicants should send letter of interest, curriculum vitae, evidence of teaching effectiveness, and three names for letters of reference to Karen Dempsey, CIRES Human Resources via email: jobs@cires.colorado.edu. Questions can be sent to Prof. Roger Pielke Jr., Chair, Search Committee for Science and Technology Policy Research: pielke@cires.colorado.edu.
Review of completed applications will begin December 1, 2006 and continue until the position is filled. For more information about CIRES, see http://cires.colorado.edu, and the Science and Technology Policy Center /cires.colorado.edu/science/centers/policy/

The University of Colorado at Boulder is committed to diversity and equality in education and employment.

Posted on October 12, 2006 01:57 PM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education

Expertise in Biodiversity Governance

Last week I had the opportunity to participate in an excellent workshop on the role of expertise in biodiversity governance. The workshop was an exercise in the design of a new science-policy organization/institution. The workshop was titled "International Science-Policy Interfaces for Biodiversity Governance" and was held at the UFZ Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany. At the workshop participants produced a set of consensus recommendations for the role of an institution that would provide expert advice in the international arena of biodiversity policy.

The main motivation for the workshop is a current consultation seeking such recommendations, called IMoSEB, organized by the French government. You can find our workshop recommendations here in PDF, and also below in HTML. Your comments on the recommendations and the more general challenge of exert advice in the area of biodiversity would be welcomed.

Leipzig Workshop Recommendations for a Knowledge-Policy Interface for Biodiversity Governance

4 October 2006

This document contributes to ongoing debates, including the IMoSEB consultation process, seeking to identify the optimal niche and conditions for the creation of an independent and effective international knowledge-policy interface1 for biodiversity governance. A knowledge-policy interface is essential to support more effective biodiversity-related decision making and societal responses to the challenges of achieving sustainable development.

Mandate:

• Synthesize and communicate a knowledge base on biodiversity in support of decision making and implementation
• Bring together and acknowledge diverse understandings, perspectives, and values regarding biodiversity loss and change
• Create a mechanism for dialogue and exchange among holders of diverse knowledge and knowledge systems (i.e., all forms of traditional and modern knowledge and science)
• Foster deeper understanding of the ways in which biodiversity loss and change transcend scales (spatial, temporal, etc.) and jurisdictional boundaries
• Through its activities enhance and improve abilities to collect, exchange and disseminate knowledge and information, and promote actions in favor of better biodiversity management at all levels
Outputs and outcomes:
• Scenarios of human futures and biodiversity loss and change, in relation to poverty, food security, economic growth, water security, conflict, human health, energy, climate change, etc. illuminating policy options, choices, and strategies available to diverse actors
• Periodic assessments of:

o existing biodiversity knowledges, including identification of gaps in existing assessments,
o status and trends on biodiversity,
o strategies and options for response,
o policy effectiveness,
o capacity at all levels of decision making
o biodiversity knowledge-policy interfaces, and
o cross-issue linkages (e.g., poverty, food security, economic growth, water security, conflict, human health, energy, climate change)

• Analyses of the causes of biodiversity loss and change, including key aspects of political economies2, and the necessary elements of societal transformation to redress these causes
• Stock-taking and management of biodiversity knowledge, including for global trends, indicators, and monitoring systems

1 We use the phrase “knowledge-policy interface” to acknowledge that information and expertise relevant to policy must include all forms of knowledge.

2 In this context we understand political economy as the analysis of economic and political dynamics, power structures, regulations, policies and dominant ideologies that affect biodiversity and people’s relation to it.

• Comprehensive outreach and communication strategy in support of dialogue and action
• Identification of knowledge gaps and feedback into research policies and priorities
• Identification of gaps in capacity for linking biodiversity knowledge to action at all levels of decision making and implementation
• Creation and dissemination of tools and methodologies for assessments, analyses, and other means of connecting knowledge and policy

Process:

• Ongoing, dynamic, and independent process that brings together diverse forms of knowledge, expertise, and science
• Ensure that process is legitimate and has appropriate institutional support and authorizing environment
• Establish secure funding stream from multiple sources
• Engage governments, private sector, civil society, scientific community, indigenous communities, international organizations and conventions, etc., in the design and operation of the mechanism
• Networking process that links and builds upon—and does not reinvent or duplicate—diverse existing networks of biodiversity expertise and policy
• Innovating process that identifies and seeks to fill gaps in existing networks of biodiversity expertise and policy
• Catalyze nested networks and activities at national and sub-global (e.g., local, regional, trans-jurisdictional) levels
• Process that ensures interpretation and translation among relevant languages, cultures, and knowledge traditions
• Provide regular opportunities for appropriate internal and external evaluation and review
• Establish small and effective coordinating mechanism (e.g., governing board) that includes appropriate balance and diversity across geography, sectors, stakeholders, expertise, etc.

Questions requiring further reflection

Participants agreed that future consultations will require careful consideration of the following key questions given the reality of trade-offs among democratization of expertise, stakeholder involvement, political legitimacy and accountability, funding mandates, scientific excellence, trust and credibility, etc.:

• What is the appropriate form of funding, institutional framework, and authorization of the mechanism by governments, international conventions, and the United Nations system while maintaining independence?
• What are the appropriate means for developing the network described above?
• How to link the mechanism to the needs of the various international conventions?

Further information

More information on the Leipzig workshop, including a full report is available at http://www.ufz.de/spi-workshop

Posted on October 12, 2006 05:58 AM View this article | Comments (6)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Biodiversity | Science Policy: General

October 11, 2006

A Collective Research Project

In an earlier thread this week, I made a plea for people to recognize the symbolic weight carried by the phrase "climate change denial." The conversation has been quite interesting.

As an exercise in research on symbolic politics, I'd like to use this thread to see if we can collectively track the exact origins of the phrases "climate change denial" and "climate change deniers". (Thanks to those of you who got this started on the nearlier thread!) Please use the comment section here for this research challenge. Please use the earlier thread for continued discussions of the broader issue. Let's see what we can learn together.

Posted on October 11, 2006 08:36 AM View this article | Comments (37)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

October 10, 2006

Limits of Models in Decision

In today’s Financial Times columnist John Kay has a very insightful piece on the limits of models in decision making. He discusses the downfall of Amaranth, a hedge fund, which lost billions of dollars, in part, because its investors did not fully understand the full scope of uncertainties associated with their investment strategies. Kay highlights an important distinction between what he calls “in model” risk and “off model” risk. In model risk refers to the uncertainties that are associated with the design of the model, in data inputs, randomness, and so on. Modelers use techniques such as Monte Carlo analysis to get a quantitative sense of model uncertainties. Off model risk refers to the degree of conformance between a model and the real world. Models by their nature are always simplifications of the real world. As in the case of Amaranth, often hard lessons of experience remind us that as powerful as models are, they can also reinforce bad decisions. As Kay writes,

When someone does attach a probability to a forecast, they have – implicitly or explicitly – used a model of the problems. The model they have used accounts for in-model risk but ignores off-model risk. Their forecasts are therefore too confident and neither you nor they have much idea how over-confident they are. That is why mathematical modeling of risk can be an aid to sound judgment, but never a complete substitute.

Posted on October 10, 2006 03:13 PM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Prediction and Forecasting

A Perspective on the 2006 Hurricane Season

The 2006 hurricane season is not yet in the books, and there is plenty of time remaining for additional storms. However, if we consider the damage that has occurred this year thus far in historical perspective, how does it rank?

Let’s assume that this season has $250 million in damage. For the following data, I am using what we call “normalized” hurricane damage which adjusts past losses to current values. The 2006 season thus far ranks 73 out of 106 seasons since 1900, and 41 out of 56 seasons since 1950.

We hope to have the completely updated normalized loss analysis and data available soon. Stay tuned.

Posted on October 10, 2006 03:07 PM View this article | Comments (13)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

October 09, 2006

On Language

Let's be blunt. The phrase "climate change denier" is meant to be evocative of the phrase "holocaust denier". As such the phrase conjurs up a symbolic allusion fully intended to equate questioning of climate change with questioning of the Holocaust.

Let's be blunt. This allusion is an affront to those who suffered and died in the Holocaust. Let those who would make such an allusion instead be absolutely explicit about their assertion of moral equivalency between Holocaust deniers and those that they criticize.

This allusion has no place in the discourse on climate change. I say this as someone fully convinced of a significant human role in the behavior of the climate system.

Let's declare a moratorium on the phrases "climate change denier" and "climate change denial." Let's invoke the equivalent of Godwin's Law in discourse on climate policy. Maybe call it the Prometheus Principle.

No more invocation of "climate change deniers."

Posted on October 9, 2006 03:49 PM View this article | Comments (81)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

October 06, 2006

More on Royal Society’s Role in Political Debates

In various comment threads I have sought to identify clear criteria that the Royal Society applied when deciding to target Exxon and its funding of advocacy groups. I have asserted that this decision was political. Several readers and Bob Ward have suggested that the decision was based solely an effort to police misrepresentations of science by Exxon and groups that it funds. In this lengthy comment I explore this issue a bit further. Please read on if you are interested.

Why does this issue matter? I have often made the case that there is absolutely no problem with interests organizing to advance their agendas. Organized interests are an important part of how democracy works. What I have frequently objected to is the hiding of political agendas behind the notion of scientific objectivity or facts. Such action leads to a pathological politicization of science where debates about "what should we do?" are transformed into "whose science is right?" losing sight of the first question. This is even more problematic when institutions like the Royal Society participate in such pathological politicization, because such institutions have a unique and valuable role to play as what I have called "honest brokers of policy options." Such honest brokering is jeopardized when institutions take on the characteristics and behavior of an interest group, like for instance, Exxon.

What do I mean by "political"? I mean that the Royal Society is acting in a manner that seeks to gain advantage over others in debates over what society should do about climate change. In my opinion, the Royal Society letter was about far more than policing (mis)representations of science in public debate. If the Royal Society was in fact interested in the misrepresentation of science, and not political action on climate change, then presumably it would have developed general, unambiguous criteria to identify how one knows a "misrepresentation of science" when one sees it and then applied these criteria indiscriminately across organizations and issue areas. From Mr. Ward’s letter it appears that he started with Exxon’s Annual Report, which suggests that the Royal Society decided to start with Exxon based on some other criteria, which I would assume resulted from identification of Exxon as a strong interest against action on climate change. Action that the Royal Society favors, and has openly said so, such as in its joint statement prior to the G8 last year.

Further evidence for the political nature of the Royal Society’s action appears in the substance of Mr. Ward’s identification of a misrepresentation by Exxon in one of its reports. As shown below, the alleged misrepresentation is pretty weak stuff and I don’t even think that it rises to the level of misrepresentation. Certainly Exxon has engaged in cherrypicking to advance its perceived self-interest. Would the Royal Society suggest that any organization that cherrypicks information should not receive funding? If so that would likely lead to the end all public debate on all subjects!

Let’s take a look at the complaint and examine whether it is in fact a misrepresentation of science. Here is what Mr. Ward wrote to Exxon (link):

Thank-you for your recent letter and accompanying copies of the 2005 ExxonMobil 'Corporate Citizenship Report' and the 'UK and Ireland Corporate Citizenship' brochure. I have read both with interest, but I am writing to express my disappointment at the inaccurate and misleading view of the science of climate change that these documents present.
In particular, I was very surprised to read the following passage from the section on Environmental performance under the sub-heading of 'Uncertainty and risk' (p.23) in the 'Corporate Citizenship Report':

"While assessments such as those of the IPCC have expressed growing confidence that recent warming can be attributed to increases in greenhouse gases, these conclusions rely on expert judgment rather than objective, reproducible statistical methods. Taken together, gaps in the scientific basis for theoretical climate models and the interplay of significant natural variability make it very difficult to determine objectively the extent to which recent climate changes might be the result of human actions."

These statements also appear, of course, in the Exxon Mobil document on 'Tomorrow’s Energy', which was published in February. As I mentioned during our meeting in July, these statements are very misleading. The "expert judgment" of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was actually based on objective and quantitative analyses and methods, including advanced statistical appraisals, which carefully accounted for the interplay of natural variability, and which have been independently reproduced.

Furthermore, these statements in your documents are not consistent with the scientific literature that has been published on this issue.

Let’s take the claims one-by-one. For those interested in the original Exxon Mobil report itself, the relevant text cited in the Royal Society letter can be found here.

Does the IPCC rely on expert judgment?

Answer = YES.

According to the IPCC instructions for preparation of reports: "Be prepared to make expert judgments and explain those by providing a traceable account of the steps used to arrive at estimates of uncertainty or confidence for key findings . . ." (PDF)

Does the IPCC distinguish between expert judgment and objective methods?

Answer = YES

From an IPCC report on presentations of uncertainty in its reports: "The [IPCC] text should distinguish between confidence statements based on well-established, "objective" findings versus those based on subjective judgments."(PDF)

Does determination of the recent warming that can be attributed to increases in greenhouse gases require expert judgment?

Answer = YES

According to Real Climate:

In public discussions there is often an emphasis on seemingly simple questions (e.g. the percentage of the current greenhouse effect associated with water vapour) that, at first sight, appear to have profound importance to the question of human effects on climate change. In the scientific community however, discussions about these 'simple' questions are often not, and have subtleties that rarely get publicly addressed.
One such question is the percentage of 20th Century warming that can be attributed to CO2 increases. This appears straightforward, but it might be rather surprising to readers that this has neither an obvious definition, nor a precise answer. I will therefore try to explain why. . . In summary, I hope I've shown that there is too much ambiguity in any exact percentage attribution for it to be particularly relevant.

Thus, was there anything factually inaccurate or inconsistent with the IPCC in the Exxon statement objected to by the Royal Society?

Answer = NO

But let’s also not overlook the obvious, was Exxon selectively presenting information from the IPCC to imply that there are uncertainties in climate science in order to sow doubt about the need for action?

Answer = YES, OF COURSE

Is the Royal Society trying to exert influence in the political process to counter Exxon’s potential influence in the political process?

Answer = YES, OF COURSE

The Royal Society’s action is thus the very essence of political behavior. This leads to two final questions.

Should the actions of the Royal Society be characterized as political actions?

Answer = YES. LET’S JUST BE OPEN ABOUT IT.

Should the Royal Society seek to "call out" Exxon for its cherrypicking?

Answer = This depends upon the role one sees for a science academy in public debate.

I personally believe that science academies should not seek to replicate the characteristics of organized interest groups for two reasons. One is that the special expertise and legitimacy of science academies give them unique potential to serve as honest brokers of policy alternatives, which are all too few in policy debates. The other is that science academies are typically funded almost entirely by public money and yet pretty much outside the political system of democratic accountability. Any particular decision on what issues to advocate for and against by such an institution will be warmly received by like-minded advocates, but in the end, such decisions represent the parochial interests of those in the organization and not necessarily reflective of broader interests. This then will have the effect of turning an institution that was meant to serve common interests into just another special interest group.

In closing, I do recognize that reasonable people can disagree on the role of science academies in public debate. But we should all be able to agree that hiding an advocacy agenda behind assertions of scientific purity is not good for either science or policy.

Posted on October 6, 2006 09:45 AM View this article | Comments (12)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics | The Honest Broker

October 05, 2006

The One Percent Doctrine

This report from the BBC on the latest international climate negotiations:

One delegate told me he thought the pace of political ambition on emissions was so slow that we had a 1,000-1 chance of avoiding dangerous climate change.
He later sent me a text message to assert that he had been overly pessimistic. The odds, he said, were only 100-1.

So when is it time to re-open for negotiation FCCC Article 2? For those wanting a bit more background on this cryptic post, please see this paper in PDF.

Posted on October 5, 2006 04:17 PM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Risk & Uncertainty

October 04, 2006

Follow Up on NOAA Hurricane Fact Sheet

Thanks very much to those who sent me the "Dear Colleague" letter from NOAA Administrator Conrad Lautenbacher discussing the now-released NOAA fact sheet on hurricanes and climate change (here in PDF). The full letter can be seen below.

Message From the Under Secretary
October 3, 2006

Dear Colleagues,

Many of you have probably seen the latest reports concerning a document on Atlantic hurricanes and climate. I do not make it a practice to comment on every mischaracterization and falsehood in media reports.

However, reports that deal with the agency’s scientific integrity strike directly at NOAA’s mission and everything the agency does. Therefore, I believe strongly that we must confront them directly and correct them quickly.

Without the foundation of sound science, every decision, policy, and action at the agency can be called into question. Unfortunately, the mere perception of scientific stifling has the same damaging effect. As someone who believes wholeheartedly in NOAA’s mission, its people and its work, I will continue to do everything in my power to ensure that NOAA stands for scientific integrity. As I’ve stated previously, peer-reviewed science speaks for itself and doesn’t need me or anyone else to interpret or modify the results. For those of you who know me personally, you realize that I encourage and actively pursue vigorous debate on all topics, particularly including science related to NOAA’s mission.

The latest round of news reports focus on an information sheet that was being prepared for this year’s hurricane season rollout. The information sheet detailed the current state of the science on the recent increase in hurricane activity. There is currently a healthy debate in the scientific community inside and outside NOAA about whether recent increases are the result of natural cycles, climate change, or other circumstances. The information sheet was prepared and reviewed in a highly collaborative fashion by nearly 50 scientists across the entire spectrum of the debate and aimed to highlight this debate in an easy-to-understand public document.

Media reports have alleged that the document was blocked because it made a reference to work by NOAA scientists that found climate change may have an impact on increased hurricane activity. This charge is inaccurate. The information sheet summarized existing scientific research and findings and contained no new science. In fact, all the studies cited for the information sheet are publicly available on the NOAA website, making the charge that they would somehow now be suppressed all the more unfounded.

The information sheet in question has been posted on our website (PDF
document:
http://hurricanes.noaa.gov/pdf/hurricanes-and-climate-change-09-2006.pdf).
I urge you to read the document so you can judge for yourself. As I tried to make clear to the media, my hope was that this process would be an exercise in scientists with different views coming together to answer important questions. While I fear an official science policy issued by the agency might have the effect of stifling this important debate, I completely support making the public aware of the state of the science.
We have established a process for encouraging further scientific debate and developing similar information sheets and we look forward to others coming out in the near future.

I reiterate my call to you to let me know personally if you ever feel like NOAA or DOC processes are not supporting the free flow of your or your colleagues’ scientific research. Scientific integrity is critical to NOAA’s credibility.

Sincerely,

Conrad Lautenbacher's Signature
Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Jr.
Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator

Posted on October 4, 2006 10:32 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters | Science + Politics

Bob Ward Comments on Royal Society Letter

{I am very pleased that Bob Ward, formerly of the Royal Society, has sent in the following comment which we are happy to post. Thanks very much! RP]

I've enjoyed reading this exchange of views, particularly the discussion over the Royal Society's contribution to the debate. I thought it might help to set out some of my views, although rather belatedly. I should explain that my employment at the Royal Society ceased on 22 September - not, as some have suggested, because I was sacked but because I am moving on to a new job and had agreed my departure date about three months ago.

I'd like to give a bit of background about the ExxonMobil sag, but start with an explanation of how the Royal Society sees its role (writing as an ex-employee).

[continued]

As you probably know, the Society was founded in 1660 to promote the 'new experimental philosophy' ie that our understanding of the natural world should be based on experiment and observation rather than merely speculating about the nature of things. The Society's motto 'nullius in verba' has been translated in various ways (eg trust not in words alone, etc), but is today generally regarded as meaning that statements about science should be assessed against evidence. The Society (technically the Council of the Royal Society) has spoken out frequently, on many issues and throughout its history, when the scientific evidence is being ignored or misrepresented. It promotes debate within the scientific community and outside, but it does challenge attempts to misrepresent the evidence, for whatever reasons.

As many have pointed out, the climate change debate is not merely one of science. The question of what to do in light of the scientific evidence is essentially a societal and political one in which scientists might be able to identify the options, but have no special role in deciding which options to pursue. However, the Society has taken the view that the debate about the options should be based on authoritative and reliable assessments of the scientific evidence, as documented in the peer-reviewed literature. It is for this reason that the IPCC has the support of the Royal Society, and indeed of many of the world's other scientific academies, such as the US National Academy of Science.

Our understanding of climate change continues to develop, and this is reflected in the work of the IPCC. The Fourth Assessment Report, due for publication next year, will be able to draw on information not available for the Third Assessment, such as probabilistic assessments of future temperature changes. And of course there are some scientists who don't agree with the IPCC's assessments. But the IPCC does an excellent job of summarising the state of knowledge, taking into account the uncertainties and differences of opinion. I recommend the NAS report published in 2001 as a critical examination of the work of the IPCC.

The saga with ExxonMobil began back in April when I gave 'The Guardian' newspaper a document I had drafted about the way in which the coverage of climate change was being covered by the UK media. 'The Guardian' correctly reported that the document had, among other things, been critical of both ExxonMobil and Greenpeace for releasing information into the public domain, via their websites, that was inconsistent with the scientific evidence, as summarised by the IPCC. Both organsiations complained about being singled out. Greenpeace made changes to their website. ExxonMobil requested a meeting with me.

I met with a couple of members of the Esso UK corporate affairs team in early July. They gave me a presentation about the company's views on energy and climate change. I told them that the Society was concerned about statements in a report published in February that we considered misleading.

I also pointed out that ExxonMobil also appeared to be funding a lot of organisations that were also making misleading public statements about climate change. They then said to me that they were planning to stop such funding.

The meeting ended and nothing further happened until the end of August, when one of the people I had met with in July sent me a copy of a new report from ExxonMobil, containing almost verbatim the statements I had complained about at the meeting. So I wrote a letter pointing out why the statements were inaccurate and misleading.

I also asked about progress towards the pledge they had made about stopping funding for organisations that were providing misleading information about climate change. I went through the list of organisations that ExxonMobil listed in their 2005 contributions report and found, of those organisations with websites that included information about climate change, 25 appeared to provide information that was more or less consistent with the evidence documented in the scientific literature, but 39 did not. I also asked for a list of organsiations that they were funding in the UK and rest of Europe, since they were not listed in the ExxonMobil contributions report.

I hope this account shows that my actions weren't really hectoring or bullying anybody. All I did was challenge the statements that ExxonMobil have been promoting, directly and indirectly through its sponsorship, to the public about the scientific evidence for climate change. Surely that is a legitimate activity for an academy of science?

Posted on October 4, 2006 06:47 AM View this article | Comments (29)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

Sizing Up Bush on Science

Here is an interesting article in The Scientist on the Bush Administration.

Posted on October 4, 2006 12:54 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science + Politics

October 02, 2006

Prediction and Decision

Across a number of threads comments have arisen about the role of forecasting in decision making. Questions that have come up include:

What is a good forecast?
When should research forecasts transition to operational forecasts?
What sorts of decisions require quantitative probabilities?
In what contexts can good decisions result without accurate predictions?

It was questions like these that motivated Rad Byerly, Dan Sarewitz, and I to work on a project in the late 1990s focused on prediction. the results of this work were published in a book by Island Press in 2000, titled "Prediction."

With this post I'd like to motivate discussion on this subject, and to point to our book's concluding chapter, which may provide a useful point of departure:

Pielke Jr., R. A., D. Sarewitz and R. Byerly Jr., 2000: Decision Making and the Future of Nature: Understanding and Using Predictions. Chapter 18 in Sarewitz, D., R. A. Pielke Jr., and R. Byerly Jr., (eds.), Prediction: Science Decision Making and the Future of Nature. Island press: Washington, DC. (PDF)

See in particular Table 18.1 on p. 383 which summarizes the criteria we developed in the form of questions which might be used to "question predictions."

Comments welcomed on any of the questions raised above, and others as appropriate as well.

Posted on October 2, 2006 03:12 AM View this article | Comments (7)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Prediction and Forecasting

September 29, 2006

Some Weekend Fun

Just so we don't take ourselves too seriously around here.

Posted on September 29, 2006 11:47 PM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R.

September 28, 2006

Latest Bridges Column

The latest issue of Bridges a publication of the Office of Science and Technology of the Austrian Embassy in Washington, DC, is now online. As always Bridges provides a wide range of interesting and stimulating essays and discussions. In particular, Stefan Kalt's column on Heidegger and technology is especially interesting.

My column in this issue is titled "Self-Segregation of Scientists by Political Predispositions" and can be found online here and as a podcast here (and regular Prometheus readers will see that it draws on several earlier discussions on our blog - thanks to all who contributed!). My essay ends with some specific recommendations for scientists -- I think along the lines specifically asked for by Judy Curry recently in the comments. As always, we welcome your feedback and comments.

Posted on September 28, 2006 07:12 AM View this article | Comments (6)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

Inconvenient Truth Panel Discussion at the University of Colorado

For locals:

Al Gore's global warming movie, "An Inconvenient Truth", will be shown on Thursday, September 28 at 7 and 9:15 pm in the Muenzinger Auditorium on the CU-Boulder campus. The Energy Initiative is sponsoring a panel titled "An Inconvenient Truth: Assessing the Science and Policy Implications" immediately following the 7 pm showing in Muenzinger Room E0046. Panelists include Roger Pielke, Jr. and Lisa Dilling of CIRES, Brian Toon of LASP, and Jim White of Environmental Studies.

Admission for the movie: $5 general, $4 w/UCB student ID. Call 303-492-1531 for more info.

There is no charge for the panel discussion and you do not need to have seen the movie beforehand to attend.

Posted on September 28, 2006 01:30 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

September 27, 2006

Caught in a Lie

There is an old political maxim that it is not the event but the cover-up that gets politicians in trouble. The issue of a two-page NOAA fact sheet and the decision by leadership in NOAA and/or its parent agency, Department of Commerce, to prevent its release is yet another lesson in Politics 101.

The figure below shows a recent version of the NOAA "fact sheet." (Note that I have received multiple copies from independent sources, several of whom -- but not all -- who asked me not to post. Several, but not all, of the documents have different dates, but the differences are not substantive. I present a screen shot of a version so as not to inadvertantly reveal where it came from.)

The document is clearly prepared for public dissemination. It includes the following text that I have circled:

The purpose of this document is to respond to frequently asked questions on the topic of Atlantic hurricanes and climate. This document reflects the current state of the science, which is based on official data sets and results presented in peer-reviewed publications. It does not contain any statements of policy or positions of NOAA, the Department of Commerce or the U.S. Government.

This is obviously not a statment one would find on an internal document. The second page includes the statement at the bottom "Visit us on the web at www.noaa.gov." Surely not a request made to employees.

Compare this to how Nature yesterday (here) reported NOAA Administrator Conrad Lautenbacher's description of the document.

When asked about the document, NOAA administrator Conrad Lautenbacher told Nature that it was simply an internal exercise designed to get researchers to respect each other's points of view. He said it could not be released because the agency cannot take an official position on a field of science that is changing so rapidly.

An internal exercise? Bush Administration appointees it seems can make plenty of smoke appear even when there is no fire.

Posted on September 27, 2006 04:01 PM View this article | Comments (7)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

Revealed! NOAA's Mystery Hurricane Report

Here is in its entirety is the NOAA "report" discussed in Nature yesterday. It is in fact titled a "fact sheet" and looks more like a set of talking points than a consensus report. I do not have the figures being referred to in the text. There is absolutely nothing new or surprising in the fact sheet. Why NOAA or DOC officials would not want this released is beyond me. Have a look.

NOAA Fact Sheet: Atlantic Hurricanes and Climate

What has been Atlantic hurricane activity during the 20th Century?
• Atlantic hurricane seasons since 1995 have been significantly more active, e.g. more hurricanes and more intense hurricanes, that the previous two decades (figure 1)
• Earlier periods, such as from 1945 to 1970 (and perhaps earlier), were apparently as active as the most recent decade.
• The past decade has seen increased U.S. landfalls, however periods of even higher landfalls occurred early in the century (figure 2)
• Strong natural decadal variations, as well as changes in data quality, density, sources, and methodologies for estimating hurricane strengths, lie at the heart of arguments whether or not a global warming contribution to a trend in tropical cyclone intensities can be detected.

How have ocean temperatures varied?
• Over the 20th Century, global ocean temperatures and sea surface temperatures in the main development region (MDR) for hurricanes in the tropical Atlantic, (and Gulf of Mexico) have warmed at similar rates, indicating a role for global warming in these regions. (Figure 3)
• Anomalous MDR, tropical Atlantic temperatures were significantly warmer than the global average from about 1930 to 1970 and after 2000 . This warming is attributed to the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO)
What factors influence seasonal to multi-decadal hurricane activity
• Hurricanes respond to a variety of environmental factors besides local ocean temperatures.
• The tropical multi-decadal phenomenon and the El Nino/La Nina cycle are important factors in determining the conditions for seasonal to multi-decadal extremes in hurricane activity.
• Research indicates that global warming can also increase hurricane intensities; there is less evidence for impacts on frequency.

How long will the current active period last?
• Scientists disagree as to whether currently a sound basis exists for making projections on how long the current active period will last. The viewpoints are:
o Limited understanding of natural decadal variability, combined with its irregular temporal behavior, preclude definitive statements about how long the active period will last. (NOAA)
o One might expect ongoing high levels of hurricane activity and U.S. landfalls for the next decade and beyond since the previous active period (1945-1970) lasted at least 25 years. (NOAA)
o Because of global warming the active period could persist
Programs of improvements to data sets, diagnostic studies for improved understanding, and systematic numerical experimentation studies will help to reveal the underlying causes for the recent active period and to predict how long the period of increased activity will last. NOAA is actively engaged in each of these activities.

Key Problems NOAA is working on
• Understanding the dynamics of the AMO, its links to the larger-scale tropical climate variability, and developing an ocean monitoring and decadal prediction capability
• Improving the quality and scope of hurricane relevant data sets
• Numerically simulating and ultimately understanding seasonal to decadal hurricane variability
• Understanding whether or not and to what degree anthropogenic forcing is having an influence on hurricanes
• Developing a predictive understanding of global climate variability and trends and the impacts of these on extreme events
• Making improvements to short range hurricane track and intensity forecasts through improved models and development of additional capabilities for hurricanes.

NOAA Resources for Additional Information

• NWS/NCEP/CPC – intraseasonal to multi-season climate forecasts; seasonal hurricane forecasts; diagnostic studies of major climate anomalies; real time monitoring of climate.

• NWS/NCEP/TPC/NHC – issue daily and seasonal (in conjunction with CPC and HRD) operational hurricane forecasts; maintain and update the official Atlantic and Northeast Pacific hurricane databases from which observational climate studies are conducted

• NESDIS/NCDC – official archive for climate data sets; development of global tropical cyclone databases, analysis of historical frequency and strength of Atlantic Basin hurricanes to support engineering design and levee rebuilding in New Orleans, analyses of climate trends, monitoring and historical perspective on current seasons.

• OAR/AOML/HRD & PHoD – physical understanding of hurricane dynamics through use of research aircraft and field studies; improvements to hurricane track and intensity forecasts; monitoring of Atlantic ocean circulations; studies of Atlantic climate

• OAR/GFDL – studies of climate variability and change; development and use of the required climate models; development of models used for operational hurricane forecasts by NOAA and the NAVY; numerical studies of climate impacts on hurricanes and their decadal variability

• OAR/ESRL – diagnostic studies of climate variability and changes; impacts of climate on extreme events.

• NOAA Climate Office – intramural and extramural support for development of a predictive understanding of the climate system, the required observational capabilities, delivery of climate services.

Posted on September 27, 2006 08:21 AM View this article | Comments (13)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

September 26, 2006

NOAA's Mystery Hurricane Report

According to Nature today last spring NOAA convened an internal seven-person team to prepare a consensus report for public release on hurricanes and global warming. According to press reports (e.g., here), the near final report's release was halted in May by (a) Department of Commerce political appointee(s).

I'd like to get the facts straight on this, as they are quite unclear in the media. I'd welcome hearing from anyone with firsthand knowledge of these events. We'd be happy to post a copy of the report as well, anonymity guaranteed.

As far as the science of hurricanes, it is safe to conclude that the mystery report has to be a synthesis of recent work that is publicly available, rather than any new science. What is more troubling to me is how the political ham-handedness (if not worse) of NOAA and its Bush Adminstration handlers works against effective hurricane policy and climate policy. Consider the following statement for the AP news report:

The possibility of global warming affecting hurricanes is politically sensitive because the administration has resisted proposals to restrict release of gases that can cause warming conditions.

The reality, as documented in numerous papers and disucssions here and elsewhere, is that greenhouse gases cannot be an effective tool of hurricane policy. So long as advocates against action on greenhouse gases inside the Administration pretend that there is a linkage between future energy policies and future hurricane impacts by micromanaging information on hurricanes, people unfamiliar with the current state of hurricane science and policy, or those looking for a political bludgeon, will easily conclude something like the following:

"There must be a big connection between changes in energy policies and future hurricane impacts, or else why would the Bush Administration try to supress information? Becuase if there is no evidence of a future connection then NOAA and Bush officials must just be stupid by acting as if there is, right?"

I am quite familiar with recent debates on hurricanes, and frequent readers know that I believe that there is an honest, unsettled debate going on. My own research shows that any action on energy policies cannot have a discernible effect on hurricane impacts as far as the eye can see, so you can guess how I'd answer that last question.

Posted on September 26, 2006 07:23 PM View this article | Comments (8)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

To Limit Choice or Expand Choice?

In a paper out yesterday, NASA's Jim Hansen recognizes the difference between a scientist serving as an issue advocate versus as an honest broker of policy alternatives when he writes (PDF):

Inference of imminent dangerous climate change may stimulate discussion of "engineering fixes" to reduce global warming. The notion of such a "fix" is itself dangerous if it diminishes efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, yet it also would be irresponsible not to consider all ways to minimize climate change.

So which is it? Dangerous or irresponsible? Should scientists openly discuss all ways to minimize climate change, including little-mentioned technologies like air capture? Or should scientists seek to limit research agendas in order to take some options off the table and privledge others in political debate?

It can't be both ways at the same time. Should scientists seek to limit choice or expand choice?

Posted on September 26, 2006 01:51 PM View this article | Comments (11)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

Follow Up on Royal Society Letter

Last week we discussed a letter from the Royal Society to ExxonMobil. The interesting discussion that followed focused on the role of scientists in general and national academies specifically in contested political issues that involve science. The issue continues to devleop. Apparently, according to Benny Peiser, the author of the Royal Society letter to ExxonMobil is no longer employed by the Royal Society. The Royal Soceity has not said anything publicly that I am aware of -- eagle-eyed readers please share what you learn.

David Whitehouse, formerly with the BBC, has shared another letter with Benny Peiser, which Benny included in his CCNet mailing list today. I have reproduced Dr. Whitehouse's letter below which provides an overview and analysis of the events of the past week.

Dear Benny,

I confess to having pulled the occasional media stunt in my time (all in the cause of good journalism of course) to get a story aired but I think that the climate change debate over the past week is a good example of how manipulating the media can result in unexpected consequences for those who hang on to the tail of this particular tiger, and frankly how some people ought to be a bit more accurate when they pontificate to the public.

As far as I can see it went like this:

Tuesday 19th September.

Posted on George Monbiot's website and the Guardian's website
(http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/09/19/the-smoke-behind-the-deniers
-fire-3/) was a column which reported that the Royal Society had had enough of those spreading misinformation about climate change. Monbiot adds, "As I reveal on Newsnight (a BBC TV Current Affairs Programme) tonight, the Society has now attempted to strike at the heart of this campaign by sending its first official letter of complaint to a corporation - the oil company Exxon. And yesterday its president, Lord Rees, sent the Telegraph what must be one of the most damning letters it has ever received."

However, Monbiot's polemic did not air on Newsnight on Tuesday but went out on Wednesday instead. Personally, I thought it was sloppy and lacked intellectual rigour. It was what is termed an "authored" piece which means it is a personal view and not dictated by the BBC's standards of fairness and impartiality. Nethertheless, Exxon's request to have a similar time to put its case was turned down by Newsnight. Monbiot's piece included a brief interview with Bob Ward, filmed at the Royal Society. It was followed by a fruitless discussion hosted by Jeremy Paxman between a scientist and a representative of a US lobby group. The most memorable thing about it was Paxman's repeatedly telling the American chap that "you are not a
scientist." I was rather disappointed not to see an interview with Lord Rees about his letter to the Telegraph.

Oh, by the way, Monbiot has a book to plug, "Heat - How to Stop the Planet Burning." (I think the title is all I need to know but I will read it.)

Now I wonder if the fact that Monbiot's Newsnight rant was a day later than he said it would be upset the choreography of this story's emergence?

Wednesday 20th September.

The front page of the Guardian carried details of the now infamous letter by Bob Ward (Senior Manager, Policy Communication, Royal Society) referred to in Monbiot's column which was sent to Exxon on 4th September. The Guardian Science Podcast available later described this story as an 'exclusive!' On the front page the Guardian mentioned no qualms about the ethics of the Royal Society's actions.

On the BBC Today radio programme that morning there was a discussion about GM technology that involved Lord May, former Chief Scientific Advisor to H.M. Government and past President of the Royal Society. After this debate the presenter asked him about the Guardian story. To my mind Lord May's response was extraordinary and demonstrated the problem in the debate. I wasn't impressed by his accuracy.

Lord May said that in 2005 the science academies of the G8 nations plus India, China and Brazil said that the "basic facts of climate change are certain." Actually they did no such thing. As Bob Ward pointed out in his letter to Exxon what the G8+ actually said was "it is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities." To my mind the words "likely" and "most" do not equate with certainty. Lord May went on to chastise those who "misrepresent the certainties of science" presumably unaware that he had done exactly that! [For reference the IPCC say the same thing - "most of the global warming over the past 50 years is likely due to the increase in greenhouse gases - note the key words "most" and "likely."]

Lord May went on to say that the fact that "humans are changing the climate" is as certain as gravitation or evolution. I find this statement surprising even though it is an obvious one as it is recognised by all that humans are changing the climate - what is in debate is the question is the magnitude of the change. Then a spokesman for Exxon, Nick Thomas (Director Public Affairs Exxon) was brought into the discussion who stated Exxon's position which, to my mind, sounded like a fair summary of the G8+ position and the IPCC position (we agree that the word is warming, that CO2 concentrations are increasing, that glaciers are shrinking and that CO2 emissions are certainly one of the contributors to climate change, we recognise man's activities are responsible for climate change.) This statement didn't quite go as far as many would wish but, given the uncertainties in the science, it was OK, I thought.

But Lord May was unconvinced. He maintained that this contradicted the US National Academy of Sciences and that what he had heard from Nick Thomas was a "misrepresentation of the facts." Having listened to the exchange several times I have to say I think Lord May is wrong about that.

The Guardian story aired on BBC News TV throughout the day (Wednesday 20th) pretty much in the form that the Guardian had used, i.e. the Royal Society - upholder of the consensus - had had enough of lies and misinformation spread by the likes of a big bad energy company like Exxon. There the story would perhaps have lain except for the next edition of the BBC's Today radio programme.

Thursday 21st September.

The Today programme asked if the Royal Society was right to police the scientific consensus this way. Bob Ward defended his actions. You can read the transcript of that discussion in a recent CCNet.

Later.

The coverage thereafter was different, as those who have read CCNet in recent days have seen. Dominic Lawson writing in the Independent on the 22nd wondered if the release of the Royal Society's letter on the 20th was anything to do with Monbiot's book?

Heaven forfend, Bob Ward wrote in a letter to the Independent on the 25th in which he says, "I can absolutely refute Lawson's laughable suggestion that it (presumable the letter) was part of a campaign to promote George Monbiot's new book."

I think this is another example of the sleight of hand that Bob Ward employed in his letter to Exxon. Even if the initial impetus for the letter had nothing to do with Monbiot, it is surely stretching belief beyond credulity that its appearance on the front page of the Guardian at the same time as Monbiot's column and Newsnight piece was unrelated!

So what was achieved?

Bob Ward made the big mistake of writing such a letter to Exxon in completely the wrong way, allowing it to be made public and becoming the topic of discussion. When a senior manager of policy communication becomes the story and not the policy itself, it is, as Alistair Campbell discovered, not a good thing. The Royal Society looks bad having tried to enforce a consensus even though, as many have pointed out, they must have been aware of the role of consensus in science. It also looks bad having sent such disgraceful (and counterproductive) letters to journalists. We also learnt that even those authorities who have scaled the august heights of science and are laden with honours are not immune to being sloppy with the facts and with a false impression of the "certainties of science."

But perhaps the cause of science has been advanced during this week for it has forced a discussion and appraisal of how so-called sceptics are being treated in this important debate and steered the global warming debate towards a scientific course and away from the rocky shoals of you are either for us or against us. It has made many examine the role of the Royal Society in scientific debate and public relations and, perhaps most importantly, once again we have been reminded that as far a science is concerned being an authority, individual or corporate, ultimately means little.

Also Monbiot does have some words of wisdom one can take away from this mess: "Be wary of self-appointed experts." Exactly.

David Whitehouse

Posted on September 26, 2006 07:21 AM View this article | Comments (25)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

September 25, 2006

Thoughts on an Immediate Freeze on Carbon Dioxide Emissions

Last week I discussed Al Gore’s call for an “immediate freeze” on U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. I dismissed this as being in the realm of fantasy, but the notion of freezing U.S. carbon dioxide emissions motivated me to investigate the issue a bit further. The following data and analyses report what I’ve learned.

Data on projected carbon dioxide emissions is available from the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) here (xls). It is presented in tons of carbon dioxide so it needs to be converted to tons of carbon (divide by 3.664). In 2006 the U.S. is projected to emit 1.63 gigatons of carbon (GtC). This is projected to increase to 2.21 GtC by 2030. EIA projections go to 2030, so that is what I use below.

What accounts for this increase? There are two important factors. One is the projected increase in U.S. population and the other is the projected increase in per capita emissions. I gathered data on projected population increases from the U.S. Census here (xls) and data on projected per capita carbon dioxide emissions here (pdf). I also gathered data on projected immigration from the Congressional Budget Office here (pdf) (note that in the calculations below I use the Social Security Administration’s Intermediate projections). These various data allow the projections to be disaggregated. Here is what I found.

U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions 2007-2030

Projected population growth accounts for 64% of the increased U.S. carbon emissions.

Of this growth 40.5% comes from births in the U.S. and 23.5% comes from immigration (i.e., 40.5 + 23.5 = 64).

The remaining 36% comes from an increase in the per capita production of carbon dioxide which EIA estimates to increase by 11% by 2030. (Note that the per capita increase is not included in the above estimates of the effects of population growth. If included they raise the values by about 2.9% -- 43.4% -- and 1.1% -- 24.6% -- respectively).

How much carbon emissions are we talking about under an immediate U.S. freeze?

The accumulated U.S. emissions in excess of its 2006 value 2007-2030 equal 7.0 GtC. What would it mean to global carbon emissions if the United States were in fact frozen at their 2006 levels? In 2030 accumulated global emissions would be 228 GtC versus 235 GtC (world data here in xls).

But let’s go further, what if the United States were to become immediately carbon neutral starting in 2007? Through 2030 accumulated global carbon emissions would then be 189.0 GtC. In 2030 global emissions would be 9.72 GtC, or about equivalent to what the world is projected to see with the U.S. under business-as-usual in 2018.

What to conclude from all of this? Here are a few things:

1. The majority of increasing emissions in the United States comes from its population growth. About 37% of this increase (i.e., 23.5/64) is due to emissions from immigration. It is not inaccurate to say that through immigration the United States is "offsetting" the emissions from other parts of the world to some degree, since their net emissions will decrease to to emigration. But it is also true that most (if not all) immigrants are coming to the U.S. from countries with far lower per capita emissions, so there is a net increase in global emissions from immigration to the U.S. Of course, the factors which lead the U.S. to such high emissions in the first place are what drive much of the motivation for immigration. Will policy makers talk of stopping immigration as a climate policy? I doubt it, but it is interesting to consider.

2. Per capita increases in carbon emissions, at 11% by 2030 seem quite small and in principle could be relatively easily addressed through improvements in efficiency. Transfer and adoption of many European practices to the U.S. would I think be more than sufficient to meet an 11% goal.

3. An immediate freeze of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, even if possible, would have exceedingly little effect on the overall challenge of reducing global carbon emissions. It would reduce the accumulated global total by 2030 by about 3% and delay any projected effects of climate change by about 6 months.

4. If we go to the extreme and assume that the U.S. becomes carbon neutral in 2007, this would have a clearly discernible effect on accumulated emissions but really wouldn’t much change the overall challenge of reducing global carbon emissions. If the U.S. were carbon neutral starting in 2007 then it would reduce the accumulated global total by 2030 by about 20% and delay any of the projected effects of climate change by about 12 years. The relative importance of the U.S. as a contributor of to carbon dioxide emissions is projected to decrease from 21.9% of global annual emissions in 2006 to 18.6% in 2030.

All of the projections above from EIA, Census, SSA, and CBO are made in the face of considerable uncertainties. For example, this recent paper (in PDF and peer-reviewed journal version) suggests that, under some scenarios, demographic factors may in fact lead to a decrease in U.S. per capita emissions as the population ages.

Whatever the future holds, it is clear from this data that while the United States is the largest contributor to carbon dioxide emissions, it nonetheless produces a small share of total global emissions. Given that the majority of its emissions come from its growing population, this places the U.S. at a disadvantage with countries with slower rates of population growth when emissions reductions are accounted on a national basis (discussed here). A continued discussion of climate policy in terms of nations seems to be more divisive than anything else from the standpoint of policy development. Politically, however, the focus on the U.S. does serve a function in both domestic and international politics and in my view goes far beyond the issues related to climate change.

Posted on September 25, 2006 09:58 AM View this article | Comments (7)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

September 22, 2006

Prometheus Class Assignment

A university class with about 90 students has been assigned Prometheus, and several other weblogs, as part of its reading assignments this semester. Welcome! The course instructor has emailed me to ask if I would write up a short note about what purpose our weblog serves and to offer some pointers to a few key posts on various topics. This seems like a worthwhile exercise, so here goes.

Prometheus began as a term project of a student, Shep Ryen, who like many of our student since graduated has gone on to power and influence ;-) He named it, came up with the design, and got it off to a running start. We have always seen Prometheus as taking advantage of the blog format to create a place where we can discuss a wide range of issues of science and technology policy. In practice, the site focuses on the subjects on which its contributors write about. I’ve been the most active blogger and since a lot of my work focuses on climate policy (and climate science policy), many of my posts wind up on climate policy issues. A recurring interest of mine, and subject of a forthcoming book, is the role of scientists in policy and politics.

We never anticipated a wide readership, being a niche subject area that sometimes delves into the minutia of science-policy issues. But we do have what I have often characterized as the best commenters in the blogoshpere on any site on any subject. In the comments you’ll find leading academics, reporters, policy makers, and informed general readers. The comments are a tremendous asset and by themselves worth the effort to run the blog. Not everyone agrees with everything written here, and that is I think a compelling strength of the dialogue.

The blog serves many purposes. It obviously serves an outreach function, helping us to promote our Center’s research. It serves as a resource where we’d like to store ideas and references. It serves as a test drive facility for ideas and arguments. It serves as a salon where we can engage in meaningful conversations and learn from each other. It serves as a place where people who disagree on topics, like hockey sticks or hurricanes, have engaged one another directly or indirectly. It also serves as a resource where we can focus attention on issues of science in society, a topical area that does not have too many venues for such open discussion that the blog format is ideally suited for. In short it serves a lot of purposes, and we continue to do it because it has been rewarding for us.

Some specific links requested for the class:

My publications: Here.

About me: Here.

On the hockey stick debate

Is the “Hockey Stick” Debate Relevant to Policy? 17 May 2005

On The Hockey Stick 6 July 2005

Invitation to McIntyre and Mann - So What? 31 October 2005

Challenge Update 1 November 2005

Does the hockey stick "matter"? 14 November 2005 Post by Steve McIntyre

Why Does the Hockey Stick Debate Matter? 14 November 2005 Post by Ross McKitrick

Reflections on the Challenge 21 November 2005

For the full list of "hockey stick" posts, including more recent stuff on the congressional hearings, Wegman and NRC reports, please search the site for "hockey stick."

On the hurricane debate

The Other Hockey Stick 22 August 2005

Consensus Statement on Hurricanes and Global Warming 21 February 2006

Forbidden Fruit: Justifying Energy Policy via Hurricane Mitigation15 March 2006

Climate and Societal Factors in Future Tropical Cyclone Damages in the ABI Reports 24 April 2006

More Peer-Reviewed Discussion on Hurricanes and Climate Change 15 May 2006

Scientific Leadership on Hurricanes and Global Warming 25 July 2006

And there is a ton of stuff not linked here, just search the site for "hurricanes."

Posted on September 22, 2006 09:41 AM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education

September 21, 2006

David Whitehouse on Royal Society Efforts to Censor

David Whitehouse is a former online science editor for the BBC. He has sent a letter to Benny Peiser, a prominent climate provocateur from the University of Liverpool who oversees the CCNet mailing list. Benny included Dr. Whitehouse’s correspondence on the Royal Society’s letter to ExxonMobil (PDF) in his compilation yesterday (Guardian story here). There is also apparently a second letter from the Royal Society to journalists, asking them to ignore people with perspectives outside the IPCC consensus.

Let me say in no uncertain terms that in my opinion the actions by the Royal Society are inconsistent with the open and free exchange of ideas, as well as the democratic notion of free speech. Here in the U.S. we have recently won a battle to allow scientists employed by government to speak freely even if their views are inconvenient to the current Administration. Such lessons should work in all directions. The Royal Society is seeking to use the authority of science to limit open debate. This is not, to put it delicately, the most effective use of scientific authority in political debates. Climate scientists and advocates confident of their positions should welcome any and all challengers, and smack them down with the power of their arguments, not the weight of their influence or authority. A strategy based on stifling debate is sure to backfire, not just on the climate issue, but for the scientific enterprise as a whole.

Here is Dr. Whitehouse’s letter, which I endorse 100%:

Dear Benny,
I wonder if I am not alone in finding something rather ugly and unscientific about the letter the Royal Society has sent to EssoUK (part of Exxon). It is reproduced in today's Guardian newspaper.

It demands EssoUK stop giving money to groups and organisations who do not believe that human activities are totally responsible for global warming. It also asks EssoUK to provide details of all the groups it funds so that the Royal Society can track them down and vet them, "so that I can work out which of these have been similarly providing inaccurate and misleading information to the public," the letter says.

My disquiet about this is nothing to do with the status of the debate about anthropogenic global warming but about the nature of the debate and the role of the Royal Society in it and the sending of such a hectoring and bullying letter demanding adherence to the scientific consensus.

Theories come and go. Some become fact, others do not. As scientists our ultimate loyalty is not to theory but to reason and to open enquiry even when some think it ill judged. We should value that above all and I am surprised the Royal Society is acting this way. Einstein once said, "Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."

However the Royal Society sees its role in debates about science, is it appropriate that it should be using its authority to judge and censor in this way?

Yours sincerely,

Dr David Whitehouse

Posted on September 21, 2006 12:08 AM View this article | Comments (107)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | The Honest Broker

September 19, 2006

Al Gore on Climate Policy

Al Gore gave a major speech on climate policy yesterday at NYU. Here are some excerpts and my reactions:

On the nature of climate policy debates:

Merely engaging in high-minded debates about theoretical future reductions while continuing to steadily increase emissions represents a self-delusional and reckless approach. In some ways, that approach is worse than doing nothing at all, because it lulls the gullible into thinking that something is actually being done when in fact it is not.

I could not agree more.

On what we should do first:

Well, first of all, we should start by immediately freezing CO2 emissions and then beginning sharp reductions. . . An immediate freeze has the virtue of being clear, simple, and easy to understand. It can attract support across partisan lines as a logical starting point for the more difficult work that lies ahead.

This seems to be in the realm of fantasy. Carbon dioxide emissions cannot simply be "frozen." This seems like exactly the sort of "high-minded debate about theoretical future reductions" that he just warned us about.

On international climate policy:

A responsible approach to solving this crisis would also involve joining the rest of the global economy in playing by the rules of the world treaty that reduces global warming pollution by authorizing the trading of emissions within a global cap.
At present, the global system for carbon emissions trading is embodied in the Kyoto Treaty. It drives reductions in CO2 and helps many countries that are a part of the treaty to find the most efficient ways to meet their targets for reductions. It is true that not all countries are yet on track to meet their targets, but the first targets don’t have to be met until 2008 and the largest and most important reductions typically take longer than the near term in any case.

The absence of the United States from the treaty means that 25% of the world economy is now missing. It is like filling a bucket with a large hole in the bottom. When the United States eventually joins the rest of the world community in making this system operate well, the global market for carbon emissions will become a highly efficient closed system and every corporate board of directors on earth will have a fiduciary duty to manage and reduce CO2 emissions in order to protect shareholder value.

This is misleading. The Kyoto "bucket" is full of holes, and not just from those countries that are not participating. Most European countries are failing to meet their targets under the treaty. To suggest that if the United States joins the Kyoto Protocol it will lead to an "efficient closed system" fails to mention that most of expected future emissions are not covered by Kyoto and that there are no plans for them to be.

On the practical actions needed:

Third, a responsible approach to solutions would avoid the mistake of trying to find a single magic "silver bullet" and recognize that the answer will involve what Bill McKibben has called "silver-buckshot" - numerous important solutions, all of which are hard, but no one of which is by itself the full answer for our problem.
One of the most productive approaches to the "multiple solutions" needed is a road-map designed by two Princeton professors, Rob Socolow and Steven Pacala, which breaks down the overall problem into more manageable parts. Socolow and Pacala have identified 15 or 20 building blocks (or "wedges") that can be used to solve our problem effectively - even if we only use 7 or 8 of them. I am among the many who have found this approach useful as a way to structure a discussion of the choices before us.

Gore repeats which has become a common myth – that if we reduce emissions by 7 or 8 of Socolow and Pacala’s "wedges" we will "solve the problem effectively." This is incredibly misleading and grossly oversimplifies the challenge of stabilizing carbon dioxide emissions. We discussed this at length here.

On particularly promising options:

First, dramatic improvements in the efficiency with which we generate, transport and use energy will almost certainly prove to be the single biggest source of sharp reductions in global warming pollution. . .
To take another example, many older factories use obsolete processes that generate prodigious amounts of waste heat that actually has tremendous economic value. By redesigning their processes and capturing all of that waste, they can eliminate huge amounts of global warming pollution while saving billions of dollars at the same time. . .

. . . we should develop a distributed electricity and liquid fuels distribution network that is less dependent on large coal-fired generating plants and vulnerable oil ports and refineries.

Small windmills and photovoltaic solar cells distributed widely throughout the electricity grid would sharply reduce CO2 emissions and at the same time increase our energy security. Likewise, widely dispersed ethanol and biodiesel production facilities would shift our transportation fuel stocks to renewable forms of energy while making us less dependent on and vulnerable to disruptions in the supply of expensive crude oil from the Persian Gulf, Venezuela and Nigeria, all of which are extremely unreliable sources upon which to base our future economic vitality. It would also make us less vulnerable to the impact of a category 5 hurricane hitting coastal refineries or to a terrorist attack on ports or key parts of our current energy infrastructure. . .

. . . A second group of building blocks to solve the climate crisis involves America’s transportation infrastructure. We could further increase the value and efficiency of a distributed energy network by retooling our failing auto giants - GM and Ford - to require and assist them in switching to the manufacture of flex-fuel, plug-in, hybrid vehicles. . .

Shifting to a greater reliance on ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, butanol, and green diesel fuels will not only reduce global warming pollution and enhance our national and economic security, it will also reverse the steady loss of jobs and income in rural America. Several important building blocks for America’s role in solving the climate crisis can be found in new approaches to agriculture. . .

Similarly, we should take bold steps to stop deforestation and extend the harvest cycle on timber to optimize the carbon sequestration that is most powerful and most efficient with older trees. . .

His best line:

It is, in other words, time for a national oil change. That is apparent to anyone who has looked at our national dipstick.

On nuclear power:

Many believe that a responsible approach to sharply reducing global warming pollution would involve a significant increase in the use of nuclear power plants as a substitute for coal-fired generators. While I am not opposed to nuclear power and expect to see some modest increased use of nuclear reactors, I doubt that they will play a significant role in most countries as a new source of electricity. The main reason for my skepticism about nuclear power playing a much larger role in the world’s energy future is not the problem of waste disposal or the danger of reactor operator error, or the vulnerability to terrorist attack. Let’s assume for the moment that all three of these problems can be solved. That still leaves two serious issues that are more difficult constraints. The first is economics; the current generation of reactors is expensive, take a long time to build, and only come in one size - extra large. In a time of great uncertainty over energy prices, utilities must count on great uncertainty in electricity demand - and that uncertainty causes them to strongly prefer smaller incremental additions to their generating capacity that are each less expensive and quicker to build than are large 1000 megawatt light water reactors. Newer, more scalable and affordable reactor designs may eventually become available, but not soon. Secondly, if the world as a whole chose nuclear power as the option of choice to replace coal-fired generating plants, we would face a dramatic increase in the likelihood of nuclear weapons proliferation. During my 8 years in the White House, every nuclear weapons proliferation issue we dealt with was connected to a nuclear reactor program. Today, the dangerous weapons programs in both Iran and North Korea are linked to their civilian reactor programs. Moreover, proposals to separate the ownership of reactors from the ownership of the fuel supply process have met with stiff resistance from developing countries who want reactors. As a result of all these problems, I believe that nuclear reactors will only play a limited role.

Gore’s technological optimism on just about every other area of climate change policy does not square with his technological pessimism about nuclear power. My guess – and it is only an uninformed guess – is that Gore’s views on nuclear power provide the strongest signal that he is positioning himself for a run at the Presidency in 2008. His views on nuclear power seem carefully crafted so as not to offend his base of political support. Otherwise, why wouldn’t he call in grand fashion (as he has in every other area) for solving the problems of nuclear power that accompany its abundant carbon free energy? If we can freeze carbon dioxide levels we can sure keep nuclear material safe.

On coal:

The most important set of problems by that must be solved in charting solutions for the climate crisis have to do with coal, one of the dirtiest sources of energy that produces far more CO2 for each unit of energy output than oil or gas. . . Fortunately, there may be a way to capture the CO2 produced as coal as burned and sequester it safely to prevent it from adding to the climate crisis. It is not easy. This technique, known as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is expensive and most users of coal have resisted the investments necessary to use it. However, when the cost of not using it is calculated, it becomes obvious that CCS will play a significant and growing role as one of the major building blocks of a solution to the climate crisis.

Here we see the technological optimism that is absent in his views on nuclear power.

On adaptation:

Absolutely nothing.

Posted on September 19, 2006 08:01 AM View this article | Comments (13)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

September 18, 2006

Carbon Dioxide Emissions at Stake in the EPA Lawsuit

I put this in the comments of an earlier thread, but I thought worth highlighting as well. What are potential effects of EPA regulation of carbon dioxide from automobiles?

Taking a look at data from the US EIA (here):

It projects out to 2030 that the accumulated global carbon dioxide emissions will be 235 GtC. It also projects that of this total about 15 GtC will come from the use of petroleum in the United States. Let's assume all of this comes from cars. Lets further assume the EPA regulates carbon dioxide such that no emissions are allowed.

This would reduce the global total emissions of carbon dioxide from 235 to 220 GtC by 2030 (assuming regulations start January 1, 2007). (The ratio presumably gets smaller further into the future as global emissions are projected t increase faster than US auto emisssions.) I don't think that current climate models are able to differentate bewteen a world with these two values of carbon dioxide emissions, much less predict how one might be different than another.

In short the effects of EPA regulation would likely be nil. So is the lawsuit about publicity? Compelling U.S. participation in an international agreement? Because it sure does not look like it is about reducing the impacts of carbon dioxide on anything perceptible in the United States.

What have I missed?

Posted on September 18, 2006 05:42 PM View this article | Comments (21)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

September 15, 2006

Michael Griffin on Science in NASA

Here (in PDF) is a refreshingly blunt speech from NASA Administrator Michael Griffin on recent issues of science in NASA. No bureaucratic mombo-jumbo here. Here are some choice excerpts:

On science as a priority:

I have on many occasions heard the accusation that NASA has betrayed the scientific community because, it is said, the Vision for Space Exploration was "sold" as being "affordable", to be “go as you can pay”. To many scientists, that means very explicitly that Exploration is to be funded after, and only after, all prior science commitments were satisfied. The idea seems to be that, after we've done JWST, Europa, SIM, TPF, and every other mission in the pre-VSE NASA budget, then and only then can we embark upon renewed human Exploration of deep space. Well, that is simply not how it works. "Affordable" does not mean that all of Science is of higher priority than anything in Exploration. The programs above were approved in an earlier time, with different budget assumptions for NASA. There have been very significant budget cuts and many unplanned requirements for funding since the Vision for Space Exploration was announced. The impact of those cuts cannot fall to any single entity in NASA's portfolio. “Go as you can pay” applies to all of NASA, not just to isolated pieces of its portfolio.

On exploration having intrinsic and economic benefits apart from science:

But, as always, there is another view, best and most tersely captured by the President’s Science Advisor, Jack Marburger, in his March '06 speech at the AAS Goddard Symposium. Jack noted that the Vision for Space Exploration is fundamentally about bringing the resources of the solar system within the economic sphere of mankind. It is not fundamentally about scientific discovery. To me, Marburger’s statement is precisely right.
So a key point must be made: Exploration without science is not "tourism". It is far more than that. It is about the expansion of human activity out beyond the Earth. Exactly this point was very recently noted and endorsed by no less than Stephen Hawking, a pure scientist if ever there was one. Hawking joins those, including the Chairman of the NASA Advisory Council, who have long pointed out this basic truth: The history of life on Earth is the history of extinction events, and human expansion into the Solar System is, in the end, fundamentally about the survival of the species. So to me exploration is, in and of itself, equally as noble a human endeavor as is scientific discovery.

On complaints about NASA’s spending priorities:

Finally, there is the issue of control. Many members of the scientific community fully understand that the President and Congress have made decisions about the Shuttle and ISS programs that will not be undone. They understand that the proportion of funding at NASA that goes to SMD is at an historic high, and that they should pocket their gains over the last decade and remain quiet, lest someone notice! They understand that NASA is unlikely to grow in real terms, and that therefore many projects which all of us would like to do earlier, will in fact be done later. They get all of that.
The problem is that these folks do understand these real-world limitations, and in a world with such limitations, they want to be in charge of the distribution of resources. Put bluntly, they want to exercise the inherent authority of government to decide what is being done with the money which is available for science at NASA, but without having to come to Washington, put on a NASA badge, make all the associated sacrifices, and live with the consequences of their decisions, which mostly means that when you decide to do one thing, you are also deciding not to do something else that someone else would like to do, and you have to be publicly accountable for that fact.

On scientists as advisors to NASA:

Some of these external folks really seem to believe that NASA program selection and planning should be vetted through “the community" for approval. It is one thing to say that, broadly, we should be guided by the decadal plans of the NAS, the organization to which Congress looks for strategic advice in such matters. I emphatically support this view, while also being of the belief that sometimes, circumstances change on time scales shorter than a decade, and also that sometimes good advice comes from other directions. But it is another thing entirely to suggest that "the community" has an inherent right to review and modify our annual budget. To me, one of the most disturbing aspects of this practice is that the very same people who stand to benefit from particular distributions of NASA funding would be advising NASA as to what those distributions ought to be.
Let us for a moment consider the situation in the abstract. The market for scientific goods and services, while dominated in the space sciences by the government, is nonetheless a market like any other. So, each year the President and Congress (mostly upon the advice of scientists) determine that the pursuit of certain goals in space and Earth science is in the best interests of the United States. Each year, the Congress approves the purchase, through NASA, of scientific goods and services to that end. As with most markets, there are more parties desiring to provide such products than can be procured, and so a variety of closely supervised competitive procurement mechanisms are employed to determine the successful suppliers of these products. Thus, from a legal, contractual, and managerial perspective, members of the external scientific community are suppliers to NASA, not customers.

My point is that if we were to substitute above any other noun besides “science”, the inherent conflict between the role of the scientific community as a purveyor of products to the government, and its role as the primary source of advice as to which products the government should purchase, would not be tolerated. Yet, the scientific community simply must be involved if we are to set intelligent priorities among the nation’s various scientific goals. The whole process is ethically defensible if, and only if, a proper “arm’s length” separation is maintained between advisors and implementers

On NASA scientists seeking to influence the advisory process:

. . . it was my observation that NASA managers have sometimes used these advisory committees to assist in shaping the direction of our programs to a degree that I find unseemly, in view of the inherent potential for conflicts that I have outlined above, and in a manner tending to reduce responsibility and accountability on the part of NASA officials.

On the distinction between advice and authority:

How many of you present here today, and who are organizational managers at any level, would appreciate external advisors – or even other managers – bypassing you to provide “tactical” advice to those who report to you? Any takers for this approach to organizational governance? And if not, would it make a difference if the staff members and the advisors are “scientists” as opposed to other employees?
Moving on, it has also been alleged that, in reshaping the advisory committee reporting structure, I am “preventing scientists from talking to scientists". This is also nonsense. As far as I am concerned, anyone can talk to anyone, and probably should! I desperately hope that the staff of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate converses widely and frequently within the community. The NASA scientific staff absolutely must be of the scientific community, and active in it, to be effective in the planning and execution of their work. But the rendering of formal advice from an advisory committee to officials of a Federal agency is hardly “scientists talking to scientists”, nor should it be.
In fact, with regard to scientific advisory committee input to NASA, the real issue is not whether “scientists can talk to scientists”, but whether the Administrator is to be included in the conversation! By requiring formal advice to be debated in and provided through the NAC, the scientific community’s advice to NASA comes to the Administrator and simultaneously to the Science Mission Directorate. Under the prior structure, with numerous committees reporting directly to lower-level organizational managers, the Administrator usually had no direct knowledge as to the advice being provided to the Agency by external groups. This is not a responsible approach to organizational management.

Thus, at this point, I am back to basic organizational management principles. Responsibility and accountability for planning and executing NASA’s science program must rest with NASA’s managers, not the external scientific community. Execution of these responsibilities must be appropriately informed, and to this end we must, and will, make intelligent use of our advisory committee structure. But the final responsibility and accountability for Agency programs can lie nowhere other than with us, the NASA staff.

Posted on September 15, 2006 04:42 PM View this article | Comments (4)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

September 14, 2006

What to Make of This?

I'm not sure how to assess this news report:

The Bush administration plans to announce as early as next week a goal of stabilizing carbon dioxide levels in the global atmosphere at 450 parts per million by the year 2106, congressional and non-government sources told Platts Wednesday.
Such an announcement, if true, might lead to the establishment of new regulatory policies -- either voluntary or mandatory -- for the power sector and other sources of CO2 emissions.

But a high-ranking source at the White House Council on Environmental Quality rejected the suggestion, saying the administration has no plans to unveil any new climate-change policies.

Rumors that the White House plans to unveil a new global warming policy have been circulating since August 27, when Time magazine reporter Mike Allen, citing unnamed administration sources, wrote that President Bush's views on the phenomenon "have evolved."

In the news story there is a telling response from a representative of the Sierra Club who apparently has decided that anything the Bush Administration does necessarily is wrong, but in expressing his opposition fails to grasp the fact that the effects of stabilization at a particular level are time invariant -- that is, as far as the effects of carbon dioxide on climate change, the precise path to stabilization is not important, the time-integrated emissions are what matters because of the long atmospheric residence time of carbon dioxide.

Dave Hamilton, director of the Sierra Club's global warming and energy programs, said that while the 450 ppm number was fine, the timeline is not.
"We've got to make 450 [ppm] by mid-century, not next century," he said, adding that the administration's plan "would not stave off the worst impacts of global warming."

I am doubtful that the Bush Administration will suggest dramatic new policies on climate change. But let's see what happens. Meantime, the strategy of advancing incorrect policy arguments to support apparent predetermined opposition to policies not yet proposed might be rethought.

Posted on September 14, 2006 06:14 AM View this article | Comments (35)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

September 12, 2006

The Promotion of Scientific Findings with Political Implications

In the Houston Chronicle today, Eric Berger has a thoughtful article about the state of the debate over hurricanes and global warming. One question that it raises is the degree to which scientists should be actively engaged in partnering with advocacy organizations to promote their work. Here is an excerpt from the Chronicle article:

While nearly all scientists agreed Earth has warmed considerably in the last century, there was no consensus on whether that warming world was causing more and stronger hurricanes to form.
Now some of those scientists have changed their minds, saying a consensus has indeed emerged.

Such talk was sparked Monday when 19 respected climate scientists published a research paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluding that human burning of fossil fuels has warmed the oceans, providing the fuel for tropical cyclones to become monster hurricanes.

"The work that we've done closes the loop," said Tom Wigley, an author of the new paper and a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

The message for the public should be clear, added Robert Correll, a senior fellow of the American Meteorological Society: Humans are the "primary driving force behind increased hurricane activity."

In a post-Katrina world, this is a question public policy-makers and the public have sought an answer to, leading to a flurry of research in the last year.

But some researchers who study the complicated interplay between hurricanes and global warming suggest little has changed in the last few months to suggest that scientists have come to a consensus.

"Honestly, I don't think anyone's changed their mind," said Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University. "To me, this looks like the same people saying the same thing over and over again."

Earlier this year, Klotzbach published a paper suggesting that, despite a rise in ocean temperatures during the last 20 years, hurricane activity worldwide has decreased.

When Klotzbach published his paper, however, he did not issue a press release or organize a teleconference.

This week's PNAS article was accompanied by a teleconference with Correll, Wigley and two other prominent hurricane scientists, Kerry Emanuel and Greg Holland.

"What concerns me," Klotzbach said, "is the politicization of this issue."

The teleconference being referred to was organized by a group called Resource Media which describes itself as "dedicated to making the environment matter. We provide media strategy and services to non-profits, foundations and other partners who are working on the front lines of environmental protection." Resource Media’s "partners" are a long list of environmental advocacy groups. I’ve personally given money to some of these groups, and in most cases I am not opposed to their advocacy. But I am concerned about scientists who align themselves with one political agenda in a politically contentious debate putatively over science. This feeds the pathological politiicization of science.

On this subject last March I wrote about how a different group of hurricane scientists participated in a media briefing organized by the group TechCentralStation, an organization that values "the power of free markets, open societies and individual human ingenuity to raise living standards and improve lives." Here is what I said then about the self-segregation of scientists according to their political predispositions:

Let’s take a look at this behavior from two perspectives. First, from the perspective of the individual scientist deciding to align with an interest group, it should be recognized that such a decision is political. There is of course nothing wrong with politics, it is how we get done the business of society, and organized interest groups are fundamental to modern democracy. Nonetheless, an observer of this dynamic might be forgiven for thinking when they see scientists self-select and organize themselves according to political predispositions that different perspectives on scientific issues are simply a function of political ideologies. We can see how contentious political debates involving science become when filtering science through interest groups is the dominant mechanism for connecting science to policy.

Aligning with powerful interests can certainly help a scientist to amplify their message in the media and elevate their prominence in political debates. This sort of amplification has long been a tactic of the political right, and it seems that the left is rapidly catching up. But the battle over perceptions of science in the media is not the same as scientific debate.

Resource Media’s campaign is disingenuous because it presents the scientific debate over hurricanes-climate change as if it has been settled, and the climate scientists they are promoting have contributed to this misinterpretation. Consider that the PNAS paper being promoted this week focuses on a subject that has never been at issue in the scientific debate:

National Hurricane Center scientist Chris Landsea said warmer water doesn't lead necessarily to stronger hurricanes.
"I agree with the paper's conclusion that the warming trend in the tropical oceans is likely due, at least in part, to greenhouse gases," Landsea said. "But this paper certainly isn't the 'key link' between hurricanes and climate change. Its focus is on something that I thought was settled quite some time ago."

As far as the scientific debate over hurricanes and climate change. It remains exactly where it has been for the past year – a debate.

On the very professional (but password protected) website that Resource Media has set up to promote the latest paper, they provide a long list of publications related to the hurricane-global warming debate, but conspicuously fail to include any work by Landsea, including his comments on Emanuel’s work, Chan, including his comments on Webster et al., or a link to the joint statement led by Kerry Emanuel and colleagues (including several who participated in the Resource Media teleconference) on the policy significance of this debate. Do they take reporters for rubes? Do they think that reporters are not aware of the broader literature? Do they not know that most reporters know a promotional campaign when they see one?

Such tactics have been criticized as cherrypicking and misrepresentation by critics of the use of science by those on the political right, and appropriately so. It seems to me that cherrypicking and misrepresentation is improper no matter who is doing it. Advocacy groups and politicians will always make the best case they can for their agenda, at the known risk of being called out by the other side.

However, when scientists willingly participate in such tactics to promote their research, and presumably a political agenda hitched to that research, they place their long-term credibility at risk. On the climate issue, many of the scientists who have aligned themselves with the political right have seen their credibility evaporate, even as they have received considerable media attention. The hurricane scientists who are now amplifying their message by aligning with the political left should take a close look at this lesson from recent history, as it may foretell their own future.

Posted on September 12, 2006 07:13 AM View this article | Comments (16)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters | The Honest Broker

September 10, 2006

The Dismal Prospects for Stabilization

The Economist's survey of climate change describes the challenge of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations as follows:

The concentration of CO2 in the air has risen from 280ppm before the industrial revolution to around 380ppm now, and the IPCC reckons that if emissions continue to grow at their current rate, by 2100 this will have risen to around 800ppm. Depending on population changes, economic growth and political will, this could be adjusted to somewhere between 540ppm and 970ppm. The prospect of anything much above 550ppm makes scientists nervous.

But a close examination of research in this area does appear to lend anything but pessimism to the notion that stabilization at 550 ppm is even possible. Forget about 500 or 450.

By contrast, the Economist suggests some optimism for reaching a 550 ppm target. My reading of the Economist survey on climate change suggests that this optimism may be the result of its confusion between stabilizing emissions reductions with stabilization of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide -- a common error in discussions of climate change. This distinction is important because it can lead one to dramatically underestimate the magnitude of the challenge represented by achieving stabilization at levels such as 450, 500, or 550 ppm carbon dioxide.

Indeed, it seems that this misplaced optimism has led the Economist to conclude, "The technological and economic aspects of the problem are, thus, not quite as challenging as many imagine. The real difficulty is political." This line of thinking is the same as that presented in the IPCC’s Working Group III, but it is not at all reflective of a consensus. For instance, the IPCC’s conclusion that climate change is not a technological but a political challenge was strongly criticized by Hoffert et al. (2002) as reflecting a "misperception of technological readiness" and they conclude that "although regulation can play a role, the fossil fuel greenhouse effect is an energy problem that cannot be simply regulated away."

A closer look at the studies referred to by the Economist in its survey on prospects for stabilization of carbon dioxide concentrations is a somewhat sobering exercise. The Economist writes,

If an answer is to be found, it lies in using a combination of economics and a broad range of technologies. Robert Socolow, an economist at Princeton University, offers an encouraging way of thinking about this. His “stabilisation wedges” show how different ways of cutting emissions can be used incrementally to lower the trajectory from a steep and frightening path towards a horizontal one that stabilises emissions at their current level.

What Socolow has proposed is an approach to getting a start on the challenge of stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions at a level that might make stabilization still feasible, not an answer to the challenge of stabilization. A closer look at Socolow’s work suggests less reason for optimism than reported by the Economist.

Socolow suggests that under business-as-usual carbon dioxide emissions will continue to increase at a rate of 1.5% per year. This growth rate would result in an additional 525 gigatons of carbon (GtC) being added to the atmosphere by 2054, and at that time an annual rate of emissions of 15.0 GtC. Socolow argues that to eventually achieve stabilization at 550 ppm requires that the annual rate of emissions 2004-2054 not exceed an annual average of 7.0 GtC. Perhaps the simplest way to think about this is that under Socolow’s assumptions the emissions of carbon dioxide by 2054 would need to be reduced by about 53%. Socolow’s approach is valuable in that it has proposed a wide range of approaches that in some combination might feasibly make some progress toward a reduction of 53% in emissions by 2054.

But even assuming the tremendous achievement of a 53% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions would not be enough to stabilize carbon dioxide emissions at 550 ppm. It is absolutely essential to recognize that constant emissions at the present level will not lead to a stabilization of emissions concentrations in the atmosphere. As Pierre Friedlingstein and Susan Solomon wrote in PNAS last year,

It is worth recalling that constant emissions will lead to a linear increase in atmospheric CO2, not to stabilization. Atmospheric CO2 stabilization can be reached only with an emission scenario that eventually drops to zero.

By "zero" this means net of carbon dioxide "sinks." If the oceans and land serve as "sinks" (i.e., they have a net uptake of carbon dioxide) then in order for the atmosphere concentrations to reach stabilization, then human emissions need not be zero but cannot exceed the net "sink." This is described by Socolow et al. (2004) on pp. 14-15 of this paper in PDF). Socolow et al. suggest that the sink level is about 2.5 GtC per year, although they acknowledge that the figure is highly uncertain. Thus, under Socolow et al.’s sink estimate, in order to achieve stabilization of atmospheric concentrations at below a doubling of pre-industrial levels requires that over the period 2054-2104 annual emissions must be reduced by 4.5 GtC, from the 7 GtC that their scenario has for 2054. This rate of reduction corresponds to about a 2% annual decrease in carbon dioxide emissions.

Based on this scenario, we can then determine the aggregate carbon dioxide emissions implied over 2054-2104, which are about 225 GtC. Thus under Socolow’s assumptions, over the period 2004-2104, to achieve stabilization at 550 ppm requires that total emissions not exceed more than 658 GtC (i.e., 433 + 225, for the figure of 433 GtC allowed 2004-2054 see Table S1 in Pacala and Socolow’s SOM). Under Socolow’s business-as-usual, the total carbon dioxide emissions 2004-2104 are about 1630 GtC. Thus, over this period there needs to be a reduction in total emissions of about 60%.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency’s figures for global carbon dioxide emissions 2004 and 2005 saw about 7.04 and 7.25 GtC of carbon dioxide and 2006 is estimated at about 7.45 GtC. Adding these up results in about 21.7 GtC. Subtracting this from Socolow’s allowable 658 GtC 2004-2104 results in about 636 GtC. One way to think about this is that the world has a carbon dioxide emissions budget of 636 GtC to "spend" by 2104. Under business-as-usual (i.e., EIA estimates to 2030, Socolow’s growth of 1.5% after) this level of aggregate emissions will be exceeded by about 2057. Faster growth rates would of course reach that point faster.

Presumably, those who say that we have no more than ten years to get started on this challenge probably recognize that under business-as-usual by 2015 about an additional 100 GtC will be emitted into the atmosphere, drawing down Socolow’s allowable "budget" to 536 GtC to be "spent" over the following 88 years.

For my part, I fail to see any meaningful difference between 636 GtC to be spent over 98 years (or an average of 6.5 GtC/year) and 536 GtC to be spent over 88 years (6.1 GtC/year). If we can reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the business-as-usual average level of about 16.2 GtC/year 2004-2104 to an average of 6.5 GtC year over that period, then surely squeezing out an additional 0.4 GtC year would not be a show stopper.

Let me suggest another possibility. Under the assumptions presented here (i.e., from Socolow’s recent work) stabilization at 550 is not in the cards. If indeed it is true that waiting ten years is too late, then one has no choice but to conclude that starting immediately is too late as well. This is likely to be an unwelcomed and unacceptable conclusion to many, I know.

What would this conclusion mean for climate policy? Here are a few thoughts.

1. Serious thought and research needs to be given to the prospect of stabilization levels much higher that currently being discussed. What are their policy implications for mitigation and adaptation?

2. The EU, for instance, needs to move discussion beyond its fantasy of stabilization at 450 ppm (see Richard Tol on this here).

3. If stabilization at higher than 550 ppm is determined to be "dangerous interference" in the climate system, then the Framework Convention on climate change needs to be renegotiated from the bottom up. Specifically, its Article 2 needs to be recognized as no longer relevant, and no longer an effective guide to action.

4. Much, much more attention needs to be given to adaptation and its role in climate policy.

5. To continue prospects for successful mitigation policy in the face of the reality that mitigation cannot achieve the goals once set for it will require renewed attention to no-regrets policies.

6. Those who say that abandoning a 550 ppm (or lower) target represents "giving up" or "throwing in the towel" will be setting the stage for a backlash when it inevitably becomes inescapable that those targets are not going to be achieved. At some point policy must be grounded in reality.

7. The longer advocates of mitigation continue to hold unrealistic goals for mitigation policies, the longer it will be before realistic policies are being discussed with a greater chance for policy success.

There are of course a lot of assumptions in the above discussion of Socolow’s work, though I have tried to select those most favorable to stabilization. And there are of course many studies of stabilization paths and scenarios (e.g., as cited by IPCC WGIII). Perhaps this broader literature leads to different conclusions than those presented here. I would be interested in hearing from anyone with a substaintive case to be made for why prospects for stabilization at 550 ppm are more optimistic than the gloomy picture painted here.

Posted on September 10, 2006 07:03 PM View this article | Comments (38)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

September 08, 2006

Ceding the Ethical Ground on Stem Cells

The Washington Post has a good news story on the possibility of "ethically acceptable" stem cell research that helps clarify the confusion created by an over-hyped story in Nature, involving business interests, a misleading press release, and a erroneous reporting of the story by Nature. But the over-hyping may be the least important aspect of this situtation for proponents of stem cell research. Firt, here is an excerpt from the Post story:

Two senators who strongly support human embryonic stem cell research lashed out yesterday at the scientist who recently reported the creation of those cells by a method that does not require the destruction of embryos, saying the scientist and his company have harmed the struggling field by overstating their results.
"It's a big black eye if scientists are making false and inaccurate representations," a combative Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said during a hearing of the Senate Appropriations labor, health and human services subcommittee, which he chairs. . .

Specter and [Senator Tom] Harkin [D-IA] focused on what they said was the main reason for the confusion: the company's [ACT] news release, which said the team had derived stem cells "using an approach that does not harm embryos."

The approach -- removing single cells -- may be harmless when only one cell is removed, the senators agreed. But in this case, it did harm embryos because the scientists, wanting to make the most of the few embryos donated for the work, took many cells from each.

Similarly, the release quoted [ACT scientist Robert] Lanza as saying: "We have demonstrated, for the first time, that human embryonic stem cells can be generated without interfering with the embryo's potential for life." . . .

Harkin said: "ACT should have made it more clear from the beginning that none of the embryos survived." He added that he suspected the wording was intentionally misleading to raise the company's long-suffering stock price. The stem cell field, he said, has "been hyped too much. We need to come back to Earth."

But Ronald M. Green, a Dartmouth University ethicist who was among several who approved the experimental protocol, told the senators they were wrong to belittle the findings or the way they were reported.

"We're speaking here of an enormous breakthrough in American medicine," said Green, who said his only financial link to the company was the approximately $200 per day he was paid -- more than a year ago -- for attending a handful of meetings to review the research.

Not addressed by the senators was a plainly incorrect announcement sent to science reporters by the journal Nature itself.

"By plucking single cells from human embryos, Robert Lanza and his colleagues have been able to generate new lines of cultured human embryonic stem (ES) cells while leaving the embryos intact," the release said.

That erroneous description -- written not by scientists at Nature but by the journal's lay staff -- was corrected after news stories were published.

Nature later apologized to reporters, blaming the mistake on "internal communication problems."

Over-hyped science? Financial ties to industry? Misrepresentation in a peer-reviewed journal? Where is the War-on-Science crowd when you need them? Oh yeah, this doesn’t involve the Bush Administration . . .

Less tongue-in-cheek, and more significantly, what has been completely overlooked here is the complete tactical blunder by ACT, Nature, and the general media in suggesting that in order to be “ethical” stem cell research should not destroy embryos. The acceptance of this point basically legitimizes the central objection to such research advanced by stem cell research opponents. It consequently takes off the table the argument that the benefits of possible medical advances might be balanced against the offense to certain groups in society. Over the long run, it may be that waging the debate over stem cells from the turf occupied by its opponents does more to limit its proponents than their ham-handed efforts to over-hype the science.

As the American Journal of Bioethics writes of this debacle on its blog:

Can't we just be honest and say that we favor embryonic stem cell research, at least for now, since that's what happens at ACT (and since it is true), even though the research destroys embryos?

Posted on September 8, 2006 01:53 AM View this article | Comments (4)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Biotechnology

Follow-up on Ceres Report

On August 23 here we took the group Ceres to task for misrepresenting our work in a report on insurance and climate change. I am happy to report that Evan Mills and Ceres have graciously followed up with me seeking to correct the presentation of our work in the report (PDF). Here is what the report now says:

Thanks to a workshop held by Munich Re and the University of Colorado at Boulder, a previous debate has evolved into a consensus that climate change and variability are playing a role in the observed increase in the costs of weather-related damages, although participants agreed that it is still not possible to determine the portion of the increase in damages that might be attributed to climate change due to GHG emissions.

Thanks very much to Evan and Ceres for following up!

Posted on September 8, 2006 12:08 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

September 07, 2006

Substance Thread - IPCC and Assessments

For those who would like to discuss the finer points of my blog writing skills, and the deeper perhaps even sinister implications of my particular word choices, please use this earlier thread;-)

For everyone else, Kenneth Blumenfled has graciously gotten us back on track in a comment reproduced below. For those wanting to discuss the substantive issues associated with my earlier post, the key elements of which I reproduce below, please use this one! Thanks!

Here are some questions worth asking about the hockey stick experience that are not receiving enough attention:

1. The Chronicle article notes that the author(s) of the hockey stick article were responsible for its inclusion in the IPCC report. What are the issues associated with having people (not just limited to the HS, of course) involved with assessing their own work? This would never fly for, say, journal peer review or the drug approval process. Other experience suggests that science can be misrepresented when people review their own work in assesments for policy makers. What are the alternatives? What are the general lessons for the emapnelment of science assessment bodies?

2. The Chronicle article noted of the IPCC's presentation of the HS, "caveats faded from view when leaders of the IPCC boiled down the 994-page scientific report into a 20-page synopsis." Representing complex science in a sound bite necessarily requires simplification, and arguably in this case, and many others, over-simplification of the science. Such over-simplifcations are amplified by the media and used in politically convenient ways by policy advocates on all sides of an issue (as described by the Chronicle, e.g., in the use of the HS by the U.S. National Asssessment and the WSJ). Does it make sense to "boil down" science in a manner that inevitably leads to a mischaracterization of that science? What are the alternatives? This isn't the only example where communication has suffered in the IPCC due to oversimplification of the relevant science.

In my view, both questions raised above might be addressed, at least in part, if the IPCC (or any assessment) were to ask and aswer "So what for action?" of science findings when bringing them to policy makers. The inclusion of any information in a "summary for policy makers" or a "policy relevant" document is based on an assumption that such information is in fact relevant to those policy makers. Scientists should be explcit about why, exactly, they are including some information and not others and what the criteria of relevance actually is. In the case of the IPCC, criteria of relevance are out of sight, and as far as I know completely arbitrary.

Kenneth Blumenfeld offers a reply:

Okay, I'll take a crack at point 1. It seems that IPCC authors may have been selected based on their expertise in a given area, and the intentions were probably better than the outcome suggests, at least in terms of the conflict-of-interest messiness. I would imagine that there was some recognition that the process was going to be a long and arduous one, so the thinking was, "why not have those who have written do the writing?"
I can't think of too many good alternatives. If you have non-experts doing the writing, don't you run the risk of misunderstanding and then misrepresenting the actual science (to at least the same degree as in the conflict-of-interest case)? And if you merely have *different* experts, then you just get the same problem, in a new flavor.

One radical idea would be to have the IPCC funnel money into graduate programs to fund doctoral-level literature reviews on each of the relevant topics. It would be win-win. Everyone knows that graduate students get way too in-depth with literature reviews, and so the chance of them missing something would be small. Students would be happy to compete for something as prestigious as IPCC authorship, and, being so early in their careers, they are all but guaranteed to have no prior investment in whichever topics they end up reviewing and writing about. The IPCC reviewers could be drawn from a pool of largely reading-but-not-writing climate scientists; for example, the sorts of folks who show great promise but then get sidetracked by 15 years of administrative appointments just after getting tenure.

Just a thought. :)

Posted on September 7, 2006 01:08 AM View this article | Comments (29)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

September 05, 2006

A Colossal Mistake

"A colossal mistake" is how Jerry Mahlman describes in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education the IPCC's decision to feature the so-called "hockey stick" in its Summary for Policy Makers.

I am somewhat surprised that discussion of the hockey stick continues to be about the he said-he said conflcit between the camps in Real Climate and Climate Audit, as described by the Chronicle. As much fun as the personalities and politics are, at some point it is probably worth discussing the broader significance of the hockey stick debate for how we think about scientific assessments and their contributions to the needs of decision makers.

Along these lines, here are some questions worth asking about the hockey stick experience that are not receiving enough attention:

Posted on September 5, 2006 07:55 PM View this article | Comments (17)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

September 04, 2006

Politics of Pluto

Excess of Objectivity.
Politicization of Science.
Underdetermination.

Posted on September 4, 2006 03:54 PM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

BA on Adaptation

Here is an interesting news story from the BBC on a forthcoming speech today by Frances Cairncross, head of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which will emphasize the need for increased attention to adaptation to climate change.

Posted on September 4, 2006 05:46 AM View this article | Comments (6)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

September 01, 2006

1 Degree

Can this be a correct reporting of the IPCC's forthcoming report?

THE world's top climate scientists have cut their worst-case forecast for global warming over the next 100 years.
A draft report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, obtained exclusively by The Weekend Australian, offers a more certain projection of climate change than the body's forecasts five years ago.

For the first time, scientists are confident enough to project a 3C rise on the average global daily temperature by the end of this century if no action is taken to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The Draft Fourth Assessment Report says the temperature increase could be contained to 2C by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are held at current levels.

Is the climate policy debate really about the difference between a global average temperature change of 2+ and 3 degrees C over the next 93 years?

Posted on September 1, 2006 10:50 PM View this article | Comments (25)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Back to Square One?

The BBC quotes AAAS president John Holdren as saying that the work has already reached the threshold of dangerous climate change. Why does this matter? If scientists actually believe that this is the case then it would mean that the overriding objective of the Framework Convention on Climate Change is obsolete and needs to be revisited. Here is what the BBC reports:

One of America's top scientists has said that the world has already entered a state of dangerous climate change.
In his first broadcast interview as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, John Holdren told the BBC that the climate was changing much faster than predicted.

"We are not talking anymore about what climate models say might happen in the future.

"We are experiencing dangerous human disruption of the global climate and we're going to experience more," Professor Holdren said.

The central objective of the FCCC is described in its Article 2 as:

stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.

But if dangerous anthropogenic interference has already occurred or is inevitably on its way, then "prevention" is not in the cards and Article 2 becomes meaningless as a guide to action. Re-opening up Article 2 for revision and updating would be extremely contentious. But view it is needed. If the science advances, so to should the policy response.

I earlier commented that the political issue of “dangerous” climate change will create incentives for scientists to claim that we are on the brink, but not there yet. Hence we often here claims of "ten years to act" and so on. I’d expect that the politically-savvy IPCC will split this baby by placing us on the brink of dangerous climate change, but not there yet. But the more scientists who speak out as Holdren have, the less tenable Article 2 is as a guide to action. In my view it is just a matter of time before Article 2 needs to be revisited. And the sooner the better.

Posted on September 1, 2006 08:48 AM View this article | Comments (7)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Risk & Uncertainty

August 31, 2006

Climate Mitigation and Adaptation in India

SciDev.net has an excellent article online about climate adaptation and mitigation in India. Here in an excerpt relevant to recent discussions here on Prometheus:

Finance is another problem for government and development agencies. The Global Environment Facility supports adaptation projects with global environmental benefits. But "how do you prove the global benefit of a storm forecasting or cyclone warning system along a specific coastline?" asks Anand Patwardhan, professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai and executive director of the Technology Information Forecasting and Assessment Council.
And even the issue of adaptation itself is contentious. "By shifting the focus to adaptation, major industrialised polluting countries are side-stepping their responsibility towards mitigation" says Sunita Narain, director of the Delhi-based non governmental organisation, Centre for Science and Environment.

Climate change or no climate change, pockets of India face frequent droughts while monsoon floods ravage others. National programmes to improve watershed and ground water management may qualify as adaptation strategies, but they have not been put in place with adaptation in mind.

"It is difficult to distinguish adaptation to climate change from the process of development itself," says Patwardhan.

"In practice, we do not experience climate change—we experience changes in weather patterns," he observes. Local communities find it difficult to visualise life in 2050, or to understand what a half degree rise in temperature will mean. And disadvantaged groups already face pressures from population growth, natural resource depletion and socio-economic inequalities. To these communities in particular, climate change will become an added stress of daily life.

"What we need to do" suggests Patwardhan, "is to link day-to-day choices and activities to the long-term response to climate change"

Amen.

Posted on August 31, 2006 06:59 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

August 28, 2006

Do the Ends Justify the Means?

On climate policy many people apparently believe that the answer is "yes!" I do not. As an example of this perspective, consider the following comment from climate sceintist Andrew Dessler:

As a citizen, there are many issues on which I have a strongly held positions (tax reform, the Iraq war, privacy issues, and yes, AGW). For each of these, I have a preferred policy. I want my policy adopted, and I don't really care why it gets adopted. Not everyone has to agree with *my reasoning* and I don't have to agree with theirs. If some people support action on AGW because they misunderstand the science ... well then they cancel the people that oppose AGW because of a cancelling misunderstanding.
I don't excuse misrepresentation of science, and I correct it wherever possible ... but if, in the final analysis, Katrina helps get a GHG policy enacted, then I'm fine with that. [emphasis added]

[Note: To be perfectly clear, this post is not about Andrew specifically, but about the more general attitude, using Andrew's comment as an example of this perspective, which is apparently widely shared.]

From my perspective, a view that bad policy arguments should be acceptable so long as they help us "win" in political battle is exactly the sort of thinking that motivated the Bush Administration's selling of the Iraq War. Not only did a bad policy result (i.e., one that has not achieved the ends on which it was sold on), but it has harmed the ability of the President to act (maybe a good thing in this case), and certainly diminished the credibility of intelligence. The exact same dynamics are at risk in the climate debate when scientists support their political preferences with bad policy arguments, or stand by silently while others speak for them.

Apparently my perspective is also widely shared. Hans von Storch, Nico Stehr, and Dennis Bray have written (PDF) of this attitude:

The concern for the "good" and "just" case of avoiding further dangerous human interference with the climate system has created a peculiar self-censorship among many climate scientists. Judgments of solid scientific findings are often not made with respect to their immanent quality but on the basis of their alleged or real potential as a weapon by "skeptics" in a struggle for dominance in public and policy discourse.

Oxford's Steve Rayner provides a similar perspective (here):

The danger of using bad arguments for good causes, such as preventing unwanted climate change, is two-fold. Generally, it provides a dangerous opening for opponents who would derail environmental policy by exposing weaknesses in the underlying science. Specifically, it leads to advocating policies for reducing future storm impacts that are likely to be ineffective in achieving their declared aim. With or without greenhouse gas emissions reductions, the costs of storm damage are bound to rise. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions will have far less impact on storm damage costs than moving expensive infrastructure away from coastal margins and flood plains.
For good or ill, we live in an era when science is culturally privileged as the ultimate source of authority in relation to decision making. The notion that science can compel public policy leads to an emphasis on the differences of viewpoint and interpretation within the scientific community. From one point of view, public exposure to scientific disagreement is a good thing. We know that science is not capable of delivering the kind of final authority that is often ascribed to it. Opening up to the public the conditional, and even disputatious nature of scientific inquiry, in principle, may be a way of counteracting society's currently excessive reliance on technical assessment and the displacement of explicit values-based arguments from public life (Rayner, 2003). However, when this occurs without the benefit of a clear understanding of the importance of the substantial areas where scientists do agree, the effect can undermine public confidence.

This is of course an issue much broader than climate change, and at its core is about how science is to operate in a democracy. The practice of science, insofar as it is related to action, is all about questions of means. That is, science can tell us something about the consequences of different possible courses of action. Science however cannot tell us how to value those consequences, which is the territory of ethics, values, religion, ideology, etc..

Once a scientist (a generic scientist!) decides to elevate ends above means in the area of their own expertise then they are in fact giving up on what their science can most contribute to the political process, and that is knowledge relevant to the means we employ in pursuit of desired ends.

If you want insight on the contemporary pathological politicization of science within the scientific community, look no further than the perspective held by many scientists that on issues related to their expertise, the ends do in fact justify the means. In my view this is bad for both democracy and for the sustianability of the sceintific enterprise.

Posted on August 28, 2006 03:50 PM View this article | Comments (47)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

August 26, 2006

Hurricane Damage Futures

A futures market called Hedge Street is offering futures contracts on insured hurricane damages for the 2006 season. There are 4 different contracts offered paying out 30 November 2006. The contracts pay out $100 for damage thresholds of $100 million, $1 billion, $10 billion, or $25 billion. As of Friday the contracts last traded at the following values:

>$100M $80.30
>$1B $65.00
>$10B $24.20
>$25B $16.80

According to our research (underway, not peer-reviewed) we are currently about 25% of the way through "damage season" meaning that 75% of the historical damage has occurred after this date. We focus on total economic damages, but if we assume that insured damages are 50% of total economic then according to one of our adjustment methods (we now have 3) the past 106 years would have seen the Hedge Street thresholds exceeded with the following occurrence:

>$100M 70.8%
>$1B 48.1%
>$10B 14.2%
>$25B 5.7%

If we scale each of these figures to 75% of their value to reflect that we are a quarter of the way through damage season then they would be less. What might this mean for investing in hurricane futures?

As of Friday the bid price for each of these thresholds was as follows:

>$100M $75.00
>$1B $62.00
>$10B $15.00
>$25B $10.00

The bid price is that Hedge Street members are willing to buy a contract. If I were investing at Hedge Street (I am not, but thinking about it!) I’d probably be selling at those prices. In particular, selling the $1B contract looks particularly attractive at $62. Based on our current estimates of historical losses, that gives you about a 50% chance of making more than 160% return on your investment. Of course the downside is that you have about a 50% chance of losing your investment. I don’t see an easy way to stop loss, but maybe I am missing something. Anyone?

Posted on August 26, 2006 07:56 PM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

August 25, 2006

Pop Quiz

Some friday fun:

The follow quote refers to what:

"I guess this is just people holding the correct [political] opinion for the wrong [science/intelligence] reasons and let's accept it with gratitude."

A. Dick Cheney commenting upon learning that a majority of Americans believe that 9/11 is related to Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

B. A commentator at Real Climate upon learning that a majority of Americans believe that the Katrina disaster was caused by global warming.

Hey what is a little public misunderstanding of policy arguments so long as it helps your political agenda?! ;-)

Posted on August 25, 2006 09:21 AM View this article | Comments (37)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

August 24, 2006

Scientific Advice at NASA

The recent resignation of three scientists on the NASA Advisory Panel raises some interesting questions about the nature of advice versus decision making and the interests of those providing the advice in the outcomes of the decisions by those receiving their input. Science magazine makes this all a bit more concrete with some of the details of the brouhaha:

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin yesterday read the riot act to the outside scientists who advise him, accusing them of thinking more of themselves and their research than of the agency's mission. Griffin's harsh comments come on the heels of the resignation of three distinguished scientists from the NASA Advisory Council (NAC), two of whom have questioned Griffin's plan to dramatically scale back a host of science projects (Science, 12 May, p. 824). "The scientific community ... expects to have far too large a role in prescribing what work NASA should do," Griffin wrote council members in a blistering 21 August message. "By 'effectiveness,' what the scientific community really means is 'the extent to which we are able to get NASA to do what we want to do. "
The outside engineers, scientists, and educators on the council traditionally offer advice on the agency's policies, budget, and projects. Placed in limbo for nearly a year after Griffin took over as NASA chief in spring 2005, the NAC was reorganized this spring under the leadership of geologist Harrison Schmitt, a former U.S. senator and Apollo astronaut who is gung ho about President George W. Bush's plans to send humans back to the moon and to Mars. Schmitt replaced Charles Kennel, director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, who resigned last week from his post as chair of the council's science committee. Two other NAC members--former NASA space science chief Wesley Huntress and Rice University Provost Eugene Levy--resigned last week in response to a direct request from Griffin that they step down.

Schmitt and members of that committee have clashed repeatedly in recent months over the role of science at the space agency. In a pointed 24 July memo to science committee members, Schmitt complained that they lacked "willingness to provide the best advice possible to Mike," refused to back Griffin's decision to cut research funds for astrobiology or recommend an alternative cut, and resisted considering the science component of future human missions to the moon. "Some members of the committee," he concluded, "are not willing to offer positive assistance to Mike."

Both Levy, a physicist, and Huntress, an astrochemist now at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, say they support human space exploration but fear that science is now taking a back seat after years of a careful balance between human and robotic efforts. NASA spokesman Dean Acosta acknowledged that the scientists and Schmitt "weren't working well together," and that Griffin telephoned Huntress and Levy last week to ask for their resignations. Griffin's memo points to what he calls "the inherent and long-standing conflict-of-interest" by scientists giving advice to an agency on which they depend for funding. And he gives them a clear way out. "The most appropriate recourse for NAC members who believe the NASA program should be something other than what it is, is to resign."

Huntress says Griffin told him that his advice exceeded the council's charge. "This is a different NAC. Our advice was simply not required nor desired," Huntress told Science. The current council, he adds, "has no understanding or patience for the science community process." Kennel, who had been named chair of the NAC's science committee, was unavailable for comment, but Norine Noonan, a former NAC member and dean of math and science at South Carolina's College of Charleston, called Griffin's action "very distressing" for scientists. "If we can't have a robust debate at the NAC level," she says, "then where in the heck is it supposed to happen?"

Posted on August 24, 2006 07:23 AM View this article | Comments (7)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General | Space Policy

August 23, 2006

Dan Sarewitz on Research Questions for Science of Science Policy

Anything Dan Sarewitz writes is worth reading. Here (PDF) is a short essay he prepared for a recent NSF workshop on the "Science of Science Policy" in which he discusses what such a research agenda might look like. Here is an excerpt:

1. We need a conceptual framework, perhaps analogous to "national innovation systems," that can help put some boundaries around, and illuminate structure and dynamics within, the complex institutional setting for knowledge creation and use aimed at goals other than wealth creation.
2. Given that public investments in research are usually justified in terms of particular, desirable outcomes, we need to develop generalized approaches for systems-based institutional analysis and mapping that would allow such justifications to be contextualized and tested simply for plausibility. (For example, we might want to test the idea that more fundamental knowledge about the climate system is important for catalyzing a global technological shift to a decarbonized energy system.)

3. As Toulmin realized 40 years ago, science policy discourse often focuses on trade-offs between various scientific fields, rather than between science and other approaches to a particular social need or goal. Because we don’t understand research institutions ecologically, we still lack a decent analytical basis for understanding the role of research within a broad portfolio of potential policy interventions aimed at some goal. Mapping institutional ecologies of knowledge creation, use, and value could provide a foundation for developing new decision tools that allow policy makers to confront fundamental questions, such as: When is "more research" the right prescription? When is it unlikely to make a difference? What other factors are necessary for it to make a difference? When would a different intervention offer a more efficient or plausible route to a desired outcome? (For example, California voters might have benefited from a discussion of the variety of ways that the $5 billion allocated for CIRM might be applied to improving public health in the state.)

4. We do know that "institutions that do research" are embedded in different ways in broader institutional ecologies. In particular, certain types of research settings—e.g., agriculture; private sector software development; clinical medicine—have been identified as sites where feedback between knowledge creation and use is supposed to be strong. We need many, many more institutional case studies to help map out the variety of designs that are available, and to develop comparative frameworks and metrics based on the relations among institutional design, and knowledge creation, use, and value.

5. And of course we also need to reflect on where our own efforts fit in. "Bring back OTA" is not an adequate prescription. What are the loci of decision making where better understanding of, and discussion about, the institutional ecology of knowledge creation, use and value might make a difference? What types of insights, tools and products might decision makers find useful? This workshop strikes me as a huge opportunity to begin to enhance the public value of science policy and science studies research, but we need to start, needless to say, by attending to the institutional ecologies within which we now operate.

Posted on August 23, 2006 07:31 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Ceres is Misrepresenting Our Work

A while back we documented in some detail how a publication in Science by Evan Mills grossly misrepresented existing research to make the claim that human-caused climate change was observable in the economic record of disasters. In a just-released report by the group Ceres, an advocacy group focused on the insurance industry, Mr. Mills is again misrepresenting existing research, and this time it is mine.

In the report just out, co-authored by Mr. Mills (here in PDF), they write of the scientific debate over the role of climate change and disaster losses:

Thanks to a workshop held by Munich Re, a previous debate has evolved into a consensus that climate change is playing a role in the observed increase in the costs of weather-related damages.

Well, no. I co-organized the workshop with Peter Hoeppe of Munich Re (to which Mr. Mills was invited to attend but turned down). Here is what the workshop report executive summary (PDF) actually says:

Because of issues related to data quality, the stochastic nature of extreme event impacts, length of time series, and various societal factors present in the disaster loss record, it is still not possible to determine the portion of the increase in damages that might be attributed to climate change due to GHG emissions. . .
In the near future the quantitative link (attribution) of trends in storm and flood losses to climate changes related to GHG emissions is unlikely to be answered unequivocally.

The use of our work in the Ceres report represents either complete incompetence or a deliberate misrepresentation our work. In either case, if they are so cavalier with how they report my work, how can I trust that they are accurately reporting the work of others? Advocacy groups that base their arguments on flawed or erroneous representations of existing research have absolutely no credibility in my book. Science is diverse enough to be able to cherrypick and shade arguments in one’s preferred direction without misrepresentation. Ceres has in fact misrepresented my work. And that is unfortunate, because some of what Ceres has to say looks like it might make sense.

Posted on August 23, 2006 06:16 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

August 20, 2006

Bunk on the Potomac

The Washington Post has published one of the worst op-eds I have ever seen. Arguments such as this one might make one think that the environmental community is hell bent on its own self-destruction (compare). Here is an excerpt:

Barring a rapid change in our nation's relationship to fossil fuels, every American within shouting distance of an ocean -- including all of us in the nation's capital -- will become de facto New Orleanians. Imagine a giant floodgate spanning the Potomac River just north of Mount Vernon, there to hold back the tsunami-like surge tide of the next great storm. Imagine the Mall, Reagan National Airport and much of Alexandria well below sea level, at the mercy of "trust-us-they'll-hold" levees maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers. Imagine the rest of Washington vulnerable to the winds of major hurricanes that churn across a hot and swollen Chesapeake Bay, its surface free of the once vast and buffering wetland grasses and "speed bump" islands that slow down storms.
Because of global warming, this is our future. Oceans worldwide are projected to rise as much as three feet this century, and much higher if the Greenland ice sheet melts away. And intense storms are already becoming much more common. These two factors together will in essence export the plight of New Orleans, bringing the Big Easy "bowl" effect here to the Washington area, as well as to Charleston, S.C., Miami, New York and other coastal cities. Assuming we want to keep living in these cities, we'll have to build dikes and learn to exist beneath the surface of surrounding tidal bays, rivers and open seas -- just like New Orleans.

Weekly World News? Nope. The Washington Post. Here is more:

In the face of this sobering data suggesting we're bringing New Orleans to the Potomac, what should we do? Realistically, there are three major options: 1) abandon our coastal cities and retreat inland, a response too staggering to imagine, 2) stay put and try to adapt to the menacing new conditions, or 3) switch to clean energy as fast as possible.
Adapting, of course, means committing fully to the New Orleans model. It means potentially thousands of miles of levees and floodwalls across much of the region. And that's just to handle the rising sea. For hurricane surge tides, Stevenson thinks the only solution might be to build a floodgate across the Potomac near Mount Vernon. It could be closed during periods of maximum danger, then reopened as the surge ebbs. He envisions another on the Patapsco River to protect Baltimore. The New York Academy of Sciences, meanwhile, has examined the idea of three such floodgates for New York City.

But are we truly ready to become New Orleanians, casting our lot behind ever-higher, unsustainable walls? Once we commit to fortified levees and massive floodgates, there's no turning back. It's an all-or-nothing proposition, as New Orleans has graphically demonstrated.

Alternatively, we can go with the third option. It's less expensive, less risky and overall much better for us: clean energy. It's the option that treats the disease of global warming, not just the symptoms. Only by dramatically reducing greenhouse gas pollution -- by switching to hybrid cars and wind- and solar-powered electricity and high-efficiency appliances -- can we slow the sea-level rise and potentially calm the growth in hurricane intensity.

We must join the rest of the world in this effort because, while the effects are local, the solution can only be global. Some adaptation to global warming will still be necessary, given the momentum built into the warming process. And a national clean-energy overhaul will represent a huge challenge to our society, especially given how little time scientists say we have left -- maybe just 10 years -- before runaway climate effects become a reality.

But switching to clean, efficient energy is a challenge compared to what? Compared to life below sea level with a constant eye on the Weather Channel, waiting for the next Category 5 storm to replicate the horrifying events of last Aug. 29?

There are numerous scientific errors and misstatements in the piece (e.g., confusion of wind speed and power dissipation), but these factual problems pale in the face of its absurd policy arguments. I fully support switching to clean, efficient energy. But to suggest that such a switch can play a perceptible role in modulating the impacts of future hurricanes is simply bunk. It is absolute, utter nonsense.

Leading scientists would do well to recognize that their coy flirting with environmental activists bent on emissions reductions, while at the same time trying to hide their actions behind a fig leaf of policy agnisticism, only serves to feed such absurdities. Anyone wanting to help the environmental community achieve the goal of decarbonizing the global energy system should instead try to stop such poor policy arguments in their tracks.

Posted on August 20, 2006 09:09 PM View this article | Comments (9)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

August 19, 2006

Hurricanes and Global Warming: All You Need to Know

The current issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) has a lengthy commentary (PDF) by Judy Curry, Peter Webster, and Greg Holland offering their opinions on a wide range of subjects related to the recent debate over hurricanes and global warming. Beyond lengthy criticism of (see also Curry's extended comments at Real Climate) the media, meteorologists, engineers, NOAA, NWS, Bill Gray, the AMS, the tropical storms list-serv, and the private sector (Did I miss anyone? How did I escape mention? ;-)), Curry et al. do tell those interested in an appropriate representation of the current debate all we need to know.

In the article, Curry et al. state clearly that the science of hurricanes-climate change is contested and differing expectations for what the future holds based on competing hypotheses won't be resolved for at least a decade:

In summary, the central hypothesis and subhypotheses cannot be invalidated by the available evidence. We anticipate that it may take a decade for the observations to clarify the situation as to whether the hypothesis has predictive ability. In short, time will tell.

This echoes what we wrote in 2005 in BAMS (PDF):

. . .the state of the peer-reviewed knowledge today is such that there are good reasons to expect that any conclusive connection between global warming and hurricanes or their impacts will not be made in the near term.

At last year's AMS meeting Webster and Curry presented an earlier version of this paper and cited Bertrand Russell on skepticism (also cited by RealClimate here):

There are matters about which those who have investigated them are agreed. There are other matters about which experts are not agreed. Even when experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. . . Nevertheless, the opinion of experts, when it is unanimous, must be accepted by non-experts as more likely to be right than the opposite opinion. The scepticism that I advocate amounts only to this: (1) that when the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain; (2) that when they are not agreed, no opinion can be regarded as certain by a non-expert; and (3) that when they all hold that no sufficient grounds for a positive opinion exist, the ordinary man would do well to suspend his judgment.

The issue of hurricanes and global warming is clearly is in Russell's category (2), and according to Curry et al. will remain there for at least a decade. What this means is that (a) those who claim that science has demonstrated no linkage between hurricanes and global warming and (b) those who claim that science has demonstrated a linkage are both misrepresenting the available science. We should expect scientists in competing camps to argue strenuously for their own perspective. This is what Curry et al. have done as well as those scientists holding a different view. But for those of us not participating in the science, picking sides reflects factors that go well beyond the science. As we wrote in BAMS in 2006 (PDF), "we should not make the mistake of confusing interesting hypotheses with conclusive research results." And as Rick Anthes has written, "it will be a number of years—perhaps many—before we know the relationships between climate change and the various characteristics of tropical cyclones."

The good news is that policy related to hurricanes is in no way dependent upon resolving this ongoing debate, as Curry, Webster, Holland, and seven of their colleagues from various camps in the debate have wisely recognized.

As we have said all along, (1) the debate is contested, and will remain so for the the indefinite future, and (2) the debate is not relevant to policy actions related to hurricanes. And that is all you need to know.

Posted on August 19, 2006 10:21 AM View this article | Comments (20)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

August 17, 2006

Is IPCC AR4 an Advocacy Document?

The IPCC claims that it is "policy relevant, but policy neutral." What this phrase actually means is clear as mud. According to various statements by its chairman Rajendra Pachauri over the past few years (e.g., link), one might be excused for thinking that the IPCC is really an advocacy document clothed in the language of science. Mr. Pachauri’s most recent comments about the report in a Reuters news report today do nothing to dispel that view:

The IPCC review, grouping over 2,000 scientists who advise the United Nations, is published in February and is expected to show stronger evidence for climate change and man's part in it.
"I think the conditions are just right for this report to make a perceptible impact," said IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri. "I think there's enough observed evidence now that certainly will influence the policymakers."

"I've just come back from one of the small mountain states of India, and they regard the melting of the glaciers as the most important problem they're facing. Their entire water supply gets completely distorted."

Talks this year on extending the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol on curbing emissions beyond 2012 could also focus action.

"There is a bit of shadow boxing going on, each group of countries is waiting for what the others are going to do," said Pachauri. "My feeling is that in the next year and a half things will accelerate and perhaps you will see some action."

If the IPCC is being prepared with a goal of making a "perceptible impact" and "influencing policymakers" then no matter what the IPCC says, it is certainly not "policy neutral." Its leadership clearly has a political agenda and it would be appropriate to include that agenda in the report, rather than hiding it behind science. Using science to advance a political agenda, but not openly acknowledging that agenda, is a form of stealth issue advocacy and a recipe for the pathological politicization of climate science. Stealth issue advocacy will severely limit the contributions of the IPCC to debate over climate policy. As an alternative approach, the IPCC should openly discuss a wide range of policy options, rather than perpetuating the continuing, fairly obvious fiction that it is "policy neutral."

Posted on August 17, 2006 07:54 AM View this article | Comments (21)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

August 14, 2006

If “Science of Science Policy” is the answer, then what is the question?

In June, the Bush Administration issued guidance (PDF) for R&D in the FY 2008 federal budget, observing,

The combination of finite resources, the commitment to the American Competitiveness Initiative, and a multitude of new research opportunities requires careful attention to funding priorities and wise choices by agency managers.

OK, then, what does it mean for people who make decisions about science funding to make “wise choices”? The memo continues, explaining that “wise choices” refers to R&D programs that advance national goals through agency missions and priorities. In other words, R&D investments are a means to other ends:

As has been reiterated previously in these annual memos, agencies must rigorously evaluate existing programs and, wherever possible, consider them for modification, redirection, reduction or termination, in keeping with national needs and priorities. They must justify new programs with rigorous analysis demonstrating their merit, quality, importance and consistency with national priorities. Agencies may propose new, high-priority activities, but these requests should identify potential offsets by elimination or reductions in less effective or lower priority programs or programs where Federal involvement is no longer needed or appropriate.
In general, the Administration favors Federal R&D investments that:

• advance fundamental scientific discovery to improve future quality of life;
• support high-leverage basic research to spur technological innovation, economic competitiveness and new job growth;
• align with the efforts of the Academic Competitiveness Council and the National Math Panel to enable superior performance in science, mathematics and engineering education;
• enable potentially high-payoff activities that require a Federal presence to attain long-term national goals, including national security, energy security, and a next generation air transportation system;
• sustain specifically authorized agency missions and support the missions of other agencies through stewardship of user facilities;
• enhance the health of our Nation’s people to reduce the burden of illness and increase productivity;
• ensure a scientifically literate population and a supply of qualified technical personnel commensurate with national need;
• strengthen our ability to understand and respond to global environmental issues and natural disasters through better observation, data, analysis, models, and basic and social science research;
• maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of the science and technology (S&T) enterprise through expansion of competitive, merit-based peer-review processes and phase-out of programs that are only marginally productive or are not important to an agency’s mission; and
• encourage interdisciplinary research efforts that foster advancement, collaboration and innovation on complex scientific frontiers and strengthen international partnerships that accelerate the progress of science across borders.

That is all fine and good, but how does a decision maker looking at alternative possible research portfolios determine if choosing one possible approach represents a “wiser” approach than another possible approach? The Administration memo answers this question by highlighting the importance of a “new science of science policy”:

Determining the effectiveness of Federal science policy requires an understanding of the complex linkages between R&D investments and economic and other variables that lead to innovation, competitiveness, and societal benefits. An interagency process has been established and is now encouraged to promote and coordinate individual agency and collaborative actions needed to develop “new science of science policy” for better assessing the impact of R&D investments, defining appropriate metrics for measuring this impact, understanding the effect of the globalization of science and technology, and improving the basis for national science policy decisions.

The question to be addressed by a “science of science policy” is thus:

What choices do we have in comprising R&D portfolios (from the national - or even international - aggregate to that of the individual program manager in a particular agency, company, or other organization) and what are the expected societal (and more parochial) outcomes associated with each alternative?

Posted on August 14, 2006 10:35 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

August 10, 2006

The Ever Increasing R&D Budget

It is budget time, and with it comes the annual ritual of members of the science and technology community complaining about their fortunes in the budget process. The relative fortunes of different research communities does wax and wane. For instance, biomedical research saw an unprecedented doubling in its budget in the late-1990s/early 2000s, and a ever-so-slight downturn since then (see PDF). NASA, NSF, and DOE's Office of Science are up dramatically this year, after years of small increases, declines, or static budgets.

But when viewed as a whole the R&D community has a track record of perhaps unprecedented success in arguing its case for federal funding. While it is true that aggregate R&D expenditures have tended to track overall trends in federal discretionary spending (see this essay), R&D has achieved a long-term growth in the portion of discretionary spending that it receives. This means that R&D is necessarily fairing better than some other parts of the federal budget.

Consider the following data (sources: here):

By President, the percentage of federal discretionary spending deveoted to R&D:

Reagan 12.5%
Bush I 13.3%
Clinton 13.6%
Bush II 13.7%

By Control of the House, the percentage of federal discretionary spending deveoted to R&D since 1982:

Democrats: 12.8%
Republicans: 13.7%

This data suggests to me first that the S&T lobby has been incredibly successful in increasing the portion of the federal deveoted to R&D. Second, there has been strong bipartisan support for R&D across presidents and congresses. the difference between Ds and Rs in the House I attrbute more to the long-term trend of increasing successes by the S&T lobby arguing for more funding, rather than any partisan signal. It just so happens that Rs have been in control more recently. Finally, for those wanting to discuss not simply the aggregate R&D budget, but what the R&D budget is meant for ... well, that would require asking "So what?" rather than "How much?" (on this point see Sarewitz PDF). And this is a question that the field of science and technology policy is uniquely suited to address.

Posted on August 10, 2006 01:57 PM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding

James Van Allen: 1914-2006

James Van Allen has died. Here is a provocative excerpt from one of his most recent writings on space policy:

In a dispassionate comparison of the relative values of human and robotic spaceflight, the only surviving motivation for continuing human spaceflight is the ideology of adventure. But only a tiny number of Earth's six billion inhabitants are direct participants. For the rest of us, the adventure is vicarious and akin to that of watching a science fiction movie. At the end of the day, I ask myself whether the huge national commitment of technical talent to human spaceflight and the ever-present potential for the loss of precious human life are really justifiable.
In his book Race to the Stratosphere: Manned Scientific Ballooning in America (Springer-Verlag, New York, 1989), David H. De Vorkin describes the glowing expectations for high-altitude piloted balloon flights in the 1930s. But it soon became clear that such endeavors had little scientific merit. At the present time, unmanned high-altitude balloons continue to provide valuable service to science. But piloted ballooning has survived only as an adventurous sport. There is a striking resemblance here to the history of human spaceflight.

Have we now reached the point where human spaceflight is also obsolete? I submit this question for thoughtful consideration. Let us not obfuscate the issue with false analogies to Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, and Lewis and Clark, or with visions of establishing a pleasant tourist resort on the planet Mars.

Posted on August 10, 2006 01:02 PM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

August 09, 2006

How to Make Your Opponent's Work Considerably Easier

Can someone reading this blog who is plugged in to advising environmental organizations let them know that invoking hurricane impacts generally and Katrina specifically as reasons for greenhouse gas mitigation is not really helping their cause?

Comments like this from Environmental Defense, an organization with an impressive track record of environmental advocacy, often make me wonder if environmental groups are actually looking to give their opponents a justified basis for criticism:

Katrina tragically illustrated how vulnerable we all remain, even in the United States, to nature's devastation. Moreover, given that New Orleans' vulnerability to hurricanes had long been appreciated but never adequately addressed, it seriously calls into question the notion that we can simply adapt to the changes wrought by global warming. The costs from Katrina, still being tallied, are staggering, and the storm's full cost—humanitarian, social, environmental and economic—will be felt for many years to come.
Katrina-like events will become more common and more widespread unless the emissions of global warming pollutants are capped. The link between global warming and hurricanes is yet another reason for Americans to insist on meaningful legislation to cap our greenhouse gas emissions.

To support this statement they cite papers from Emanuel, Webster, Holland, and Curry and disparage work of Klotzbach and Landsea. Here is what these six plus Anthes, Elsner, Knutson, and Mayfield had to say about policies related to hurricanes:

As the Atlantic hurricane season gets underway, the possible influence of climate change on hurricane activity is receiving renewed attention. While the debate on this issue is of considerable scientific and societal interest and concern, it should in no event detract from the main hurricane problem facing the United States: the ever-growing concentration of population and wealth in vulnerable coastal regions. These demographic trends are setting us up for rapidly increasing human and economic losses from hurricane disasters, especially in this era of heightened activity. Scores of scientists and engineers had warned of the threat to New Orleans long before climate change was seriously considered, and a Katrina-like storm or worse was (and is) inevitable even in a stable climate.
Rapidly escalating hurricane damage in recent decades owes much to government policies that serve to subsidize risk. State regulation of insurance is captive to political pressures that hold down premiums in risky coastal areas at the expense of higher premiums in less risky places. Federal flood insurance programs likewise undercharge property owners in vulnerable areas. Federal disaster policies, while providing obvious humanitarian benefits, also serve to promote risky behavior in the long run.

We are optimistic that continued research will eventually resolve much of the current controversy over the effect of climate change on hurricanes. But the more urgent problem of our lemming-like march to the sea requires immediate and sustained attention. We call upon leaders of government and industry to undertake a comprehensive evaluation of building practices, and insurance, land use, and disaster relief policies that currently serve to promote an ever-increasing vulnerability to hurricanes.

Question for Environmental Defense:

OK, I’ll bite. With the "meaningful legislation that caps greenhouse gas emissions" that you are calling for, what effect will this have on hurricane intensities and hurricane impacts over the next 100 years? Here is a hint (PDF) in formulating your answer. Readers feel free to answer as well.

Posted on August 9, 2006 10:22 PM View this article | Comments (11)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

August 08, 2006

A Pielke and Pielke Special

Over at my father's blog we have collaborated on a post titled, "Big Time Gambling With Multi-Decadal Global Climate Model Predictions." The whole thing is posted below. Feel free to comment here or there, we'll both read comments on each other's blog.

Big Time Gambling With Multi-Decadal Global Climate Model Predictions
Roger A. Pielke Sr. and Roger A. Pielke Jr.

Many advocates for action on climate change, including the IPCC assessments and recent documentaries have promoted a view that global warming will continue through the 21st century, with global warming defined as a steady increase in global average temperatures. This prediction of warming is based on the output of multi-decadal general circulation models and is primarily due to the radiative forcing effect of anthropogenic emissions of CO2. In such models only relatively minor year-to-year variations in global average temperatures are forecast in the upward trend, except when major volcanic eruptions cause short-term (up to a few years) of global cooling. For example, see these projections of the most recent IPCC — none of the models has an obvious multi-year (i.e., >2) decrease in global average temperatures over the next century.

Such predictions represent a huge gamble with public and policymaker opinion. If more-or-less steady global warming does not occur as forecast by these models, not only will professional reputations be at risk, but the need to reduce threats to the wide spectrum of serious and legitimate environmental concerns (including the human release of greenhouse gases) will be questioned by some as having been oversold. For better or worse, a failure to accurately predict the changes in the global average surface temperature, global average tropospheric temperature, ocean average heat content change, or Arctic sea ice coverage would raise questions on the reliance of global climate models for accurate prediction on multi-decadal time scales. Surprises or experience that evolve outside the bounds of model output would likely raise questions even among some of those who have so far accepted the IPCC reports as a balanced presentation of climate science. (for a perspective different than the IPCC on applications of climate models see this).

The National Research Council published a report in 2002 entitled "Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises" (of which RP2 was a committee member). The report raised the issues of surprises in the climate system. One of the surprises (to many) may be that the global climate models are simply unable to accurately predict the variability and trends in the climate metrics that have been adopted to communicate human-caused climate change to policymakers. Among the climate metrics with the most public visibility are the long term trends in global average surface temperature, global average tropospheric temperature, summer arctic sea ice areal coverage, and ocean heat content.

There is some emerging empirical evidence to suggest, however, that the concerns expressed here are worth consideration. The recent dramatic cooling of the average heat content of the upper oceans, and thus a significant negative radiative imbalance of the climate system for at least a two year period, that was mentioned in the Climate Science weblog posting of July 27, 2006, should be a wake-up call to the climate community that the focus on predictive modeling as the framework to communicate to policymakers on climate policy has serious issues as to its ability to accurately predict the behavior of the climate system. No climate model that we are aware of has anticipated such a significant cooling, nor is able to reproduce such a significant negative radiative imbalance. Meaningless distinctions between “projections” and “predictions” will be unlikely to convince consumers of climate models to overlook experience that does not jibe with modeled output.

There is no greater danger to support for action on important issues of human impacts on the environment than an overselling of what climate science can provide. If the climate behaves in ways that are unexpected or surprising it will be more than just credibility that is lost. Advocates for action should think carefully when gambling with the unknown predictive abilities of climate models. The human influence on the climate system is real, but the climate may not always cooperate.

Posted on August 8, 2006 11:03 AM View this article | Comments (29)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

The Politics and Economics of Offshore Outsourcing

Anyone wanting to understand the debate over outsourcing should have a look at this paper by former Bush insider Greg Mankiw and Philip Swagel:

The Politics and Economics of Offshore Outsourcing
NBER Working Paper No. 12398
Issued in July 2006
link (free to .gov and universities that subscribe to NBER, follow link titled "Information for subscribers and others expecting no-cost downloads")

Abstract: This paper reviews the political uproar over offshore outsourcing connected with the release of the Economic Report of the President (ERP) in February 2004, examines the differing ways in which economists and non-economists talk about offshore outsourcing, and assesses the empirical evidence on the importance of offshore outsourcing in accounting for the weak labor market from 2001 to 2004. Even with important gaps in the data, the empirical literature is able to conclude that offshore outsourcing is unlikely to have accounted for a meaningful part of the job losses in the recent downturn or contributed much to the slow labor market rebound. The empirical evidence to date, while still tentative, actually suggests that increased employment in the overseas affiliates of U.S. multinationals is associated with more employment in the U.S. parent rather than less.

Posted on August 8, 2006 05:56 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Gathering Storm | Technology Policy

Beyond the Mug's Game

Steven Popper and his colleagues at the RAND Corporation have a thoughtful perspective on computer models and their uses in decision making, which he describes in a letter in this week's Economist:

SIR – Your excellent report on economic models raises troubling questions for both the builders and the consumers of such models ("Big questions and big numbers", July 15th). The root of many problems lies not in the models themselves but in the way in which they are used. Too often we ask "What will happen?", trapping us into the mug's game of prediction, when the real question should be: "Given that we cannot predict, what is our best move today?" This subtle shift in emphasis from forecasting to informing resolves many of the conundrums you raised.
Instead of determining the "best" model that solves optimal strategies we should instead seek the most "robust" model that achieves a given level of "goodness" across myriad models and uses assumptions consistent with known facts. My colleagues and I use such methods to address intractable policy issues fraught with arguments over which model is "right", what assumptions are valid and what is the nature of the good? This method makes the decision to be informed part of the analysis itself and the results are more readily accepted by policymakers.

Steven Popper
Senior economist
RAND Corporation
Santa Monica, California

Posted on August 8, 2006 05:51 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Risk & Uncertainty

August 07, 2006

Hurricanes, Catastrophe Models, and Global Warming

Yesterday’s Boston Globe had an interesting article about catastrophe models in the insurance industry in the context of uncertainties about hurricanes and global warming. The article raises a number of unanswered questions. Here are a few excerpts and a few of my reactions:

An influential but little known segment of the insurance industry is considering whether climate change might be partly to blame for more intense hurricanes in the North Atlantic. The result of this examination, which comes as scientists debate the same question, could be skyrocketing insurance rates in coastal regions from Maine to Texas.
Already, one leading company that forecasts the risk of natural disasters for the insurance industry has revamped the computer model it uses to simulate future weather trends. The model, which looks five years out, now captures the possibility that global warming might be contributing to hurricane activity.

Risk Management Solutions released the new model in May, predicting that average annual insurance losses will increase 25 to 30 percent in the coastal Northeast because of increased hurricane activity.

Florida state officials are researching whether they should add a climate change component to an insurance hurricane risk model they have developed. And Boston-based AIR Worldwide Corp., another top risk modeler, is launching a study with Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist Kerry Emanuel to understand global warming's impact on hurricanes and whether insurance risk will rise as a result.

"It behooves us to research this in a scientific way," said Karen Clark, president and chief executive officer of AIR Worldwide. "We want to quantify the effect of global warming on hurricane activity."

The confidential risk models that private companies like AIR and Risk Management Solutions develop are key factors in the price of homeowners insurance bought by many coastal residents. The modelers calculate the risk from hurricanes, earthquakes, and other natural hazards to homes and businesses in a region that takes into account everything from construction material to wind speeds. Insurance providers often use the predictions as an important piece in a complicated formula to set rates.

If global warming is driving more intense hurricanes -- and more of those hurricanes hit land -- it could drastically increase the risk of property loss along crowded coasts.

If catastrophe models are an important factor in insurance rates, and insurance rates are an important factor in insurers bottom line (not to mention a hot-button political issue in U.S. coastal states), then it seems obvious that there is potential for financial conflicts of interest in this area. With respect to pharmaceuticals generally there has been much concern, appropriate in my view, about the role of financial ties to industry among researchers and advisors. And on the climate issue industry funding from the energy sector is tantamount to a scarlet letter. How should we think about insurance industry funding of research related to global warming and insurance risk? [Disclaimer- A few years ago I had a graduate student funded by an insurance company to study uncertainties in catastrophe models.]

Howard Kunreuther, an expert on risk and insurance at the Wharton School, hits the nail on the head when he in quoted in the article:

Ultimately, the problem modelers face is figuring out a short-term prediction from a long-term trend. "The problem is that scientists talk about climate change in terms of 25, 50, or more years; they are not willing to make predictions about five years," said Howard Kunreuther, co-director of the Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. "The insurance industry is most interested in knowing what is likely to happen in the next few years as they determine what premiums to set on their coverage against hurricanes and other natural disasters."

Predictions about the long-term future are of course safe, because they cannot be evaluated in the short term. And there will always be this or that event that is "consistent with" the long term predictions, and absolutely nothing is inconsistent with them. According to the article, some scientists are apparently willing in private to make short-term predictions for the insurance industry (also discussed at length here):

In part to deal with this problem, Risk Management Solutions convened a panel of four specialists, including Emanuel, in Bermuda last October to discuss, among other things, what was causing recent hurricane activity and how many storms might hit land.
Aided by the scientists, RMS came to the conclusion that the current period of hurricane activity is so different from the long-term record it didn't make sense anymore to base its models on only the past. In May, the company announced a new model that incorporated the specialists' opinions and the more recent spate of hurricanes, among other changes.

Telling the rest of us what they told the insurance industry, in the form of peer-reviewed, scientific, short-term predictions, would be good in a number of ways. It would allow for empirical evaluation of the predictive skill of short-term (5 years or less) hurricane/climate science, based on actual events. And importantly, it would provide some transparency and accountability for the insurance industry as it ventures into the complicated, conflicted, and political world of climate science, with implications for their bottom line and their customer's insurance rates.

Posted on August 7, 2006 07:07 AM View this article | Comments (4)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters | Risk & Uncertainty

August 04, 2006

Be Careful What You Wish For

Democrats on the House Science Committee have been trying to get the Technology Administration in the Department of Commerce to release a report that Congress had requested and paid for on the impact of "outsourcing" on U.S. science and technology jobs. For some unknown reason, whether hardball politics or simply incompetence, Secretary Carlos Gutierrez ignored requests for release of the study, which was to be delivered in 2004.

Finally a few weeks ago, Science Committee Democrats were able to get the report they had been seeking, and have posted excerpts on their website. What does it contain that DOC or the Administration might want to hide? Not much.

My reading of the report finds the following two statements to be the most interesting, because they are counter to claims of a looming outsourcing crisis:

The effect of offshoring on the competitiveness of the US IT services and software sector appears to be negilible . . .
The present outsourcing and offshoring trends will increase the competitiveness of the U.S. semiconductor industry in the short term . . .

So what gives? The DOC report does provide some strong counter-evidence to the claims of an outsourcing crisis presented in the NRC report Rising Above the Gathering Storm, which has been used in support of a bipartisan push for more science and engineering funding in the name of competitiveness. Maybe the DOC report was being sat on so as not to provide a mixed message on competitiveness. After all, running on the issue of foreigners taking "our" jobs sounds pretty appealing. But I am skeptical about this explanation. After all, Democrats as well as Republicans like to run on the jobs issue and the DOC report doesn't exactly help the Democrats cause (they clearly were looking for evidence that the Administration was hiding evidence of a mass exodus of jobs overseas). And surely there are also behind-the-scenes politics going on that may trump this explanation.

In any case, the Science Committee Democrats are to be applauded for wrestling the report that they paid for out of DOC. However, in the end it provides little help to their cause, and in fact contains data at odds to the recent bipartisan push on addressing U.S. competitiveness through more funding for research. It also suggests that the crisis in offshoring is not as bad as advertised, but this is a result not being told by either party.

Posted on August 4, 2006 07:24 AM View this article | Comments (7)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Gathering Storm

Nisbet and Mooney on Media Coverage of Hurricanes and Global Warming

Matt Nisbet and Chris Mooney have a thoughtful article on media coverage of hurricanes and global warming here.

They have some interesting analysis and quotes, such as this one from Andy Revkin:

"The great strength of the global warming argument lies in the balance of the evidence. The closer you bore into specific impacts like hurricanes, however, the more equivocal the science gets."

They also cite those who would use the issue of hurricanes to argue for and against emissions reductions (see original for links):

On the one hand, a who's who of Democratic leaders including Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Jimmy Carter cited the recent scientific findings to warn that global warming had contributed to the hurricane problem, and to push for action on greenhouse gas emissions.
Variations on this message appeared in two September columns by Nicholas Kristof and two editorials at The New York Times, but also in work by columnists at the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post. Skeptics responded by disputing the scientific evidence and insisting that no serious cuts in emissions were required. "There is no relationship between global warming and the frequency and intensity of Atlantic hurricanes. Period," Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote, rather incautiously, in early September. Others suggested the real focus should be on adapting coastal areas to the likelihood of future disasters. Later would come reports of personal fights between scientists, and allegations of suppression of dissent at government agencies.

They cite some of our work, but I think they fall a bit into the on-the-one-hand/on-the-other-hand sort of reporting that they criticize when they write:

On the one hand, University of Colorado political scientist Roger Pielke, Jr. and his colleagues argue that by far the most important factors influencing our susceptibility to hurricanes are "growing population and wealth in exposed coastal locations." When viewed in comparison with the urgent need to address this societally-induced vulnerability, they maintain that the question of whether or not hurricanes might themselves be growing stronger is quickly overshadowed in significance. On the other hand, in an article in the May issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, a group of leading climate scientists and hurricane experts claim that the balance of the evidence already suggests a human impact on hurricanes, and urge a more precautionary approach to policy.

In reality there is no apparent difference of views on policy options between the two perspectives cited by Nisbet and Mooney. There is in fact overlap in authorship between the Anthes et al. paper that they cite and the recent Emanuel et al. statement, whcih I strongly support. Nisbet and Mooney could have been a bit more clear on this.

Their article is strong in calling for science reporters, as well as scientists, to establish the policy context of contested issues:

n sum, science writers continue to worry about how the issue of hurricanes and global warming is being used politically, and many also assert that caution demands the publication of more research before they can move ahead on the story. These are all legitimate concerns, and the pressure exerted by both editors and media watchdogs to not "take sides" is real. Yet given their specialization and experience, science writers are perhaps uniquely qualified to shield themselves from allegations of bias, and to interpret the policy implications of the subjects they're covering for readers. As long as they ground their stories in thorough, fair-minded reporting and do not stray into unsupported speculation or unnecessary argumentation, these journalists could provide a true public service. Such changes in how journalists and scientists negotiate what counts as news could mean that, when the next big storm hits, we have a chance to bring the policy questions into sharper focus. Otherwise, the public will be left with an all-too-familiar repeating narrative of conflict and doubt/

Overall, this is a really nice article, but it leaves me wondering, what is the role of a science journalist in a democracy anyway?

Posted on August 4, 2006 01:53 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

August 03, 2006

Who Believes that GHG Mitigation Can Affect Tomorrow’s Climate?

The almost daily use of current weather and climate events to argue for action on greenhouse gases by the media and political advocates is among the most egregious misuses of science in the climate debate. Not only does it redirect attention away from those actions most likely to have an effect on the impacts of weather and climate, but it creates disincentives for action on the longer-term problem of human-caused climate change.

The use of current weather and climate events as a promotional symbol in the climate debate exploits a cognitive heuristic called pattern matching. One reason why there is so little mention of the long time lag between action on energy policies and a perceptible influence on climate is that it would work against exploitation of this cognitive heuristic.

These dynamics are well explained in research conducted by John Sterman of MIT and Linda Booth Sweeny at Harvard (PDF) which concludes that just about everyone – including management, math, and science graduate students at MIT (no slouches there) - believes that changes in energy policies can have an immediate and discernible influence on the climate system. Here is an excerpt from their paper:

We carried out experiments to assess public understanding of basic processes affecting the climate, specifically, whether adults understand the relationships between atmospheric GHG concentrations and flows of greenhouse gases into and out of the atmosphere. Though the subjects, graduate students at MIT, were highly educated, particularly in mathematics and the sciences, results showed widespread misunderstanding of mass balance principles and the concept of accumulation. Instead, most subjects relied on pattern matching to judge climate dynamics. The belief that emissions, atmospheric CO2, and temperature are correlated leads to the erroneous conclusion that a drop in emissions would soon cause a drop in CO2 concentrations and mean global temperature.

Sterman and Booth Sweeney explain why it is that many people think this way:

Why do people underestimate the time delays in the response of climate to GHG emissions? Obviously the average person is not trained in climatology. We hypothesize, however, that widespread underestimation of climate inertia arises from a more fundamental limitation of people’s mental models: weak intuitive understanding of stocks and flows—the concept of accumulation in general, including principles of mass and energy balance. Prior work shows people have difficulty relating the flows into and out of a stock to the trajectory of the stock (Booth Sweeney and Sterman, 2000). Instead, people often assess system dynamics using a pattern matching heuristic (Sterman and Booth Sweeney, 2002), concluding that system outputs (e.g., global mean temperature) are positively correlated with inputs (e.g., emissions). Pattern matching can work well in simple systems but fails in systems with significant stock and flow structures: a stock can rise even as its net inflow falls, as long as the net inflow is positive. For example, a nation’s debt rises as long as its fiscal deficit is positive, even as the deficit falls; debt falls only when the government runs a surplus. Since anthropogenic GHG emissions are now roughly double net removal, atmospheric GHGs would continue to accumulate, increasing net radiative forcing, even if emissions drop, until emissions fall to net removal (of course, removal is not constant; we consider the dynamics of removal below). In contrast, pattern matching incorrectly predicts mean temperature and atmospheric GHGs closely track emissions; hence stabilizing emissions would rapidly stabilize climate, and emissions cuts would quickly reverse warming and limit damage from climate change. People who assess the dynamics of the climate using a pattern matching heuristic will significantly underestimate the lags in the response of the climate to changes in emissions and the magnitude of emissions reductions needed to stabilize atmospheric GHG concentrations.

Stocks and flows may be stunningly obvious to a climate scientist, but it is difficult to comprehend for most people, and it made even more difficult to understand when the point is willfully ignored ot obfuscated by many advocates for energy policy action on climate change. Those who use current climate events like hurricanes or heat waves to justify action on mitigation are thus exploiting pattern matching for a short-term political gain. But my sense is that such exploitation will backfire.

People of good faith can debate the costs and benefits of policies to mitigate climate change, but policy should not be based on mental models that violate the most fundamental physical principles.

Sterman and Booth Sweeney argue that pattern matching is to be expected in how people think,

The difficulties people experience in our experiments should perhaps be expected. It is not necessary to understand stocks and flows to fill a bathtub. It is far more efficient to watch the water in the tub and shut off the tap when it reaches the desired level—a simple, effectively first-order negative feedback process. For a wide range of everyday tasks, people have no need to infer how the flows relate to the stocks—it is better to simply wait and see how the state of the system changes, and then take corrective action.

Sterman and Booth Sweeney suggest that this heuristic lends support to "wait-and-see" policies. This may be the case, but I think it also creates a sense of control over the climate system that simply doesn’t exist. If we can control the climate system, and correspondingly climate impacts, simply by changing our energy policies, then it would be logical to think - "Hey! Drive a Prius and no more heat waves or hurricanes!" The explotation of pattern matching also creates incentives for small, meaningless actions. The poverty of the current policy debate on climate change would be far more apparent if advocates more openly described the time lag between action on energy policies and perceptible influences of the climate system. This also would help to make advocacy for action on energy policies more honest and properly justified.

The hard reality is that the only justifiable use of current weather and climate events as a tool of promotion for action on climate change is in support of improving adaptive responses and reducing vulnerability.

Posted on August 3, 2006 10:20 AM View this article | Comments (16)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Climate Porn

The BBC has an article today about a new report from the U.K. based Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), which the BBC characterizes as a "Labour-leaning" think tank.

The alarmist language used to discuss climate change is tantamount to "climate porn", offering a thrilling spectacle but ultimately distancing the public from the problem . . .

Simon Retallick, IPPR’s head of climate change, has this to say:

If the public is to be persuaded of the need to act we must understand how climate change is being communicated in the UK. Currently, climate communications too often terrify or thrill the reader or viewer while failing to make them feel that they can make a difference, which engenders inaction.
Government and green groups should avoid giving the impression that 'we are all doomed' and spend less time convincing people that climate change is real. . .

I very much agree with these views, but I do have two quibbles with the overview of the report. First, missing here is a discussion of the role of the climate science community, within which many have taken on as a personal mission the task of convincing people not only that climate change is real, but that anyone who deviates from the "consensus" should be vilified or silenced. Yes, there is a scientific consensus on climate change as described by the IPCC, but it offers little prospect of compelling a political consensus. Consequently, efforts to use science to force political action are in my view one of the driving factors behind "climate porn."

Second, Retallick suggests a focus on "large actions" like hybrid cars or insulation instead of "small actions" like turning down the thermostat. From where I sit hybrid cars and wall insulation are "small actions" when compared to the challenge of stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. The report does not go far enough in discussing the complete transformation of the global energy infrastructure needed to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at anything close to today’s levels. Where is the discussion of nuclear energy, vast investments in energy R&D, or even air capture? The report does not apparently acknowledge that solutions will unlikely to be motivated by climate concerns alone (as I discussed in my recent testimony before the U.S. Congress, PDF), which further underscores the pathological role played by climate porn.

Here is a longer excerpt from the IPPR website which describes the report:

The research analysed more than 600 articles from the UK press, as well as over 90 TV, radio and press ads, news clips and websites to find out how the media, government and green groups are communicating climate change.
The report argues that the discussion on climate change in the UK is confusing, contradictory and chaotic, and with the likely result that the public feels disempowered and uncompelled to act.

The report says that climate change communications should avoid using inflated or extreme language and placing the focus on small actions to solve the problem.

The report identifies ten different ways of talking about climate change, of which the first two are dominant:

*Alarmism ("we’re all going to die"): this pessimistic approach refers to climate change as awesome, terrible, immense and beyond human control. It excludes the possibility of real action – "The problem is just too big for us to take on". Alarmism might even become secretly thrilling – effectively a form of "climate porn". It is seen in almost every form of discussion on the issue.

"A world of climate chaos spiralling out of control"

* Small actions ("I’m doing my bit for the planet – and maybe my pocket"): the "small actions" approach is the dominant one in campaign communications from government and green groups. It asks a large number of people to do a few small things to counter climate change. The language is one of ease and domesticity with references to kettles and cars, ovens and light switches. It is often placed alongside alarmism. It is likely to beg the question: how can this really make a difference?

"20 things you can do to save the planet from destruction"

Posted on August 3, 2006 07:46 AM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Energy Policy

August 02, 2006

Amar Bhidé on Getting Beyond Techno-Fetishism and Techno-Nationalism

This week’s Economist describes a study by Columbia University’s Amar Bhidé on the production of scientists and engineers, critical of the ideas of "techno-fetishism and techno-nationalism.' According to the Economist, if Mr. Bhidé’s views are correct, "then America's policymakers should worry more about how to keep consumers consuming than about the number of science and engineering graduates, at home or in the East." The analysis presented by Mr. Bhidé is consistent with some of my critiques of the recent focus by the NAS, Bush Administration, and Congress on the production of more scientists and engineers as a palliative for the U.S. economy.

Here is an excerpt from the Economist article, and after that a link and excerpt from Mr. Bhidé’s paper (PDF).

In a marvellously contrarian new paper, Amar Bhidé, of Columbia University's business school, argues that these supposed remedies, and the worries that lie behind them, are based on a misconception of how innovation works and of how it contributes to economic growth. Mr Bhidé finds plenty of nice things to say about many of the things that most trouble critics of the American economy: consumption as opposed to thrift; a plentiful supply of consumer credit; Wal-Mart; even the marketing arms of drug companies. He thinks that good managers may be at least as valuable as science and engineering graduates (though given where he works, perhaps he is talking his own book). But he has nothing nice to say about the prophets of technological doom.
Mr Bhidé says that the doomsayers are guilty of the "techno-fetishism and techno-nationalism" described in 1995 by two economists, Sylvia Ostry and Richard Nelson. This consists, first, of paying too much attention to the upstream development of new inventions and technologies by scientists and engineers, and too little to the downstream process of turning these inventions into products that tempt people to part with their money, and, second, of the belief that national leadership in upstream activities is the same thing as leadership in generating economic value from innovation.

But nowadays innovation—a complex, gradual process, often involving many firms making incremental advances over many years—is not much constrained by national borders, argues Mr Bhidé. Indeed, the sort of upstream innovation (the big ideas of those scientists and engineers) most celebrated by those who fear its movement to China and India is the hardest to keep locked up in the domestic market.

The least internationally mobile innovation, on the other hand, is the downstream sort, where big ideas are made suitable for a local market. Mr Bhidé argues that this downstream innovation, which is far more complex and customised than the original upstream invention, is the most valuable kind and what America is best at. Moreover, perhaps the most important fact overlooked by the techno-nationalists, notes Mr Bhidé, is that most of the value of innovations accrues to their users not their creators—and stays in the country where the innovation is consumed. So if China and India do more invention, so much the better for American consumers.

The most important part of innovation may be the willingness of consumers, whether individuals or firms, to try new products and services, says Mr Bhidé. In his view, it is America's venturesome consumers that drive the country's leadership in innovation. Particularly important has been the venturesome consumption of new innovations by American firms. Although America has a lowish overall investment rate compared with other rich countries, it has a very high rate of adoption of information technology (IT). Contrast that with Japan (the original technology bogeyman from the East) where, despite an abundance of inventive scientists and engineers, many firms remain primitive in their use of IT.

One reason why American firms are able to be so venturesome is that they have the managers capable of adapting their organisations to embrace innovation, says Mr Bhidé. Pressure to be venturesome may have come from America's highly competitive markets. And America's downstream firms are arguably the world's leaders in finding ways to encourage consumers to try new things, not least through their enormous marketing arms and by ensuring that there is a lavish supply of credit.

And here are the opening paragraphs from Amar Bhidé’s paper:

The "techno-fetishism and techno-nationalism" described by Ostry and Nelson in 1995 has apparently drawn strength over the last decade from concerns in the West about globalization. The mindset incorporates two related tendencies. One is the focus on the upstream development of new products and technologies while glossing over their downstream consumption and use. The other is the belief that national prosperity requires upstream international leadership in upstream activities – "our" scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and firms have to better than everyone else’s – they must write more papers, file more patents and successfully launch more products. Otherwise, competition from low-wage countries like China and India will erode living standards in the West especially as they upgrade their economies to engage in more innovative activities.
In this paper I claim that the two tendencies misapprehend the nature and role of innovation as well as the implications of globalization. I argue that the willingness and ability of individuals to acquire and use new products and technologies is as important as – and in small countries more important than – the development of such products and technologies. Moreover nations – unlike many individuals and organizations – don’t have to outperform 'competitors' in order to prosper. Notwithstanding the rhetoric about the competitive advantages of nations – a transplant from the domain of inter-firm rivalry that has displaced references to old-fashioned comparative advantages – countries are not locked into zero-sum trade. An innovation originating in one country does not impoverish other countries. Rather it tends to improve standards of living in all countries that have the downstream capacity to acquire and implement the innovation.

Posted on August 2, 2006 07:25 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Gathering Storm

July 31, 2006

National Journal: Who Turned Out the Enlightenment?

In this week’s National Journal Paul Starobin has an extremely thoughtful cover story on the politicization of science. He appropriately finds that the pathological politicization of science occurs on both the left and the right, but astutely also recognizes that the scientific establishment itself bears some responsibility for today’s hyper-politicization of science:

. . . the modern professional research scientist is not, by any stretch, a blameless figure -- in this tale, that scientist emerges as an increasingly partisan and self-interested figure, dependent on government grants and largely an inhabitant of Blue America.

Starobin does a nice job characterizing how science is used as a tool of politics from the political Left and Right. He registers complaints similar to those that we have expressed about those who would politicize the politicization of science by labeling it only a problem of the Right, or at least, only a problem worth worrying about from the Right. Starobin expresses plenty of concern across the political spectrum, which will likely inevitably mean that his analysis will be dismissed by most partisan observers. But this is good news as the side he aligns with is that of science and democracy. Of the scientific community, Starobin has some strong medicine to offer, and I pull the following excerpt at length:

It is tempting, in this tale, to take pity on the scientist. Assailed from all sides, he -- yes, most top scientists are still men -- may appear to be just as much a casualty as the Enlightenment mind-set itself.
Alas, it is not that simple. Inevitably the scientist has been dragged, or has catapulted himself, into the values and political combat that surround science and has emerged, in certain respects, as just another (diminished) partisan.

This is plainly the case in the matter of the Religious Right's mugging of evolution. Darwin, anticipating just such a beating, had a ready response in the true spirit of science, which was that there was nothing in his scientific observations, nor could there be in any scientific gathering of evidence, that proved or disproved the existence of God. But that sort of agnostic caution seems to have lapsed as an example for today's scientists.

Among neo-Darwinian biologists on both sides of the Atlantic, a kind of counter-militancy has gathered force. Prominent evolutionists such as Richard Dawkins of Britain are proudly proclaiming their atheistic beliefs -- even suggesting that anyone who believes in God is a fool. "Of course it's satisfying, if you can believe it," Dawkins has said about faith in God. "But who wants to believe a lie?"

But it is Dawkins who looks dim for seeking to claim more from science than science can, by definition, provide. "He is an evangelical atheist" and "he is killing us," Alan I. Leshner, the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said in an interview.

If modern scientists were the classical liberals that they like to say they still are, then they presumably would not be clustered on one side of the partisan divide. In fact, they display a deep-blue orientation. A Pew Research Center survey last year found that 87 percent of "scientists/engineers" (representing a random sampling of members of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering) disapproved of the way Bush was handling his job as president. In the fall of 1997, by contrast, 78 percent of scientists/engineers approved of Bill Clinton's performance.

What gives? The answer, in part, is that scientists have a long-standing tendency to believe that some societal problems -- global warming is a current example -- demand collective solutions of the sort that laissez-faire Republicans tend to be reluctant to support. In the 1930s, scientists widely embraced FDR's New Deal, and a number of researchers, blind to Stalin's crimes, were in fact Communist sympathizers or party members.

Today's Lab-Coat Liberal, as opposed to a Jefferson-style classical liberal, is also a product of the 1960s. Leading research scientists, as National Academy members generally are, inhabit an academic environment that was radicalized by the Vietnam War protest movement and civil-rights struggles. Although most scientists balk at the New Left's fixation on identity politics, science academia, even as it subsists on government grants, tends to take an anti-establishment posture that embraces a false view of science's own purity.

"Through its actions in Vietnam our government has shaken our confidence in its ability to make wise and humane decisions," the Cambridge, Mass.-based Union of Concerned Scientists declared in its founding document in 1968. Never mind that elite research scientists -- members of a secretive government-connected team dubbed "The Jasons" -- advised the Pentagon on certain Vietnam war-fighting strategies.

This mind-set, pitting the purportedly apolitical concerns of scientists against the connivers who wield political power in Washington, endures. In a recent Web posting on the prospect of a confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, the Union of Concerned Scientists declared that Iran "does not represent a direct or imminent threat to the United States." That is a policy judgment, not a scientific conclusion, and it is a dubious one at that, given the clear signs that Iran, a backer of Shiite militias in neighboring Iraq and of Hezbollah in Lebanon, is complicating the mission of U.S. forces in the Middle East.

The Bush administration as a whole, not just its military policies, is in the Cambridge outfit's gun sights. Citing climate change, childhood lead poisoning, reproductive health, drug abuse, and other issues, the group declared in 2004: "When scientific knowledge has been found to be in conflict with its political goals, the administration has often manipulated the process through which science enters into its decisions." Signatories included Edward Wilson, the Harvard entomologist once taken to task by the New Left.

In an interview, Cornell physicist Kurt Gottfried, chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists and a drafter of that founding declaration, denied that the group, or scientists generally, had a pronounced partisan disposition. "I do not believe that 77 percent or 87 percent of scientists vote Democratic normally," he said. But the available data, as scientists like to say, suggest otherwise. In 15 years of polling, scientists "have always stood out as among the most Democratic of the elites," Michael Dimock, associate director of the Pew Research Center, said in an interview.

Thus the science community, even if at times a reluctant warrior, is itself contributing to the polarization that afflicts America's political culture. Viewed by the Founders as part of the glue that binds American democracy, the scientist is in danger of becoming a force for its increasing fragmentation.

The last sentence is exactly the dynamic I was referring to when I criticized scientists at RealClimate last week for serving as agents of divisiveness in political debates.

Starobin, like many of us, loses momentum when talking about what might be done to address the pathological politicization of science. But from where I sit, that means there might be a good audience for The Honest Broker ;-) Jokes aside, Starobin has written an extremely thoughtful article. It will certainly appear on my fall syllabus.

Posted on July 31, 2006 02:29 AM View this article | Comments (13)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

Patty Limerick on Wildfire and Global Warming

Patty Limerick, a renowned historian of the American West and valued colleague here at the University of Colorado, has written a thoughtful perspective in the Los Angeles Times on western wildfires, human responsibility, and climate change. In many ways her views on fire in the context of climate change are quite similar to those I express on hurricanes. Here is an excerpt:

The new responsibility had many forms. Homeowners cleared trees and brush around their houses. Local governments adopted tougher rules on development in high fire-risk zones. Insurance companies revised their policies to reward owners who exercised foresight and took action to prevent fire.
But a recent scientific study could easily be misinterpreted as an invitation to go back to sleep. It is also an indicator of how politicized some environmental science has become and the problem that poses for taking responsibility in a region prone to fire.

The authors of "Warming and Early Spring Increases Western U.S. Forest Wildlife Activity," published this month in the journal Science, reach a thought-provoking conclusion: Climate change has been the "primary driver" of the increase in big wildfires in the West, even more than recent changes in land use or the unnecessary suppression of natural fires. Warmer temperatures have melted the snowpack earlier in the spring, producing a longer dry season and more combustible materials. Thus the opportunities for big fires to start have multiplied.

Should we now blame a changing climate for the West's wildfire problem? Or should we continue to change land use and management practices to reduce the fire danger? And how should our answer shape our conduct?

The battle over global warming has far reaching consequences for how we think and act. And for some people, the battle over climate change trumps everything else. Patty expresses some concern that by being sucked in to the maw that is the global warming debate, discussion of climate change might work to derail a fragile consensus of effective practical strategies for dealing with vulnerabilities to forest fires.

After Colorado's 2002 fire season, representatives from environmental groups, federal and state agencies, utilities, insurance companies, universities and county governments convened in the state to find a solution to a problem caused by decades of fire suppression. It was a very mixed group, and I imagine many of them would cancel each other out at the polls. The group's name was a bureaucratic mouthful: the Front Range Fuels Treatment Partnership Roundtable.
The key word in this undertaking was responsibility, and in the judgment of many who participated, myself included, we accomplished something. The "fuel" in forests along the Front Range had reached worrisome levels. In the absence of fire, the density of flammable trees and underbrush had greatly increased. We surmounted mutual distrust and reached a consensus for which fuel areas to target and which strategies would best reduce the danger of future fires.

But now, if we declare climate change the primary driver of increases in wildfires, as the study in Science suggests, what could a plucky group of Coloradans possibly do to find a remedy for this problem?

Of course, if climate change explains the greater frequency and intensity of the West's wildfires, the question of responsibility shifts levels, and we are immersed in one of the most contentious issues of science and public policy. Is human behavior — the use of fossil fuels as the main energy source — warming the planet, or is the rise in temperature part of a natural cycle that has occurred in Earth's past?

She concludes by asserting, correctly in my view, that whatever role climate change has in forest fires does not let anyone off the hook as far as needed on-the-ground actions. Yet the climate scientists who reported the possible connection of fires and climate change abandoned ship when it came time to address questions of policy. In my view, the authors of the recent study set the stage for having their research results to be caught up in the debate over global warming, when they might have diffused such controversy from the start by clearly describing the policy terrain, as did a group of hurricane/climate scientists in recent weeks.

The study's authors skirt this question. "Whether the changes observed in Western hydro-climate and wildfire are the result of greenhouse gas-induced global warming or only a usual natural fluctuation is presently unclear," they write.
But is it possible for a group of scientists in 2006 to study an issue — wildfire — immersed in contention, put forward an explanation based on climate change and then sidestep the question of whether humans bear any responsibility for that climate change?

The question of human culpability is a big roadblock to resolving many environmental dilemmas. Thanks to it, the findings of environmental scientists are often the spark for contention and misinterpretation rather than understanding and discussion. It's not easy to think of a scientific study on the natural world that doesn't have some connection to contested public policy. Biologists who simply want to study wildlife may find themselves enmeshed in political battles over the status of threatened or endangered species. Geologists and hydrologists may be drawn into disputes over the safety and permanence of waste disposal sites.

In such circumstances, these scientists have reason to feel like zookeepers feeding hungry animals: Their study findings barely hit the ground before advocates and rivals pounce on them, snarl and tug at each other over them, then tear the whole into pieces to secure the choicest parts.

This rowdiness is called "data dispute," and it's becoming a popular sport in environmental circles in the West. It doesn't show us at our best. Nor does it make the most of the enormous resources of the natural scientists studying the West's environment.
So let's not dispute data this time.

In too many environmental disputes, we squabble over the management of materials — sewage, spent nuclear fuel, carbon emissions, outdated computer parts. Meanwhile, the question of who will take custody of that unpopular substance called responsibility remains the most contentious and consequential matter of all.

The current condition of the West's forests has multiple causes. Climate, fire suppression, government regulation (or its absence) and the construction of buildings in forested areas all play a part in creating it. Regardless of which factor we accent in our explanations, we still have a big problem before us. And we still must take responsibility for it and find a remedy. The findings of climate scientists do not diminish that responsibility.

Well said!

Posted on July 31, 2006 01:49 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Andrew Dessler Has a Blog

Frequent Prometheus contributor and Texas A&M professor Andrew Dessler has been bitten by the blog bug. Check out his new site here. We wish Andrew the best as he sets up what will no doubt be a thoughful voice on climate science and politics.

Posted on July 31, 2006 01:36 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

July 28, 2006

Holier Than Thou

The RealClimate folks are all excited about an internal memo from the Inter-Mountain Rural Electric Association (link here in PDF) that details, among other things, that the IREA have donated $100,000 to support the activities of Patrick Michaels, a long-time political advocate on the climate issue. I’m all for disclosure of financial support. But the response to this memo, at RealClimate and elsewhere, suggest to me that many involved in the climate debate would much rather bash their opponents than work with them to find common ground. In a democracy, action occurs most often through compromise rather than complete annihilation of one’s opponents. Until this point is realized by those calling for “action” expect gridlock to continue.

Here are some questions that I have about this episode:

1. So what? In a democracy interests mobilize and support fellow travelers. Where science and politics overlap care must be taken to be aware for the possibility of conflicts of interest, which includes but are not limited to the financial. For example, the Journal of the American Medical Association has recently clarified a policy for disclosing potential conflicts of interest in research papers. The climate community would do well to adopt this practice. That people involved in the political battle over climate change see benefits in supporting people who share their interests is not a surprise, it is democracy at work.

2. Is only some money unclean? Those who are criticized for accepting industry money often observe that Jim Hansen was awarded an unrestricted cash prize of $250,000 from the Heinz Family Philanthropies. Stanford University’s Global Climate & Energy Project has accepted $100 million in support from ExxonMobil and other industry sponsors. Does this mean that we should discount Hansen’s work and that coming from Stanford? Or is it only certain combinations of people and funders that we should be concerned about?

3. Are vows of poverty signs of moral superiority? There does seem to be more than a hint of holier-than-thouness about all of this. One of the RealClimate contributors said in the Washington Post, "We don't get any money; we do this in our free time." He fails to recognize that his "free time" is made possible by an employer and research funders who allow (or look the other way) when RealClimate pursues its political agenda and aggressively attacks those who do not share it. I have no doubts that Pat Michaels holds his values every bit as strongly as the RealClimate folks do. Groups interested in political action usually begin by recognizing the legitimacy of differing value commitments. RealClimate seems to acknowledge this when they write, "It might actually help people engage on the substance of their concerns rather than simply arguing about the science - which, as we are by now well aware, - is simply a path to gridlock." Have they followed this useful guidance when engaging the concerns of the IREA?

4. Do opinions chase dollars, or do dollars chase opinions? I am convinced that it is the latter, a consequence of what Dan Sarewitz has called the "excess of objectivity" which allows political interests to simply survey the landscape and align with convenient experts. With nod to their own apparent moral superiority, RealClimate suggests that the causality goes the other way, writing, "any quote from Michaels should probably be followed with 'So spake the industry's P.R.O, A man who really ought to know, For he is paid for saying so'." In the Washington Post, Donald Kennedy has a more realistic and fair-minded perspective about Michael’s funders, ""I don't think it's unethical any more than most lobbying is unethical," he said. He said donations to skeptics amounts to "trying to get a political message across.""

Finally, what I think is most interesting about the IREA letter, and not discussed by anyone, is their description of how they view different policy options. They view a carbon tax and cap-and-trade system as the least desirable options. They support voluntary programs and investments in technology. They also view the participation of India and China as essential to any international agreement. They want all industries involved in any political action on greenhouse gases, and they don’t want the economy to be harmed. Seems to me that there are real opportunities for a discussion on climate change policies and the possibility that the IREA might be amenable to a course other than business-as-usual. Looking for common ground is consistent with the perspective that I presented in may congressional testimony last week (PDF). I doubt anyone is going to change IREA’s views of science and certainly not their values commitments. If they are to be "brought on board" in a coalition supporting action on climate change, it will be done through compromise – Politics 101.

But rather than seize upon the possibilities for compromise, advocacy groups like RealClimate have decided to use the memo as an opportunity to foster divisiveness and continued gridlock. It really does make me wonder if some actually want action on climate change or simply to score meaningless political points by bashing those who do not share their values. It will get commentators in the blogoshpere nicely agitated, but it won’t in my view contribute positively to progress on climate policy.

Posted on July 28, 2006 08:37 AM View this article | Comments (20)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Man in a Can

From Reuters:

NASA is considering shutting down all the research programs it conducts aboard the international space station for at least a year to fill a projected budget shortfall of up to $100 million, a top station manager said today.

Research, even space station research, has always been secondary to NASA's long-term vision of somehow someway getting a human on Mars:

Rather than researching materials, fluid physics and other basic microgravity phenomena, NASA decided to fund only those programs that had a direct bearing on human spaceflight beyond low-Earth orbit, which is where the space station and the space shuttles fly. Funding for radiation studies, for example, was to be a key part of the U.S. station research program.
"Cutting science programs would suggest that it is merely a joy ride to the moon," said Katie Boyd, spokeswoman for Alabama Republican Sen. Richard Shelby. "It would mean that we as a national have wasted billions of taxpayer dollars."

The New York Times in an editorial today on NASA's changing mission statement sees part of the story, but fails top recognize that NASA's preference for human spaceflight over science dates back decades. The Times choses instead to pin the source of NASA's focus on human spaceflight on the current Administration, which I think misses the mark. It is to be found instead in the agency's culture and long-term history across different presidents and political eras.

At a time when global warming has become an overriding issue, NASA has been delaying or canceling programs that could shed light on how the climate changes. The shortsighted cutbacks appear to result from sharply limiting NASA’s budget while giving it hugely expensive tasks like repairing the stricken shuttle fleet, finishing construction of the space station, and preparing to explore the Moon and Mars. Something had to give, and NASA’s choices included research into how the planet’s climate is responding to greenhouse gas emissions. . .
The problems in earth sciences are part of a broader slowdown in science missions as NASA tries to do too much with too little. NASA officials sometimes say that they are slowing the rate of growth in science budgets. But Congressional analysts say the agency cut its science spending in 2006 to cover unexpectedly expensive shuttle repairs. It now plans small increases that won’t keep up with inflation or bring spending back to previous levels for many years. One analyst likened NASA to a mugger who takes $100 from a victim and then returns $20 a year, telling the recipient to be thankful.

A Senate committee has approved $1 billion in emergency funds to reimburse programs that were cut to pay for the shuttle repairs. If that doesn’t fly, count home-planet studies and other science programs as a casualty of the administration’s insistence on completing the space station.

Maybe it is time to talk about breaking up NASA and its various missions.

Posted on July 28, 2006 07:02 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

July 27, 2006

Hockey Stick Hearing Number Two

Today, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce is hosting its second hearing on the so-called "hockey stick" in the past two weeks.

From last week's marathon hearing TechCentralStation provides an interesting set of quotes. A statement by Representative Jay Inslee (D-WA) to Professor Edward Wegman is particularly telling:

I want you to make sure you understand the reality of this situation. I've given you all the sincerity that I could give to you. But the reason you are here is not why you think you are here, OK? The reason you are here is to try to win a debate with some industries in this country who are afraid to look forward to a new energy future for this nation. And the reason you are here is to try to create doubt about whether this country should move forward with the new technological, clean-energy future, or whether we should remain addicted to fossil fuels. That's the reason you are here. Now that's not the reason individually why you came, but that's the reason you're here. Thank you very much.

Not long ago, we discussed here how scientists are recruited -- sometimes willingly, sometimes not -- in such a manner to serve as pawns in political battles. Rep. Inslee clearly recognizes that science is simply a symbol in ongoing debates about energy policies. Presumably the witnesses that the minority invited to testify were brought in to serve a similar purpuse as those that he described to Dr. Wegman.

Ironically, from all accounts Dr. Wegman's report initiated by the majority staff of the committee and the report led by Dr. North for the NRC apparently agree on all of the statistical and technical aspects of the hockey stick issue. The difference was that the North Committee went to great lengths to minimize the practical significance of their findings and the Wegman report did not. In both cases their characterizations of their findings reflect extra-scientific considerations.

Showing no shame, Representative Inslee asked Dr. Wegman if he could recite the three laws of therodynamics (you can't win, can't break even, and can't get out of the game, courtesy of C.P. Snow). Dr. Wegman, a statistician, replied that he probably could not. Presumably the fact that Dr. Wegman could not recite these laws means that the nation should adopt Rep. Inslee's preferred energy policies, whatever those might be. Of course, Mr. Inslee did not apparently recognize that since Wegman and North agree on the substance of the issues, discrediting one would seem to imply discrediting the other. But Rep. Inslee has already told us that the substance does not matter (See also the question posed by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and Han von Storch's quite appropriate response).

On the other side Rep. Barton (R-TX) asked Dr. Wegman who he voted for in 2000, to which he replied Al Gore. Presumably this bit of Texas political trivia means that in fact Dr. Wegman's statistical analysis has credibility, and we should thus favor Rep. Barton's favored energy policies, whatever those are.

All in all last week's hearing was a pretty sad day for science in politics, or more accurately - science as politics. Both parties came off looking pretty bad. And the scientists involved all looked helpless or unwilling to break out of the fix they were in -- with the exception of Hans von Storch whose comments in my view were thoughtful and on target- PDF.) A lot of the blogosphere commentators on this issue have taken political sides just like the members of Congress and seem more than happy to wage their political battles through the science. Exceedingly few people seem concerned about the pathological politicization of science itself, and seem perfectly have to join the fray. I'd expect that we'll see more of the same today. But maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Here is my two cents on the whole affair:

On the hockey stick in politics, I wrote here last summer: "Resolving the technical dispute will do little to address the larger issues of climate science policy or the symbolic and real political implications of the hockey stick debate." See the rest of that post for a more detailed description of my views, which I see no reason to change.

On the hockey stick in climate policy, in this post from last fall we came pretty close to a consensus among participants in the debate that it does not matter for climate policy. of course, the policy and politics are interwoven, and my view is that the politics of the issue are an obstacle to policy (see my testimony from last week - PDF).

On the hockey stick in science policy and politics -- here is where I think the most important issues are. The hockey stick debate reflects in microcosm just about everything that is wrong about the climate debate. Scientists who are advocates of action on energy policies, or simply are burdened by outsized egos, could have defused the hockey stick debate a long time ago by taking a conciliatory stance with respect to the critics of the hockey stick and its prominant role in the IPCC. The IPCC deserves a lot of the blame for the issue, first for elevating the hockey stick to an icon and then by circling the wagons when criticized. Hindsight is 20/20, but even the recent NRC report was a missed opportunity to defuse the issue.

The critics of the hockey stick, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, have proven how difficult it is for scientific truths to be kept under wraps, according at least to Drs. North and Wegman. This of course cuts both ways in the climate debate. They also have provided a case study in the power of blogs in today's worlds of science and politics. But they have done themselves no favors by cozying up with conservatives. Perhaps this is a marriage of convenience, but it has served to further politicize the issue.

Finally, the big loser in all of this seems to be the IPCC, which appears to have viewed the hockey stick debate as something to win and survive, rather than learn from and evolve.

Bottom line - after all of the sound and fury over the hockey stick climate policy remains a mess and the politics as intractable as ever. Today's hearing, I'll guess, will continue this trend. Any comments from people watching the hearing would be welcomed.

Posted on July 27, 2006 07:56 AM View this article | Comments (9)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

July 26, 2006

Conflicts of Interest at the National Academies?

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) released a very interesting report (PDF) this week which found substantial conflicts of interest present among members of study panels at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS, and more specifically its National Research Council which oversees its study panels).

Why should we care about conflicts at the NAS? According to CSPI:

Self-interested parties, including Congress, government agencies, and corporate lobbying groups, are increasingly turning to the NAS to define the scientific state of play on controversial topics, whether it is global warming, stem cell research, or a specific toxic chemical. For the NAS to maintain its credibility in this role, it must be vigilant in rooting out even the appearance of conflicts of interest among its committee members.

What did CSPI conclude?

. . . we found serious deficiencies in the NAS’s committee-selection process that could jeopardize the quality of future NAS reports. The NAS has allowed numerous scientists (and others) with blatant conflicts of interest to sit on committees. Compounding that problem, those conflicts of interest usually are not disclosed to the public

The CSPI defines a conflict of interest as "a financial tie within the last five years to a company or industry that is relevant to the committee topic." Under this definition, of the 21 committees it it looked at CSPI found that "Nearly one out of every five scientists appointed to an NAS panel has direct financial ties to companies or industry groups with a direct stake in the outcome of that study." The NAS did not acknowledge publicly many of these financial interests.

The CSPI further alleged that the NAS did not take efforts to balance the perspectives of its committees finding a ratio of more than 7 to 1 appointees favoring industry perspectives over environmental or public interest group perspectives. The CSPI recommends that the NAS "should expand its definition of balance on committees to include bias and point of view, in addition to areas of expertise." This perspective is contrary to that taken by the NAS itself which has supported non-disclosure of information such as "voting record, political-party affiliation, or position on particular policies."

We have periodically raised the issue of NAS committee composition at the NAS, for instance on reports on Hubble Space Telescope, perchlorate, and on the advisory process itself. Advisory committee composition is an important subject, and I agree with the CSPI that in many cases the NAS could be more transparent and balanced. At the same, we should resist the lure of believing that there are heroic philosopher kings out there with no biases except for the truth. As I have argued before (e.g., Washington Post PDF), what an advisory committee is asked to do is as important as who they ask to do it. An advisory committee tasked with placing science into the context of a range of policy options may be less likely than a committee focused only on science or a single course of action to slip from advice into advocacy.

Posted on July 26, 2006 07:37 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

July 25, 2006

Rep. Rush Holt on Science Advice

From Represenatative Rush Holt's statement (PDF) prepared for today's House Science Committee hearing on science advice to congress:

There is no shortage of information and no shortage of wisdom. We are swamped with experts. We need help in weaving it into policy-relevant fabric.

Posted on July 25, 2006 12:42 PM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

Scientific Leadership on Hurricanes and Global Warming

I have often made the case that one of the best ways for scientists to depoliticze science is to clearly discuss the significance of scientific disputes for policy action. Today's New York Times reports that 10 scientists involved in the sometimes acrimonious debate over hurricanes and global warming have prepared a statement that places their debate into policy context. Here is an excerpt from the NYT story:

The scientists, several of whom had publicly debated the hurricane-climate connection in recent months, said they were concerned that the lack of consensus on the climate link could stall actions that could cut vulnerability — no matter what is influencing hurricane trends.
Philip J. Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University who disputes the idea that global warming is linked to stronger storms, said the social and economic trends were completely clear.

"There is likely to be an increase in destructiveness from tropical cyclones regardless of whether they are getting more intense or not," he said yesterday. “"his is largely due to the increase in coastal population and wealth per capita in hurricane-prone areas."

Kerry A. Emanuel, a climatologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, drafted the statement and conducted one of several recent studies asserting that the building energy of hurricanes in recent decades was probably related to human-driven warming of the seas.

"We as a community have said for a long time that this is a big social problem right now," Dr. Emanuel said in an interview. "A lot of us are tired of the climate question being set up as a bigger conflict than it is."

The full statement can be found here.

Congrats to the authors Kerry Emanuel, Richard Anthes, Judith Curry, James Elsner, Greg Holland, Phil Klotzbach, Tom Knutson, Chris Landsea, Max Mayfield, and Peter Webster. This is scientific leadership at its best.

Posted on July 25, 2006 12:55 AM View this article | Comments (17)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

July 21, 2006

Jim Hansen's Refusal to Testify

According to E&E Daily, James Hansen who was invited to appear at yesterday's House Government Reform Committee, but did not appear, would have attended had John Christy not attended. According to E&E Daily (link, but a subscription site):

In the message Hansen sent to reporters to explain his absence from yesterday’s hearing, the director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies said he had a conflicting doctor appointment to deal with a cold that interacts with his asthma to create a drip in his lungs. But he also indicated he would have adjusted his schedule if the witness list did not also include skeptical points of view.

The only person on the witness list who's views could be characterized as skeptical was John Christy. John is widely acknowledged by his peers as a highly qualified and accomplished climate scientist. He was, for example, on the CCSP Temperature Trends Committtee as well as the recent NRC Hockey Stick Committee, and particpates in the IPCC. So I am baffled why Jim Hansen would only appear if other legitimate perspectives are excluded. He might disagree with Christy's views, but they are certainly appropriate to include on a Congressional panel.

Coming from someone who complained about being censored, it sounds like he'd like to do a bit censoring of his own. It also seems a bit odd for a high ranking government employee to refuse to offer testimony when called upon by Congress to do so. This helps to explain Chairman's Davis' obvious pique when mentioning Hansen in his opening comments yesterday.

Posted on July 21, 2006 02:33 PM View this article | Comments (15)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Follow up on Criticism of AGU Hurricane Assessment

Not long ago I criticized an AGU assessment of hurricane science for its demonstrably inaccurate treatment of seasonal climate forecasts. I hypothesized that the issue of seasonal hurricane forecasts had been caught up in the "hurricane-climate wars" between Bill Gray and Greg Holland. Holland and Peter Webster (who were both involved with preparing the AGU report) took serious issue with my even raising this hypothesis (how dare I!!), flatly denying any such relationship between the AGU report's criticism of Gray's seasonal forecasts and the global warming debate. However, In today's hearing (that I participated in) Judy Curry's testimony completely vindicates my raising this issue (Curry is a collaborator with Holland and Webster). Here is the relevant excerpt from her testimony (PDF):

It may take up to a decade for the observations to clarify the situation as to which explanation, natural variability or global warming, has better predictive ability. In the short term, evaluation of seasonal forecasts for the North Atlantic can provide some insights into the predictive capability of natural variability. Holland (2006) has conducted an assessment of statistical forecasts of North Atlantic tropical storm activity. Seasonal forecasts are based upon the statistics of North Atlantic tropical storms for the period since 1950. W. Gray commenced making seasonal forecasts in 1984. For the first decade (until 1994), Grays forecasts performed well (Figure 10), with a bias error of -0.2 storms per season for the June forecasts and a root mean square error of 1.8. In the period since 1998, Grays forecasts have performed much worse, with a notable low bias averaging -3.1 storms per season and a root mean square error of 5.2. NOAAs seasonal forecasts for the same period show little variation from Grays forecasts. It is argued here that the persistent low bias in the seasonal forecasts since 1995 indicates that the elevated activity in this period cannot be explained solely by natural variability seen in the historical data record since 1950.

Posted on July 21, 2006 02:07 AM View this article | Comments (21)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

July 20, 2006

Congressional Testimony

Here is a PDF of my Congressional testimony today before the House Government Reform Committee. We'll link to the other testmony when available online.

Posted on July 20, 2006 08:53 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

July 18, 2006

Space Shuttle Flight

Congrats to NASA and its astronauts for the safe return of the shuttle yesterday. Here are a few interesting comments I have come across on the mission.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas and chairwoman of the Senate Commerce subcommittee on science and space, called the mission "an important milestone in our nation’s space exploration history." (link)

Expectations for the space program have really gone down if simply returning astronauts safely is interpreted as an important milestone. On the other hand, it might be a good sign if such a view reflected an honest appraisal of the risks of spaceflight. Call me a cynic, but I doubt this latter explanation explains comments like those of Senator Hutchinson, which probably reflect diminishing expectations more than anything else.

"We don't have any slack," [NASA Administrator Michael Grifin] said. "We have just enough shuttle flights left to do the job, so we can't afford to mess up." (link)

Planning with no "slack" is called "success-oriented planning" and has plagued NASA for decades. Why in the world would NASA create plans with absolutely no slack? As has been seen time and time again, this is a recipe for schedule disruption, cost overruns, and performance shortfalls. Griffin also says: "I think the words 'routine human space flight' don't go in the same sentence. Every one of these (missions) is experimental." In such a circumstance, isn’t a little slack desirable? It is not really going out on a limb to expect that the next 16 missions won’t be carried out as planned today.

"The shuttle remains a fragile, delicate, temperamental vehicle and needs to be operated with extreme care," said John Logsdon, who heads the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University . . . "I think that the most likely future is one in which the shuttle flies out its remaining missions and gets its job done." (link)

If the risks of losing an orbiter are 1 in 100, then there is about a 15% chance of losing an orbiter over its last 16 flights. As I have written before, this is just about the same odds as playing Russian Roulette. If the odds are less in NASA’s favor, then the chances go up. Given NASA's history, I dount that Logsdon is correct about the most likely future. This doesn't mean that there will be a catastrophic loss of an orbiter, but the chances of the less likely futures are not insignificant and they come with a few outcomes with extreme consequences. A more likely future will involve unexpected technical, schedule, and costs issues that disrupt the plans set at any given time.

Posted on July 18, 2006 04:34 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

July 15, 2006

Upcoming Congressional Testimony

I'll be testifying before the House Government Reform Committee on Thursday, July 20. Details TBA here. The hearing is titled, "Climate Change: Understanding the Degree of the Problem."

I'll post my prepared testimony here on Thursday.

Posted on July 15, 2006 08:44 PM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

July 08, 2006

Summer Break

We'll be offline for a short while. Kevin is away as well, so we won't have much if any action here. See you in a few weeks!

PS. Comments on existing posts will remain open, behave yourselves;-)

Posted on July 8, 2006 05:01 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R.

July 07, 2006

The Honest Broker, Coming Soon to a Bookstore Near You

This week I shipped off to Cambridge University Press my final revisions on my forthcoming book, The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics. It is scheduled to be published early next year. Consequently, I’ll be shamelessly promoting the book here until then! An article in this week’s Nature on science and advocacy (Thanks CW!) makes me think that the book is well timed, here is an excerpt:

For conservation biologists, it's the question that won't go away. Should they make the leap from describing the facts of a case, to telling people what ought to be done?
Biologist Reed Noss of the University of Central Florida believes they should. Addressing a meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) in San Jose, California, last week, he tried to convince the crowd that they have a responsibility to be not just scientists dealing in objective facts, but also advocates pushing particular policies.

But Mike Scott of the University of Idaho, organizer of the symposium, thinks the SCB should stick to the facts. "We need to position ourselves as the go-to authority on conservation matters worldwide," he says. "We can more forcefully do that if we do rigorous science, and then leave it for the decision-makers to figure out what to do with that."

The advocacy question is perhaps more difficult for conservation biologists than many other scientists. Their field is already premised on the value of having lots of species around. And most of these scientists got into the field because of their strong feelings about nature, the wilderness and often particular species.

Peter Brussard, a population biologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, points out that the debate goes back to at least 1951. Then the Nature Conservancy split from the Ecological Society of America because of a dispute over whether scientists should do more than just describe.

These days, he thinks, "the debate has been reframed a little bit", with more researchers willing to be advocates. In the end, he says, much depends on the definition of advocacy. "We never seem to get beyond semantics."

For example, does advocacy include sending a paper to policy-makers? Or to the press? Or reiterating your findings if you don't think policy-makers have taken enough notice of them?

Back in San Jose, the US Geological Survey's Susan Haseltine warns the meeting of the harm a scientist can do to their credibility by being an activist. "I don't believe you can be strong in science and in advocacy," she says.

Hopefully my book will help to inform such a discussion about advocacy and the role of scientists in policy and politics.

Posted on July 7, 2006 12:45 PM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker

Letter to Editor, AZ Daily Star

Yesterday I was asked by a reporter at the Arizona Daily Star to read and offer my thoughts on a just-out paper in Science by Westerling et al. on trends in forest fires and the possible role of climate change. The resulting news story was interesting, not least because it grossly mischaracterizes my views on climate change, despite having been asked directly by the reporter what my views are on the subject. So I just sent in the following letter to the editor of that paper.

Dear Editor-
AZ Star reporter Tony Davis grossly mischaracterizes my views on climate change in a story published July 7, 2006. He writes that I have "been critical of the view that human-caused global warming represents a major environmental threat." To the contrary, much of my research for the past 15 years has been focused on options for dealing with global warming, and in particular, the role of science in policy. In an email to Mr. Davis reponding to his question about my views on the subject I wrote that I seek to "openly confront some of the real but uncomfortable practical challenges involved with reducing emissions and adapting to climate." Instead of sharing what I actually wrote, Mr. Davis came up with something completely different, and incorrect.

Sincerely,

Roger A. Pielke, Jr.
Professor, Environmental Studies
Director, Center for Science and Technology Policy Research
University of Colorado

And here is what I had to say to the reporter about the Westerling et al. paper. Readers can compare what points the reporter chose to include and which ones were left out:

Tony-
I just read the paper. I have a few reactions:

1. They are asking the right questions -- we do need to know the role of climate in the context of the many other factors that lead to climate-related impacts.

2. That being said, I did not see any attention to the role of fire fighting policies. Since 1970 the notion of "let it burn" in some locations has been followed to some degree. I am left wondering what role such policies might have had on fire magnitude and trends over time. Given this apparent oversight, I am not sure that this paper captures all of the important factors shaping fire history.

3. It would be easy to over-interpret this paper. The IPCC notes that 35 years is a pretty short time frame for attribution of any trend to human-caused climate change, and I would think that is especially the case for a complex issue like forest fires.

Bottom line - a useful paper that adds to our knowledge and hopefully will stimulate further research on the integrated effects of climate-society-policy. At the same time I can envisage the paper being used simply as a charicature in the global warming debate -- Global Warming Causes Forest Fires! -- but that would be a shame because fire policy is more complex than that.

Thanks for the chance to respond ...

Best regards, Roger

Posted on July 7, 2006 07:43 AM View this article | Comments (22)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

July 06, 2006

Energy Dependence, Part 2

A recent op-ed by two professors at the Polytechnic University of New York in the Washington Post makes the case that biofuels offer no long-term alternative to fossil fuels. They write:

But as we've looked at biofuels more closely, we've concluded that they're not a practical long-term solution to our need for transport fuels. Even if all of the 300 million acres (500,000 square miles) of currently harvested U.S. cropland produced ethanol, it wouldn't supply all of the gasoline and diesel fuel we now burn for transport, and it would supply only about half of the needs for the year 2025. And the effects on land and agriculture would be devastating.
It's difficult to understand how advocates of biofuels can believe they are a real solution to kicking our oil addiction. Agriculture Department studies of ethanol production from corn -- the present U.S. process for ethanol fuel -- find that an acre of corn yields about 139 bushels. At an average of about 2.5 gallons per bushel, the acre then will yield about 350 gallons of ethanol. But the fuel value of ethanol is only about two-thirds that of gasoline -- 1.5 gallons of ethanol in the tank equals 1 gallon of gasoline in terms of energy output.

Moreover, it takes a lot of input energy to produce ethanol: for fertilizer, harvesting, transport, corn processing, etc. After subtracting this input, the net positive energy available is less than half of the figure cited above. Some researchers even claim that the net energy of ethanol is actually negative when all inputs are included -- it takes more energy to make ethanol than one gets out of it.

But allowing a net positive energy output of 30,000 British thermal units (Btu) per gallon, it would still take four gallons of ethanol from corn to equal one gallon of gasoline. The United States has 73 million acres of corn cropland. At 350 gallons per acre, the entire U.S. corn crop would make 25.5 billion gallons, equivalent to about 6.3 billion gallons of gasoline. The United States consumes 170 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel annually. Thus the entire U.S. corn crop would supply only 3.7 percent of our auto and truck transport demands. Using the entire 300 million acres of U.S. cropland for corn-based ethanol production would meet about 15 percent of the demand.

It is argued that rather than using corn to make ethanol, we can use agricultural wastes. But the amounts are still a drop in the bucket. Using the crop residues (called corn stover) from corn production could provide about 10 billion gallons per year of ethanol, according to a recent study by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The net energy available would be greater than with ethanol from corn -- about 60,000 Btu per gallon, equivalent to a half-gallon of gasoline. Still, all of the U.S. corn wastes would produce only the equivalent of 5 billion gallons of gasoline. Another factor to be considered: Not plowing wastes back into the land hurts soil fertility.

Similar limitations and problems apply to growing any crop for biofuels, whether switchgrass, hybrid willow, hybrid poplar or whatever. Optimistically, assuming that switchgrass or some other crop could produce 1,000 gallons of ethanol per acre, over twice as much as we can get from corn plus stover, and that its net energy was 60,000 Btu per gallon, ethanol from 300 million acres of switchgrass still could not supply our present gasoline and diesel consumption, which is projected to double by 2025. The ethanol would meet less than half of our needs by that date.

And they end with the always-inconvenient issue of trade offs:

Finally, considering projected population growth in the United States and the world, the humanitarian policy would be to maintain cropland for growing food -- not fuel. Every day more than 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes -- one child every five seconds. The situation will only get worse. It would be morally wrong to divert cropland needed for human food supply to powering automobiles. It would also deplete soil fertility and the long-term capability to maintain food production. We would destroy the farmland that our grandchildren and their grandchildren will need to live.

Posted on July 6, 2006 08:15 AM View this article | Comments (6)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Energy Policy

Energy Dependence

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal John Fialka has an interesting article (free) that takes apart the notion of “energy independence.” Here is an excerpt:

The U.S. may be addicted to oil, but many of its politicians are addicted to "energy independence" -- which may be among the least realistic political slogans in American history.
Recently, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, perhaps warming up for another presidential campaign, gave a speech calling for energy independence and invoking the Fourth of July. "For the second time in our history, let's declare and win our independence," he said. Separately, 43 Democratic senators, including Mr. Kerry, launched a program to "Put America on the road to energy independence by 2020."

President Bush, meanwhile, has been talking for three years about setting a goal "to promote energy independence for our country." That is in line with Republican tradition: After the Arab oil embargo in 1973, President Nixon trotted out "Project Independence," a list of synthetic-fuel programs that would meet America's energy needs within 10 years. It failed within two.

Now, energy experts across the political spectrum are criticizing politicians' calls for "energy independence," saying the goal falls somewhere between pipe dream and economic impossibility.

Posted on July 6, 2006 08:08 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Energy Policy

July 05, 2006

Straight Talk on Climate Policy

In a column in today's Washington Post, Robert Samuelson provides a dose of political realism on climate policy:

From 2003 to 2050, the world's population is projected to grow from 6.4 billion people to 9.1 billion, a 42 percent increase. If energy use per person and technology remain the same, total energy use and greenhouse gas emissions (mainly, carbon dioxide) will be 42 percent higher in 2050. But that's too low, because societies that grow richer use more energy. Unless we condemn the world's poor to their present poverty -- and freeze everyone else's living standards -- we need economic growth. With modest growth, energy use and greenhouse emissions more than double by 2050.
Just keeping annual greenhouse gas emissions constant means that the world must somehow offset these huge increases. There are two ways: Improve energy efficiency, or shift to energy sources with lower (or no) greenhouse emissions. Intuitively, you sense this is tough. China, for example, builds about one coal-fired power plant a week. Now a new report from the International Energy Agency in Paris shows all the difficulties (the population, economic growth and energy projections cited above come from the report).

The IEA report assumes that existing technologies are rapidly improved and deployed. Vehicle fuel efficiency increases by 40 percent. In electricity generation, the share for coal (the fuel with the most greenhouse gases) shrinks from about 40 percent to about 25 percent -- and much carbon dioxide is captured before going into the atmosphere. Little is captured today. Nuclear energy increases. So do "renewables" (wind, solar, biomass, geothermal); their share of global electricity output rises from 2 percent now to about 15 percent.

Some of these changes seem heroic. They would require tough government regulation, continued technological gains and public acceptance of higher fuel prices. Never mind. Having postulated a crash energy diet, the IEA simulates five scenarios with differing rates of technological change. In each, greenhouse emissions in 2050 are higher than today. The increases vary from 6 percent to 27 percent. . .

No government will adopt the draconian restrictions on economic growth and personal freedom (limits on electricity usage, driving and travel) that might curb global warming. Still, politicians want to show they're "doing something." The result is grandstanding. Consider the Kyoto Protocol. It allowed countries that joined to castigate those that didn't. But it hasn't reduced carbon dioxide emissions (up about 25 percent since 1990), and many signatories didn't adopt tough enough policies to hit their 2008-2012 targets. By some estimates, Europe may overshoot by 15 percent and Japan by 25 percent. . .

The trouble with the global warming debate is that it has become a moral crusade when it's really an engineering problem. The inconvenient truth is that if we don't solve the engineering problem, we're helpless.

Posted on July 5, 2006 05:27 AM View this article | Comments (39)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

July 03, 2006

How to Break Up NASA

My latest column for Bridges is online: How to Break Up NASA. Comments welcomed!

As usual, there are many good articles in Bridges, and a number of NASA-related articles in the current edition.

Posted on July 3, 2006 07:06 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

June 29, 2006

An Honorable Retirement for the Shuttle

At Space.com Leonard David has a great news story on the upcoming shuttle launch with some interesting perspectives:

The soon-to-depart shuttle mission evokes a good news/bad news comeback from Joseph Pelton, a research professor with the Institute for Applied Space Research at George Washington University.
"The good news is that the shuttle is still a relatively safe experimental space vehicle with a 1-in-60 to 1-in-100 chance of a category one failure—loss of vehicle, loss of crew. The bad news is that after $2 billion in expenditures for the reflight effort—and now many years after the Columbia failure—critical objectives set by the CAIB have not been accomplished," Pelton told SPACE.com.

Pelton was lead investigator for Space Safety Report: Vulnerabilities and Risk Reduction In U.S. Human Space Flight Programs an independent assessment prepared and released last year by the Space and Advanced Communications Research Institute (SACRI) of George Washington University.

Pelton singled out several remaining key issues: the stiffening of the shuttle outer hull; the ability perform repairs to the shuttle’s thermal protection system in space; and correction of the foam-shedding problem.

"The mantra that NASA developed after Columbia that said ‘find it, fix it and fly safely again’ rings hollow after so much time and money has been spent with such limited results," Pelton explained.

NASA credibility and space funding

"In truth, the problems that NASA continues to experience with its shuttle and the International Space Station program—really the only reason the shuttle is still flying—goes back at least to the Challenger disaster in 1986," Pelton said.

Two major national space commissions back then—one looking into the Challenger accident, the other delving into the future of the American space program—noted that the shuttle was indeed becoming “obsolescent” and that it had to be replaced by another vehicle within at least 15 years, or 2001, Pelton noted.

"Instead of developing alternative plans for the launch of International Space Station components in smaller and more modular parts at that time," Pelton said, "NASA pushed ahead without developing a new vehicle, nor developing a back-up plan.

Now, not only is NASA’s credibility and space funding at risk, Pelton continued, but also at risk are the agency’s international partners that are engaged in the $100 billion station program. “The now ‘tar baby-like tandem’ of the ISS and the space shuttle has done great harm to space programs around the world."

NASA has over-invested in both the shuttle and station initiatives, Pelton said, taking away money from programs that truly matter to the United States and indeed the world.

Never too late to start over

"The truth of the matter is that the shuttle program—an experimental program when designed in the 1970s—should have been grounded years ago. It should be replaced by better, safer, and more cost efficient programs. The development of private space vehicles that are human-rated, something that NASA is currently actively supporting, is clearly the right step forward," Pelton advised.

Ultimately, it is not NASA that is at fault here, Pelton said, pointing to national leadership that has often overruled the space agency on where and how to spend their limited resources. It is never too late to start over, he said, and develop a NASA program that makes sense, balances expenditures, and set priorities that matter to the person in the street.

"The question is not whether NASA should be grounding the space shuttle and putting them in museums,” Pelton concluded, “but what are its backup plans and how can it restore balance to its overall space programs and give new focus to its various NASA centers?"

It is worth noting that under Pelton's estimates of risk (1/60 to 1/100) this equates to a probability of a catastrophic accident at between 15% an 63%(!) over 16 remaining flights. Lets say this again -- if Pelton's risk estimates are correct there is a rather high probability of another lost shuttle.

Space historian Roger Launius asks, appropriately, about the option of allowing the Shuttle to have an "honorable retirement":

Indeed, there is a lot riding on the next shuttle liftoff, beyond technology.
"This is one of the most significant missions of the shuttle program because of the policy implications that it presents," said Roger Launius, Chair, Division of Space History at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Launius underscored the fact that Griffin has stated clearly that if NASA does not fly successfully this time it would mean the end of the program. "That, of course, begs the question [as to] what defines a successful mission?"

The last mission, for all of its challenges, was successful by most measures. It launched, flew, and returned safely; it delivered its supplies and equipment to the ISS; it undertook several safety tests and repairs.

That being the case, several questions percolate to the surface, Launius said.

"Is a level of success commensurate with the last mission sufficient to conclude that the program will continue? If that is not where the bar is set, is it higher or lower? I confess that I have no idea. I also confess that I hope and pray that this mission is a rousing success, by any standard that one might want to apply," Launius told SPACE.com.

Honorable retirement

Launius also senses there is something present with the forthcoming shuttle flight that he hasn’t necessarily experienced before.

"A sustained and underlying depression seems present among those working in the program, some of them for their entire careers," Launius explained. "There is a sense of ending—as well as an ever-present perception of loss and failure—present among many members of the space shuttle team."

Without question, Launius said, the space shuttle will be retired within something less than a decade, whether it is after this next mission or 2010 or sometime a bit later.

"As the space shuttle enters its home stretch, it should be remembered with both praises for its many accomplishments and criticisms for its shortcomings,” Launius suggested. “I am in favor of giving the shuttle an honorable retirement and to give a full measure of respect and thanks to those charged with its operations over the years for their efforts."

In the process of retiring the space shuttle, "I hope NASA will ensure that the knowledge and expertise gained in the shuttle program is preserved and used for the future," Launius concluded.

In my view NASA is acting like an aging boxer, not knowing when to say when. The end result is often not pretty.

Posted on June 29, 2006 09:43 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Risk & Uncertainty | Space Policy

June 28, 2006

Westword on Bill Gray

Here is a pretty thoughtful article on Bill Gray and a number of familiar folks in the hurricane debate.

Posted on June 28, 2006 04:02 PM View this article | Comments (11)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

June 27, 2006

The Is-Ought Problem

Al Gore obviously hasn't read Andrew Dessler's book:

. . . if you accept the truth of what the scientific community is saying, it gives you a moral imperative to start to rein in the 70 million tons of global warming pollution that human civilization is putting into the atmosphere every day.

This is a fine example of the is-ought problem described by philospoher David Hume. ASU's Brad Allenby has explained why we should care about the is-ought problem in science:

. . . the elite that has been created by practice of the scientific method uses the concomitant power not just to express the results of particular research initiatives, but to create, support, and implement policy responses affecting many non-scientific communities and intellectual domains in myriad ways. In doing so, they are not exercising expertise in these non-scientific domains, but rather transforming their privilege in the scientific domains into authority in non-scientific domains.

Posted on June 27, 2006 03:55 PM View this article | Comments (11)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science Policy: General

Just Barely Unacceptable Risk

The Space Shuttle is set to launch on July 1, 2006. According to NASA officials, this is the first flight being launched in which the risk has been deemed “unacceptable”:

NASA's top safety official and the agency's chief engineer said today they opposed the shuttle Discovery's launch July 1 because of concern about so-called ice-frost ramps on the ship's external tank that could shed foam and cause catastrophic impact damage. In fact, Discovery's flight will be the first in shuttle history with a system formally classified in the "unacceptable risk" category.
Bryan O'Connor, director of Safety and Mission Assurance at NASA headquarters in Washington, and Chris Scolese, the agency's chief engineer, both declined to concur with the decision to launch when signing an official Certificate of Flight Readiness, or CoFR, following a flight readiness review that ended Saturday.

But both men said today they viewed the issue as a threat to the vehicle - not a direct threat to the crew - and as such, they accepted NASA Administrator Mike Griffin's decision to press ahead with launch.

Here is how O’Connor characterized his thinking:

O'Connor today acknowledged a perception problem with the seemingly contradictory positions, but said it was the result of the flight readiness review process and the engineering community's classification of the ice-frost ramps as "probable/catastrophic" in NASA's integrated risk matrix.
"When this first came up, most folks were pretty concerned about it," he said. "That concern level has been going down as we learn more about it, as we refine the models, we look at the data. We haven't changed the design, but there's a little bit of a shift toward more comfort than the other direction.

"I think we're just barely into the unacceptable risk area. I think it's unacceptable to the program to go fly in this condition. But I also believe if it's elevated to the right authority, an administrator (Griffin) who looks at it and with his understanding and his position in the agency who can accept it, then I felt like I was not going to lie down in the flame trench or throw my badge down."

Is NASA playing Russian Roulette with the future of the space program?

Posted on June 27, 2006 03:21 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

June 26, 2006

A New Paper

The text that accompanied my public lecture last spring for the NAS Ocean Studies Board has now been published in the magazine Oceanography. Here is a citation and link:

Pielke, Jr., R. A. 2006. Seventh Annual Roger Revelle Commemorative Lecture: Disasters, Death, and Destruction: Making Sense of Recent Calamities, Oceanography, 19:138-147. (PDF)

Comments welcomed.

Posted on June 26, 2006 03:24 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

June 23, 2006

A(nother) Problem with Scientific Assessments

The American Geophysical Union released an assessment report last week titled "Hurricanes and the US Gulf Coast" which was the result of a "Conference of Experts" held in January, 2006. One aspect of the report illustrates why it is so important to have such assessments carefully balanced with participants holding a diversity of legitimate scientific perspectives. When such diversity is not present, it increases the risks of misleading or false science being presented as definitive or settled, which can be particularly problematic for an effort intended to be "a coordinated effort to integrate science into the decision-making processes." In this particular case the AGU has given assessments a black eye. Here are the details:

The AGU Report includes the following bold claim:

There currently is insufficient skill in empirical predictions of the number and intensity of storms in the forthcoming hurricane season. Predictions by statistical methods that are widely distributed also show little skill, being more often wrong than right.

Such seasonal predictions are issued by a number of groups around the world, and are also an official product of the U.S. government’s Climate Prediction Center. If these groups were indeed publishing forecasts with no (or negative) skill, then there would be good reason to ask them to cease immediately and get back to research, lest they mislead the public and decision makers.

As it turns out the claim by the AGU is incorrect, or at a minimum, is a minority view among the relevant expert community. According to groups responsible for providing seasonal forecasts of hurricane activity, their products do indeed have skill. [Note: Skill refers to the relative improvement of a forecast over some naïve baseline. For example, if your actively managed mutual fund makes money this year, but does not perform better than an unmanaged index fund, then your fund’s manager has showed no skill – no added value beyond what could be done naively.] Consider the following:

1. Tropical Storm Risk, led by Mark Saunders finds that their (and other) forecasts of 2004 and 2005 demonstrated excellent skill according to a number of metrics:

Lea, A. S. and M. A. Saunders, How well forecast were the 2004 and 2005 Atlantic and U.S. hurricane Seasons? in Proceedings of the 27th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology, Monterey, USA, April 24-28 2006. (PDF)
For further details see this paper:

Saunders, M. A. and A. S. Lea, Seasonal prediction of hurricane activity reaching the coast of the United States, Nature, 434, 1005-1008, 2005. (PDF)

2. Phil Klotzbach of Colorado State University, now responsible for issuing the forecasts of the William Gray research team, provides a number of spreadsheets with data showing that their forecasts demonstrate skill:

Seasonal skill excel file
August monthly forecast skill excel file

September monthly forecast skill excel file

October monthly forecast skill excel file

Klotzbach writes in an email: "All three of our monthly forecasts have shown skill with respect to the previous five-year monthly mean of NTC using MSE (mean-squared error as our skill metric). Here are our skills (% value is the % improvement over the previous five-year mean):

August Monthly Forecast: 38%
September Monthly Forecast: 2%
October Monthly Forecast: 33%"

3. NOAA’s Chris Landsea provides the following two figures which show NOAA’s seasonal forecast performance.

He writes in an email: "You can see that we do okay in May (4 out of 7 seasons correctly forecasting number of hurricanes for example), but better in August (6 of 8 seasons correct)."

He also provides a link to this peer-reviewed paper:

Owens, B. F., and C. W. Landsea, 2003: Assessing the skill of operational Atlantic seasonal tropical cyclone forecasts, Weather and Forecasting, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp.45-54. (PDF)

From this information, it seems clear that there are strong claims in support of the skill of seasonal hurricane forecasts and relevant peer-reviewed literature. The AGU statement is therefore misleading and more likely just plain wrong. It certainly is not a community consensus perspective that one might expect to find in an assessment report.

What is going on here? Perhaps the AGU's committee was unaware of this information, which if so would make one wonder about their "expert" committee. Given the distinguished people on their committee, I find this an unlikely explanation. Instead, it may be that the issue of seasonal hurricane forecasting has gotten caught up in the "climate wars." William Gray is the originator of seasonal climate forecasts and has rudely dismissed the notion of human-caused global warming, much less a connection to hurricanes. One of the lead authors of the AGU assessment has been in a public feud with Bill Gray and is a strong advocate of a human role in recent hurricane activity. It is not unreasonable to think that the AGU assessment was being used as a vehicle to advance this battle under the guise of community "consensus." It may be the perception among some that if Bill Gray’s or NOAA’s work on seasonal forecasts, which is based on various natural climatic factors, can be shown to be fundamentally flawed, then this would elevate the importance of alternative explanations.

If this hypothesis explaining what is going on is indeed the case, then it would be a serious misuse of the AGU for the advancement of personal views, unrepresentative of the actual community perspective. It would also represent a complete failure of the AGU’s assessment process. Given that there is peer-reviewed literature indicating the skill of seasonal forecasts, and none that I am aware of making the case for no skill, the AGU has given consensus assessments a black eye, and in the process provided incorrect or misleading information to decision makers.

The AGU case may be isolated, but it does beg the question raised by my father and others, how can we know whether scientific assessments faithfully represent the relevant community of experts versus a subset with an agenda posing under the guise of consensus? I am aware of no systematic approaches to answering this question. It is a question that needs discussion, because as political, personal, and other issues infuse the scientific enterprise, blind trust in disinterested science and science institutions no longer seems to be enough.

Posted on June 23, 2006 06:37 AM View this article | Comments (6)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Scientific Assessments

June 22, 2006

Quick Reaction to the NRC Hockey Stick Report

My reading of the summary of the report and parts of the text is that the NAS has rendered a near-complete vindication for the work of Mann et al. They report does acknowledge that there are perhaps greater uncertainties in temperature reconstructions, reducing Mann et al.'s claim of warmest decade/year in 1,000 years down to 400. Nonetheless, I see nothing in the report that suggests that Mann's research is significantly flawed, nor any calls for release of his data or algorithms, though the report does say in very general terms that such release is a good idea. I am not a climate scientist, but my reading of the section that deals with criticisms of Mann et al.'s work (starting at p. 105) is that while these critiques raise some interesting points, they are minor issues, and the committee find's Mann et al.’s original conclusion to be "plausible." I’d bet that the word "plausible" will be oft invoked as one of the take home messages of the report.

So what to make of this? The NRC has come to the conclusion that the hockey stick debate is much ado about nothing, and make the further point that this particular area of science is not particularly relevant to detection and attribution of human caused climate change. I am certain that research on this subject will continue, but hopefully this NAS report will allow the rest of us to focus on the policy debate rather than this particular issue of science.

I would have liked to see the report get into far more detail on science policy questions, such as release of data, methods, code, etc. and mechanisms of peer review, and IPCC authors reviewing their own work. However, I recognize that these issues may have been interpreted as outside their charge and the committee was not empanelled for this purpose.

Is this the final word on the "hockey stick"? My guess is that for most people, yes, especially if Representative Boehlert, who requested the report, is satisfied with the answers to his questions.

Posted on June 22, 2006 09:07 AM View this article | Comments (45)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

June 21, 2006

Eve of the NAS Hockey Stick Report Release

Tomorrow the National Research Council is going to release its report on the so-called “hockey stick” of global temperature trends that was emphasized in the most recent IPCC report. Not long ago we asked the principles involved in the debate to explain to those of us not involved why this debate matters. On the eve of the NRC report, we thought it might be worth revisiting some comments made by the principles in the debate.

According to Steve McIntyre:

So even if the Hockey Stick did not “matter” to the scientific case, it mattered to the promotion of the scientific case. Scientists may want to “move on”, but institutions cannot, if they want to maintain any credibility. If the Hockey Stick was wrong, it would be as embarrassing as the failure to find WMD in Iraq. In both cases, the policy might well be justified on alternative grounds, but the existence of the alternative grounds does not mean that responsible agencies should not try to isolate the causes of intelligence failure and try to avoid similar failures in the future.

Today, McIntyre provides some pre-release comments on the report.

According to Ross McKitrick:

It matters because it concerns the validity of an influential scientific paper. . .
It matters because it exposes the uncomfortable reality about journal peer review. . .

It matters because it exposes the uncomfortable reality about the IPCC. The IPCC’s use of the hockey stick was not incidental: it is prominent throughout the 2001 report. Yet they did not subject it to any independent checking: revealing an astonishingly cavalier attitude to the quality of their case. This raises the question of whether anything in the report was subject to serious, independent checking. . .

It matters because it exposes the uncomfortable reality about how governments use scientific information Canada (and many other countries) used the hockey stick heavily in their promotion of the Kyoto Accord. . .

It matters because it exposes an uncomfortable reality about the culture of climate science. . .

From Stefan Rahmsdorf and William Connolley of RealClimate:

SR: "The discussions about the past millennium are not discussions about whether humans are changing climate; neither do they affect our projections for the future."
WC: "Why is this fight important to the rest of us? the answer is: you shouldn't. It isn't.."

And finally, here was my two cents of thoughts on the various “so what?” reactions.

Posted on June 21, 2006 12:08 PM View this article | Comments (6)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

June 20, 2006

Please Critique this Sentence

I am working on a new essay on climate policy. I would like your help by critiquing the following sentence, with a particular focus on providing any counter-references from the peer-reviewed literature.

No emissions reduction policy currently under discussion – from changes in personal behavior to those proposed under the Framework Convention on Climate Change – even if successfully implemented will have a discernible effect on the global climate system for at least 50 years.

Now, let me say that this statement, which I believe is scientifically accurate (e.g., see NCAR’s Jim Hurrell testimony) does not mean that we should throw up our hands or stick our heads on the sand about greenhouse gas emissions. But this sentence does have profound implications for thinking about climate policies, their public justifications, and the significance of adaptation. Such implications are typically not front and center in the climate debate, but they should be.

Posted on June 20, 2006 06:27 AM View this article | Comments (47)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

June 17, 2006

We Are Not Ready

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security released a report yesterday (PDF) detailing a review of the state of emergency preparedness across the United States. Bottom line: we are not as ready as we can or should be. My interpretation – the response to Katrina did not necessarily reflect unique circumstances. This report is a sobering read. Here are a few excerpts:

According to U.S. Census data, the average number of people per square mile in Hurricane Belt States is 711, compared to 94 people per square mile in other States. This high-population density is a further impetus to develop and maintain emergency plans that can help warn, evacuate, shelter, and provide care for large numbers of people. p. 35

Only 27% of State and 10% of urban area [emergency operations] plans were rated as Sufficient in terms of adequacy to cope with a catastrophic event. p. 62

Only 18% of State and 11% of urban area plans were rated as having Sufficient feedback mechanisms to ensure the public is taking appropriate action as directed in disseminated forecasts and messages. . . . Although advances in technology (e.g. Internet, cell phones, pagers) have provided several avenues to communicate to the public, many participants have not effectively employed those resources to expedite or expand the provision of emergency public information. p. 66

DHS Peer Review Teams rated less than 20% of State and 10% of urban area plans as Sufficient in providing time estimates and planning for use of multiple modes of transportation for evacuation of people in different risk zones. Both DHS and DOT found that plans do not adequately address evacuation for the most socially vulnerable population segments. Some participants expressed the belief that they will never experience a catastrophic event as defined in IB197 and mass evacuations were not considered a plausible scenario. p. 67

Emergency public information is critical to reduce loss of life and property and to facilitate emergency response operations. Government at all levels does not adequately address pre-incident public education on preparedness measures, alerts and warnings, evacuation, and shelter procedures. Most Review participants do not have a process to evaluate the effectiveness of public education in these areas or for outreach to people with special needs. p. 74

No ironclad guarantees exist in a profession that combats terrorists and nature. Even the best plans will not always deliver success. The historian Henry Adams said, “In all great emergencies, everyone is more or less wrong.” Planners cannot foresee every outcome, and incident managers cannot anticipate every scenario. While disasters have a language of their own and no plan can guarantee success, inadequate plans are proven contributors to failure. The results of the Nationwide Plan Review support fundamental planning modernization. Vince Lombardi said, “We’re going to relentlessly chase perfection knowing full well we will not catch it because perfection is unattainable. But we are going to relentlessly chase it because in the process we will catch excellence.” p. 80

Posted on June 17, 2006 07:18 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

June 14, 2006

The Climate Policy Equivalent of Graham-Rudman-Hollings

Graham-Rudman-Hollings refers to U.S. legislation in the 1980s that sought to bring the federal budget deficit under control. It didn’t work because it based its "budget cuts" on projected spending, and thus required cuts from some imaginary baseline of what would have happened absent the "budget cuts." As former Bush Administration spokesman Ari Fleisher explained in 2001:

Graham-Rudman-Hollings was, in essence, an approach based on deficit projections of what government had to do to bring deficits into certain lines. And it lead to a lot of gimmickry, and to other issues that were complicating the process of government.

Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are currently in their "Graham-Rudman-Hollings" phase, and this is a condition, ironically enough, shared by both the current U.S. approach as well as that under the Kyoto Protocol.

Under the Kyoto Protocol there is a complex policy called the "Clean Development Mechanism" that – simplified – provides emissions reductions credits to countries that invest in developing countries to generate clean technologies. According to a recent press release (PDF) from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change:

According to the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat, the Kyoto Protocol’s clean development mechanism (CDM) is as of today estimated to generate more than one billion tonnes of emission reductions by the end of 2012. In addition to the implementation of climate-friendly policies at home, the 1997 landmark treaty allows industrialized countries to meet their emission targets through the treaty’s flexible mechanisms. "We have crossed an important threshold with these emission reductions", said Richard Kinley, acting head of the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat. "It is now evident that the Kyoto Protocol is making a significant contribution towards sustainable development in developing countries".

Emissions reductions are calculated off of a baseline of what would have occurred absent the CDM investment. So it would be more accurate to say that the CDM represents a smaller increase in emissions than otherwise estimated would have occurred. Nonetheless, CDM projects each represent an additive increase in total global GHG emissions.

Now contrast this with the Bush Administration’s stated goal of reducing "greenhouse gas intensity" which is a measure of how much GHGs are produced per unit of economic activity. From an official U.S. government "fact sheet":

In February 2002, President Bush committed the United States to a comprehensive strategy to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of the American economy (how much we emit per unit of economic activity) by 18 percent by 2012. Meeting this commitment will prevent the release of more than 500 million metric tons of carbon-equivalent emissions to the atmosphere.

The Bush plan has been widely criticized for basically following a business-as-usual approach, as reductions in greenhouse gas intensity are occurring throughout many global economies. According to the White House lead on climate change, James Connaughton, last month:

But when it comes to carbon, what we found is by focusing on intensity we can find the lowest hanging fruit for outcomes. It does not diminish the importance of counting absolute reductions.

One formal difference between the Bush plan (a critique is here) and that of the CDM (a critique is here) is that the CDM is part of a framework that seeks to reduce overall emissions. But the practical reality is that both programs, whatever their positive merits, cannot be honestly be justified as "reducing emissions" as they in fact make very small contributions to reducing the increase in GHG emissions. Consider that most countries participating in Kyoto will all but certainly fail to meet their modest emissions reductions targets.

For advocates of immediate action emissions reductions, under all current and proposed policies (that I am aware of) the future looks like an extended period of uninterrupted growth in greenhouse gas emissions, accounting games notwithstanding. All of the debate about action on emissions will be of little practical effect unless there are policy options on the table that can actually achieve real emissions reductions, not just a reduction in the rate of increase. Right now, there does not seem to be evidence of such options, and so long as the climate debate remains in its Graham-Rudman-Hillings phase, don’t expect to see such options, or much more importantly, significant efforts to create them. The conclusions of one scholarly article on Graham-Rudman-Hollings is worth thinking about:

Gramm-Rudman-Hollings legislation has failed to control the budget deficit. However, the yearly ritual of preparing budgets that conform to the legislated requirements of this Act creates the illusion of deficit control and removes the incentive for developing real deficit controls.

It is great to argue that something should be done, but at some point the discussion has to be moved to what actions are worth doing and with what effects.

Posted on June 14, 2006 07:23 AM View this article | Comments (4)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

June 13, 2006

Willful Ignorance

I find this just amazing:

Beginning next month, Florida researchers won't be able to travel to Cuba to carry out any studies. Although the United States allows such interactions, the state has banned faculty members at Florida's public universities from having any contact with the island nation under a law enacted last week. "This law shuts down the entire Cuban research agenda," says Damián Fernández, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami.
Cuba is one of six countries that the U.S. State Department has designated as a "sponsor of terrorism," although U.S. scholars can travel to Cuba for research if they first obtain a government license. The Florida measure, which passed the state legislature unanimously, essentially closes that loophole by disallowing state-funded institutions from using public or private funds to facilitate travel to such countries. (The list includes North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Sudan.)

"Florida's taxpayers don't want to see their resources being used to support or subsidize terrorist regimes at a time when America is fighting a war on terror," says David Rivera, a Republican Cuban-American state legislator who introduced the bill. Florida researchers won't miss out on anything by not going to Cuba, he adds: "I don't think there's anything there that cannot be studied in the Dominican Republic or other Caribbean islands."

Except Cuba. Duh.

Posted on June 13, 2006 07:29 AM View this article | Comments (4)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | International

Hurricane Politics

I like Bill Clinton. I wish he were still president (22nd Amendment aside!). But the following characterization of his remarks on hurricane policy is an inevitable consequence of the ongoing debate over hurricanes and global warming, in which hurricanes are used to justify emissions reductions policies:

As Tropical Storm Alberto threatened to strengthen into the ninth hurricane in 22 months to affect Florida, former President Clinton predicted Monday that Republican environmental policies will lead to more severe storms.

Expect to see more of such nonsense in the coming months.

Posted on June 13, 2006 07:21 AM View this article | Comments (11)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

June 10, 2006

The Curious Case of Storm Surge and Sea Level Rise in the IPCC TAR

Earlier this year while I was involved in preparing our contribution to an exchange with colleagues for the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society on hurricanes, a particular sentence in the response (PDF) to our paper piqued my interest. The sentence read in full:

As summarized in the Working Group II assessment of McCarthy et al. (2001), model projections of the mean annual number of people who would be flooded by coastal storm surges increase several-fold (75–200 million, depending on the adaptive response) for midrange scenarios of a 0.4-m sea level rise by the 2080s relative to scenarios with no sea level rise.

The sentence caught my attention because it was stunningly ambiguous and unclear. What could it mean? So I set out to learn more about it. What I found and my experiences trying to publish what I have found provides some insights into the increasingly curious world of climate science.

The sentence is actually a direct quote from the IPCC Working Group II Third Assessment Report’s Summary for Policymakers, p. 13 (here in PDF). As such it has been widely quoted in the years since the Third Assessment. But a review of how it has been interpreted shows considerable confusion about what it actually means. For example:

A peer-reviewed article in the British Medical Journal came to one conclusion:
"The number of people at risk from flooding by coastal storm surges is projected to increase from the current 75 million to 200 million in a scenario of mid-range climate changes, in which a rise in the sea level of 40 cm is envisaged by the 2080s."

A report by an oil industry group came to a second interpretation (PDF):

"Even a somewhat conservative scenario of a 40-cm [15.8-in.] sea-level rise by the 2080s would add 75 to 200 million people to the number currently at risk of being flooded by coastal storm surges."

The Red Cross offers still another interpretation,

"The average annual number of people whose houses are flooded by storm surges along coastlines is expected to increase from a few million each year to between 75 and 200 million by the year 2080, estimates the IPCC."

Such differing perspectives are chracteristic of this particular bit of the IPCC consensus. No one, it seems, knows what this sentence means. Now this might not be surprising; after all, the IPCC is written by committee and it would not be surprising to see a confusing sentence come out of such a process. However, this is where it gets considerably more interesting. It appears that the IPCC did not explain what the sentence means, and going back to the original scientific source for the statement does not allow one to arrive at a clear interpretation of what it means.

Given that the IPCC is frequently touted as the most highly peer-reviewed document in climate science I found this quite interesting, and somewhat troubling. So I wrote up what I had learned, only to find after months of trying that publishing such a story can be quite challenging.

But before discussing my attempts to publish, let me describe the source of the sentence and the challenges in interpreting what, exactly, it means.

The IPCC WGII SPM points to Section 4.5 of the full assessment report as the source for the sentence. So going to that section, one finds absolutely nothing related to the sentence. However, thanks to Google and the online availability of the IPCC the trail does not end there. Searching on various combinations of "sea level rise" and "storm surge" leads to Chapter 7 of the IPCC which has this passage:

Worldwide, depending on the degree of adaptive response, the number of people at risk from annual flooding as a result of a 40-cm sea-level rise and population increase in the coastal zone is expected to increase from today’s level of 10 million to 22-29 million by the 2020s, 50-80 million by 2050s, and 88-241 million by the 2080s (Nicholls et al., 1999). Without sea-level rise, the numbers were projected at 22-23 million in the 2020s, 2732 million in the 2050s, and 13-36 million in the 2080s. The 40 cm sea-level rise is consistent with the middle of the range currently being projected for 2100 by Working Group I. In 2050, more than 70% (90% by the 2080s) of people in settlements that potentially would be flooded by sea-level rise are likely to be located in a few regions: west Africa, east Africa, the southern Mediterranean, south Asia, and southeast Asia. In terms of relative increase, however, some of the biggest impacts are in the small island states (Nicholls et al., 1999).

Nowhere in this passage is it clear however where the SPM got the 75-200 million number, or what it might mean.

Nicholls et al. 1999 is this paper:

Nicholls J.N., F.M.J. Hoozemans and M. Marchand, 1999. Increasing flood risk and wetland losses due to global sea-level rise: regional and global analyses, Global Environmental Change, 9:S69-S87. (PDF)

And after several careful readings it turns out that all of the questions lead to Table 7 in that paper which I reproduce below.

My first reaction was that the IPCC confused the cumulative people affected by a 1 in 1000 year storm surge event (People to Respond or PTR in the Table 7) with the "mean annual number of people who would be flooded by coastal storm" (AAPF in the Table 7) because these numbers -- 70-205 million -- look pretty close to those in the SPM (75-200 million) and it would perhaps be easy to confuse the last digits. If so then this would be a huge error, conflating a cumulative number with a cumulative number.

So I emailed Robert Nicholls who graciously responded suggesting that there was another possible interpretation that got one reasonably close to the IPCC numbers. That would be taking the Average Annual People flooded under "Evolving Protection" for the 2080s – 88 million – and subtracting the 13 million for the 2080s under evolving protection with no sea level rise, leaving one with 75 million. Very promising.

However, there is no similar calculation that leads to 200 million. The analogous calculation under the "Constant Protection" column is 228-36 = 192 million. One could confuse the different models to arrive at 237(+4)-36 = 205, but this would be an obvious methodological error (comparing across different models) compounded with a typo. And if not a typo why alter the value from 205 to 200? I can't figure it out.

So where exactly the numbers came from remains a mystery. No one I’ve asked knows the answer. It makes no sense to me that the numbers would be generated through some procedure outside the peer-reviewed literature, as this is outside the scope of the IPCC’s mandate. And there appears to be no logical or intuitive combination of values that result in the values that appear in the SPM from Nicholls et al. Of course, the IPCC is a sprawling document, and the derivation of these numbers may yet be hidden somewhere inside, but I haven’t found them. Maybe there is an obvious or straightforward explanation, but I have not heard it.

OK, so what? The IPCC has a sentence that is confusing at best, and more likely is just nonsense. Nonsense happens, right?

Well, no. When I first searched for information about it last February, I found that the sentence in question has been used in official documents related to climate policy by the Japanese (PDF), Canadian, and British governments. From a follow up search that I just conducted it seems that the UK citation has been superceded, but I am sure that it remains in cyberspace somewhere.

The IPCC SPM is used to justify policy actions on climate change, and thus it would seem pretty important that its information be accurate and understandable. In this case, it appears that neither criterion was met.

So I thought – naively -- that this was a pretty interesting story, particularly given that the IPCC is presently in the midst of preparing its fourth assessment, and wrote a short essay describing what I had found – and more importantly had not found -- about the SPM sentence and the main report, when compared to the original literature. I have tried to publish at two outlets that one would think might have an interest in the accuracy of IPCC assessments, only to be turned down, quickly in one case because it didn’t fit a category, and after an extremely long delay in the second case with the chief editor explaining to me, essentially, that the emperor’s clothes are really quite beautiful. The case of storm surge and sea level rise in the IPCC WGII SPM seems to be so obviously an open and shut case – the facts are readily available for anyone to examine for themselves – that I admit some considerable surprise at the difficultly in getting it published. But I suppose that is what blogs are for.

Here is how I opened my essay that I wrote last February:

In the children’s game of "telephone" a group of children sit in a circle and someone starts the game by whispering a phrase to the person seated neat to them and so on all around the circle. After enough transmissions a phrase that begins as "five stories" might come out the end as "jive turkey" to everyone’s delight. The game of telephone provides a cautionary tale for producers and users of scientific assessments. The case of mistaken and misinterpreted information about storm surge impacts illustrates the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests that the IPCC may have its own "jive turkey" problem minus the delight.

I justified why this issue is important as follows:

The IPCC has great potential to inform policy makers, however its credibility rest on being accurate and faithful to the literature. Errors will inevitably occur, but in this case an error in the IPCC’s most important summaries has been used uncritically in policy documents and academic studies, apparently not having been noticed until now. This problem may be more systemic, e.g., I have elsewhere written about the IPCC’s erroneous treatment of non-peer reviewed studies of the attribution of climate disasters to greenhouse gases (e.g., Pielke, 2005). However broad the problem is, as the IPCC gears up for its fourth assessment report it seems critical to carefully evaluate its procedures for accuracy, and for users of the IPCC to understand the strengths and limits of assessments. There is a more fundamental problem and that is the distilling of complex, nuanced research into one-sentence sound bites that perhaps inevitably cannot accurately capture what is to be found in a lengthy scientific article.

I sought to provide a more accurate summary of Nicholls et al. 1999 than one can find in the IPCC TAR, which in fact leads to conclusions at odds with that distilled by those who have misinterpreted the IPCC sentence. In fact, Nicholls et al. proivide considerable support for the argument tha increasing coasal habitation is a far greater issue than sea level rise when it comes to storm surge (surprise, surprise):

A more accurate summary of Nicholls et al. (1999) would start by observing that the paper used a scenario that had that number of people subjected to 1 in 1000 or greater risk of coastal storm surges increasing from 197 million in 1990 to 575 million in the 2080s without any rise in sea level, due only to population growth and demographic changes. Under this scenarios, with sea level rise (and no societal reaction) the 2085 population-at-risk would be 630 to 640 million. With no sea level rise Nicholls et al. (1999) calculate an increase in the average annual number of people flooded rising from 10 million (1990) to 36 million (2085) with 1990 levels of protection. With protection that evolves as a function of GDP (but not otherwise changed due to sea level rise) the number of people flooded increases only by 3 million, from 10 million (1990) to 13 million (2085), even though population-at-risk increased by 378 million people. This suggests that only 0.8% of the additional people who inhabit the coastal zone by 2085 with a 1 in 1000 or greater risk would on average experience an annual flood. This compares with 5.1% of inhabitants who experience a flood in 1990 based on the assumptions of Nicholls et al.
Putting this together, according to Nicholls et al. (1999) population-at-risk increases by 438 million by 2085 while the average annual number of people flooded increases by 78 million people, from 10 million in 1990 to 88 million in 2085 (and by 3 million, from 10 million to 13 million under the no sea level rise scenario). So the IPCC should have reported that:

Nicholls et al. estimate that of the 438 million additional people expected to inhabit the coastal zone by 2085 with a 1 in 1000 or greater rise of storm surge, about 0.7% - 18% of them, or on average between 3 million and 78 million additional people annually would experience the effects of coast flooding under the assumptions of the sensitivity analysis.

The difference between assuming that only 0.8% of the additional people who inhabit the coastal zone at risk to flooding under a scenario of no sea level rise versus 18% under a scenario of sea level rise results from the fact that the methods assumes an appropriate adaptive response in the first case but not the latter. For instance, to reach the 18% portion requires than many people would move to locations far riskier than they choose to inhabit today. Using the same ratio of people who experience floods to those at risk (i.e., assuming that people adapt where they live according to the contemporaneous risk) as Nicholls et al. use for 1990 (i.e., 5.1%) would suggest an additional 22.3 million people would be exposed to floods with a population increase of 438 million. Using the ratio suggested for 2085 under no sea level rise results in an additional 3.5 million people who experience floods. Nicholls et al. provide no reason to expect that society will be significantly more risk averse in 2085 than today, nor why the presence of sea level rise would change the acceptable risk from a scenario of no sea level rise.

I concluded with some words of caution:

These details for just this one study of storm surge are very complicated and to understand them requires a careful examination of the primary literature. Clearly, what appears in the 2001 IPCC bears only a distant relation to what the original study actually said. For this reason, scientific assessments cannot replace the primary literature, and some thought should be given by scholars to how best to deal with knowledge that is highly simplified through assessment and then recirculated into academic inquiry. Like the children’s game of telephone, this is a recipe for miscommunication, mischaracterization of scientific research, and a foundation of knowledge that rests a few feet above the ground. A more appropriate role for assessments would be to focus more explicitly on the information needs of policy makers and focus attention on a wide range policy options and their possible consequences. Efforts to summarize complex science may not ultimately prove useful to policymakers if they result in oversimplifications and mischaracterizations.

Climate science is a curious business, that’s for sure.

Posted on June 10, 2006 02:04 PM View this article | Comments (34)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

June 08, 2006

Confusion on Science Censorship in US Federal Agencies

There may be a good explanation, but Warren Washington has expressed apparently conflicting views on science censorship in U.S. federal agencies. In today’s Rocky Mountain News Warren Washington, outgoing chairman of the National Science Board (which oversees the National Science Foundation), is quoted as follows:

The American public is not hearing the full story on global warming because Bush administration officials are muzzling government scientists, a top climate researcher said Wednesday.
Warren Washington, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, said that Bush appointees are suppressing information about climate change, restricting journalists' access to federal scientists and rewriting agency news releases to stress global warming uncertainties.

"The news media is not getting the full story, especially from government scientists," Washington told about 160 people attending the first day of "Climate Change and the Future of the American West," a three-day conference sponsored by the University of Colorado's Natural Resources Law Center. . .

Washington said in an interview that the climate cover-up is occurring at several federal agencies, including NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. Forest Service. NOAA operates several Boulder laboratories that conduct climate and weather research.

I was in attendance at the workshop and heard Dr. Washington’s allegations. But unless he has some new information (which he might), but has not released, it is difficult to square these allegations with a recent report of the NSB on this issue. A report (available here in PDF, relevant section begins at p. 6) which was chaired by Dr. Washington found no evidence of suppression. Here is an excerpt:

. . . the Board has reviewed statutes, regulations, agency statements and internal documents related to this issue for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and the Departments of Agriculture (USDA), Energy (DOE), and Health and Human Services (HHS). In addition, the Board requested that the Inspector General (IG) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) poll her counterparts at these agencies for additional relevant information.
The Board would like to acknowledge and thank EPA, NASA, NIH, NOAA, USGS, USDA, and DOE for their responses to our request for information. . .

The survey of the agencies’ IGs indicated that no reports were issued to indicate scientific information was suppressed or distorted at the agencies involved with the Board’s review.

It may be that while there are no formal reports from within various agencies, suppression is nonetheless ongoing. However, I would hope that Dr. Washington would provide the evidence of such continuing suppression if he has it. Otherwise, the allegations of suppression risk undermining the credibility of countless hard-working government scientists and their agencies. As a NOAA spokesman said,

Jordan St. John, a NOAA spokesman, said the allegations against his agency are false.
"NOAA is an open and transparent agency," he said. "It's unfair to the people who work at this agency that this kind of characterization keeps being made. Hansen said it once, and it took on a life of its own and just keeps getting repeated."

But Washington insisted that government officials are "trying to confuse the public" about climate change and the scientific consensus that global warming is a real problem.

The only way to reconcile these different points of view is with data. Without data that suppression continues (beyond the well documented cases of Jim Hansen and the NOAA hurricane press release) it is hard to know what is being referred to. If I see Warren today at the conference, I’ll ask him. The NSB does offer a number of useful recommendations, which I provide here in full:

RECOMMENDATIONS
Based on our analysis, we offer the following recommendations:

• A Government-wide directive should be issued by the Administration that provides overarching principles and clearly articulates the requirement for all agencies to develop unambiguous policies and procedures to encourage open exchange of data and results of research conducted by agency scientists, while preventing the intentional or unintentional suppression or distortion of research findings and accommodating appropriate agency review. A developed set of principles should also state the concomitant responsibility of agency employees regarding the advocacy of public policy that might be implied by their research.

• Agency-wide policies covering the public disclosure of an agency’s research results should be issued and uniformly applied, widely communicated, and readily accessible to all employees and the general public. Like those recently released by NASA, these policies should unambiguously describe what is and is not permitted or recommended. Responsibilities for communicating research results by researchers, public affairs officers, policy makers, and other agency employees should be clearly described. A clear distinction should be made between communicating professional research results and data versus the interpretation of data and results in a context that seeks to influence, through the injection of personal viewpoints, public opinion or formulation of public policy.

• An objective dispute resolution mechanism for disagreements involving the public dissemination of agency research findings should be implemented. This will help ensure the public has access to the research and that scientific findings presented are credible and of the highest quality.

• A Government-wide review should be established to ensure that implementation of these recommendations is conducted in a manner that meets the high standards expected and is consistent across agencies.

From where I sit these make good sense, however, I will point out that this aspiration will forever be problematic: “A clear distinction should be made between communicating professional research results and data versus the interpretation of data and results in a context that seeks to influence, through the injection of personal viewpoints, public opinion or formulation of public policy.”

Posted on June 8, 2006 07:15 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

June 07, 2006

Comments on Nature Article on Disaster Trends Workshop

Quirin Schiermeier has an article in the current issue of Nature on our recent workshop on disaster loss trends and climate change. The workshop executive summary can be found here and a PDF here. The article, unfortunately, has a few mistakes and is subject to misinterpretation.

1. The Nature article does not recognize that the workshop participants used the IPCC definition of "climate change" to mean a change irrespective of causes. At several points the author of the Nature article conflates "climate change" and "global warming" which is something we at the workshop were careful not to do. Here is the opening paragraph of the Nature story:

Insurance companies, acutely aware of the dramatic increase in losses caused by natural disasters in recent decades, have been convinced that global warming is partly to blame. Now their data seem to be persuading scientists, too. At a recent meeting of climate and insurance experts, delegates reached a cautious consensus: climate change is helping to drive the upward trend in catastrophes. . .
Delegates seem to have found the record persuasive. Their consensus statement, to be released on 8 June, says there is "evidence that changing patterns of extreme events are drivers for recent increases in global losses".

Clearly climate change has played a role in driving recent increases in losses. On attribution to human causes see below.

2. The article does not distinguish my collaborator’s personal views from those of the workshop consensus, thereby creating room for confusion. Here is the relevant passage:

There was no agreement on how big a role global warming has played, however. "Because of issues related to data quality, it is still not possible to determine the portion of the increase in damages that might be attributed to climate change," the workshop concluded.
"Dissent over the issue is clearly waning," says Peter Höppe, head of Munich Re's Geo Risks department, who co-chaired the workshop with Roger Pielke Jr, director of the University of Colorado's Center of Science and Technology Policy Research. "Climate change may not be the dominant factor, but it has become clear that a relevant portion of damages can be attributed to global warming."

The workshop consensus is worth repeating:

11. Because of issues related to data quality, the stochastic nature of extreme event impacts, length of time series, and various societal factors present in the disaster loss record, it is still not possible to determine the portion of the increase in damages that might be attributed to climate change due to GHG emissions

and

13. In the near future the quantitative link (attribution) of trends in storm and flood losses to climate changes related to GHG emissions is unlikely to be answered unequivocally.

3. Nature unfortunately trots out the worn “skeptic” label to describe my views:

Previously sceptical, Pielke says that he is now convinced that at least some of the increased losses can be blamed on climate: "Clearly, since 1970 climate change has shaped the disaster loss record."
He adds a note of caution, however: "Disaster damage is not the place to look for early indications of climate change," he says. "Policy advocates should exercise caution in using disaster losses to justify climate mitigation, lest they go beyond what science can support."

~~I was accurately quoted, but my use of the term "climate change" was as we used it at the workshop.~~ [Update- Upon checking I was misquoted! See comments. RP] I am increasingly convinced that since 1970 a portion of the increase in disaster losses is due to changes in climate, clearly, and largely due to US hurricanes. But it is less clear that such trends exist if the record dates to 1950 or 1920.

4. Nature cites GermanWatch as a group who has used attributed disaster losses to human-caused climate change, but does not mention that a representative of the group participated in the workshop and signed on to the workshop consensus.

Overall, I am disappointed with this story.

Posted on June 7, 2006 12:13 PM View this article | Comments (8)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

Workshop Executive Summary

Report of the Workshop on
“Climate Change and Disaster Losses - Understanding
and Attributing Trends and Projections”
25-26 May 2006, Hohenkammer, Germany

Introduction

In summer 2005 both Roger Pielke, Jr. of the Center of Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado and Peter Hoeppe of the Geo Risks Research Department of Munich Re learned from each other that each planned to organize a workshop on the assessment of factors leading to increasing loss trends due to natural disasters. Both agreed that such a workshop was timely, especially given the apparent lack of consensus on the role of climate change in disaster loss trends. Roger Pielke, Jr. and Peter Hoeppe decided to have a common workshop in 2006 in Germany to bring together a diverse group of international experts in the fields of climatology and disaster research. The general questions to be answered at this workshop were:

What factors account for increasing costs of weather related disasters in recent decades?

What are the implications of these understandings, for both research and policy?

[click through to read the rest]

The participants were selected by a workshop organizing team that met in December, 2005. Participants were selected for their high level of competence and to represent a wide range of different attitudes to the subject. All participants came into the workshop agreeing that anthropogenic climate change is a concern.

In total 32 participants from 13 countries attended the two day workshop (list of participants attached). “White papers” from 25 participants were submitted in advance and formed the basis of the discussions. The workshop was organized in 4 sessions:

1. Trends in extreme weather events
2. Trends in Damages
3. Data issues – extreme weather events and damages
4. Syntheses discussion

In the syntheses session the discussion was focused on finding consensus positions among the participants on statements about the attribution of disaster losses and the policy implications. These 20 statements are listed in the executive summary and are described in more detail in the full workshop summary report. Specific views of individual participants can be found in their white papers, which each was given the opportunity to revise following the workshop.

The workshop was sponsored by Munich Re, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research, and the GKSS Research Center.

Workshop on
“Climate Change and Disaster Losses - Understanding
and Attributing Trends and Projections”
25-26 May 2006, Hohenkammer, Germany

Executive Summary

The focus of the workshop was on two questions:

What factors account for increasing costs of weather related disasters in recent decades?

What are the implications of these understandings, for both research and policy?

Consensus (unanimous) statements of the workshop participants:

1. Climate change is real, and has a significant human component related to greenhouse gases.

2. Direct economic losses of global disasters have increased in recent decades with particularly large increases since the 1980s.

3. The increases in disaster losses primarily result from weather related events, in particular storms and floods.

4. Climate change and variability are factors which influence trends in disasters.

5. Although there are peer reviewed papers indicating trends in storms and floods there is still scientific debate over the attribution to anthropogenic climate change or natural climate variability. There is also concern over geophysical data quality.

6. IPCC (2001) did not achieve detection and attribution of trends in extreme events at the global level.

7. High quality long-term disaster loss records exist, some of which are suitable for research purposes, such as to identify the effects of climate and/or climate change on the loss records.

8. Analyses of long-term records of disaster losses indicate that societal change and economic development are the principal factors responsible for the documented increasing losses to date.

9. The vulnerability of communities to natural disasters is determined by their economic development and other social characteristics.

10. There is evidence that changing patterns of extreme events are drivers for recent increases in global losses.

11. Because of issues related to data quality, the stochastic nature of extreme event impacts, length of time series, and various societal factors present in the disaster loss record, it is still not possible to determine the portion of the increase in damages that might be attributed to climate change due to GHG emissions

12. For future decades the IPCC (2001) expects increases in the occurrence and/or intensity of some extreme events as a result of anthropogenic climate change. Such increases will further increase losses in the absence of disaster reduction measures.

13. In the near future the quantitative link (attribution) of trends in storm and flood losses to climate changes related to GHG emissions is unlikely to be answered unequivocally.

Policy implications identified by the workshop participants

14. Adaptation to extreme weather events should play a central role in reducing societal vulnerabilities to climate and climate change.

15. Mitigation of GHG emissions should also play a central role in response to anthropogenic climate change, though it does not have an effect for several decades on the hazard risk.

16. We recommend further research on different combinations of adaptation and mitigation policies.

17. We recommend the creation of an open-source disaster database according to agreed upon standards.

18. In addition to fundamental research on climate, research priorities should consider needs of decision makers in areas related to both adaptation and mitigation.

19. For improved understanding of loss trends, there is a need to continue to collect and improve long-term and homogenous datasets related to both climate parameters and disaster losses.

20. The community needs to agree upon peer reviewed procedures for normalizing economic loss data.

Posted on June 7, 2006 11:50 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

A Marginal View on Science Policy

Jack Stilgoe at DEMOS has a good post up on their blog referring to Terrence Kealey’s latest call for government to get out of the science funding business. I agree with Jack’s take on this:

Kealey's view is pretty marginal, and doesn't deserve a huge amount of attention. But it's an interesting reminder of how some people view science as a homogenous factor of production. For Kealey, it's about making sure that "science" gets done, rather than wondering about what science should get done and how.

Have a look at Jack’s post for links to Kealy’s op-ed and very useful background information, including a relevant DEMOS report on the public value of science.

Posted on June 7, 2006 06:48 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding

June 06, 2006

Lloyd's on Climate Adaptation

Lloyd's of London has an interesting new report out on the need for the insurance industry to improve their adaptive capacity in the face of climate change (here in PDF). The report is titled "Climate Change: Adapt or Bust." Here is the executive summary:

1. TOO LITTLE BUT NOT yet TOO LATE. The insurance industry must do more now to understand and actively manage climate change risk.
An increasing wealth of scientific evidence is available to predict the impact of changing weather patterns and future climate change on the insurance industry. So far, efforts to do so have been patchy and there is little evidence of industry behaviour changing as a result. Much of the latest science suggests that climate change will take place faster than we thought. Urgent and active management of climate change – starting with investment in research – is now imperative. It is not too late to change, but change is long overdue.

2. Recent events have shown capital and pricing models to be wanting. We must regularly update and recalibrate our models to keep pace with REALITY.

Catastrophe modellers have now reacted to criticisms following the recent record US hurricane seasons. However, much of this work could and should have been done prior to these events. Going forward, the industry must take a new approach to underwriting, looking ahead and not simply basing decisions on historical patterns. Insurer pricing and capital allocation models must be updated regularly – and not just in extremis – to reflect the latest scientific evidence. Our responsibilities in this regard will be increasingly widely drawn: regulators will require the industry to maintain a level of capital adequate for changing levels of climate change risk.

3. Windstorm trends will put particular pressure on businesses and their insurers.

Based on natural cycles alone, we can expect the current trend towards extreme windstorm events to continue and increase over the next decade. Climate change can only exacerbate this, and insurers must plan for a higher frequency of extreme events, over a longer storm season and over a wider geographical area. Insurers must also take advantage of scientific advances to factor forecasts for the season ahead into their planning, instead of relying only on long-term trends.

4. Climate change means Exposures are changing and new ones emerging.
insurers must regularly review and communicate conditions of coverage.

We foresee an increasing possibility of attributing weather losses to man made factors, with courts seeking to assign liability and compensation for claims of damage. Exposures can also be expected to increase in respect of property, business interruption and political risks, demanding the same response. That means the insurance industry will want to regularly review conditions of coverage against risk appetite, and do more to educate the public about changing exposures. The industry can help by creating incentives for policyholders to reduce risk. Opportunities for those insurance markets which are flexible and innovative will emerge too: as society adapts to the impact of climate change, new technologies will be required and insurance of these developments will be needed.

5. Insurers must prepare for the impact of climate change on asset values. Underwriting for profit will be key,

As major corporate investors, insurers rely on returns from assets to boost their own financial performance. We expect climate change not only to produce extreme capital damaging events, but also to increase uncertainty around corporate business plans and potentially reduce asset values. This makes it even more important for the industry to price risk according to exposure and to underwrite for profit. We also see industry players having increased opportunity to use their influence as investors, in order to encourage responsible and climate proof behaviour from the boards of corporations in which they invest, and with which they do business.

6. Effective partnership with business and government will be key to
managing risk. The insurance industry must engage now.

Based on long experience, Lloyd’s believes that insurance markets operate most efficiently when left to free market forces, and the vast majority of natural perils are insurable – as long as the market is free to price risk adequately. However, if this freedom is removed, or if the pace of climate change grows faster than expected, this could change our view. Industry strategists will want to consider the long-term insurability of weather-related risk. We believe that a meaningful partnership with government and business, supported by a series of practical actions, has the best chance of providing solutions. In particular, this should address the issue of increasing concentrations of population and economic wealth in high risk areas, for example on coasts. This report focuses on adaptation but we recognise that mitigation of the risk itself (ie the reduction of CO2 emissions) is crucial.

Posted on June 6, 2006 08:24 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

June 05, 2006

Climate Change is a Moral Issue

Quite unintentionally, Dave Roberts of Grist Magazine provides an incredibly clear statement of the insanity of the climate debate:

Advocating that adaptation play a larger role in U.S. policy, in the current political context, does not increase the odds of sensible, balanced climate policy. It simply, if inadvertently, helps the corporatist right cloud the debate and avoid the difficult steps required to cut GHG emissions.
And whatever else we do, that task is paramount.

In an ideal, abstract policy debate, sure, I'd say we should boost our attention to adaptation. But in the current political situation, I don't want to provide any ammunition for the moral cretins who are squirming frantically to avoid policies that might impact their corporate donors. Until they're gone from the scene -- until we have an administration serious about addressing this problem -- I'm going to focus on cutting emissions.

Dave’s honesty is to be applauded, as his view on this subject is widely shared among those in the climate debate but rarely explained so clearly. However, his focus on sticking it to the “moral cretins” he so despises has the side effect of preventing greater help to people like those pictured below waiting for help in the aftermath of hurricane Mitch. There are hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, who sure could use a little help in improving their adaptive capacity irrespective of emissions reductions.

Climate change is indeed a moral issue. But hey, why advocate policies that can directly help suffering people around the world when you can instead stick to your ideological opponents?

Posted on June 5, 2006 12:26 PM View this article | Comments (24)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

June 02, 2006

Comment from Judy Curry

[Ed.- I want to make sure that Judy's response to my post earlier today is not missed. I will respond in the comments. RP]

Roger,

I make it a practice not to blog, but i want to clarify your misreading of our meeting with Governor Bush. We went to extreme pains NOT to talk about policies or politics. We talked about the science and the risks to Florida. Governor Bush made the important point in our discussion that this whole issue has become very politicized, and said that we needed to take the politics out of this and get to the bottom of the scientific issue of hurricanes and global warming. I wholeheartedly agree.

The most important issue from Florida's point of view is to understand whether the hurricane situation is likely to get worse. We said that there is a considerably risk that it will.
Florida and other coastal cities need to urgently reassess their risk to hurricanes to allow for the risk of increased hurricane activity. No matter what we decide to do about the greenhouse warming issue, the most vulnerable coastal cities need to reconsider their coastal engineering, land use practices, emergency procedures, etc. in view of the risk of increasing hurricane activity and the longer range prospect of sea level rise.

The prospect of increasing hurricane activity has overall raised people's awareness of the global warming issue, but I don't think that many people believe that anything we do re greenhouse gases in the short term will influence the problems that our coastal cities are facing particularly in the next few decades.

The media has often misrepresented my remarks, that is unfortunate but not unexpected I guess. The particular article you refer to was an accurate portrayal of our meeting with Governor Bush. Yes, there are a variety of advocacy groups in Florida that are trying to influence Governor Bush and others to adopt a variety of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Yes those groups believe that hurricanes can help raise awareness of the global warming issue. But no one that I know of is pushing greenhouse gas reductions as a policy to deal with increasing hurricane activity.

Judy

Posted on June 2, 2006 08:59 PM View this article | Comments (15)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

Petropolitics, MoveOn.org, and The Politics of Decarbonization

Thomas Friedman is brilliant at capturing large-scale dynamics of the international scene. In the current issue of Foreign Policy he has an excellent article on the relationship of oil prices and the “pace of freedom” which he argues always move in opposite directions. His article provides a compelling justification for reducing reliance on fossil fuels:

Let me stress again that I know that the correlations suggested by these graphs are not perfect and, no doubt, there are exceptions that readers will surely point out. But I do believe they illustrate a general trend that one can see reflected in the news every day: The rising price of oil clearly has a negative impact on the pace of freedom in many countries, and when you get enough countries with enough negative impacts, you start to poison global politics.
Although we cannot affect the supply of oil in any country, we can affect the global price of oil by altering the amounts and types of energy we consume. When I say “we,” I mean the United States in particular, which consumes about 25 percent of the world’s energy, and the oil-importing countries in general. Thinking about how to alter our energy consumption patterns to bring down the price of oil is no longer simply a hobby for high-minded environmentalists or some personal virtue. It is now a national security imperative.

Therefore, any American democracy-promotion strategy that does not also include a credible and sustainable strategy for finding alternatives to oil and bringing down the price of crude is utterly meaningless and doomed to fail. Today, no matter where you are on the foreign-policy spectrum, you have to think like a Geo-Green. You cannot be either an effective foreign-policy realist or an effective democracy-promoting idealist without also being an effective energy environmentalist.

Reframing the greenhouse emissions issue beyond global warming is important if effective action is going to take place. Support for this assertion comes from a poll taken by participants in nationwide "house parties" organized by MoveOn.org a liberal advocacy group. From an email in my inbox here are the results of this poll:

Health care for all 65091
Sustainable energy independence 61030

Restored constitutional rights 35675

Guaranteed accurate elections 35133

Diplomacy over militarism 28912

High quality education for all 27874

Solutions to global warming 26306

A guaranteed living wage 25527

Publicly funded elections 21096

A balanced federal budget 20945

Look at that -- global warming is #7 while sustainable energy independence is #2. If global warming doesn’t rank higher with MoveOn.org participants, why would anyone expect that it will it ever rank higher among the general public?

There are good reasons to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. Leading with global warming as a promotional strategy may seem like the right thing to do, but as a matter of political expediency, why not go where the policy arguments and political salience are strongest?

Posted on June 2, 2006 05:54 AM View this article | Comments (6)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Energy Policy

Like a Broken Record

We have made the case many times here that reducing greenhouse gases makes good sense for a wide range of reasons, not just climate change, but that it is a poor policy argument to suggest that greenhouse gas reduction can have any effect on hurricane losses in the near term, and only a small effect in the long term due to the inexorable pace societal development along the coast. Just yesterday I was asked in the comments why it is I that on hurricanes and global warming I always “change the subject” from climate science to hurricane policy. Below are some good reasons why we should always ask “so what?” in the context of scientific debates.

In comments made earlier this month Georgia Tech scientist Judy Curry was quoted as advocating emissions reductions as a means to respond to hurricanes (when I contacted Judy about this she said that the media put together two disconnected thoughts to make it sound like she was advocating emissions reductions as hurricane policy, but that she was not):

"We’re seeing an increase in the sea surface temperatures, and increase in the number of storms and in the intensity of those storms," said Dr. Judy Curry.
The question is why? Dr. Judy Curry says part of the reason is us.

Curry is one of the researchers in the forefront of the contentious global warming debate. She says data clearly shows that greenhouse gases we create with our cars, our industrial plants, our very lifestyles are helping to dissolve the polar ice caps and worse, melt the Greenland ice sheet.

"We have the technologies, we still have some time to reduce our greenhouse gases there is no reason we shouldn’t be doing this," said Curry.

And just yesterday another news story cited how greenhouse gas emissions reductions were being advocated in Florida as a response to hurricanes.

Florida's governor cautiously entered the debate Wednesday over whether rising global temperatures are to blame for an increase in the number of strong hurricanes, meeting with two researchers who say global warming is threatening Florida with a long-term future of more bad storms.
Bush met with Peter Webster and Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who published research last year showing an increase in global hurricane intensity, with a doubling of the number of Category 4 or 5 hurricanes since 1970. That increase coincides with a rise of nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit in ocean surface temperatures, they say. . .

The debate is something of a storm itself, and Bush joined it cautiously.

"He said they presented some pretty compelling information," said Bush spokesman Russell Schweiss, declining to say whether Bush agrees that global warming is increasing the number of strong hurricanes. "He encouraged them to continue with their research."

Webster and Curry's meeting came as environmentalists seek to push to the state level efforts to curb the emission of so-called greenhouse gasses that are blamed for causing global temperature increases.

They say President Bush's administration in Washington hasn't done enough to combat greenhouse gas emissions _ and note that Florida could help by cutting emissions since it's the fifth largest producer of such gasses in the United States.

Besides, in hurricane alley, Florida has more to gain from lower emissions than the country as a whole if Webster and Curry's findings are right , said Jerry Karnas of the Florida Wildlife Federation, which set up the meeting.

Bush didn't commit to any policy changes in the meeting.

But Attorney General Charlie Crist, with whom the scientists also met, said he was impressed. Crist is one of several men running to be the next governor.

"It's fairly apparent that (global warming) has increased (hurricane) activity," Crist said after meeting the scientists.

So long as there are bad arguments for good causes valid criticisms of the justifications for those good causes will be enabled from friend and foe alike, and much more importantly, policies might be enacted that cannot do what they are sold on. For some perhaps the ends justifies the means – that is, securing emissions reductions is worth selling them on poor policy arguments. However the irony is that bad arguments are in the end unlikely to be a winning strategy of salesmanship, as you risk being identified as not having a good case to make in the first place. And on greenhouse gas emissions there is a solid policy argument to make, it just doesn’t involve hurricane policy.

Hat tip: Dad

Posted on June 2, 2006 05:39 AM View this article | Comments (4)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

June 01, 2006

NOAA Protest

Kevin Vranes has the scoop on the protest by some environmental groups calling for the NOAA administrator and NHC director to resign because they haven’t said the politically correct things about hurricanes and global warming. I don’t have much to add to Kevin’s post which is right on target. However, it is worth adding that NHC Director Max Mayfield has co-authored (with me and 3 others) two peer-reviewed papers on the hurricane-global warming issue over the past year. Here is the conclusion from the first paper, which clearly shows the rantings of madmen unfit for public service (PDF):

. . . looking to the future, until scientists conclude a) that there will be changes to storms that are significantly larger than observed in the past, b) that such changes are correlated to measures of societal impact, and c) that the effects of such changes are significant in the context of inexorable growth in population and property at risk, then it is reasonable to conclude that the significance of any connection of human-caused climate change to hurricane impacts necessarily has been and will continue to be exceedingly small.

Posted on June 1, 2006 04:32 AM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

May 31, 2006

Cherrypicking at the New York Times

You won’t find more blantantly obvious example of cherrypicked science than in today’s New York Times, which has an article on two new peer-reviewed studies on hurricanes and climate change. Given the debate over climate change and hurricanes the new studies are certainly newsworthy. However, it is what is left out of the Times story that makes the cherrypicking stand out undeniably.

The New York Times makes (and has made) no mention of two other just-published peer-reviewed studies (links here and here) providing somewhat different perspectives on the hurricane-climate issue and its policy significance (I am a co-author on one of the studies. It does not deny a global warming-hurricane link, but instead characterizes the literature in the context of an exchange with others with a different view). These studies, which are two among a larger family of research, are not necessarily "the other side" but they do add important context selectively ignored by the Times. In today's article, for balance the New York Times interviewed NOAA’s Stanley Goldenberg, who is a respected scientist, but who hadn’t seen either of the papers referred to in the article or published a peer-reviewed study this month. Interviewing one of the authors of recent peer-reviewed work would have necessarily required referencing that work.

To the extent that the New York Times has a powerful role in shaping how policy options are framed and discussed, it does a disservice to the public and policymakers when it cherrypicks science. I suppose this is because they have decided to pick sides in the political debate over climate change and that political calculus shapes its editorial decisions.

Posted on May 31, 2006 07:01 AM View this article | Comments (36)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

May 30, 2006

Scenarios, Scenarios: Hansen’s Prediction Part II

After a bit more investigation, motivated by comments on my earlier post on Jim Hansen’s 1988 predictions (thanks all), it turns out that Jim Hansen has two sets of scenarios labeled A, B, and C. This is confusing to say the least. The conclusions of the earlier post remain unchanged, however, the analysis below may help to explain some things.

The first set of scenarios A, B and C are from his 1988 paper and the details can be found in the appendix to that paper. The second set of scenarios named A, B, and C was apparently generated for his 1998 paper in order to rescale emissions projections based on the lack of realism in the 1988 projections. The earlier post of mine therefore is actually a comparison of the 1998 scenarios with what has transpired since, and in that case it is true that Scenario C (let’s call it C98) is clearly the most comparable to how things have evolved since 1998.

For his 1988 paper here then from its appendix are the relevant annual growth rates for each scenario relevant to the time period 1990-2005, which I am now labeling with the year affixed for clarity:

Scenario A88

CO2 1.5%
N2O 0.2% 1990-1999, 0.4% >2000
CH4 1.5%

Scenario B88

CO2 1% 1990-1999, 0.5% >2000
N2O 2.5% 1990-1999, 1.5% >2000
CH4 1.0% 1990-1999, 0.5% >2000

Scenario C88

CO2 1.5 ppm 1990-2000, fixed at 368 ppm after 2000
N2O 0.0%
CH4 0.5% year 1990-2000, fixed at 1916 ppm after 2000

How do these scenarios compare? From the earlier post here again are the actuals:

CH4 0.46%
N2O 0.95%
CO2 -0.52% (Annex 1 Countries 1990-2003)
CO2 >0.45% (Non-Annex 1 Countries 1990-2003) (note typo caught in earlier post)
CO2 1.5 PPM (1990-2005)

How to evaluate these scenarios?

From 1990-2000 Scenario C88 was right on target with respect to CH4 and CO2, and off with respect to N2O (The description of Scenario C88 actually doesn’t mention N2O in the appendix describing the growth rates, so I assumed that it was zero).

Scenarios A88 and B88 were off by factors of 3 and 2 respectively with respect to CO2 and CH4. With respect to N2O Scenario A88 was by a factor of 0.2 too small and B88 was a factor of 2.5 too large. These are large errors, much larger than those documented with respect to the 1998 projections, as would be expected.

So, there are several conclusions to draw from this exercise.

1. With respect to Jim Hansen’s 1988 predictions, his Scenario C88 was the most accurate with respect to emissions 1990-2000. That scenario froze time in 2000, meaning that going forward there are two evolving scenarios which both have dramatically overestimated emissions. The lower of the two is thus “more accurate” than the other. Neither is particularly accurate or realistic. Any conclusion that Hansen’s 1988 prediction got things right, necessarily must conclude that it got things right for the wrong reasons.

2. With respect to Hansen’s 1998 predictions C98 has been the most accurate.

3. In two sets of predictions compared with experience, Jim Hansen’s predictions of emissions have proved to be overly aggressive both times with respect to rates of emissions with his lower estimate proving most accurate.

4. When discussing Hansen’s scenarios make sure that you differentiate between 1988 and 1998 versions.

More comments welcomed!

Posted on May 30, 2006 03:55 PM View this article | Comments (31)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Dave Roberts Responds on The Climate Debate

Over at the GristMill blog, Dave Roberts continues our exchange on the notion of a “third way” perspective on climate change. Dave is typically thoughtful in his comments in which he is having none of the third way business, arguing:

It's possible, and frequently true, that one side's right and the other is wrong, even if many of the correct people argue poorly or are otherwise annoying. (emphasis in original)

However, I’m not at all sure what he is referring to in terms of "right" and "wrong" because he does not say. He writes,

It is conventional wisdom now that every issue is defined by two shrill, partisan camps, and that it is a mark of intellectual integrity to choose a path between them.
As a heuristic, this may have once had some value, but today it's become a fetish. A tic.

Let's be clear: There is no empirical significance in falling between, or even just outside, two opposing positions. A position's truth value has nothing to do with its number of adherents, or its adherents' rhetorical acumen. The desire not to be a "joiner," not to belong to a "tribe," is a matter of temperament, not empiricism. (emphasis in original)

Let me offer several other criteria – other than "truth value" (which I honestly do not understand what Dave means by – what does it mean to ask "Is a policy option "true"?") -- through which we might evaluate competing policy arguments: realism (is it possible?), practicality (is it doable?), and worth (is it desirable?). From an empirical perspective I am confident that the current approaches to climate policy advocated by both the climate skeptics and alarmists fail according to all three criteria. (To be glib, for "current approaches" simply assume (a) "do nothing" for the skeptics and (b) the approach favored by the FCCC for the alarmists.) I don’t know if the proposals that are frequently advocated here at Prometheus are "in between" or "outside" the current debate and I’m not sure that I care or that such partisan-relative-geography even matters. What matters is that there are basically two approaches to climate policy that take up all the air in the debate under a shared assumption that arguing about science is the appropriate battle ground for the debate. In my view significant progress on climate mitigation or adaptation won’t be made until new options are considered beyond those at the focus of the skeptic-alarmist debate. If that view makes me a temperamental third wayer, then I am guilty as charged.

Given that policy debates almost always boil down to two options – a dynamic recognized long ago by Walter Lippmann – the importance of "third way" thinking should be a function of whether the two options at the center of debate are up to the task of dealing with the problem motivating the policy in the first place. Dave Roberts may deplore third way thinking in general, but there are situations when both of the dominant poles of policy debates are similarly misguided.

Thus far, for all of its bluster the climate debate has been characterized by a paucity of realistic, practical, and worthwhile policy options. I’m all for empiricism, so if Dave wants to engage in an exchange focused on a substantive evaluation of actual climate policy options, I’d be happy to participate.

Posted on May 30, 2006 08:05 AM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

May 29, 2006

Evaluating Jim Hansen’s 1988 Climate Forecast

A lot of attention has been paid by both sides of the climate debate to a prediction made in 1988 before Congress by NASA scientist James Hansen. Today this forecast is the subject of an op-ed by Paul Krugman in the New York Times in which he accuses a prominent climate skeptic of scientific fraud. For some time I have been interested in various claims about Jim Hansen’s forecast because I am interested in prediction and its use/misuse in policy and politics. But what has been missing to date is a rigorous evaluation of Hansen’s forecast. Here is an initial effort to bring a bit more rigor to such an evaluation. The numbers below are not the last word, may contain errors, and are intended to open a discussion on this subject.

Hansen’s 1988 prediction was based on an analysis presented in this paper:

Hansen, J., I. Fung, A. Lacis, D. Rind, S. Lebedeff, R. Ruedy, G. Russell, and P. Stone 1988. Global climate changes as forecast by Goddard Institute for Space Studies three-dimensional model. J. Geophys. Res. 93, 9341-9364. (Abstract)

The paper generated future climate predictions based on three scenarios, described in the abstract as follows:

Scenario A assumes continued exponential trace gas growth, scenario B assumes a reduced linear linear growth of trace gases, and scenario C assumes a rapid curtailment of trace gas emissions such that the net climate forcing ceases to increase after the year 2000.

In this PDF, Jim Hansen provided an image of the prediction for the three scenarios with an overlay of the actual temperature increase in a response to Michael Crichton. I have reproduced the figure immediately below.

The observations (black) are very closely matched to Scenario B. Consequently, Jim Hansen claimed, "the real world has followed a course closest to that of Scenario B" (PDF). But is this correct? It appears that Jim Hansen may have gotten the right answer on temperature for the wrong reasons because his assumptions about emissions paths were not accurate. Further, Scenario B with the best match to temperature is the most inaccurate with respect to emissions projections.

The three scenarios used by Jim Hansen were based on assumptions about how society would produce emissions forward from 1988. Key assumptions were made for methane (CH4), Nitrous Oxide (N2O), and Carbon Dioxide (CO2) – For scenarios A and B in developing and developed countries, and for the global total in the case of Scenario C. Here are the assumptions from Hansen’s 1988 paper for growth rates in CH4, N2O, and CO2:

Scenario A

CH4 0.5%
N2O 0.25%
CO2 3% developing, 1% developed

Scenario B

CH4 0.25%
N2O 0.25%
CO2 2% developing, 0% developed

Scenario C

CH4 0.0%
N2O 0.25%
CO2 1.6 ppm increase annually

In order to evaluate whether these assumptions played out as projected in the three scenarios I consulted online databases with estimates of increases in CH4, N2O, and CO2.

I found CH4 data for 1990-2005 in an EPA report (PDF) in Appendix A-II.

I found N2O data for 1990-2005 in the same EPA report (PDF) in Appendix A-3.

I found CO2 data from the UN FCCC in a recent report (PDF) , for Annex I countries in table II-3 for 1990-2003.

I found global CO2 levels for 1990-2005 in the U.S. government database.

I used this data to compare growth rates in CH4, N2O, and CO2 to Jim Hansen’s 3 scenarios from 1988. Here is what I found:

Actual Rate of Increase

CH4 0.46%
N2O 0.95%
CO2 -0.52% (Annex 1 Countries 1990-2003)
CO2 >4.5% (Non-Annex 1 Countries 1990-2003)
CO2 1.5 PPM (1990-2005)

Comparison with Scenarios

Most Accurate CH4 Assumption = Scenario A
Most Accurate N2O Assumption = each
Most Accurate CO2 Assumption = Scenario C

In none of the three emissions assumptions did Scenario B contain the most accurate emissions assumptions. From this initial evaluation, it seems that to the extent that Jim Hansen’s Scenario B has accurately anticipated global temperature increases since 1988, it has done so based on inaccurate assumptions about emissions paths. Perhaps the errors cancel out, but an accurate prediction based on inaccurate assumptions should give some pause to using those same assumptions into the future. I am not sure which Scenario would be evaluated as the most accurate, but given the importance of CO2 as a greenhouse gas, I’d lean toward Scenario C. None of this is to doubt that global temperature has increased or will continue to increase as projected by the IPCC.

The usual caveats apply: This analysis provides no support for anyone who would cherry pick one scenario over another to evaluate their accuracy (as Paul Krugman has accused Patrick Michaels and Michael Crichton of doing). Nor does this analysis provide any reason not to support the importance of action on climate policy.

What it does, however, is raise questions about how scientists are treated differently in the public by other scientists and the media, and importantly, how some instances of policy-relevant science are framed critically and other instances are framed quite positively. Take William Gray for example who spent decades warning about a coming increase in hurricane activity, who was proven correct when activity increased, only to be frequently excoriated by his peers for his views on global warming. On hurricanes, Gray may have been right for the wrong reasons, but he was nonetheless right in his warning. Hansen on the other hand, is feted by his peers and the media yet just like Bill Gray may have been right for the wrong reasons.

Posted on May 29, 2006 04:10 PM View this article | Comments (24)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

May 27, 2006

Playground! After School!

Does Science really need to devote letter space to content-free testosterone-laden exchanges that involve no science or science policy?

Donald Kennedy's Editorial "The new gag rules" (17 Feb., p. 917) was quite disturbing. I was offended, not by the unfounded allegations of conspiracy at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), but by the Editorial's reckless disregard for the truth.
Dean Acosta, NASA

His letter is short on facts but rich in rhetoric, presumably to support his central point: that public affairs types need to collaborate with scientists because the latter can't write well.
Donald Kennedy, Science

Posted on May 27, 2006 09:31 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

How Taxonomy is Political

From this week’s Science:

Three of us have published descriptions of new species of restricted-range reptiles and amphibians that tragically aided their commercial exploitation. Immediately after being described, the turtle Chelodina mccordi from the small Indonesian island of Roti (2) and the gecko Goniurosaurus luii from southeastern China (3) became recognized as rarities in the international pet trade, and prices in importing countries soared to highs of $1500 to $2000 each. They became so heavily hunted that today C. mccordi is nearly extinct in the wild (4) and G. luii is extirpated from its type locality (3). The salamander Paramesotriton laoensis from northern Laos was not known in the international pet trade prior to its recent description as a new species (5). Over the past year, Japanese (6, 7) and German collectors used the published description to find these salamanders, and they are now being sold to hobbyists in those countries for $170 to $250 each. Similar cases are known from elsewhere in the world and from other taxa.
Withholding locality information from new species descriptions (8) might hamper profiteers, but it also hampers science and conservation. However, with the aid of the Internet, scientists can now monitor commercial demand for species just as commercial collectors can monitor scientific journals. This means prior information exists on which taxa will likely become commercial commodities (we should become concerned for any newly described species of Chelodina and Goniurosaurus). In such cases, taxonomists should work closely with relevant governmental agencies to coordinate publication of the description with legislation or management plans that thwart overexploitation of the new species. Of course, this will not always be easy or successful, and may lengthen publication time, but alternative solutions that allow taxonomists to continue their work without contributing to species decline are wanting.

Posted on May 27, 2006 09:06 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Environment

Appropriate Advocacy by a Science Association

We have at times here at Prometheus taken issue with scientific organizations that take advocacy positions on certain issues. Today we’d like to highlight a situation where the American Association for the Advancement of Science is engaging in advocacy quite appropriate to its mission and expertise – from its press release:

AAAS, the world’s largest general science society, is urging a British teachers association to withdraw a motion calling on its members to boycott Israeli scholars and academic institutions that do not publicly declare their opposition to Israel’s policies in the territories.
The boycott proposal is scheduled for consideration during the 27-29 May annual conference of the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education, the largest trade union and professional association for lecturers, researchers and others working in higher education and adult education in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. A vote is expected Monday.

What is the difference between the AAAS advocating for a withdrawal of the British teachers association boycott and, say, our previous criticisms of national science academies arguing for certain climate policies? There are three differences:

1. The boycott is a matter of “policy for science”. As the AAAS observes in its statement,

Free scientific inquiry and associated international collaborations should not be compromised in order to advance a political agenda unrelated to scientific and scholarly matters.

The governance of the scientific enterprise is squarely within the expertise and mission of the AAAS.

2. The statement from the science academies on climate change that I referred to went well beyond issues of the governance of science into issues of the governance of the economy, and even more broadly, the governance of global society. Science, and the expertise contained within science academies, which is a subset of expertise and opinion of relevance to climate change, is not a sufficient basis for arguing one course of action over another on climate change.

3. Climate change does not need more advocacy, but more options. When science academies engage in advocacy they eschew the role of honest brokers of policy options – a role that is sorely needed on climate policy because just about everyone n the skeptic-mainstream debate has decided to take sides rather than work toward creating new options that might break down opposition. In the case of the boycott the AAAS is very clear about its value commitments and the basis for its advocacy. It is not claiming that its position is grounded in science and suggests that its perspective is that of a special interest – that of an association interested on the advancement of science. This is entirely appropriate.

Good for the AAAS!

PS. This is my first blog posting from an airplane. Pretty damn cool.

Posted on May 27, 2006 08:43 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Definately Not NSHers

Joel Achenbach has a long and interesting article on climate skeptics in the Sunday Washington Post, you can read it here.

Posted on May 27, 2006 03:24 AM View this article | Comments (4)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

May 26, 2006

The Future Will be Blogged

There is a long and interesting article in today's Chronicle of Higher Education on the role of blogs in contemporary politics. Here is an excerpt:

Media attention to blogging has exploded, in part because of a number of what I call blogthroughs, events that allowed bloggers to demonstrate their powers of instant response, cumulative knowledge, and relentless drumbeating. Those incidents included bloggers' role in challenging the memo about President Bush's National Guard service revealed on CBS, which may have led to Dan Rather's resignation as anchor of the network's evening news; video logs of the tsunami in Southeast Asia; and the high-profile use of blogs by Howard Dean's campaign for the last Democratic presidential nomination. Now, according to various measurement and rating services such as Technorati and BlogPulse, tens of millions of Americans are blogging on all kinds of subjects, like diets, relatives, pets, sports, and sex. Bloggers include journalists, marines in Afghanistan, suburban teenagers, law-school professors, senators, and district attorneys.
Of greatest interest to modern students of politics are the blogs that focus on public affairs. Mainstream political news media regularly check what blogs are saying about a given story — or how they created it. Surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and other organizations have found that most contributors to those blogs follow campaigns and political debates and are extremely likely to vote in elections. Politicians and activists are naturally eager to get their message to such a target audience while also bypassing the mainstream media's editorializing and heavy fees for advertising. Yet, as one political consultant I know put it, "The $200-million questions are: What are blogs? How can we use them? What exactly are they good for?"

Even experts cannot answer those questions because political blogs are in a state of flux. Are they a revolution or an evolution in political speech and activism — or a return to the more partisan press of the nation's early days? Will political bloggers challenge or complement traditional politics, political work, and politicians? Are bloggers representative of other Americans, or are they a minority of politically active citizens? How much impact will blogs have on political discourse and, ultimately, on voting behavior? Are they further Balkanizing American politics, with liberals reading only leftist blogs and conservatives reading only rightist ones?

The author of the article is David D. Perlmutter, of Louisiana State University, who runs a blog here that discusses blogs in politics among other subjects.

Posted on May 26, 2006 05:08 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Technology Policy

May 25, 2006

Reaction to Comments on Non-Skeptic Heretics

My only partially tongue-in-cheek post yesterday on the NSH Club generated many comments here and on Kevin’s NoSeNada blog. As well, my email box filled up with a bunch of comments. Here are a few perspectives on the various comments:

1. Dave Roberts, a commenter whose views I have a lot of respect for as they can always be counted on for being thoughtful and passionate, of Grist Magazine responded with fury to both my post and Easterbrook’s op-ed. Of Easterbrook, Roberts (somewhat bizarrely in my view) takes him to task for coming around to Roberts own views, writing on the GristMill blog:

So all of us who have been warning about it for years -- pushing against dimwits like Gregg Easterbrook -- are now, retroactively, by His Own Centrist Grace, transmuted from "alarmists" to reasonable people.

Of my post Dave similarly pulls no punches in the comments,

You can [Ed- I assume this was supposed to be and. RP] Easterbrook share then tendency to set up strawmen and then proclaim your own intellectual heroism for disagreeing with them. Your eagerness to seen as a maverick completely distorts your perceptions.
This is a complicated discussion. There are a whole range of positions, defended by various people in good faith. Defining your little team seems like the least productive way of engaging the issue.

A few responses to this: First, Dave’s assertion on his blog that "there's no substitute for political engagement" does not seem to apply to my attempt to stake out a distinct political position on climate change that is different from the existing dominant two camps. Third way political campaigns are often castigated in exactly the manner that Dave has dismissed my views -- i.e., if you are not with us, then you must be against us!

Second, Dave, unlike many of the NSHers I pointed to and commenters reacting to my post has come out firmly against adaptation except, as he writes in the comments here, for that climate change already committed to, explaining on his blog:

Once we "adapt" to the new climate we have in 2040, the changes will keep coming. We'll have to adapt all over again to the climate of 2060, and the climate of 2080, etc. Human society, no matter how clever, no matter how wealthy, simply isn't equipped to live in a constantly, dramatically changing climatic situation. Economic development depends on stability and predictability. . . We need to commit unreservedly to halting our acceleration of that instability. We all need to be pulling in the same direction, and that won't happen until arguments like [The atmosphere is warming, and it's attributable to human activity, but the "cure" (substantial CO2 emissions cuts) would be worse than the disease. It would be easier, and cost less, simply to adapt to a warmer world.] die a richly deserved death.

But for all of his complaining about my views, he doesn’t offer up any policy options (aside from denying value of adaptation), relying instead on heated political rhetoric and empty appeals to mitigate. So Dave, if you are reading, you are invited to share your specific policy recommendations here.

2. Andrew Dessler, whose views I also have a lot of respect for, commented (along with many others) here that he is:

-extremely pro-mitigation --- we need to begin to institute policies to reduce GHG emissions
-extremely pro-adaptation --- we also need to begin to institute policies to reduce our vulnerability to climate change

This immediately presents a very different perspective than Dave Roberts, hence Andrew’s NSH status ;-) But Andrew then says, "overall, I'm indifferent to the Kyoto Protocol."

Sorry Andrew, but you can’t have it both ways! The Kyoto Protocol, as is the FCCC under which it was negotiated, is in fact strongly biased against adaptation. If you are indeed strongly pro-adaptation and pro-mitigation at the same time, a view which I share, then it seems only logical and consistent to observe that Kyoto and the FCCC don’t share this same commitment. There is of course a need for some international framework to help shape and coordinate climate policies, and the FCCC is a monumental achievement, but it is not beyond evolving in positive ways. And the difference between evolution and revolution may not be large. Simply ask people about the value of reopening FCCC Article 2 for discussion to see what I mean. Opening up the discussion of balance of adaptation and mitigation, and the institutional incentives for each under the FCCC, would be a good place to start, but seems pretty far off.

3. Over at NoSeNada, Kevin provides a good characterization of my initial intent of the NSH post suggest of NSHers: "these are some people who aren't afraid to dissent from the conventional wisdom, even when dissenting gets them a lot of flak" rather than "here's a new club of people who all feel the same way". I haven’t asked anyone if they agree or not with my characterization of NSHers, I just lumped in folks whose views do not appear to be well characterized by the existing Manichean debate. And from my email inbox, it seems there are a lot of such people!! At the same time, it is important to recognize that there are also many people whose views are reflected by the two-sided debate and who (on both sides) are not at all excited by the prospect of a third way position, whatever it is called, tongue-in-cheek or not.

Overall it has been a surprising conversation, not least because of all of the apparent latent support for the notion that there is in fact a third way position on climate change. Keep the comments coming; this has been a valuable exchange, thanks all!

Posted on May 25, 2006 12:22 AM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

May 24, 2006

Gregg, Welcome to the NSH Club!

In the New York Times today, author and commentator Gregg Easterbrook renounces his “climate skeptic” credentials in favor of accepting that there is a consensus on climate science. This qualifies him for membership in the burgeoning club of non-skeptic heretics (NSH). Here is an excerpt from Gregg says in his op-ed:

Yes: the science has changed from ambiguous to near-unanimous. As an environmental commentator, I have a long record of opposing alarmism. But based on the data I'm now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert.

But what is it that I mean by “non-skeptic heretic”? These are people who accept the science of climate change but do not engage in meaningless exhortations or bland political statements, and instead openly confront some of the real but uncomfortable practical challenges involved with reducing emissions and adapting to climate. Easterbrook writes,

President Bush was right to withdraw the United States from the cumbersome Kyoto greenhouse treaty, which even most signatories are ignoring. But Mr. Bush should speak to history by proposing a binding greenhouse-credit trading system within the United States.

Easterbrook has previously commended the Bush Administration’s Methane to Markets program, which granted him immediate heretic credentials, coupled with his new NS status, qualify him to be in the NSH Club. Saying anything remotely non-negative about Bush Administration is a fast ticket to the NSH Club. Commenters here have almost gone so far as to call me a Republican (ouch!;-) for questioning certain firmly held "truths." NSH members don’t seem to fall on partisan lines, though most so far are defectors from the climate policy mainstream, which helps to explain why they do seem to receive a chilly reception from the mainstream non-skeptics. There are nonetheless growing members from the traditional skeptic crowd as well.

A brief foray into the archives provides the following list of people whose writings suggest strong canadacies for membership in the NSH Club:

Myself
Dan Sarewitz
Steve Rayner
Kevin Vranes
Richard Tol
Hans von Storch
Nico Stehr
Steve Rayner
Myanna Lahsen
Bjorn Lomborg
Ted Nordhaus
Michael Shelleberger
Andrew Dessler
Indur Goklany
David Keith
Tim Dyson
Roger Pielke, Sr.
Michele Betsill
Chris Landsea
Karen O’Brien
Robert Lempert

There are of curse many more out there as well. And there seem to be others who are occasionally testing the waters of the NSH Club (the water is HOT!), such as reporter Andy Revkin, as well as some folks from the traditional skeptic community, such as John Christy.

For the mainstream climate advocates the NSH Club is a threat not only because it undercuts their primary point of authority in scientific cum political disputes, but it risks proposing practical and meaningful policy options that might in fact make a difference and thus allow them to leapfrog into a position of new authority on the climate issue. Consequently, there have been efforts to frame this group as traditional skeptics in new clothes, which are sometimes labeled as "impact skeptics" -- who have the temerity to suggest that some future impacts of climate change might be less-than-catastrophic (for some), or might be best handled by adaptation, and "policy skeptics" -- who have some doubts that the framework of the FCCC and its Kyoto Protocol are the last word on climate policy. And there are of course traditional skeptics who stand by their views, such as represented in he recent CEI commercials or by Senator James Inhofe (R-OK). Through such evolving framings of the debate we are seeing a mighty struggle to hold on to the status quo, which has been a fun and rewarding debate for many, but hopelessly ineffective from the standpoint of policy action.

The NSH Club seems to be here to stay and drawing members from both sides of the heretofore gridlocked debate. Expect much angst from those o both sides who will try very hard to preserve the old debate. At the same time expect much interesting discussion about policy, as science begins to take a backseat. Such discussion, like all important political discussions will sometimes uncomfortable and challenging, but it will be a breath of fresh air from the burgeoning ranks of the NSH!

Update: You can find Andy Revkin's blog here, where he has some writings along NSH lines.

Posted on May 24, 2006 06:16 AM View this article | Comments (31)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Juice or No Juice? Who Decides?

With Barry Bonds under the specter of steroids allegations on the brink of passing Babe Ruth in home runs, on another subject of sports and technology Arthur Caplan has a thought-provoking op-ed in the San Jose Mercury News about a new effort to classify sleeping in oxygen tents as a doping violation. He writes:

Should the bureaucrats who set the rules for the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports extend their critical eye to where athletes are allowed to sleep? This past weekend in Montreal, the bureaucrats, otherwise known as the World Anti-Doping Association, indicated that they are going to try to do exactly that. Bad idea. . .
Many athletes in amateur endurance sports such as skiing, running and cycling use altitude tents. These tents simulate thin mountain air. By sleeping in them, athletes who live at sea-level can get the benefits enjoyed by those who live in mountainous areas. Mountain air has less oxygen, so the body makes more red blood cells to compensate. Those extra red blood cells can provide a slight boost if you are running a marathon or skiing cross-country for 15 miles. That is one of the reasons the U.S. Olympic training facility is located in the Rocky Mountains at Colorado Springs, Colo.

So why is WADA worried about tents? There seems to be one main reason -- sleeping in a tent is a passive activity producing benefits that athletes do not "earn" or "merit." The idea that athletes ought to train to gain improvements in performance, not just lie snoozing in an artificial environment while their bodies make more red blood cells, is at the core of WADA's concern. WADA is worrying about tents not for reasons of safety or even fairness but on ethical grounds -- athletes should strive, not snooze, to succeed.

Linking the virtues to athletic success has some appeal. But when WADA uses a moral view of what makes sport worthwhile it is imposing a set of values rather than reflecting what athletes or the public want. Moreover, drawing a line at high-altitude tents is a boundary that cannot hold.

It is not possible to know who is sleeping in a tent unless WADA officials are prepared to get a lot more up close and personal with athletes than they are likely to tolerate. And if you ban altitude tents, are saunas, steam rooms, massages, ankle wraps and vitamins soon to follow?

Modern athletes long ago brought technology into their lives, and WADA holding its breath and pouting about those who are lazing around in altitude tents will not change that fact. We need to keep an eye on technology and its impact on sports. WADA has, however, nodded off at the switch with its threat to ban sleeping in altitude tents.

It would be a meaningless exhortation to say that athletics should be “pure,” and an unregulated playing field seems undesirable. How then should decisions be made about the role of science and technology in athletic achievements? Should some S&T sport policies be made democratically by government institutions, e.g., such as those focused on the Olympics or NCAA? Or should sport be a private affair internally policed, leaving open the possibility of competing professional sport leagues – the JMLB (Juiced- MLB) vs. the JFMLB (Juice-Free MLB)? (Though there is that anti-trust thing.)

I’m not sure what I’d recommend on where and how to draw lines in sport, but it does seem clear that the processed used to make decisions about S&T in sport are at least as important as the outcomes that result from such processes.

Posted on May 24, 2006 03:24 AM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

May 23, 2006

If You Want to Comment . . .

A reminder following several emails: If you want to comment you will need to register (click the link from the comment page).

The site remains unmoderated for registered users. We won't be moderating comments from those who are unregistered.

Posted on May 23, 2006 10:34 AM View this article | Comments (4)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Site News

Decisions Matter

From today's New York Times:

"People didn't die because the storm was bigger than the system could handle,and people didn't die because the levees were overtopped. People died because mistakes were made and because safety was exchanged for efficiency and reduced cost."
Raymond Seed, University of California at Berkeley

Prof. Seed is the lead author of a report released yesterday on Hurricane Katrina. The NYT covered the release of the report in this article yesterday.

Posted on May 23, 2006 07:49 AM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

May 22, 2006

Off by 6 Orders of Magnitude

In an ABC News story on changing hurricane intensities NCAR scientist Greg Holland asserts,

"Remember, for each 10 mph increase of wind speed," says atmosphere scientist Greg Holland, "there's about 10 times more damage, and 20 times more financial loss."

There are those who argue that damage is proportional to the sqaure or even the cube of changes in wind speed, but no one I am aware of who argues that there is a factor of 10 or 20 per 10 mph. This would equate to a difference of 10^8 or 10,000,000 times more damage beween a category 1 and a category 5 (i.e. from 75 mph to 155 mph).

Empircally, when we look at normalized hurricane damage over the past 106 years, we find about 100 times more damage in category 4/5 storms than category 1.

Posted on May 22, 2006 03:46 PM View this article | Comments (6)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

Climate Change and Disaster Losses Workshop

With Munich Re, we are co-organizing a workshop this week outside of Munich that will bring together experts from around the world to deal with two questions:

The economic costs of weather-related disasters have increased dramatically in recent decades. However, experts disagree about the reasons for this increase. Some think that the trend can be explained entirely by the ever-growing numbers of people and value of property in harms way. Others think that human-caused climate changes have led to more frequent and intense weather events and therefore account for some part of the increased damage.
We are organizing a workshop to bring together experts from around the world to address the following two questions:

1. According to the research currently available, what factors account for the increased costs of disasters in recent decades?

2. And what are the implications of these understandings, for both research and policy?

Participants have been selected not only because they can bring value to the discussion, but because they bring to the workshop different answers to these questions. Our goal is not to reach a complete consensus, but what one member of the Workshop Organizing Team appropriately called a “consensus dissensus” – agreement on areas where there is remaining disagreement, the research necessary to resolve those differences, and the significance for research and action.

The Workshop is sponsored by Munich Re, GKSS Research Centre, the Tyndall Centre, and the U.S. NSF.

We expect to produce a report and a paper for publication on the workshop. Meantime those interested in learning more can access a library that we have started to put together with literature relevant to the discussion. If you would like to suggest additions to the workshop, we would be happy to add them.

Posted on May 22, 2006 06:45 AM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

May 21, 2006

How to Register to Comment

We've activated the sign up function for posting comments on Prometheus. It takes about 2 minutes and need only be done once.

Here is is the sign up link. We hope that you'll sign up and participate in discussions. Should you have any trouble signing up or commenting please send me an email: pielke@colorado.edu.

Thanks!

Posted on May 21, 2006 06:33 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R.

May 20, 2006

Signs of Change?

The New York Times has an op-ed today that makes a point that we’ve been arguing for a long time:

Clearly, it's time for some radical ideas about solving global warming. But where's the radical realism when we need it?

Is this evidence that mainstream discussion of climate policy is beginning to reflect the realties of the impoverished political debate narrowly focused on science and largely irrelevant policy options? Lets hope so.

Posted on May 20, 2006 10:04 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Comment Policy Issues

All- 99% of our commenters are respectful and thoughtful. We have had a recent increase in nasty comments, and today a somewhat threatening and disturbing comment, from an anonymous commenter named Eli Rabbett who even after several requests from Kevin and I has continued this pattern of behavior.

Unfortunately if these posts continue we will likely have to go to a registration-based comment policy, to ban certain URLs from commenting if they refuse to follow our rules, or publicly expose the identities of anonymous posters who engage in such behavior (and yes, we will). We do not want to go down this route, and would prefer an open site and to allow anonymous comnents.

We respectfully ask that all commenters here help to enforce the comment policy and that we all engage in respectful discussions, even on topics that we disagree about. That is the value of the site, and it would be a shame to see it suffer because of the efforts of very few.

For the immeediate future, Kevin and I will ruthlessly delete any comment deemed out of bounds as we see fit. For just about everyone, this doesn't matter. For those few others, keep it respectful and substantive, and you are welocme to participate.

Thanks!

Posted on May 20, 2006 09:47 AM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Site News

May 18, 2006

Fox News Documentary

On Sunday Fox News will air their second documentary about climate change at 10PM EST. Details can be found here. Several months ago they were out in Colorado interviewing people for this, me and my father included. I gave a long interview presenting my standard stuff that Prometheus readers are familiar with by now. Even so, I will be interested to see how (or if) they use my interview in the documentary. I have my reactions Monday. I'd welcome yours as well, and we can discuss.

Posted on May 18, 2006 09:47 AM View this article | Comments (49) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

May 17, 2006

A Few Reactions to the Bonn Dialogue on the FCCC

This week the International Institute for Sustainable Development continues its invaluable service of providing summaries of international meetings and negotiations by providing a summary of the “UNFCCC dialogue on long-term cooperative action.” Here are a few reactions to that summary, focused mainly on issues of adaptation. The IISD summary suggests that serious problems remain with consideration of adaptation under the FCCC and that some developing countries are not satisfied:

ADAPTATION: Tanzania and the Philippines said adaptation should have the same status as mitigation, expressing concerns that it had not yet been seriously addressed. Tuvalu underscored adaptation as a crucial issue, and called for urgent action rather than studies or pilot projects, implementation of UNFCCC Article 4.4 (developed country support for adaptation for vulnerable developing countries) and a process to ensure a rapid response to help countries suffering damage. The Philippines highlighted the need for innovative ways of financing. Egypt noted that mitigation efforts in developing countries are receiving more support than adaptation measures through the CDM.

We have discussed this subject frequently. The FCCC has a built-in bias against adaptation and characterizes it as being in opposition to mitigation. Bizarrely, under the FCCC adaptation has costs but not benefits (and the IPCC follows this cooking of the cost-benefit books), because under its view of the world adaptation would be unnecessary if climate change could be prevented. Under this way of thinking, adaptation projects reflect costs that would be avoided with mitigation, hence, preventing adaptation represents a benefit of mitigation. Think about that for a minute, and ask yourself, how can adaptation and mitigation really be complements under the FCCC if the case for the latter depends in no small part on preventing the former?

Under the FCCC adaptation to climate change means something very specific, it does not mean adaptation to climate, but only to those marginal effects of climate changes directly attributable to greenhouse gas emissions. If this strikes you as unrealistic and confusing, you’d be right. The reality is that in many, if not most, places in developed and developing countries adaptation to climate (broadly, not just the marginal effects of GHGs on climate) makes good sense as societal is extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate, whatever the underlying causes. As we have stated here many times, it is scientifically untenable to tease out the GHG contribution to human disasters like Katrina. It is nonsensical to try to implement policies that address only those marginal impacts of GHGs, rather than the root causes of disasters themselves, which lie primarily in societal vulnerability.

We discussed this sort of nonsense following COP-10 in December, 2004 based on another IISD report which included the following telling explanation of why it is that developing countries have difficulty receiving funding for adaptation projects:

. . . adaptation projects are generally built on, or embedded in, larger national or local development projects and, therefore, the funding by the GEF would only cover a portion of the costs. In other words, if a country seeks funding for a project on flood prevention, the GEF would only be able to finance a portion proportional to the additional harm that floods have caused or will cause as a result of climate change, and the rest would have to be co-financed by some other body. The plea from LDCs, particularly the SIDS, lies precisely on this paradox, in that even if funds are available in the LDC Fund, their difficulty of finding adequate co-financing, and the costly and cumbersome calculation of the additional costs, renders the financial resources in the LDC Fund, in practice, almost inaccessible.

At this weeks meeting a comment by the UK summarized by the IISD suggests that little has changed in this regard:

The UK identified some cross-cutting themes, including financing and scientific uncertainty, which is particularly problematic for adaptation.

Why is scientific uncertainty problematic for adaptation? Because unless there is a way to attribute the impacts of GHG-caused climate change on developing countries, under the FCCC there is no vehicle for action, as the FCCC is not an all-purpose framework for reducing vulnerabilities to the effects of climate. How ironic is this? Adaptation is all about decision making under uncertainty and preparing for a future that is unknown. So in the face of uncertainties adaptation should make good sense, because its benefits are broad. Yet, under the FCCC the arbitrary rules have been set up in such a way as to mostly exclude adaptation as a policy response.

Of course, this gets back to the fact that the FCCC has been and continues to be a vehicle for changes to global energy policies and considerations of adaptation simply get in the way. Approaching climate change in this fashion makes about as much sense as telling someone that because we don’t know when they will be struck by heart disease we can provide little assistance helping them to adopt of a healthy lifestyle.

To be fair, I have many friends and colleagues who are far more sanguine about the prospects for adaptation under the FCCC, and are willing to debate this point strenuously with me when I raise comments like those above. They use words like “mainstreaming” and “sustainable development” to make their case, and cite Article 4.4 of the FCCC, among others. I respect their views and perhaps our differences in views have a bit of glass half full/half empty about them. But even so I have been convinced for some time now that the FCCC is much more of an obstacle to effective action on adaptation than a facilitator. Much of its efforts on adaptation seem to be an effort to provide a fig leaf of competence in order gloss over what increasingly appears to be a fatal flaw in the framework. The recent report from the IISD provides no reason for me to change my views.

Until the very core of the FCCC is opened up for discussion (and by core I mean Article 2 and its gerrymandered definition of climate change), the bias against adaptation is likely to persist, and adaptation policies will continue to be presented as counter to the goals of mitigation and will continue to be considered in that manner in formal negotiations (statements to the contrary notwithstanding). If this is anywhere close to the mark then people will suffer and die more than they might otherwise because of the words used to frame the climate debate as an issue of energy policy, and energy policy only.

For further reading:

A short essay:

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 2004. What is Climate Change?, Issues in Science and Technology, Summer, 1-4. (PDF)

Peer-reviewed studies with lots of detail:

Pielke, Jr., R.A., 2005. Misdefining “climate change”: consequences for science and action, Environmental Science & Policy, Vol. 8, pp. 548-561. (PDF)

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 1998. Rethinking the Role of Adaptation in Climate Policy. Global Environmental Change, 8(2), 159-170. (PDF)

May 15, 2006

More Peer-Reviewed Discussion on Hurricanes and Climate Change

In the May issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, a group of distinguished scientists have written a response to our 2005 article on Hurricanes and Global Warming. The scientists include Rick Anthes, Bob Correll, Greg Holland, Jim Hurrell, Mike MacCracken, and Kevin Trenberth. Our response is co-authored by the same group that brought you Pielke et al. 2005 – Pielke, Landsea, Mayfied, Laver, and Pasch. Links to the entire set of papers are below in reverse chronological order. I’ll be happy to address comments and questions on this exchange in the comments. Overall, I think that this is a fruitful exchange that clearly delineates some of the differing positions on this subject. Have a look!

Reply to Comment by Anthes et al. 2006: Pielke, Jr., R. A., C. W. Landsea, M. Mayfield, J. Laver, R. Pasch, 2006. Reply to Hurricanes and Global Warming Potential Linkages and Consequences, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 87:628-631. (PDF)

Comment on Pielke et al. 2005: Anthes, R. A., R. W. Corell, G. Holland, J. W. Hurrell, M. C. McCracken, and K. E. Trenberth, 2006 Hurricanes and global warming: Potential linkage and consequences. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 87:623-628. (PDF)

Original paper: Pielke, Jr., R. A., C. Landsea, M. Mayfield, J. Laver and R. Pasch, 2005. Hurricanes and global warming, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 86:1571-1575. (PDF)

Posted on May 15, 2006 10:46 AM View this article | Comments (9) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

May 12, 2006

Science Studies: Cheerleader, Marketer, or Critic?

A former colleague of mine used to say that social scientists were the equivalent of "lap dogs" for the broader scientific community.

By that, he meant that social scientists were around to entertain, look good, but nothing more. My experiences suggest that there is some element of truth in his description of the relationship of science studies with the broader scientific community, especially in those situations where the funding of the science studies scholars depends upon the largesse of the broader scientific community that they are working with. It is a difficult issue because one of the lessons from science studies research is the need for a close relationship with stakeholders, which for many science studies scholars are the scientists themselves.

I was motivated to blog on this after reading a column in the Philadelphia Inquirer by Arthur Caplan, a University of Pennsylvania bioethicist, discussing the challenges of putting limits on science. He observes,

The moral standoff that will quickly come to characterize the 21st century is becoming clear. It is not the teaching of intelligent design vs. evolution in American schools. Almost no one but biblical literalists takes the ID position with any seriousness as science. Nor will it be the heated squabble over embryonic stem-cell research. That scrum is actually over as well: Many nations around the world are doing this type of research, so the question is only where not whether.
The real battle - the battle that will come to occupy the moral center stage of American politics, morality, law, public policy, editorial pages, and water-cooler discussions - will be waged over where genetic engineering ought to take us and whether we are satisfied to leave it to scientists to guide us there.

Caplan acknowledges that "there here are plenty of reasons to worry about the misapplication and misuse of genetics." But even with such concern, Caplan quickly turns to a defense of the inexorable advance of research, and allaying of concerns about the role of scientists in shaping such advances,

Still it is a grave, grave mistake to argue that we must put all forms of genetic engineering off limits. Too much good will be lost. Our only hope of combating some of the worst pests and plagues that beset us and will torment our grandchildren is through genetic manipulation and engineering. The genetic revolution you and I are witnessing is humankind's last, best hope since it offers the prospect of more and safer food; the repair and elimination of genetic maladies like Tay-Sachs, juvenile diabetes, sickle cell disease, and hemophilia; the conquest of TB, malaria, avian flu, SARS, HIV, and many other plagues. And it will allow us to rebuild broken, worn out, or injured body parts.
Any of these alone would be enough reason to pursue genetic research. Together, they all but obligate us to do it. They are an all but unanswerable reply to those who say "No" to genetic research and engineering. Our society would be foolish and cruel to forbid or ban genetic research given the needs of the sick, starving, impaired and those of future generations for solutions and treatments. Will we really turn away from those who literally are dying before our eyes, or who will die before our children's eyes, simply out of fear of scientists guiding public policy?

Caplan offers a defense of scientific advancement much like the old saw, "guns don’t kill people, people kill people,"

I do not believe we have much to fear from the actions of any individual scientist. Few, contrary to the pope's concern, aspire to play God. Science has no tolerance for such fantasies.
Geneticists know how little they know individually and how hard it is to manipulate nature. Moreover, none of them, not even the best and brightest, is capable of transforming a discovery from the lab into the real world by himself or herself. That sort of power is reserved for the deity, governments or the market.

What the deity does is beyond our control. But what government or the market does or is allowed to do is very much a matter of politics, regulation and oversight. When theologians or members of the public point the finger of moral worry at scientists, they need to redirect it. It is governments and the marketplace that we need to shape and hold accountable for how genetic knowledge is or is not applied.

I generally agree with Caplan that genetic technologies may hold great promises and that almost every scientist is a good and decent person. But these general feelings about the science and scientists are no substitute for the fact that (a) genetic technologies may pose unknown risks (e.g., concerns raised about GMOs and the environment) and simply be morally wrong (e.g., chimeras), and (b) scientists, like any group in society, are not above democratic accountability.

Caplan suggests that the an unfulfilled role for scientists – and their science studies lapdogs – is to communicate the importance of research so that the public will allow it to go forward and support it.

What scientists need to do - and quickly - is come out of their laboratory lairs and be seen in public. You need to know about their aspirations, dreams, hopes, and values. You need to know they stand shoulder to shoulder with all of us in wanting a better world. They see a better future and a way to get there.
Genetic research in the hands of those who practice is not aimed at power, fame, ambition, or transforming oneself into a god. If it is about anything, it is about love: the love of life, the love of people, the drive to make a better life for the sick and those at risk of becoming so.

These last few statements are pretty incredible. The Hwang Woo-Suk and Gerald Schatten stem cell affair (see the University of Pittsburgh report in PDF) may have been an aberration but it did provide a window into a world where power, fame, and ambition are not so uncommon. In light of this recent experience, for an ethicist to suggest otherwise is a bit pollyannaish, and quite a bit too much cheerleadering from where I sit.

Caplan is of course right on when he asks us to

Hold your politicians accountable. Ask them to explain how funding for genetics is allocated and accounted for. Insist that they ensure that commercial interests do not succeed in keeping private genetic applications and products that might offend the moral sense of the community or, worse, our health and well-being.

But part of such accountability in my view is public engagement in the process of deciding on what research is and is not appropriate, not simply engaging abroader set of stakeholders in decisions about commercialization after the research is well underway or completed in the form of products. Along these lines, a perspective of "upstream engagement" has been discussed here in the context of the excellent work of a UK think tank called DEMOS. (Have a look at their most recent report on governing nanotechnology here.) Caplan goes too far when he asserts, "The genetic genie is out of the bottle. There is not much anyone can do to put it back nor, once we understand its potential for good, ought we to do so." There are many genies and many bottles. Deciding which genies to free and which to keep in their bottle is an important part of the democratic governance of science and technology.

Caplan’s piece reminded me of Langdon Winner’s comments about the societal aspects of nanotechnology in Congressional testimony in 2003. Winner had some strong things to say about science studies scholars,

The professional field of bioethics, for example, (which might become, alas, a model for nanoethics) has a great deal to say about many fascinating things, but people in this profession rarely say "no."
Indeed, there is a tendency for career-conscious social scientists and humanists to become a little too cozy with researchers in science and engineering, telling them exactly what they want to hear (or what scholars think the scientists want to hear). Evidence of this trait appears in what are often trivial excercises in which potentially momentous social upheavals are greeted with arcane, highly scholastic rationalizations. How many theorists of "intellectual property" can dance on the head of a pin?

One way to avoid the drift toward moral and political triviality is to encourage social scientists and philosophers to present their findings in forums in which people from business, the laboratories, environmental organizations, churches, and other groups can join the discussion. It is time to reject the idea there are only a few designated stakeholders that are qualified to evaluate possibilities, manage the risks, and guide technology toward beneficial outcomes.

As issues of science and technology continue to occupy an even more central role in important societal questions, there will be difficult questions raised about the role of science studies with respect to their relationship with science, politics, and policy. Science studies scholars will have to confront questions about what sorts of roles they ought to play and under what institutional, financial, and social dynamics. To oversimplify, what will it be, cheerleader, marketer, or critic?

May 11, 2006

Scientific Communication and the Public Interest

Often here at Prometheus we have made the argument that science does not take place in a vacuum. Efforts to communicate science to the public and policy makers are inherently social and political acts. The UK Royal Society has just released an important report titled “Science and the Public Interest” (PDF) which shares this perspective and discusses the challenges facings scientists communicating their results in the context of policy and politics. From the Preface, Lord Rees describes the significance of the report,

Usually, new research results are disseminated within the research community via conference presentations and journal papers; wider communication is usually an afterthought. However, the way this is done – by, for instance, press conferences or media releases – can strongly colour public reactions and attitudes, especially if there are immediate implications for people’s health or way of life. Recent episodes such as the high-profile discrediting of papers on cloning are likely to bring the quality and reliability of all research under greater scrutiny. And even when a result is firm, it is important to convey its impact fairly – neither over-hyping potential spin-offs, nor exaggerating potential risks.

The report argues that scientists have two primary responsibilities when communicating their science:

The first is to attempt an accurate assessment of the potential implications for the public. The second is to ensure the timely and appropriate communication to the public of results if such communication is in the public interest. These twin responsibilities should be embedded within the culture of the research community as a whole, and all practices should take them into account and respect them.

Communication of the significance of scientific results necessarily involves considerations that go well beyond the focus of the research that led to the results in the first place. I discussed this in a 2002 essay in Nature (PDF,

. . . it is essential to differentiate scientific results from the policy significance of those results. To illustrate the distinction, consider the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s conclusion that the global average temperature in 2100 will increase from 1.4 C to 5.8 C. Explaining what this scientific result means to the non-specialist may take some effort — it may require explaining the origins of the estimates, how ‘global average’ is defined, trends, conditions and the confidence levels of the projection. Yet, crucially, all this is different from an assessment of the significance of this conclusion for action (‘policy’), which depends on how the results (‘science’) are related to valued outcomes, such as human health, environmental sustainability, economic prosperity and so on.
Assessing the significance of science for policy requires a clear distinction of policy analysis from political advocacy. The former increases the range of alternatives available to decision-makers by clearly associating scientific results with a range of choices and outcomes. The latter seeks to decrease the range of alternatives (often to a single desired outcome). Because scientific results typically have a degree of uncertainty, and because a range of alternatives can achieve particular policy outcomes, commitment to a particular policy involves considerations that go well beyond science.

In its extremely valuable checklist for researchers seeking to communicate the Royal Society acknowledges that scientists may need assistance when seeking to describe the significance of their science for society:

7. Do you need any advice to help you to provide appropriate context for your results, and if so whom do you need to assist you?
8. How might your results be used by other individuals or organisations, such as campaigners or policy-makers?

Question 8 suggests raises a crucially important question but the report provides no guidance for scientists to help them determine what it means to act in the public interest versus as an advocate for a particular special interest group. For many scientists the route to influencing the public interest is simply align themselves with a “side” in a debate – based on money, politics, or other values. We see that a lot in the blogoshpere where people (including scientists) align themselves according to tribal-like affinities. This sort of self-segregation may lead to effective communication which is counter to public interests. We discuss such ideological self-segregation here. As an example, if all scientists align ideologically, as for instance the vast majority do on climate change, it may reduce science to simply a tool for marketing competing bad policy options, as scientists largely forgo the more effective role of introducing innovative new policy options into debate.

The Royal Society report is important because it highlights the importance of communication as an inevitable political and social act. It also provides valuable guidance for scientists seeking to communicate. However, it does not go far enough in providing guidance on how scientists might negotiate the minefield of special interests seeking to appropriate scientific authority for their special cause. Before communicating, scientists have choices in how they orient themselves and their institutions with respect to public interests and these choices can be as important as the process of communication itself.

Posted on May 11, 2006 07:18 AM View this article | Comments (16) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

May 10, 2006

A Bizarro GCC and The Public Opinion Myth, Again

A story in today’s Wall Street Journal provides additional evidence of the fantasy world that is climate politics:

An educational group that former Vice President Al Gore is helping to launch intends to spend millions of dollars convincing Americans that global warming is an urgent problem.
The U.S. hasn't enacted mandatory limits on greenhouse-gas emissions, a situation many environmentalists attribute to slim public awareness of the consequences of rising temperatures.

The group, which yesterday adopted the name Alliance for Climate Protection, plans to use advertising and grass-roots organizing to try to raise awareness, particularly among labor groups, hunters, evangelicals and conservatives in general.

The effort, still in the planning stages, will look "like a political campaign," predicts Lee M. Thomas, who ran the Environmental Protection Agency during President Ronald Reagan's second term and has agreed to be a board member.

This is a wasted effort for a number of reasons. First, as we’ve documented here many times (e.g., here and here) while he public does not have a deep grasp of the technical details of global warming, it does have an overwhelming awareness of the issue. Not only is there awareness, but an overwhelming majority already favor action. Public education to achieve awareness and support for action that already exist will be efforts wasted on the convinced (e.g., here).

A second reason is that any effort to elevate the intensity of public opinion (not mentioned in the article, but necessary to elevate one issue over another in the public’s eye) will run a very real risk of making policy arguments that are misleading and perhaps simply incorrect. Assertions that future hurricane damages can be modulated via emissions policies are an example of this type of policy over-promising. The reason for this is that global warming is not an issue for which immediate action can lead to tangible short-term benefits (e.g., discussed here), so for many people it simply does not compare to the importance of other issues that do have short-term effects, like gas prices and hurricane reinforced roofs.

The Alliance for Climate Protection seems to me to simply be a Bizzaro version of the now-defunct Global Climate Coalition and I suspect that it will have much the same effectiveness on public opinion and ultimate fate..

Posted on May 10, 2006 07:03 AM View this article | Comments (57) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

May 09, 2006

11,000 Deaths a Day, Page 8, Ho Hum

In a world where influential leaders commonly claim that it is terrorism or global warming that is the world’s greatest problem, I was struck by this page 8 article from today’s New York Times, which contained the following:

More than four million newborns worldwide die each year in their first month of life, comparable to the number of babies born in the United States annually, Save the Children reported Monday.
Many of those infants could be saved with simple, inexpensive items, like sterile blades to cut the umbilical cord, antibiotics for pneumonia and knit caps to keep them warm, the group said in "State of the World's Mothers 2006," a new report. Ninety-nine percent of newborn deaths are in developing countries, where such items are often not widely available.

The deadliest time for children is in the hours after birth, and the deadliest places are the poorest corners of world. South Asia and Africa have the highest rates of newborn deaths, Save the Children said. "The first day of life is the most dangerous day a human being has," said Charles MacCormack, president of Save the Children.

While many countries have significantly lowered mortality rates for children younger than 5 in recent decades, the group said, little progress has been made globally in preventing the deaths of newborns and their mothers.

Four million a year is 11,000 children a day. Every single day. And this is not a problem of high technology, but low-tech diffusion and adoption. It is a solvable problem with tangible costs and benefits in the near term sharply weight towards the benefits.

What is the role of the United States government in helping to deal with this problem? According to the New York Times:

“President Bush's budget for the 2007 fiscal year proposes spending $323 million on maternal and child health programs in the United States Agency for International Development, less than the $356 million Congress appropriated last year. Save the Children is supporting a House bill that would instead increase financing. Mr. [Charles] MacCormack [president of Save the Children] said the amount of such aid had been flat through the past three administrations.”

Posted on May 9, 2006 12:42 PM View this article | Comments (15) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health

May 08, 2006

Myths of the History of Ozone Policy

I have heard the case of ozone depletion invoked time and time again by advocates for mitigation action on climate change. Such invocations are not only like the old adage of generals fighting the last war, but worse, because they are like old generals looking to fight the old war as they wish it had been, rather than how it really was.

Here is a True/False quiz on the history of ozone policy. Keep track of your answers and the key will be provided after the jump:

1) Science provided a clear message.
2) Policy makers relied on consensus science to take action.
3) Public opinion was intense and unified.
4) Ozone skeptics remained mute and high-minded.
5) Science reached a threshold of certainty that compelled action

If you answered False to each of these then give yourself 100%. The ozone story is documented in this paper:

Betsill, M. M., and R. A. Pielke, Jr., 1998: Blurring the Boundaries: Domestic and International Ozone Politics and Lessons for Climate Change. International Environmental Affairs, 10(3), 147-172. (PDF)

Here are some brief comments on the questions above:

1) Science provided a clear message.

The science of ozone depletion was quite uncertain all the way through (and beyond) the Montreal Protocol in 1987, but especially so during the late-1970s/early-1980s adoption of the Toxic Substances Control Act, Clean Air Act Amendments, and Vienna Convention. Similarly, the settlement of the NRDC lawsuit that paved the way for the U.S. participation in the Montreal protocol took place before the discovery of the ozone hole.

2) Policy makers relied on consensus science to take action.

Policy makers used science as an indication of a possible problem and then very much followed a "no regrets" strategy. They first regulated "non-essential" uses of CFCs, for which substitutes were more readily available, and then took on essential uses later. In this way policy makers did what was relatively easier first, and left the more politically difficult challenges for later. In this way they reduced the scope of the problem. Climate change has seen the opposite strategy with the most difficult challenge and largest framing (regulating global energy use) at the center of the debate. Consensus science really did not play a role in ozone policy until after the Montreal Protocol when the issue was mature and fine-tuning was possible in the policy responses.

3) Public opinion was intense and unified.

According to the official UN history of the ozone issue there were exceedingly few news stories on ozone depletion in the U.S., China, U.K., or Soviet Union from 1977-1985, when much of the policy framework for the issue was developed (Figure 8.1, p. 293). The NYT had about 20 stories in 1982, and in no other year were there that many stories combined in 10 different leading newspapers during that period. This was also a period of intense (and legitimate) scientific debate. In fact, many people believed after the aerosol spray can ban in the late 1970s that the problem had been solved. It is hard to imagine ozone having anywhere near the salience and uniformity of opinion that we now see among the public on climate change.

4) Ozone skeptics remained mute and high-minded.

According to that same UN history (p. 295) one British scientist commented in 1975 that [Ozone-depletion theory is] "a science fiction tale . . . a load of rubbish . . . utter nonsense." There were plenty of skeptics on this issue, buoyed by fundamental uncertainties in the science in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The focus on "no regrets" strategies kept the attention off of science and onto policy options, which led to a breakthrough in the invention of substitutes for CFCs.

5) Science reached a threshold of certainty that compelled action.

Action on ozone proceeded incrementally with many decisions taken, first in the U.S. and then internationally. There was no "threshold for action" that we see so often called for in the context of climate change. Action took place based on what the political dynamics would allow. Science played a very important role in placing ozone depletion on the decision making agenda and then again in fine tuning the international protocol once it had been widely accepted. In between it was effective politics and a healthy policy process that compelled action, not science.

On the ozone issue we seem to have learned the wrong lessons – those that never existed in the first place. Progress on climate change mitigation might be more effective if many of today’s advocates actually fought the last war, rather than the one that they seem to have think that they won.

Posted on May 8, 2006 01:38 PM View this article | Comments (56) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Environment

May 04, 2006

Prometheus at 2

We've been online for two years. Who would have guessed that Shep's term project would wind up like this? Thanks once again to our commenters, by far the best on any blog on the web. Keep it up.

For my part, I'm going to celebrate by going offline for a few days. See you next week. ;-)

Posted on May 4, 2006 02:10 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Site News

FEMA Disaster Database

Rick Sylves of the University of Delaware sent me this link to an online database of FEMA disaster declaration information, supported by the Public Entity Risk Institute. I haven't had a chance to explore it, but it looks quite valuable. Have a look.

Posted on May 4, 2006 02:05 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

May 02, 2006

The Next IPCC Consensus?

Yahoo Asia has a news story on the on the forthcoming IPCC report. Here is an excerpt:

A United Nations panel on climate change noted for the first time the likelihood that global warming resulting from human activities is causing heat waves and other abnormal weather phenomena as well as Arctic ice mass loss, according to a draft report seen by Kyodo News on Sunday.
"It is very likely that greenhouse gas forcing has been the dominant cause of the observed warming of globally averaged temperatures in the last 50 years," says the draft fourth assessment report of Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

I haven’t see the draft of the report so I don’t know if it is accurate or not, but assuming that it is, it raises a few interesting issues in the context of our recent discussion of the notion of consensus.

First, it is worth comparing the quoted sentence by Yahoo Asia to its companion in the IPCC TAR (here in PDF):

In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.

One key difference is the change from “likely” (meaning 64-90%) to “very likely” (meaning >90%). They did not use “virtually certain” (>99%). (For the terms, see this PDF). From where I sit, a 10% chance that a greenhouse gas forcing is not the dominant cause of warming seems to allow plenty of room for healthy skepticism to exist. I’m interested in understanding why the IPCC is confident at the 90% level and not the 99% level. Clearly many scientists who have sp[oken out publicly on climate change are 99% certain.

A second key difference is the substitution of the phase "dominant cause" for the word "most." IPCC terms are not chosen arbitrarily and my reading of this is that as far as GHGs, it represents a step back from the statement in 2001. I equate "most" with a majority (>50%) and "dominant" with a plurality. I am sure commentators will have a field day with that. Were I a betting person I'd wager that "dominant" won't last until the end.

Of course, it should be said that the news story is referring to a draft and these statements may well be substantially modified before the report’s official release. However, if accurate, the preview of what the IPCC will say seems to allow considerable room for healthy skepticism, meaning that for the foreseeable future climate policy must develop in the context of a lack of absolute certainty. Less prosaically, we can fully expect the mainstream-skeptic debate to be with us for a long time, so we’d better develop policy responses that are robust to that conflict, efforts to scour the debate of such voices notwithstanding.

Posted on May 2, 2006 02:35 PM View this article | Comments (38) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Risk & Uncertainty

Nowotny on Curiosity and Control

Helga Nowotny, science studies scholar and Vice-Chair of the European Research Council’s Scientific Council, has an interesting op-ed in which she discusses the challenges of managing scientific curiously in the context of the broader society wishing to control the direction of science in various ways. Here is an excerpt:

The dilemma – and it is a decisive one – is that today we cherish the passionate curiosity of an Albert Einstein. But we still want to control the unforeseeable consequences to which curiosity leads. The dilemma must be overcome by allowing curiosity to be protected and supported, while trying to capture those of its fruits that will benefit society. How we accomplish this must be continuously negotiated in the public sphere. Irreducible contradictions will remain, and therein lie the ambivalence that characterises modern societies’ stance toward science.

Posted on May 2, 2006 02:31 PM View this article | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

May 01, 2006

Really, Really, Really Bad Reporting

Time magazine has named MIT’s Kerry Emanuel one of the world’s 100 most influential people. Congrats to him, I certainly think he is brilliant and the honor is well deserved. However, I can’t imagine that Kerry is too happy with the unfortunate blurb Time put together to describe him.

It's easy to argue about the hypothetical causes and effects of global warming. It's a lot harder for any serious disagreement to continue when extreme weather is demolishing a major American city. The U.S. experienced just such a moment of clarity last year when Hurricane Katrina laid waste to New Orleans, awakening all of us to the true cost of climate change. It was Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who helped us make the connection.

Perhaps before writing that bit of nonsense Time might have visited Kerry’s homepage and considered this statement he has posted:

Q: I gather from this last discussion that it would be absurd to attribute the Katrina disaster to global warming?
A: Yes, it would be absurd.

Posted on May 1, 2006 08:40 PM View this article | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

Klotzbach on Trends in Global Tropical Cyclone Intensity 1986-2005

Here (in PDF) is a very interesting paper by Phil Klotzbach, a student of Bill Gray’s at Colorado State University, accepted for publication by Geophysical Research Letters, and apparently in press for later this month (according to this page). The paper challenges the findings of recent high-profile studies on trends in hurricane intensities.

In the paper Klotzbach replicates the methodology of Webster et al. (2005) (PDF) and a very similar approach to Emanuel (2005) (PDF) to explore trends in tropical cyclone intensity over the period 1986-2005, which is a subset of the period used by Webster et al. and Emanuel, and apparently the period during which there is the most agreement on the quality of the observational data. What he finds is pretty interesting. Here are a few of Klotzbach’s talking points (PDF) that he prepared to accompany the paper:

3) If the increases in TC activity found by Emanuel [2005] over the past 30 years (based on data from 1975-2004) and Webster et al. [2005] over the past 35 years (based on data from 1970-2004) are robust, one would expect to see similar trends over the shorter time span evaluated in this paper (1986-2005), especially since SST increases have accelerated in the past twenty years.
7) With regards to ACE [Ed.- A measure of intensity, similar to Emanuel’s PDI], there has been a large increase in ACE in the North Atlantic basin since 1986. There has been a large decrease in ACE in the Northeast Pacific basin since 1986. All other basins show small upward or downward trends. Globally, there has been a slight increasing trend from 1986-2005; however, if only the past sixteen years are evaluated (1990-2005), there has actually been a slight decreasing trend.

8) With regards to the number of Category 4-5 hurricanes, there has been a large increase in North Atlantic storms but also a large decrease in Northeast Pacific storms. When these two regions are summed together, there has been virtually no increase in Category 4-5 hurricanes (i.e., 47 Cat. 4-5 hurricanes from 1986-1995 and 48 Cat. 4-5 hurricanes from 1996-2005). For the globe, there has been an approximate 10% increase in Category 4-5 storms from 1986-1995 to 1996-2005; however, most of this increase occurred from the late 1980s to the early part of the 1990s in the Southern Hemisphere where some data quality issues may have still been present. There has been very little change in the number of Category 4- 5 hurricanes since 1990, which is an agreement with Figure 4, panel A from Webster et al. [2005].

10) These findings indicate that there has been very little trend in global tropical cyclone activity over the past twenty years, and therefore, that a large portion of the dramatic increasing trend found by Webster et al. [2005] and Emanuel [2005] is likely due to the diminished quality of the datasets before the middle 1980s. One would expect that if the results of Webster et al. and Emanuel were accurate reflections of what is going on in the climate system, than a similar trend would be found over the past twenty years, especially since SSTs have warmed considerably (about 0.2°C – 0.4°C) during this time period.

Interestingly, from Table 2 of Klotzbach’s paper, he shows that the number of category 4-5 storms increased from 164 in 1986-1995 to 180 during 1996-2005. Between the same two periods the number of Category 4-5 storms in the Atlantic basin increased from 10 to 25 storms, meaning that setting the Atlantic aside, the rest of the globe saw and increase from 154 in 1986-1995 to 155 during 1996-2005, or no trend at all. However, a close look at the basins around the world shows lots of variability. Consequently, this paper is quite useful to my research because it means that in regions outside the Atlantic basin that damage trends related to storm intensity since 1986 must be due to factors other than changes in storm intensity.

More generally how this peer-reviewed paper, which challenges much of the received wisdom on hurricanes of late, is handled by the scientific community, the blogoshpere, and the media will say a lot about the current state of the debate over climate change.

Posted on May 1, 2006 02:22 PM View this article | Comments (11) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

A Very Bad Dream Indeed

Did you catch this letter in yesterday’s New York Times? Titled "Scientists Speak Out About Guantánamo" the letter was signed by 19 scientists who identified themselves as members of the National Academy of Sciences, and as 4 Nobel laureates.

I pretty much agree with their politics on this issue, but I can’t figure out what it has to do with science or science in policy. They write,

Although this is not a scientific issue in the usual sense, we feel that to ignore it would be to abdicate our responsibility to the truth.

Well, I can’t imagine a better example of both the linear model (i.e., that truth dictates a particular course of action, see this PDF) and Brad Allenby’s concerns about "nightmare science," from his recent essay of that title which included this passage:

In short, the elite that has been created by practice of the scientific method uses the concomitant power not just to express the results of particular research initiatives, but to create, support, and implement policy responses affecting many non-scientific communities and intellectual domains in myriad ways. In doing so, they are not exercising expertise in these non-scientific domains, but rather transforming their privilege in the scientific domains into authority in non-scientific domains. Science is, in other words, segueing back into a structure where once again authority, not observation, is the basis of the exercise of power and establishment of truth by the elite.

Posted on May 1, 2006 02:20 AM View this article | Comments (57) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

April 28, 2006

Al Gore’s Bad Start and What Just Ain’t So

The image above is taken from the homepage of Al Gore’s new movie. If the imagery is indicative of the role of science in its presentations of policy options, then the case for action on climate change is going to suffer a setback. Reducing smokestack emissions, or any CO2 emissions, is simply not an effective tool of hurricane disaster mitigation.

Often on these pages we have made the case that the debate that rages over hurricanes and climate change is largely irrelevant to climate policy, even as it used as a symbol in climate politics. The reason for the insensitivity of policy to this debate is the overwhelming influence of societal factors in driving trends in the growth in disaster losses even under assumptions that global warming has significant effects on hurricanes. We have made the case in a wide range of fora and in a wide range of ways, and yet, it seems that the urge to use hurricanes as a justification for climate-related energy policies is just too appealing, despite its grossly unsupportable scientific grounding. It does not matter whether or not scientists can establish a link between global warming and hurricanes – it won’t affect how we think about climate policy.

More evidence for this perspective is provided in a recent news story about the insurance and reinsurance industries,

"Regardless of whether climate change is leading to increases in the number of storms or their intensity, analyses by ISO's catastrophe modeling subsidiary, AIR Worldwide, indicate that catastrophe losses should be expected to double roughly every 10 years because of increases in construction costs, increases in the number of structures and changes in their characteristics," said [Michael R.] Murray [ISO assistant vice president for financial analysis], "AIR's research shows that, because of exposure growth, the one in one-hundred-year industry loss grew from $60 billion in 1995 to $110 billion in 2005, and it will likely grow to over $200 billion during the next 10 years."

Assume a doubling of losses every ten years for the next 80, and you get a multiple of 2^8 or 256. Can anyone cite a study that suggests that hurricane frequencies or intensities will increase by 1/100 of this amount? (Note that damage is not linear with intensity, but even so.) You can’t. Even with less aggressive assumptions about societal change one still gets very, very large increases in impacts. For the simple math of why it is that societal growth dominates any scenario of the projected effects of climate change, and hence climate mitigation, on hurricanes, see this post we did a short while back. And there are umpteen others available on this site. I await the acceptance of this argument by the mainstream climate science community (as well as the relevant parties of the blogosphere), of which a troubling number have ignored or openly resisted this argument, and some very publicly yet without substance. But they shouldn't, as it is about as solid a policy case as one can imagine.

As we have often said, climate mitigation makes sense, and so too does preparing for future disasters, but linking the first with the second is simply unsupported by an honest policy assessment. And it seems to me that honest assessments of policy action help the case for action on climate change. Al Gore is off to a bad start -- let’s hope the rest of his effort is substantially better or else he risks setting back the case for action on climate change.

Posted on April 28, 2006 02:29 AM View this article | Comments (48) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

April 27, 2006

Cutler and Glaeser on Why do Europeans Smoke More Than Americans? Part II

This is a second post discussing a paper by two Harvard economists, David Cutler and Edward Glaeser, available at the National Bureau of Economic Research that raises some interesting questions about the role of science and advocacy on the smoking issue. In this post I'd like to ask some questions about Figure 3 in that paper, reproduced below. For me, Figure 3 raises some really interesting questions about the relationship of science, advocacy, and societal outcomes for which I really have no answers for. I am hoping that Prometheus readers can point me to serious, scholarly literature that might explain what is shown in figure 3.

Figure 3 shows an increase in smoking in the U.S. through about 1950, broken up only by the Great Depression. There is then a drop off, which Cutler and Glaeser attribute to a first "health scare" about cigarettes which appeared first in the scientific literature and then in the popular media. The upward trend then resumes until the 1960s, a few ups and downs follow, and then, remarkably, from about 1970 on, a steady, almost monotonic decrease.

The question I have is, given these trends, how can one identify the effectiveness of advocacy for and against smoking, and in particular the role of science, uncertainty, and so-called "junk science" in outcomes as measured by societal outcome, in this case the number of cigarettes smoked per adult.

I have thought a good deal about this graph and it seems to show perhaps a number of things, which I suggest below.

1. In the battle over smoking efforts to deny a link between smoking and health risks seems to have been completely a lost effort. There is precious little evidence of the effects of such campaigns in this data. Of course, one could argue that the rate of decrease would be larger without such campaigns, however, if that were the case one would probably expect to see shorter term effects as such campaigns are more or less successful over time. This is a puzzle.

2. There are likely population effects that need to be disaggregated. This is smoking per adult, and as national population grows, this perhaps reflects less people deciding to take up smoking rather than a large increase in people quitting. But such data would be worth gathering.

3. Interestingly, there seems to be no acceleration of the trend in reduction of smoking as the scientific basis for a link between smoking and health risks became much stronger over time. The rate of change in this graph seems at a glance to be about the same in 1975 as it was in 1995. If there was a tight relationship between scientific understandings and societal outcomes, I'd hypothesize an ever increasing rate of change on this issue, especially as the pro-smoking media campaigns have waned. Now it could be that a bunch of complex factors conspire to randomly keep the rate of change in balance, and more analysis would be needed to determine this.

4. To me this data suggests a similarlity with data and findings in other areas of science. Specifically, science has a huge role in getting a subject onto the "agenda" of decision making, but after that, its role is very much dimished and subsumed to other factors, such as cultural, social, and political. If this is correct, it would require some deeper understanding about the role of advocacy relatd to scientific issues and the efficacy of using science as a tool of advocacy. This begs the question -- why has anti-smoking advocacy been so successful over time? The throwaway answer that increasing scientific certainly is the key does not seem to jibe with this data.

For me this graph opens up some fundamenal questions tha arise at he intersection of science, advocacy, societal outcomes. I am motivated enough to follow this up with some actual research, so I'd welcome any comments and suggestions. The case of smoking/science is often raised in discussions of climate change and other areas as an analogy, but I am not convinced that such analogies are based on anything more that supposition, guesses, and assumptions.

Posted on April 27, 2006 08:29 AM View this article | Comments (12) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health | Risk & Uncertainty

April 26, 2006

Cutler and Glaeser on Why do Europeans Smoke More Than Americans? Part I

The relationship of scientific research, industry advocacy, government action, and public behavior on smoking is frequently cited in discussion and debate, but I have actually seen little empirical research that backs up the various claims that are often made on this issue. Two Harvard economists, David Cutler and Edward Glaser, have a paper available at the National Bureau of Economic Research that raises some interesting questions about the role of science and advocacy on the smoking issue.

A few points it seems can be taken as fact:

1. smoking is a health hazard
2. The smoking industry for many years engaged in an active campaign to suggest that smoking is not a health hazard
3. Smoking is addictive
4. Smoking rates, and the change in those rates, are different in different parts of the work

Cutler and Glaeser seek to untangle some aspects of this last point by asking “Why do Europeans Smoke More Than Americans?” The answer that Cutler and Glaeser provide it turns out is complicated, and in my view fundamentally flawed. Here is what they claim in their abstract:

While Americans are less healthy than Europeans along some dimensions (like obesity), Americans are significantly less likely to smoke than their European counterparts. This difference emerged in the 1970s and it is biggest among the most educated. The puzzle becomes larger once we account for cigarette prices and anti-smoking regulations, which are both higher in Europe. There is a nonmonotonic relationship between smoking and income; among richer countries and people, higher incomes are associated with less smoking. This can account for about one-fifth of the U.S./Europe difference. Almost one-half of the smoking difference appears to be the result of differences in beliefs about the health effects of smoking; Europeans are generally less likely to think that cigarette smoking is harmful.

Their findings are interesting, among them:

. . . price differences cannot explain why Americans smoke less than Europeans.
While our conclusions thus need to be interpreted with some care, the U.S. does not appear to tax or regulate tobacco consumption particularly highly, making these explanations unlikely to account for the lower smoking rate in the US.

Given that our model suggests a possible non-monotonic relationship between income and cigarette consumption, the lack of a clear consensus on the income elasticity of smoking is not so surprising.

So price, regulation, and income cannot explain the differences in smoking between the U.S. and Europe. Cutler and Glaeser next turn to beliefs about smoking, for which they begin by noting:

The U.S. has one of the highest rates of believing that smoking is harmful; 91 percent of Americans report believing that smoking causes cancer. Given the high proportion of Americans that believe in UFOs and the literal truth of the bible, this must represent one of the most remarkable instances of the penetration of scientific results in the country. Beliefs about the cancer-causing role of cigarettes in some European countries, like Finland, Greece, Norway, and Portugal, are almost identical to those in the U.S., but in other places beliefs are far weaker. For example in Germany only 73 percent of respondents said that they believed that smoking causes cancer.

An interesting aside, if this recent poll is to be believed more people in Europe believe that global warming is a serious problem than believe that smoking causes cancer. By contrast, in the U.S., the opposite is the case. I’m not sure what to make of this, but the answer is surely tied up in the question Cutler and Glaeser are trying to unravel.

Cutler and Glaser then go out on what I think is thin ice when they assemble an argument based on several lines of reasoning to conclude:

On the whole, our evidence suggests that differences in beliefs are the most important factor explaining the differences in smoking between the U.S. and Europe.

One of the most important lines of evidence is presented in their Figure 11, which I reproduce below.

View image

Figure 11 purports to show a relationship between beliefs about smoking and smoking rates. However, the relationship is entirely a function of excluding Greece from the analysis. Cutler and Glaeser argue earlier in their paper why Greece is excluded from the regressions:

When we examine bivariate relationships between smoking and other factors (prices, regulations, or beliefs), it is important to have a relatively homogeneous sample of countries by income. Within Europe, the major income outlier is Greece, with a per capita income that is 60 percent below the European average ($10,607 in Greece versus $25,858 in Europe in 2000) and 25 percent below the next lowest country (Spain, at $14,138). For this reason, we omit Greece from many of our regressions, though we present raw data for Greece in the tables and show the country in the figures.

I find this justification wholly unsatisfactory. Greece, despite its lower income has the highest rate of belief that smoking causes cancer. Greece is also highly regulated, and does not have unusually cheap cigarettes. In short, its inclusion would certainly muddy the analysis. Excluding it, somewhat arbitrarily in my view, does not add any confidence that Cutler and Glaeser have an adequate explanation for what is going on.

What I get from this paper is that in fact, we don’t yet have an adequate explanation for why we see large differences in smoking between the U.S. and Europe. Consequently, if we can't explain the role of scientific information in smoking, it is safe to say that our understanding of the role of scientific information in societal outcomes on other more complex issues remains frustratingly undeveloped.

In part II I will take a look at trends in U.S. smoking presented by Cutler and Glaeser and suggest a similar lack of understanding.

Posted on April 26, 2006 07:22 AM View this article | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health | Risk & Uncertainty

April 25, 2006

Tenure, University of Colorado, and the Local Newspaper

Many of my colleagues at the University of Colorado are convinced that our local Boulder newspaper, The Daily Camera, carries some grudge against the university. Today’s front page headline in the Camera on the release yesterday of a report on tenure here does not hurt their case:

CU tenure flawed: Independent study says it is too hard to fire tenured professors

Here is how the Chronicle of Higher Education headlined their coverage of the same report:

Outside Report Applauds Tenure System at U. of Colorado

Interesting difference in perspective. For those interested in the tenure report itself, you can find it here.

Posted on April 25, 2006 02:33 PM View this article | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education

What We Discussed in Class Today

Science and Technology Policy – ENVS 5100
In Class Assignment
April 25, 2006

You will be divided into 3 groups. You have 3 case studies written in the form of assertions/arguments about professional roles and responsibilities. The cases are related to space policy, bioethics, and climate change.

Please read and discuss the cases until 12:30. We will the reconvene as a class and discuss the cases among the group.

Questions to consider:

Do you agree with the arguments made in the essays? Why or why not?

What implications are raised for the individuals involved in the cases?

What implications are raised for the institutions involved in the cases?

What advice would you give to the participants?

What would you do?

Posted on April 25, 2006 12:17 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

April 24, 2006

Climate and Societal Factors in Future Tropical Cyclone Damages in the ABI Reports

Last year the Association of British Insurers released several reports on damages from extreme weather events and climate change. Since then, I’ve seen the reports cited as evidence of (a) a climate change signal has been seen in the disaster record, and (b) the importance of greenhouse gas reductions as a tool to modulate future disaster losses.

Unfortunately for those citing the ABI reports in these ways, the actual content of the reports supports neither of these claims. A close look at the ABI report shows that it actually supports the arguments that we have made on the relationship of extreme weather events and damage trends. And there is at least one significant error in the report, which serves as a reminder why as valuable as such “grey literature” can be, it is always important to put complex research through a process of rigorous peer reviews. Here are all the gory details (and I do mean all!):

The ABI overview report (PDF) uses catastrophe models (provided by a firm called AIR headquartered in Boston) to project future increases in damage costs related to climate change and extreme events. The report observes:

This study is one of the ﬁrst to use insurance catastrophe models to examine the potential impacts of climate change on extreme storms. It focuses on one of the most costly aspects of today’s weather – hurricanes, typhoons, and windstorms, because of their potential to cause substantial damage to property and infrastructure.

The report concludes of tropical cyclones in the U.S. and Japan, and European windstorms:

Under these climate change scenarios, total average annual damages from these three major storm types could increase by up to $10.5 bn above a baseline of $16.5 bn today, representing a 65% increase.

My analysis below focuses on the two largest contributors to these costs, tropical cyclones in the U.S. and Japan. First, it needs to be observed that the report does have an enormous oversight:

These loss estimates do not include likely increases in society’s exposure to extreme storms, due to growing, wealthier populations, and increasing assets at risk. For example, if Hurricane Andrew had hit Florida in 2002 rather than 1992, the losses would have been double, due to increased coastal development and rising asset values. Adaptive measures to limit vulnerability could prevent costs escalating.

Why does this matter? Consider Japan, which the report estimates will see its population reduced by half over the next 100 years. By not factoring in this decrease in exposure, the report overestimates the future impacts of climate change by a factor of two. In other words, if today’s population of Japan was half its present value, its current baseline of average tropical cyclone damages would be proportionately lower. It is incomplete, at best, to project future damages by holding society constant and simply changing the climate. Society changes in big ways, and these also must be considered in any projection. The failure to consider societal change sets the stage for misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the ABI reports.

On to the data:

From Table 6.4 we find a baseline of total losses for the US and Japan related to tropical cyclones of 13.5 billion (9.5 and 4.0, respectively). In the ABI Technical Report (PDF, Table 3.7 on p. 38) we see that the total losses increase by the following amounts for a doubling of CO2 by the 2080s:

Wind speed increase US Japan
4% 4.4 1.6

6% 6.8 2.5

9% 11.3 4.1

The ABI also provides data that would allow for a sensitivity analysis of the influence of changing per capita wealth and populations on future damages. Here is what is reported in ABI Technical Report tables 3.8 and 3.9 for population and wealth out to 2100 (2004 = 100):

US Japan

Wealth 262 280

Population 267 50

Since the climate changes impacts are projected to 2085, we need to adjust this table to 2085 through interpolation (2004 = 100):

US Japan

Wealth 236 259

Population 231 57

So this gives a combined change in population and wealth for the US and Japan, 2004-2085, under the assumptions of the ABI as follows:

US = 2.36 * 2.31 = 5.45
Japan = 2.59 * .57 = 1.48

So using the framework we had presented in an earlier post to examine the sensitivity of losses to future climate and societal changes:

Baseline US = 9.5
Increase related to changing climate, society constant (4%, 6%, and 9%) = 4.4, 6.8, 11.3
Percentage increase over baseline = 40%, 63%, 103%
Increasing damage as a function of societal changes (climate constant) = 51.8
Percent increase of societal changes over baseline = 545%

Sensitivity ratio, societal factors to climate factors, US case:

13.6 to 1
8.7 to 1
5.3 to 1

Baseline Japan = 4.0
Increase related to changing climate, society constant (4%, 6%, and 9%) = 1.6, 2.5, 4.1
Percentage increase over baseline = 46%, 72%, 119%
Adjusted for population decrease = 26%, 41%, 68%
Increasing damage as a function of growing wealth (climate constant) = 10.4
Percent increase of societal changes over baseline = 259%

Sensitivity ratio, societal factors to climate factors, Japan case:

10 to 1
6.3 to 1
3.8 to 1

In Table 3.5 in the Technical Report the ABI estimates that climate mitigation could reduce from about 20% to 80% of the projected increases in damages related to climate change, or from $1.2B (0.2 * (4.4+1.6)) to $12.3B (0.8 * (11.3+4.1). Setting aside the inter-related effects of societal and climate change as well as the baseline value (which consequently makes this calculation very conservative), by contrast efforts to reduce vulnerability could reduce future damages by as much as $62.2 billion (51.8 + 10.4). In other words reducing vulnerability is between 5 and 52 times more effective than mitigation. This is the same conclusion that we reached in our published work on this subject.

Unfortunately, the information found in the ABI report is sometimes misrepresented. For instance, in an exchange with me in Science, Evan Mills makes the following claim (here in PDF) about the ABI report:

As an indication of the potential value of emissions reductions, the Association of British Insurers, in collaboration with U.S. catastrophe modelers, estimated that U.S. hurricane or Japanese typhoon losses would vary by a factor of five for scenarios of 40% and 116% increase in pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

Perhaps this is just inartful writing, but this claim is decidedly not what the ABI report says, as can be clearly seen from the tables and analysis above. When assumptions and qualifications are dropped, meanings can change dramatically, sometimes 180 degrees as happened in this instance. Less charitably, Mills claim about what the ABI report says is a complete misrepresentation. Elsewhere I have written about the “laundering of grey literature,” and this instance is one worth watching with respect to the next IPCC report.

Contrary to some citations of the ABI reports on climate change, a close look indicates that the reports actually underscore the points we have been making about the relationship of tropical cyclones and climate change. It is worth noting that the analysis in this post takes the ABI assumptions exactly as they are given in the ABI reports. This exercise indicates that only way to conclude that reducing emissions is an effective tool of disaster management is to rig the analysis to guarantee this result by doing two things: (1) freeze society and only allow climate to change, and (2) to disallow vulnerability reduction as a policy response and allow only greenhouse gas reductions. This is of course not how the real world works. The bottom line is that it would be a mistake to cite the ABI reports as in any way contradictory to the work we have done. In fact, I’m going to start citing them in support of our work!

Posted on April 24, 2006 11:36 AM View this article | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

April 23, 2006

Conflicted about Conflicts of Interest?

On climate change, do the media, scientists, and commentators treat possible conflicts of interest equally across the political spectrum? Based on the anecdote reported below, it appears not.

First the precedent. Imagine if a prominent non-scientist responsible for editing official government reports on climate change was at the same time being paid to engage in advocacy work related that that issue. You and I would probably have some concerns, no? This situation is not so far from a true story.

Last fall, a senior staff member in the Bush Administration’s Council on Economic Quality resigned after it was revealed in the New York Times that he had edited government reports related to climate change. As The New York Times reported,

Philip A. Cooney, the former White House staff member who repeatedly revised government scientific reports on global warming, will go to work for Exxon Mobil this fall, the oil company said yesterday.
Mr. Cooney resigned as chief of staff for President Bush's environmental policy council on Friday, two days after documents obtained by The New York Times revealed that he had edited the reports in ways that cast doubt on the link between the emission of greenhouse gases and rising temperatures.

A former lawyer and lobbyist with the American Petroleum Institute, the main lobbying group for the oil industry, Mr. Cooney has no scientific training.

Much concern, appropriately in my view, was expressed at the time that Mr. Cooney’s ties to an organization with a vested political agenda on climate change made it unseemly at best to have him involved with editing a government report on climate change (although as I wrote at the time, the edits themselves were not so significant). For instance, one member of the press asked the following of President Bush’s spokesman, Scott McClellen,

"Scott, on Philip Cooney, you said earlier today that the White House has been -- that he had been looking at other options for some time. With his move to Exxon, are there concerns now about at least an appearance of impropriety?"

McClellen avoided the question, of course.

Now consider this case. Last night HBO aired a documentary on global warming (which I did not see). The program describes itself as focused on describing the problem posed by global warming and recommending solutions. Its producer, Laurie David, claims that the documentary to be non-partisan, but at the same time the program clearly describes its mission as one focused on advocacy. The writer of the program is identified as Susan Joy Hassol.

Ms. Hassol, interestingly enough, currently serves as the Technical Editor for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program’s report on Climate Change Science Program Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences (authors are listed here in PDF). She was also a lead author of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (here in PDF) and edited the U.S. National Assessment (here in PDF).

I am sure that Ms. Hassol must be good at what she does, given her resume (a short but incomplete bio is here in PDF), though she is clearly not a scientist and it is unclear what subject(s) her degree(s) may be in. Ms. Hassol is not shy about her political agenda on climate change, as indicated by this interview last week in the Aspen Times:

Hassol said specific mention of Kyoto is not in the final version [of the HBO film], even though she felt it was important.
"There was an effort not to want to alienate anyone," she said, though she said politics is an essential part of solving global warming.

"We need to have a law in this country that makes it no longer free to dump carbon into the atmosphere," she said. "Why wouldn't you do that? It's so cheap to burn fuel and burn coal. The costs of climate change are not built in to the costs of burning fossil fuels, and they should be."

However, the film does not include those points.

"I raised the idea," she said. "Their eyes glazed over. You just can't do everything in one hour. It was tough. There were a lot of things I wanted to include that we couldn't."

Even with the restrictions on some of the material, she is excited about the solutions presented, from energy efficiency to new technologies.

"We have an enormous challenge, yet it's not an impossible challenge," she said. "It can be addressed. We can't stop it cold. This is definitely the largest challenge humanity has ever faced."

So here is the situation: A prominent non-scientist responsible for editing official government reports on climate change is at the exact same time being paid to engage in advocacy work related that that issue. To quote the media question to Scott McClellen regarding the Phil Cooney affair, “are there not indications of at least the appearance of impropriety?”

Let’s get the obvious differences out of the way – Mr. Cooney worked as a government employee for the President in the White House, while Ms. Hassol serves as a paid consultant for the government. ExxonMobil is a favorite target of activists, and the environmental groups associated with the HBO special are much less visible. Those differences aside, my question is, is it fair for Mr. Cooney to serve as the focus of attention for his possibly conflicted role in the preparation of official government reports on climate science, and Ms. Hassol to get a free pass while also editing major government science reports? Or think of it this way, if Mr. Cooney has been an outside consultant editing the same reports, while also in the pay of ExxonMobil (or any other group with a vested interest) would that have lessened the focus on his role? I think not. Let me reiterate that this post is not to disparage either Mr. Cooney or Ms. Hassol, but to compare and contrast their very similar professional roles and how it seems that each has been treated very differently by the media and commentators, and certainly by scientists. Does this situation say something about different standards applied to different people on this issue, depending upon whose politics they happen to advocate? Are we conflicted about conflicts of interest?

Posted on April 23, 2006 09:53 AM View this article | Comments (67) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

April 21, 2006

BBC on Overselling Climate Science

The BBC has a really excellent half-hour program on the overselling of climate science. A short news story accompanies the program, but it is really worth listening to the program in full, and it is available here. The program makes a compelling case that climate science has, in many instances, been oversold. A central focus on the program is the path between scientific publication, official press release, and media reporting. The BBC program finds fault at all three stops. I have a few thoughts on the program after the jump.

First, the BBC critiques a number of areas of arguably exaggerated climate science and a card-carrying climate skeptic is nowhere to be found. This is smart and responsible reporting, given the intense politicization of the climate issue. In a comment posted at the Climate Audit weblog the producer of the piece explains (in response to an earlier comment about the program’s conclusion that it should give skeptics little comfort -- a conclusion that the earlier commenter called a “rider”),

I produced the documentary. I think what you describe as the rider was important because we wanted to move beyond the sceptics v believers argument. I think the programme was better for not featuring sceptics, that the true believers could just dismiss.
Climate science needs to be put under the same degree of public scrutiny as politics, business and other scientific fields. This can’t happen if you have to choose to be either a partisan sceptic or an uncritical believer.

It would be oh-so-easy for someone to simply dismiss the BBC story had they not carefully chosen who they interviewed. On numerous occasions the program clearly described that the people that they were interviewing actually believe that climate change is real and a problem. As the news story accompanying the program notes,

All of the climate scientists we spoke to fervently believe global warming is being caused by human activity. Many agree there's also a major problem with alarmism. As one scientist said: "If we cry wolf too loudly or too often, no-one will believe us when the beast actually comes for dinner."

Second, the program interviews Hans von Storch and Steve Rayner, two extremely thoughtful observers of and participants in climate science. In January, 2005 we highlighted this passage from a paper that von Storch had written with Nico Stehr and Dennis Bray:

We need to respond openly to the agenda-driven advocates, not only skeptics but also alarmists, who misuse their standing as scientists to pursue their private value-driven agendas. This is a tragedy of the commons, namely that the short term gains (in terms of public attention; success of specific political agendas; possible funding) of a few are paid for on the long term by the scientific credibility of the whole discipline. Instead, sustainability requires that the discipline of climate science to provide the public with options of policy responses to the challenge of climate change, and not to prescriptively focus on only one such option (i.e., maximum reduction of GHG emissions).

von Storch and Stehr also teamed up on an essay which appeared in January 2005 in Der Spiegel in which they wrote,

Sadly, the mechanisms for correction within science itself have failed. Within the sciences, openly expressed doubts about the current evidence for climatic catastrophe are often seen as inconvenient, because they damage the "good cause," particularly since they could be "misused by skeptics." The incremental dramatization comes to be accepted, while any correction of the exaggeration is regarded as dangerous, because it is politically inopportune. Doubts are not made public; rather, people are led to believe in a solid edifice of knowledge that needs only to be completed at the outer edges.
The result of this self-censorship in scientists' minds is a deaf ear for new and surprising ideas that compete with or even contradict conventional patterns of explanation; science degenerates into being a repair shop for popular, politically opportune claims to knowledge. Thus it not only becomes sterile; it also loses its ability to advise the public objectively.

Steve Rayner from Oxford whose perspectives were highlighted here just last month warned of the “danger of using bad arguments for good causes.”

Third, that exaggerated climate science via press release is often used as a tool of stealth (or even overt) political advocacy has been well documented in, of all places, the peer reviewed literature. Consider the following two articles:

Henderson-Seller, A., 1998. Climate whispers: Media communication about climate change. Climatic Change 40:421-456. (link, subscription required)
Ladle, R. J., P. Jepson, and R. J. Whittaker, 2005. Scientists and the media: the struggle for legitimacy in climate change and conservation science, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 30: 231-240. (PDF)

These articles indicate that scientific community has at its disposal solid information based on practical experience and academic knowledge of communication on how to avoid misrepresentations of climate science, whether willful or by accident.

The BBC program is a breath of fresh air because it breaks out of the stale skeptic vs., believer (to use their words) framing of almost all discussions of climate change. Such efforts to regulate excess without falling into a clearly defined, pre-existing political battle are far too rare in this area. Here’s hoping that more media, and more scientists, see the value in such a third-way approach for keeping both skeptics and believers in check. In the long run, it is science that will benefit.

Posted on April 21, 2006 12:03 AM View this article | Comments (29) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

April 20, 2006

New Article and Podcast

What does British philosopher Stephen Toulmin have in common with George Bush's science advisor John Marburger?

My latest column for Bridges is out and is titled, "Science Policy Without Science Policy Research." This time the folks at the Office of Science & Technology at the Embassy of Austria in Washington, DC have also produced a podcast, which can also be heard online. See the essay, hear the podcast, and learn the answer to the question posed above here. The entire issue of Bridges is worth your attention.

Posted on April 20, 2006 06:10 PM View this article | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Gathering Storm | Science Policy: General

Some Simple Economics of Taking Air Capture to the Limit

A while back we discussed the notion of “air capture” which refers to the direct removal of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and referenced the work of David Keith at the University of Calgary. David has an excellent paper on this in the journal Climatic Change, available here, and David’s views on my earlier post can be found here.

With this post, I’d like to engage in some simple math on the economics of air capture. Think of this exercise a bit like the mathematician's tendency to take things to their limit. In a policy sense, exploring air capture is also a bit like taking things to the limit. If climate change is defined as a problem of increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 (and other greenhouse gases), then it is logical that the solution would be to stop that increase, and some form of air capture is a logical way to do that (please note that I have not said anything about technical feasibility or economic efficiency). The exercise below explores what sort of costs air capture implies using the lower end of Keith’s cost estimates of $200 per ton of CO2 removed from the atmosphere (the upper end is simply 2.5 times higher, for those interested in those numbers). I’d like to motivate some discussion on this subject, because I’d like to understand it further. A central question that I have been pondering is: Given the numbers below, why isn’t air capture technology at the center of debate on climate change?

If the end of the world is at risk, as some have warned, should a politically-neutral technology (i.e., requires no change in behavior, no complicated negotiations, no oversight or compliance regimes, no carbon markets, nada) that may cost as little as 1% of today’s global GDP (yes, a big number I realize) at least be on the table with other options of similar magnitude costs, but with huge political obstacles to their implementation? At a minimum why isn’t air capture technology research at the center of the governmental investment in climate change technologies? I remain completely baffled by this oversight in the policy debate.

Here is the math:

Starting points: 1 ppm of CO2 equals 2.08 billion tons (Thanks to CU faculty colleague Jim White for this info!) At $200/ton air capture cost this equals $416 billion per 1 ppm CO2 scrubbed from the atmosphere.
A. Total Cost for US to reduce emissions to 1990 levels:

A1. Annual cost

1990 US CO2 emissions: 5,005,300,000 tons
2004 US CO2 emissions: 5,988,000,000 tons
Source: US EPA

Lets just say roughly 1 billion tons, annual cost of compliance to 1990 levels via air capture = $200 billion or approximately 1.5% of US GDP.

A2. Incrementally increasing costs

Yearly increase in CO2 emissions = roughly 150,000,000 tons
Annual increase in costs = $30 billion or (0.2% of US GDP)

B. Cost for Global reduction of emissions

B1. To pre-industrial values

From 380 ppm to 280 ppm requires a reduction of 100 ppm or $41.6 trillion dollars (~67% of global GDP, assuming ~$60B global GDP), with an average annual recurring cost of reducing approximately 1.5 ppm or $624 billion (~1% of global GDP).

B2. Brute force stabilization to 350 ppm

Presumably, air capture could be used to “tune” the atmospheric concentrations of CO2 to some desired concentration. From 380 to 350 ppm requires an initial reduction of 30 ppm or $12.5 trillion dollars (~21% of global GDP), with an average annual recurring cost of reducing approximately 1.5 ppm or $624 billion (~1% of global GDP).

B3. Brute force stabilization to 400 ppm

From 380 ppm to 400 ppm implies ~10 years of business as usual, and then with an average annual recurring cost of reducing approximately the annual increase of 1.5 ppm or $624 billion (~1% of global GDP). The US share of this cost would initially be approximately 25% (or somewhat less) of this total or $151 billion. Developing country costs would start out small and would increase as their economies (and emissions) grow. My first impression is that these numbers and time frame seem surprisingly reasonable.

How would any of this be paid for? I don’t know and haven’t given this much thought. But the numbers at the lower end, e.g., $151 billion for the U.S., seem to be well within the range of a gasoline or carbon tax, which could be phased in very gradually over the next 10 years.

Some caveats and notes: CO2 isn’t the only important greenhouse gas, but it is important. Cost estimates are estimates, Keith says they might be accurate to within a factor of 3, and given what I know about the uncertainty in past efforts at technological forecasting the costs could be much higher or much lower, and it is worth noting that cost estimates of this sort often wind up being far too high than what proves to be the case in reality. Nonetheless, the best data on air capture technologies will come from actual engineering experiments. As David Keith writes in his Climatic Change paper and on our blog, in reality air capture would make the most sense as a complement to other forms of mitigation and sequestration. My point here is not to propose an optimal policy in any way, but to take air capture to the limit. I am not advocating air capture as a solution (I simply don’t know enough), but I am advocating air capture as a contribution to the debate on climate change. And of course none of this addresses adaptation to climate or climate change. And above all – caveat emptor!

Posted on April 20, 2006 06:37 AM View this article | Comments (38) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Energy Policy

April 19, 2006

Long Live the Linear Model

Scholars who study the role of science in society have long dismissed the so-called “linear model” of science as descriptively inaccurate and normatively undesirable. In fact, within this community, such discussions are often viewed as pretty old stuff. However, when it comes to practicing scientists and many policy makers, the knowledge of the science studies crowd seems pretty far removed.

The linear model holds that investments in basic research are necessary and sufficient to stimulate scientific advancements, motivate technology developments, and bring products and serves to the market, where society benefits. The linear model was championed in Vannevar Bush’s post-war science policy manifesto titled “Science: the Endless Frontier” and has been fundamental to modern science policy ever since. Here is a graphic I made up illustrating the linear model.

linear model.png

I am reminded almost daily at the depths to which the linear model shapes science policy, science advocacy, and science politics. Yesterday I came across an op-ed which used the linear model to argue for increased funding, at an exponential rate it seems, for health research, based on the linear model. Here is an excerpt:

In 2002, roughly one-third of the papers were from US research groups. By 2004, US groups accounted for only one-quarter of the publications. Government policy may be among the factors contributing to the gap between US and international publications in the field.
Why worry about this trend? The answer lies with our biomedical ''discovery machine," which operates on a seven-step assembly line:

1.) An academic scientist designs an experiment to answer an important question.

2.) The scientist applies to the government to fund the research.

3.) The money pays for students and fellows who conduct the research.

4.) The results are published in journals, which advance the field.

5.) An invention may result. This may lead to a patent, which then is licensed to a start-up company.

6.) With a monopoly granted by the patent, the company attracts venture capital. If it is successful, the company grows.

7.) Years later, the discovery becomes a therapy for patients.

It takes $28.8 billion, the annual budget of the NIH, to prime this machine. Every year, the money generates an astonishing amount of fundamental knowledge and thousands of biomedical discoveries. With no initial funding, this apparatus stops at Step 1.

With no money, what do the scientists do? They choose other careers. Worse, they leave to do research in other countries.

When scientists abandon their laboratories, a field can vanish. A scientific discipline is designed to grow exponentially. A professor will train a handful of students, some of whom go on to become professors and train more students. Some PhDs enter industry, where they lead projects and hire more trained workers. Funded properly, this collection of specialists becomes a formidable force, building research centers, driving innovation, and creating business sectors. The government front-loads the process; ingenuity and free enterprise takes care of the rest.

Scientists often get quite worked up when scientific knowledge is mispresented in the media, and rightly so. However, it seems that the bar is set quite a bit lower when it comes to the (mis)representation of knowledge from science studies.

Posted on April 19, 2006 10:20 AM View this article | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Gathering Storm | Science Policy: General

An Outsourcing Urban Myth

In today’s New York Times David Leonhardt has a column which debunks the supposed exodus of radiology work to India, finding such claims to be vastly overstated:

A few years ago, stories about a scary new kind of outsourcing began making the rounds. Apparently, hospitals were starting to send their radiology work to India, where doctors who make far less than American radiologists do were reading X-rays, M.R.I.'s and CT scans.
It quickly became a signature example of how globalization was moving up the food chain, threatening not just factory and call center workers but the so-called knowledge workers who were supposed to be immune. If radiologists and their $350,000 average salaries weren't safe from the jobs exodus, who was?

On ABC, George Will said the outsourcing of radiology could make health care affordable again, to which Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York retorted that thousands of American radiologists would lose their jobs. On NPR, an economist said the pay of radiologists was already suffering. At the White House, an adviser to President Bush suggested that fewer medical students would enter the field in the future.

"We're losing radiologists," Representative Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, said on CNN while Lou Dobbs listened approvingly. "We're losing all kinds of white-collar jobs, all kinds of jobs in addition to manufacturing jobs, which we're losing by the droves in my state."

But up in Boston, Frank Levy, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, realized that he still had not heard or read much about actual Indian radiologists. Like the once elusive Snuffleupagus of Sesame Street, they were much discussed but rarely seen. So Mr. Levy began looking. He teamed up with two other M.I.T. researchers, Ari Goelman and Kyoung-Hee Yu, and they dug into the global radiology business.

In the end, they were able to find exactly one company in India that was reading images from American patients. It employs three radiologists. There may be other such radiologists scattered around India, but Mr. Levy says, "I think 20 is an overestimate."
Some exodus.

Nonetheless, Leonhardt suggests that issues related to outsourcing remain:

For now, the practical effect on radiology is small. At its highest levels, the United States health care system may be the best the world has ever known. India doesn't even have many radiologists today, let alone a large number who measure up to American standards.
But that's going to change. Eventually, Indian doctors will be able to do the preliminary diagnoses that are a big part of radiology. Something similar will happen in accounting, architecture, education, engineering and the law, as Mr. Levy and his colleagues suggest in the coming Milken Institute Review.

These fields tend to be regulated already, giving them noble excuses — like certification, client privacy and legal accountability — to put up trade barriers. But the real reason will usually be a simple desire to protect jobs and salaries.

When factory workers have asked for that kind of protection, the country has told them no. So why does the answer change when the request comes from a wealthier, more influential group of workers?

Posted on April 19, 2006 07:31 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Gathering Storm | International

April 18, 2006

Congressional Opinions on Climate Science and Policy

Thanks to Chris Weaver who posted a link yesterday in the comments to a very interesting recent poll (here in PDF) from the National Journal on views of members of Congress on climate science and policy. The poll provides some empirical evidence to support a number of arguments made here on Prometheus. Here is my interpretation of the significance of the poll:

1) The poll asks, “Do you think it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made pollution?” The replies are interesting with 98% of Democrats saying “Yes” and only 23% of Republicans saying “Yes.” Presumably, “beyond a reasonable doubt” means with greater than 95% certainty, so the question requests a level of certainty greater than that expressed by the 2001 IPCC which expressed a 64%-90% certainty on the same question. So members of both parties need to go beyond the most recent IPCC to answer this question. They could be steeped in the most recent science, but I’d guess there is more than a small ideological element at play here, on both sides. I haven’t seen the most recent drafts of the 2007 IPCC, but I assume that it will come out much more consistent with what the Democrats believe. Nonetheless, an important observation here is that, as has been found in many areas, the views of members of Congress are more ideologically determined than those of their party membership among the general population. In opinion polls of the public asking the same question, Democrats do not show such unanimity of opinion, and Republican views are not so consolidated. I chalk this down to the effects of gerrymandering of Congressional districts which has often been pointed to as a key factor in a legislature far more ideological than the people who they actually represent.

2). But what should not be overlooked, is that even with the party divisions, a clear majority of members of both the House and Senate believe that global warming is real and caused by humans. If the poll numbers accurately reflect Congressional perspectives, then 55 members of the Senate and 251 members of the House (!!) believe that “it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made pollution.” This seems to be inescapable evidence that there is exceedingly little value left in continuing to argue the science of this particular question. Clearly, there are other factors at play here beyond “skepticism” which shapes how decision makers act on climate change. Efforts to educate Congress on the reality of climate change are in my view completely wasted on a majority of the convinced.

3) The poll asks a second question, “Which of these actions to reduce pollution could you possibly support?” and the answers included five options, Mandatory limits on carbon dioxide emissions, Increased spending on alternative fuels, Greater reliance on nuclear energy, Higher fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles, and a Higher gasoline tax. For each of these issues, except a gasoline tax which is not favored by members of either party, there is far more agreement than was displayed on the question of science. And in each case there is evidence of enough support to suggest that agreement across parties might be found on particular policy options. The devil is of course always in the details, but what this poll shows is that debate on climate policy show be taking place in terms of policy options, and not science. There is ample evidence that there is room for compromise across partisan boundaries, without the need to turn Republicans into Democrats or vice versa.

Bottom line: The nation awaits politically creative policy options that can navigate the complicated set of interests of 535 members of Congress to start taking effective action on climate policy. All of the precursors for such action are in place, minus of course the politically creative options. Efforts to debate the science are simply misplaced in such a context. Die hard partisans will no doubt come up with a range of excuses why they cannot compromise, and will gravitate back to the science as a comfortable home for maintaining the present debate. Such partisans typically point the finger of blame at their political opponents, though they should be looking in the mirror. The evidence from this poll suggests very strongly that such reactions are grounded more in a desire to maintain the present gridlock, rather than to move the issue of climate policy forward.

Posted on April 18, 2006 07:47 AM View this article | Comments (16) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

April 17, 2006

A New Article

I have an invited article just out in the magazine Regulation, published by the Cato Institute. The article is titled "When Scientists Politicize Science" (here in PDF). The first part of the article retells the story of debate over the Skeptical Environmentalist, and my views of the role of science in that debate, which I first presented in a peer-reviewed paper in 2004 (here in PDF). The second part gets into the the broader context of science and politics, and in this essay I am more explicit that I have before about the notion of "honest brokers of policy alternatives". Here is a short excerpt:

Instead of the futile effort to keep science and politics separate, it may make more sense to ask scientists to engage more substantively in policy debate, not by taking sides but instead by serving as “honest brokers of policy options.” Such honest brokers might distinguish themselves from policy advocates (who work to reduce available options) by furnishing policymakers with a broad set of policy alternatives and their relative pluses and minuses. The policymakers would then decide what course of action to take.

I welcome comments and reactions. Thanks.

Posted on April 17, 2006 06:32 AM View this article | Comments (19) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

April 16, 2006

Around the Op-Ed Pages this Sunday

Here are some thoughts about a number of related op-eds that I came across this Sunday morning.

From the LA Times last week (and the Boulder Daily Camera today) is an interesting op-ed by Francis Fukuyama about the perils of thoughtful public intellectualism. Here is an excerpt:

Seven weeks ago, I published my case against the Iraq war. I wrote that although I had originally advocated military intervention in Iraq, and had even signed a letter to that effect shortly after the 9/11 attacks, I had since changed my mind. . .
But apparently this kind of honest acknowledgment is verboten. In the weeks since my book came out, I've been challenged, attacked and vilified from both ends of the ideological spectrum. Many people have noted the ever-increasing polarization of American politics, reflected in news channels and talk shows that cater to narrowly ideological audiences, and in a House of Representatives that has redistricted itself into homogeneous constituencies in which few members have to appeal to voters with diverse opinions. This polarization has been vastly amplified by Iraq: Much of the left now considers the war not a tragic policy mistake but a deliberate criminal conspiracy, and the right attacks the patriotism of those who question the war.

This kind of polarization affects a range of other complex issues as well: You can't be a good Republican if you think there may be something to global warming, or a good Democrat if you support school choice or private Social Security accounts. Political debate has become a spectator sport in which people root for their team and cheer when it scores points, without asking whether they chose the right side. Instead of trying to defend sharply polarized positions taken more than three years ago, it would be far better if people could actually take aboard new information and think about how their earlier commitments, honestly undertaken, actually jibe with reality — even if this does on occasion require changing your mind.

Of course, in such a polarized state of affairs, people reading Fukuyama’s warning will simply interpret it to mean that their opponents are the ones who are ideological and unwilling to change their minds!

Along these exact lines, the New York Times has an interesting op-ed by Daniel Giblert, a professor at Harvard, on how people use information to confirm/deny that which they already believed. Here is an excerpt:

Much of what happens in the brain is not evident to the brain itself, and thus people are better at playing these sorts of tricks on themselves than at catching themselves in the act. People realize that humans deceive themselves, of course, but they don't seem to realize that they too are human. . .
A Princeton University research team asked people to estimate how susceptible they and "the average person" were to a long list of judgmental biases; the majority of people claimed to be less biased than the majority of people. A 2001 study of medical residents found that 84 percent thought that their colleagues were influenced by gifts from pharmaceutical companies, but only 16 percent thought that they were similarly influenced. Dozens of studies have shown that when people try to overcome their judgmental biases — for example, when they are given information and told not to let it influence their judgment — they simply can't comply, even when money is at stake.

And yet, if decision-makers are more biased than they realize, they are less biased than the rest of us suspect. Research shows that while people underestimate the influence of self-interest on their own judgments and decisions, they overestimate its influence on others. . .

In short, doctors, judges, consultants and vice presidents strive for truth more often than we realize, and miss that mark more often than they realize. Because the brain cannot see itself fooling itself, the only reliable method for avoiding bias is to avoid the situations that produce it.

When doctors refuse to accept gifts from those who supply drugs to their patients, when justices refuse to hear cases involving those with whom they share familial ties and when chief executives refuse to let their compensation be determined by those beholden to them, then everyone sleeps well.

Until then, behavioral scientists have plenty to study.

In addition, the Washington Post has a defense of nuclear power by Patrick Moore, a former Greenpeace founder who apparently became disaffected. And the NYT has an op-ed by James Lincoln Kitman, New York bureau chief for Automobile Magazine, which complains about the public’s and policy makers’ blunt endorsement of hybrid automobile technologies. Each is fairly nuanced and raises complicated points, which, if you agree with Fukuyama and Gilbert, may be more likely to be spun as wedge devices in ideological battles among people whose views are hardened irrespective of data or argument, rather than considered on their intellectual merits. For my part, I do think that argumentation matters and that many people are open to new information, analysis, and the related evolution of their thinking on policy issues. But this probably does not fully extend to many of the loudest, most certain, and strident commentators that sometimes seem to dominate public debates.

Posted on April 16, 2006 08:40 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

April 14, 2006

Are We Seeing the End of Hurricane Insurability?

Catastrophe (cat) models are computer models of expected losses that allow the insurance and reinsurance industries to have a quantitative basis for calculating the risks that they face and hence set prices in a manner that is actuarially sound (for some background see this post). At least, that is how it is supposed to work in theory. (Warning: This is a long and detailed post.)

In practice things are far more complex, not least because cat models are “black boxes” developed outside of the public view, which makes it impossible to evaluate them independently. Cat models, and their opaqueness, are the focus of an emerging debate between consumer groups and cat model companies. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that in this debate are some indications that hurricane insurance may be changing dramatically. Insurance Journal reported the following last week (Note: Risk Management Solutions (RMS) is a leading provider of “catastrophe models.”)

Risk Management Solutions has defended its hurricane risk models in the face of consumer groups' criticisms that the models are more political than they are scientific and that they are designed to justify insurance premium increases.
RMS declined to address the specific allegations made by the Consumer Federation of America and the Center for Economic Justice but issued a statement claiming that the groups' viewpoint "is a misrepresentation" of its role in the insurance industry.

On March 27, CFA and CEJ wrote to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners raising questions about recent upgrades in the RMS wind models that the groups maintain would lead to "unjustified increases in homeowners and other property casualty insurance rates."

The letter, signed by CFA's J. Robert Hunter and CEJ's Bernie Birnbaum, called for state regulators to increase regulation of RMS and other third-party organizations, including credit-scoring firms, whose work impacts insurance rates and availability.

The groups also blasted state regulators for failing to closely monitor the activities of RMS and other third-party rating organizations.

The consumer watchdogs referred to a recent announcement buy RMS that it is changing its hurricane models. RMS said that "increases to hurricane landfall frequencies in the company's U.S. hurricane model will increase modeled annualized insurance losses by 40 percent on average across the Gulf Coast, Florida and the Southeast, and by 25-30 percent in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast coastal regions relative to those derived using long-term 1900-2005 historical average hurricane frequencies."

The groups, claiming this would mean overall double-digit rate increases from Maine to Texas, contend that while RMS says that this increase is necessary for scientific reasons, "the evidence indicates that the primary reason for the change appears to be not science at all, but politics."

The letter from the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) and the Center for Economic Justice (CEJ) can be found here in PDF. The letter states:

Consumers were told that, after the big price increases in the wake of Hurricane Andrew, they would see price stability. This was because the projections were not based on short-term weather history, as they had been in the past, but on very long-term data from 10,000 to 100,000 years of projected experience. The rate requests at the time were based upon the average of these long-range projections. Decades with no hurricane activity were assessed in the projections as were decades of severe hurricane activity, as most weather experts agree we are experiencing now. Small storms predominated, but there were projections of huge, category 5 hurricanes hitting Miami or New York as well, causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. Consumers were assured that, although hurricane activity was cyclical, they would not see significant price decreases during periods of little or no hurricane activity, nor price increases during periods of frequent activity. That promise has now been broken.

The CEA and CEJ are expressing frustration that the science of hurricanes has evolved since the models were first developed. For its part, RMS goes some distance towards concluding that hurricane history is now irrelevant. In a white paper (PDF) used to justify its new approach to risk, RMS writes:

Given a constant climatological state (or if annual variations from that state are short lived and unpredictable) the activity rate in a catastrophe model can best be represented as the average of long-term history. In this situation there is no need to characterize the period over which the activity is considered to apply because, with current knowledge, it is expected that rate will continue indefinitely. The assumption that activity remains consistent breaks down, however, where there are either multi-year fluctuations in activity or persistent trends. It then becomes necessary to characterize the time period over which the activity in the Cat model is intended to apply.

It does not seem to me that RMS recognizes how profoundly revolutionary this perspective is, or its potential consequences for their own business. What they are say is that the historical climatology of hurricane activity is no longer a valid basis for estimating future risks. This means that the catastrophe models that they provide are untethered from experience. Imagine if you are playing a game of poker, and the dealer tells you that the composition of the deck has been completely changed – now you don’t know whether there are 4 aces in the deck or 20. It would make gambling based on probabilities a pretty dodgy exercise. If RMS is correct, then it has planted the seed that has potential to completely transform its business and the modern insurance and reinsurance industries.

What happens if history is no longer a guide to the future? One answer is that you set your expectations about the future based on factors other than experience. One such approach is to ask the relevant experts what they expect. This is what RMS did last fall, convening Kerry Emanuel, Tom Knutson, Jim Elsner, and Mark Saunders in order to conduct an “expert elicitation”. Here is how RMS described their process and its results:

The experts were asked to address and resolve the following questions:
• What is the expected basin activity of category 1-5 and category 3-5 hurricanes in the Atlantic basin over the next five years?

• What is the expected activity for category 1-5 and category 3-5 hurricanes at U.S. landfall over the next five years?

• How much longer can we expect the recent period of high Atlantic hurricane activity to persist?

• What is the expected activity of category 1-5 and category 3-5 hurricanes in the Caribbean over the next five years?

The experts discussed each question for one hour and a consensus opinion was then established for each question. The main conclusions reached by the experts were:

1. Activity in the Atlantic basin for the next five years is expected to be close to the average of the past 11 years. The probability for the activity to return to levels corresponding to the long term baseline is small over the next five years.

2. The experts each provided perspectives on the probability of the five-year U.S. landfalling rates being above or below certain thresholds, with the probability estimates provided by each expert considered interdependent (under a Poisson assumption). Relative to the historic 1900-2005 baseline, the increases in landfalling activity rates averaged across the group convert into about a 20% increase in the rate of category 1-2 storms and a more than 30% increase for category 3-5 storms.

3. The high levels of activity observed over the last 11 years are expected to last for at least another 10-15 years.

4. The medium-term activity in the Caribbean region is expected to be consistent with the perspective of activity developed for the full basin.

RMS then used the information provided by the panel of experts to implement the five-year view of activity rates in both the U.S. and Caribbean Hurricane models.

In general, expert elicitation is a very useful method for aggregating the views of a community of specialists on focused questions. In this instance, RMS has left itself wide open to some valid criticism. For instance, although each scientist included in its elicitation is well-respected in the field, the four experts represent a small subset of the relevant and available expertise on the questions that were asked. Including more of the community in an expert elicitation would add to the legitimacy of the results, even if the conclusions themselves don’t change. Because the elicitation resulted in a forecast of persistence, I’d guess that including more experts probably wouldn’t much change the results, although it might increase the uncertainty of the conclusions.

Also, RMS conducted its elicitation October, 2005 with the intent that it will shape its risk estimates for the next 5 years. This is wholly unrealistic in such a fast moving area of science. It is unlikely that the perspectives elicited from these 4 scientists will characterize the views of the relevant community (or even their own views!) over the next five years as further research is published and hurricane seasons unfold. Because RMS has changed from a historical approach to defining risk, which changes very, very slowly, if at all over time, to an expert-focused approach, it should fully expect to see very large changes in expert views as science evolves. This is a recipe for price instability, exactly the opposite from what the consumer groups, and insurance commissioners, want.

From the perspective of the basic functioning of the insurance and reinsurance industries, the change in approach by RMS is an admission that the future is far more uncertain than has been the norm for this community. Such uncertainty may call into question the very basis of hurricane insurance and reinsurance which lies in an ability to quantify and anticipate risks. If the industry can’t anticipate risks, or simply come to a consensus on how to calculate risks (even if inaccurate), then this removes one of the key characteristics of successful insurance. Debate on this issue has only just begun.

Posted on April 14, 2006 08:33 AM View this article | Comments (26) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

April 13, 2006

Advocacy by Scientists and its Effects

Frank Press visited us earlier this week. Dr. Press was science advisor to President Jimmy Carter and he subsequently served as the president of the National Academy of Sciences. All in all it was a great opportunity for us, and Dr. Press was extremely generous with his time spent with faculty and students.

One vignette told by Dr. Press involved his response to why it was that the Academy, during his tenure, never saw fit to undertake a study on Ronald Reagan’s proposed Strategic Defense Initiative (or “Star Wars”). Dr. Press’ response was interesting.

He said that there was a petition circulating among the scientific community expressing opposition to the program and that something like 60% of the members of the Academy had signed the position. Dr. Press suggested that this had compromised the ability of the Academy to lend an independent voice to the debate and that any report that the Academy did would therefore be dismissed in the political process. It seems to me that the nation would have benefited from such an independent review by the Academy on this issue. Dr. Press did not shy away from expressing some strongly held views during his lecture and public interview, though he did note that he stays away from petitions.

I am not implying a general principle here, other than to underscore that the relationship of science and politics is complex, and the ways in which scientists choose to engage that relationship, as individuals and as a community, have important and sometimes unanticipated consequences for policy outcomes.

We’ll return to this when the transcript of his visit is available on our Science Advisors website. There are a number of other interesting vignettes as well.

Posted on April 13, 2006 10:56 AM View this article | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General | Space Policy

April 12, 2006

Out on a Limb II: A Verrrry Looong Limb

Kerry Emanuel and Michael Mann have a draft paper (which I haven’t seen, but I’ve seen Kerry present) in which they argue that the multi-decadal patterns of active/inactive hurricane periods in the Atlantic are mainly a function of anthropogenic forcings, including greenhouse gases and aerosols. Related to this work Emanuel makes a bold forecast reported in today’ Palm Beach Post:

"It's unlikely we'll ever see a quiet decade [for hurricanes] for the next 100 years in the Atlantic."

I wonder if we’ll soon hear industry in the eastern US asking for relief from the Clean Air Act requirements justified in terms of reducing hurricane impacts (joke). More seriously, it’ll be a long time before Kerry’s prediction can be evaluated against observations, however, in the short-term, it simply adds to the overwhelming case already in place to enhance resilience to hurricane impacts in those regions known to be at risk to hurricane strikes.

Posted on April 12, 2006 08:54 PM View this article | Comments (12) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

Prove It

MIT professor Richard Lindzen has an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal on the climate debate. He asserts:

Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. . . And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions about accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest. However, even when such papers are published, standards shift.

I will grant him several of these claims – including the mindless labeling of certain scientists as industry stooges or scientific hacks – but the rest of these very serious claims need to be backed up by more than just bald assertion.

As far as certain scientists who are disfavored in the grants process or in peer-reviewed publication because of their political views, I guess I’d say: prove it. I have no doubt that extra-scientific factors often play a role in the publication process and in proposal reviews. However, the nature of peer-reviewed publication and funding is so decentralized that if you can’t publish your work somewhere or get it supported, eventually, well, there must be a reason, and, hint, hint, it’s not an environmental conspiracy.

Make no mistake, funding for climate science is profoundly influenced by political considerations, just not in the way that Lindzen suggests. As Dan Sarewitz and I argued in 2003,

Our position, based on the experience of the past 13 years, is that although the current and proposed climate research agenda has little potential to meet the information needs of decision makers, it has a significant potential to reinforce a political situation characterized, above all, by continued lack of action. The situation persists not only because the current research-based approach supports those happy with the present political gridlock, but more uncomfortably, because the primary beneficiaries of this situation include scientists themselves.

Read that paper here in PDF.

Posted on April 12, 2006 08:45 PM View this article | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | R&D Funding

Boehlert on NOAA Press Policy

Below is a press release from Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), chair of the House Science Committee, detailing a conversation with Vice Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher, NOAA Administrator discussing the PR policy at NOAA. Here's guessing that NOAA will adopt NASA's PR policy in short order. Here is the press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 11, 2006

Science Committee Press Office: 202-225-4275

Joe Pouliot, joe.pouliot@mail.house.gov

Zachary Kurz,
zachary.kurz@mail.house.gov

BOEHLERT URGES CLEARLY DEFINIED PUBLIC AFFAIRS POLICY AT NOAA

WASHINGTON - House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) sent the following letter last Friday to Vice Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher, Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in response to an April 6 story in the Washington Post on concerns expressed by NOAA scientists.

Dear Admiral Lautenbacher:

I appreciated your call yesterday to discuss the concern we share over the report in The Washington Post describing scientists' concerns that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is limiting discussion about climate change. I was pleased to hear once again that you support open and unfettered scientific communication, as you have stated in the past both to me and in messages to NOAA employees.

However, it seems clear that, despite your commitment, at least some scientists at NOAA continue to feel that the agency is not encouraging open communication. (Our staff has heard such concerns repeatedly; the problem goes beyond the few instances alleged in The Post.) NOAA's efforts to attract, retain and make full use of the nation's best scientists will be stymied if your scientists and the scientific community at-large believe that NOAA seeks to limit the discussion of climate science and its implications. And the issue of climate change is too important to countenance any scientists feeling intimidated or constrained about discussing the matter, regardless of whether that feeling is the result of specific policy actions or of misimpressions that create a stifling atmosphere.

Therefore, I recommend that you swiftly take the following steps, which appear to have helped remedy similar concerns at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA):

1) Set up permanently a process that employees will trust by which employees can report concerns when they believe that scientific
communication is being suppressed.

2) Issue a clear and to-the-point policy - not something convoluted or subject to misinterpretation - that states the principles and policies that govern scientific communication at NOAA, the role of the public affairs office in such communication, and any limits on what NOAA scientists can say as government employees and as private citizens.

3) Address in a forthright manner the specific allegations raised in The Post.

4) Make sure NOAA's public affairs staff and science managers
understand the need for openness and the consequences that will ensue if they try to limit scientific discussion.

5) In a timely manner, meet with NOAA scientists around the country to express directly your commitment to open communication and to hear what concerns the scientists may have.

I do not doubt your commitment to openness. I do have to wonder whether that commitment is fully and uniformly being implemented at NOAA and whether scientists and their managers throughout the agency believe the agency is committed to openness.

NOAA scientists play a critical role in understanding climate change and other environmental phenomena. You need to redouble your efforts to ensure that NOAA fosters a truly open atmosphere. I look forward to working with you as you do that.

Sincerely,

SHERWOOD BOEHLERT

Chairman

# # #

109-226

Posted on April 12, 2006 12:38 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Super El Nino Follow Up

In fairness to Jim Hansen, I have an obligation to post this follow up email to his list serve related to his super El Nino prediction that I discussed earlier this week (for those interested in a copy of the revised paper or to get on Hansen's email list, which I'd recommend, I suggest contacting him directly at jhansen@giss.nasa.gov):

Figures for attached "Global Temperature Change" paper are at: ftp://ftp.giss.nasa.gov/outgoing/JEH/pnas11april06/11april2006_figs.pdf
Apologies for another e-mail, but I inadvertently sent the first draft of "Temperature" paper to my full e-mail list, so need to also send out the revised version.

Comments were received from about 10 people -- very helpful -- thanks! I feel guilty about putting so many people to reading a draft. It ended up on a blog and in a newspaper! Interesting world that we live in these days.

Primary comments received:

1. Crichton stuff: downplay or throw it out; gives him too much attention/credit.

I try to downplay it, but for the reason given in the paper, I think that it should not be ignored. He is taken seriously by the highest levels in the government.

2. Super El Nino: lots of criticisms, especially implication (via question "Super El Nino in 2006-2007?") that I
am predicting a super El Nino in 2006-2007.

Present version should make clear that what we are saying is: Global warming has increased the east-west equatorial temperature gradient and that should increase the probability of a super El Nino. It is still a crap shoot, so it requires many rolls of the dice for empirical verification. Even in the last 30 years there have been only two super El Ninos.

We disagree with the contention that the greater warming in the West Pacific might be a figment of the areas considered, or the fact that our map compares the last five years with the late 1800s. The results look the same if we plot the temperature change based on the trends for the entire period of data.

It is true that, by choosing the areas in the east and west differently you can get the El Nino in the late 1870s to look almost as strong as the 1998 El Nino. But we are not claiming that there have never been super El Ninos in the past. I hope that is clearer in the present version.

3. Modern vs paleo (Holocene and last million years) comparison.

This didn't generate a response, but it is the important part. I am becoming of the opinion that even 1C additional warming may be highly undesirable; 2-3C is clearly a different planet.

Overall: this has still not been submitted to a journal or refereed, so take it with a grain of salt - but it is better than first draft. Also, as a couple of you suggested BAMS is not the right place -- it started out as a Crichton piece, but the added parts are more important. I will probably send it to PNAS, as you can tell from the format.

Jim

Posted on April 12, 2006 12:27 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

April 10, 2006

Politicization of Science 101: How to Use Science to Argue Politics, Manipulate the Media, and Silence your Political Opponents

A recipe for effectively using science to advance political aims:

1. Find yourself in a highly political, high-stakes debate that involves considerations of science (or more generally, intelligence).

2. Seek to turn the political debate into a debate about science or information, that is, scientize the politics.

3. Seek to associate your preferred political outcomes with a clear consensus of the relevant expert community, even if this means oversimplifying the issue. This strategy will work best if you use the term “consensus” (scare quotes!) in an undefined manner. Even if there are legitimate areas of uncertainty or debate, keep the focus on “consensus.”

4. Disparagingly characterize anyone who disagrees with your preferred political perspective as a “skeptic” or “contrarian” or “outlying perspective.” Don’t allow any distinction between the typically few consensus areas of knowledge and typically many more areas that have some greater uncertainty. If uncertainty is raised as a concern, emphasize the need for preemptive action in the face of uncertainty.

5. Do whatever you can to associate your opponents with Republicans, Democrats, industry, environmentalists, or a lack of patriotism. The latter is particularly effective.

6. Argue that the media is dealing with mistruths by allowing your political opponents voice because they are not part of the science/information “consensus” (remember, if consensus is undefined you can use it against just about anyone who disagrees with you). Ask the media to favor your political agenda under these circumstances. (If the media can be tricked into thinking that claims about information are the same as political claims, then they just might fall for it, and take sides! Yours!)

If successful, this strategy will allow you to use science to argue for your favored political outcome while denying your opponent the opportunity to do the same, and the beauty of it is that you need not admit to being political at all, simply standing behind the truth, and who could be against the truth?

Two good examples of this strategy in practice are familiar to many of us, and in many ways the political dynamics of information/science are quite similar:

A. Climate science/politics.
B. Bush Administration arguments for going to war in Iraq.

The politicization of science is a bipartisan affair. The real question is whether politicization such as described above is OK (a) in no cases, (b) in all cases, or (c) in those cases in which the ends justify the means.

The more fundamental question that I have about this dynamic, which despite the tongue-in-cheekiness displayed above, is what effect such a strategy -- which I think exists in many venues -- has on the practice of science and the long-term sustainability of science as an effective contributor to policy and politics. Do we risk something in the long-term by using science as a Trojan Horse for political gain in the short term?

Posted on April 10, 2006 04:26 PM View this article | Comments (57) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Risk & Uncertainty | Science Policy: General

University Responsibilities and Academic Earmarks

In yesterday’s Daily Camera (our local newspaper here in Boulder) Todd Neff had a good article on a complicated subject – academic earmarks. Earmarks are directed spending by members of Congress to their district. Earmarks are typically not a large amount when compared to the discretionary budget, but they have been growing in recent years and have caught the attention of a number of members of Congress. Historically, earmarks have been an acceptable and important mechanism for members of Congress to “bring home the bacon” to their districts. Earmarks have to be taken out of existing programs, and thus represent a reshuffling of spending priorities from that originally authorized by Congress. For some programs, like those related to transportation, earmarking is expected and fairly typical (although there are exceptions).

“Academic” earmarks refer to directed spending on research and development programs. Many researchers oppose such earmarks because they circumvent most institutional mechanisms of peer review and thus place politics above merit. In addition, academic earmarks can materially affect the performance of government research programs if the money for the earmark comes from an existing research program. From the perspective of a government program manager, an academic earmark looks very much like an unexpected budget cut. None of this is to say that good work can’t be done under an earmark, only that it introduces a very different mechanism for resource allocation than a merit-based, strategic-focused approach that is difficult enough under ordinary circumstances.

Back to Boulder. It turns out that some of the budgets of NOAA labs here in Boulder are being earmarked, effectively resulting in cuts to programs core to the NOAA mission. In the Daily Camera article I am quoted suggesting that universities need to take a greater role in policing academic earmarks, or else they should not be surprised when in some situation scientific excellence is subsumed to jobs and money. Here is an excerpt:

A 50 percent budget cut is delaying upgrades for supercomputers for modeling hurricanes and improving storm prediction.
An effort to understand how much of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide the United States generates is limping along because of a 30 percent cut.

The sole U.S. civilian laboratory dedicated to monitoring and predicting solar storms, which can knock out communications satellites and trigger power blackouts, is running on 44 percent less money than in 2005.

With the war in Iraq costing more than $4.5 billion a month and entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security on the rise, times are tough for federal "discretionary" programs, which include everything from scientific research to the FBI.

But several National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration initiatives in Boulder are less victims of shrinking budgets than of political horse-trading that increasingly threatens the long-term health of strategic U.S. science programs, some scientists and policy-makers say.

Some of the nation's core climate-research efforts, based in Boulder, have seen their budgets cut an average of 15 percent this year, lab officials say. That's far more than the 8.2 percent drop in NOAA's overall research budget, which fell from about $414 million in 2005 to $380 million this year.

Earmarking science

Earmarking, known technically as "directed spending" and sometimes derisively as "pork," has been around since the earliest days of the republic. It involves legislators directing specific projects to their districts without giving the responsible federal agencies a say.

In its "2006 Congressional Pig Book," released last week, the nonprofit, nonpartisan Citizens Against Government Waste reported 9,964 earmarks it regards as pork, worth $29 billion this year. That's up from 958 such earmarks worth $12.5 billion in 1996.

"If you're generating earmarks for districts directed into projects and the investment is well-supported, that's the way Congress has operated for 200 years," said U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, D-Eldorado Springs.

Mark Udall represents Boulder as well. Here is another excerpt which describes the effects of earmarks on the NOAA labs in Boulder:

The Bush administration and both the House and Senate versions of spending bills requested $13 million for NOAA's High Performance Computing & Communications office. The budget ended up being halved compared to last year's.
The cut happened in a conference committee in November, where a cadre of senators and House members hashed out differences in the legislative bodies' separate bills. A 212-page conference report then went to the House and Senate for an up-or-down vote. There was no explanation for the cut.

"It was killed in conference, which is very tough to deal with," said Alexander "Sandy" MacDonald, acting director of NOAA's Earth Systems Research Laboratory in Boulder, which oversees six NOAA atmospheric research divisions.

The Boulder supercomputers are key tools in improving forecasters' ability to predict weather in general, and severe storms and hurricanes in particular. The cuts came less than three months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast.

MacDonald said NOAA has delayed an upgrade of the supercomputers for nine months and hopes the same cuts don't happen again in 2007.

The same conference report channeled $10.3 million in earmarks to nine programs, money that would otherwise go straight to NOAA.

The conference report offers little hint of what those nine earmarks mean and no mention of their legislative sponsors. One line item, for $1 million, says simply: "Univ of AL Huntsville Climate Research." Another, also for $1 million, reads: "Drought Research Study."

University of Alabama at Huntsville professor John Christy said the climate research involves installing weather stations that will report hourly weather information throughout Alabama.

They relate to the study of climate, generally a long-term affair, in that the stations will provide such information for decades, he said.

Christy said the drought study would assess how irrigation could boost corn production in a state that must import from the Midwest 95 percent of the grain consumed by its 1 billion chickens.

"My feeling is that we were provided with this funding because we were going to make a tremendous contribution to the state of Alabama with it," Christy said.

Such projects are a rounding error compared to earmarks at NASA, which totaled $271 million. But they had a big impact in Boulder. James Butler, deputy director of NOAA's Global Monitoring Division here, said his division's budget is down an average of 15 percent this year.

Among its activities, the lab monitors carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that scientists believe are causing global warming. The division's Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases group, the world's foremost monitor of global carbon-dioxide levels for a half-century, saw its budget slashed 30 percent.

Butler said among the programs the group is paring back is a network of sensors on radio towers and in small aircraft to study how much carbon dioxide land and vegetation absorbs versus how much the nation's collective smokestacks and tailpipes emit.

"This is critical. If we're going to learn about how we're increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we need to know this," Butler said.

NOAA's Chemical Sciences Division in Boulder also faces a 15 percent budget cut, said scientist Richard Lataitis. He said a program focusing on California's torrential rains to connect weather and climate phenomena was cut from $450,000 to about $50,000.

NOAA's Space Environment Center saw its budget drop from $7.2 million to $4 million in the congressional conference report, said Ron Zwickl, the center's acting director. The center monitors and develops systems to forecast solar storms that can wreak havoc with satellite communications and electric utilities.

He said the center is coping without layoffs this year but that another year of such cuts would be "nearly fatal."

Given that earmarking is an established practice in Congress, is there really a problem here? And, if so, what might be done? The Daily Camera article offers some perspectives on these questions, starting with a frank admission from Congressman Udall about the political realities of earmarking.

Given the political realities of Congress, Udall said complaining about earmarks is a sensitive issue: "How do I do it in such a way that there's no retaliation in the next budget cycle?" Udall asked.
He said the earmarking process needs structural change to make the decisions less personal, more transparent in terms of their purpose and their congressional sponsor, and subject to an individual vote on their own merits.

The lobbying reform bill the Senate passed 90-8 on March 29 addresses earmarks. The bill does require that "the essential governmental purpose for the earmark" and the name of the legislator backing it be published at least 24 hours before a vote on conference reports.

"It's better than nothing," Udall said.

CU's Pielke said universities should also take action against certain earmarking. He cited the University of Michigan as an example of an institution with strict policies that limit earmarking.

"I don't see Congress necessarily making a distinction between a science project and a road project," Pielke said. "So it's up to the universities on this issue."

On a Web page explaining its policy, Michigan officials say scientific earmarking "wastes taxpayer money and slows the scientific progress that would be made if the same sums were allocated on a merit basis."

"It's something I've pushed at the University of Colorado," Pielke said. "It hasn't gotten legs so far."

From where I sit universities, and perhaps university associations like the American Association of Universities, should consider developing guidelines for earmarking. Specifically, under what circumstances will a university pursue an earmark? What federal programs are appropriate targets for an earmark? What projects should be pursued? What process goes on within the university to determine which faculty member’s project gets put forward for an earmark? From my experience, such questions are uncomfortable at best for universities to debate and discuss.

I sit on the Federal Relations Advisory Committee for the University of Colorado, where we discuss earmarks a lot, and it seems to me that most faculty members are nervous about earmarking, unless it is their pet project being earmarked. It also seems that university administrators have no problem with earmarking, typically arguing that “everyone else is doing it, so we don’t want to be left out.” Of course the reality is that earmarking is never a large amount of resources when compared to the institution’s overall research funding.

What might be done? One model might be the University of Michigan, which has adopted a policy on earmarking. It states:

The University of Michigan supports scientific peer review as the primary and best mechanism to allocate Federal research funds. Accordingly, it is the general practice of the University not to seek and/or accept Congressionally directed or "earmarked" funds.

The Michigan policy does allow for earmarking under certain situations:

In rare instances, the University may choose to undertake efforts to secure directed funding from Congress. Exceptions to the University anti-earmarking policy should be made only when agreed upon by the Vice President for Research, in consultation with the Vice President for Government Relations, the Provost, the University federal relations staff and other executive officers, as deemed appropriate, and with approval of the President. Such exceptions should be limited and made only when based on the considerations listed below and the proposed initiative is so meritorious that the responsible course is to proceed.

The whole policy can be found here.

It seems to me that a leading research university, like Michigan or Colorado, should eschew academic earmarks in general. These universities are so successful in raising research support through traditional means that earmarking smacks of a bit of greed. Further, the negative effects on the R&D enterprise, as illustrated by the effects on the NOAA budget, are far greater than whatever benefits result from the redirected funds. I’ve suggested to our Federal Relations Advisory Committee that we adopt a policy like the Michigan policy; so far, it hasn’t received much support, though I haven’t pushed on this nearly as hard as I could.

Posted on April 10, 2006 07:06 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education | R&D Funding

April 07, 2006

Op-ed Online

The Albuquerque Journal published an op-ed of mine last weekend titled "Science, Politics and Press Releases," and it is now online Thanks to each of you who provided comments on an earlier version.

Posted on April 7, 2006 03:36 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

April 06, 2006

Out on a Limb with a Super El Niño Prediction

I’m not really sure what to make of this, other than there is a dark line being drawn in the sand by NASA’s Jim Hansen and colleagues (PDF):

We suggest that an El Nino is likely to originate in 2006 and that there is a good chance it will be a "super El Nino", rivaling the 1983 and 1997-1998 El Ninos, which were successively labeled the "El Nino of the century" as they were of unprecedented strength in the previous 100 years.

Here is what NOAA/NCEP/CPC says:

Most of the statistical and coupled model forecasts indicate ENSO-neutral conditions in the tropical Pacific through the end of 2006 (Fig. 6). The spread of the most recent statistical and coupled model forecasts (weak La Niña to weak El Niño) indicates uncertainty in the outlooks for the last half of the year. However, current conditions (stronger-than-average easterly winds over the central equatorial Pacific and below-average upper-ocean heat content) support those forecasts indicating that La Nina conditions will continue for the next 1-3 months.

It would of course be incorrect to evaluate the science underlying a single prediction based on a single forecast. Nonetheless, the reality is that Dr. Hansen has bet some of his public credibility in making such a forecast, for better or worse. If he is proven right with this forecast, contrary to all of the models and statistics, then his credibility will rise far beyond its already stratospheric levels. If he is wrong, he will be brought a bit back to Earth by his critics who will use this against him. In short, he is taking a big risk, with potential for a big payoff or a big cost. A final note worth thinking about – a strong El Niño event is typically inconsistent with a very active hurricane season, so if Dr. Hansen is proven right, then a bunch of other folks will likely be wrong (including Bill Gray, NOAA, and others who are anticipating another active hurricane season). Time, and not much of it, will tell.

Posted on April 6, 2006 04:50 PM View this article | Comments (67) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Factcheck.org, part II

After I sent an email to factcheck.org yesterday they responded with an email and modified their online story. I am happy to learn of their commitment to accuracy. However, they don't have it right yet, so I have followed up with them.

The modification reads,

One who does not foresee "devastating hurricanes" is Roger Pielke Jr. He says perceptions regarding hurricanes are skewed by recent major storms, and adds:
Pielke : Claims of linkage between global warming and hurricane impacts are premature . . . (and) any future changes in hurricane intensities will likely be small in the context of observed variability.

Pielke directs the University of Colorado's Center for Science and Technology Policy Research and maintains the Prometheus science policy web log.

My follow-up response to Factcheck.org included the following:

Your amended text is as follows:
"One who does not foresee "devastating hurricanes" is Roger Pielke Jr."

That is incorrect. In 1997 in our book titled "Hurricanes: Their Nature and Impacts on Soceity" (John Wiley Press) we wrote:

"Hurricane impacts are certain to become a more imprtant policy issue in the near future than they have been in the recent past. As long as societal vulnerability to hurricanes continues to increase, we will continue to see damages and casualties increase, making reduction of vulnerability all the more important." (P. 193)

We will therefore continue to see "devastating hurricanes," e.g., at the 2005 AGU meeting I presented a talk discussing the possibility of a $500 billion hurricane.

So I'd suggest something like the following:

"Roger Pielke, Jr., a professor at the University of Colorado, finds the notion of global warming affecting hurricanes quite plausible, but maintains that the ever-growing concentration or people and property on the coast to be a much more important factor in the growing toll of hurricane landfalls."

I do appreciate their attention to getting the facts right.

Posted on April 6, 2006 01:52 PM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

April 05, 2006

Fact Checking Factcheck.org

FactCheck.org has a story up on global warming which has some major errors in citing our work on hurricanes. It states,

One dissenter from the consensus view, Roger Pielke Jr., says perceptions regarding hurricanes in particular are skewed by recent major storms, and adds:
Pielke : Claims of linkage between global warming and hurricane impacts are premature . . . (and) any future changes in hurricane intensities will likely be small in the context of observed variability.

Pielke directs the University of Colorado's Center for Science and Technology Policy Research and maintains the Prometheus science policy web log.

This is wrong on two counts as readers here know well:

1) I accept the consensus view of the IPCC WG I on the science of climate change.

2) Our hurricane work that they cite comes from a peer reviewed paper (in BAMS) which presents research that is well within the range of current scientific discussion on climate change. By suggesting that there is a consensus and dissenting view on hurricanes Factcheck.org gets it wrong.

Posted on April 5, 2006 03:46 PM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Brad Allenby on "Nightmare Science"

Brad Allenby, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at of Arizona State Univeristy, where he holds an affiliation at CSPO, has a brilliant essay online at GreenBiz titled "Nightmare Science." Every scientist should read it closely. Here is an excerpt:

We have, as scientists, established the validity of science through adoption of a process that institutionalizes observation, and thus grants us privileged access to truth, at least within the domains of physical reality. In doing so, we have destroyed authority as the source of privileged knowledge -- and, concomitantly, assumed much of the power that used to reside in the old elite (e.g., the Church).
But now suppose that scientists become increasingly concerned with certain environmental phenomenon -- say, loss of biodiversity, or climate change. They thus not only report the results of the practice of the scientific method, but, in part doubting the ability of the public to recognize the potential severity of the issues as scientists see them, become active as scientists in crafting and demanding particular responses, such as the Kyoto Treaty. These responses, notably, extend significantly beyond the purely environmental domain, into policies involving economic development, technology deployment, quality of life in many countries, and the like.

In short, the elite that has been created by practice of the scientific method uses the concomitant power not just to express the results of particular research initiatives, but to create, support, and implement policy responses affecting many non-scientific communities and intellectual domains in myriad ways. In doing so, they are not exercising expertise in these non-scientific domains, but rather transforming their privilege in the scientific domains into authority in non-scientific domains. Science is, in other words, segueing back into a structure where once again authority, not observation, is the basis of the exercise of power and establishment of truth by the elite. But the authority in this new model is not derived from sacred texts; rather it is derived from legitimate practice of scientific method in the scientific domain, extended into non-scientific domains. Note that this does not imply that scientists cannot, or should not, as individuals participate in public debate; only that if they do so cloaked in the privilege that the scientific discourse gives them they raise from the dead the specter of authority as truth.

Why is this nightmare science? Precisely because it raises an internal contradiction with which science cannot cope. In an age defined by the scientific worldview, which is the source of the primacy of the scientific discourse, science cannot demand privilege outside its domain based not on method, but on authority, for in doing so it undermines the zeitgeist that gives it validity. When demanding the Kyoto Treaty as scientists, it is themselves, not their opponents, that they attack.

Read the whole thing, several times.

Posted on April 5, 2006 12:07 AM View this article | Comments (66) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

April 04, 2006

The Omega-3 Pig

Autumn Fiester, from the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics, has a provocative essay on genetically modified pigs at AJOB. Here is an excerpt:

The new omega-3 pig is the perfect example of what is terribly wrong with American animal biotech research: scientists pursue whatever interests them, and then they try to find a problem for which their results can be hailed as the solution. Instead of having the animal biotech agenda driven by the public’s true needs and values, we have an agenda-less agenda, with individual research teams expending vast resources on frivolous projects the public doesn’t want or need. The backdrop here is that Americans are, at this point, overwhelmingly opposed to this science, and much of this research is federally funded, so the American people actually pay for the research through their tax dollars. We need a biotech strategy that serves the public’s collective interests and conforms to their values.

Dr. Fiester concludes,

All of this is not to say that animal biotechnology can never be morally justified. There may be great good that can be accomplished with a reflective, cautious approach to this science. But instead of the default position being “anything goes,” it ought to be “proceed only with extreme caution.”

This does sound to me a lot like the objections that some have to stem cell research. How should we decide, whether it is genetic modification of animals or human stem cell research, what research is to be allowed and which is not?

Posted on April 4, 2006 01:16 AM View this article | Comments (19) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Biotechnology

April 02, 2006

On the Value of “Consensus”

The notion of a scientific consensus on climate change has become a common fixture in discussions of climate science and policy. What once may have been a useful concept has now become little more than a political touchstone used more often to advance political agendas than to support policy development. Even to discuss this issue, as I am here, is to risk being labeled a “climate skeptic” by the denizens of politically correct discourse on climate. Lest there be any confusion, as I’ve written many times, I accept the IPCC consensus on climate science, and base my readily available peer-reviewed climate policy research on the IPCC scientific consensus.

There is of course a scientific consensus on climate change. But what, exactly, does this mean? Checking in with the dictionary folks at Oxford we learn that a “consensus” is a “general agreement.” And a “general agreement” means that there is an “accordance in opinion or feeling … concerning all or most people.” But a “general agreement” is imprecise, so the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has sought to institutionalize the process of defining exactly what it is that scientists are in accordance on and with what certainty. In 2001 the IPCC issued its Third Assessment Report and in its communiqué to policy makers summarized the Working Group I consensus in 17 pages (hereafter SPM, here as PDF, and the other working groups also produced SPMs).

This is where things get tricky. Consider for example this statement from the SPM:

In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.

How might one interpret this statement? Fortunately, the IPCC has standardized its terminology on uncertainty (see this document in PDF). So an equivalent phrase would be:

Relevant IPCC Lead Authors judge that over the past 50 years that the majority of observed warming has been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations with between 64% and 90% certainty.

But even with the quantification, it is unclear how one should interpret this statement, because the IPCC relies on “expert judgment” – an opaque, negotiated process among IPCC co-authors -- to arrive at its consensus statements and levels of uncertainty. There are other methods (e.g., formal expert elicitation) to derive a consensus perspective, but none can remove the need for judgment and corresponding ambiguity (for more discussion of this point see the End Note below). Think about the following questions that one might ask about this IPCC statement:

Would it be fair to interpret this statement as indicating that anyone who is less than 64% certain that “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations” is a climate skeptic?
Similarly, would it be fair to interpret this statement as indicating that anyone who is more than 90% certain that “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations” is a climate alarmist?

Does the statement in fact allow for scientifically valid views outside the 64%-90% range, with the range simply representing a measure of central tendency?

I have no idea how to answer these questions in a way faithful to the intent of the IPCC, and in my experience it turns out if you ask 5 IPCC contributors you get 5 different answers. The IPCC consensus is remarkably open to interpretation, and consequently we should not be surprised to see it used in very different ways.

For instance, when I read the 2001 IPCC statement from above as a non-expert, I see that the IPCC TAR decided to use the word “likely,” rather than “very likely” (>90%) or “virtually certain” (>99%), which seems to clearly suggest that there was some considerable uncertainty in this statement, i.e., up to a 1/3 chance that the warming over the past 50 years was due to factors other than greenhouse gases. The statement would thus seem to allow a large enough amount of uncertainty to warrant scientifically valid questions about the trend and its causality. And it would also seem that at least in 2001 the climate research community would have agreed with this interpretation, having subsequently focused a considerable amount of research attention on the issues of detection and .attribution related to temperature.

Others interpret the IPCC consensus statements in a much more categorical fashion, for instance, in 2004 Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist and co-host of the RealClimate blog, appealed to and restated this same IPCC consensus statement but completely dropped the references to uncertainty writing (here in PDF),

In the 20th century, global climate warmed by ~0.6°C . . . Most of this warming is due to the rising concentration of CO2 and other anthropogenic gases.”

He then labels people who have doubts about the causes of the global temperature increase – “The attribution sceptics doubt that human activities are responsible for the observed trends.” To be fair, it may be that Rahmstorf and his colleagues at RealClimate believe that the science on this particular issue has now moved from “likely” into the realm of “virtually certain,” perhaps giving us a hint of what to expect in the next IPCC, explaining that

The following scientific findings can no longer credibly be argued to be in dispute:
(1) The observed large-scale warming of the atmosphere and ocean is an entirely expected, and in fact well-predicted, consequence of the human-caused accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

(2) There is no other reasonable scientific explanation for the observed warming.

But until the next IPCC process actually is completed and guidance is formally provided to policymakers, non-experts like me have no choice but to rely on the 2001 IPCC as the most recent authoritative consensus statement of the scientific community. The only alternative that we non-experts have is to pick and choose among more recent science and interpretations of that science according to whose views we trust or feel more politically comfortable with. Preventing this sort of cherry picking through a comprehensive community view was one of the main reasons for the creation of the IPCC in the first place.

In practice, the notion of “consensus” is typically portrayed in pure black and white. You are either with the consensus or you are one of those skeptics, who Rahmstorf characterizes as “frequently dishonest.” And we see this pattern whether the issue is temperature trends as discussed above, or a seemingly even more uncertain issue like hurricanes and climate change. Consider this quote from a recent ABC News story which focuses on the nefarious intentions of the oil industry-funded climate skeptics, “But some continue to promote the idea there are “uncertainties in the science”.”

Such characterizations by scientists and the media can have a chilling effect on scientific discourse because they create powerful incentives to avoid research which may be somehow critical of the consensus, leaving such research primarily to those seeking to challenge the consensus. So as a result, some chose to focus on critiquing the hockey stick, others choose to critique the satellite temperature record, still others focus on critiquing the role of the sun in the climate system, and so on. It seems clear that the orientation that each of these researchers take to the subject of study is profoundly shaped by an interest in either consolidating or expanding the “consensus,” with trans-scientific agendas shaping more than a few perspectives. As a result, many climate scientists have become much more tactical in how they select research topics. If this interpretation is anywhere close to the mark then climate science as a whole suffers because of an adversarial orientation in which scientists pick and choose research topics and stances according to what they want to (dis)prove, not simply what they want to learn.

Underlying much of the tactics of climate science are of course political perspectives. What the ABC News article cited above really means is that some assert that there are “uncertainties in the science” as a rationale for business-as-usual policies on climate change, and it is this sort of characterization of uncertainty that is unwelcome. At the same time, it seems that the mentioning of those very same uncertainties in climate science is OK, so long as one also accompanies that with an appropriate qualification about the need for political action.

Consider that among much of the environmental and scientific communities it is appropriate for James Hansen to state: “Climate models suggest that doubled CO2 would cause 3ºC global warming, with an uncertainty of at least 50%” (PDF). But among many of the same people, the following statement by George Bush is inappropriate, "We do not know how much our climate could, or will change in the future. We do not know how fast change will occur, or even how some of our actions could impact it." Both statements seem to me to be obviously scientifically consistent the knowledge represented by IPCC. The difference is that James Hansen has openly advocated one political agenda and George Bush another. The defining characteristic of a “climate skeptic” does not seem to be only how one views climate science, but how one orients climate science in political context. This explains why it will be extremely unlikely to see Ted Nordhaus and Michael Schellenberger labelled climate skeptics, even though they wrote in Saturday’s New York Times a statement entirely consistent with Rahmstorf’s “attribution skeptics”:

Environmentalists and their opponents have spent far too much time debating whether global warming is caused by humans, and whether the transition to cleaner energy sources will be good or bad for the economy. Whatever the causes, warming is a genuine risk.

They won’t be called skeptics because they also advocate a “Global Warming Preparedness Act.” Politics manifests itself in how various people choose to interpret the notion of “consensus” and use it in politically convenient ways.

In its efforts to precisely delineate a “consensus” the IPCC and those who incessantly cite a universal consensus may be leading us astray. The focus on consensus diverts attention from policy development to endless scientific debates with the pockets of remaining resistance to the consensus, and in the process creates a false impression that securing total conformance to the “consensus” is a prerequisite for action.

As M. Granger Morgan and colleagues remind us, the exact definition of a scientific consensus can be a function of the method used to elicit scientific perspectives. For example, they find that the consensus view on uncertainties associated with aerosol forcing reported by the IPCC in 2001 dramatically underestimated the uncertainties actually held by the relevant experts, they conclude,

The range of uncertainty that a number of experts associated with their estimates, especially those for total aerosol forcing and for surface forcing, was often much larger than that suggested in 2001 by the IPCC Working Group 1 summary figure.

And as well, science advances with surprising findings, new discoveries, and unexpected results. For all of these reasons the precise details of a scientific consensus are always in flux, seeking to pin it down precisely in for it order to sit untouched for 5 or 6 years does not faithfully represent how science works, and more importantly, it does not effectively inform the needs of policy making. For these reasons I wrote last year:

So in addition to arguing about the science of climate change as a proxy for political debate on climate policy, we now can add arguments about the notion of consensus itself. These proxy debates are both a distraction from progress on climate change and a reflection of the tendency of all involved to politicize climate science. The actions that we take on climate change should be robust to (i) the diversity of scientific perspectives, and thus also to (ii) the diversity of perspectives of the nature of the consensus. A consensus is a measure of a central tendency and, as such, it necessarily has a distribution of perspectives around that central measure (1). On climate change, almost all of this distribution is well within the bounds of legitimate scientific debate and reflected within the full text of the IPCC reports. Our policies should not be optimized to reflect a single measure of the central tendency or, worse yet, caricatures of that measure, but instead they should be robust enough to accommodate the distribution of perspectives around that central measure, thus providing a buffer against the possibility that we might learn more in the future.

Until we have a consensus on the diminishing value of the notion of consensus as the keystone of the climate debate, we’ll continue to see the politicization of climate science and the continued gridlock on climate policy. Climate researchers will continue to array themselves tactically with respect to the consensus, ensuring a continuous stream of research results that shade the consensus to and fro. But the reality is, scientists are in general agreement, and at this point effective action on climate change does not depend on either strengthening or more precisely measuring that agreement. The important questions instead are what actions, when, by whom, at what cost, to whom, how, and why?

***End note: From Reilly et al. 2001:

Expert judgment was widely used in preparing the TAR, but the organizers were not able to impose a consistent procedure across the various components. The likelihood terms above were variously assigned on the basis of "judgmental estimates" in the discussion of the science of climate (1) and on using "collective judgment" when discussing the effects of climate change (2). However, little or no documentation is provided for how judgments were reached or whose estimates were reflected. In discussion of mitigation measures (3), the TAR did not report any analysis using these concepts. The TAR states that many hundreds of scientists contributed to the report. In the absence of documentation, readers could easily conclude that reported likelihoods represent a consensus among them (7). This is not necessarily the case (8). Many of the scientists listed as contributors were never consulted about these probability judgments.

Posted on April 2, 2006 04:30 PM View this article | Comments (35) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

March 31, 2006

Prometheus Comment Guidelines

Here at Prometheus we are approaching our second anniversary. Our weblog started out as a student project (Thanks TSR!), which became an experiment in outreach, and now more-or-less a fixture of our Center. The good news is that Prometheus has a wide readership and many valuable comments from thoughtful and appreciated visitors. But at the same time, as our reach has grown, there has been a recent increase in less thoughtful comments, some in the form of hijacking posts, and some in the form of simple anger directed at me and often directed at another commentator. Given these recent events and in order to maintain a high quality site I propose the following guidelines for comments:

1. We’d prefer that you identify yourself in your post. There is a very high correlation between quality posts and people who identify themselves.

2. We’d like discussions to focus on the subject of the post. There are plenty of open thread discussions online elsewhere.

3. Make arguments supported by data. We think that the value of this site is that in enables communication among people with different perspectives to share views and learn from one another.

4. It is OK to disagree with posts or other comments. We discuss a lot of complicated and political issues here on which people will inevitably have different views on. We can learn from people coming from different perspectives.

5. All perspectives are welcomed here. We do not censor or otherwise filter comments, except for the ubiquitous spam and very rare profane submission. I’d like to keep this policy in place, which will be most likely if there is collective sharing in the value of these guidelines.

6. Above all, be respectful to each other in your posts. Don’t make comments personal, don’t sling insults. Do make forceful, well crafted arguments.

7. Help us maintain these standards by explicitly policing one another.

These guidelines are obviously subject to change and we’d welcome your suggestions for improving them. We are very happy with our growing readership, and want to continue to maintain our same high standards. For my part, I will seek to avoid engaging with commentators who chose not to follow these guidelines.

Thanks!

Posted on March 31, 2006 07:44 AM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R.

March 30, 2006

NASA in the Political Minefield

NASA, which has come under fire recently for its management of scientist’s access to the media, has run more issues involving politics. According to the Houston Chronicle today,

Five days after NASA administrator Michael Griffin urged a Houston audience to keep U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay in office, a spokesman denied Wednesday that Griffin had made a formal campaign endorsement.
"The space program has had no better friend in its entire existence than Tom DeLay," Griffin said Friday of DeLay's legislative support of the agency. "He's still with us and we need to keep him there."

With DeLay present, Griffin spoke at the annual Space Center Rotary Club of Houston's nonprofit National Award for Space Achievement Foundation gala.

Griffin had no intention of soliciting votes for the 11-term lawmaker, NASA spokesman Dean Acosta said.

"He did not make an endorsement and will not get involved in any political campaigns," Acosta said. "If his words of thanks to Tom DeLay were misconstrued as an endorsement, then he regrets that."

Why does this matter? Well, the law for one reason,

The black-tie awards dinner at which Griffin made his remarks was held after regular working hours, but Griffin was representing the space agency and giving an award to a NASA employee, astronaut Eileen Collins.
Griffin's travel to Houston from Washington, D.C., for the dinner was paid by NASA rather than the Rotary Club, said event organizer Floyd Bennett of the United Space Alliance.

The independent Office of Special Counsel, which administers the Hatch Act, will investigate the matter, spokesman Loren Smith said.

Employees who violate the Hatch Act can be removed from office, according to the Office of Special Counsel, or suspended without pay.

Determining whether Griffin was acting in an official or after-hours capacity "really is a close call," said Corey Ditslear, a political scientist at the University of North Texas.

According to one political scientist, this is a tempest in a teapot:

But any misstep by Griffin was relatively minor, said Stephen Hess, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University.
"Even in this context, I am not going to get too uptight about it," Hess said. "When (officials such as Griffin) make statements that can be interpreted as political statements, the government should not be underwriting it. You just caught the fellow with a little egg on his vest, looking untidy."

Just goes to show that in highly politicized contexts, minefields abound.

Posted on March 30, 2006 07:00 AM View this article | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General | Space Policy

March 29, 2006

Pielke Sr. and Jr. Profiled in Nature

Here is a link to the article.

Posted on March 29, 2006 10:37 AM View this article | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

Once Again Attributing Katrina’s Damages to Greenhouse Gases

Last fall we took issue with Kevin Trenberth, NCAR scientist and IPCC lead author responsible for the chapter on hurricanes, when he gave a presentation to policy makers that attributed part of Katrina’s rainfall to greenhouse gas emissions, and suggested that the added rainfall may have caused the New Orleans flooding and damage.

When I blogged this, some folks accused me of misquoting him or “putting words in his mouth.” Fortunately, Kevin has spoken to the media this week in New Zealand on this subject, and we can let his own words speak for themselves. Here is a how the Dominion Press reported Kevin’s thoughts on Katrina:

“Hurricane Katrina, which ripped through New Orleans last year, leaving a repair bill of up to US$200 billion, is a sign that humans ought to be paying more attention, he says. "This is not to say Katrina was due to global warming . . . There is an influence of global warming, something like an 8 per cent influence.
"So if about 305 millimetres of rain falls in New Orleans that means about an extra 25.4mm of rainfall more than might have occurred anyway. Often it's the straw that broke the camel's back. Was 25.4mm of extra rainfall enough to cause the levees to break? The big flooding event in Manawatu, that may be an example of the same kind of thing . . ."

Scientists routinely tell us that we cannot attribute the effects of anthropogenic climate change to any one particular event, and while Trenberth does say that we cannot attribute the existence of Katrina to greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), he does suggest that once it does exist we can attribute precisely 25.4 mm of rainfall to GHGs, and that this difference could have led to the disastrous flooding of New Orleans (as well as another flood event in New Zealand). Here is what we said about this last fall:

Perhaps there are good scientific reasons for making such a claim, but they probably should go through peer review before being announced as fact (with no sense of uncertainty!) before policy makers. Especially when other scientists, like Kerry Emanuel, assert that such precise attribution is not possible. And further, given that the IADWG has published in JOC May 2005 that attribution of trends in precipitation to GHGs has not yet occurred, it stretches the credulity of this non-climate scientist to think that such precise attribution is possible for specific events.

I am a supporter of scientists speaking their minds, and I support Trenberth’s right to say what he believes. Kevin is a prolific scientist who is widely cited in the community. However, on this issue he is way out on a limb, especially in his comments about damage, a subject on which I have some expertise. In a 1999 paper (PDF) we responded to Kevin’s frequent invocation of the straw/camel metaphor to draw a very different conclusion:

With respect to the relative contribution of climate and societal factors to the flood damage record, Trenberth’s (1997) metaphor of increasing precipitation being the ‘‘straw that breaks the camel’s back’’ is particularly apt. The camel (representing society) is already burdened by the weight of past decisions that have placed people and property into harm’s way. Thus, when hydrologic floods do occur, they can lead to enormous damage. In many instances, such damage is avoidable— society need not wait for the ‘‘last straw’’ to act.

Kevin’s statements on hurricane science and impacts are especially troubling because of his role as the lead author of the IPCC chapter on hurricanes. For better or worse, his credibility, and thus that chapter’s legitimacy, is at risk on this particular issue. [Note: Kevin has an open invitation to respond to this post here, which we will gladly publish.] It is important for the climate science and policy communities to recognize the reality that out-on-a-limb statements by leaders in the IPCC community can seriously damage the credibility of the IPCC and the legitimacy of arguments for action on climate change even if, as some assert, such views have no bearing on the content of the report or are tangential to more important reasons for action.

Posted on March 29, 2006 05:37 AM View this article | Comments (26) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

March 28, 2006

New Options for Climate Policy?

At times we have complained about the lack of a formal mechanism to introduce new and innovative policy options into the climate debate resulting in a Manichean battle over Kyoto. In a short essay for Foreign Policy in Focus, William D. Nordhaus, of Yale University and one of the leading authorities on the economics of climate change, would seem to agree with this perspective in the context of mitigation. Here is an excerpt:

After more than a decade of negotiations and planning under the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), the first binding international agreement to control the emissions of greenhouse gases has come into effect in the Kyoto Protocol. The first budget period of 2008-2012 is at hand. Moreover, the scientific evidence on greenhouse warming strengthens steadily as observational evidence of warming accumulates. The institutional framework of the Protocol has taken hold solidly in the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which covers almost half of Europe's CO2 emissions.
Notwithstanding this apparent success, the Kyoto Protocol is widely seen as somewhere between troubled and terminal. Early troubles came with the failure to include the major developing countries along with lack of an agreed-upon mechanism to include new countries and extend the agreement to new periods. The major blow came when the United States withdrew from the Treaty in 2001. By 2002, the Protocol covered only 30% of global emissions, while the hard enforcement mechanism in the ETS accounts for about 8% of global emissions. Even if the current Protocol is extended, models indicate that it will have little impact on global temperature change. Unless there is a dramatic breakthrough or a new design, the Protocol threatens to be seen as a monument to institutional overreach.

Nations are now beginning to consider the structure of climate-change policies for the period after 2008-2012. Some countries, states, cities, companies, and even universities are adopting their own climate-change policies. Are there in fact alternatives to the scheme of tradable emissions permit embodied in the Protocol? The fact is that alterative approaches have not had a serious hearing among natural scientists or among policymakers.[emphases added]

What, according to Nordhaus, is wrong with Kyoto?

The fundamental defect of the Kyoto Protocol lies in its objective of reducing emissions relative to a baseline of 1990 emissions for high-income countries. This policy lacks any connection to ultimate economic or environmental policy objectives. The approach of freezing emissions at a given historical level for a group of countries is not related to any identifiable goal for concentrations, temperature, costs, damages, or “dangerous interferences.” It is not inevitable that quantity-type arrangements are inefficient. The target might be set to ensure that global temperature increase does not exceed 2 or 3 degrees C or for some other well-defined and well-designed economic and environmental objectives.

I discussed practical problems of implementation associated with the notion of “dangerous interference” in this paper (PDF). And Richard Tol took issue with the justification behind the 2 degree stabilization target of the EU in a post for us here. The key point in Nordhaus’ comment seems to be the need for “well-defined and well-designed economic and environmental objectives.”

Nordhaus points our attention away from Kyoto and toward internationally harmonized carbon taxes. Whether or not such policies represent a practical, realistic, or worthwhile alternative to Kyoto (and Nordhaus makes a strong case that they do), Nordhaus correctly points our attention to the critically important need for options to the current gridlock to be presented and evaluated. To be most effective as input to the policy process, discussion of such options should take place not only among individual scholars but also more formally through authoritative institutions of climate science and policy. The alternative, as Norhaus warns, is that we are left with a "monment to institutional overreach."

Posted on March 28, 2006 02:46 PM View this article | Comments (36) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

March 27, 2006

Wise Words from James Van Allen to Jim Hansen

From a recent interview with NASA's Jim Hansen:

You grew up in Iowa and studied at the University of Iowa under legendary astrophysicist James Van Allen, discoverer of the radiation belt surrounding the Earth. Did that background prepare you for the public debates you've taken up?
The example I gave of Van Allen's influence on students was his demeanor. He was just calm. He didn't get flustered. When I went to NASA, I heard that his proposal for an experiment on a mission to Jupiter was not selected because NASA headquarters was not very happy with him; he criticized NASA repeatedly for its emphasis on putting men in space instead of automated spacecraft. When I mentioned that to him in a letter, he just said, "I know that my positions have not endeared me to people at NASA headquarters, but I take the position that I'm dealing with honorable men."
It's a good attitude.

Posted on March 27, 2006 02:13 PM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

March 25, 2006

A DEMOS Op-ed on Science and Smoking Bans

The folks at DEMOS, a think tank in London, continue to produce really thoughtful stuff. This short op-ed by Jack Stigloe is right on:

Two years ago, I was lucky enough to interview Professor Sir Richard Doll for a project on expertise.
Right up until his death last year at the age of 92 Doll worked tirelessly to convince the world of the dangers of smoking. Thanks to Doll and others we now know, and are constantly reminded by our cigarette packets, that smoking kills – active or passive.

Leaving aside any uncertainties that might blur its edges, this piece of knowledge has saved lives, and allowed policymakers to make better decisions. But, as David Hume told us long before the invention of the cigarette, you can’t get an ought from an is. Science can inform policy, but it can’t determine it. The issue of smoking in enclosed public places might look like a scientific one, but it is also deeply political. . .

As we have seen from media coverage of the issue, the question of whether we should allow or forbid smoking in pubs is about much more than what we know of its dangers. At the very least, it’s also about liberty, it’s about responsibility and it’s about economics.

We must acknowledge that, most of the time, science cannot tell us what to do. Science’s voice must be heard, but it must not drown out others. The smoking ban that disappeared and then reappeared is a political mess. But this should only come as a surprise to those people who thought that there was an easy answer.

Learn more about DEMOS here and on their weblog.

Posted on March 25, 2006 02:12 PM View this article | Comments (29) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health

March 23, 2006

Money Can Buy Happiness

From the Science Coalition:

Dear President Bush,
As members of The Science Coalition, an alliance of more than 60 of the nation’s leading research universities, we are writing to commend you on your efforts to spur new ideas and keep America competitive by significantly increasing funding for physical science and engineering research. Investments in basic science research, most of which is carried out by America’s universities, are a crucial step in continuing America’s status as a leader in innovation.

Posted on March 23, 2006 10:27 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding

March 22, 2006

A View From Colorado Springs

For those unfamiliar with the geography of Colorado, Colorado Springs is not far from Boulder, perhaps two hours drive on a good day. But in some respects it seems pretty distant. A link to an editorial in the Colorado Springs Gazette appeared in my inbox (thanks!) on Senator James Inhofe's request for information on UCAR/NCAR, which is here in Boulder. Here is how it begins:

[Disclaimer: I worked for UCAR/NCAR 1993-2001 and am hardly an unbiased person in this matter. You've been warned. Comments after the excerpt below.]

One senator’s inquiry into the inner workings of Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research, and its parent organization, the University Center for Atmospheric Research, is being construed by some as an act of political intimidation. The senator, James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma who chairs the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, is a global warming skeptic. NCAR and UCAR, which receive federal support through the National Science Foundation, are viewed as leading proponents of global warming theory. That’s led some to allege that Inhofe is trying to pressure NCAR and UCAR into tailoring their research to take a more skeptical view, and of polluting the purity of science with politics.
But we’re not sure Inhofe’s request is out of line. NCAR’s contract with the NSF hasn’t been put up for competitive bid in years — which strikes us as a legitimate subject of inquiry. What else Inhofe might be looking for is unknown. But if he’s searching for evidence that the organizations are engaged in “advocacy science,” rather than conducting unbiased research, that’s a legitimate inquiry as well, since federal funds are involved.

Taxpayers have an interest in knowing they are supporting sound, even-handed, agenda-free science, on climate change or any other issue. And if Inhofe or any member of Congress has reason to doubt this, inquiries are in order.

Some are shocked, shocked by the suggestion that science can be corrupted or co-opted — that researchers at NCAR and UCAR are doing anything other than objective research. How dare anyone question the integrity of “science,” they huff. But that’s a willfully naive view, given the way science, policy, advocacy and big money intermingle in this society.

Scientists are as susceptible to being seduced by political agendas, personal biases and self-interest as any other human beings, in our view. And given the power they wield on so many policy disputes, from global warming to the Endangered Species Act, it’s legitimate to ask if they have agendas.

It’s obvious that scientists have increasingly been crossing the line into advocacy. We find it laughable, for instance, when the Union of Concerned Scientists — which for years has been pushing a radical, left-wing political agenda — accuses the Bush administration of “politicizing” science.

Read the whole thing. Now some reactions.

My thoughts on this are very much along the lines of my reaction to Representative Joe Barton's request for information related to the so-called "Hockey Stick." Here is what I said about that:

From the perspective of climate science or policy Rep. Barton’s inquiry is simply inane. There will be little insight gained on climate or how we might improve policies on climate change through his “investigation.” As Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) has written in response to Rep. Barton, “These letters do not appear to be a serious attempt to understand the science of global warming. Some might interpret them as a transparent effort to bully and harrass climate change experts who have reached conclusions with which you disagree.... If the Committee indeed has a genuine interest in the science of global warming, you should withdraw these letters and instead schedule a long-overdue Committee hearing on climate change.”
Of course, it is doubtful that Rep. Barton’s Committee (on Energy and Commerce, I remind you) actually has any real interest in the science of climate change, except as a tool of tactical advantage in the continuing political battle over global warming. Rep. Barton and others opposed to action on climate change will continue to gnaw at the hockey stick like a dog on a bone so long as they perceive that it confers some political benefits.

1. I do think that it is perfectly fair to question the long-term management of NCAR by UCAR. Some competition might be valuable.

2. We have often discussed the consequences of scientists politicizing science. Like it or not, the reaction of the Gazette will not be unique. Unfortunately, the likely instinctive response of most people -- on all sides of this issue -- will be to exacerbate the politicization.

3. Senator Inhofe is going about this all wrong in my view. If he really wants to investigate UCAR/NCAR, then he should tap some of his colleagues on Senate Commerce and do it via hearings, out in the open, and through established channels of legislative oversight authority. His fishing expedition smacks of political opportunism, and will delegitimize any merit that his efforts might have.

4. For many scientists, it is crucial to understand where the editorial writers for the Colorado Springs Gazette are coming from. Simply opposing, criticizing, or dismissing their concerns will not be a good strategy, if for no reason than their views are likely to be widely shared by a significant part of the population, and both the future of support for your science, and support for the use of your science. depends upon maintaining some degree of legitimacy across the populace. Politicze the scientific enterprise at your own, and society's, peril.

5. In the blogosphere both the Inhofe request and the Gazette editorial serve in many situations as perfect wedge devices which allow people to align according to their political predispositions. This is well and good, but the scientific blogo-subset has to deicde if this is the best way to engage this issue. In my view, it may make things worse.

Posted on March 22, 2006 08:30 PM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science Policy: General

The Big Knob

In 2000, we wrote a paper titled, "Turning the Big Knob: Energy Policy as Means to Reduce Weather Imapcts." The metaphor implied that some viewed energy policies as a means for decision makers to tune the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases in such a way to modulate the number or intensity of extreme events, and thereby also modulate the resulting societal impacts. Frequent readers of Prometheus will know that this subject has been the subject of many discussions on this site of late, and will know that we think that while there are good reasons for concern about climate change, and for reducing GHG emissions, the Big Knob strategy is a loser when it comes to disaster impacts.

Upon hearing from several critics of our work comments to the effect that no one really believes that GHGs can be used to intentionally modulate hurricanes or their impacts, I thought it worth showing the figure below. This was part of a major media campaign by a leading (and typically very thoughtful) environmental group last fall focused specifically on hurricanes (not GHG reductions generally). This image was taken from their WWW site at the time. See the Big Knob?

Posted on March 22, 2006 04:35 PM View this article | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

March 21, 2006

Stem Cells and Vulgar Democracy

Dan Sarewitz has posted the text of a paper that he gave at the AAAS meeting last month titled, “Proposition 71: Vulgar Democracy in Action” (PDF). Here is how it begins:

In 1947, when Congress passed legislation to create the National Science Foundation, President Truman vetoed the bill because it insulated the administration of the proposed agency from direct Presidential control. At issue here was not a simple question of turf or the exercise of power, but a fundamental principle of democratic governance: that publicly funded programs must be ultimately accountable to the public via democratically elected officials. In the decades since Truman’s veto, as the nation’s investment in research has grown from a few tens of millions to about sixty billion dollars, this principle has never seriously been challenged. Indeed, it is precisely this accountability that has allowed the publicly funded research enterprise to maintain its political legitimacy, productivity, and growth through such crises as the Tuskegee experiment and the death of Jesse Gelsinger, and which has stimulated a considerable beneficial evolution of scientific norms in such areas as protocols for human subjects’ research, the treatment of laboratory animals, and the role of gender and ethnic diversity in clinical trials. Democratic accountability, that is, is good for science.
So, in the summer of 2004, when I first read the language of Proposition 71, the “California Stem Cell Research and Cures Act,” I was floored. Written and promoted by a coalition of patients’ advocates and research interests from the academic and private sector, Proposition 71 was of course a response to President Bush’s draconian restrictions on publicly funded embryonic stem cell research. But it was a response that was as extreme in its own way as the President’s actions. Proposition 71 would create a new stem cell research institute, funded by public monies raised through a bond issue, that was effectively insulated from all public accountability through a variety of mechanisms, including the creation of a state constitutional right to conduct stem cell research, a ten-year funding entitlement that “shall not be subject to appropriation or transfer by the Legislature or the Governor for any other purpose,” and a provision that allowed legislative amendment to the initiative only after three years, only by a 70% supermajority of the California legislature, and only “to further the purposes of the grant and loan programs created by the measure.”

Most troubling of all were the proposed mechanisms for accountability, particularly as embodied in the Independent Citizen’s Oversight Committee, whose stipulated membership was made up almost entirely of people whose interests were in some way served by goals of embryonic stem cell research. There was absolutely nothing independent about this committee at all. In summary, as I wrote in an LA Times op-ed in October 2004, “Proposition 71 would put stem cell research out of the reach of Sarewitz democracy—in a move that would seriously undermine the unwritten social contract that exists between government and science in this country.” Conservative political theorist Francis Fukuyama, writing in the Wall Street Journal on the same day, was less restrained, asserting that “Prop 71 is a bad idea, not because stem-cell research is morally wrong, but because it represents a huge, self-dealing giveaway of money from cash-strapped California taxpayers to a small group of institutions and companies that will remain largely unaccountable.” A similar position was taken by the Center for Genetics and Society, a California-based NGO with liberal leanings.

Now of course I recognize that questions of political accountability and the governance of science can hardly stack up to the promise of curing disease. Indeed, at one point prior to the election I found myself in the compromised position of having to debate on a radio program one of the promoters of Proposition 71, a Hollywood director named Jerry Zucker, who, if I recall correctly, had a child with diabetes. No doubt I came off as an ivory tower esthete willing to place abstract principle above the alleviation of a child’s suffering.

As usual, Sarewitz is smart, provocative, and on target. Read the whole thing. (PDF)

Posted on March 21, 2006 07:02 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Biotechnology | Health

March 20, 2006

Representative Boehlert Says "It's Time"

Sherwood Boehlert (R-MI), chairman of the House Science Committee, announced that he will not run for re-election. Here is an excerpt from his announcement:

As I see it, my unwritten instructions from the folks back home were basic and clear: go to Washington, listen to all the arguments, pro and con, weigh all the available facts, and then do what you think is best in our interest and that of the nation.
I have followed those instructions, believing as I do that Edmund Burke was right, more than two centuries ago, when he said,

'Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment, and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.’

My manner of representation and voting record of more than two decades has earned for me the label of moderate.

I’m proud of that label, fervently believing that the overwhelming majority of thinking people reject the extremes of the left and right.

They find stalemate unacceptable and want us to sort out our differences and find common ground. As I see it, that personifies a moderate.

As events of the past year in Washington have documented, this has been the ‘moderates moment.’ There is an abundance of evidence to suggest that our influence has expanded and our moment has been extended.

A few years ago, Congressional Quarterly, the highly respected, non-partisan magazine, conducted an extensive review and analysis of the records and performance of all 535 of the Representatives and Senators. The magazine then developed a list of 50 of ‘the most effective Members of Congress,’ honoring me among them as a ‘centrist’ who works to build consensus.

The magazine went on to say of the group ‘they exemplify skills and behaviors that help them accomplish their goals.’

That made me proud.

Congrats Rep. Boehlert!

Posted on March 20, 2006 02:22 PM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

March 17, 2006

Politicization 101: Segregating Scientists According to Political Orientation

A reporter I know sent to me a press release yesterday titled “Scientists Dispute Link Between Hurricanes and Global Warming.” The press release was disseminated by the TCS Science Roundtable. TCS – Tech Central Station – is often a very useful and informative site for analyses and opinions from a self-described perspective that values “the power of free markets, open societies and individual human ingenuity to raise living standards and improve lives.” As such TCS is very much a special interest group. People can choose to agree or disagree with TCS analyses, or share its values. But in this post I want to highlight the role that university and some government scientists play in the unhealthy politicization of science through their willing association with advocacy groups (like TCS, but also, e.g., environmental advocacy groups), and the increasing tendency for organizations that should serve as “honest brokers of policy options” to transform themselves into advocacy-like groups.

The scientists cited in the TCS press release with information on contacting them to discuss hurricanes are the following:

William Gray, Colorado State University
James O’Brien, Florida State University

Pat Michaels, University of Virginia

Anthony Lupo, University of Missouri-Columbia

Roy Spencer, University of Alabama

George Taylor, Oregon State University

Call me a rocket scientist, but it seems that these scientists in particular are included in this press release because their perspectives, which they may hold very strongly and have good support for scientifically, align in some way with the special interests of the group promoting them. Interest groups have a great deal of power in such situations, because they can selectively assemble experts on any given topic to basically support any ideological position. This is a function of what Dan Sarewitz calls an “excess of objectivity” or the not-so-tongue-in-cheek principle that for every PhD there is an equal and opposite PhD.

Let me emphasize that it would be utter nonsense to claim that this is only a phenomenon that occurs on the political right, where TCS is coming from. For instance, the Union of Concerned Scientists routinely uses university and government scientists to legitimize its views, generally viewed as coming from the political left. However, as we’ve discussed here before, the political right has been more successful at marshalling experts to their causes, but the left is rapidly closing the gap.

Let’s take a look at this behavior from two perspectives. First, from the perspective of the individual scientist deciding to align with an interest group, it should be recognized that such a decision is political. There is of course nothing wrong with politics, it is how we get done the business of society, and organized interest groups are fundamental to modern democracy. Nonetheless, an observer of this dynamic might be forgiven for thinking when they see scientists self-select and organize themselves according to political predispositions that different perspectives on scientific issues are simply a function of political ideologies. We can see how contentious political debates involving science become when filtering science through interest groups is the dominant mechanism for connecting science to policy.

It is this condition of dueling special interest scientists that leads to a second perspective, and that is an institutional approach to providing science advice in a way that is not filtered through a particular special interest agenda. It is this very condition that gives legitimacy to government science advisory panels, National Academy committees, and professional societies. But the role such groups as honest brokers is in my view endangered. For instance, consider a congressional staff briefing organized by the American Meteorological Society last fall on the subject of hurricanes and global warming (see this PDF). This briefing included the perspectives of:

Kevin Trenberth, NCAR
Judy Curry, Georigia Tech

Kerry Emanuel, MIT

All distinguished scientists, but undoubtedly a subset of scientific views (and on its policy significance) on hurricanes and climate change. The AMS took on the characteristics of TCS when putting together this briefing by selecting participants to represent a narrow perspective that was all but certainly shaped by political considerations. In discussing this general issue with colleagues and here on Prometheus, some make the claim that such unbalanced perspectives are needed from the scientific community in order to balance what is considered to be the greater ability of the political right to get its message out. Whether or not the right does in fact have a louder voice, it is important to recognize that efforts to restore some universal balance in public debate and discussions by picking a side in political debate have the ultimate effect of turning organizations like the AMS into what appears to be (or actually is) just another ideologically motivated interest group. Such threats to the legitimacy of scientific committees, assessments, advisory groups, and professional organizations are more and more common.

What we lose in this process are honest brokers. For the more ideologically motivated, such a loss may be no big deal. But for those of us who think that perspectives on science and policy are not purely a function of ideology, then there is a very real threat to the positive role of science in policy and politics.

Today, where does one go for the presentation of a comprehensive perspective on scientific views and their implications for policy? There are increasingly few outlets for such honest brokering, meaning that we all fall back on ideological filters, which means that science is increasingly subsumed to pure politics as a tool of marketing competing ideological agendas.

My advice to scientists:

1. Affiliate yourself with interest groups with open eyes. Recognize what you are doing, and if it makes sense for you then go ahead and affiliate.

2. But at the same time demand of the community’s scientific institutions that they reflect a broad perspective on science and policy. If you agree to participate in an event, a committee, an assessment, etc. look for people with different views than your own, and if you don’t seem them, demand that they be included.

Posted on March 17, 2006 09:00 AM View this article | Comments (73) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

March 15, 2006

Forbidden Fruit: Justifying Energy Policy via Hurricane Mitigation

We’ve on occasion discussed a paper that we did in 2000 on the relative contributions to future damage of changes in intensity of hurricanes (called tropical cyclones worldwide) and changes in societal vulnerability, under the assumptions of the IPCC to 2050. Our paper found that the independent effects of changes in societal vulnerability are larger than the independent effects of changes in storm intensity by a factor of between 22 to 1 and 100 to one. The ratios are far larger the further one goes into the future. This would seems to provide pretty compelling evidence that even if scientists are underestimating the degree to which hurricane intensity will change in the future, energy policies simply are not going to be an effective tool of hurricane policy. Thus we have often recommended keeping separate the issues of greenhouse gas reductions and hurricane policy.

For obvious reasons some people find this argument inconvenient. One response to a talk I gave on this last week was, “if we don’t have the imagery of hurricane damage it is going to make the task of selling greenhouse gas reductions that much harder” (see also the recent discussion at Kevin’s NoSeNada blog, and thanks to Brian S. for motivating this further discussion). Below is some simple math that should make the point inescapable, drawn from the analysis in Pielke et al. 2000 (PDF). Have a look, and play around with the numbers yourself.

A = hurricane damages today = $1

B = increase in hurricane damages in 2050, according to high end of IPCC TAR = 10% increase = $1 * 0.10 = $0.10

C = increase in hurriane damage in 2050, according to low end of IPCC TAR in Pielke/Landsea normalization method = 220% increase = $1 * 2.20 = $2.20

D = combined effect of B and C = $2.20 * 0.10 = $0.22

E = Total increase in costs = B + C + D = $0.10 + $2.20 + $0.22 = $2.52

F = Total costs in 2050 = A + E = $3.52

Of E the part that can be addressed by intentionally modulating the intensity of hurricanes (a dubious proposition, but lets assume) is $0.32 (B + D), and the part that can be addressed by addressing vulnerability is $2.44 (C + D) (note: does not equal E because D is counted twice because it is influenced by both factors).

So if you focus on energy policies as a way to modulate hurricane behavior as a tool of disaster mitigation, and assuming that (a) you can instantaneously reduce GHGs to pre-industrial, and (b) that we are not committed to change already, then you can at best reduce the increase in future damages from $3.52 to $3.20, still representing a 320% increase from today.

But lets be slightly more realistic, how about Kyoto? Assuming that the effects of GHG reductions on hurricane intensity are instantaneous and exactly proportional to emissions concentrations (also dubious assumptions, but lets go with them) under full and successful implementation of Kyoto, including the participation of the US, the reduction in projected damages would be about $0.03. (Assuming: increase 2005-2050 = ~120 ppm, Kyoto’s effects = ~12 ppm, $0.32 * 12/120 = ~$0.03, but substitute numbers as you wish, I just made these up.) Now before people start writing to tell me Kyoto is a first step, please go ahead and substitute second, third, and fourth steps as you wish and see what effects they get. Then get back to the political realities such as Kyoto is not meeting its targets, and the subsequent steps look a long way off (not to mention the incorrect simplifying scientific assumptions above about the close connections of GHG reductions and corresponding reductions in hurricane intensity) .

Again, it is important for me repeat that I support emissions reductions, and I even think Kyoto makes good political sense for the U.S. to be a part of, however, it stretches credulity to think that Kyoto or any emissions reductions policy makes sense as a tool of hurricane (or more generally, disaster) mitigation. The important policy question is not whether or not global warming affects hurricanes, it probably does, but rather, what outcomes can be expected from different policies in response to hurricanes related to the things we care about, like property and life?

Moving on, if you focus on reducing vulnerability as a tool of disaster mitigation, then you can at best reduce the increase in future damages by $2.42 to $1.10, representing an increase of 10% from today. And of course mitigation need not stop at the level of damages we see today, and in principle can cut into that original $1.00 of losses, which proportionately reduces the increase related to changing storm intensity. It seems obvious that achieving the same $0.03 reduction in future losses from the $2.42 expected due to increasing vulnerability would be a much more tractable and cost effective approach to hurricane mitigation than an indirect effort to modulate storm behavior. Put another way, 100% success in implementation of Kyoto is the equivalent of about 1% success in addressing vulnerability. This is a huge difference in both the politics and the practicality.

Note that all of the above are calculated using the most favorable ratio toward emissions reductions of 22 to 1. The other end of the scale is 100 to one, so keep that in mind. Alos keep in mind that this anaysis goes to 2050, if you'd like to extend it to, say, 2085, probably should at least quadruple the vulneability numbers and increase the intensity numbers by a percent or three.

The bottom line: For advocates of emissions reductions, asserting a hurricane-energy policy linkage is tempting, very tempting. But it does not make good policy sense. It is a bad argument, perhaps even an abuse of science or immoral. If scientific accuracy is of concern, then look elsewhere for your justifications.

Talk in DC Today

Just a reminder for readers in DC, I'll be giving a talk at the Smithsonian at 5:30PM. Details here.

Posted on March 15, 2006 04:51 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

March 14, 2006

Hoodwinked!

The science community has successfully tricked a major politician into thinking that the U.S. is experiencing a rapid decline in its science and technology standing in the world. In the March issue of the American Physical Society News (link here, subscription required) Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA), chair the very influential House Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the major science agencies, writes the following:

In my role as chairman of the House Science-State-Justice-Commerce Appropriations subcommittee, which controls the budget of NASA, the National Science Foundation, the White House Office of Science and Technology policy and NOAA, I have met over the past year with groups that advocate for business, education, and research and development. What I heard from them is that America is facing unprecedented competition from countries such as China and India and our role as the global innovation leader is being challenged. I was alarmed to learn that three key measuring sticks show America on a downward slope: patents awarded to American scientists; papers published by American scientists, and Nobel prizes won by American scientists.

What does the data say? Actually, the opposite:

Patents granted: Not decreasing, but increasing

Papers published: Not decreasing, but increasing

Nobel prizes: Not declining, US dominant, consider:

The United States is by far the leading country in the world since 1951 in awards of Nobel Prizes in Science, which include Chemistry, Physics and Medicine-Physiology. United States scientists received 195 or 56% of the 350 Nobel Prizes in Science awarded from 1951 to 2005. The United States has received a majority of Nobel Prizes in Science each decade from 1951 to 2000. From 1991 to 2005 U.S. scientists earned 59 (57.8%) of the 102 Nobel Prizes awarded in Science.

The solution to this “crisis”? According to Congressman Wolf:

Remembering how the nation was mobilized to compete for the space frontier after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in the late 1950's, I wrote President Bush last year urging him to embrace this issue. I asked that he dramatically increase our nation's innovation budget–federal basic research and development–over the next decade to ensure U.S. economic leadership in the 21st century.

I wonder if anyone is going to let Congressman Wolf know that he is basing policy on a complete misunderstanding of the “problem”? Don’t count on it. Special interests are especially special when they are yours, and what is a little fudging of the facts when science funding is at stake? The science community plays the crisis card inappropriately at some risk, as policy makers don’t usually like being hoodwinked.

Posted on March 14, 2006 09:05 AM View this article | Comments (19) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Gathering Storm | R&D Funding

To Advocate, or Not?

When should a scientist get involved in political advocacy related to policy making in the area of their expertise? And once having decided to get involved, what form of advocacy should the scientist engage in, given that there are numerous options for scientists as advocates?

In my experience, such questions are rarely discussed among scientists. Some assert that politics is necessarily a bad thing to be avoided and refuse to admit any role in advocacy, even among those who are clearly advocates. In discussing such things one prominent scientist went so far as to assert that in his entire life he had never done anything that might be construed as political. Others simply assert that what is in their own personal special interests is obviously in everyone’s interest, and that people who disagree must be science abusers and morally corrupt. Still others gather in tribes with like-minded colleagues, particularly in the blogosphere, creating very real instances of Cass Sunstein's echo chambers. The discussion of advocacy in science often takes place in its own echo chamber of the science studies community.

I came across an article about malaria in Kenya (courtesy of the always excellent SciDev.net), which had the following very interesting passage, which raises questions about roles and responsibilities of scientists in broader society:

Kenya is the third leading nation in research on malaria in the world, according to a survey published last November by Thomson Scientific’s Essential Science Indicators (ESI) — an in-depth analytical tool that offers data for ranking scientists, institutions, countries and journals around the world.
USA is the leading nation followed by England. France, Germany and Switzerland are ranked fourth, fifth and sixth, respectively. Available as a ten-year rolling file, ESI covers ten million articles in 22 specific fields of research and is updated every two months.

But despite the fact that Kenya is a leading producer of research data on malaria, it remains one of the countries with the highest malaria mortality rate in the world. Why the disconnect between research and control?

Prof Bob Snow, the head of Malaria, Public Health and Epidemiology Group, Centre for Geographic Medicine at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri), blames lack of mechanisms to translate research into policy and implementation. "The problem is not with the scientists that malaria burden in Kenya is still very high and raising. As scientists, we have done our part and done it very well. The major problem is that unlike in Britain and other countries, there is no mechanism to directly translate research findings into national policy or to translate research into action."

Prof Snow, who has been involved in malaria research in the country for the last 18 years and is ranked fifth in the world in malaria research, feels the government does not fully comprehend the role of researchers.

"As scientists in Kenya, we have to do two jobs. We have to conduct research and then convince the government or the Ministry of Health to adopt our research findings. This should never be the case. There should be a mechanism that automatically facilitates adoption of research findings by the government."

What mechanism? How created? Run by whom? What does it mean to “adopt research findings”? Automatically? These are the questions at the core of 21st century science policy. Asking and answering these question are of course political exercises themselves and can create some discomfort among scientists/advocates. Consider the cirle-the-wagon reactions often seen here to suggestions that the IPCC might not be an optimal means of connecting science and decision making. And consider the frustration expressed by scientists such as James Hansen about their role in the political process.

As people focus attention on press releases, NRC committees on hockey sticks, drug approval processes, government science reports, national academy statements, science in developing countries, etc. etc. it will be these questions of process that will be important to keep at the fore.

Posted on March 14, 2006 08:34 AM View this article | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health | Science Policy: General

March 13, 2006

Reactions to Searching for a Signal

I would love to be the first person to conclusively identify the signal of increasing greenhouse gases in the historical record of disaster losses. I have no doubt that such a study, scientifically solid and peer reviewed, would be widely cited, globally reported, and the author(s) would reach near rock star status in the climate science and advocacy communities. The problem is that I (and a number of colleagues) have been looking for such a signal for more than 10 years, recording our efforts in dozens of papers along the way, and so far the signal hasn’t been found.

On Wednesday his week I’ll be giving the NRC Ocean Studies Board’s annual Roger Revelle memorial lecture at the Smithsonian in Washington DC in which I’ll provide an overview of this search and what we’ve found to date. The message of the talk is as follows:

1. Anthropogenic climate change is real.
2. Greenhouse gas reductions make good policy sense.
3. But there is no evidence that energy policies focused on climate change can be an effective tool of disaster mitigation.
4. There is currently no evidence that allows us to attribute to human-caused climate change any part of the decades-long trend of a rising toll of disasters, a record which is dominated by floods and storms.
5. More people are beginning to conduct research in this area and perhaps future research results will tell a different story, but 1-4 above are what can be said today and supported by scientific research.
6. Given the state of the literature, this should not be a controversial conclusion.
7. There are better justifications for GHG reductions than disasters, and there are far better options available to policy makers than energy policies to make a material difference in future impacts of climate and weather extremes.

Of late, as the subject of disasters and climate change has become increasingly salient I have noticed a significant ratcheting up in the intensity of criticism that some leading scientists bring to discussing my work. Some of it, quite frankly, borders on the bizarre. Consider the following recent experiences:

*On several occasions, one in a public forum, a very prominent scientist whose name you would all recognize all but accused me of falsifying my research results in order to hide the global warming signal in disaster losses that he believes must certainly be there. The alternative, that our work is solid, apparently is not a possibility.
*Another prominent scientist whose name you would all recognize quite angrily and nastily accused me in an email of being a climate change denier who refuses to see the truth. I replied with an explanation that I was no denier and I provided a list of a few dozen peer-reviewed papers to support my perspective on climate change and disasters, with no response.

*After giving a lecture at a major U.S. university I had a chance to talk one-on-one with the head of the unit that had invited me (a major unit on campus), who was another big-name-you-would-recognize. His first question for me was to ask my political orientation, stating that it was hard to discern from my talk. I thought it an odd question but I answered him anyway. He had no substantive questions about my talk, so I hope my answer to his political orientation question clarified everything.

*Perhaps most troubling, the editor of a leading scientific journal asked me to “dampen” the message of a peer-reviewed publication for fear that it would be “seized upon” by those seeking to defend their interests in business-as-usual energy policies. I found this incredible – was I really being asked to change scientifically well-supported arguments based on some editorial concerns about politics?!

These sorts of experiences are not completely new for me. In past years I have also described how colleagues have pressured me to be careful about my research because of its supposed political implications for those seeking to justify energy policy action based on reducing disaster impacts. Of course, from where I sit one important message of my research is for advocates of changes in energy policies related to climate change simply to make better arguments and to avoid bad ones. This message would seem to be in everyone’s interests.

Some of the experiences described above can be explained as resulting from interactions with a few hyper-politically-charged scientists, some who are full of anger and vitriol. So perhaps these experiences are only a function of a few bad apples that I have the good fortune to be interacting with. From that perspective perhaps I should not be too concerned by the behavior of these individuals. But given their prominence in the community and its institutions, and the chance that these are not isolated experiences, I do worry that the politicization of climate science is reaching epidemic proportions with profound consequences for the field. From my narrow perspective on the climate science community, viewed through the lens of how my work on disasters is received, it seems that some research is judged not by its content but by how some would like the research to turn out. For my part I will continue searching for a signal of global warming in the disaster record, and if and when I find it you’ll know that I really believe that it is there. And know that I won’t be intimidated, bullied, or pressured into saying otherwise or staying silent.

For those who are interested in my work in this area, the following list of publications focuses primarily on storms and floods and document various ways that we have tried to understand and probe the disaster loss record in these contexts. Of course, there is much research conducted by others on this subject, most of which is referenced in the articles below. We have discussed this subject at length here at Prometheus and new readers can find this discussion under the climate change archives. As in any area of science there is much work in this area remaining to be done, and such research may indeed provide new insights that change the perspectives of today.

PDFs of the articles below, almost all which are peer reviewed, can be found here, and the books should be obtainable from your library.

Downton, M., J. Z. B. Miller and R. A. Pielke, Jr., 2005. Reanalysis of U.S. National Weather Service Flood Loss Database, Natural Hazards Review, 6:13-22.

Downton, M. and R. A. Pielke, Jr., 2005. How Accurate are Disaster Loss Data? The Case of U.S. Flood Damage, Natural Hazards, Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 211-228.

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 2005. Are there trends in hurricane destruction? Nature, Vol. 438, December, pp. E11.

Pielke, R. A., 2005. Attribution of Disaster Losses, Science, Vol. 310, December 9, pp. 1615.

Pielke, Jr., R.A., S. Agrawala, L. Bouwer, I. Burton, S. Changnon, M. Glantz, W. Hooke, R. Klein, K. Kunkel, D. Mileti, D. Sarewitz, E. Thompkins, N. Stehr, and H. von Storch, 2005.Clarifying the Attribution of Recent Disaster Losses: A Response to Epstein and McCarthy, Bulletin of American Meteorological Society, Volume 86 (10), pp. 1481-1483.

Pielke, Jr., R. A., C. Landsea, M. Mayfield, J. Laver and R. Pasch, 2005. Hurricanes and global warming, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 86:1571-1575.

Pielke, Jr., R.A. and D. Sarewitz, 2005. Bringing Society back into the Climate Debate, Population and Environment, Volume 26, Number 3, pp. 255-268.

Pielke, Jr., R.A., J. Rubiera, C. Landsea, M. Fernandez, and R.A. Klein, 2003: Hurricane Vulnerability in Latin America and the Caribbean, Natural Hazards Review, 4: 101-114.

Downton, M. and R.A. Pielke, Jr., 2001. Discretion Without Accountability: Politics, Flood Damage, and Climate, Natural Hazards Review, 2(4):157-166.

Downton, M. and R. A. Pielke, Jr., 2001: Politics and disaster declarations. Natural Hazards Observer, 25(4), 1-3.

Changnon, S., R. A. Pielke, Jr., D. Changnon, D., R. T. Sylves, and R. Pulwarty, 2000. Human Factors Explain the Increased Losses from Weather and Climate Extremes, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 81(3), 437-442.

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 2000. Flood Impacts on Society: Damaging Floods as a Framework for Assessment. Chapter 21 in D. Parker (ed.), Floods. Routledge Press: London, 133-155.

Pielke, Jr., R. A. and M.W. Downton, 2000. Precipitation and Damaging Floods: Trends in the United States, 1932-97. Journal of Climate, 13(20),
3625-3637.

Pielke, Jr., R.A., M. Downton, J. Z. B. Miller, S. A. Changnon, K. E. Kunkel, and K. Andsager, 2000: Understanding Damaging Floods in Iowa: Climate and Societal Interactions in the Skunk and Raccoon River Basins, Environmental and Societal Impacts Group, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, August.

Pielke, Jr., R. A., R.A. Klein and D. Sarewitz, 2000. Turning the Big Knob: Energy Policy as a Means to Reduce Weather Impacts. Energy and Environment, Vol. 11, No. 3, 255-276.

Pielke, Jr., R. A., and R. A. Pielke, Sr. (eds.), 2000: Storms: a volume in the nine-volume series of Natural Hazards & Disasters Major Works published by Routledge Press as a contribution to the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction. Routledge Press: London.

Kunkel, K., R. A. Pielke Jr., S. A. Changnon, 1999: Temporal Fluctuations in Weather and Climate Extremes That Cause Economic and Human Health Impacts: A Review. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 80, 6, 1077-1098.

Landsea, C. L., R. A. Pielke, Jr., A. Mestas-Nuez and J. Knaff, 1999. Atlantic Basin Hurricanes: Indicies of Climate Changes. Climate Change, 42, 89-129.

Pielke Jr., R.A., 1999: Nine fallacies of floods. Climatic Change, 42, 413-438.

Pielke, Jr., R. A. and M. Downton, 1999. U.S. Trends in Streamflow and Precipitation: Using Societal Impact Data to Address an Apparent Paradox. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 80(7), 1435-1436.

Pielke, Jr., R.A., and C.W. Landsea, 1999: La Nina, El Nino, and Atlantic Hurricane Damages in the United States. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 80, 10, 2027-2033.

Pielke, Jr., R. A., C. W. Landsea, M. Downton, and R. Muslin, 1999: Evaluation of Catastrophe Models Using a Normalized Historical Record: Why It Is needed and How To Do It. Journal of Insurance Regulation. 18, pp. 177-194.

Pielke, Jr., R. A. and C. W. Landsea, 1998. Normalized Hurricane Damages in the United States: 1925-95. Weather and Forecasting, American Meteorological Society, Vol. 13, 621-631.

Pielke Jr., R. A., 1997: Reframing the U.S. Hurricane Problem. Society and Natural Resources, 10, 485-499.

Pielke, Jr., R. A., and R. A. Pielke, Sr., 1997: Hurricanes: Their Nature and Impacts on Society. John Wiley and Sons Press: London.

Posted on March 13, 2006 05:47 AM View this article | Comments (30) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

March 09, 2006

Uranium Enrichment and Stem Cells

Yesterday’s New York Times had an interesting article on uranium enrichment research in Iran. It begins as follows:

There are times when even a little bit of research can be a bad thing, especially if it centers on Iran and the bomb. On Tuesday, a wide range of nuclear scientists and analysts faulted as dangerous Moscow's tentative proposal to let Tehran do small amounts of research on uranium enrichment, with some comparing it to being a little bit pregnant. "After a while, you tend to wind up having a baby," said Peter D. Zimmerman, a professor of science and security in the war studies department of King's College, London. "I do not believe the Iranians should have any access to enrichment technology until they prove to be a more responsible partner than they've been so far." The Iranians have strenuously objected to such characterizations, saying the West wants to deprive them of atomic knowledge and expertise that they have a right to acquire for a peaceful program of nuclear power. They see it as nothing less than a devious plot by outside powers to keep their country from modernizing. In an interview with Al Arabiya television last month, for example, Ali Larijani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, said, "The problem is that they look at the Islamic nations as being inferior, that we should not have modern technology, and it is enough for us to produce tomato paste and mineral water."

The international issue of nuclear research in Iran is in my mind exactly analogous to the debate at the federal level over stem cell research in the United States in the follow ways:

1. A group in society – the researchers -- wants to conduct research that has potential positive benefits to outcomes that they value.
2. Another group in society – the restricters -- wants to restrict that research because of its potential negative impacts with respect to outcomes that they value.
3. Both groups seek to impose their values on the other, but both cannot succeed at the same time as their goals are in direct conflict.
4. In both cases the restricters have the upper hand from a political perspective.
5. In both cases the researchers are seeking ways around the research restrictions.
6. The researchers assert that this is about the right to conduct research.
7. The researchers accuse their opponents as being morally challenged.
8. In both cases the decision to conduct the research or not is 100% political.

These debates are about what research gets to be conducted, by whom, and how paid for. Did I miss anything? I’m interested in reactions.

Unpublished Op-Ed: Science, Politics, and Press Releases

The following is an op-ed I prepared a few weeks ago. It was accepted for publication at a major U.S. newspaper but, for whatever reason, I never heard back frm them again. So I am assuming that its window of opportunity has passed and am posting it here. However, if anyone reading this is interested in publishing it before a broader audience, please send me an email - pielke@colorado.edu. Thanks!

Science, Politics, and Press Releases

The Bush Administration has faced constant criticism for its overbearing management of information. Some of the latest allegations involve scientists from two federal agencies who claim that they have been muzzled by political operatives.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), well known for its public relations prowess, embarrassed itself with the ham-handed efforts of a political appointee to deny media access to James Hansen, one of it's most prominent scientists. NASA's woes multiplied when it was revealed that the media gatekeeper was a 24-year old former Bush campaign worker who had "accidentally" claimed earning a college degree when he did not. And when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued a press release asserting an official agency position on hurricanes and global warming, this assertion simply was not true. NASA fired its political appointee and instituted a review of its media policies. NOAA revised its press release and its administrator, Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Jr., encouraged all NOAA scientists "to speak freely and openly."

But the allegations that have followed these two incidents reflect fundamental misunderstandings about the relationship of science and politics. For instance some scientists in NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena complained that NASA headquarters preferred to use the phrase "climate change" rather than "global warming" in press releases. But the choice of language to use in a press release reflects political as well as scientific considerations.

It is true that a Republican strategy memorandum recommended the phrase "climate change," yet environmental advocacy groups have long preferred the phrase "global warming." Science alone cannot say which phrase to use, and consequently the choice between them necessarily involves political considerations. NOAA and NASA produce hundreds of scientific papers each year, and only a very small fraction are accompanied by an official press release. Thus the decision even to issue a press release necessarily involves non-scientific considerations such as casting the agency in a positive light, newsworthiness, and sometimes, partisan politics.

That the political leadership of federal agencies manages information in pursuit of their interests is not new or surprising. President Nixon went so far as to move around the timing of Apollo moon launches with respect to the 1972 presidential election against NASA's wishes in order to manage the possible negative public relations consequences of a failed mission.

Some seek to de-politicize science communications in the holy grail of identifying a bright line between science and politics. David Goldston, chief of staff to Representative Sherwood Boehlert, chairman of the House Science Committee, said "The issue is where does science end and policy begin." But if the choice of words in a press release and the decision to issue a press release about science are inherently political, then there simply is no such line.

A better approach was suggested by NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, who suggested distinguishing professional duties from personal opinions, "as long as people speak as private citizens, my attitude is, let me hold your coat for you. You can get into that fray and get beat up. You just can't label it as an agency position." In the 21st century scientists have options for communicating to the world that rival the reach of official press releases. For instance, scientists can easily set up a weblog from their home computers and on their own time expound on any topic that they wish. A good example of someone successfully using such a strategy is NASA's Gavin Schmidt, an employee of James Hansen, who along with collaborators has set up RealClimate.org, a widely read and influential internet weblog whose authors have not held back in hosting political discussions on topics like the Kyoto Protocol, Intelligent Design, and the Bush Administration. Today a weblog may have an even greater reach and influence than an official NASA press release.

But distinguishing professional duties from personal opinions can also present a challenge, especially for senior career officials. As the official NOAA media policy states, "Whether in person, on camera, or over the phone, when speaking to a reporter you represent and speak for the entire agency." Democracy would be impossible if every government employee sought to interpret or implement laws and policy according to their own personal preferences. Government employment carries with it professional responsibilities, which are proportionately greater the higher ranking the career official. J.D. Sobel writes, "All senior leaders, whether appointed or career, serve in an administration and for a principle with broader responsibilities. These officials have special obligations to protect and support their principal and administration as the mechanism of democratic accountability in government. They have strong implicit obligations to stay within the policy framework of their administration and not undermine their principal."

Of course, government scientists who disagree with the policies of their employers always have the option of resigning, if they feel that they can no longer do their jobs, or they can stay, do their jobs, and seek effective reform from the inside. But what they should not do, however, is pretend that in the purity of science there lies a solution to the realities of politics. Claims to the contrary ultimately will lead to further politicization of the scientific enterprise.

Posted on March 9, 2006 05:04 AM View this article | Comments (48) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

March 08, 2006

On Missing the Point

Karen O’Brien, of the University of Oslo’s Department of Sociology and Human Geography, has a very thoughtful editorial in the current issue of the journal Global Environmental Change. She suggests, quite appropriately in my view, that debate and discussion on global environmental issues focuses too narrowly on “science” and not on important issues of “human security.” She is asking us to consider reframing how we think about and organize to act on environmental issues. In my view, O’Brien is absolutely correct in her analysis, but her perspective, and that of Oxford’s Steve Rayner which we discussed yesterday, are far removed from the center of the current politicized and scientized debates over global environmental issues. Here is an excerpt from her editorial:

The time has come to reframe global environmental change first and foremost as an issue of human security. For years, the global environmental change research, policy, and activist communities have been pointing to a long list of potential negative outcomes from human-induced environmental changes. The premise for concern has been that we are altering key components of the Earth System, changing climate and hydrological systems, carrying out dramatic land cover changes, undermining ecosystem services, and reducing genetic, ecosystem, and species diversity (MEA, 2005; Steffen et al., 2004). A substantial effort has been made to document, understand, and explain the science behind these issues, in order to support policies and actions that address the driving forces of environmental change. This science-based approach has produced powerful arguments for reconsidering current strategies of economic growth and development, in favor of what can be considered sustainable development. Nevertheless, the approach has maintained environmental change as an issue of “science” rather than of human security, and it has consequently failed to engage society in creating the transformations that will lead to sustainability.
Human security goes beyond the traditional understanding of security as a state-centered concept related to threats and conflict. In terms of environmental change, human security can be considered the condition when and where individuals and communities have the options necessary to end, mitigate, or adapt to risks to their human, environmental, and social rights; have the capacity and freedom to exercise these options; and actively participate in attaining these options (GECHS, 1999). This is a people-centered concept that focuses on enabling individuals and communities to respond to change, whether by reducing vulnerability or by challenging the drivers of environmental change. More than a measurable and objective state, human security is something that is felt and experienced, and it is fundamental to every individual's well-being.

The emphasis on “science” over “security” is evident in popular debates about climate change. For example, the media in Norway (as in many other countries) seems to be obsessed with the question, “Is this climate change or not?” Every extreme hurricane, storm, or heat wave raises the spectre of human-induced climate change. Following each major event, the Norwegian media gathers groups of scientists to defend their research and the strong scientific consensus that increased greenhouse gas emissions are changing the climate. Sceptical positions and scientific uncertainties are then equally highlighted, and anyone who has not taken graduate level meteorology classes is thrown into deep confusion.

Watching the media debate the relationship between Hurricane Katrina and climate change in September 2005, I could not help but think that this is simply missing the point. The debate should not be about whether or not this is evidence of climate change, but about whether human society has the capacity to respond to these types of shocks. Focusing on scientific uncertainty diverts attention away from the factors that generate vulnerability and create human insecurities. Indeed, uncertainty about human impacts on the climate system is inevitable, and the more scientific knowledge we gain, the more uncertain we are likely to be …

Read the whole thing here.

March 07, 2006

“Bad Arguments for Good Causes”

In an editorial in the latest issue of the journal Global Environmental Change Oxford’s Steve Rayner laments “a widespread pathology: the use of bad arguments for good causes.” Rayner cites work that I and colleagues have been engaged in on hurricanes and global warming to help make this point (However, one might also look up on Promethesus Richard Tol, Hans von Storch, and Indur Goklany to see similar points being made in various contexts):

The danger of using bad arguments for good causes, such as preventing unwanted climate change, is two-fold. Generally, it provides a dangerous opening for opponents who would derail environmental policy by exposing weaknesses in the underlying science. Specifically, it leads to advocating policies for reducing future storm impacts that are likely to be ineffective in achieving their declared aim. With or without greenhouse gas emissions reductions, the costs of storm damage are bound to rise. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions will have far less impact on storm damage costs than moving expensive infrastructure away from coastal margins and flood plains.
For good or ill, we live in an era when science is culturally privileged as the ultimate source of authority in relation to decision making. The notion that science can compel public policy leads to an emphasis on the differences of viewpoint and interpretation within the scientific community. From one point of view, public exposure to scientific disagreement is a good thing. We know that science is not capable of delivering the kind of final authority that is often ascribed to it. Opening up to the public the conditional, and even disputatious nature of scientific inquiry, in principle, may be a way of counteracting society's currently excessive reliance on technical assessment and the displacement of explicit values-based arguments from public life (Rayner, 2003). However, when this occurs without the benefit of a clear understanding of the importance of the substantial areas where scientists do agree, the effect can undermine public confidence.

Rayner calls for greater attention to the institutional mechanisms that society has in place to connect science and decision making: “Yet if we recognize that science cannot compel public policy, the need to develop effective institutional arrangements for it to appropriately inform public policy is greater than ever.”

I think that he is absolutely correct. However, many prominent members of the scientific community are so wrapped up in asserting truth claims against so-called skeptics that they have all but ignored the broader issues of institutional legitimacy and the need for action in the face of diversity. The climate issue illustrates these dynamics prominently but is by no means a unique case. Rayner explains how this occurs:

Once a candidate issue is selected for attention, policy makers are consistently led to believe that, given time and money, scientific inquiry will reduce relevant uncertainty about environmental risk. Their scientific advisors hold out the promise that more fine-grained information will clarify the nature and extent of the problem and enable policy makers to craft efficient and effective responses. While it justifies important (and often expensive) research programmes, this view tends to disregard two factors.
First, as scientific knowledge increases, it raises new questions to be answered. The proliferation of uncertainties may make policy less, rather than more tractable. In particular, see-sawing scientific opinion, for example about whether particular substances have a net warming or cooling effect, can be particularly worrisome to policy makers, inclining them to postpone judgement to the long-term.

Second, the accumulation of information may lead to “contradictory certainties” that may make decisions more complicated rather than self-evident. The result is often a surfeit of information from which decision makers with opposing viewpoints can pick or choose. A decade ago, writing in this journal, Herrick and Jamieson (1995) recognized just this problem with the US National Acid Precipitation Assessment Programme (NAPAP), which generated a veritable banquet of data and findings, but little guidance to help non-specialist decision makers to determine which items should be considered in the policy choice. As a result, the Clean Air Act Amendments were passed without the benefit of a clear scientific direction. In the end, public disagreements about science become a surrogate for political debates about values and science is reduced to the spectacle of duelling assessments.

So long as policy debates are dominated by people who believe that universal agreement on a particular set “facts” or perspective on “truth” is a prerequisite to policy action, don’t be surprised to see continued gridlock and inaction. That is a truth you can count on.

Posted on March 7, 2006 07:53 AM View this article | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science Policy: General

March 06, 2006

"Tear Down that Wall"

Robert Cook-Deegan of Duke University's Center for Genome Ethics, Law, and Policy is another worthy addition to the fledgling group-blog now forming over at Issues in Science and Technology. From his first post:

Without an OTA equivalent, S&T advice is channeled through external constituencies and the executive branch, which is inherently administration-dependent. Congress has lost most of its S&T analytical capacity, and the executive branch has lost its credibility. Have we given up on bipartisanship, resigned to polarized S&T war rhetoric, without even the option of consensual, incremental building?
Mr. Gingrich and Senator Clinton, tear down that wall! Then build sturdy structures that restore a bipartisan ethos. A good place to start is science and technology policy, where partisanship is particularly stupid and destructive.

Posted on March 6, 2006 09:06 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy

Registration is now open for the 2006 AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy in Washington, DC. The meeting will be held on April 20-21, 2006 (Thursday and Friday) at the Washington Court Hotel.

The AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy (formerly the "AAAS Colloquium"), held in Washington each spring, provides a forum for discussion and debate about budget and other policy issues facing the S&T community. Click here for the latest version of the 2006 Forum program. Click here for registration information. The 2006 Forum features sessions on the budgetary and policy context for research and development in 2007; achieving energy security; avian flu and other global health threats; science and technology and homeland security; the global innovation challenge, and responses by U.S. industry and policymakers; and protecting the integrity of science.

More info here.

Posted on March 6, 2006 09:00 PM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

March 02, 2006

Review of Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Part 3

Part 1 and Part 2 of this series discussed Chapters 1 and 2. This installment focuses on RAGS Chapter 3, which is titled, “How is America doing now in science and technology?” It really should be named, “How is science and technology doing now in America?”

The focus is regrettably not on what S&T can do for the U.S. public, but what the U.S. public can do for the S&T community. According to data that we discussed last month (here) the U.S. has 1.26 million workers who are classified as researchers, which represents roughly about 1% of the U.S> labor market. Given the small size of the R&D part of the workforce, compared to the whole, the most important question for using investments in S&T as a tool of “competitiveness” is: What is the relationship of investments in different areas of S&T and the quality and quantity of jobs in the broader U.S. labor market? This important question goes unasked by RAGS. Read on for details.

Surprsingly, RAGS paints a uniformly rosy picture about the state of R&D in the United States. Consider the following examples from the report:

By most available criteria, the United States is still the undisputed leader in the performance of basic and applied research.
In addition, many international comparisons put the United States as a leader in applying research and innovation to improve economic performance. In the latest IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook, the United States ranks first in economic competitiveness, followed by Hong Kong and Singapore.

Researchers in the United States lead the world in the volume of articles published and in the frequency with which those papers are cited by others. US-based authors were listed on one-third of all scientific articles worldwide in 2001.

The United States also excels in higher education and training. A recent comparison concluded that 38 of the world’s 50 leading research institutions—those that draw the greatest interest of science and technology students—are in the United States.

Since World War II, the United States has been the destination of choice for science and engineering graduate students and for postdoctoral scholars choosing to study abroad. Our nation—about 6% percent of the world’s population—has for decades produced more than 20% of the world’s doctorates in science and engineering.

So then what is the problem? RAGS takes on a slightly jingoistic tone when it points to foreigners as the problem. The report has a positive tone on this development -- “It is no surprise that as the value of research becomes more widely understood, other nations are strengthening their own programs and institutions. If imitation is flattery, we can take pride in watching as other nations eagerly adopt major components of the US innovation model” – but it hints in many places that other countries are “catching up” and thus threatening the U.S. economy.

RAGS notes that the relative advance of other countries has benefits, but also suggests undefined risks: “The global increase in the production of scientific knowledge eventually benefits all countries. Yet trends in publication could be a troubling bellwether about our competitive position in the global science community.” The risks identified include a “global competition for talent” with RAGS suggesting that many scientists and engineers will find other countries more appealing than the United States. The report makes general claims about a downturn in “basic research” conducted by industry, even as industry support for R&D has increased steadily. It expresses concerns about lower wages for professionals in developing countries and how that strains the U.S. economy. No mention is made about the relationship of S&E jobs in other countries and information on unemployment in the U.S. labor market, for instance.

It seems that the core of the argument of this chapter is contained in the section titled “Restraints on Public Funding.” This section begins by decrying the decrease in Cold War funding for military R&D. The section continues by lamenting the pace of increasing federal budgets for R&D,

Public funding for science and engineering rose through the 1990s, but virtually all of the increase went to biomedical research at NIH. Federal spending on the physical sciences remained roughly flat, and increases for mathematics and engineering only slightly surpassed inflation. Funding for important areas of the life sciences—plant science, ecology, environmental research—supported by agencies other than NIH also has leveled off. The lack of new funding for research in the physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering raises concern about the overall health of the science and engineering research enterprise, including that of the health sciences.

These complaints are focused on the inputs to R&D in the form of public money. No mention is made about the outputs much less how variations in the inputs are related to variations in the outputs.

The next section turns to education. RAGS argues,

The rise of new international competitors in science and engineering is forcing the United States to ask whether its education system can meet the demands of the 21st century. The nation faces several areas of challenge: K–12 student preparation in science and mathematics, limited undergraduate interest in science and engineering majors, significant student attrition among science and engineering undergraduate and graduate students, and science and engineering education that in some instances inadequately prepares students to work outside universities.

But there is no discussion here about how those educated in S&E are related to the workforce of 160 million people. Like most everyone, I think improving education is important, but how much of the focus should be on science and engineering versus, say, writing and spoken communication, conflict resolution, ability to work in groups, understanding geopolitics and the U.S. role in a larger world, etc. It is not clear from the arguments presented here how it is that we might prioritize educational deficiencies in the United States. Rather it is assumed that S&E education is the most pressing, and indeed only, area that needs attention.

The analysis in RAGS is sometimes found wanting, for instance, the following sentence probably wouldn’t last long in a paper for Public Policy 101: “Furthermore, many adults with whom students come in contact seemingly take pride in “never understanding” or “never liking” mathematics.” The report presents a collection of comparative data indicating this or that related to how certain other countries produce a greater proportion of scientist and engineering students or that those students fare better on tests of achievement. What the chapter does not explain is that such arguments have been made for almost 50 years, yet over that time frame the U.S. economy has done quite well. The assertions made by RAGS may be correct, but the analysis simply is not present to allow one to follow an argument to the report’s conclusions. One is asked to take the report’s conclusions almost entirely on faith.

This chapter, like the other reviewed so far ends with a restatement of the assumptions that form the backbone of the report:

Because our economic, military, and cultural well-being depends on continued science and engineering leadership, the nation faces a compelling call to action.

Posted on March 2, 2006 06:36 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Gathering Storm

March 01, 2006

Politics and the IPCC, Again

Anyone with concerns about the politicization of the IPCC, and its stance of "policy neutrality," should raise an eyebrow at recent stories from the BBC and The Guardian. Leaking information before the report has gone through full review smacks of overt politicking. But more generally, those doing the leaking and their representations of what will be found in the IPCC are far from "policy neutral.” Perhaps it is time for the IPCC to dispense with the illusion of being policy neutral and simply admit its political agenda.

As far as the "news" that has been leaked, it is hardly news. According to the Guardian:

A draft of the next influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report will tell politicians that scientists are now unable to place a reliable upper limit on how quickly the atmosphere will warm as carbon dioxide levels increase.

But this is also what was said by IPCC in 2001:

The range of global mean temperature change from 1990 to 2100 given by the six illustrative scenarios for the ensemble is 2.0 to 4.5C … Note that this is not the extreme range of possibilities, for two reasons. [emphasis added]

And further, both the Guardian and BCC note a “strengthening of consensus.” And here I have thought since 2001 that it was airtight, even unanimous. Was I mistaken? How can the consensus be “further strengthened” from the consensus represented in 2001?

These news stories continue a trend that we first observed with the 2005 Exeter meeting (see here and here) of using scientific/IPCC summaries as a tool of politics by those doing the science/assessing. I wrote last year:

If the Exter conference is indicative of the direction that the IPCC will be taking in its Fourth Assessment Report, then it will be remembered as a key milestone in the continuing evolution of the IPCC from honest broker to political advocate.

No matter what one's politics are on climate change, we should all be able to agree that the leaks to the British media represent a further politicization of climate science and damage the legitimacy of the IPCC as an independent -- "policy neutral" -- body.

Posted on March 1, 2006 10:27 AM View this article | Comments (104) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Upcoming Public Lecture in DC at The Smithsonian

I’ll be giving a lecture on March 15, 2006 at 5:30 PM in the Baird Auditorium of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, details here. The lecture is the Annual Roger Revelle Commemorative Lecture sponsored by the National Research Council’s Ocean Studies Board. Please come out and do introduce yourself if you are a Prometheus reader. The title of my lecture is “Disasters, Death, and Destruction: Accounting for Recent Calamities.” Here is the abstract:

The recent devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, the Indian Ocean tsunami, and South Asian earthquake has kept natural disasters at the focus of our attention. The past decades have seen a spectacular series of catastrophes around the world with ever increasing economic losses and horrific loss of life. The recent spate of disasters has created two common perceptions among decision makers and the general public.
First, there is a sense that the economic impacts associated with extreme events have increased in recent years. Second, given that a human influence on the climate system has been well established, a perception exists that the recent increase in weather-related disasters like floods and hurricanes is in some way related to changes in climate.

These perceptions beg two questions:

Have loss of life and damages associated with extreme weather events actually increased in recent years?

What factors account for observed trends in the impacts of weather on society?

The answers to these questions are more than simply idle speculations -- they underlie policy decisions with important social, economic, and political ramifications, such as disaster preparations, insurance, international climate change negotiations, and policies for scientific research. Because policy is based in part on the perceptions that policy makers hold about weather and climate, it is worth determining the answers to the two questions in a scientifically rigorous manner. This lecture discusses trends in loss of life and damages associated with disasters with a focus on extreme weather events. It also discusses factors which account for the observed trends and the state of our knowledge in this area. It concludes with a discussion of implications for policy and research related natural hazards and global climate change.

Posted on March 1, 2006 06:42 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

February 28, 2006

Newsweek on Outsourcing

An article about India and concerns about U.S. outsourcing in this week’s Newsweek is relevant to our on going discussion of Rising Above the Gathering Storm and U.S. "competitiveness." It is titled, “Outsourcing: Silicon Valley East Americans once feared their jobs would be shipped to India, but the backlash was overdone. Now everybody's winning,” and can be found here. Here is an excerpt:

Not long ago, what seemed most possible was that India would steal the jobs of American workers. But as George W. Bush visits there this week, he'll find a maturing economy that is no longer all about call centers and basic tech support. Now big American investment banks and drugmakers are joining tech firms on the passage to India. R&D centers are springing up so fast that there's now a shortage of Indian engineers. And the stigma of outsourcing jobs to India is disappearing. American companies once afraid to put their names on the doors of their Indian offices now issue press releases touting their latest investments there. "American firms have gotten over their anxiety about India," says financial-services consultant Harrell Smith of Celent Communications. "Now the new anxiety is if you're not in India."
What happened to the outsourcing backlash? It has been muted by the fact that India didn't suck Silicon Valley dry after all. Actually, U.S. tech employment is growing. There are 17 percent more tech workers in the United States today than back in the bubble days of 1999, says a new study by the Association for Computing Machinery. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the U.S. economy will add 1 million tech jobs over the next decade, a 30 percent increase. "Everyone was worried about the offshoring bogeyman," says Moshe Vardi, an author of the ACM study. "But the big whoosh of jobs to India never happened.'' Indeed, that gush slowed to a steady stream once American companies realized it's tough to set up shop in a country with bad roads and a patchy power grid. Lately, American consulting firms that once predicted runaway growth in outsourcing to India have been slashing their estimates by half or more. Now American companies are hanging on to the high-skilled work that requires face-to-face interaction, while everything that can be done "over the wire" gets shipped offshore.

Posted on February 28, 2006 07:29 AM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Gathering Storm | Science Policy: General

A Review of Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Part 2

Part 1 of this review focused on Chapter 1 of RAGS. This post focuses on Chapter 2, which is titled, “Why are Science and Technology Critical to America’s Prosperity in the 21st Century?” It seems obvious that science and technology are indeed important to society, and understanding why this is so would be helpful for understanding how to prioritize R&D investments in the context of many other demands on public funds, and the relative desirability different possible R&D portfolios. Unfortunately, this chapter does little more than sandwich reams of information between highly general and simplified assertions of the importance of R&D. RAGS Chapter 2 does very little to answer the question posed in its title. For details, read on.

This chapter begins by simply asserting the answer to the question raised in its title,

The visible products of research, however, are made possible by a large enterprise mostly hidden from public view—fundamental and applied research, an intensively trained workforce, and a national infrastructure that provides risk capital to support the nation’s science and engineering innovation enterprise. All that activity, and its sustaining public support, fuels the steady flow of knowledge and provides the mechanism for converting information into the products and services that create jobs and improve the quality of modern life. Maintaining that vast and complex enterprise during an age of competition and globalization is challenging, but it is essential to the future of the United States.

This series of assertions may seem almost intuitive, and the chapter claims that the relationship of public R&D investments and economic growth are well understood,

“the economic value of investing in science and technology has been thoroughly investigated. Published estimates of return on investment (ROI) for publicly funded R&D range from 20% to 67%.”

However, one of the studies that it cites prominently does not display such confidence or certitude. Scott et al. (2001, available here in PDF) open their report with a telling quote from Georgia Tech’s Barry Bozeman:

In the study of technology transfer, the neophyte and the veteran researcher are easily distinguished. The neophyte is the one who is not confused.

Scott et al. introduce their literature review with a recognition of the challenges faced by scholars trying to understand the complicated relationship of R&D and the economy:

The relationships between public research and innovation are recognised to be an increasingly significant topic in the emerging knowledge economy. However, this is an area beset by high levels of complexity and a surprisingly small amount of empirical research. It is a field where it is easy to be misled by simplistic ideas, or to become confused by such data as do exist and the conflicting interpretations that can be made from them. As this review will show, even now eminent commentators and analysts are grappling with some of the most fundamental dimensions of the relationships between research and innovation, science and technology.

Scott et al. assertion a “small amount of empirical research” does not square with RAGS claim that this area has been “thoroughly investigated.” One might be excused for thinking that RAGS cherrypicked the convenient parts of Scott et al. and ignored the rest. Scott et al. warn the reader that the “intuitive approach” (which RAGS asserts unabashedly) to understanding the role of public R&D in the economy can be misleading:

In the context of limited resources for supporting basic research, and the need to justify the expenditure of these resources, a growing number of policy-makers and academic analysts have become interested in understanding the relationships between basic research and economic activity. Much of this analysis has been underpinned by an attractive intuitive approach to understanding these relationships. This approach is characterised by several logical and sequential steps:
• First, science is mainly seen as a source of new information about how the world works.
• Second, because this information is published openly (as is usual with academic research findings), it is ‘free to all comers’ – a low cost input into economic processes.
• Third, the link between science and technology is obvious: scientific information is used in the creation of new technologies, which are then used in economic activity.
• Finally, given this role of science in the creation of economic returns, it becomes attractive to try to quantify the amount of economic benefit that can be attributed to the basic science elements.

This way of seeing science-technology-economy linkages is so intuitively obvious that for a long time it was simply assumed to be a valid approach. Unfortunately, it contains within it a series of misleading and incomplete ‘mindsets and myths’, the limitations of which have only become apparent through more in-depth investigations in recent years.

Scott et al. are decidedly less sanguine that studies focused on quantifying economic rates of return to research are a useful basis for specific science policy decisions,

Studies that use productivity growth as an indicator of social returns to research investments have a number of problems. In adopting a high level of aggregation in their analysis they rarely control for inter-industry differences in technological opportunity and appropriability. Furthermore, such studies do not reveal how the economic returns are realised and thus do not enable a comparison of the productivity impact of research in different scientific disciplines. A further point to keep in mind is that most measures estimate average rates of return, while marginal rates of return are required for the purposes of resource allocation decisions.

A similar critique can be found in Boskin and Lau (1995). Scott et al. do suggest that R&D provides many benefits to the economy, perhaps even more significantly than narrow studies of economic activity would suggest, through the many “channels” of interconnection between science and the rest of society. They suggest that the management of the relationship of science and society through these channels can be a more useful approach to science policy than by seeking to modulate macro-economic effects in an input-output manner. What is clear from Scott et al. however is that understandings of the relationship of science policy decisions and societal outcomes remain quite murky, unlike the assertions found in RAGS.

RAGS plays fast and loose with the voluminous data that it presents. For instance, RAGS asserts that increasing life expectancy in the United States provides a good indicator of the value of basic research. But this assertion would seem to be countered by the fact that the United States is not even close to first place globally in life expectancy, while countries with longer life expectancy invest far less in health research (and healthcare). The story of life expectancy illustrates the many complexities involved in the relationship of science, technology, and societal outcomes. RAGS presents a large amount of statistical information about how health indicators have improved in the United States over the past century, with the suggestion that these trends were a direct or indirect result of public investments in R&D. This may indeed be the case, but this argument is not developed or made here.

Further, as interesting as it is to see ratios of horses to cars in 1900 versus 1997, it is not clear the relevant of such trivia to the underlying analysis. The most telling conclusion I draw from the various graphs presented about technological progress and market penetration is how spectacularly uncorrelated such trends are with public funding of science and technology. Important questions are raised by thee data, but they are not even touched upon here.

Based on its collection of upward sloping graphs, RAGS takes a page from Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist and Gregg Easterbrook’s The Progress Paradox when it makes the claim that environmental and social indicators are almost universally getting better. It then reiterates its core assumption to explain why we see these improvements:

The science and technology research community and the industries that rely on that research are critical to the quality of life in the United States. Only by continuing investment in advancing technology—through the education of our children, the development of the science and engineering workforce, and the provision of an environment conducive to the transformation of research results into practical applications—can the full innovative capacity of the United States be harnessed and the full promise of a high quality of life realized.

What RAGS has yet to do through Chapter 2 is make an argument in support of this repeated assertion about the importance of R&D. Let me underscore that I also believe that R&D is important, but science policy decision making can and should be based on more than general statements of value. For instance, how might we judge the relative value of one possible R&D portfolio to another? Perhaps RAGS answers this in a subsequent chapter.

Posted on February 28, 2006 06:59 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Gathering Storm | Science Policy: General

February 27, 2006

A Review of Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Part 1

Given the recent attention to competitiveness by the White House and Congress, I thought that it might be useful to dig into the intellectual foundation that lies underneath. This post is the first in a series and offers a perspective on the recent NRC report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm (RAGS), all 543 pages of it, chapter-by-chapter. I start the review with this post focused on Chapter 1, titled “A Disturbing Mosaic.” We provided an overview of the executive summary of RAGS here.

The summary of my critique of the RAGS report so far is that there is a disconnect between the statement of the problem and the proposed solution. It is a truism that science and technology underpin modern society. And it is also true that the world economy has been transformed by economic globalization. But it does not clearly follow from these initial conditions that a policy focused on increasing investments in basic research in the physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering, and the number of scientists and engineers, will improve U.S. “competitiveness” much less counter the negative effects of globalization. While there are a suite of other policy recommendations to be found in RAGS, the focus is mostly on government funding for science and the production of PhD scientists and engineers. My interpretation of Chapter 1 in RAGS is that its arguments are largely faith-based rather than built on a foundation of policy analysis, but perhaps that is to come in future chapters. Read on for details.

RAGS has been cited as the intellectual foundation for the focus in President Bush’s State of the Union address on “keeping America competitive.” It also has been cited as the basis for a suite of proposed legislative actions now in various stages of development in Congress, most notable the so-called trifecta of PACE bills – Protecting America’s Competitive Edge.

RAGS defines the policy problem to be addressed consistent with the thesis of Thomas Friedman’s book, The World is Flat, which argues that the world in more economically competitive that ever before. RAGS summarizes Friedman’s concerns as follows:

Friedman asks rhetorically whether his own country is proving its readiness by “investing in our future and preparing our children the way we need to for the race ahead”. Friedman’s answer, not surprisingly, is no.

RAGS takes Friedman’s concern as its central focus:

This report addresses the possibility that our lack of preparation will reduce the ability of the United States to compete in such a world. Many underlying issues are technical; some are not. Some are “political”—not in the sense of partisan politics, but in the sense of “bringing the rest of the body politic along”. Scientists and engineers often avoid such discussions, but the stakes are too high to keep silent any longer. Friedman’s term quiet crisis, which others have called a “creeping crisis”, is reminiscent of the folk tale about boiling a frog. If a frog is dropped into boiling water, it will immediately jump out and survive. But a frog placed in cool water that is heated slowly until it boils won’t respond until it is too late. Our crisis is not the result of a one-dimensional change; it is more than a simple increase in water temperature. And we have no single awakening event, such as Sputnik. The United States is instead facing problems that are developing slowly but surely, each like a tile in a mosaic. None by itself seems sufficient to provoke action. But the collection of problems reveals a disturbing picture a recurring pattern of abundant short-term thinking and insufficient longterm investment.

The RAGS focus on “competitiveness” reminds me of a statement by Charles L. Schultze, writing in a book edited by B. L R. Smith and C. Barfield (Technology, R&D, and the Economy, Brookings, 1996), who suggested some principles for thinking about R&D in the economy

First, do not specify the target as increasing competitiveness. Competitiveness is a virtually meaningless, if widely used, word. It can – and has been – used to justify virtually anything.

RAGS then identifies three “clusters” of problems:

*Tilted jobs in the global economy
*Disinvestment in the future
*Reactions to 9/11

Let’s consider each in turn.

“Tilted jobs in the global economy” refers to the reality that companies have access to an employment market that goes well beyond national borders. Far from being a problem, RAGS seems to make the case that the flattening of the global economy is a good thing, both for the U.S. and other countries:

Most economists believe that [David] Ricardo is still correct—that there will be gains for all such nations. They acknowledge that there might be a transition phase in which wages for lower skilled workers in a rich country like the United States will fall. Some say that there is, however, no reason to believe that wages for highly skilled workers will fall in either the short run or the long run. Economist Paul Romer argues that technological change continues to increase the demand for workers with high levels of education. As a result, wages for US workers with at least a college education continue to rise faster than wages for other workers. The low wages for highly skilled workers seen in such countries as China and India are not a sign that the worldwide supply of highly skilled workers is so large that worldwide wages are now falling or are about to fall, says Romer. In those economies, wages for skilled workers are low because these workers were previously cut off from the deep and rapidly growing pool of technological knowledge that existed outside their borders. As they have opened up their economies so that this knowledge can now flow in, wages for highly skilled workers have grown rapidly.”

In spite of this seeming optimism based on the consensus view of economists RAGS then presents a conclusion that I can only conclude must be based entirely on assumptions:

It has also been argued that in a period of tectonic change such as the one that the global community is now undergoing, there will inevitably be nations and individuals that are winners or losers. It is the view of this committee that the determining factors in such outcomes are the extent of a nation’s commitment to get out and compete in the global marketplace. New generations of US scientists and engineers, assisted by progressive government policies, could lead the way to US leadership in the new, flatter world—as long as US workers remain among the best educated, hardest-working, best trained, and most productive in the world.

A few things should be pointed out. First, the United States is by any measure a global economic winner and has been for decades and longer. Second, this part of the report provides no data and no argument to make the case that the “tilting” of the global is in anyway problematic from a national perspective, and the evidence that it does provide suggests that this tilting is instead beneficial. The transition from a description of the realities of globalization to the call for progressive government policies and education of scientists and engineers is abrupt. It may very well be that such actions are needed, but the case has not yet been made thus far in RAGS. Let’s move on.

The second cluster of problems is “disinvestment in the future.” This section starts by citing a public opinion poll to make the case that education is suffering in the United States. It then presents familiar statistics on the average performance of U.S. K-12 students when compared to their OECD counterparts. The chapter then argues that more of the costs of education are being placed upon individuals, rather than the public. RAGS asserts that this has the effect of limiting the access to higher education among low-income students. I would agree that this is indeed a problem. But lets be clear, it is a problem of equity and access, and no connection is made here to the larger thesis of the chapter focused on economic competitiveness.

The section next claims that “the increasing pressure on corporations for short-term results has made investments in research highly problematic.” This section could have been a bit more substantive, and perhaps later in the report we will see such substance. But according to data gathered by the NSF SRS, industry has a long-term trend of increasing investments in research and development, with the NSF’s most recent issue brief noting, “Companies spent $204 billion in current-year dollars on research and development (R&D) performed in the United States during 2003 compared with $193.9 billion in 2002.” Industry outspends the federal government on R&D by about 50%. It is not at all clear that there is a problem in industry related to R&D investments. There is certainly no evidence of “disinvestment.”

The next section asserts that “funding for research in most physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering has declined or remained relatively flat—in real purchasing power—for several decades.” Why does this matter? According to RAGS, there are two reasons. The first is that health care advances depend on such research, “Many medical devices and procedures—such as endoscopic surgery, “smart” pacemakers, kidney dialysis, and magnetic resonance imaging—are the result of R&D in the physical sciences, engineering, and mathematics.” RAGS does acknowledge the meteoric rise in funding for health research over he past decade, but that apparently is insufficient. The second reason why RAGS argues that flat funding for the physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering matters is that it creates incentives for less-risky research, “Many believe that federal funding agencies—perhaps influenced by the stagnation of funding levels in the physical sciences, mathematics and engineering—have become increasingly risk-averse and focused on short-term results.” It is not clear either what this means or why it matters. A focus on high-risk research is a function of research policies and not necessarily the consequence of overall funding levels. For example, one way to encourage “riskier” research in NSF would be to do away with the second review criterion focused on broader societal impacts and focus narrowly on scientific merit. Funding is neither here nor there. Again, there is no evidence of a “disinvestments.”

Let’s now turn to the third problem cluster, “Reactions to 9/11.” RAGS takes issue with three specific areas of U.S. science policy put into place follow 9/11, “visa policies, export controls, and the treatment of “sensitive but unclassified” information.” These are of concern to scientists because of the limitations that each policy places upon the ability to recruit and train foreign students and conduct research alongside foreign colleagues.
Because I work in a university and see the effects of these policies, I am in general agreement with RAGS that they are problematic from the standpoint of fettering research. But at the same time these policies have been put in place as a reaction to the threat of terrorism. Have such policies gone too far? Perhaps. But of course scientists want research to be unfettered by restrictions. So far however RAGS has not provided evidence for understanding the effects of national security policies in a way that would allow for a sense of the tradeoffs involved. Perhaps this is to come in a subsequent chapter.

The chapter ends by asserting – not arguing – its conclusion: “Well-paying jobs, accessible health care, and high-quality education require the discovery, application, and dissemination of information and techniques … This report emphasizes the need for world-class science and engineering—not simply as an end in itself but as the principal means of creating new jobs for our citizenry as a whole as it seeks to prosper in the global marketplace of the 21st century.” That modern society is built upon science and technology is obvious. But the important questions about science and technology are not yet raised by RAGS, much less answered – What information is it that we need? What techniques? How should we think about priorities among different areas of knowledge? How does world-class science and engineering relate to jobs? Perhaps the answers to these questions will be revealed in subsequent chapters.

Thus far, the story is about an ill-defined problem with a crystal-clear solution: more investment in research and development.

Posted on February 27, 2006 07:22 AM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Gathering Storm | Science Policy: General

February 24, 2006

New FAQs

We've just posted a few new short FAQs, ostensibly for the media but really for anyone, on subjects that we discuss a lot around here. They are on:

Space Policy
Politicization of Science
Hurricanes and Global Warming
Drought Policy

Find them here. Your comments/suggestions are welcomed.

Posted on February 24, 2006 03:19 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

David Goldston on Science Policy in the U.S. Congress

In our Winter, 2006 newsletter David Goldston, Chief of Staff for the House Committee on Science, provides a perspective on the state of science policy in Congress. Goldston’s essay was invited as a response to his Democratic counter-part (recently retired), Bob Palmer, who prepared a perspective for us last summer titled, Science Policy: The Victim of Partisan Politics”.

Palmer wrote,

The Federal government is not responding to the many political challenges of the day – energy, environment, health care, global economic competition – whose resolution would greatly benefit from the wise application of S&T. When politics is overly fettered by partisanship, so is science – in the sense that its legitimate role in opening up more room for negotiations and the development of policy options is severely limited. This unfortunately is the niche that science policy occupies today.

To which Goldston responds,

In short, this hardly seems the time to lament the lack of debate over science policy in Washington or the unwillingness of Congress to air science issues. What remains to be seen is how much progress a divided Congress will make in an election year in resolving these issues. As of now, the outlook is promising.

We are appreciative of both David Goldston and Bob Plamer for not only engaging each other, but for providing us a rare look at perspectives on Congressional science policy straight from the House Science Committee. Our newsletter can be found here.

Posted on February 24, 2006 06:54 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

February 23, 2006

New IST Science Policy Blogs

The IQ of the science policy blogosphere just increased. The periodical Issues in Science and Technology, a publication of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, has unveiled several of the authors of its new group blog. They are ASU’s Daniel Sarewitz and OECD’s Jerry Sheehan. For those interested in science policy, they are worth a look and perhaps a link in your favorites. Here is one of Dan Sarewitz’s recent posts:

It comes as a relief to learn, from a recent NY Times article, that scientists have recently gone to Capitol Hill to give Members of Congress and their staff a briefing on “how science works.” It’s a little weird, I guess, that a single briefing could explain what centuries of inquiry and debate by scientists, philosophers, sociologists, historians, and others have failed to achieve, but I accept that one has to simplify these things for the lay audience. According to the article, Science editor Donald Kennedy told the Congressional audience that “the ultimate test of truth in science” is the replication of results: Hmmmm. Well, there’s certainly no way to replicate a billion or so years of Darwinian natural selection, so I guess the theory of evolution must not be science. And obviously you can’t replicate a general circulation model’s prediction of the future behavior of climate, since the future hasn’t happened yet, so apparently climate modeling isn’t science either. I suspect there’s some subtlety here that I’m missing, but I’m sure our elected officials were able to grasp it.

Have a look. We’ll keep you updated as Issues adds more contributors.

Posted on February 23, 2006 07:10 AM View this article | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

February 21, 2006

Consensus Statement on Hurricanes and Global Warming

Under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization’s Commission on Atmospheric Sciences, its Tropical Meteorology Research Program Panel has just issued a statement on hurricanes and global warming (here in PDF).

The statement is significant not only because it was drafted by nine prominent experts, but because it includes in its authorship Kerry Emanuel, Greg Holland (second author of Webster et al. 2005), Ton Knutson, and Chris Landsea. Frequent readers will recognize these names as people not always in agreement. That they came together to produce a consensus statement is good for the community, and also gives a good sense on where they agree and disagree.

While the statement has enough background and language to allow anyone to selectively cherry pick from it in support of any perspective, here is the take-home message from the statement

“The research issues discussed here are in a fluid state and are the subject of much current investigation. Given time the problem of causes and attribution of the events of 2004-2005 will be discussed and argued in the refereed scientific literature. Prior to this happening it is not possible to make any authoritative comment.”

Therefore, for those of us not involved in primary research on hurricanes and climate change, any conclusions, or predictions about how future research will turn out, about the role of global warming in hurricanes will necessarily be based on non-scientific factors. If you are like the IPCC, then you will assume that observed climate phenomena can be explained by natural variability unless and until the thresholds of “detection and attribution” can be achieved. This is a high threshold for identification of greenhouse gas effects on climate, and it is of course not the only approach that could be taken. But it is the approach of the IPCC.

If you are politically or ideologically motivated to use the threat of stronger hurricanes in pursuit of some goal, then you will bet that a link will indeed be established. And similarly, if you are politically or ideologically motivated to discount the threat of stronger hurricanes in pursuit of some goal, then you will bet that no link is immediately forthcoming.

The reality is that the present state of science does not allow us to come to a conclusion that global warming has affected hurricanes (e.g., see this PDF). It is suggestive, and different experts disagree about what future research will tell us. I’d bet that this condition of uncertainty about future research will be with us for a long time. Thank goodness its resolution is not of particularly large importance for understanding and implementing those actions known with certainty to be most effective with respect to hurricane impacts (e.g., here in PDF).

Posted on February 21, 2006 06:56 AM View this article | Comments (31) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

February 16, 2006

There is No Line

In today’s New York Times Andy Revkin has a follow up story on politics and NASA media policies. The story shows that we are rapidly on our way to intellectual incoherence on this issue. Consider the following:

"The issue is where does science end and policy begin," said David Goldston, chief of staff to Representative Sherwood Boehlert, chairman of the House Science Committee.

News flash (but not to Prometheus readers!) - There is no line that cleanly divides science from policy. The discussion of the use of the term “climate change” versus the phrase “global warming” clearly shows that there is no getting away from politics in the presentation of scientific issues. As scholars of communication tell us, politics is inherent in the act of communication.

In a more recent example of possible political pressure at the agency, press officers and scientists cited an e-mail message sent last July from NASA's headquarters to its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. It said a Web presentation describing the uncontroversial finding that Earth was a "warming planet" could not use the phrase "global warming." It is "standard practice," the message went on, to use the phrase "climate change." NASA officials said the intent was to use the most general term to describe climate fluctuations. But other public affairs workers and some scientists at the agency called it an effort to avoid mentioning that global temperatures are rising. The e-mail message was written by Erica Hupp, a civil servant at headquarters. She did not reply to several requests for comment, but several people who work with her, and others who preceded her in managing earth-science news in the office, said this was a standing unwritten order from political appointees in public affairs. "There was this general understanding that when something in this field was written about that it was to be described as climate change and not global warming," said Elvia H. Thompson, who recently retired from the same office.

So think about this carefully. The phrase “climate change” was recommended in the Luntz memo as part of a (failed, IMO) strategy to sway public opinion against action on climate change. The phrase “global warming” is preferred by environmental advocacy groups for exactly the same reason. Which phrase do you choose? The choice cannot be determined by science alone. (Though it is worth noting that the science community does indeed prefer the term “climate change”, e.g., it is the IPCC not the IPGW.) As I’ve written here before, even the specific definition of the phrase “climate change” reflects a political position.

Other examples of the use of language as tools of political advocacy in science include the use of the words “fingerprint” (e.g., here) and “harbinger” (e.g., here) as recommended by the Union of Concerned Scientists as means of political advocacy.

Decisions about what press releases are put out and how the content in them is described are always going to be political decisions. There is no scientific basis for deciding what to release or how to frame it. When the Clinton Administration was in office things were spun one way, and when the Bush folks took over things were spun another way. In every case such spinning can be done in a way that does not involve misrepresenting scientific understandings (not that spinners always succeed in this).

There is no line. Looking for one is a wild goose chase. Policies and practices for media relations in science agencies will always be political. And politics is a function of who is in power. If you don’t like it, get involved, run for office, campaign for your favored candidate, get out the vote, participate in special interest advocacy groups, do all of these things. But don’t pretend that science can resolve political disputes. There is no line.

Posted on February 16, 2006 09:10 AM View this article | Comments (37) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

NOAA and Hurricanes

NOAA has edited its press release that originally asserted a “consensus” among NOAA scientists, which we discussed here. How does this change the landscape of the hurricane climate issue? While it is a positive step forward for public relations, it doesn’t alter the current state of the science or most importantly, our understanding of what sorts of policy actions make the most sense in hurricane policy. Read on for details.

The material that NOAA added yesterday to their September 2005 press release reads as follows:

EDITOR’S NOTE: This consensus in this on-line magazine story represents the views of some NOAA hurricane researchers and forecasters, but does not necessarily represent the views of all NOAA scientists. It was not the intention of this article to discount the presence of a human-induced global warming element or to attempt to claim that such an element is not present. There is a robust, on-going discussion on hurricanes and climate change within NOAA and the scientific community.
The headline and paragraph could have more clearly stated:

“Agreement Among Some NOAA Hurricane Researchers and Forecasters”

There is agreement among a number of NOAA hurricane researchers and forecasters that recent increases in hurricane activity are primarily the result of natural fluctuations in the tropical climate system known as the tropical multi-decadal signal.”

The Wall Street Journal discussed this in an article today, and adds this detail:

Scott Smullen, NOAA's deputy director of public affairs, said the article was never meant to be an official position, and added that the use of the word "consensus" was a mistake made by one of his staff members. "There is no consensus," Mr. Smullen said.

As we’ve stated before, NOAA should not be in the business of issuing an agency perspective on areas of science, so from the perspective of NOAA public relations this would seem to be a positive step. But what does it tell us about the science of hurricanes and climate change? Absolutely nothing. It has been no secret that different scientists have different firmly held views about what future research will reveal. Because of the overlay of politics this has become a nasty personal debate among some scientists, fanned by media attention, fame, and hubris. What should we observers expect? Dan Sarewitz provides a guide:

When political stakes associated with a controversy are relatively low, high certainty is more permissible than when the stakes are high (e.g., Collingridge and Reeve, 1986). Fewer disciplines, institutions, and stakeholders are likely to have strong and competing interests in any particular assertion of uncertainty levels. . . But when the costs and benefits associated with action on a controversy begin to emerge and implicate a variety of interests, both political and scientific scrutiny of the problem will increase, as will sources of uncertainty.

In short, we should expect to see many studies on this subject coming out in the peer reviewed literature in coming years. Some will likely be supportive of the notion that GHGs, others will not. Advocates and scientists alike will cherry pick among these to make their case. And because the issue is so politicized only the most high-minded and responsible scientists will avoid getting caught up in mud slinging. From where I sit, both Kerry Emanuel and Chris Landsea, on different sides of this issue, have exemplified such responsibility.

But this public debate over global warming and hurricanes is also dangerous. It completely drowns out discussion, debate, and advocacy about those actions most likely to be effective with respect to hurricane policy. Politics sure is fun, and conflict draws attention. But the reality is that the scientific debate over hurricanes and climate change is going to be with us for many, many years. No matter how it is resolved, if ever, one way or another it won’t be particularly significant for policy. And the U.S. hurricane season is less than 4 months away.

Posted on February 16, 2006 07:20 AM View this article | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

February 15, 2006

On Having Things Both Ways

From James Hansen’s talk at The New School, 10 February 2006 (here in PDF).

I do not attempt to define policy, which is up to the people and their elected representatives, and I don’t criticize policies. The climate science has policy relevance, but I let the facts speak for themselves about consequences for policy-makers.

But then the very next sentence says:

I intend to show that the answer to the question “Can we still avoid dangerous human-made climate change” is yes, we could, but we are not now on a path to do that, and if we do not begin actions to get on a different path within the next several years we will pass a point of no return, beyond which it is impossible to avoid climate change with far ranging undesirable consequences. Why we are not taking actions to avoid climate change relates to the topic of this conference, which I will address in the latter part of my talk.

I have a lot of respect for Dr. Hansen’s stand against being muzzled in NASA, but his statement on policy suggests that he is either woefully uninformed about the nature of policy and politics or he is willfully couching political advocacy in the cloth of “science.” Further into his presentation he is explicitly political, and sadly misinformed about how politics works:

It seems to me that special interests have been a roadblock wielding undue influence over policymakers. The special interests seek to maintain short-term profits with little regard to either the long-term impact on the planet that will be inherited by our children and grandchildren or the long-term economic well-being of our country. The public, if well-informed, has the ability to override the influence of special interests, and the public has shown that they feel a stewardship toward the Earth and all of its inhabitants. Scientists can play a useful role if they help communicate the climate change story to the public in a credible, understandable fashion.

The public is in fact made up of special interests, which includes groups such as Democrats, Republicans, environmentalists, industrialists, academics, and NASA employees. Politics is not about “overriding special interests” but balancing them. Dr. Hansen would do well to read Federalist 10. After that he should read Sarewitz. With all this talk about scientific literacy of the public, perhaps we might start talking about politcal literacy among scientists. I have no problem with Dr. Hansen talking about policy and politics. I do have a problem with him talking about policy and politics and framing his comments as “science.” This is what politicizes science.

Dr. Hansen aside, perhaps one of the obstacles to developing effective climate policy is that we as a society have placed “Working Group 1” expertise in charge of leading the debate on climate policy when what we really need is the expertise found in “Working Group III” and beyond.

Posted on February 15, 2006 03:43 PM View this article | Comments (15) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Sarewitz in American Scientist

Dan Sarewitz, director of the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes at ASU, is a close colleague and frequent collaborator. He is also one of our leading thinkers on science in politics and society. He has an essay in the March-April 2006 issue of American Scientist titled “Liberating Science from Politics.” It is relevant to frequent recent discussions on this blog. Below is an excerpt, but do read the whole thing:

”Wouldn't it be wonderful if science—and scientists—were taken more seriously in the political process? Wouldn't democracy be better served? And wouldn't many difficult problems be more rationally resolved? Take the debates over protecting the environment. It certainly seems that, here, science should be able to cut through political controversy and enable beneficial action. Yet experience mostly shows the opposite: Controversies surrounding environmental problems as diverse as global climate change, genetically modified foods, nuclear energy, biodiversity, air and water pollution, and toxic wastes rarely seem to come to a satisfactory resolution. They are instead characterized by long-term intractability and periodic resurgence of bitter partisan dispute—all in the face of a continual expansion of scientific understanding.
Blame for this unsatisfactory state of affairs is usually assigned to the political process itself, especially to those who use science to advance particular ideological agendas. If only, the complaint goes, those (a) conservatives (b) liberals (c) environmentalists (d) industrialists or (e) ignorant members of the public would understand the facts, or stop manipulating the facts for their own political gain, we could arrive at rational solutions to the problems we face.

Yet this sort of complaint—which I have heard, in one form or another, from innumerable scientists—suffers from a profound misunderstanding of the relation between science and politics. The idea that a set of scientific facts can reconcile political differences and point the way toward a rational solution is fundamentally flawed. The reality is that when political controversy exists, the scientific enterprise is ideally suited to exacerbating disagreement, rather than resolving it.”

Read the whole essay here.

Posted on February 15, 2006 07:04 AM View this article | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

February 12, 2006

Science Suppression: A Personal Story

During 1993-1994 I was doing research on my dissertation which was focused on the implementation of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), then a new program having been written into law in the fall of 1990. Part of my research involved interviewing people responsible for the creation of the program and its implementation. Many of these people were high-ranking agency officials and very difficult to schedule, so I was only able to interview several of them. In 1994 I wrote up a paper based on my analysis for presentation at the annual meeting of the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) in Washington, DC. I sent copies of the paper to the agency officials that I did get to interview for their reaction, and this is when the fun began.

At the time I was sitting at NCAR courtesy of Mickey Glantz, who later hired me as a post-doc and then a staff scientist in his group. But in 1993-1994 I was an unpaid graduate student taking advantage of Mickey’s gracious offer of a desk and access to NCAR people as I finished up my dissertation. The paper I had drafted for APPAM was critical of the USGCRP arguing that it was structured to produce a lot of good science, but not necessarily well-structured to contribute useful information to decision makers. (For the argument see this 1995 paper – PDF -- which is descendant of the 1994 APPAM analysis).

The reaction to the paper was swift and for a wet-behind-the-ears graduate student a lesson in the politics of science. (I have the email correspondence still from these events.) The few copies of the paper I had mailed to my interviewees had multiplied and had made their way around USGCRP circles, and people were not happy with the paper. There was concern among USGCRP officials that the paper could be damaging in the budget process, particularly since I had an affiliation with NCAR, which they felt gave me some credibility.

One person that I had sent the paper to was a top official in the National Science Foundation (NSF) in charge of the directorate that provided base funding for NCAR. Concern about my paper was expressed by this official to the director of NCAR and the President of UCAR, the body that oversees NCAR. There was quite a hullabaloo surrounding this as NCAR was encouraged to disallow me from conducting research there, and more than gently reminded where its funding came from. In short, USGCRP officials wanted me gone and my paper to disappear.

The good news is that the NCAR leadership stood up for my right to call things as I saw them and stood strong in the face of what must have been very uncomfortable pressure from NSF. After all I was just a nobody grad student and NCAR very easily could have brushed me off to please NSF. Here is an excerpt from an email from a top NCAR official to others in NCAR leadership on this from June, 1994:

Maybe this is a test – can a graduate student write his dissertation on a subject that may imply that a program of our government is not perfect? Is there any such thing as academic freedom or freedom of scientific inquiry, or must we all sing the party line? If a program can’t tolerate criticism – it probably NEEDS to be criticized. I’ve read some of Roger’s work, and I found his criticisms to be generally on point and constructive. I don’t feel we should in any way “distance ourselves” from Roger’s work. But what do I know?

Further good news that resulted from this was that part of the negotiations that resulted was an agreement that I would go to Washington, DC and interview a wide range of people associated with the USGCRP so that they could “set me straight.” Thus, I was able to get access to many people high up in the program who heretofore had been inaccessible to me. I interviewed them and much of what I learned appeared in the final version of my dissertation.

I learned a number of lessons from this experience. First, I learned the importance of some distance from government when doing policy research. Although NCAR works with government funds, its staff are not government employees. NSF could exert pressure through the budget, but did not have direct line authority over NCAR leadership or NCAR scientists. Second, I learned the importance of leadership. NCAR leadership from Mickey Glantz on up to the top was very supportive of research and erring on the side of openness rather than suppression. Third, I learned that incentives for suppressing unwelcome news are strong. I did not ascribe the actions of the NSF official to the politics of the newly elected Clinton Administration or any broader war on policy research, but a misguided effort to exert control over what information came out of NCAR in an effort to protect parochial political interests. Finally, I learned that efforts to suppress typically have the exact opposite effect. Had NSF ignored that paper, no one would have read it, I never would have had additional access to leading USGCRP officials, I probably wouldn’t have received an offer of a post-doc at NCAR, and today I’d be doing something completely different than giving scientists a hard time.

Postscript: More that ten years later a top official involved in the debacle expressed to me regret that it occurred and suggested that with hindsight my analysis at the time did prove to have merit. I appreciated this and remain on fairly good terms with this person, now retired.

Posted on February 12, 2006 03:58 PM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Political Advocacy and the Ethics of Resigning

At the core of the debate over NASA and NOAA policies for the interaction of scientists with the media lies an implicit and ill-defined distinction between discussions of science and discussions of policy. Most discussions of Dr. Hansen have glossed over the distinction between his right to speak out and his fundamental disagreement with the policies of the U.S. government. Is there a point at which Dr. Hansen, or other government officials in similar situation, have an obligation to resign? The answer is that it is complicated.

Democratic government would be impossible without career government employees whose duty it is to carry out the laws and policies put into place by the properly elected representatives of the people. But is reality, career government employees have considerable discretion in their duties and are key factors in recommending and implementing policy. The debate over James Hansen has thus far failed to engage these complicated issues, falling back on the worn, but safe science-policy distinction.

For example, Michael Griffin, NASA administrator, released a statement on in which he stated, “It is not the job of public affairs officers to alter, filter or adjust engineering or scientific material produced by NASA's technical staff.” And NOAA Administrator Conrad C. Lautenbacher said “I encourage scientists to conduct peer-reviewed research and provide the honest results of those findings.” What is unsaid by NOAA and NASA here is how scientists should manage discussing policy issues when they are in political opposition to the current policies of the U.S. government, which is really at the core of the debate of NASA and NOAA.

A news story from Australia helps to frame the challenge:

A FORMER CSIRO senior scientist and internationally recognised expert on climate change claims he was reprimanded and encouraged to resign after he spoke out on global warming. . . Dr Pearman says he fell out with his CSIRO superiors after joining the Australian Climate Group, an expert lobby group convened by the Insurance Australia Group and environment body WWF in late 2003. A core aim of the group was to encourage Australian political leaders to consider carbon trading — where industry pollution is capped and there are financial incentives to reduce emissions — and other measures including a target to reduce greenhouse gases by 60 per cent by 2050. The Federal Government has said it will not pursue carbon trading at this stage. It accepts that global warming is real and poses a threat to the Australian environment, but does not support mandatory targets for reducing carbon emissions. Dr Pearman, who headed the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research for 10 years until 2002, said he was admonished by his Canberra superiors for "making public expressions of what I believed were scientific views, on the basis that they were deemed to be political views".

What is political advocacy anyway? Political advocacy refers to efforts to reduce the scope of choice available to decision makers, typically to some desired course of action. In the case above, Dr. Pearman was not only acting as a political advocate in arguing for carbon trading, he actively joined groups whose mission was overt political advocacy. For his part, Dr. Pearman doesn’t seem to recognize what political advocacy actually is stating, "In 33 years (with CSIRO), I don't think I had ever felt I was political in that sense. I've worked with ministers and prime ministers from both parties over a long period of time, and in all cases I think I've tried to draw a line between fearless scientific advice about issues and actual policy development, which I think is in the realm of government." The article does not say how active Dr. Pearman was in his political advocacy, but it is conceivable that his advocacy actions were in direct conflict with his duties as a government employee and as such it would be entirely appropriate to ask him to leave. (Much the same if a conscientious objector objected to a war. Rather than force them to fight or allow them to block implementation it would be appropriate to relieve them of their government duties.)

James Hansen has clearly engaged in political advocacy unrelated to his expertise on climate when he came out in support of John Kerry, when he criticized the role of special interests he disagrees with influencing the Bush Administration, and when he offered some comparisons to NOAA press policy, "It seems more like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union than the United States." And James Hansen also engaged in political advocacy related to his expertise when he called for the U.S. government to act on reducing greenhouse gases. All of this seems quite obvious.

Let me emphasize that I think that Dr. Hansen should be able to do all of these things, provided that he is clear that he is offering his opinions and they differ from those of his employer, the government of the United States. He did exactly this in a recent speech,

Hansen prefaced his speech, which focused largely on how quickly humans must act in order to prevent irreversible climate change, by saying he was speaking as an individual. "I'm not speaking for the agency or the government," he said.

But at the same time it is important to recognize how government works in the United States, and most democracies. Far reaching national policies are set by the duly elected representatives of the people, and not unelected government bureaucrats. Governance would be impossible if every government employee sought to implement policies according to their own personal beliefs. As Sobel writes in an excellent article titled “The Ethics of Resigning,”

All senior leaders, whether appointed or career, serve in an administration and for a principle with broader responsibilities. These officials have special obligations to protect and support their principal and administration as the mechanism of democratic accountability in government. They have strong implicit obligations to stay within the policy framework of their administration and not undermine their principal.

Dr. Hansen has every right to disagree with the policies of the U.S. government. But at some point, Dr. Hansen and others in government positions have to decide where their allegiances lie – do they want to work for the government and help to implement those policies that, for better or worse, are the result of the messy process of democracy? Or do they want to throw their efforts behind the aims of special interest groups who are seeking particular political outcomes? There is indeed a choice to be made as they cannot effectively do both. And sometimes, the ethically correct choice in a democracy is to resign and take the honorable position of outspoken political advocate.

J. P. Dobel argues that the decision to resign from a government position has positives and negatives, among them,

. . . resignation can help ensure accountability to democratic institutions . . . exit from an institution can signal to the public the existence of a debate over deeper or more serious issues than had been exposed in public deliberations. A public resignation with voice adds information and credibility to dissent. Like any human action, however, resignation cuts both ways and can also harm accountability. If everyone opposed to a policy exits, the institution loses its capacity for internal reform. Exits of dissenters narrow the range of options within an inner circle, encourage groupthink, and undermine the internal trust and communication needed for honest policy discussion.

Dobel argues that career officials have strong incentives not to resign,

Career officials possess strong independent moral obligations to stay and accede to legal changes in policy as they respond to democrativ accountability and defend the competence of their office. They might believe they can ameliorate the policy, leak, or whistle blow, or work to change the policy.

Bottom line from my perspective:

NASA and NOAA have an obligation to allow career scientists to express their views on science and its relationship with policy.

Career scientists have an obligation to differentiate their personal views from official government policies.

Career scientists need to look inside themselves and ask the difficult question, “If I cannot in good faith fulfill my job and its responsibilities to implement the policies of a democratic government because I disagree with those policies, do I have an ethical obligation to resign and take on a role as political advocate working to change the system?”

If democratic governance is to be possible, then for some people in some situations, the answer to this question should be “Yes.” I don’t know what the answer is for James Hansen, but it is a question that he should ask himself every day that he works to overturn U.S. government policies on climate.

Reference: J.P. Dobel, 1999. The Ethics of Resigning, Journal Policy Analysis and Management, 18:245-263.

Posted on February 12, 2006 08:46 AM View this article | Comments (21) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

February 11, 2006

Slouching Toward Scientific McCarthyism

In the 20 February 2006 issue of The New Republic, John B. Judis has an article about how the issue of hurricanes and global warming has been handled by NOAA. Judis is engaging in scientific McCarthyism by arguing that certain perspectives on science are invalid because they are viewed as politically incorrect by some.

The transformation of this part of climate science into pure politics is fully embraced by those on the political left and the right, and most troubling is that this transformation is being encouraged by some leading scientists who have taken to criticizing the views of other scientists because they happen to work for the federal government. These scientists know full well how such accusations will be received. What ever happened to sticking to the science? Read on for background and analysis.

Judis alleges that scientists and political appointees in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA (pronounced “Noah”) are together conspiring to suppress scientific knowledge about a linkage of hurricanes and global warming,

Many respected climate scientists, including some who work for NOAA, believe the organization's official line on the link between global warming and hurricanes is wrong. What's more, there is reason to believe that NOAA knows as much. In the broader scientific community, there is grumbling that NOAA's top officials have suppressed dissenting views on this subject--contributing to the Bush administration's attempt to downplay the danger of climate change. Says Don Kennedy, the editor-in-chief of Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, "There are a lot of scientists there who know it is nonsense, what they are putting up on their website, but they are being discouraged from talking to the press about it."

The notion that NOAA has an “official line” on hurricanes put up on their website apparently comes from this press release from 29 November 2005 which includes the following statements:

The nation is now wrapping up the 11th year of a new era of heightened Atlantic hurricane activity. This era has been unfolding in the Atlantic since 1995, and is expected to continue for the next decade or perhaps longer. NOAA attributes this increased activity to natural occurring cycles in tropical climate patterns near the equator. These cycles, called “the tropical multi-decadal signal,” typically last several decades (20 to 30 years or even longer). As a result, the North Atlantic experiences alternating decades long (20 to 30 year periods or even longer) of above normal or below normal hurricane seasons. NOAA research shows that the tropical multi-decadal signal is causing the increased Atlantic hurricane activity since 1995, and is not related to greenhouse warming.

There is consensus among NOAA hurricane researchers and forecasters that recent increases in hurricane activity are primarily the result of natural fluctuations in the tropical climate system known as the tropical multi-decadal signal.

Judis argues that the scientific consensus has moved on:

NOAA's official position reflects what used to be the conventional wisdom on the relationship between global warming and hurricanes. Until recently, most empirical climate studies had focused on the frequency of hurricanes; and most researchers concluded that there wasn't a link to global warming--the frequency was connected to cyclical trends. But, in the last year, two important studies have suggested that there is an observable link between global warming and the growing intensity of hurricanes.

The studies that he refers to are familiar to readers of this bog, Emanuel in Nature and Webster et al. in Science, hereafter E05 and W05. What Judis doesn’t tell his readers is that neither E05 nor W05 are attribution papers – that is, neither paper conducted a rigorous analysis to explain the trends that they have documented. Here is what those papers actually say about attribution:

Emanuel et al. 2005 expresses some doubt as to the cause of the trends that he observes: “Whatever the cause, the near doubling of power dissipation over the period of record should be a matter of some concern”
Webster et al. 2005 more explicitly eschew attribution: “attribution of the 30-year trends [in hurricane intensity] to global warming would require a longer global data record and, especially, a deeper understanding of the role of hurricanes in the general circulation of the atmosphere and ocean, even in the present climate state.”

Now to be fair, Emanuel and the Webster et al. team have stated frequently in public that they firmly believe that the trends that they have documented are in fact caused by global warming. Why is there a difference between the cautious statements these scientists have made in their peer-reviewed publications and what they have said in public? The difference is that between rigorous research and hypotheses about what future research will show. Neither E05 nor W05 fully explain the trends that they see, but as we suggest in or 2005 BAMS review (here in PDF), they are “suggestive” of a linkage. Further peer-reviewed research may indeed demonstrate attribution, but it has not yet, and for those of us without expertise in the science it is probably best to rely on what the peer reviewed literature says rather than picking sides in an unfolding debate yet to appear in the peer-reviewed literature.

Judging by a quote in the Judis article, Donald Kennedy of Science thinks that this issue is important enough to violate his own magazines embargo policy when he says that, “According to Kennedy, forthcoming papers by Emanuel and by Kevin Trenberth of NCAR could strengthen the case for a link between hurricanes and global warming.” Of course it seems obvious that even if such papers are soon to appear, it makes no sense for scientists who are unaware of them to reflect what they say. [My guess is that these papers will offer competing theories to explain recent trends.] But I suppose that the logic here is that such studies merely confirm what those evil NOAA scientists should have known in the first place.

TNR’s Judis appears to acknowledge a “scientific debate” but then writes as if the previous scientific paradigm has been overturned and anyone who says differently must be in cahoots with the Bush Administration’s spin machine or conservative commentators. Bizarrely, Judis criticizes NOAA scientists for making statements fully supportable by peer-reviewed science, and in some cases work that those scientists have published.

NOAA officials have sometimes included carefully crafted caveats designed to deflect criticism from scientists who know about the controversy. But, because they don't acknowledge the debate explicitly, the general public is likely to miss the caveats' significance. Appearing before a subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee on September 20, for instance, Max Mayfield, the director of NOAA's National Hurricane Center, said, "The increased activity since 1995 is due to natural fluctuations and cycles of hurricane activity, driven by the Atlantic Ocean itself along with the atmosphere above it and not enhanced substantially by global warming." NOAA officials also resort to clever ambiguities that elude the public.”

If there is a scientific debate as Judis suggests, should Mayfield have the right to express his views on the science? Didn’t we just go through this with James Hansen? Is it that Mayfiled’s views are not politically correct and so therefore he must be lying to the public? Judis is encouraging scientific McCarthyism.

Judis continues to pile on NOAA administrators and scientists for making statements that are either consistent with existing science or their own personal views on the science,

They deny, for instance, any link between global warming and hurricane "activity"--a term that glosses over the distinction between frequency and intensity. The November issue of NOAA's online magazine declares that "NOAA attributes recent increase in hurricane activity to naturally occurring multi-decadal climate variability" (italics added). In settings where scientists are not likely to be listening, NOAA officials have even dropped the hedged and ambiguous language. On August 30, Conrad Lautenbacher, the head of NOAA, said in Weldon Spring, Missouri, "We have no direct link between the number of storms and intensity versus global temperature rise." The next month, when CBS's "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer asked Mayfield whether the hurricanes had "something to do with global warming," he replied unequivocally, "Bob, hurricanes, and especially major hurricanes, are cyclical." And, at the NOAA press conference, Bell said simply of hurricane intensity: "It's not related to greenhouse warming."

Bell has an impressive record of scientific research. Is he not allowed to speak to his conclusions and hypotheses, or are only certain perspectives allowed in today’s politics of the climate debate? If we are going to advocate that James Hansen can speak his views on climate science, which are not universally shared, on what basis is Judis criticizing Bell for expressing his views?

Judis even endorses scientific McCarthyism by associating the views of certain scientists with conservative commentators, suggesting that certain views should be evaluated by who refers to them,

As expected, Rush Limbaugh, Rich Lowry of National Review, The Washington Times, and other conservative voices have cited NOAA to attack what Limbaugh has called "the global warming crowd." But NOAA's and Mayfield's statements have also influenced mainstream commentators. Citing Mayfield, USA Today editorialized against "global warming activists" who were turning the "storms into spin." CNN correspondent Ann O'Neill counseled against attributing hurricanes becoming "bigger and meaner" to global warming. "Don't rush to blame it on global warming, experts warn," she wrote. And two of the experts she quoted were Mayfield and Chris Landsea, Mayfield's colleague at the National Hurricane Center. Citing Mayfield, a Chicago Tribune editorial issued a similar admonition against linking hurricanes with global warming.

Judis goes on to discuss the state of public relations in NOAA, a subject on which I too have heard rumors of a clamp down. As I understand things the alleged clamp down affects all NOAA employees, not just those who want to assert a linkage between global warming and hurricanes (Who are these folks? Judis does not name names.). This is indeed an important subject and it would benefit from some hard evidence (muzzled NOAA employees contact me: pielke@colorado.edu!). But to suggest that any such clamp down on media interactions has contributed to a stifling of discussion of hurricanes and global warming is absurd. This subject has received far more attention than is warranted by its policy significance. The great irony here is that Judis is trying to stifle the voices of those who he disagrees with.

For its part, NOAA should never put out an official agency position on a scientific subject, unless it has some formal mechanism for arriving at such a position (as does the FDA, for instance). Individual scientists, whether they are in NOAA and NASA, should be able to voice their views on science in which they have expertise. If many scientists within NOAA happen to think that the linkage of hurricanes and global warming is overstated by others, there is no need to ascribe this to the politics of the Bush Administration or to lying or deceit. Every NOAA scientist quoted in the Judis story has had a career that began long before Bush took office. Each is an accomplished scientist. They are deserving of our respect, even if their views are not received as politically correct.

The reality is that the last word on the science of hurricanes and climate change has yet to be written. And as far as the peer-reviewed literature is concerned, the debate really hasn’t even begun. There are differing expectations from very smart people about what future research will say. This is a recipe for an increase in our collective uncertainty. For the foreseeable future there will be conflicting statements made by qualified scientists. How people choose sides in this debate is likely to be much more a function of politics and ideology than anything else. Expect to see more scientific McCarthyism.

Posted on February 11, 2006 08:58 AM View this article | Comments (28) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

February 09, 2006

More on GM Foods and WTO

At SciDev.net David Dickson has a thoughtful essay on GM foods, science, and trans-science. Dickson notes that people in poor countries can view “modern science and technology with suspicion, if not scepticism.” I’d extend this claim to cover some people in richer countries as well. Here is an excerpt:

But the distrust is also due to the fact that faith in scientific solutions may clash with the comforting certainties of traditional belief systems. This in turn means that these solutions may undermine not only the social practices that belief systems support — the most obvious example being traditional medicine — but also the social cohesion they generate. Put these factors together, and the result is that, for all its promises, modern science often generates a sense of alienation, rooted in feelings of a loss of control. In principle, we can all subscribe to the idea that, as the philosopher Francis Bacon said, "knowledge is power". In practice, scientific knowledge is frequently seen as reinforcing the power of those who already have it — and, as a consequence, further disenfranchising those who do not.

Dickson then explains that the GM food debate is not really about scientific risk per se, but science and technology in modern society:

Nowhere does this alienation appear more strongly than in the public opposition to genetically modified (GM) crops. Critics frequently label this opposition as 'irrational' or 'anti-scientific'. Such thinking is reflected in yesterday's verdict by the World Trade Organisation, which overturned European opposition to imports of GM crops from Argentina, Canada and the United States on the grounds that Europe lacked a sufficient scientific justification for taking such action (see WTO says Europe's GM ban broke trade rules). To some extent, the critics are justified. The 'science' that opponents of GM crops quote to support their cause is often misleading, incomplete, or just wrong. Think of the mileage given to the work by immunologist Árpád Pusztai, whose claim that eating GM potatoes can weaken the immune system is contested by most experts in the field, but remains widely quoted by GM opponents. Or look at the claim that GM food can trigger allergies. The evidence is no stronger than data supporting claims that carbon dioxide emissions do not accelerate global warming. Yet those who readily reject the second claim often have little difficulty in accepting the first. All this, however, misses the point that the opposition to GM crops is not grounded in a scientific assessment of their relative risks and benefits. Rather, it is strengthened by deeper feelings of mistrust and alienation, and the fact that GM technology meets many of the criteria for triggering such a reaction.

Dickson says that the debate has confused science and politics:

The problem with all of these arguments is that, despite raising legitimate concerns about how the modern technology is controlled, they can demonise the technology itself. And in doing so they also implicate the science on which it is based. Sometimes linking the means with their ends is justified. The US National Rifle Association may claim that it is people — not guns — that kill, but that does not imply that guns are a neutral technology (significantly the US patent system refuses to offer protection to clearly anti-social devices, such as letter bombs). For GM crops, however, this is far from being the case. The technology may have associated dangers that remain unknown, such as the long-term ecological impacts of growing GM crops. But it is also clear that, provided the technology's use is properly monitored and controlled, it has the potential to meet the needs of farmers — both large-scale and small — as well as society's demands for cost-effective food production.

Where I depart from Dickson is when he suggests that better “communication” can help stanch opposition to new and potentially disruptive technologies:

One step towards reducing this distrust is greater transparency. Information about science — and the technology based on it — must be communicated in an accessible way. It also means that information must not be restricted to the positive aspects of the technology, but must embrace all relevant data; nothing generates suspicion more than a sense that unfavourable data is being suppressed. But communication has to take place in context. Preaching about the virtues of science-based agriculture without taking into account people's underlying concerns is unlikely to help. Effective communication must involve an awareness of the factors that generate alienation and cause distrust of science, which in practice means giving people the information they need to retain a sense of control of what is important to them.

But perhaps Dickson simply oversimplified his recommendation when he called it “communication” as his conslcusion shows condierably greater nuance, and presents good advice:

[Our] conviction [is] that a commitment to science-based agriculture is essential if the world in general — and developing countries in particular — are to meet the growing demand for food. Equally important is a commitment to ensuring that new technologies are applied within a political framework that encourages social inclusion (for example, with adequate provision for benefit sharing, or for moulding intellectual property laws to local circumstances). This will minimise feelings of alienation and distrust . Paying attention to one and not the other significantly reduces the overall chances of success. Addressing the two simultaneously is a more challenging task. But it is essential if the promises of agricultural biotechnology are to be fulfilled. Shooting the messenger — the science on which these technologies are based — is not the answer.”

More reading at the SciDev.net dossier on biotechnology and the Pew Initiative of Food and Biotechnology.

Posted on February 9, 2006 07:21 AM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Biotechnology

Greenhouse Gas Politics in a Nutshell

One the one hand . . .

The world has seven years to take vital decisions and implement measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions or it could be too late, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Tuesday. Blair said the battle against global warming would only be won if the United States, India and China were part of a framework that included targets and that succeeded the 1992 Kyoto Protocol climate pact. "If we don't get the right agreement internationally for the period after which the Kyoto protocol will expire -- that's in 2012 -- if we don't do that then I think we are in serious trouble," he told a parliamentary committee. Asked if the world had seven years to implement measures on climate change before the problem reached "tipping point", Blair answered: "Yes".(link)

On the other hand . . .

Restricting cheap flights by putting a tax on air travel to cut pollution was ruled out by Tony Blair yesterday. . . The prime minister said it would take a "fairly hefty whack" for people to cut back on flights, adding that it would be hard to sell such a move. Instead, he said, the best way to tackle climate change was to invest in more environmentally friendly aircraft and in other new technology. Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrats' environment spokesman, later accused Mr Blair of "talking big on the international stage on climate change", but throwing in the towel at the first difficulty at home. "Emissions from aviation represent the greatest challenge in tackling climate change. For the Prime Minister to wash his hands in this way is simply unbelievable," said Mr Baker.” (link)

Posted on February 9, 2006 12:08 AM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

February 08, 2006

Political Plate Tectonics and Energy Policy

Does buying a hybrid car make its owner feel virtuous while helping the environment, or does it just make the driver feel virtuous?

According to an article in today’s New York Times, it may be the latter:

Each one becomes a free pass for its manufacturer to sell a few extra gas guzzlers. For now, this is less true for Toyota's cars, because they're above the mileage requirement. But Toyota's trucks and the American automakers are right near the limits. So every Toyota Highlander hybrid S.U.V. begets a hulking Lexus S.U.V., and every Ford Escape — the hybrid S.U.V. that Kermit the Frog hawked during the Super Bowl — makes room for a Lincoln Navigator, which gets all of 12 miles a gallon. Instead of simply saving gas when you buy a hybrid, you're giving somebody else the right to use it. The hybrid, then, is just about the perfect example of what's wrong with our energy policy. It's a Band-Aid that does a lot less to help the earth than we like to tell ourselves. When Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed conservation as "a sign of personal virtue" a few years back, a lot of environmentalists were disgusted. But that, sadly, is what a lot of well-meaning hybrid owners are driving: an expensive symbol that they're worried about our planet, rather than a true solution.

Vice President Cheney’s 2001 comment about the “personal virtue” of conservation hit a raw nerve among many observers (see, e.g., this PDF for examples), but consider the quote in broader context,

Now, conservation is an important part of the total effort. But to speak exclusively of conservation is to duck the tough issues. Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis all by itself for sound, comprehensive energy policy. We also have to produce more [energy].

In a passage that immediately follows the excerpt above from the New York Times today a representative from a leading environmental advocacy group says something remarkably similar to the Vice President’s 2001 comment,

You can consider yourself a conservationist and still see the logic in this. As Jon Coifman, the media director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, says, "We're not going to kick our oil addiction with good will and personal virtue. You do need market signals, and you do need rules. And you need virtue. You need it all."

Clearly, the Vice President and NRDC would disagree on what energy policy options make sense, but the fact that they have both signaled that new options are needed may be a sign that the status quo may be nearing its sell-by date. Could this be a sign of dramatic changes in energy policy to come?

[Note: We also discussed hybrids here.]

Posted on February 8, 2006 08:15 AM View this article | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Energy Policy

What About Democracy?

The WTO ruled yesterday that there is no scientific justification for opposition in the EU to genetically modified crops. According to the Financial Times,

The World Trade Organisation ruled yesterday that European restrictions on the introduction of genetically-modified foods violated international trade rules, finding there was no scientific justification for Europe’s failure to allow use of new varieties of corn, soybeans and cotton. The ruling was a victory for Washington in a long-running dispute that has pitted US faith in the benefits of the new crops against widespread consumer resistance in Europe. It was immediately welcomed by US farmers and the biotechnology industry, but castigated by environmental and consumer groups who charged the ruling was a blatant example of international trade rules running roughshod over democratic decisions aimed at protecting consumer health and safety. . . The ruling was also seized on by groups representing large food companies such as Monsanto and Syngenta, which have been frustrated by the moratorium and the slow pace of approvals for new GM products. Sarah Thorn, senior director of international trade at the Grocery Manufacturers Association, said: “The WTO’s decision makes it clear that biotech regulations must be based on sound science and that the EU’s approach to biotech crop approvals is unwarranted.” But Friends of the Earth criticised the ruling as an “inappropriate intrusion into decisions about what food people eat”. Brent Blackwelder, president of the group’s US division, said: “The WTO is unfit to decide what we eat or what farmers grow. It is an undemocratic and secretive institution that has no particular competence in environmental or health and safety matters. This WTO decision will only increase the determination of citizens in Europe and around the world to reject these poorly tested foods.”

We might also observe that there is no scientific justification for the following:

*Preventing Iran from having a nuclear research program
*Banning human cloning
*Disallowing performance enhancing drugs in athletics

Decisions about such issues are political decisions based on values, not science. The WTO decision is apparently based on an assumption that EU decision making about GM foods should be based only on a narrow calculus. This is of course a value judgment about what factors should matter and which ones should not in making a decision about GM foods. But shouldn’t citizens in a democracy have the right to make decisions in any which way that they choose? As suggested above, there is of course no scientific justifications for focusing on nuclear research in Iran, banning human cloning, or disallowing performance enhancing drugs in athletics. Each of these issues involves societal decisions about what is right, what is wrong, what is appropriate, what is desired. In short, none of these decisions are determined by science, but by our values and how they are manifested in policy and power. The WTO needs a broader perspective. On this issue, the EU is in the right.

Posted on February 8, 2006 01:46 AM View this article | Comments (21) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Biotechnology

Transhumanism

James Wilsdon of DEMOS, a U.K. think tank, has a thoughtful essay (subscription required) in the Financial Times on the occasion of the release of a new DEMOS collection of essays titled Better Humans? The Politics of Human Enhancement and Life Extension. Here is an excerpt from Wilsdon’s essay:

This movement is known as transhumanism, and its central belief is that advances in science and technology will liberate us from the constraints of illness and ageing, and enable us to live longer, healthier lives. In its more modest form, transhumanism advocates the embrace of new technologies, such as smart drugs, cosmetic surgery and gene therapy, which can enhance our physical and mental capabilities and make us ‘better than well’. At the more radical end of the spectrum, you find futurists such as Ray Kurzweil, whose recent book ‘The Singularity is Near’, argues that ‘Ultimately we will merge with our technology… By the mid 2040s, the non-biological portion of our intelligence will be billions of times more capable than the biological portion.’ Such predictions have provoked a fierce reaction, both from religious and cultural conservatives, who see transhumanism as an assault on human nature, and from the liberal left, which sounds alarm bells about the implications for equality and human rights. Francis Fukuyama has gone so far as to describe transhumanism as ‘the world’s most dangerous idea’. Yet as the technologies for human enhancement start moving from the pages of science fiction into the laboratory, and eventually into the marketplace, these responses are no longer sufficient. The basic impulse behind transhumanism is a progressive one: a desire to extend current models of medicine and healthcare in ways that would enable us to live longer, fitter and more fulfilling lives. Provided that enhancement technologies are carefully regulated, and opened up to genuine public debate, there is no reason why they should not enjoy widespread public support. Most of us, given the choice, would seize the opportunity to live well beyond our allotted ‘three score years and ten’, even if this required us to take a cocktail of new drugs. The explosive growth in cosmetic surgery shows just how quickly attitudes can change, with enhancements that were once taboo now part of the regular diet of TV makeovers and lifestyle magazines. The big question is who will bring human enhancement and life extension into the mainstream. Politicians and business leaders, who are already struggling to cope with rising pensions and healthcare costs, may be understandably reluctant to speculate about a world in which we all live (and work?) well into our second century. . . What is politics for if not to improve the quality – and length – of our lives? The transhumanists have done us all a favour by drawing the lines of a political battle that is yet to be fought.

Read the whole report here.

Posted on February 8, 2006 12:58 AM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Biotechnology

February 07, 2006

I'll Take the Under

NASA's FY 2007 budget proposes 17 space shuttle missions between now and September 30, 2010. That is 55 months, or about one shuttle flight every three months. I am thinking that the odds of flying 17 flights over that time period are vanishingly small. Success-oriented planning has its limits. I'd put the over/under at less than 10.

Posted on February 7, 2006 12:02 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

February 02, 2006

Especially Special Interests

Many observers of and in the scientific community have quite appropriately decried the apparent undue influence of industry on political issues involving science. So it is very interesting to read in today’s New York Times how big industry lobbied the Bush Administration for more funding for science:

President Bush's proposal to accelerate spending on basic scientific research came after technology industry executives made the case for such a move in a series of meetings with White House officials, executives involved said Wednesday.

Why would industry want more government spending on research?

After all industry already spends upwards of $180 billion per year (PDF) on research and development, and since 1998 (PDF) basic research funding has increased dramatically. Could it be that industry has a special interest in seeing the government spend more on science? According to the New York Times this is exactly the case.

What was different this year, according to a number of Capitol Hill lobbyists and Silicon Valley executives, was support on the issue by Republican corporate executives like Craig R. Barrett, the chairman of Intel, and John Chambers, the chief executive of Cisco Systems. Industry officials eager to see a greater government commitment to research held a series of discussions with administration officials late last year that culminated in two meetings in the Old Executive Office Building on Dec. 13. There, a group led by Mr. Barrett and Norman R. Augustine, a former Lockheed Martin chief executive, met with Vice President Dick Cheney. A second group headed by Charles M. Vest, the former president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, met with Joshua B. Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget. The industry and science leaders told the officials that the administration needed to respond to concerns laid out in a report by a National Academy of Sciences panel headed by Mr. Augustine. It warned of a rapid erosion in science, technology and education that threatened American economic competitiveness.

The panel headed by Norman Augustine was full of people with corporate ties (details here). Consider:

Norman Augustine: Former CEO of Lockheed Martin, on the boards of Black and Decker, Lockheed Martin, Proctor and Gamble, and Phillips Petroleum
Craig Barrett, CEO, Intel

Gail Cassell, vice president, Eli Lilly

Robert Gates, on the boards of NACCO Industries, Brinker International, and Parker Drilling Corporation

Charles Holliday, CEO, DuPont, on the boards of HCA and Catalyst

Richard Levin, on the board of Lucent

Lee Raymond, CEO, ExxonMobile

P. Roy Vagelos, former CEO Merck & Co.

Charles Vest, on the board of IBM
So here is one perspective on how an observer might interpret what what has transpired here:

The National Academy of Sciences convened an expert panel of people to make recommendations about how the federal government might help the United States become more competitive. This expert panel was comprised of many people who have a clear vested, financial stake in their recommendations. Not surprisingly then they recommend a set of actions involving increasing the federal support for research and development, much of which directly benefits industry, e.g., through intellectual property rights under Bayh-Dole, a greater supply of U.S. based talent (i.e., greater supply = less wages) etc. Then, along with a number of their industry friends, the chairman and a member of the NRC committee actively lobby the Administration for this particular package of “industry subsidies” to appear in the federal budget.

Now I am writing this not to object to more spending for science and technology. I’m all for it, after all I work at a university and frequently apply for reserach grants. But I am writing this to illustrate how fickle people are when it comes to “special interests.” Imagine, if you can, if this panel had been comprised to recommend an energy policy strategy and came up with a set of recommendations for drilling in the Arctic and clean coal. You can bet that many activists in the science community would be howling about the influence of industry special interests on government.

As it happens the special interests in question here are those parochial interests shared by the science community across industry, government, and academic science. So you can expect to hear not a single word from the scientific commnity about industry's prominent role in formulating these recommendations or any protests about members of a NRC committee engaging in overt political advocacy and lobbying. the only difference between this issue and others is that in this case it is the science community's self-interests that are at stake.

It just goes to show, that when it comes to special interests, they are especially special when they are yours.

Posted on February 2, 2006 10:35 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding | Science Policy: General

February 01, 2006

The Chronicle on the SOTU

Here is how the Chronicle of Higher Education reported President Bush’s State of the Union speech last night:

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, President Bush proposed spending billions over the next decade on basic science research and on mathematics and science education. In his speech to a joint session of Congress, the president provided few details of his plan, which he dubbed "The American Competitiveness Initiative." Specifics are expected to be provided in his budget request for the 2007 fiscal year, which is due out next Monday. However, sources familiar with the plan say it will provide $146-billion over the next 10 years, including $50-billion to double the budgets of three agencies: the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy's Office of Science, and the Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology. In the 2007 fiscal year, which begins on October 1, it would provide $910-million in additional funds for those agencies.

According to AAAS, in FY 2006 NSF, DOE’s Office of Science, and NIST received $6.93 billion for research. The President’s Budget will thus recommend a collective 13.1% increase for these agencies research budgets. In terms of these agencies overall budgets, the increase is closer to 10%.

Posted on February 1, 2006 07:11 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R.

January 31, 2006

Stern Report on Climate Change

No chance yet to look this over, but the UK Stern Report on Climate Change has released its report, available here. This will surely be discussed a great deal. We’d welcome comments from anyone who has had a chance to look at it.

Posted on January 31, 2006 10:08 AM View this article | Comments (20) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Straight from the Horse’s Mouth

No doubt we’ll be discussing the SOTU in days to come, but for now on a different subject, Harvard’s Center for Health and the Global Environment organized a congressional briefing last week on what science is and is not, according to a story in the New York Times today.

So now, when scientific questions pervade legislation on issues like climate change and stem cell research, there is growing concern that Congressional misunderstanding can produce misguided policy. To fight such misunderstanding, Mr. Boehlert and others sponsored the Jan. 23 briefing, organized by the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard. Capitol Hill has briefings by the dozen every year in which industry, academic and activist groups address diverse topics related to science. Some criticize these briefings as little more than showboating. But Mr. Boehlert, like many others, thinks they are "absolutely" useful. And the briefing was unusual in that its subject was not avian flu, the budget for NASA or any other relatively narrow issue, but rather "how science works."

Harvard’s Sheila Jasanoff, a widely read and respected scholar of science studies, took a less positive view of the session, one that I largely share:

Not everyone thought defining science was even possible, in such a short session. "It makes me extremely tired that they are going to do this again," said Sheila Jasanoff, a professor of science and technology studies at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, who has written widely on how science policy is made. "There is no easily graspable definition."

Some interesting quotes from the New York Times article:

The worth of any scientific finding, Dr. [Donald] Kennedy [editor of Science] told the crowd, is not the prominence of the researchers responsible, the prestige of their institutions or the authority of their funding agencies, but whether other researchers achieve the same results. Dr. Kennedy did not refer explicitly to a scandal that is roiling science, and Science — the discovery that highly praised cloning experiments in South Korea survived the magazine's peer review process to win publication, only to be declared fraudulent. But he said: "Peer review is not a process that guarantees truth. If it were, no one would ever repeat experiments." Replication, he said, "is the ultimate test of truth in science."

I am sure this will be seized upon by the opponents ~~still beating that dead horse~~ involved in the “hockey stick” debate, with one side claiming that other studies have found the same results as the controversial earlier study and the other side claiming that study has yet to be fully replicated. Both sides are probably right.

The following excerpt caused me to raise an eyebrow and is pretty telling about science in politics:

Dr. [Harvey V.] Fineberg [president of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences] spoke of the way scientific knowledge was turned into information useful to society, a process that he said the National Academy encouraged through its regular production of reports on topics as diverse as national security and arsenic in drinking water. The academy's reports are influential, he said, because of its reputation for integrity, because of its avoidance of conflict of interest, because researchers who produce its findings are volunteers and because "nothing is kept back."

Now if an official from just about any other organization such as tobacco companies, big oil, environmental groups, etc. stated that their group had no conflicts of interest, it would pass the laugh test. For some reason, scientists get a free pass, even in the face of ample evidence to the contrary, which we’ve documented here in abundance.

If Congress wants to learn about how science works, it should of course talk to scientists, but it should also talk to people whose expertise lies in how science works. When might we see a congressional briefing starring Shelia Jasanoff?

Posted on January 31, 2006 07:57 AM View this article | Comments (32) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

January 30, 2006

Boehlert on Hansen

From Spaceref.com:

Rep. Boehlert Responds to Accusations Concerning NASA's "Silencing" of Climate Scientist

PRESS RELEASE
Date Released: Monday, January 30, 2006
Source: House Science Committee

WASHINGTON - House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) sent the attached letter today to Dr. Michael Griffin, Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), in response to articles in the New York Times and the Washington Post this weekend concerning NASA's treatment of Dr. James Hansen, Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

January 30, 2006

Dr. Michael Griffin
Administrator
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Washington DC 20546

Dear Dr. Griffin:

I am writing in response to several recent news articles indicating that officials at NASA may be trying to "silence" Dr. James Hansen, the director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

It ought to go without saying that government scientists must be free to describe their scientific conclusions and the implications of those conclusions to their fellow scientists, policymakers and the general public. Any effort to censor federal scientists biases public discussions of scientific issues, increases distrust of the government and makes it difficult for the government to attract the best scientists. And when it comes to an issue like climate change, a subject of ongoing public debate with immense ramifications, the government ought to be bending over backward to make sure that its scientists are able to discuss their work and what it means.

Good science cannot long persist in an atmosphere of intimidation. Political figures ought to be reviewing their public statements to make sure they are consistent with the best available science; scientists should not be reviewing their statements to make sure they are consistent with the current political orthodoxy.

NASA is clearly doing something wrong, given the sense of intimidation felt by Dr. Hansen and others who work with him. Even if this sense is a result of a misinterpretation of NASA policies - and more seems to be at play here - the problem still must be corrected. I will be following this matter closely to ensure that the right staff and policies are in place at NASA to encourage open discussion of critical scientific issues. I assume you share that goal.

Our staff is already setting up meetings to pursue this issue and I appreciate NASA's responsiveness to our inquiries thus far. I would ask that you swiftly provide to the Committee, in writing, a clear statement of NASA's policies governing the activities of its scientists.

NASA is one of the nation's leading scientific institutions. I look forward to working with you to keep it that way, and to ensure that the entire nation gets the full benefit of NASA sciences.

Sincerely

[Signed]

Sherwood Boehlert
Chairman

Posted on January 30, 2006 03:04 PM View this article | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Dangerous Climate Change

The UK Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs has released online a new book (here in PDF, 16 MB) titled, “Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change,” which is a collection a papers presented at a meeting of the same title early last year. We commented on the meeting last year here and here.

I have just read Rajendra Pachauri’s (head of the IPCC) introductory chapter which was based on remarks that he gave at the conference. Not much new in it, but I thought that the following passage from Dr. Pachauri’s chapter provides a telling indication of how a narrow focus on human-GHG-caused climate change tends to warp the thinking of otherwise smart people about issues that involve much more than just human caused climate change:

In Mauritius, a couple of weeks ago, there was the major UN conference involving the small island developing states. In discussions with several people there, I heard an expression of fear based on the question: suppose a tsunami such as that of December 26 were to take place in 2080 and suppose the sea level was a foot higher, can you estimate what the extent of damage would be under those circumstances? Hence, I think when we talk about dangerous it is not merely dangers that are posed by climate change per se, but the overlay of climate change impacts on the possibility of natural disasters that could take place in any event.

So by 2080 society is going to experience changes probably far greater than from 1930 to 2005 and he is talking about the difference in impacts between a 25 foot and 26 foot wall of water? In this case, he probably would have been on solid ground by saying that patterns of coastal development over the next 75 years are far, far more important than an extra 12 inches of sea level rise, rather than trying to link climate change to tsunami impacts. But as we've argued ad repeatium here, this is the kind of thinking that necessarily results from Article 2 of the FCCC.

I’d welcome comments from anyone who has read parts of the book. I am sure that it is a pretty accurate preview of what we should expectin IPCC AR4 next year.

Posted on January 30, 2006 12:19 PM View this article | Comments (15) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

January 28, 2006

Let Jim Hansen Speak

The Bush Administration once again demonstrates its unbelievable clumsiness when it comes to handling the politics of global warming. In a story carried on the website of the New York Times, Andy Revkin writes,

James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.

What is it that the Bush Administration is trying to keep Jim Hansen from saying?

According to the NYT article,

The fresh efforts to quiet him, Dr. Hansen said, began in a series of calls after a lecture he gave on Dec. 6 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. In the talk, he said that significant emission cuts could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles, and that without leadership by the United States, climate change would eventually leave the earth "a different planet." The administration's policy is to use voluntary measures to slow, but not reverse, the growth of emissions.

Here is why the Administration’s actions are, from a political standpoint, incredibly stupid.

1. Many, many government scientists routinely engage in political advocacy on the climate issue. Revkin points to this in his article when he identifies a government scientist who expresses views less critical of the Administration’s stance on climate change, but who apparently does not have the same restrictions.

2. Clearly, Jim Hansen is being singled out because of his stature and visibility. But that same stature results in a front page New York Times story when he complains about his treatment.

3. Jim Hansen’s statements about “policy” are really just political exhortations, and not really about policy in any significant degree. The climate issue is in gridlock and it is inconceivable that (yet another) prominent scientist witnessing to his political values is going to change these dynamics, even if it offers some short term discomfort for the Bush Administration.

4. Jim Hansen’s statements had their 15 minutes of attention and were largely old news – the Bush Administration has turned a non-story into renewed focus on their approach to climate.

5. Finally, we want scientists to engage in policy discussions. Note to the Bush Administration – you are funding about $2 billion of research focused on improving policy. If scientists don’t talk about policy, then they are wasting the public’s money.

6. From a crass political standpoint, when scientists of the stature of Jim Hansen make overtly political statements absent any substantive or meaningful discussion of policy, they make themselves look bad. Had the Administration given Jim Hansen enough rope, he may very well have undercut his own authority by looking like just another scientist trying to couch his political views in science.

Let’s be clear: the Administration has every right to control what its political appointees say. They even are in the right when they insist that scientists clearly differentiate their own views from official government policies, particularly when the scientist is speaking from an official setting using government resources. This is especially important when the speaker is very prominent.

I am sure that the reaction of the Administration will be that this is either manufactured (read the whole NYT story) or it is the result of an over-aggressive political appointee (echoes of the defense used to explain why a prospective scientific advisory board member was asked who he voted for).

Two final points – this case helps to underscore how absurd it is to try to separate science and policy. The IPCC has a formal mandate to be “policy relevant, but policy neutral”. If the Bush Administration was smart and really wanted to silence scientists, it would ask why IPCC rules aren’t good enough for NASA scientists. Keeping science and policy separate makes no sense for the IPCC or U.S. government scientists.

And lastly, understanding this experience requires no need to fall back on a simple-minded “war on science”. This is just bad politics by the Bush Administration, which reflects on a policy failure shared by all.

Posted on January 28, 2006 11:21 AM View this article | Comments (35) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

January 27, 2006

How Science becomes Politics

Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich (R) provides a great example of how politicians hand off hot-button political issues to scientists, and couch that transfer in science (hat tip, Matt Nisbet).

The Washington Post reported yesterday,

After remaining mostly silent on a bill that was killed last year by a Republican-led filibuster threat, Ehrlich (R) is pushing a plan to spend $20 million next year on stem cell research. But Ehrlich is not committing himself on the question that has stirred the most controversy: whether the money should be used primarily for work on stem cells derived from human embryos or from less controversial adult stem cells Although the move has drawn some criticism, Ehrlich argued in an interview that he is acting prudently, given the evolving nature of the science. "I wasn't that good of a biology student. I'm not going to make that decision," Ehrlich said. "The point here is that the decision should be a function of the science. These are fundamentally science questions, not political questions." The governor would leave it to a state-founded technology corporation to decide whether to provide grants for work on adult stem cells or work on embryonic stems cells, which many scientists say holds greater promise but some in his party consider tantamount to abortion. Ehrlich, who has supported stem cell research since his days in Congress, said that his public silence last year masked a behind-the-scenes effort to develop an alternate approach that would both bolster the state's biotechnology sector and depoliticize a difficult issue for Republicans. "The strong pro-life members know the administration does not share their views on this issue, but we wanted to try to lower the temperature on the politics," he said. "I wanted to try to keep everyone's eye on the ball, and I believe this approach accomplishes that goal.”

Now he made claim to not know a lot about biology, but he clearly knows politics. A passage later in the story illustrates the absurdity of claiming that decisions about stem cell research are scientific not political,

Some advocates of the research say Ehrlich's plan has merit and view it as more likely to withstand opposition in the Senate. "As long as there's no preference for adult, that's fine," said Robert Johnson, a lobbyist for Maryland Families for Stem Cell Research, a coalition formed during last year's debate that has primarily supported embryonic work. But the governor's posture drew criticism yesterday from sponsors of the stem cell bills. In an interview, Sen. Paula C. Hollinger (D-Baltimore County) was adamant that money be spent on work on embryonic stem cells, which is controversial because it involves the destruction of human embryos. Hollinger's bill would restrict research funded with state money to embryos discarded at fertility clinics and establish other rules for funding the science. "The only reason we're doing this bill is that the president has refused to allow the research to be done," Hollinger said, referring to a 2001 executive order by President Bush that set limits on the embryonic stem cell research that can be funded with federal money.

If the relevant scientific community here wants to avoid becoming the political battleground for this particular debate, then it would be wise to bounce the issue right back up to the Governor saying, “We know a lot about biology, but we know that a decision about funding stem cell research is politics not science.”

Posted on January 27, 2006 11:00 AM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Biotechnology

Hypotheses about IPCC and Peer Review

The IPCC is the 800 pound gorilla in the climate debate. It has been the locus of legitimate and credible climate science (salience is another matter, but I digress). It is increasingly coming under criticism in a number of dimensions for some very good reasons. In this post I’d like to suggest a few hypotheses about how the IPCC has indirectly contributed to the politicization of climate science in ways we’ve not discussed here. These are for discussion, and I’d welcome evidence for/against and other sorts of examples.

Laundering Grey Literature

The IPCC has a requirement that its assessments be based on peer reviewed literature. It has not always held itself to this standard, particularly in its Working Groups II and III. I have noticed recently a number of peer-reviewed papers that reference so-called “grey literature” (e.g., agency, company, NGO reports) which hasn’t itself been peer reviewed. Then the peer-reviewed study that cites the grey literature is subsequently cited in another publication to refer to the information in the original non-peer reviewed source. This is a way to give the veneer of peer review to a non-peer-reviewed study. Here is an example of this dynamic.

Fun with Deadlines

The IPCC sets a deadline for when papers must be accepted in order to be considered in a particular assessment report. This guarantees that the assessment won’t have to be continually updated, but it also means that the assessment is automatically out-of-date in some case where new findings have been released. Because editors and journals have considerable discretion in when they publish what papers, the IPCC’s deadline can set the stage for some mischief in the publication process as papers with a particular slant are published before the deadline and other published after. I don’t have any data on this, but it’d be interesting to compare the time-to-publication of key papers cited in IPCC reports with a journal’s standard practices. This issue came to mind as I read this comment from RealClimate,

There are several more papers "in the mill" which we are not at liberty to discuss right now [Ed.- Embargoed, see below], which insure that the weight of peer-reviewed studies available for consideration in the next IPCC report will point towards a strengthening, not a weakening, of the IPCC '01 conclusions regarding the anomalous nature of recent hemispheric and global warmth in a long-term context.

Maybe it is just inartful language, but claims to “insure” previously found results do not make me comfortable about the agendas of climate scientists.

Embargoes as Silencers

This one is not about the IPCC, but Science and Nature. I was recently at a science talk at NCAR and a number of leading scientists refused to discuss their work because it would potentially be under “embargo” with Science or Nature, if accepted. My understanding is that embargoes refer to releasing papers accepted for publication to the media in advance of the artificial deadlines set by Science and Nature to generate news-worthiness. They do not apply to scientists talking among themselves in scientific settings. So when scientists use potential embargoes as a way to silence discussion and debate on their work, it reduces the internal vetting of scientific ideas and makes the leading journals the only place where debate can occur. Since Science and Nature are highly selective is what they allow as far as intellectual exchanges following up papers they publish, the entire process of scientific debate and learning is arguably slowed down. Meantime, this allows findings supporting one view or another to gain much greater standing in political debate than they might otherwise have.

Comments? Other observations?

Posted on January 27, 2006 08:41 AM View this article | Comments (12) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Two Interesting Articles

This post describes two papers that discuss different aspects of climate science, policy and politics. I don’t agree with everything argued in them, but they are thoughtful pieces of scholarship that challenge us to think. They are both worth a look.

In the journal Science Technology & Human Values Reiner Grundman has an interesting paper that makes the compelling argument that scientific consensus is neither necessary for sufficient for political action on climate change. He argues that the absence of a consensus did not limit progress on the ozone issue and the presence of a consensus has not forced progress on the climate issue. Instead, he argues the importance of political leadership. Here is the abstract:

Science, Technology & Human Values, Vol. 31, No. 1, 73-101 (2006) DOI: 10.1177/0162243905280024 © 2006 SAGE Publications
Ozone and Climate: Scientific Consensus and Leadership
Reiner Grundmann

Aston University

This article compares the cases of ozone layer protection and climate change. In both cases, scientific expertise has played a comparatively important role in the policy process. The author argues that against conventional assumptions, scientific consensus is not necessary to achieve ambitious political goals. However, the architects of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change operated under such assumptions. The author argues that this is problematic both from a theoretical viewpoint and from empirical evidence. Contrary to conventional assumptions, ambitious political regulations in the ozone case were agreed under scientific uncertainty, whereas the negotiations on climate change were much more modest albeit based on a large scientific consensus. On the basis of a media analysis, the author shows that the creation of a climate of expectation plus pressure from leader countries is crucial for success.

A second paper is by our Myanna Lashen also the journal Science technology & Human Values (here in PDF), and grapples with the contradictory impulse for more democratic decision making and the practical reality of the role of information limits and political power that shapes the ability of the public to weigh competing knowledge claims. She argues,

this study demonstrates that exposure to countervailing opinions does not necessarily result in a more informed, participatory, and critically aware citizenry, a necessary basis for legitimate policy making in policy arenas in which only probabilistic knowledge is possible. This study of U.S. climate politics highlights problematic aspects of how governments, international bodies, and political and vested interest groups have chosen to deploy science. It shows that these actors deploy science and the “symbols of science” (Toumey 1996) in ways that constrain public debate and critical, balanced understanding of the strengths and limitations of scientific knowledge.

Here is Lahsen’s conclusion,

As shown by countless social studies of science, science is intimately and inextricably interlinked with politics, and no transcendent definitions exist by which to distinguish true science from “pseudoscience.” Even peer-reviewed science produced by means of the scientific method of hypothesis, experimentation, and falsification is liable to error. But it is nevertheless a particularly rigorous basis for the production of knowledge, and it can and should enjoy greater consideration relative to claims that not only are produced by less rigorous methods but also are paid by, and designed to benefit, financial and political elites over the general good. As responsible citizens, we must learn how to recognize the difference and to define the general good by means of truly participatory processes.

Like all of her work, this piece is complex and rich in detail, and challenges you to think about the complexities and inconsistencies present in the real world of human action.

Posted on January 27, 2006 07:27 AM View this article | Comments (16) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science Policy: General

January 26, 2006

The Elephant in the Floodplain

Yesterday the Government Accounting Office released a statement by David M. Walker, Comptroller General of the United States, on the challenges for the National Flood Insurance Program (PDF), before the Chairman, Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, U.S. Senate. The report notes the tremendous impact of the hurricanes of 2005 for the program, and goes over some of the basic challenges facing the NFIP, like the fact that the program is by design not actuarially sound. However, the report does not address what is the most fundamental flaw in the program: it is built upon a vision of climate science that does not square with reality.

As we discusses in depth here last week, policy makers almost always have to simplify their world in order to make policies. Such simplifications are often practically useful if they lead to desired outcomes. But if a policy is based on a fundamentally incorrect notion of how the world works, the policy may fail or even lead to outcomes opposite of those intended. Such is the case with the NFIP. The NFIP is at its core based on the notion that climate is stationary and unchanging. It does not recognize climate variability or change. As such it produces maps of flood risk that are used to guide implementation of the program that are based on a completely incorrect vision of how the world works. Comptroller Walker’s testimony yesterday observed,

Accurate flood maps that identify the areas at greatest risk of flooding are the foundation of the NFIP. Flood maps must be periodically updated to assess and map changes in the boundaries of floodplains that result from community growth, development, erosion, and other factors that affect the boundaries of areas at risk of flooding. FEMA has embarked on a multiyear effort to update the nation’s flood maps at a cost in excess of $1 billion. The maps are principally used by (1) the approximately 20,000 communities participating in the NFIP to adopt and enforce the program’s minimum building standards for new construction within the maps’ identified flood plains; (2) FEMA to develop accurate flood insurance policy rates based on flood risk; and (3) federal regulated mortgage lenders to identify those property owners who are statutorily required to purchase federal flood insurance.

No mention there of climate variability or change. Here is what I said in a 1999 paper (PDF) about flood risk and how perceptions of flood risk are the number one fallacy policy makers hold about floods:

The concept and terminology of the ‘100-year floodplain’ was formally adopted by the federal government as a standard for all public agencies in 1977 under Executive Order 11988. In 1982 FEMA reviewed the policy and found that it was being used in the agencies and, lacking a better alternative, concluded that the policy should be retained (FIFMTF, 1992, p. 8-3). However, despite the FEMA review, use of the concept of the 100-year flood is encumbered by a number of logical and practical difficulties (cf. Lord, 1994).
First, there is general confusion among users of the term about what it means. Some use the term to refer to a flood that occurs every 100 years, as did the Midwestern mayor who stated that ‘after the 1965 flood, they told us this wouldn’t happen again for another 100 years’ (IFMRC, 1994, p. 59). Public confusion is widespread: A farmer suffering through Midwest flooding for the second time in three years complained that ‘Two years ago was supposed to be a 100-year flood, and they’re saying this is a 75-year flood, What kind of sense does that make? You’d think they’d get it right’ (Peterson, 1995).

Second, the ‘100-year flood’ is only one of many possible probabilistic measures of an area’s flood risk. For instance, in the part of the floodplain that is demarcated as the ‘100-year floodplain’ it is only the outer edge of that area that is estimated to have an annual probability of flooding of 0.01, yet confusion exists (Myers, 1994). Areas closer to the river have higher probabilities of flooding, e.g., there are areas of a floodplain with a 2% annual chance of flooding (50-year floodplain), 10% annual chance (10-year floodplain), 50% annual chance (2-year floodplain) etc., and similarly, areas farther from the river have lower probabilities of flooding. The ‘100-year floodplain’ is arbitrarily chosen for regulatory reasons and does not reflect anything fundamentally intrinsic to the floodplain.

Third, the ‘100-year floodplain’ is determined based on past flood records and is thus subject to considerable errors with respect to the probabilities of future floods. According to Burkham (1978) errors in determination of the ‘100-year flood’ may be off by as much as 50% of flood depth. Depending on the slope of the flood plain, this could translate into a significant error in terms of distance from the river channel. A FEMA press release notes that ‘in some cases there is a difference of only inches between the 10- and the 100-year flood levels’ (FEMA, 1996). Further, researchers are beginning to realize an ‘upper limit’ on what can be known about flood frequencies due to the lack of available trend data (Bobée and Rasmussen, 1995).

Fourth, the 100-year floodplain is not a natural feature, but rather is defined by scientists and engineers based on the historical record. Consequently, while the ‘100-year floodplain’ is dynamic and subject to redefinition based on new flood events that add to the historical record, the regulatory definition is much more difficult to change. For instance, following two years of major flooding on the Salt River in Phoenix, Arizona, the previously estimated 100-year flood was reduced to a 50-year flood (FIFMTF, 1992, p. 9-7). What happens to the structures in redefined areas? Any changes in climate patterns, especially precipitation, will also modify the expected probabilities of inundation. For example, some areas of the upper Midwest have documented a trend of increasing precipitation this century (Changnon and Kunkel, 1995; Bhowmik et al., 1994). Furthermore, human changes to the river environment, e.g., levees and land use changes, can also alter the hydraulics of floods. Finally, the extensive use of the term ‘100-year flood’ focuses attention on that aspect of flooding, sometimes to the neglect of the area beyond the 100-year flood plain (Myers, 1994).

The fact of the matter is that the NFIP is based on the idea that floods occur with a constant probability and that such constancy can be quantified in maps to guide development and insurance. This assumption is fundamentally wrong. The NFIP cannot succeed until it addresses this fundamental flaw. Meantime, expect the public to foot the bill for a policy that cannot work because it fundamentally mischaracterizes how the world really works.

Posted on January 26, 2006 07:10 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

January 25, 2006

And They’re Off . . .

Interesting times are ahead for science policy discussions for a lot of reasons. This story from The Hill mentions the bills that we referenced a few days ago:

A bipartisan group of senators will introduce an ambitious trifecta of bills today aiming billions of dollars in new spending at the nation’s sliding science and technology sector. The bills, collectively called Protecting America’s Competitive Edge (PACE), sprang from a request made by Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) to the independently funded National Academies: What specific actions could Congress take to ensure continued U.S. competitiveness? When the National Academies came back with 20 recommendations and a report on how to implement them, the senators took notice, as did President Bush, who is reportedly considering making science and technology innovation a major theme of his State of the Union address. Alongside Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), Alexander and Bingaman are sponsoring three versions of PACE: one for energy, one for education and one for tax policy. The bills would set up a new transformational-energy agency within the Energy Department, create science and math scholarships for 25,000 students and boost research spending at seven federal agencies. The bills are estimated to cost upwards of $9 billion, a price tag that could prove anathema to a congressional leadership already wary of the bloated federal deficit. But the PACE bills have the solid support of the GOP-leaning business community.

The brief article is here .

Posted on January 25, 2006 11:19 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding | Science Policy: General

Public Value of Science

Yesterday we pointed to a thoughtful report from DEMOS, a UK think tank, titled “See-through science” published in 2004. Last year DEMOS published a follow-up report that provided a somewhat more sober perspective on the staying power of the so-called “deficit model” of the public understanding of science. The follow-up report is tilted, “The Public Value of Science” and is just as thoughtful as the first. Here is what it says about the deficit model:

Beneath the thin crust of consensus in these debates there lies a deeper ambivalence. Old assumptions continually reassert themselves. To give one recent example, Alec Broers, in his 2005 Reith Lectures, The Triumph of Technology, rehearsed the now familiar argument that ‘it is time . . . to move away from the old concept of “the public understanding of science” to a new more dynamic “public engagement”’. Minutes later, in the debate that followed, he had this exchange with Mary Warnock:
Baroness Warnock: After the election, the government, whatever government, has simply got to bite the bullet and start planning and constructing new nuclear reactors. In spite of your extremely welcome insistence that the public must be involved, do you think the public is really well-enough informed? Are they not perhaps too apprehensive to make this decision? It seems to me that what is needed here is very firm leadership.

Lord Broers: I agree with you. But I don’t know how quickly we can educate the public, to bring the evidence forward in a calm and rational way.

No sooner have ‘deficit’ models of the public been discarded than they reappear.

Later in the report the authors single out those who would use the notion of objective scientific truth to argue against public involvement in science policy decision making:

As we noted earlier, rumours of the death of the ‘deficit model’ have been greatly exaggerated. Despite the progress of the science and society agenda, there are still those who maintain that the public are too ignorant to contribute anything useful to scientific decisionmaking. One of the most vocal is the Liberal Democrat peer, Dick Taverne. In a letter attacking Nature’s editorial on upstream engagement, Taverne rejects ‘the fashionable demand by a group of sociologists for more democratic science’. He goes on: ‘The fact is that science, like art, is not a democratic activity. You do not decide by referendum whether the earth goes round the sun.’ But Taverne is setting up a straw man. As we emphasised in See-through Science, upstream engagement is not about members of the public standing over the shoulder of scientists in the laboratory, taking votes or holding referendums on what they should or should not be doing. That Taverne can conceive of accountability only in these terms reflects nothing more than the poverty of his own democratic imagination. This agenda is not about imposing cumbersome bureaucratic structures on science, or forcing lay people onto every research funding committee. Questions about structures do need to be considered, but are a sideshow compared with the far more important – and exciting – challenge of building more reflective capacity into the practice of science. As well as bringing the public into new conversations with science, we need to bring out the public within the scientist – by enabling scientists to reflect on the social and ethical dimensions of their work.

But getting individual scientists or communities within the scientific enterprise to “reflect” on the broader dimensions of their work can be a challenge. A few written comments from students in my graduate seminar this week were extremely perceptive along these lines. One student observed,

Pielke (2002) states, “many granting agencies now ask in their evaluation criteria whether the proposed research will benefit society.” Although many scientists support this principle, they do not have the expertise to assess their work in this way. This statement resonated with my office mate and me, and we had a good laugh. Whether applying for a large research grant or a graduate student fellowship there is always a requirement to state broader impacts or to indicate how the proposed research furthers the mission of the funding agency. In addition, the applicant must usually specify how the results will be made available to the public. These are always the most exasperating questions to answer, and I generally feel like I'm pandering to some reviewer with my uninspired response. Its not that I do not think science should provide some benefit to society at large. To the contrary, I and most scientists are trying to better understand the natural world so that we can fix some of the problems in it. I just can’t answer the broader impacts question very well because, aside from understanding a tiny piece of the sea level rise puzzle, I don’t really know how my increased knowledge of meltwater movement on the Greenland Ice Sheet will benefit my neighbor down the street.”

Another student was less charitable,

In science and engineering, it seems that people are becoming more specialized in certain areas and do not always see beyond their realm. They did not always realize how their work affects others and vise versa. . . The individuals see their finished product and move on to their next task. What goes on beyond that point may not be of their concern. There are many other things that go into research such as funding and politics. Many people say to themselves “That is not my job, so I do not have to know”. . . I believe that today many people play the ignorant card . . . Again, it is not their responsibility and therefore they believe they do not need to care.”

These comments from practicing, early-career scientists echo the arguments of the DEMOS report which finds fault in the so-called linear model of the relation of science and society, which provides a rationalization for both detachment and a lack of accountability in the form of a narrow focus on scientific truths:

When all else fails, critics of upstream engagement tend to resort to arguments based on a linear model of innovation. They grudgingly concede that technologies and applications may merit some public discussion, but insist that ‘basic science’ should be kept apart, as a unique domain governed by curiosity and ‘science for science’s sake’. Yet like deficit models of the public, linear models of innovation are a default, unthinking response to the complexity of the subjects they purport to describe. As John Ziman observes, despite the fact that ‘the linear model of technological innovation is obviously over-simplified. . . it underlies what most politicians, business people, civil servants and journalists say about science’.”

So what is a science studies scholar to do? If the linear model of science doesn’t work in shaping public views about science and about science in particular policy issues, it certainly won’t work in shaping scientists’ views about science in its broader societal and political contexts. The DEMOS reports are open in acknowledging that the answers to this challenge are not readily apparent, but that there are numerous efforts ongoing to enage the scientific community in discussions about its role in society. Their closing words encourage us to keep this subject in play even if challenging,

These are difficult issues and we do not pretend they can be easily resolved. But they bring us back to where we started: the fundamental questions of why we do science, where it is taking us, and who it is for. Tony Blair’s speech to the Royal Society, in which he warned of emotion driving out reason, was titled ‘Science matters’. Our argument has been that, yes, science does matter. But it matters for more than narrow, economic reasons. We need to talk, and occasionally to argue, about why this is so. And we need to infuse the cultures and practices of science with this richer and more open set of social possibilities. This is how, together, we can build public value.

Read the whole thing, here.

Posted on January 25, 2006 08:49 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Global Spending on R&D

According to a recently released UNESCO report, in 2002 the world spent $830 billion on research and development in the public and private sectors, which represents about 1.7% of global GDP or $134.40 per person. The United States spent 3.1% of its GDP or $1,005.90 per person; the EU spent 1.8% of its GDP or $431.80 per person, Japan 3.1% and $836.6/person, Israel 4.9% and $922.40/person, China 1.2% and $56.20/person, and India o.7% and $19.80/person. This data come from this table in PDF.

In 2002, the United States had 1.26 million researchers with R&D funding per researcher at $230k. For the EU, 1.11 million researchers, and $177,000 per researcher, Japan, 647,000 researchers, $165k/researcher, Israel 9,200 researchers, $661k/researcher, China 811,000 researchers, $89k/researcher, India 118,000 researchers, $177k/researcher. This data comes from this table in PDF.

A press release describes it as follows:

North America continues to lead in scientific investment, with public and private funding accounting for 37% of the world’s gross expenditure on research and development (GERD) in 2002. However, Asia is now the second largest investor, with a share of 32%, overtaking Europe which contributed 27% of GERD, according to data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) featured in the UNESCO Science Report 2005.

Aside from the two summary table linked above the whole report must be purchased, here is a link to the report.

Posted on January 25, 2006 03:12 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding | Science Policy: General

January 24, 2006

Partisanship and Ability to Ignore Facts

So this study looks interesting:

Democrats and Republicans alike are adept at making decisions without letting the facts get in the way, a new study shows. And they get quite a rush from ignoring information that's contrary to their point of view. Researchers asked staunch party members from both sides to evaluate information that threatened their preferred candidate prior to the 2004 Presidential election. The subjects' brains were monitored while they pondered. The results were announced today. "We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts." The test subjects on both sides of the political aisle reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted, Westen and his colleagues say. Then, with their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix, Westen explained. The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making. . . The brain imaging revealed a consistent pattern. Both Republicans and Democrats consistently denied obvious contradictions for their own candidate but detected contradictions in the opposing candidate. "The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data," Westen said.”

If this study is correct then those “junk science” and “war on science” folks will each probably find a way to ignore or discount its conclusions! But on a deeper philosophical note, does this mean that those who allege that either Republicans or Democrats are worse abusers of science are in fact themselves abusing science?

Posted on January 24, 2006 04:55 PM View this article | Comments (16) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

Have we really moved beyond PUS?

The excerpt below is from the excellent report from DEMOS, a UK think tank, titled “See-through science,” which discusses the evolution of engagement between the scientific community and the rest of society. It argues that we have moved beyond the simplistic and unsuccessful efforts by scientists to enhance the public understanding of science (PUS) as a way to motivate public action in particular directions, such as supporting science or accepting certain technologies. Perhaps this is the case in certain contexts having to do with the introduction of potentially disruptive technologies like nanotechnology, but my sense is that the PUS model is alive and well in the scientific community at large. Just consider the recent NRC report on US competitiveness I mentioned yesterday. Here is the excerpt from the DEMOS report:

Phase 1: Public understanding of science (PUS)
The initial response of scientists to growing levels of public detachment and mistrust was to embark on a mission to inform. Attempts to gauge levels of public understanding date back to the early 1970s, when annual surveys carried out by the US National Science Foundation regularly uncovered gaps in people’s knowledge of scientific facts (for example, whether the earth goes round the sun or vice versa). Walter Bodmer’s 1985 report for the Royal Society placed PUS firmly on the UK agenda, and proclaimed ‘It is clearly a part of each scientist’s professional responsibility to promote the public understanding of science.’ The Bodmer report gave birth to a clutch of initiatives designed to tackle the blight of public ignorance, including COPUS, the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science.

Phase 2: From deficit to dialogue

For more than a decade, the language and methods of PUS oozed across the face of UK science policy. But instead of lubricating understanding, scientists gradually discovered that PUS was clogging the cracks and pores which might have allowed genuine dialogue to breathe. Implicit within PUS was a set of questionable assumptions about science, the public and the nature of understanding. It relied on a ‘deficit model’ of the public as ignorant and science as unchanging and universally comprehensible. Partly as a result of PUS’s failings, relations between science and society festered throughout the 1990s, and an occasional rash of blisters erupted (the BSE crisis, GM crops, mobile phones, MMR). It wasn’t until 2000 that PUS was washed away, when an influential House of Lords report detected ‘a new mood for dialogue’. Out went PUS, which even the government’s Chief Scientific Adviser now acknowledged was ‘a rather backward-looking vision’. In came the new language of ‘science and society’ and a fresh impetus towards dialogue and engagement.

Phase 3: Moving engagement upstream

The House of Lords report detected ‘a new humility on the part of science in the face of public attitudes, and a new assertiveness on the part of the public’. And in the four years since it was published, there has been a perceptible change. Consultation papers, focus groups, stakeholder dialogues and citizens’ juries have been grafted on to the ailing body of British science, in the hope that they will give it a new lease of life. Every so often, a few drops of PUS still dribble out from a Lewis Wolpert or a Lord Taverne, but these voices are now a dwindling force. The science community has embraced dialogue and engagement, if not always with enthusiasm, then at least out of a recognition that BSE, GM and other controversies have made it a non-negotiable clause of their ‘licence to operate’.

Read the whole report here.

Posted on January 24, 2006 09:11 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

January 23, 2006

United States Competitiveness

It looks like science policy issues might be increasing at the focus of policy makers attention in the near term. Chemical & Engineering News reported late last week,

“A bipartisan group of senators plans to introduce a package of legislation next week aimed at boosting U.S. competitiveness in science and technology by doubling federal funding for basic research and establishing a new science agency within the Department of Energy. The bills will be collectively titled the Protect America's Competitive Edge Act. They would implement 20 recommendations contained in an October 2005 report by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) that outlined a series of steps the U.S. should take to maintain its global economic competitiveness. The legislation would establish an agency at DOE called the Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy (ARPA-E) that would provide grants for "high-risk" research and development programs in the energy sector.”

The 20 recommendations referred to are from the NAS report “Rising Above The Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future”. The report was in response to a request from Congress that asked:

(1) What are the top 10 actions, in priority order, that federal policy-makers could take to enhance the science and technology enterprise so that the United States can successfully compete, prosper, and be secure in the global community of the 21st Century?
2) What strategy, with several concrete steps, could be used to implement each of those actions?

Like kids in a candy store, the NAS committee was unable to limit itself to just 10 and came up with a list of 20 recommendations. Here are the recommendations:

Annually recruit 10,000 science and mathematics teachers by awarding 4-year scholarships and thereby educating 10 million minds.
Strengthen the skills of 250,000 teachers through training and education programs at summer institutes, in master’s programs, and Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate training programs and thus inspire students every day.

Enlarge the pipeline by increasing the number of students who take AP and IB science and mathematics courses.

Increase the federal investment in long-term basic research by 10% a year over the next 7 years.

Provide new research grants of $500,000 each annually, payable over 5 years, to 200 of our most outstanding early-career scientists.

Institute a National Coordination Office for Research Infrastructure to manage a centralized research-infrastructure fund of $500 million per year over the next 5 years.

Allocate at least 8% of the budgets of federal research agencies to discretionary funding.

Create in the Department of Energy and organization like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Office called the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.

Institute a Presidential Innovation Award to stimulate scientific and engineering advances in the national interest.

Increase the number and proportion of US citizens who earn physical-sciences, life-sciences, engineering, and mathematics bachelor’s degrees by providing 25,000 new 4-year competitive undergraduate scholarships each year to US citizens attending US institutions.

Increase the number of US citizens pursuing graduate study in “areas of national need” by funding 5,000 new graduate fellowships each year.

Provide a federal tax credit to encourage employers to make continuing education available (either internally or through colleges and universities) to practicing scientists and engineers.

Continue to improve visa processing for international students and scholars.

Provide a 1-year automatic visa extension to international students who receive doctorates or the equivalent in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, or other fields of national need at qualified US institutions to remain in the United States to seek employment. If these students are offered jobs by United States-based employers and pass a security screening test. They should be provided automatic work permits and expedited residence status.

Institute a new skills-based, preferential immigration option.

Reform the current system of “deemed exports.”

Enhance intellectual-property protection for the 21st century global economy.

Enact a stronger research and development tax credit to encourage private investment in innovation

Provide tax incentives for US-based innovation

Ensure ubiquitous broadband internet access.

Depending upon how this is financed it looks to me like a $5 to $10 billion price tag for all this annually, maybe more. Since both parties are strong supporters of both R&D and U.S. competitiveness, it will be interesting to see how this issue develops. One question that seems to be unasked is, will implementing these 20 recommendations actually lead to the desired results? That is, will they address the issue of US competitiveness? What is the problem anyway?

Big Knob Critique Response

In 2000, Dan Sarewitz, Bobbie Klein and I published a paper titled “Turning the Big Knob: Energy Policy as a Means to Reduce Weather Impacts” (PDF) in which we calculate the relative sensitivity of future tropical cyclone damages to the independent effects of changes in storm behavior under climate change to changes in societal vulnerability. For the changes in both storm behavior and societal vulnerability we used the assumptions of the IPCC. Brian Schmidt, who works for an environmental organization in San Francisco, and who occasionally has visited our website with always-thoughtful comments, has taken the time to write up a critique of our paper and post it on his blog. We appreciate the engagement. Brian graciously asked us for a response, so here it is.

First a correction, Schmidt states that “Climate will increase hurricane costs by about 40-50%, according to the studies cited in the paper.” This is what those early-1990s studies said, however, they used assumptions about changing hurricane intensity that were later revised downward by the IPCC. Using in the damage projection methods the actual numbers cited by the IPCC SAR for changing “maximum potential intensity” of tropical cyclones the projected increase in damages due only to the effect of changes in storms related to climate change is in fact about 8-10%. For close followers of this subject the numbers used by the SAR were about twice those projected in a subsequent paper by Knutson and Tuleya. This error is repeated throughout Schmidt’s post. It is worth noting that the general conclusions are pretty much insensitive to an error of this magnitude.

Schmidt offers three critiques of our paper. First, he writes, “it ignores the combined effects of climate change and increased economic value.” We have heard this before. The response is that we are performing a sensitivity analysis and not generating a prediction of future damages. Our point in this paper was to identify the independent effects of climate change versus societal change. It Schmidt would like to go ahead and add another factor that recognizes the fact that future damages will indeed be the result of the combined effects, he should go right ahead. This does nothing to change the fact that the independent effect of societal changes is larger than the independent effect of climate change by a factor of between 22 to 1 and 60 to 1. This is the case if combined effects are included or not.

Schmidt offers up this as a second critique, “Another major problem is the implicit assumption that by controlling land-use, one can in effect relocate away from global warming.” We said no such thing. What we did say is that if societal factors are far more responsible than climate change for the expected growing impacts of tropical cyclones, then from a policy perspective it is only logical that decisions related to societal vulnerability are likely to have greater potential to address those impacts. We discuss land use, but also forecasts and warnings (to save lives), reducing environmental degradation, enforcement of building codes and other policies. Relocation is not something that we discuss.

Schmidt’s third critique is even less appropriate, “A third major problem parallels the problem with Bjorn Lomborg's critique of a lack of economic analysis over global warming, particularly a lack of cost-benefit analysis.” We did not conduct a cost-benefit analysis, nor did we claim to, so it is hard to respond to this. We conducted a sensitivity analysis to ascertain where policy makers might have the greatest ability to influence future hurricane damages. What we found is that using the “big knob” of tuning global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations is unlikely to be able to affect anything more than a very small portion of future tropical cyclone losses, and that this finding is very robust under all combinations of scenarios of climate change and societal change present in the IPCC SAR.

Schmidt offers three other minor critiques:

“ Damage estimates are artificially low because they come primarily from a time when hurricanes were at a low point in their long-term cycle. Recalibrating the damages to include more intense hurricane cycles we are experiencing now would give much larger figures.

Let’s accept this as true. It is irrelevant. Our analysis focused on how damages would increase as a multiple of a particular base year. Changing the base has no effect on the multiple, and has no effect on our sensitivity analysis.

“It's dated. It's from 2000, and relies extensively on 1996 IPCC assessments, which rely on still earlier studies. This isn't a flaw of the study itself, but rather than relying on it, the work should be done again with updated information.”

It is a 2000 paper. Nonetheless the analysis holds up exceedingly well as there has nothing that has occurred related to scientific understandings of tropical cyclones or projections of societal vulnerability that would change our basic conclusions. We do intend to update this analysis using the assumptions of the IPCC AR4 (we do have funded research on such sensitivity analyses under our SPARC project.). Better yet would be if the IPCC itself did such a sensitivity analysis, not just for tropical cyclones, but for every climate impact that is the joint function of climate and societal factors.

“It ignores costs resulting from redirecting land use.

We don’t claim to be doing a cost-benefit analysis, nor do we discuss relocation.

The bottom line is that the analysis is robust under a wide range of realistic and unrealistic scenarios for climate change and societal change. Even if we were to simply assume that the IPCC SAR underestimated changes in future tropical cyclone intensity by 100% or 200% the qualitative implications of our paper would remain unchanged. I appreciate Schmidt’s comments that changing land use behavior is difficult. But the reality is that there is no basis for expecting that a global energy policy focused on stabilizing greenhouse gas offers a meaningful tool with which to modulate future tropical cyclone damages.

The lure of a “big knob” that can be tuned to an ideal state is indeed appealing, but in the case of tropical cyclones the sooner we recognize that effective policy will take place on the ground in thousands of vulnerable locations around the world that experience damage, then the more effective policy responses will be.

Posted on January 23, 2006 07:31 AM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

January 21, 2006

“Practically Useful” Scientific Mischaracterizations

Gavin Schmidt, NASA scientist and a RealClimate proprietor, and I have occasionally engaged in a bit of back-and-forth on issues of science and politics. I respect Gavin, and we have always enjoyed cordial relations, but as regular readers here will know, I have frequently criticized RealClimate for hiding an implicit political agenda behind the fig leaf of putative concern about scientific truth. A recent exchange between Gavin and I related to a recent post of mine provides a look behind the fig leaf, and more importantly illustrates how hiding behind science contributes to sustaining gridlock on climate policy.

My post made the case the statements of some climate scientists about the state of climate science are likely shaped by the overriding objective of the Framework Convention which is to prevent "dangerous anthropogenic interference" in the climate system. Gavin and I both seem to agree that the ultimate of the Convention is not grounded in an accurate reading of how the world works. I’ll let Gavin explain the fundamental weakness in the Convention’s overriding objective:

”This post is based on a kind of false dichotomy, that there are two separates states of 'climate' - One which is benign and one which is 'dangerous' and that the sole scientific and political task is to ascertain when the switch is and presumably avoid it. Does it really need me to point out how over-simplisitic this is? The fact is that there will not be a global tipping point that pitches us into 'dangerous' terrrority, more like countless local tipping points (for ecosystems, climate, argiculture) that will come at varying points in the trajectory. The further along we go, the more damage will be done - it may not be a smooth increase but it is certainly not a binary system.”

But Gavin makes an interesting leap in a further entry when he says “there are no binary states 'benign' vs 'dangerous'. This is a completely separate question from whether it is practically useful for a policy to set an arbitrary limit as if there were.”

So what he is saying here is that in some situations it is OK for policy makers to mischaracterize how the world actually works if they find such mischaracterizations to be “practically useful.” My response to this was to ask a question:

“But I am curious why is it then that you folks at Real Climate focus so much on "getting the science right" in the climate debate but you draw the line when it comes to the implementation of the FCCC? Maybe as a practical matter it is useful for Senator Inhofe (from his perspectives) to mischaracterize the science? It is OK for the FCCC to mischaracterize how the world works but not Inhofe? Seems like you are saying that policies out of step with scientific understandings are OK if the goals are in one direction but not others. . . In a number of publications I (and others) have pointed to the impracticality of the current policy framework, in part because it does not reflect how the world actually works.”

Let’s take a look at some of the effects of the Framework Convention’s mischaracterization of how the world works for real-world outcomes:

Astonishingly, developing countries face barriers to getting resources to deal with climate disasters because they can’t prove that the climate-related impacts, such as disasters, that they have experienced have actually crossed the “dangerous interference” threshold. Consider this report of the International Institute for Sustainable Development,

”. . . if a country seeks funding for a project on flood prevention, the GEF would only be able to finance a portion proportional to the additional harm that floods have caused or will cause as a result of climate change, and the rest would have to be co-financed by some other body. The plea from LDCs [Least Developed Countries], particularly the SIDS [small island developing states], lies precisely on this paradox, in that even if funds are available in the LDC Fund, their difficulty of finding adequate co-financing, and the costly and cumbersome calculation of the additional costs, renders the financial resources in the LDC Fund, in practice, almost inaccessible.”

Obviously, it is practically impossible to distinguish any climate change signal in disasters. The Framework Convention does not appear to be grounded in economic reality either, as suggested by Nordhouas and Boyer (2000, PDF):

“. . . it appears that the strategy behind the Kyoto Protocol has no grounding in economics or environmental policy. The approach of freezing emissions at a given level for a group of countries is not related to a particular goal for concentrations, temperature, or damages. Nor does it bear any relation to an economically oriented strategy that would balance the costs and benefits of greenhouse-gas reductions.”

Stanford’s David Victor agrees,

“Diplomats have been trying to build an overly ambitious system for controlling greenhouse gases that is based on a fundamentally flawed architecture. . . Governments need to start thinking about the alternatives to the Kyoto Protocol approach.”

One of the great ironies of this situation is that from the perspective of the stated political objectives of the Bush Administration, it would have been far more “practically useful” for them to have signed on to Kyoto rather than flipping the bird to the rest of the world when they unilaterally pulled out of the Protocol. I made this case in a post here a while back. This up-is-down perspective can cause dissonance I know. I am in fact saying that the best way to stymie progress on the climate issue is to support the Framework Convention and its Kyoto Protocol and the best way to facilitate action is to argue the case for new and innovative options to the policy strategy outlined under the Framework Convention. Because everyone is pretty wedded to their positions, it is not surprising that this argument finds few supporters on either side of the current debate.

So to return to where we started on this post, when scientists overlook, excuse, or otherwise defend the inescapable reality that the Framework Convention is grounded in a vision of the world that does not square with how the world actually works, not only are they showing their political colors, but more importantly, they are contributing to the sustainability of the current gridlock on climate change. When leading scientists point out the inconsistency of the Article 2 of the Climate Convention with reality, then we might have an opportunity to discuss new and innovative policy options. And that is something that really would be practically useful.

Posted on January 21, 2006 09:18 AM View this article | Comments (30) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

January 19, 2006

On Donald Kennedy in Science, Again

In this week’s Science magazine editor Donald Kennedy opines that “Not only is the New Orleans damage not an act of God; it shouldn’t even be called a “natural” disaster.” Could it be that he sees the significance of millions of people and trillions of dollars of property in locations exposed to repeated strikes from catastrophic storms? Unfortunately, not at all.

Prof. Kennedy is a Johnny-come-lately to exploiting Katrina for political advantage on climate change. He writes, “As Katrina and two other hurricanes crossed the warm Gulf of Mexico, we watched them gain dramatically in strength. . . We know with confidence what has made the Gulf and other oceans warmer than they had been before: the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from human industrial activity, to which the United States has been a major contributor.”

I suppose one could make the convoluted case that Prof. Kennedy is [just a bad writer/only talking about statistics/dumbing-down the science/anticipating inevitable future research results] and didn’t really mean to link Katrina’s damage (or Katrina) with global warming. But he did, clearly. The current state of science doesn’t support such claims. Let’s review:

From Kerry Emanuel’s homepage:

“Q: I gather from this last discussion that it would be absurd to attribute the Katrina disaster to global warming?
A: Yes, it would be absurd.”

From Webster et al.(2005) in Science (PDF):

“. . . attribution of the 30-year trends [in hurricane intensity] to global warming would require a longer global data record and, especially, a deeper understanding of the role of hurricanes in the general circulation of the atmosphere and ocean, even in the present climate state.”

From RealClimate:

“. . .there is no way to prove that Katrina either was, or was not, affected by global warming. For a single event, regardless of how extreme, such attribution is fundamentally impossible.” (emphasis added)

From Rick Anthes at UCAR (who effectively used the “act of god” metaphor in his essay):

“Whatever the relationship between hurricanes and global warming turns out to be, it is not likely to be simple, and we will never be able to attribute a single event like Katrina to a changed climate.”

If you want to read about Katrina not being an “act of God” I’d recommend this thoughtful essay by former national park service director Roger Kennedy. We criticized Donald Kennedy just last week for advocating policies related to extreme weather events that simply cannot work, and this week he backs that up with more of the same. If one actually cares about the impacts of hurricanes, it makes no sense to express concern about hurricane damage without at all mentioning coastal population growth and development. As I have written previously, our continuing focus on the issue of hurricanes and global warming is not simply about getting the science right. It is about advocating policies that can save lives and mitigate damage. Global warming is important, hurricanes are as well, but you can’t kill those two birds with a single stone. You can’t (PDF).

For an argument for policies that hold far more promise for dealing with hurricane impacts than those being advocated by Professor Kennedy, have a look at this op-ed (in PDF) that Dan Sarewitz and I had in the L.A. Times last fall. Reflecting upon Prof. Kennedy’s recent editorials, I not sure what is worse – the repeated advocacy of really bad policy on the pages of the nation's leading scientific journal or the deafening silence of the relevant scientific community in the face of these arguments.

Posted on January 19, 2006 03:16 PM View this article | Comments (12) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

A Question for RealClimate

Here is a question for the RealClimate folks, which I hope that they will address on their site, and other relevant experts are welcome to respond as well:

What behavior of the climate system could hypothetically be observed over the next 1, 5, 10 years that would be inconsistent with the current consensus on climate change? My focus is on extreme events like floods and hurricanes, so please consider those, but consider any other climate metric or phenomena you think important as well for answering this question. Ideally, a response would focus on more than just sea level rise and global average temperature, but if these are the only metrics that are relevant here that too would be very interesting to know.

Here is why I ask: I am in the midst of a professional exchange with colleagues related to some published work and the issue has been raised that certain observed climate phenomena are “consistent with” modeled results. But it seems to me that give the incredible number of model studies any observed behavior of the climate system is “consistent with” some model study that has been published somewhere by somebody. The way to make such a statement more meaningful would be to clearly distinguish a priori what observations would be “consistent with” from those that would be “inconsistent with” climate model behavior. I have often seen claims about “consistency” but never a discussion of what observed behavior of the climate system would be "inconsistent with" current expectations.

I have more than a passing interest in this question, having a long-time interest in the role of models (PDF) and predictions in decision making.

Thanks much for all responses.

Posted on January 19, 2006 09:21 AM View this article | Comments (40) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Past the Point of No Return?

Advocates for action on climate change are in an interesting double bind. One the one hand, some may feel that motivating action requires strong statements, such as we saw in comments from James Lovelock reported in The Independent earlier this week, that human-caused climate change has “passed the point of no return.” On the other hand, if it becomes generally accepted that we have indeed passed the “point of no return” then this condition would render irrelevant the central objective of the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), under which the Kyoto Protocol is negotiated, requiring a new debate on the basic objectives of international climate policy.

The central objective of the FCCC is described in its Article 2 as “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” But if dangerous anthropogenic interference has already occurred or is inevitably on its way, then “prevention” is not in the cards and Article 2 becomes meaningless. And re-opening up Article 2 for revision would be extremely contentious, which in my view would not necessarily be a bad thing. So to be consistent with the FCCC, those calling for action have to walk a careful line between rendering the FCCC obsolete yet still making a strong case for immediate action, hence the double bind.

I would expect that we will see this double bind play out implicitly in the context of the next report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as well as in the public statements of scientists on climate change. For scientists who support the FCCC, the only “politically correct” interpretation of the state of climate science is to claim that we are approaching a point of no return, and that we have a brief window of, say, 10 to 20 years to take action. Any other position on the science of climate change could be interpreted as rendering the Framework Convention moot (i.e., past the point of no return), or not generating a sufficient motivation for near-term action (e.g., a longer time-frame for action).

We should fully expect to see this dynamic play out as a debate among those advocating action on climate change. Those who are hip to the implications of claiming that we are “past the point of no return” will find themselves contradicting those who are unaware of the political consequences of such strong statements. I’d bet that there already such statements from politically-savvy scientists in response to Lovelock’s recent claims. All of this might be good for climate policy as re-opening discussion of Article 2 is desperately needed (e.g., see this paper in PDF for more discussion of the pathologies associated with the FCCC and its Article 2).

Posted on January 19, 2006 08:08 AM View this article | Comments (15) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

January 17, 2006

OSTP AWOL?

The website Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President has been uncharacteristically inactive in recent months. For example, the most recent posted speeches by OSTP officials John Marburger, Kathie Olsen, and Richard Russell are at least six months old. And with the exception of a report released last month on tsunami risk reduction, OSTP has been completely mute on substantive science and technology policy issues.

This seems pretty inconsistent with the quote from President Bush featured on the OSTP home page, ""Science and technology have never been more essential to the defense of the nation and the health of our economy".

If it is so essential, then what gives with the absence of OSTP in the face of important science policy issues of the day?

Posted on January 17, 2006 07:28 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Myanna Lahsen's Latest Paper on Climate Models

Myanna Lahsen is an anthropologist who spent about seven years embedded within the "tribe" of climate modelers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. She is presently a research scientist here at our Center, and for the last several years she has been conducting fieldwork in Brazil on the "interplay of science, culture, power and politics in international affairs through a focus on the Large-Scale Biosphere Atmosphere (LBA) experiment." Her project website is here. Her work is rich in detail and strong in weaving together analysis from data collected through participant-observation.

Myanna just had a very interesting paper come out on climate models:

Lahsen, M., 2005. Seductive Simulations? Uncertainty Distribution Around Climate Models, Social Studies of Science, 35:895-922. (PDF)

The paper will be of interest to scholars in STS because it provides an alternative (and much needed) perspective on Mackenzie's somewhat influential notion of the "certainty trough." If you are interested in Myanna's critique and elaboration of Mackenzie's perspective, then have a look at the full paper. For those folks interested in the perspectives of climate modelers on uncertainty with respect to their models, I thought that a few excerpts from Myanna's recent paper might be worth pulling out and highlighting. However, given the richness of the paper and importance of context for understanding her arguments, I would still encourage you to have a look at the whole paper. Meantime, the excerpts below will give you a sense of her analysis and arguments.

She starts by noting that her purpose is not to criticize models or modelers but to focus on how their creators understand them and their uncertainties. This is a particularly important subject because climate modelers are important contributors to policy debates and discussions on climate change.

"Climate models are impressive scientific accomplishments with importance for science and policy-making. They also have important limitations and involve considerable uncertainties. The present discussion focuses on uncertainties about the realism of climate simulations - rather than the models' significant strengths - in order to highlight features of models that are overlooked when their output is taken at face value." (p. 898)

Lahsen observes that in practice climate scientists routinely confused their modeled world with the real world.

" During modelers' presentations to fellow atmospheric scientists that I attended during my years at NCAR, I regularly saw confusion arise in the audience because it was unclear whether overhead charts and figures were based on observations or simulations. . . In interviews, modelers indicated that they have to be continually mindful to maintain critical distance from their own models. For example:
Interviewer: Do modelers come to think of their models as reality?

Modeler A: Yes! Yes. You have to constantly be careful about that [laughs].

He described how it happens that modelers can come to forget known and potential errors:

[Modeler A:] You spend a lot of time working on something, and you are really trying to do the best job you can of simulating what happens in the real world. It is easy to get caught up in it; you start to believe that what happens in your model must be what happens in the real world. And often that is not true . . . The danger is that you begin to lose some objectivity on the response of the model [and] begin to believe that the model really works like the real world . . . then you begin to take too seriously how it responds to a change in forcing. Going back to trace gases, CO2 models - or an ozone change in the stratosphere: if you really believe your model is so wonderful, then the danger is that it's very tempting to believe that the way it responds to a change in forcing must be right. [Emphasis added]

And as well in the following passage:

" Erroneous assumptions and questionable interpretations of model accuracy can, in turn, be sustained by the difficulty of validating the models in the absence of consistent and independent data sets. Critical distance is also difficult to maintain when scientists spend the vast majority of their time producing and studying simulations, rather than less mediated empirical representations. Noting that he and fellow modelers spend 90% of their time studying simulations rather than empirical evidence, a modeler explained the difficulty of distinguishing a model from nature:
Modeler B: Well, just in the words that you use. You start referring to your simulated ocean as 'the ocean' - you know, 'the ocean gets warm', 'the ocean gets salty'. And you don't really mean the ocean, you mean your modeled ocean. Yeah! If you step away from your model you realize 'this is just my model'. But [because we spend 90% of our time studying our models] there is a tendency to forget that just because your model says x, y, or z doesn't mean that that's going to happen in the real world.

This modeler suggests that modelers may talk about their models in ways they don't really mean ('you don't really mean the ocean, you mean your modeled ocean . . . '). However, in the sentence that immediately follows, he implies that modelers sometimes actually come to think about their models as truth-machines (they 'forget to step away from their models to realize that it is just a model'; they have a 'tendency to forget')."

Another modeler interviewed by Lahsen reinforces these perspectives:

" The following modeler suggests that the above tendencies are pervasive in the field of climate modeling:
Modeler D: There are many ways to use models, and some of them I don't approve of. [Pause] It is easy to get a bad name as a modeler, among both theoreticians and observational people, by running experiments and seeing something in the model and publishing the result. And pretending to believe what your model gives - or, even, really believing it! [small laugh] - is the first major mistake. If you don't keep the attitude that it's just a model, and that it's not reality . . . I mean, mostly people that are involved in this field really have that, they have the overtone that it is.

Interviewer: They do tend to think that their model is the reality?

Modeler D: Or even if they don't think that, they tend to oversell it, regardless.

Interviewer: And why do they oversell it?

Modeler D: Because people get wrapped up in what they have done. You know, I spent years building this model and then I ran these experiments, and the tendency is to think: 'there must be something here'. And then they start showing you all the wonderful things they have done . . . And you have to be very careful about that.

Confirming Shackley and Wynne's argument, modeler D suggests that modelers sometimes 'oversell' their models, strategically associating them with more certainty than is warranted. However, echoing others quoted earlier, Modeler D also suggests that modelers sometimes lose critical distance from their own models and come to think of them as reliable representations of reality . . . As GCMs incorporate ever more details - even things such as dust and vegetation - the models increasingly appear like the real world, but the addition of each variable increases the error range (Syukuro Manabe, quoted in Revkin, 2001)."

Lahsen reports similar conclusions related to another modeler that she interviewed:

" Modeler E, in the excerpt quoted above [Ed.- not shown here], distinguished some modelers from 'people who are interested in the real world'. He thus implied that modelers sometimes become so involved in their models that they lose sight of, or interest in, the real world, ignoring the importance of knowing how the models diverge from it. Recognition of this tendency may be reflected in modelers' jokes among themselves. For example, one group joked about a 'dream button' allowing them - Star Wars style - to blow up a satellite when its data did not support their model output. They then jokingly discussed a second best option of inserting their model's output straight into the satellite data output."

Lahsen's earlier work documented different perspectives between theoreticians (modelers) and empiricists (typically meteorologists or old-school climatologists), and reinforces that here.

" Modeler E noted that theoreticians and empiricists often criticize modelers for claiming unwarranted levels of accuracy, to the point of conflating their models with reality. My fieldwork revealed that such criticisms circulate widely among atmospheric scientists. Sometimes such criticisms portray modelers as motivated by a need to secure funding for their research, but they also suggest that modelers have genuine difficulty with gaining critical distance from their models' strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, they criticize modelers for lacking empirical understanding of how the atmosphere works ('Modelers don't know anything about the atmosphere'). . . In interviews, empiricists often voice criticisms along the lines of this one expressed by a meteorologist: 'I joke about modelers: they have a charming and naive faith in their models.' Such comments were especially common among empirical meteorologists trained in synoptic weather forecasting techniques, who conduct empirical research on a regional or local scale. They have not been centrally involved in the process of model development and validation, and thus may fall within MacKenzie's category of the 'alienated'. These empiricists trained in synoptic methods are particularly inclined to criticize GCMs. Such criticism may have to do with the fact that there is considerable resentment among various subgroups of atmospheric scientists about the increased use of simulation techniques, and such resentment may be echoed in other sciences in which simulations are ascendant . . . "

Lahsen describes the tensions between theoreticians and empiricists.

"Compared with modelers, such empirical research meteorologists with background in weather forecasting are part of a different social world; these two groups partake in different, albeit overlapping, social networks defined by different scientific orientations and cultural norms. The empiricists are less committed to GCMs or to the theory of human-induced climate change. They manifest skepticism about numerical forecasts in own creations. Simulation of complex, uncertain, and inaccessible phenomena leaves considerable room for emotional involvement to undermine the ability to recognize weaknesses and uncertainties. Empiricists complain that model developers often freeze others out and tend to be resistant to critical input. At least at the time of my fieldwork, close users and potential close users at NCAR (mostly synoptically trained meteorologists who would like to have a chance to validate the models) complained that modelers had a 'fortress mentality'. In the words of one such user I interviewed, the model developers had 'built themselves into a shell into which external ideas do not enter'.

But she also explains that they need each other.

" Generally speaking, atmospheric scientists are better judges than, for example policy-makers, of the accuracy of model output. However, the distribution of certainty about GCM output within the atmospheric sciences reveals complications in the categories of 'knowledge producers' and 'users', and the privileged vantage point from which model accuracies may be gauged proves to be elusive. Model developers' knowledge of their models' inaccuracies is enhanced by their participation in the construction process. However, developers are not deeply knowledgeable about all dimensions of their models because of their complex, coupled nature. Similarly, the empirical training of some atmospheric scientists - scientists who may be described as users - limits their ability to gauge GCM accuracies in some respects while enhancing their ability to do so in other respects; and, generally, they may have better basis than the less empirically oriented modelers for evaluating the accuracy of at least some aspects of the models. Professional and emotional investment adds another layer of complexity. Model developers have a professional stake in the credibility of the models to which they devote a large part of their careers. These scientists are likely to give their models the benefit of doubt when confronted with some areas of uncertainty. By contrast, some of the empirically trained atmospheric scientists, who are less invested in the success of the models, may be less inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, maintaining more critical understanding of their accuracy."

We are in the process of getting all of her publications online accessible from her homepage, and will announce them when available. Meantime you can find the paper discusses above (here in PDF).

Posted on January 17, 2006 07:21 AM View this article | Comments (9) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

January 16, 2006

Indur Goklany's Rejected Nature Letter

Indur Goklany, of the U.S. Department of Interior, shared with us the letter reproduced below which he submitted to Nature and had rejected for publication, as is of course their prerogative. However the letter is interesting enough that we thought it to be worth sharing, with his permission. It is a response to an article by Patz et al. which appeared in Nature last November. Patz et al. repeated WMO claims that human-caused climate change causes over 150,000 lives annually, which comes from McMichael et al. 2004 (here in PDF). Last year we commented on this WHO report, taking a somewhat different perspective than Goklany does below. Have a look, it is an interesting letter. Goklany has also had some smart things to say in his publications about adaptation and climate change.

Goklany Letter

Sir - It is astonishing to find a review article in Nature (Patz, J.A., et al., Nature 438, 310; 2005), henceforth "the Review", whose major conclusion is taken from an analysis whose authors themselves acknowledge did not "accord with the canons of empirical science". Specifically, its estimate, that anthropogenic climate change already claims over 150,000 lives annually, is based on the Review's reference 57 which notes (on p. 1546)(1) that:

"Empirical observation of the health consequences of long-term climate change, followed by formulation, testing and then modification of hypotheses would therefore require long time-series (probably several decades) of careful monitoring.While this process may accord with the canons of empirical science, it would not provide the timely information needed to inform current policy decisions on GHG emission abatement, so as to offset possible health consequences in the future." [Emphasis added.]

In other words, science was sacrificed in pursuit of a pre-determined policy objective. But, absent serendipity, one cannot base sound policy on poor science. Sound science is a necessary, although not sufficient, condition for sound policy.

Furthermore, the Review's policy pronouncement that "precautionary approaches to mitigating anthropogenic greenhouse gases will be necessary" (p. 315), even if ultimately proven sound, is not based on any policy analysis. As it notes, "the regions with the greatest burden of climate-sensitive diseases are also the regions with the lowest capacity to adapt to the new risks" (p. 315). Thus, another method of reducing this burden would be to enhance these regions' adaptive capacity to cope with these diseases. This can be accomplished by either specifically reducing their vulnerability to these diseases or by advancing the underlying determinants of adaptive capacity, namely, economic development, human and social capital, and the propensity for technological change (which is tantamount to advancing sustainable development). (2, 3)

Either adaptive approach would reduce both "new" health risks due to climate change and "pre-existing" risks occurring in the absence of climate change. By contrast, greenhouse gas reductions would only address new risks. Moreover, the burden of disease from new risks in 2000, which the Review itself estimates was a twentieth of the pre-existing burden (4), will-if projections of the global populations at risk of malaria (5) and hunger (6) are any guide-remain smaller, at least through most of this century. Secondly, either adaptive approach would reduce the total burden more rapidly than emission reductions because of the climate system's inertia. Therefore, by comparison with emission reduction efforts, either adaptive approach would for the next few decades reduce climate-sensitive risks faster, by a greater amount and, as shown elsewhere, more economically.(4)

For these reasons, the Review's policy fix-"precautionary approaches to mitigating anthropogenic greenhouse gases while research continues on the full range of climate-health mechanisms and potential future health impacts" (p. 315)-is inadequate to the "global ethical challenge" posed by climate change (p. 315). In the short-to-medium term, it would save more lives, and therefore be more precautionary and ethical, to reduce vulnerability to urgent climate-sensitive problems (e.g., malaria and hunger) which currently kill millions each year, promote sustainable economic development and implement "no-regret" emission reduction policies while undertaking the research and development necessary to expand the universe of "no-regret" technological options so that, in the long term, deeper emission reductions, when and if they become necessary, can be more reasonably afforded. (4) Such an approach would help solve current problems without compromising the ability to address future problems.

Indur M. Goklany* *US Department of the Interior, 1849 C Street NW, Washington, DC 20240, USA; phone: 202-208-4951; Fax: 202-208-4867; e-mail: igoklany@ios.doi.gov (The views expressed here are not necessarily those of any branch of the US Government)

References

(1) McMichael, A. J. et al., in Comparative Quantification of Health Risks: Global and Regional Burden of Disease due to Selected Major Risk Factors (eds Ezzati, M., Lopez, A. D., Rodgers, A. & Murray, C. J. L.) Ch. 20, 1543-1649 (World Health Organization, Geneva, 2004).

(2) Goklany, I.M., Energy & Environment 14, 797-822 (2003).

(3) Goklany, I.M., Energy & Environment 16, 667-680 (2005).

(4) World Health Organisation. The World Health Report 2002 (WHO, Geneva, 2002).

(5) Arnell, N. W. et al., Clim. Change 53, 413-446 (2002).

(6) Parry, M. L. et al., Glob. Environ. Change 14, 53-67 (2004).

Posted on January 16, 2006 07:13 AM View this article | Comments (15) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

January 15, 2006

Re-Politicizing Triana

University of Maryland's Bob Park, a generally reliable and always interesting commentator on science issues, falls well short of his usual standards in today's New York Times in an op-ed on the termination of the NASA Triana satellite. Park chooses to go after cheap political points rather than engage the real substance of policy issues involving the convoluted and controversial history of Triana.

Park bemoans the termination of Triana and asks ominously, "Why did NASA kill a climate change project?". He suggests a sinister conspiracy within the Bush Administration to "avoid the truth about global warming" and to transfer their "hated" of Al Gore onto the project he first proposed in 1998. Supposedly coming to Vice president Gore in dream, the original idea for Triana was based on putting a high definition TV camera far out in space where the satellite's 24-7-365 view of the Earth would inspire people to be better stewards of our planet. In 1998 the Clinton White House issued a press release on Triana, which described the proposal as follows:

"Vice President Gore proposed today that NASA scientists and engineers design, build and operate a satellite that will make available a live image of earth 24 hours a day on the Internet ... "This new satellite, called Triana, will allow people around the globe to gaze at our planet as it travels in its orbit around the sun for the first time in history," Vice President Gore said. "With the next millennium just around the corner, developing this High Definition TV quality image of the full disk of the continuously lit Earth and making it available 24 hours a day on the Internet will awaken a new generation to the environment and educate millions of children around the globe. This new space craft will be carried into low earth orbit where a small motor will place it in orbit 1 million miles from earth at the L1 point (short for the Lagrangian libration point), the point between the earth and sun where gravitational attractions are balanced. The satellite will carry a small telescope and camera to provide these new compelling images ... These images of the earth moved thousands of Americans and encouraged them to become active stakeholders in our planet's wellbeing, Vice President Gore said."

NASA, no fools when it comes to responding to influential policy makers, reacted quickly to the Vice President's proposal and set up a program. But positive feelings did not last long within NASA. In 1999, NASA's inspector general issued a report (here in PDF) that was extremely critical of Tirana's cost and mission, writing,

"In the context of NASA's constrained budget and the widespread availability of satellite pictures of the Earth, we are concerned about the cost and changing goals of the Triana mission. A relatively simple and inexpensive mission focused primarily (though not exclusively) on inspiration and education has evolved into a more complex mission focused primarily on science. The added scientific capabilities will increase the amount of data gathered by the mission, but they will also increase the mission's total cost. In addition, due to the mission's circumscribed peer review process,1 we are concerned that Triana's added science may not represent the best expenditure of NASA's limited science funding."

In 2000, the National Research Council issued a letter report on the scientific aspects of Triana, which gave a luke-warm endorsement of the mission, concluding:

"The task group found that the scientific goals and objectives of the Triana mission are consonant with published science strategies and priorities for collection of climate data sets and the need for development of new technologies. However, as an exploratory mission, Triana's focus is the development of new observing techniques, rather than a specific scientific investigation."

The NRC report was widely spun by advocates of Triana as an "endorsement" of the mission. This prompted Bob Harriss, formerly of NASA, and me to write a letter to Science in which we wrote:

"In the case of Triana, by focusing exclusively on "scientific merit," the NRC report neglected two important aspects of program evaluation: the cost-effectiveness and opportunity costs associated with the mission--which are particularly important given that no recently published NRC reports called for a mission such as Triana as part of the nation's remote sensing strategy. The opportunity costs of Triana go beyond those expressed in budgets to include research community time and focus, adherence to scientific goals, and ultimately scientific credibility. To provide two examples of questions that should have been addressed: Would national needs be better served if the resources devoted to Triana were instead focused on the widely supported goal of a synthetic aperture radar satellite mission? A series of successful Earth Science Enterprise satellite missions is providing a deluge of new data to the scientific community: Might national needs be better served by additional funds for analysis and applications of these data? But the NRC panel did not address such broader issues, stating that it "lacked the proper expertise, resources, and time to conduct a credible cost or cost-benefit analysis ... or an analysis of the mission goals and objectives within the context of a limited NASA budget or relative to other Earth Science Enterprise missions". It is exactly these issues that matter most in science and space policy decision-making. By focusing only on scientific merit, the NRC not only neglected the needs of decision-makers for a comprehensive perspective, but it provided an opportunity for the misuse of the report. Immediately after the NRC report was released, partisans were "spinning" it as an endorsement of the mission, misrepresenting the report's narrow focus on scientific merit under an assumption of successful implementation. Whether or not Triana makes sense as a component of the nation's remote sensing agenda would require consideration of the issues neglected by the NRC panel, including Triana's contributions to meeting its other rationales, such as education and space weather forecasting ... We have no reason to believe that Triana should not be a component of the nation's remote sensing infrastructure; however, the existing process has not shown why the mission should play such a role. The Triana experience provides a clear example of how the scientific community too often neglects asking and answering the difficult, but necessary, questions involved with effectively advising policy-makers on the nation's scientific priorities. Ultimately the soundness of the nation's scientific endeavors is at stake."

And this brings us back to Bob Park's New York Times op-ed today. Park continues the politicized legacy of Triana carrying the weight of political arguments of one sort or another, and while Park decries this, he perpetuates it by suggesting a sinister political motivation behind its termination. While perspectives on Triana are no doubt shaped by its unique origins, the reality is that has never occupied a high priority role in research priorities set forth by the climate science community, its costs ballooned and took resources from other earth and space science programs that had gone through community peer review (here in PDF, and it required a space shuttle flight of which there are exceedingly few left.

Park is going pretty far out on a limb when he suggests that Triana is a key resource in settling the climate change debate. It's not. To suggest otherwise is to either mischaracterize the current state of climate science, which has a robust consensus, or to mischaracterize the scientific value of Triana. There are lots of reasons to criticize the Bush Administration's approach to climate policy, but its support of research is not among them.

So, why did NASA kill Triana? Perhaps for some very legitimate reasons.

In his op-ed Bob Park choose scoring cheap political points rather than contributing to more effective science policy. He neglects important factors in favor of trying to place blame on the Bush White House for its alleged pursuit of a political vendetta and avoidance of scientific truth. In doing so, Park perpetuates the increasingly popular myth that science policy decision making is as simple as checking party identification. This is not just wrong, it threatens our ability to make effective science policy decisions.

Posted on January 15, 2006 10:16 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Space Policy

Spring Syllabus Online

This spring I am teaching a graduate seminar, "Science and Technology Policy". The syllabus is online here. Comments welcomed.

Posted on January 15, 2006 01:15 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

January 13, 2006

Some Various Quotes

Here are some quotes from things I read recently that I thought were interesting:

Former Colorado basketball player Chauncey Billups was not talking about grade inflation, but he might as well have been when he said, "When you have success and you're not working as hard as you can, it can really be a curse because it gives you a false sense of what it takes to be successful."

Havard's Sheila Jasanoff has many wise things to say about science, policy, and politics. Here is a passage from her 1986 book, Risk Management and Political Culture, p. 72, about risk assessment:

"Scientific judgment must be exercised throughout, usually in full knowledge that different choices may lead to substantially different policy recommendations. Given this state of affairs, it is almost inevitable that a scientist's personal and political values will influence his reading of particular facts."

And page 70 has this gem,

"Research in the sociology of science has led to at least two formulations of the degree to which science is actually socially constructed. The dominant and more complex view holds that scientific knowledge is constructed partly in accordance with norms internal to science, such as empirical testing and peer review, but partly in accordance with external social interest, including the political interests of particular scientific communities. The relative importance of the internal and external norms can vary across disciplines, over time, and in response to political context. A more extreme formulation of the "social construction" hypothesis holds that differences in scientific claims can be reduced to differences in political orientation, so that most assertions about science can be seen as just a camouflage for constellations of values and preferences. Understandably, the second formulation has found adherents among political activists, who sometimes claim that there is no such thing as "good" or "bad" science, at least in the policy context. All policy-relevant science, in this view, is directed to strategic ends, and its quality is irrelevant so long as it leads to the desired societal objectives. At the opposite pole, some scientists are convinced that "good" and "bad" or "right" and "wrong" are absolute, unambiguous categories in science and that policymakers must steer clear of "scientific nonsense" if they are to reach legitimate policy decisions."

Like Jasanoff and most STSers put me down as an adherent of the "dominant and more complex view" of science in policy and politics.

Richard Rorty has lots of wise things to say as well, here is one interesting passage from the essay "A World Without Substances or Essences" which appears on p. 51 in his 1999 book, Philosophy and Social Hope (thanks AB!),

"The term 'objective' is defined by antiessentialists not in terms of relation to intrinsic features of objects by rather by reference to relative ease of attaining consensus among inquirers. Just as the appearance-reality distinction is replaced by distinctions between the relative ease in getting agreement. To say that values are more subjective than facts is just to say that it is harder to get agreement about which things are ugly or what actions evil than about which things are rectangular."

Like Rorty, put me down as an anti-essentialist.

Posted on January 13, 2006 08:40 AM View this article | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge | Science Policy: General

Does Disaster Mitigation Mask a Climate Change Signal in Disaster Losses?

Based on the current peer-reviewed literature, it absolutely does not. This post explains why this is the case.

One reaction to our work on attribution of factors responsible for the increase in weather-related losses worldwide has been to claim that successful disaster mitigation, that is, the protection of people and property from losses related to extreme events, has masked the role of climate change in driving increasing disaster losses. Such claims are not backed up by data or analysis.

For example, in his response to a comment (here in PDF) in Science Evan Mills asks, "What are the offsetting effects of human efforts to curb losses (building codes, early warning systems, fire protection, flood defenses, land-use planning, crop irrigation, etc.)?" He provides an answer to this question in his original paper:

"Many human activities mask losses that would otherwise manifest in the trend data. These include improved building codes, early-warning systems, flood control, electric load-shedding to avoid blackouts during heatwaves, disaster preparedness and response, and land-use planning. Insurer actions to reduce their exposures produce a dampening effect on observed insured costs. Untangling these offsetting factors is a necessary part of any comprehensive attribution analysis and has not been dealt with satisfactorily in the literature."

The argument here seems to be that successful mitigation efforts remove a portion of losses that otherwise would have occurred and with them they remove a signal of climate change. This argument is flawed for two reasons. First, it is logically incoherent. The effects of mitigation on losses are unrelated to climate signals. Mitigation modulates the exposure of population and wealth, it does not affect the underlying climate signal in the data. Hurricane Andrew will cost more than a category one storm taking the same path, regardless of level of mitigation. Second, a close look at actual disaster data shows that any signal of mitigation is exceedingly small in the context of the inexorable growth in population and wealth exposed to the effects of extreme events. In fact, it is not clear in many cases if mitigation efforts have had a positive or negative effect on losses. While documenting the costs and benefits of mitigation is important from the standpoint of disaster mitigation policy, by all indications it is largely irrelevant to this issue of attribution of trends in disaster losses as related to climate and societal factors. Let's consider each of these factors in turn.

Logically it makes sense that disaster mitigation affects the societal contribution to the disaster loss record, but not the climate contribution. This is explicit in the definition of disaster mitigation, which refers to "a sustained action taken to reduce or eliminate the long-term risk to people and property from natural hazards and their effects" (Source: FEMA PDF). When we look at a long-term trend in disaster losses, to identify a climate signal one of the first methodological steps is to adjust the data in a way that removes a societal signal from the loss data, by adjusting the data to some base year's losses, seeking to leave only those trends and variations that result from the physical behavior of the extreme weather phenomena. Successful mitigation actually contributes to this end by "dampening" the societal signal of increased wealth and population.

If the effects of mitigation were large enough and exhibited a systematic trend over time, then they would indeed be important factors to consider in loss normalization. There is no evidence that this is the case and ample evidence to the contrary (see below). At some point those who assert a climate change signal is disaster data will have to get their hands dirty with actual data analysis and research, rather than vigorous "proof bys assertion" (I couldn't resist).

There is the hypothetical situation where the mitigation efforts completely eliminate any damages whatsoever. In this case, a climate signal would of course be eliminated from the loss record, as the loss record itself would be terminated. Such situations are rare but not unprecedented. One example of this was shown to us in a recent seminar by Hans von Storch on North Sea storm surges which shows that the structural mitigation put in place after the North Sea floods of 1962 have eliminated damages in that region since that time making it impossible to glean climate trends from storm surge losses. But so long as the extreme event results in any damages at all, mitigation activities do not "mask" a climate signal. More intense events and more frequent events will still result in more damages than less and less intense events. In principle, successful mitigation may reduce the magnitude of societal growth on losses, but do not affect the ability to detect a climate signal in the loss record.

One way that mitigation effects might be seen in a long-term record of disasters is if one were to adjust the data for population and wealth, and if climate events are shown to have no trend, then the remaining trend in the adjusted dataset would necessarily be due to changing characteristics in the population and wealth, which might include the effects of mitigation. Successful mitigation would result in a long-term decline in losses, all else being equal. So for example, if we look at flood damages in the United States we find that losses per capita have increased while losses per unit wealth have in fact decreased (see this 2000 paper in PDF). These twin trends are consistent with the conclusion that when wealth and population are considered together in the context of a long-term trend if increasing precipitation, that mitigation has had a tangible effect on losses per unit wealth, and the increasing losses per capita reflect the growing wealth per capita. As we argued in the 2000 paper:

"after the variability in precipitation is accounted for, a significant decreasing trend is found in damage per unit wealth. This would suggest that the vulnerability of tangible property to flood damage has declined (perhaps because of successful flood policies), and the total damage has increased simply because of growth in total wealth."

So while it is possible that mitigation has had a discernible impact, it does not mask or otherwise preclude an analysis that concludes, as we did that, "the growth in recent decades in total damage is related to both climate factors and societal factors: increased damage is associated with increased precipitation and with increasing population and wealth. At the regional level, this study reports a stronger relationship between precipitation measures and flood damage, and indicates that different measures of precipitation are most closely related to damage in different regions. This study suggests that climate plays an important, but by no means determining, role in the growth in damaging floods in the United States in recent decades." (Note: For those interested in changes in precipitation, globally they have not been attributed to human caused climate change, see this discussion.)

So the presence of mitigation policies related to flooding precluded neither the identification of a small climate signal in the loss data nor identifying the much larger signal of societal changes, nor the relationship of the two. We found a similar result when we looked at hurricane damage and ENSO. (Hurricane damage is obviously a much more straightforward case for discerning climate-society relationships.) Efforts to mitigate hurricane impacts presented no obstacle to the identification of the climate signal of ENSO in the hurricane loss data (see this paper in PDF). We should not expect mitigation to mask climate signals because mitigation modulates only the societal signal in all cases except when it results in completely eliminating damages, which occurs in only exceedingly rare situations.

And perhaps troubling from the standpoint of disaster policy, a close look at loss data suggests that mitigation has a pretty small signal in any case. It may not even be positive in many instances. As FEMA notes, "Evaluating natural hazard mitigation is a complex and difficult undertaking which is influenced by several variables" (Source: FEMA PDF). The reason such evaluation is so difficult is that the signal of mitigation is small in the context of other factors. In his paper Mills selectively cites a study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers which (in support of its efforts to justify building levees) asserts that, "estimates that flood control measures have prevented 80% of U.S. losses that would have otherwise materialized." Such studies have been widely criticized because flood control measures create the conditions that lead to flood damage in the first place. Tobin (1995) explains how this might be so:

"Once [a levee] has been constructed, however, the structure may generate a false sense of security to the extent that floodplain inhabitants perceive that all flooding has been eliminated. With the incentive to take precautions removed, few residents will be prepared for the remedial action in the event of future floods. Even more costly, however, this false sense of security can also lead to greater development in the so-called safe areas, thus adding to the property placed at risk when the levee does fail, the increase in development can actually raise losses even higher than if no local system has been constructed in the first place"

Something similar was observed in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew. Surveys of damage found that homes built decades ago performed much better in the storm than homes built in recent years. Part of this was due to the style of home but also building quality and lack of effective inspections. So the effect of "mitigation" in the form of building practices was in fact to enhance vulnerability and thus increase losses as compared to past decades, which make in fact "mask" the actual costs of past storms estimated through normalization. Quantifying the effects of mitigation on losses has proven extremely difficult in aggregate loss trends because of the overwhelming influence of other societal factors.

So the methodology for distinguishing climate versus societal factors in the historical trend of increasing disaster losses remains unchanged by claims that disaster mitigation masks climate signals in loss data.

First, look to trends in climate events (e.g., frequency, intensity, location, etc.). If there are no trends identified, then it is impossible for trends in the events to be driving trends in the losses. If mitigation is in fact a significant factor this should be clearly identifiable in loss data adjusted for growth in population and wealth in the context of well-established understandings of climate phenomena.

Second, adjust the loss data to reflect changes in wealth and population exposed to the extreme events. If mitigation does not eliminate losses, then it is unlikely to have any material impact on the normalization methodology from the standpoint of discerning the effects of climate trends in the loss record.

Merely asserting the presence of disaster mitigation is an insufficient argument to overcome the evidence available to date (PDF) that supports the hypothesis that the worldwide trend of increasing weather-related disaster losses can be explained just about entirely by growth in population and property exposed to damages. I am open to new evidence and in particular quantitative analyses that address this hypothesis, as it is completely plausible that changes in climate could drive trends in disaster losses. However, we haven't see such data or analysis shown yet.

Posted on January 13, 2006 07:45 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

January 10, 2006

Does Donald Kennedy Read Science?

In an editorial in the 6 January 2006 issue of Science editor Donald Kennedy writes, "The consequences of the past century's temperature increase are becoming dramatically apparent in the increased frequency of extreme weather events ..."

In a letter published in Science 9 December 2005 written to correct another set of unsupportable claims published in Science about extreme weather events, I wrote (here in PDF),

"Over recent decades, the IPCC found no long-term global trends in extratropical cyclones (i.e., winter storms), in "droughts or wet spells," or in "tornados, hail, and other severe weather"... A recent study by the International Ad Hoc Detection and Attribution Group concluded that it was unable to detect an anthropogenic signal in global precipitation."

And even though my brief discussion of hurricanes got lost in the page-proof process (a correction is pending), recent research indicates no increase in the global frequency of tropical cyclones (e.g., Webster et al. 2005), and no long-term increase in the number or intensity of storms striking the U.S. (e.g., Landsea 2005). In short, there is no evidence to support Prof. Kennedy's claim of an "increased frequency of extreme weather events" that can be attributed to increasing global temperatures.

This issue is about more than simply getting the science right. In advancing an explicitly political agenda from a very influential position, Prof. Kennedy is making claims for particular policy actions that won't work as advertised. As we have written umpteen times here, and backed with research, yes greenhouse gas reductions make sense, but not as a policy instrument for addressing the escalating societal impacts of extreme events. While I have sympathies for Prof. Kennedy's politics, as a matter of policy, Professor Kennedy's argument is simply wrong.

Posted on January 10, 2006 09:09 AM View this article | Comments (12) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

January 06, 2006

The Policy Gap on Climate Change

Do scientists who work on the climate issue have a responsibility to place their work into policy context, specifically, to help policy makers understand the significance of science for alternative courses of action?

Here I'll argue that the answer to this question is clearly "yes," based on a careful look at the historical record of justifications given for public investments in climate research, but that many scientists, including leaders in the community and the IPCC, believe that the answer is "no." Such a refusal to formally sanction, much less engage in, the invention and evaluation of new policy options is one very important reason why the climate issue remains in gridlock, with debate continuing over bad options all around.

(Note: To be fair, some limited progress has been made on connecting climate science and policy, particularly at the regional and sub-regional scales, but there is a long way to go. See this informative but deflating post from Lisa Dilling on the recent CCSP workshop on decision support.)

Before proceeding several clarifications are in order. First, by "climate science" I mean all of the work conducted under climate research programs, which includes physical science and social science (including economics), and summarized by all three Working Groups of the IPCC. My focus is not exclusively on WG I-type science. Second, many scientists and organizations are indeed involved in political advocacy on the climate issue, where political advocacy is defined as working to reduce the scope of choice available to decision makers. Such advocacy often takes the form of explicit endorsement of specific policies. But advocacy can also be "stealth advocacy" in the form more general endorsement of those who support particular policies, or more commonly, opposition of those who advocate a particular course of action, with such opposition typically expressed in terms of science. What is wrong with advocacy anyway, as it is a noble calling in a democracy? In general nothing, but in some situations ever more advocacy can actually contribute to sustaining a political gridlock when all available options are bad ones, as I argued last year in an essay criticizing advocacy efforts by national science academies. The climate change debate desperately needs a dramatic expansion of policy options under discussion, but where will these new and innovative options come from?

Not from the U.S. scientific community is one answer (and I think that this argument holds more broadly, but the examples below focus primarily on the U.S. where more than half of all climate research funding comes from). To understand this argument, I'll present a bit of history on science-policy interactions on the climate issue. I'll provide references at the bottom for those interested in further details or sources.

From the start, politicians put responsibility for action on climate change onto the shoulders of scientists. Al Gore was representative of this dynamic when he stated in 1984,

"The ability of political and economic institutions to respond to a challenge of this magnitude will depend in large part upon how the scientific community explains the problem, how much certainty it invests in that explanation, and how actively involved it becomes in spelling out what the clearly sensible choice might be."

Politicians are more than happy to hand off this hot potato to scientists because dealing with climate change means making decisions and making decisions, especially far-reaching ones, holds the prospect of upsetting important constituencies, which cannot be a good thing for most politicians.

For their part the scientific community, or at least its leadership, warmly accepted the responsibility for leading the response to climate change. In the late 1980s the scientific community organized a massive research program under an explicit policy mandate. The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) was developed with the following goal:

"To gain an adequate predictive understanding of the interactive physical, geological, chemical, biological and social processes that regulate the total Earth system and, hence establish the scientific basis for national and international policy formulation and decisions "

Read that goal statement closely. It is important to recognize that the USGCRP was never proposed as a basic research program, it was proposed as a program to support policy making, with science as a means to that end, not the end itself. The USGRP is a policy research program that includes climate science as its focus. This focus was codified in a 1990 law (P.L. 101-606) calling for the USGCRP to support policy development (a detailed history of this law and its meaning can be found in Pielke 1995 referenced below). In 1989 before the law was passed a member of Congress expressed his reasons for supporting the program, "We [in Congress] are in desperate need of policy assistance. What are the ways - what are some of the things that we could do to increase the policy relevance of scientific research on global change?" The answer to this question was to initiate a large-scale climate research program with a policy mandate.

Now it was not too long after the law was passed that a number of members of Congress began asking for results. In 1993 a leading official of the USGCRP testified before Congress and was asked the following question,

"How much longer do you think it will take before [the USGCRP is] able to hone [its] conclusions down to some very simple recommendations, on tangible, specific action programs that are rational and sensible and cost effective for us to take . . . justified by what we already know?"

The USGCRP official provided a stunningly telling reply, "Whether [USGCRP] research can translate into actions to deal with the climate change problem . . . is not really the business of the [USGCRP]. That is where our job ends and, thank God, in some sense, other people's job starts"

What?!? Think about this; here we have a multi-billion dollar research program, justified as providing "useable information to policymakers," and a leading official of that program disavows the program's connection to action? Either the program was misjustified or mis-implemented (see Pielke 1995 cited below for a comprehensive argument to this effect, in short the program's goals were never clearly described so that scientists could think they were supported to do basic research, policy makers could expect relevant, and the different perspectives were not resolved).

Fast forward a decade to the Bush Administration which decided to rearrange the structure of U.S. climate research by creating a Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) as an umbrella over the USGCRP and a new effort, the Climate Change Research Initiative (note: I am PI on a major CCRI research program on climate science policy, SPARC). The new structure restated the policy focus of climate research, "The Climate Change Research Initiative (CCRI) [was] launched by the President in June 2001 to reduce significant uncertainties in climate science, improve global climate observing systems, and develop resources to support policymaking and resource management." And similarly to a decade earlier, the leadership of the program disavowed any responsibility for connecting research to policy, with its director stating in congressional testimony in 2003, "The CCSP studies and reports do not recommend specific policy options."

One difference between 1993 and 2003 was that some prominent observers began to complain about the situation. For example, Donald Kennedy, editor of Science, wrote a 2003 editorial titled "The Policy Drought on Climate Change" in which he complained about the focus of the CCSP as being too narrowly on basic research and too little on research on policy options. Yet much stayed exactly the same.

In 2003 Dan Sarewitz and I wrote an essay for Issues in Science and Technology making many of these points titled "Wanted Scientific Leadership on Climate" (cited below). Issues printed an incredible letter in response from a group of very prominent scientists whose names will be familiar to anyone working on the climate issue - Tom Wigley, Ken Caldiera, Martin Hoffert, Ben Santer, Michael Schlesinger, Steven Schneider and Kevin Trenberth. In the letter (here as PDF) these scientists, apparently unaware of the justifications and legislation behind the research program which supported their work, sought to rewrite history in terms of their own interests,

"The basic driver in climate science, as in other areas of scientific research, is the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. Furthermore, the desire of climate scientists to reduce uncertainties does not, as Pielke and Sarewitz claim, arise from the view that such reductions will be of direct benefit to policy makers"

Compare this statement to the goals of the USGCRP and CCRI described above, and there is an obvious mismatch, again leading one to the conclusion that climate research is either misjustified or mis-implemented. The letter-writers then further disavow an explicit connection between climate research and the needs of policy makers, perhaps unaware that this is in fact established in law,

"Of course, it would be nave to suppose that climate scientists live in ivory towers and are driven purely by intellectual curiosity. The needs of society raise some interesting and stimulating questions that are amenable to scientific analysis. It is true, therefore, that some of the research results that come from climate science are policy relevant. It is also true that scientists in the community are well aware of this. It is preposterous, however, to suggest that climate science is primarily policy driven."

Preposterous. Right. About as preposterous as looking at climate research program documents, public law, and congressional hearings to document the repeated justifications expressed by and scientists and policy makers for spending tens of billions of dollars of public monies on climate research.

The disengagement of the scientific community from discussion of policy options continues. For example, the IPCC eschews formal discussions of policy options (something it did not do in its first assessment report where it had an explicit mandate to consider policy options). The net result of the IPCC's disengagement from discussing policy options means that it has in practice fallen in behind the Framework Convention and rather than helping to lead policy discussions on climate change it has arguably become more of an instrument of political advocacy than policy analysis. By taking such a stance, the IPCC is quickly working itself towards complete policy irrelevance. When 2007 comes around decision makers will need information on what to do post-Kyoto, not arguments in support of Kyoto or Climate Convention Article 2.

I was motivated to describe this history by a valuable conversation over the past week on this blog post with several climate scientists that I respect who vigorously defended the proposition that climate scientists should steer clear of engaging in policy research or discussions that might help to expand or clarify the scope of policy alternatives available to decision makers.

One scientist captured (perhaps unwittingly) the perspective held by the vast majority of scientists that I engage with on this issue when he wrote, "Nothing is perfect in this world, and that includes your utopian dream where scientists seek to "expand the scope of choice". Sure, that's a great job for some people to do, and I'm all for it. I don't see why it has to necessarily be _my_ job just because my field of research may have some policy implications." By contrast, in the U.S. at least climate research is supported for exactly this reason. For researchers who accept funding under the CCSP/USGCRP engaging policy is your job.

So my response to climate scientists who decry the pace of action on climate change, criticize the policies of Bush Administration, battle those nefarious climate skeptics, or their perceived mischaracterizations of their science in the media is as follows:

It may be wise to understand the justifications for the ample funds that our fields received from the public. Tens of billions of dollars in research support are provided not because the public or politicians share our innate curiosity in the behavior and implications of climate phenomena, but instead because they want policy options that are politically feasible, technically possible, and economically viable. When you complain about the lack of action, ask yourself where policy options come from. Then go look in the mirror.

References

Pielke Jr., R. A., 1995: Usable Information for Policy: An Appraisal of the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Policy Sciences, 38, 39-77. (PDF)

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 2000: Policy History of the U.S. Global Change Research Program: Part I, Administrative Development. Global Environmental Change, 10, 9-25. (PDF)

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 2000: Policy History of the U.S. Global Change Research Program: Part II, Legislative Process. Global Environmental Change, 10, 133-144. (PDF)

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 2001: The Development of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, A Policy Case Study Prepared for the 2001 American Meteorological Society Policy Symposium, June. (PDF)

Pielke, Jr., R. A. and D. Sarewitz, 2003. Wanted: Scientific Leadership on Climate, Issues in Science and Technology, Winter, pp. 27-30. (PDF)

Posted on January 6, 2006 09:47 AM View this article | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science Policy: General

January 04, 2006

Relevant but Not Prescriptive Analysis

Continuing a series of posts this week about the role of scientists in politics I'd like to call attention to a very interesting 2002 paper by Fulton T. Armstrong in the journal Studies in Intelligence. If Armstrong's name sounds familiar it may be because it came up last year in the nomination of John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations as someone who has bumped heads with Bolton, and had been demoted as a result. See this article for some background.

Armstrong's article is titled, "Ways to Make Analysis Relevant But Not Prescriptive" and if this title also sounds familiar it may be because this is the same phrase used by the IPCC (e.g., here in PDF) to describe its relationship with policy in its work. In my comments below I'll contrast Armstrong's view on this subject with that of the IPCC, and my critique of some of the IPCC's practices related to policy analysis. The IPCC never defines what it means by "relevant but not prescriptive," but it seems pretty clear that however it uses the term it is not the same meaning as Armstrong suggests that it should be defined.

What follows are some excerpts from Armstrong's article, which is very interesting, but certainly not comprehensive on this subject. Let's start with Armstrong's "bottom line" and then I'll offer some comments on particularly interesting passages.

"The policymaker (or his or her boss) was elected by the American people to make value judgments. It is our job to develop a framework to help policymakers weigh multiple options, but their job to determine how to react to challenging situations, from turning the other cheek to staging a full confrontation. It is our job to discern whether the Argentine government's new economic policies will enable it to survive and satisfy people's needs, but it is the policymakers' job to determine whether Argentina's steps warrant US and IMF help. It is our job to assess the intentions, strengths, and vulnerabilities of violent groups, such as the Colombian FARC insurgents, but it is the prerogative of senior US officials to brand them "terrorists" and include them in the Global War on Terrorism. It is our job to provide information on whether the Cuban government is supporting terrorist activities, but it is the policymakers' choice whether to keep Cuba on the State Department's list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. It is the decisionmakers' prerogative to decide whether rhetoric hostile to a US policy-say, criticism of the war in Afghanistan-is a "setback" for the US national interest in absolute terms.

The Intelligence Community should provide policymakers with analytic products that are realistic and reflect a range of legitimate interpretations of events and their implications for the United States. We should be the radiologists: We take the picture and read the spots on it to the best of our ability, but we leave the diagnosis and cure to the doctors. We should provide the facts and possible interpretations of them, but not apply a value ruler. Our products should reflect an awareness of the immutable "national interests" as well as the range of policy options and political preferences-and not prejudge them for the policymaker."

The key here is found in the last statement. Armstrong sees that "not applying a value ruler" occurs not by ignoring policy, but by being aware of and engaged in policy analysis, by providing a range of options for policy makers to consider. This stands in stark contrast to the behavior of the IPCC, which stands at arms length from explicit discussion of policy options, yet expresses a clear preference throughout for certain policy options over others.

He starts his essay with some humor,

"The CIA is neither a policy nor a law-enforcement agency-this is our mantra from the day that we sign on. Analysts do not have policy preferences. Analytic products do not lean in specific policy directions.

The Agency produces intelligence free from political bias. We say implicitly that we focus on national interests, not the policy or political interests of an administration or the Congress. Every piece of intelligence we produce is to be both policy relevant and-despite the correlation between relevance and the political stakes behind it-reflect a non-politicized interpretation of the national interest. We say we can swim without getting wet."

In other words, politics imbues the work of the CIA, despite statements to the contrary.

"The complex dynamics that underpin policy preferences are part of living in the real world. Priorities are never as clear-cut as policy rhetoric would have them. It is the responsibility and prerogative of the policymakers to determine how conflicting interests will be prioritized for their purposes. It is particularly tough when policymakers' appetites for intelligence contributions do not correlate closely with the lofty priorities we think we should be supporting. Indeed, many of us have worked late into the night to meet a policymaker request for intelligence on a matter that is presented as being of urgent national interest, only to find out later that our support was used to help one side in a bureaucratic dogfight."

In other words, sometimes intelligence is used to support pre-determined political objectives. Shocker!

"The temptation to take sides in policy debates is strong, but analysts can run into trouble even inadvertently, because there are so many types and levels of "national interest." If we are not careful, sections that address "Implications for the United States" can become policy-prescriptive simply by describing a positive outlook that coincides with a policy direction or expressing pessimism about a foreign country's course of action, and can appear to "poke the policymaker in the eye," as former Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates used to say."

The IPCC has run into considerable trouble on this count, exactly as Armstrong describes, starting with it schizophrenic approach to the concept of "climate change" itself (see this PDF).

Armstrong argues that being relevant but not prescriptive requires having an awareness of the political and policy terrain. Ignorance of or attempting to ignore this context is not helpful

"To stay clear of minefields, the crucial first step is to consciously assess the different categories into which US interests fall-not an easy task because all interests seek to cloak themselves as "national" interests. To do that, in my opinion, requires intelligence professionals to follow the policy and political debates and know where various policymakers and politicians are drawing the lines on national interests.

Our job is to remain outside the policy and political process, not to be ignorant of it. To navigate around the shoals of debate, we have to know where the points of contention are. We can garner only a piece of this from policymaker "feedback" on analysis, although such channels of communication are important. In my personal experience, feedback should always be taken with a grain of salt. Administration officials are human, and it is natural for them to favor information that supports their views.

Policymakers usually are not eager to challenge us or put opposing views on the table-because they see no benefit in questioning the conclusions, want to avoid the appearance of unduly influencing analysis, or are too harried to take the time. Periodic internal reviews of our work provide more meaningful insights into the quality and timeliness of our support to policymakers. Analysts should also seek information from outside the administration-from public forums, nongovernmental organizations, and Capitol Hill. Analysts should be versant in the policy and political sides of their stories. Savvy intelligence requires it."

The second part of the preceding excerpt warns of the dangers of relying too much on feedback from policy makers as a source for evaluating the effectiveness of intelligence. The IPCC has highlighted its role in support the Climate Convention and Kyoto Protocol (discusses here), but with more and more observers asserting that Kyoto is a very, very small step forward at best (a dismal failure at worst), it is fair to question how effective the IPCC has actually been in supporting decision making on climate. Positive statements from people responsible for implementation of the Convention are valuable of course, but not definitive.

Armstrong calls for internal and external reviews of intelligence activities, which is something that the IPCC and its supporters have openly and vigorously resisted.

"Use alternative analysis. Single-line analysis entails selectivity in the use of evidence and argumentation and, therefore, results in a relatively narrow interpretation of US interests. Explorations of alternative possibilities are more intellectually honest, prejudge policy preferences less, and have a longer shelf life. Reinterpreting evidence based on a recognition that the assumptions, drivers, and implications in our main line of analysis may be wrong or skewed can force us to recognize the legitimacy of different perspectives and keep us from getting too close to one policy thrust or another."

The IPCC is focused on developing a "consensus" view on climate science. However, evidence exists that in some areas the IPCC's consensus may not accurately reflect scientific opinion among relevant experts. For example, this forthcoming paper by Granger Morgan and colleagues finds that the consensus view on uncertainties associated with aerosol forcing reported by the IPCC dramatically underestimates the uncertainties actually held by the relevant experts, they conclude, "The range of uncertainty that a number of experts associated with their estimates, especially those for total aerosol forcing and for surface forcing, was often much larger than that suggested in 2001 by the IPCC Working Group 1 summary figure." It may very well be that policymaking is better support by a presentation of the full ranges of uncertainty rather than through idealized constructs of consensus, (see this essay in PDF). The great irony here is that the best way to deflate the efforts of legitimate skeptics of any sort is to invite them into the fold and have them present their views as part of the diversity of perspectives on complex, contested scientific issues. Not allowing them to participate enhances their legitimacy and credibility, particularly in situations like that documented by Morgan et al. where the assessment report understates the uncertainties as view by the relevant community.

"Merely to warn is somewhat extortionary; it tells policymakers that we see circumstances harmful to national interests according to a single interpretation of them. It covers our rear ends-we can always say we "told you so"-but it leaves the policymakers exposed, often without providing actionable intelligence that would help them develop a viable remedy. Good opportunity analysis, on the other hand, provides the policy community with an inclusive assessment of how various US interests are affected by evolving circumstances. Done right, opportunity analysis reflects the complex array of interests that policymakers are trying to juggle. If a foreign government is headed toward a decision harmful to a US interest, analysts may see opportunity to promote other interests, perhaps as a quid pro quo. Foreign policy does not follow a straight line; analysis should not either."

I interpret "opportunity analysis" here to be equivalent to a discussion of policy options. The IPCC in seeking to describe a problem requiring action short changes politicians when it fails to follow through with a wide-ranging discussion of specific policy options (i.e., taken by who, how, where, at what costs?) rather than broad hand waving at best and stealth policy advocacy at worst.

The Armstrong essay provides lots to think about and discuss. Read the whole thing "here".

Posted on January 4, 2006 01:28 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science Policy: General

January 03, 2006

Partisan Politics and Science Policy

Conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg had an interesting column last week on the virtues of political partisanship. He writes, "Of course, there's nothing wrong with people being more polite to one another. But the belief that a healthy liberal democracy is one in which partisanship has disappeared is not merely ignorant, it's dangerous. Liberal democracy ceases to exist when partisanship vanishes. Democracy is about disagreement before it is about agreement." I think that this is exactly right.

I also agree with Goldberg when he writes, "When you hear people say, "We need to get past partisan differences," what they are really saying is you should shut up and agree with me. Similarly, when public health experts, child advocates, televangelists, environmentalists and the rest insist that this or that isn't a political issue, it's a health issue, child-safety issue, moral issue or whatever-kind-of-issue, what they are really saying is that we shouldn't have a political argument about my cause. Because my cause is beyond politics. You should just agree with me and do it my way. But even when people make this argument in all sincerity, they miss the point. Virtually all issues are political issues the moment we ask politicians to deal with them."

But Goldberg's argument is incomplete. Yes, politics is bargaining, negotiation and compromise (through arguments of course) in pursuit of desired ends, but arguments are about some action (i.e., policy). Policy has politics because political debate is typically over competing courses of action. But what happens in situations in which options for action are poorly defined or all available options for action are bad ones? Where do options for action actually come from? That is, who invents policy options? Who is responsible for developing the range of options that we wind up falling behind in partisan fashion? They certainly don't invent themselves. (One colleague recently responded to this question by explaining that "policy options are exogenous variables to policy analysis"!). The answer seems to be obvious - experts invent policy options. This begs the further question, what roles do we want experts to play in a democracy? Are some roles more context-appropriate or effective than others? How do we know?

One role is of course to engage in overt political advocacy, in the explicitly partisan sense that Goldberg applauds. The political advocate is not only a noble calling in society it is in many ways the fundamental basis for American democracy, e.g., as espoused by James Madison in Federalist 10. Experts should indeed support those policy options or political candidates that they feel will advance the values that they hold dear.

But there is another role for experts, particularly in situations where policy choice is limited or all available options are unlikely to achieve desired ends. In such cases we want experts to invent new options, to give us more choices. More options hold the prospect of altering political dynamics in ways that can break pre-existing gridlock. For example, when scientists invented substitutes to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) over two decades ago it helped to sway industry support for CFC regulations. Imagine if instead of working on new options, those scientists instead spent their time simply arguing for or against regulation. Some areas of policy institutionalize the distinction between expanding or clarifying options and promoting a particularly favored option, and military intelligence is probably the best example. When the Bush Administration worked to conflate these two roles during its promotion of the Iraq war, it arguably led to a weakening of the intelligence infrastructure at best and a limited perspective on available options at worst. (There are other roles for experts as well, not described in this essay.)

Here we've frequently argued against mindless partisanship among scientists. By this we mean the knee-jerk reaction by some scientists, and more importantly scientific organizations, to jump on this or that political bandwagon in an effort to reduce the scope of choice available to decision makers. The issue of climate change provides a great example of this dynamic with many prominent scientists focusing their time and efforts arguing against the nefarious skeptics who oppose regulation of greenhouse gases. As a result of this action these anti-skeptics wind up either explicitly or implicitly (i.e., hiding behind science) advocating either undefined or unworkable policy options. This is a problem when if anything climate debate needs more options not more advocacy.

Instead of such political advocacy, like those scientists who helped to break open the debate over CFCs open, we think that some scientists should be working hard to expand the scope of choice available to decision makers. The IPCC, for example, has explicitly ruled out such behavior, and thus has increasing come to serve as an advocacy effort. Expanding options does not mean "getting beyond partisanship," or that partisanship is undesirable, but instead that there are multiple roles for experts in society and we would be wise to understand what those roles are and what criteria scientists might use in deciding what role(s) to play.

Scientists and other experts do face choices in how they relate to the broader society and such choices have individual and collective consequences.

To read more along these lines see this essay:
Pielke, Jr., R. A., 2002: Policy, politics and perspective. Nature 416:368.

Posted on January 3, 2006 08:51 AM View this article | Comments (51) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

January 02, 2006

Normative Science

Robert Lackey, a senior fisheries biologist for the Environmental Protection Agency in Corvallis, Oregon, has a number of very interesting papers on the role of science in politics and policy, and in particular on the role of scientists in policy and politics.

One very interesting essay (of many) is on "normative science" (PDF here) which appeared in Fisheries in 2004. In this essay, which focuses on fishery science but has much broader relevance, Dr. Lackey starts by noting where he stands on science in policy and politics:

"First, fisheries scientists should contribute to policy analysis. Not only is it the right thing to do, we are obligated to do so. I do not hold with the notion that it is sufficient for scientists to publish their findings solely as scholarly reports. Second, when scientists contribute to policy analysis, they need to exercise great care to play an appropriate and clearly defined role. Here is where the interface between science and policy gets muddled for many fisheries scientists. Exactly what is an appropriate role and how do we tell when we are off track? Our role is not described adequately under the current rubric of providing the so-called "best available science." Further, scientists are often asked to contribute to help resolve fisheries policy issues that are unfolding amidst a complex, volatile mix of clashing values, differing preferences, and opposing, often mutually exclusive, societal priorities."

Dr. Lackey defines "normative science" as follows:

"These days, one commonly asserted imperfection in the science-policy interface is that some so-called "science" is imbued with policy preferences. Such science may be labeled as normative and it is potentially an insidious kind of scientific corruption. By normative science, I mean "information that is developed, presented, or interpreted based on an assumed, usually unstated, preference for a particular policy or class of policy choices." In some forms, normative science is not obviously normative to policy makers or even to many scientists. Such "science" has become a serious problem. I believe that use of normative science is stealth policy advocacy."

This perspective is one that Prometheus readers will be familiar with as a topic frequently discussed on this site. "Normative science" has also been labeled "post-sensible science" by Dennis Bray, described here at Prometheus by Hans von Storch as, "science which is encroached by moral entrepreneurship which is usually a mix of "good" political intentions and personal drive for the limelight." Dr. Lackey also notes, "Politically, from what I observe, the use of normative science cuts across the ideological spectrum. It seems no less common on the political Left or the Right, nor from the Greens nor from the Libertarians."

For many scientists and observers of science a common, but misplaced, response to issues of "normative science" is to call for science to be pure, or somehow separate from normative considerations. We see this from those on the political right in calls for "sound science", and on the political left in their calls for "scientific integrity." These are really just different terms for the same concept. Others suggest that a focus on scientific consensus can work to avoid normative concerns, e.g., such as claimed by the IPCC. As Dr. Lackey suggests, dealing with issues at the messy interface of values and science requires that scientists engage with, not pull away from, issues of policy and politics. How to structure such engagement is the real challenge.

Reference

Lackey, Robert T. 2004. Normative science. Fisheries. 29(7): 38-39.

Posted on January 2, 2006 08:38 AM View this article | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

December 30, 2005

David Keith on Air Capture

David Keith sends in this thoughtful response to my recent post on air capture.

Author: David Keith

While Roger raises some interesting points, I think the original post overstates the near-term importance of air capture. In speculating about the potential importance of air capture, I find myself caught between two very different possible futures.

In one future, which we might call the linear future, I assume that we live in a world in which carbon prices/constraints are (roughly) equal across economic sectors and in which they increase gradually, and in which they gradually apply to a larger and larger set of countries. This world is the subject of most economic models of the climate problem. In this world, it will be a very long time before air capture technologies become economically competitive, if indeed they ever do.

There is however, an alternative, nonlinear future. It has been 40 years since the climate problem was first brought to the attention of policymakers (the first report to a US president that stated the climate problem in modern terms was to Johnson in 1965). We have done very little. Despite the best efforts of many of us, it seems to me plausible that little but talk will be achieved in the next few decades. This may be particularly likely if some other major problem (e.g., a global pandemic) helps to keep climate off the front burner. When the world finally ask seriously to manage the climate problem, it may do so in a climate of crisis. Perhaps spurred on by scientific findings such as evidence of impending ice sheet collapse and rapid sea level rise. In such a world we might manage the climate problem by spending 5% or 10% of world GDP for a decade or two rather than addressing the problem slowly and smoothly at a rate of 1% of GDP over most of the century as is typically assumed in climate policy discussions. In such a world, options like air capture might be useful because they could be implemented comparatively quickly precisely because they are partially decoupled from the worlds energy infrastructure.

While I, of course, prefer the first world. The second seems plausible, however, given that governments often find themselves able to manage only a few problems at once and operate by ignoring problems until some combination of circumstances puts them at the top of the policy agenda.

Such a world might well consider not only air capture but more radical approaches such as albedo geoengineering. I think geoengineering is among the more credible claimants to the title of "the third rail of climate policy"

Roger: thanks for getting this discussion started.

Cheers, David

N.B., Our Air Capture paper is now available on the Climatic Change website.

For some thoughts on geoengineering see: 37. D. W. Keith (2001). Geoengineering. Nature, 409, p. 420. PDF 26. David W. Keith (2000). Geoengineering the Climate: History and Prospect. Annual Review of Energy and Environment, 25, p. 245-284. PDF here.

Posted on December 30, 2005 06:52 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

December 22, 2005

Responses to Emanuel in Nature

Chris Landsea and I each have brief comments on Emanuel (2005) in this week's Nature. Emanuel offers a response. We'll have more to say on these soon, but for now, please have a look at the exchange here in PDF.

Posted on December 22, 2005 10:20 AM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

December 19, 2005

Sarewitz on Mooney

Center affiliate and long-time collaborator Dan Sarewitz has posted an advance copy of his review of Chris Mooney's book "The Republican War on Science," forthcoming in Issues in Science and Technology. The review can be found here in PDF.

Sarewitz writes, "The Republican War on Science offers a catalog of Republican-led confrontations with mainstream science, ranging from attacks on evolution and denial of climate change tocthe stacking of government advisory committees with industry scientistscand the blocking of federal funds for stem cell research. As an unapologetic critic of the Bush administration, I was eager to read a penetrating political analysis of how the current regime has sought to wring partisan advantage from the complex and difficult relationship between politics and science. Alas, what I found was a tiresome polemic masquerading as a defense of scientific purity."

For a contrasting viewpoint see this favorable review of Mooney's book by John Horgan in the New York Times, which finds agreement with Mooney that Democracts seek truth, while Republicans seek God and money. Horgan writes that telling good science from bad, "can indeed be difficult, especially if all the scientists involved are trying in good faith to get at the truth, and Mooney does occasionally imply that demarcation consists simply of checking scientists' party affiliations. But in many of the cases that he examines, demarcation is easy, because one side has an a priori commitment to something other than the truth - God or money, to put it bluntly."

Sarewitz picks up on this point as well and rejects it in no uncertain terms, "Mooney tells a story of bad, duplicitous, politically motivated scientists and policymakers on the Republican side, and good, honest, disinterested scientists and policymakers on the Democratic side... Yet Mooney never confronts the reality that scientists on his side of the fence must have values, interests, and personalities just as surely as those on the other side, whom he portrays as consistently corrupt. There can be only one of two reasons for this neglect. Either Mooney has chosen not to portray the values of scientists who line up on the Democratic side because he knows it would weaken his argument and undermine his claim that he is only defending the purity of science, or he actually believes that the scientists on his side are uninfluenced by their values and interests. The reader must therefore decide if the narrator is unreliable or just hopelessly naive."

Posted on December 19, 2005 05:08 AM View this article | Comments (13) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

December 15, 2005

Get Ready for Air Capture

I have often joked that the solution to increasing greenhouse gases was simple: simply invent a tabletop device (solar powered of course) that turns the CO2 in ambient air into diamonds and releases oxygen. While I am still awaiting this invention, the issue of "air capture" of CO2 is becoming less and less far-fetched. Whether or not air capture proves technologically, economically, or politically feasible in the long run, the technology, or more precisely the idea of the technology, has the potential to fundamentally transform debate on climate change.

The idea of air capture of CO2 is simple in principle: ambient air is taken in, CO2 is taken out, and air is released. (Those interested in an introduction to the technical details should see this PDF by David Keith and Minh Ha-Duong. For a look at a a prototype system see this PDF.)

Currently air capture of CO2 is a political third rail of climate policy. Here is why:

For most of those people opposed to greenhouse gas regulation advocating air capture would require first admitting that greenhouse gases ought to be reduced in the first place, an admission that most on this side of the debate have avoided. When so-called climate skeptics start advocating air capture (which I have to believe can't be too far off), then you will have a sign that the climate debate is really changing.

If such a transformation occurs, then we have the irony of seeing the climate skeptics become the technology advocates and the greenhouse gas regulation advocates become technology skeptics. Why? For most of those people who support greenhouse gas regulations, even admitting the possibility of air capture is anathema, because it would undercut the entire structure of the contemporary climate enterprise. Consider that the Kyoto Protocol and all of its complex mechanisms would largely be rendered irrelevant. So too would be most research on carbon sequestration (though point source sequestration would likely remain of interest) and management, as well as much of research on reducing emissions in autos, homes, cities, etc.. As well, because among many much of the motivation for climate mitigation lies in changing peoples lifestyles, securing advantages in international economics, and changing energy policies, air capture represents a tremendous threat to such agendas. As a 2002 Los Alamos National Laboratory press release trumpets, "Imagine no restrictions on fossil-fuel usage and no global warming!"

Now for a moment imagine that the technological, economic, and political obstacles to air capture could be successfully overcome. For the record, I have no idea if this is in fact the case, however some very prominent researchers think that it is possible, see e.g., this PDF. What would this mean?

This would mean that policy makers could then tune the atmosphere to whatever concentration of CO2 that they desired, and people around the world could continue to consume fossil fuels with abandon. (The entire prospect of geoengineering would of course require some very, very careful thought that I am obviously overlooking for the moment.) Now of course, this argument presumes that the climate problem is one of stabilizing CO2 concentrations at a particular level, such as described in the Climate Convention, a framing that I have critiqued (e.g., here in PDF), but let's go with it for purposes of discussion. The problem of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere would then simply be turned into a technical exercise in scrubbing the atmosphere clean, of course, at some cost.

Critics of air capture that I have spoken to dismiss air capture almost reflexively as undoubtedly forever remaining too costly and technologically infeasible. But given its potential to reshape the climate debate, I am amazed that air capture has not captured more attention from researchers and, especially, policy makers. For example, the recent IPCC report on Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage discusses capture from point sources, like power plants, but not from air. Should air capture start getting attention you can just about predict who will argue against it as being infeasible and work to keep it off of technology research agendas. (Question: Does anyone know how much research money is currently devoted to air capture?)

According to estimates by David Keith and colleagues, the costs of air capture are about one order of magnitude higher than the price that carbon trades for in the European carbon exchange. In the history of technological innovation, this is really not very far apart (think computers). Imagine if governments around the world set up a $50 billion prize for the first technology that demonstrated economic viability for air capture of carbon dioxide at, for instance, $20 per ton, $5 per ton or $1 per ton. The resulting investment in innovation would be massive. To scale the cost of awarding such a prize, it is a fraction of some projections of the annual costs of implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, which would deal with about 99% less of the problem than cost-effective air capture.

Can air capture solve the problem of increasing greenhouse gas emissions? I don't know. But if scientists and policy makers frame the climate problem as one of stabilizing concentrations of atmospheric CO2, then given the potential payoff, air capture deserves to be at the center of international climate policy debate. Presently it is not, but I'd bet that it will be soon.

(Note: Thanks to David Keith for providing useful background information on air capture!)

Posted on December 15, 2005 05:49 PM View this article | Comments (24) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Environment

Inside the Policy Sciences

For those of you interested in the intra-community discussions among scholars who study policy, I have a paper just out (it has a 2004 date, but it is just released) in the journal Policy Sciences about the sustainability of the tradition of scholars who are self-described policy scientists, which is the community in which I received my graduate training in the early 1990s and a perspective that I continue to teach today. The paper is part of a special issue of the journal on the future of the Policy Sciences.

My view is that while the academic policy movement is perhaps as strong as ever, the tradition of the policy sciences proposed by the policy movement's founder Harold Lasswell mid-twentieth century faces extinction. My essay motivated three lengthy responses and a chance for a rejoinder.

If you are interested in such stuff you can find the whole exchange here.

Posted on December 15, 2005 08:56 AM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

December 13, 2005

Matt Nisbet on Framing Science

Matt Nisbet, a professor at Ohio State, has set up a very interesting blog on "framing science". We look forward to reading, responding to, and engaging with Matt and his readers.

Posted on December 13, 2005 10:37 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Hurricanes and Global Warming FAQ

We've set up a very basic "Hurricanes and Global Warming FAQ" here. It is designed to be updated as interests request and events warrant. So if you'd like to suggest a question or comment on an answer please do so and we'll continue to update it as readers find it useful. We'd welcome suggestions for other topics for which a similar FAQ might be of interest.

Posted on December 13, 2005 10:28 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

December 09, 2005

Exchange in Today's Science

I have a letter in Science this week reacting to an article by Evan Mills in the 12 August 2005 issue of Science, which I comprehensively critiqued here. My letter is accompanied by a lengthy response from Mills. You can find both my letter and the response here in PDF.

I wrote the letter is in response to claims made by Mills (2005) about the role of climate change in the increasing losses related do disasters. Mills stated in the August paper that "climate change has played a role in the rising costs of natural disasters," and on the "relative weights of anthropogenic climate change and increased exposure" in the loss trend Mills concludes "quantification is premature." My letter concludes, "Presently, there is simply no scientific basis for claims that the escalating cost of disasters is the result of anything other than increasing societal vulnerability." Mills response does nothing to question this statement about the current state of the science.

Mills' lengthy and rambling response to my letter essentially confirms this assertion by discussing many things, but avoids engaging the points that I raised in my letter. Here are a few reactions.

1. First, Science for some reason did not include my page proof changes to the letter. This is not a terribly big deal. But I did update the letter to reflect some more recent literature on hurricanes, and a citation that was "in press" but is now published. I've emailed to see where things broke down. You'd think they wouldn't at Science.

2. Mills writes, "The disaster attribution literature upon which such assertions are based is fraught with data and measurement uncertainties and is decidedly incomplete, especially concerning events outside the United States (1)." To support this claim, he once again cites a paper that has no relevance to the point being made, referencing a study that does not discuss trends in disasters or their attribution (here). Mills seems unaware of actual work that seeks to quantify measurement uncertainties in disaster loss data, like this paper: Downton, M. and R. A. Pielke, Jr., 2005. How Accurate are Disaster Loss Data? The Case of U.S. Flood Damage, Natural Hazards, Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 211-228. (PDF). He doesn't seem to realize that if the data are really as bad as he suggests they are, that this doesn't support his claim to be able to identify a greenhouse gas signal in the loss record.

3. Mills goes on an on about issues that are far removed from his original claims about natural disasters or my reaction to those claims. He discusses "noncatastrophic processes such as small storms, lightning, soil subsidence, permafrost melt, the effects of mold and airborne aeroallergens on human health, coral reef decline, coastal erosion, or crop diseases." He also mentions "energy prices" and "changes in temperature and precipitation extremes, continental drying, and a range of associated impacts on physical and biological systems." He also discusses "atmospheric and ocean circulation and elevated ocean heat content, as well as sea-level rise and associated coastal erosion." Wow, neat stuff. But what do these things have to do with natural disasters or the clear focus of my letter? Nothing.

4. Mills raises some questions, "Why are losses from weather-related events rising faster than those from nonweather events? What are the offsetting effects of human efforts to curb losses (building codes, early warning systems, f ire protection, flood defenses, land-use planning, crop irrigation, etc.)? How do we explain rising economic losses (e.g., those to crops in the heartland or physical infrastructure built on melting permafrost) that are only weakly linked to oft-cited demographic factors such as populations clustering around coastlines? Lastly, why would rising numbers of events not translate into rising costs?" My reaction to this laundry list of uncertainties is to wonder how it can be that in the face of such unanswered questions Mills can so confidently conclude that greenhouse gases are responsible for some part of the historical trend in economic losses from disasters.

5. Mills mischaracterizes one of my papers when he cites a paper of ours to support the following, "Assuming that only socioeconomic factors-rather than rising emissions-influence losses may yield ill-founded policy recommendations that focus exclusively on adapting to climate change while dismissing energy policy as a legitimate part of the toolkit for responding (11)." Here is what our paper (PDF) actually said about energy policy, "Recognizing that climate impacts are best address through adaptation rather than prevention need not undercut he goals of increased energy efficiency and reduced greenhouse emissions." Dismissing energy policy? Hardly.

I could go on (but I won't!). Mills concludes with a line that I might have written, "Rather than "proof " by vigorous assertion, the constructive approach is to better understand the compounding roles of increasing vulnerability and climate change, and take affordable precautionary steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the changes rather than waiting for unaffordable consequences." Given that Mills cites essentially none of the relevant literature and once again engages in unfounded assertions, misdirected citations and far-reaching distractions, I am confident that for the thoughtful reader this exchange will go a long way toward clarifying where the state of science lies on this issue.

Posted on December 9, 2005 06:01 AM View this article | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

December 08, 2005

Science Studies in Science Policy

My latest perspective in Bridges is now online here. It is titled, " The Role of Science Studies in Science Policy." It starts out like this:

"In recent decades, science has been increasingly called upon to forge closer connections with the broader society. The days of the basic researcher toiling away in a laboratory with little concern about or accountability to external influences seems to be growing more distant every day. The trend toward a more societally-responsive scientific enterprise has been well documented by scholars who study science in society. Concepts describing this trend such as "Mode 2 science," "use-inspired basic research," and "well-ordered science" will be quite familiar to anyone well-acquainted with the discipline of "science and technology studies." But this trend is not just something that affects natural scientists. It also affects scholars like myself who study science in society. This leads me to ask: What is the relationship between science studies and science policies? And how should that relationship be shaped?"

The rest can be found here. Comments welcomed.

Posted on December 8, 2005 08:01 AM View this article | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

December 06, 2005

Preview of AGU Presentation -- The $500 Billion Hurricane

On Wednesday at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, along with Kerry Emanuel I'll be presiding over a special session on hurricane Katrina. As part of that session I will be presenting preliminary results of a comprehensive update of a 1998 paper that Chris Landsea and I collaborated on titled, "Normalized Hurricane Damages in the United States: 1925-95" (available here as PDF). On the update I am collaborating again with Chris, and also Joel Gratz from here at the University of Colorado.

First, some of the features of the updated analysis.

1. We have extended the dataset forward to 2005 from 1995 and back to 1900 from 1925, representing 35 years of additional data. (Our analysis of the period 1900-1924 is still in process.) NOTE! This data has not been peer reviewed and is preliminary. But it does give a sense of where we are at in the analysis and some early numbers.

2. We used updated inflation for all factors used in the normalization: inflation data (source: 2005 Economic Report of the President), population data (source: 2000 U.S. Census), and wealth data (Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis).

3. We have included 2005 storms damages as twice the current insured loss total, following the conventional practice of the National Hurricane Center (NHC). These numbers will be closely looked at, particularly Katrina. Generally, flood damage is not included in the hurricane damage tabulation, so how exactly to deal with New Orleans will be a subject of considerable attention. In what you see below, consider 2005 numbers preliminary, but are an effort to make an apples-to-apples comparison with the data 1900-2004.

4. We will be paying close attention to uncertainties in the data. In particular, we are investigating the possibility that pre- ~1960 data may significantly underestimate the actual losses for two reasons. One is that in this period there was very little or no public assistance provided after disasters (e.g., federal disaster assistance) and thus such costs would not have appeared in the totals during that period, yet they do appear in every large event today. Second, at some point before 1987 the NHC began using insured losses as the basis for calculating total losses, multiplying insured losses by a factor of two to arrive at a total estimate. This raises the possibility of a step function in the loss data when this practice began, meaning that earlier losses could in fact be significantly higher than we report, perhaps by as much as a factor of two. We are confident that the data since 1960 is fairly robust. Note that all of these errors work in the direction of magnifying losses earlier in the century. The possibility exists that we may continue to underestimate the hurricane loss potential

Some Data

Top 10 Damaging Storms 1900-2005 (note 1900-1924 incomplete)

1.	1926	Great Miami	$129,700,000,000
2.	2005	Katrina	$80,000,000,000
3.	1900	Galveston	$53,100,000,000
4.	1992	Andrew	$50,800,000,000
5.	1915	Storm 2	$50,200,000,000
6.	1938	New England	$35,000,000,000
7.	1944	Storm 9	$34,300,000,000
8.	1928	Lake Okeechobee	$29,600,000,000
9.	1965	Donna	$23,900,000,000
10.	1969	Camille	$19,200,000,000

Note that Katrina I ranked number 2 here. Even with a larger estimate for Katrina this would hold. The 1926 Miami storm estimate may be conservative for reasons discussed above. Note that none of the 4 storms from 2004 or Wilma appears in the top 10. Andrew is ranked 4th. Andrew and Katrina are the only storms in the top 10 that occurred in the past 35 years.

Top 10 Years 1900-2005 (note 1900-1924 incomplete)

1.	1926	$141,400,000,000
2.	2005	$100,000,000,000
3.	1900	$53,100,000,000
4.	1992	$52,500,000,000
5.	1915	$52,200,000,000
6.	1944	$45,900,000,000
7.	2004	$45,100,000,000
8.	1938	$35,000,000,000
9.	1954	$32,700,000,000
10.	1928	$29,600,000,000

Looking at yearly damages, 1926 is number 1 with 2005 not far behind. 2004 is in 7th place and 1992 is in 4th. The next most recent year in the rankings in 1954.

Top 10 10-Year Periods 1935-2005

1.	1935	$193,300,000,000
2.	2005	$175,700,000,000
3.	1947	$125,500,000,000
4.	1950	$114,400,000,000
5.	1951	$112,600,000,000
6.	1952	$110,600,000,000
7.	1949	$107,700,000,000
8.	1953	$107,400,000,000
9.	1946	$106,000,000,000
10.	1955	$103,000,000,000

When we look at the cumulative damages over 10-year intervals 1935-2005 we see the effects of many large events in the 1940s and 1950s. When we eventually extend the database back to 1900 comprehensively, I expect to see additional years in this listing around 1926 and before 1910. The take-home point here is that single large events are not the only way to look at hurricane losses, but decadal periods with consistently high losses. The 1980s and 1990s appear at the bottom of such a ranking. Our thinking about hurricane damage is shaped by our experiences in an anomalous several decades of very low losses when considered in historical perspective.

Differences between 1998 and 2005 analyses, and a look to the future

Across the board the average per-storm increase in losses between our 1998 study and the present effort is 104%. Inflation accounts for about 13% of this increase, meaning that losses have increased in real terms by 91% or in other words, have just about doubled.

Consider this, if the pace of population growth and increasing wealth continues at these rates until 2020, then in 2004 dollars (i.e., today's dollars) we should expect a repeat of the 1926 storm to cause about $500 billion in damages in 2020, all else being equal. Katrina would be $320 billion, Andrew $200 billion. These numbers boggle the mind, but provide some indication where we are headed.

Posted on December 6, 2005 08:54 AM View this article | Comments (17) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

November 28, 2005

Stem Cells and that "War on Science"

Every so often here we've taken issue with claims of a Republican "war on science." Our view is not a defense of Republican policies, far from it. Our view is that the factors which lead to the misuse of science in politics have less to do with political or ideological affiliation than with the basic dynamics of science in decision making. As a result, improving the use of science in decision making won't occur through mindless partisanship, but by actually paying attention to the dynamics of science in society. The ethical quandaries of he South Korean stem cell research program reported in the New York Times Friday throw another wrench into claim of a Republican "war on scince" and evidence that science abuses routinely span the political spectrum (The American Journal of Bioethics was on top of this and its significance early on, see this post).

Here is an excerpt from the New York Times article,

"The South Korean researcher who won world acclaim as the first scientist to clone a human embryo and extract stem cells from it apologized Thursday for lying over the sources of some human eggs used in his work and stepped down as director of a new research center. After months of denying rumors that swirled around his Seoul laboratory, the researcher, Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, confirmed that in 2002 and 2003, when his work had little public support, two of his junior researchers donated eggs and a hospital director paid about 20 other women for their eggs. On several earlier occasions, he had said that he did not use eggs harvested from subordinates and that no one was paid for egg donations. "Being too focused on scientific development, I may not have seen all the ethical issues related to my research," Dr. Hwang, a veterinarian by training, told a news conference in Seoul on Thursday."

Chris Mooney, passionate partisan and ubiquitous champion of the "war on science" argument (and who we've debated on this issue before), has claimed that President Bush's 2001 exaggeration of the number of stem cell lines available to researchers to be "one of the most flagrant purely scientific deceptions ever perpetrated by a U.S. president on an unsuspecting public."

So if deceiving the public to limit stem cell research is a "war on science" then presumably it is equally improper to deceive the public to advance stem cell research. The alternative is that one adopts an ends-justifies-the-means sort of logic in which the appropriateness of lying is determined to be a function of one's judgments about the value of the desired end. Of course, this sort of logic is exactly what underlies claims of the "war on science" anyway. Of course it also underlies conservatives calls for "sound science."

I didn't like how President Bush justified his stem cell decision in 2001 and I don't approve of Dr. Hwang Woo Suk's ethical lapses. But it should be obvious that these sorts of actions won't be addressed through simply more political partisanship, but through a carefully understanding of the complex factors which shape the use and misuse of science in decision making.

Posted on November 28, 2005 12:12 AM View this article | Comments (22) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health

November 24, 2005

Prometheus Reader Feedback Forum

As we celebrate a Thanksgiving holiday today, we thought that it might be useful to extend thanks to the many Prometheus readers, commentors and emailers. We appreciate the interaction and lively exchanges. We'd like to hear from you feedback about the site, its content and how it might be improved. Feel free to use the comments here or send us an email.

Posted on November 24, 2005 08:17 AM View this article | Comments (9) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

November 22, 2005

Tom Yulsman on Religion and Science

University of Colorado professor and faculty affiliate to our Center Tom Yulsman has a characteristically thoughful perspective in 20 November The Denver Post titled, "Science and religion face off." Here is an excerpt:

"That millions of Christians and Jews, including many scientists, believe both in God and traditional evolutionary biology, seems almost too obvious to require argument. And they seem to suffer neither from the utopian fantasies and moral degradation predicted by the proponents of intelligent design, nor from the diminution of their spiritual feelings and belief in God..."

Read the whole thing.

Posted on November 22, 2005 03:51 PM View this article | Comments (20) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

Two Perspectives on Katrina

Rick Anthes at UCAR, writes, “There can be little doubt that the failure of society and government on all levels contributed so much to this disaster that it can hardly be called an act of God.” See his essay on the storm here.

Roger Kennedy, historian and former director of the National Park Service, writes, “Post-Katrina policy is being muddled with too much vague talk of “natural disasters” and “acts of God.” Disasters are catastrophes affecting people.” See his essay on the storm in our Center’s Fall newsletter, Ogmius, available here.

Posted on November 22, 2005 03:48 PM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

November 21, 2005

Reflections on the Challenge

A few weeks ago we posed a challenge to both parties involved in the so-called "hockey stick" debate to explain why the rest of us ought to care about the debate. We asked, "so what?" We received responses from Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick while everyone on the other side declined to participate, though a few showed up in the comments. Here I'd like to offer a few assorted reflections on the responses and the subsequent discussion.

1. First, thanks to Steve McIntyre (SM) and Ross McKitrick (RM) for providing thoughtful responses. The responses motivated a healthy discussion and for me provided some greater insight into the dynamics of the ongoing debate within the climate community not just over the hockey stick, but broader issues as well.

2. Interestingly enough, the response from SM is completely in agreement with RealClimate contributors Stefan Rahmsdorf (SR) and William Connelley (WC) that the "hockey stick" debate is pretty much irrelevant to the scientific question of whether or not greenhouse gases will affect the future climate. Consider:

SR: "The discussions about the past millennium are not discussions about whether humans are changing climate; neither do they affect our projections for the future."

WC: "Why is this fight important to the rest of us? the answer is: you shouldn't. It isn't.."

SM: "I'm inclined to agree that, for the most part, the Hockey Stick does not matter to the great issue of the impact of 2xCO2."

This agreement is interesting because it means we can move beyond the often invoked assertion that the hockey stick is the keystone supporting the entire scientific basis of climate science. Others may assert that the hockey stick is a scientific keystone, but apparently not the principals involved in this debate.

3. But the agreement among the parties raises a very interesting set of questions that have much more to do with climate science policy than climate policy. First among these questions is a very good point raised by both SM and RM, if the hockey stick doesn't matter to the case for greenhouse gas effects on climate, why was it included and featured in the Summary for Policy Makers in the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? SM provides a compelling answer to this question, "So even if the Hockey Stick did not "matter" to the scientific case, it mattered to the promotion of the scientific case." The role of the SPM and the "promotion" of science by IPCC officials is a fair subject for discussion, independent of the answers to the technical questions M&M are debating with Mann et al.. Ultimately, the hockey stick debate is relevant to policy questions, but these questions have more to do with how we think about and organize science for policy, than any particular questions of climate policy itself.

4. RM suggests that the hockey stick is a symbol of the fidelity of journal peer review, the credibility and legitimacy of the IPCC, and how governments (in this case Canada) use scientific symbols to promote particular policies. It seems to me that MM sure could have made these points a lot more prominently early on. I am more convinced about the importance of the IPCC and journal peer review than the argument about the influence of the hockey stick on Canadian climate policies, but I am open to the case being made. I see that MM briefly raise the issue of journal peer review in their 2005 publication in Energy and Environment (PDF) and nothing comes up in their GRL publication (PDF). SM did raise some of these issues on his blog last February and in a related op-ed. RM raises some of these issues in this conference paper (PDF). But these are pretty hard-to-find nooks and crannies. My unsolicited advice to SM and RM is to spend more time (a lot more time) talking about the "so what?" questions as they pursue the obscure technical details. (By all means pursue the obscure and technical, but if indeed you care about the broader issues, then it is the broader issues that matter most.) They might find themselves with some allies if they talk more about peer review in science and international assessments, for which there are many people with interests and concerns. Pretty much all I do is "so what?" related to climate science, and I did not understand the positions of M&M until they wrote these essays. All of us are more likely a tool of those seeking to use our work for their purposes if we do not clearly and repeatedly (ad nausem) stake out your claim to the "so what?" ground. Perhaps, one reason that the folks on the other side chose not to participate may be their desire to leave the "so what?" ground open for occupation.

5. The concerns raised by SM and RM about the IPCC are part of a much broader set of experiences that raise questions about the credibility, legitimacy and salience of the IPCC. SM is perfectly justified in asking questions about the IPCC. We are all stakeholders in the IPCC process, and there appears to be no independent venue for raising issues about the IPCC process. The reception of the paleo climate community to M&M, regardless of the merits of their claims, is a good reason why such an independent venue makes sense. Certainly M&M could have been more tactful and diplomatically astute in their efforts, but still, the IPCC is the international organization responsible for bringing climate science and economics to policy makers, it can't afford to be petty or aloof. I'd contrast the reception that Wentz and Mears received upon bursting on the scene with evidence that the Spencer/Christy satellite data was flawed. The dynamics here are easy to understand, and they can be found in all sorts of places, but it is the job of the IPCC to treat science and scientists fairly, not to protect a consensus or political symbols.

6. Finally a few comments about the discussion that followed. I continue to be amazed at the degree of tribal behavior that the climate community generates. Different camps give themselves and their opponents cute names -- "hockey team," "skeptics," "contrarians, "mainstream". They meet in club houses like RealClimate and ClimateAudit where they talk amongst themselves. A telling comment appeared early in the exchange when some one asked me if I was "embarrassed" to be providing a forum for RM. This tells me that some folks are less interested in resolving the climate debate than perpetuating it. I suppose the fight is good sport. But if progress is ever going to be made on the issue then people on different sides will have to meet, discuss and compromise. If I were a proprietor of RealClimate or ClimateAudit I would have some very real concerns about creating an "echo chamber". Sometimes I wonder if these sites do less to educate their self-selected visitors than make their proprietors more strident and extreme in their own views, a la Cass Sunstein.

7. Finally, I found it amusing to find myself being attacked simultaneously on both the RealClimate website and the ClimateAudit website for being in the camp of the other. As one post said, "if you are not with us you are against us". This perspective, which is held not only among anonymous blog commentators, but some scientists, issue advocates and politicians helps to explain why the climate debate is locked in stalemate, and everyone chooses to fight about science instead.

Thanks all for participating. If you have any suggestions for topics and contributors that we might invite in the future to engage one another, please send them along.

Posted on November 21, 2005 03:29 PM View this article | Comments (54) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Hurricanes and Global Warming

It has been called, "absurd," "shameful," and "crazy." Now it can be called something else -- published. Here is our assessment of the current state of the literature on hurricanes and global warming.

Pielke, Jr., R. A., C. Landsea, M. Mayfield, J. Laver and R. Pasch, 2005. Hurricanes and global warming, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 86:1571-1575. PDF)

Comments on the substance of the paper are welcomed.

Posted on November 21, 2005 07:47 AM View this article | Comments (23) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

November 18, 2005

IPCC and Policy Neutrality?

I have received comments from two scientists, one very high up in the IPCC and strongly worded, complaining about the following short passage I wrote in a book review (PDF) in Nature earlier this year:

"the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has the temerity to claim that it is "policy neutral", yet its website trumpets its success in advocating the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol to the Framework Convention on Climate Change. As science policy has changed, these actions show signs of schizoid behaviour - the result of efforts to keep science both part of and separate from politics at a time of fundamental change in science policy."

The scientists both asked for evidence that the IPCC was not "policy neutral" as it claims to be, clearly finding my assertion jarring in some way. The evidence is here on the IPCC www site in two documents. The first is titled "16 Years of Scientific Assessment in Support of the Climate Convention" (PDF)and the second is a retrospective (PDF) by Bert Bolin, former IPCC chair, which describes the close relationship of the IPCC and Climate Convention (or FCCC), and how the IPCC shifted its organization in response to the Convention. It does not seem at all controversial to assert that the IPCC has been closely bound to the Climate Convention, and that this stance is difficult to square with the IPCC's formal policy of "policy neutrality."

Indeed, we observed here last December that the Norwegian minister of the environment had raised similar concerns about the politicization of the IPCC because of a too-close relationship with the FCCC. And NASA's James Hansen also has expressed concerns about the policy implications of the "close binding" between the IPCC and FCCC. Further, even definition of the phrase "climate change" can lead to policy non-neutrality (PDF).

But to make the point inescapable, imagine the reaction if the CIA put up on its web site a document titled, "Three Years of Intelligence Gathering in Support of the Iraq War." The IPCC has a very important role to play in climate policy. But it seems that it has yet to figure out exactly what that role ought to be. A good place to start would be to clarify what it means by policy neutrality and act accordingly, rather than come after people who point out its inconsistencies.

Posted on November 18, 2005 09:10 AM View this article | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Final Version of Paper

The final version of the following paper is now online:

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 2005. Misdefining Climate Change: Consequences for Science and Action, Environmental Science and Policy, 8:548-561. PDF)

Posted on November 18, 2005 08:18 AM View this article | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Special AGU Session on Katrina

Late in the development of the program for the Amreican Geophysical Union's (AGU) fall meeting, the AGU asked Kerry Emanuel and I to organize a special union session on hurricane Katrina. The session will be held Wednesday 7 December at 13:40. It has just been added to the AGU website here. If you are attending, please drop by, should be very interesting. Here are the speakers and talk titles:

1340 U33C Marriott Salon 7 Scientific Perspectives on Hurricane Katrina: >From Planning to Recovery I

Presiding: K A Emanuel, MIT; R A Pielke, Jr., University of Colorado
1340 Hurricane Katrina, the Response, and the Recovery: Discerning the Real Disaster
*M Davidson
1340 U33C Marriott Salon 7 Scientific Perspectives on Hurricane Katrina: >From Planning to Recovery I

1355 Meteorology of Hurricane Katrina *H Willoughby

1410 Perspectives on the State of Storm Surge Modeling *R Luettich, J Westerink, B Blanton

1425 The Role of Science and Scientists in Responding to Hurricane Katrina: A U.S. Geological Survey Perspective *T Cohn

1440 Normalized Hurricane Losses in the United States: 1900-2005 *R Pielke, Jr., C Landsea, J Gratz

1455 The Hurricanes of 2005: A Reinsurance Perspective *A Castaldi

1510 Science as the Whistleblower for Catastrophic Disasters; What Went Wrong with Hurricane Katrina? *S Laska

1525 Can science better inform policy? Connecting scientific insights to social values for effective policy making in the wake of natural disasters B Holland, *S Peters, J Ramage, D Sahagian

Posted on November 18, 2005 08:12 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

Spinning Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data

In a press release issued today the United Nations tries to put a positive spin on data that tells a far different story. The release states:

"Developed countries, taken as a group, have achieved sizable reductions of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but further efforts are needed to sustain these reductions in gases blamed for global warming and cut them further, a United Nations climate body warned today. The acting head of the secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Richard Kinley, emphasized that a large part of the reductions was achieved in the early 1990s in countries of Eastern and Central Europe undergoing transition to a market economy. "

The release should have said that all of the so-called "reductions" are the result of the collapse of the Soviet Union which led to a one-time accounting quirk based only on the date used as the baseline for measuring reductions (1990). The press release spins off into fantasy land when it states,

""National efforts to implement the Climate Change Convention and to prepare for the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol have already resulted in emission reductions," [Kinley] said of the pact that requires 35 industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5 per cent by the year 2012. Compared to 1990 levels, their GHG emissions were down 5.9 per cent in 2003."

Let's take a look at the data in the report. Russia's decrease in emissions alone accounts for more that the alleged decrease of all 35 countries taken as a group. In other words, if we look at 34 countries rather than 35 (i.e., the 35 minus Russia) there is in fact a net increase in emissions. Perhaps the press release should have said, "Russia Reduces GHG Emissions, Other 34 Taken as a Group See Increases." It gets worse if you include states formerly part of the Soviet Union. If we also remove Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine then the remaining 29 states see an increase in greenhouse gas emissions of 4.7%.

There are other one-time accounting issues. If we also remove Germany, which as a result of reunification saw the dramatic reduction of GHGs from the former East Germany, and the United Kingdom which saw its economy transition due to changes in its economy due to policies put in place under Margaret Thatcher, then the remaining 27 countries see an increase in GHGs of 8.2%.

If we also take the United States out of the mix (in 24th place out of 35 countries), then the remaining 26 countries, which still include a number of eastern European countries affected by the end of the cold war, still see an increase in GHG emissions of 1.5%.

The real story here is not the success of the Kyoto Protocol, but quite the opposite. Emissions "reductions" that have occurred have been the result of one-time events that have nothing to do with climate policy, most notably the economic effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union, but also changing economic policies in the United Kingdom. And even taking the United States out of the mix, the remaining countries have still seen emissions increase. There may indeed be a signal of the Kyoto Protocol in this data, but I sure can't see it. The UN is misleading us all by suggesting otherwise.

Posted on November 18, 2005 07:46 AM View this article | Comments (11) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

In Other News

We have coming up a comment on the "hockey stick so what?" exercise. Until then, enjoy the debate, which had a slow start but has become quite substantive. Here also are a few items worth briefly noting.

1. Dan Sarewitz is profiled in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education. Dan is a close friend and colleague. He is also one of the smartest people you'll ever meet. Read the Chronicle article here here. And you can find his various writings here.

2. For our readers in Italy, I have a new book out in Italian (thanks to a set of excellent translators!). Here are the details:

Pielke, Jr., R. A. 2005. Scienza e politica: La lotta per il consenso. (trad. di B. Giovagnoli), Laterza, Lezioni Italiane, Rome.

A considerably longer version in English should be available in 2006, stay tuned.

3. The American Journal of Bioethics blog has a very thoughtful post on the ethical scandal that appears to be engulfing South Korea's stem cell research program. They are promising more substance on this next week in the AJOB, we'll watch closely.

4. The Washington Post reports a former DuPont employee's claims that the company kept hidden for almost 30 years studies that indicated that chemicals used in making Teflon cause adverse health effects. The Environmental Working Group, which is part of this story as a source of internal DuPont documents, notes in a press release that this comes just, "week before a potentially significant date in the civil suit the Bush administration's EPA has pursued against the company for suppressing health studies on PFOA, which is used in the production of Teflon pan coatings." How to reconcile this lawsuit with claims of a Republican "war on science" I don't know, but people are clever and I am sure will figure out a way.

5. More relevant to a war on science was the release this week by the Government Accounting Office of a report (PDF) on the decision process within the FDA that led to the denial of over-the-counter (oTC) status for the so-called "Plan B" drug. We'll have more on this decision next week. The short story is that the Bush Administration has clearly politicized this issue as a way to satisfy its conservative base who strongly oppose abortion. There is no doubt about this. But is is a mistake for those who wish to see Plan B receive OTC status characterize the decision in one in which science dictates a certain outcome. No. This is about the value of making a decision solely on criteria of health safety of the drug versus bringing in broader criteria of the morality of abortion. The decision at FDA was unusual because such broader criteria are rarely a factor in drug decision making. But in areas like medical marijuana, drinking ages, etc. etc. we see such conflicts arise. To argue that science compels a particular decision, as both sides have here, reflects the fact that everyone wants to hide behind science, on what is fundamentally a political decision for all involved.

Posted on November 18, 2005 07:43 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

November 11, 2005

The Role of Social Science Research in Disaster Preparedness and Response

Yesterday the House Science Committee held a hearing on the role of social science research in disaster preparedness and response. Here are some excerpts from the prepared testimony:

Susan Cutter (PDF): "The Hurricane Katrina crisis was precipitated by a physical event, but it was the failure of social and political systems that turned the natural disaster into a human catastrophe. As a nation, we need to understand the human decisions and organizational failures that contributed to this disaster so it won't happen again. We need an independent review of the local, state, and federal responses to Hurricane Katrina so we can learn the lessons of what went right and what went wrong in the response and use these to improve our preparedness and responses to future disasters. The social science disaster research community is ready and willing to step up to this challenge and participate in such an independent review. Are you willing to authorize one?"

Shirley Laska (PDF): "I was not participating in some abstract intellectual exercise during the last few years as I was drawing from my own and others' existing research to warn professional group after professional group of an impending Katrina. The result of those warnings not being heeded was the end of my community. And as our warnings were accurate, this doom assessment of the impact is not hyperbole. Recovery of coastal Louisiana from hurricanes Katrina and Rita is in my opinion uncertain. We do not yet know if we have the family, organizational and governmental resources, ability and energy to accomplish it. And the cost to the society is astronomical. This is the outcome of scientists not being heard. And it doesn't get any more personal for a scientist than Katrina has been for me."

Posted on November 11, 2005 08:03 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

November 09, 2005

Avoiding the Painfully Obvious

Over at RealClimate Gavin Schmidt has written a post defending the IPCC against a critique by Nigel Lawson, a member of the British House of Lords and former chancellor of the exchequer. An exchange I had with Gavin in the comments aptly illustrates why some people agree with Lawson when he claims, "the IPCC's apparent determination to suppress or ignore dissenting views, which has become little short of a scandal, is part of a wider problem."

Lawson has some strong things to say, "The IPCC process is so flawed, and the institution so closed to reason, that it would be far better to thank it for the work it has done, close it down, and transfer all future international collaboration on the issue of climate change to the established Bretton Woods institutions." For his part Schmidt, gives no ground in his defense, "The IPCC makes its assessments in a very thorough writing and review process involving hundreds of scientists, open to critics, with transparent and predefined procedures. That it makes no proclamations in between the full assessments is not a 'scandal', it simply is sticking to its sound and transparent procedures." An open discussion on the IPCC is worth having. But here I'd like to focus in on how an exchange I had with Gavin reinforces one of Lawson's main complaints about the IPCC and the climate science community, an inability to admit error.

Lawson points to those making connections of global warming and hurricanes Katrina and Rita as an indication of scientific excess. Schmidt responds as follows:

"Just how much of an error is revealed by Lawson's last paragraphs in which he, ironically, he uses the notion of a scientific consensus to combat (admittedly widespread) popular claims of a direct link between the individual impacts of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and global warming. Since no scientists have made a claim of direct cause and effect (see our recent post on potential statistical links between hurricane intensity and tropical warming), any scientific assessment (such as the next IPCC report) will certainly not do so either. It is precisely because such anecdotal 'science' is not a balanced picture of the state-of-the-art that IPCC exists in the first place."

I agree with Schmidt's general comments. But I pointed out to Schmidt that he was simply wrong is his assertion that no scientist has made a claim of direct cause and effect. In fact, Kevin Trenberth who, ironically enough, is the lead author of the IPCC chapter on hurricanes, made an explicit connection between global warming and hurricane Katrina just last week in a congressional briefing organized by the American Meteorological Society. In one of Trenberth's slides (PDF), reproduced below, he asks, "how big is the effect from global warming?" and answers, "Implies 1" extra rain near New Orleans" right next to a picture of flooding and damage.

Let's state the obvious. Trenberth is making a clear attribution between global warming and hurricane Katrina, and is suggesting a connection to the flooding. This is troubling because, as I pointed out on RealClimate, "Perhaps there are good scientific reasons for making such a claim, but they probably should go through peer review before being announced as fact (with no sense of uncertainty!) before policy makers. Especially when other scientists, like Kerry Emannuel, assert that such precise attribution is not possible. And further, given that the IADWG has published in JOC May 2005 that attribution of trends in precipitation to GHGs has not yet occurred, it stretches the credulity of this non-climate scientist to think that such precise attribution is possible for specific events." Yet when I pointed this out to Schmidt, instead of admitting the obvious, he says the following:

"... you appear to be putting words into Trenberth's mouth. He does not claim that Katrina was caused by global warming, and I'm surprised that you continue to interpret his words now and last year to conclude this. He has claimed that global warming is changing the background in which hurricanes form (which is clearly true), but that can in no way be construed as arguing that Katrina can be directly attributed to global warming. Trenberth is as aware as we are that individual events are not attributable in the sense that Lawson implies, and any consensus statement on the issue will agree. Let's not be distracted by semantics."

I find this response amazing because Schmidt is telling me not to believe my own eyes. When pressed Schmidt himself falls back on semantics, "I read the slide, and frankly, even if the context in which Trenberth placed the comment is as you assume, it is still not a direct attribution of a specific hurricane to global warming. To keep belabouring this point, it is quite clearly not what Lawson is referring to." Can Schmidt think that such parsing will be taken seriously? How about simply stating that Trenberth is a bit forward on his skis here? Why the denial?

This is exactly the sort of behavior that Lawson has concerns about (and incidently which was cited as a factor in Chris Landsea's resignation from the IPCC.). It is no wonder that some people are losing faith in the IPCC, its leaders and defenders seem to be incapable of admitting the validity of any dissenting views, even when those dissenting views are obviously correct right before your eyes.

Posted on November 9, 2005 08:47 AM View this article | Comments (38) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

November 08, 2005

The Abdication of Oversight

Last summer we took issue with Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) when he sought to gain political advantage by taking on some climate scientists. I'd bet that the loud reaction to his "investigation" was one factor in Rep. Barton's apparent decision not to follow up as yet. Such external oversight of science and politics can play a positive role in limiting the politicization of science and its negative effects on policy making. Now we have a case of Democrats playing politics through climate science, and a similarly loud reaction would seem to be appropriate from informed observers. Will we see a similar reaction?

Providing ample evidence that the politicization of science by politicians is a bipartisan pastime, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and 150 fellow Democrats have introduced a rarely used "resolution of inquiry" to explore whether the Bush Administration has been hiding evidence that the current hurricane season has been caused by global warming. Kucinich said in press release last week:

""The American public deserve to know what the President knew about the effects climate change would have, and will continue to have, on our coasts. This Administration, and Congress, can no longer afford to overlook the overwhelming evidence of the devastating effect of global climate change. It is essential for our preparedness that we understand global climate change and take serious and immediate actions to slow its effects."

According to an InsideEPA.com news story, which Rep. Kucinich introduced to the Congressional Record (PDF), the "Resolution of Inquiry" is part of a strategy to try to divide moderate Congressional Republicans from the party. According to InsideEPA.com,

"A novel effort by 150 House Democrats to require that the White House turn over documents showing what it knows about climate change effects on U.S. coastal regions may force key Republican moderates to choose party loyalty over their environmental records, or risk leaving themselves open to attacks from conservative opponents in upcoming primaries, sources say... Kucinich's resolution does not specifically mention hurricanes, but congressional staffers familiar with the effort say Congress is growing more concerned that climate change may have increased hurricane severity in light of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. ''This has been a brutal hurricane season and many think climate change will be the defining problem of our generation. We want to know what [President Bush] knew,'' according to one staffer."

InsideEPA.com describes the Democrats strategy as one that seeks to place a few congressional Republicans in a tight spot,

"Observers say the ROI will present House Science Committee Chairman SHERWOOD BOEHLERT (R-NY), Rep. VERNON EHLERS (R-MI) and Rep. WAYNE GILCHREST (R-MD) with a critical choice between siding with their party in deflecting attention from the president's climate policies and their environmental records, which have won them praise and endorsements from environmental groups. Their decisions on the matter may prove crucial during their 2006 primaries, where at least one is expected to face a tough fight against a more conservative GOP candidate."

The InsideEPA.com article goes into some details about why it is that Congressmen Boehlert, Ehlers and Gilchrest are ripe for a squeeze.

What to make of this? Congressional Democrats are playing politics, trying to gain some advantage in the upcoming congressional election, which is what they are supposed to do. With respect to the climate issue, because the Democrats are the minority party they don't have the power to call hearings or otherwise set the agenda, so it might be appropriate to use the "Resolution of Inquiry" to access information. (For details on the congressional "Resolution of Inquiry" see this report (PDF) from the Congressional Research Service at the Federation of American Scientists website.)

No matter where one comes out on the climate issue, it is obvious that the Democrats are playing their politics through science. The tone of his inquiry smacks of black helicopters and the trilateral commission. As a close observer of the hurricane research community in NSF, Navy, and NOAA over the past 10 years, I know that there is no hidden smoking gun waiting to be discovered in the bureaucracy that shows that the Bush Administration had forewarning that this year's hurricane season would be particularly bad, and kept that information under wraps to appease their oil and gas friends. Perhaps the Bush Administration would do such a thing, but in this case it did not, for the simple reason that such information does not exist. It doesn't.

The playing of partisan politics by Democrats through the science of climate change and hurricanes may come at a price in policy effectiveness. As we have stated here many times, there is simply no evidence to suggest that policy makers can modulate hurricane behavior, much less their impacts for the foreseeable future through energy policies. Representative Kucinich and his 150 colleagues risk focusing attention on bad hurricane policies and, as a consequence, overlooking good ones.

This would be a good time for leaders in the scientific community to discuss the policy issues associated with hurricanes and climate change. Is there a smoking gun on the science of hurricanes in the bureaucracy? Can energy policies be an effective tool of disaster mitigation? This would also be a good time for the "war on science" crowd to burnish their alleged bipartisan credentials. Call me a jaded cynic, but my guess is that both groups will be stony silent, reflecting their own committed partisanship. If so, then you will be seeing a very real consequence of the politicization of science - the abdication of oversight.

Posted on November 8, 2005 01:44 AM View this article | Comments (16) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

November 07, 2005

Scientific Protectionism or Globalization?

Last month the National Research Council released a report titled "Rising Above The Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future." The report argues, "The unmatched vitality of the United States' economy and science and technology enterprise has made this country a world leader for decades, allowing Americans to benefit from a high standard of living and national security. But in a world where advanced knowledge is widespread and low-cost labor is readily available, U.S. advantages in the marketplace and in science and technology have begun to erode. A comprehensive and coordinated federal effort is urgently needed to bolster U.S. competitiveness and pre-eminence in these areas so that the nation will consistently gain from the opportunities offered by rapid globalization."

Writing at SciDev.net Caroline S. Wagner and Calestous Juma take issue with the report's focus on science as a area of competition among nations. They write, "The National Academy of Sciences report encourages an 'us and them' mentality within knowledge systems that can only exacerbate political instabilities and resentment."

Instead, Wagner and Juma argue for a collaborative approach to realizing the benefits of global knowledge,

"Although each countries' individual scientific output is still duly attributed to them, knowledge transcends national boundaries. And the new knowledge networks are being continually created within global networks of colleagues sharing resources and ideas. It would be highly inefficient for every country to recreate the entire infrastructure needed for a robust knowledge economy. Success is defined by the ability to forge links that largely depend on one's attractiveness as a partner. And this is a two-way street. Any nation that sees science and technology as a way to build national strength discovers that the knowledge available from the global network is an asset that can be used, added to, and exploited locally. Scientific protectionism, on the other hand, denies nations access to knowledge that forms the lifeline of any innovation system."

The debate between the NRC and Wagner/Juma is over what sort of problem the United States faces, or even if there is a problem. Before we can understand what sorts of actions make sense, it is important to know what kind of problem those actions are to deal with. The debate is complicated not only because of the complexities of international economics and politics, but also because the supply and demand for scientific expertise have been used somewhat disingenuously by the U.S. scientific community (e.g., see this exchange) in the early 1990s as a Trojan horse argument to justify more funding for research. The issue of national competitiveness and scientific innovation takes the form of debates over immigration policy, science policy, innovation policy and even tax and trade policies. It also manifests itself in debate over the "outsourcing" of jobs, patent and intellectual property rights and the broader debates on globalization and development.

Clearly, this is an important area of discussion with practical implications, and even in the context of decades of discussion of technology policy, we seem to be in the early stages of deciding what sort of issue we are grappling with. Those of us with interests in science and technology policy should be spending some time thinking about these issues, as they are certain to occupy an increasing amount of attention among decision makers.

To learn more about this area, check out this syllabus from a course taught at Harvard by Calestous Juma, "Technological Innovation and Development Policy."

Posted on November 7, 2005 08:49 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | International

November 04, 2005

Presentation on Hurricanes and Global Warming

Yesterday I participated in a panel session of the Board on Atmospheric Science and Climate of the National Research Council. Also on the panel were Kerry Emanuel (MIT), Greg Holland (UCAR, and co-author of the recent Webster et al. 2005 paper in Science), and Rick Anthes (UCAR). It was an interesting panel with good questions from the BASC and others who attended.

If you'd like to see what I presented, basically a summary of our forthcoming BAMS paper, you can downoad it is PDF here.

Posted on November 4, 2005 12:06 PM View this article | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

November 03, 2005

Old Wine in New Bottles

Earlier this week the Harvard Medical School's Center for Health and the Global Environment issued a report titled, "Climate Change Futures: Health, Ecological, and Economic Dimensions" (PDF). Reports on climate change in the "grey literature" are a dime a dozen, but this one is worth singling out.

The report includes a section (pp. 21-25) focused on "Trend Analyses: Extreme Weather Events and Costs," a subject that we have discussed here in some detail. The Harvard Report repeats some of the same old inaccuracies. The report states, "With weather-related losses on the rise and extreme events more frequent, can we look back on historical data and draw conclusions about the likely impact of climate change on future losses? Can we tease out the role of climate from other factors when looking at specific events? The consequences are due to the combination of inflation, rising real estate values, the growth in coastal settlements and the increasing frequency and intensity of weather extremes... Climate signals in rising costs from "natural" disasters are evident in many aspects of the data."

This statement is simply inconsistent with the current state of scientific literature on this subject, which we summarized in a recent letter (PDF) in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS), "Future research may yet reveal a connection between climate change and trends in disaster costs, but at present it is premature to attribute trends in disaster costs to anything other than characteristics of and changes in societal vulnerability."

OK, so far, pretty dull stuff, exaggerated, sloppy science in a report outside the scientific literature, yadda yadda yadda. But here is where it gets interesting. The people responsible for editing this report are none other than Paul Epstein and Evan Mills, two people whose work we have discussed here before in this exact same context. We took issue with a paper on this same subject Mills had in Science not too long ago for its poor scholarship, such as making assertions that were not supported by evidence and citing references for support that were unrelated to the claims being made. We contacted Mills and offered him a chance to respond and he declined. Many of these same claims resurface in the Harvard report. Epstein is the lead author of the BAMS paper that originally motivated our letter to BAMS taking issue with similar exaggerated claims about the role of the factors responsible for increasing disasters related to extreme weather events. Similar claims reappear in the Harvard report.

There is a body of peer-reviewed literature and views of a number of scholars that directly contradicts claims that Mills and Epstein have been making. Oddly enough the Harvard report includes our exchange in BAMS in the bibliography, but it does not appear in the text. While I have absolutely no problem with people holding different views on complicated subjects and debating the differences and their significance for policy actions, what strikes me as odd is that even after being called on this, Mills and Epstein have proceeded as if this literature does not exist, and are still making the same, unsupportable claims. This can only be for one reason.

Such cherry picking and sloppy work not only reflects poorly on the funders of the report, Swiss Reinsurance and the U.N. Development Program, but also on the people who are identified as peer reviewers of the report (a list which includes the current head of the IPCC). It is baffling to me that Mills and Epstein cannot see that their frequent and repeated mischaracterization of the state of the science on climate impacts will only work against their interests, which are apparently to motivate changes to energy policies. I too would like to see changes to energy policies, so their misguided efforts are problematic. And for those who are interested in practical, effective steps to deal with disasters, repeated promises that the solution to increasing disaster losses lies in energy policies offer false hopes of better outcomes.

Posted on November 3, 2005 09:02 AM View this article | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

November 02, 2005

Politics, Apollo, Ed David and Richard Nixon

The webcast and transcript of our visit with Ed David, science advisor to Richard Nixon from 1970-1973, are now available online. Dr. David related a story that I had never heard before about how the scheduling of the Apollo missions were affected because of political considerations related to the 1972 presidential election. In short, President Nixon was worried that an accident might hurt his reelection prospects. Here is how Dr. David described the events:

"Another interesting situation I found myself involved with was the Apollo program. When I arrived on the White House scene, two Apollo missions had already been canceled. They were Apollo 18 and 19. There were originally plans, as I remember, for 20 and 21, but 21 never really got off the drawing board. The possible cancellation of Apollo 16 and 17 was in the wind, it was talked around, even though those two missions were slated to provide important scientific information about the moon, and they were basically the payoff of all of the efforts that went into the Apollo program. Most of the man-hours on the moon came during those two missions. In fact, most of the scientific measuring equipment the astronauts placed on the moon at that time are still there and many of them are still operational. So there's an awful lot of data coming in. Now, after examining this issue closely with the help of the President's Science Advisory Committee, which was called PSAC in those days, and specifically the help of Professor Tommy Gold of Cornell, who some of you may know, I wrote a memo to the president saying, in effect, that the nation had bought everything for these trips except the fuel, and that we ought to go ahead in light of the potential knowledge to be gained. That memo had some effect, and Apollo 16 and 17 proceeded, and Apollo 17 put the first scientist on the moon. And he's a good friend of mine now.

The interesting aspect of all this was the reason for considering canceling 16 and 17 in the first place. That reason was essentially political. It focused on the timing of those two launches vis-a-vis the 1972 presidential election. Apollo 17 was slated to launch about a month before the election day, early in November, 1972. The big worry by the political forces in the White House was that if there was an accident of Apollo 17, it would bear heavily on the election outcome negatively. I suggested that Apollo be postponed, however, until December after the election, a month after it, and that Apollo 16 was too early to have much influence on the outcome, we did win that day for the final two moon missions. This shows you how science hangs by a string in such situations. It illustrates that political thinking is very different from scientific thinking. Anyone coming to the science advisory post without considerable experience in politics is in for some rude shocks."

In our informal discussions, Dr. David described how NASA at first resisted the schedule change, claiming that they would have difficulty keeping their staff in peak form during the delay. Dr. David gave them a choice that they could not refuse. Launch in December ... or not at all. NASA quickly saw the merits of his perspective.

There is a great deal of interesting material from Ed David's visit on science and politics in the transcript here. Have a look.

Posted on November 2, 2005 10:13 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

November 01, 2005

Challenge Update 2

Michael Mann has written me a thoughtful email declining the invitation to contribute. He writes, “However, the issues you raise have already been dealt with already in some detail on RealClimate.org. A good place to start would be the post by my colleague Stefan Rahmstorf at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=114. I'm sure you will find this, and the other materials there quite relevant to the issues you raise.”

While I regret that Michael Mann won't be participating, the invitation to contribute remains open to any other member of the RealClimate team, or other relevant collaborators.

Posted on November 1, 2005 01:51 PM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Interesting Report on my Work

A group called the Center for Science and Public Policy (CSPP) has produced a report (PDF) on disaster trends and climate change that relies heavily on my work. A few weeks ago, I was approached by CSPP with a draft of the report and asked to read it over for accuracy, an opportunity which I appreciate. The report is an accurate summary of peer-reviewed work that I have been involved in and some of my blog postings on this subject.

The CSPP notes on its webpage that it is a "non-partisan public policy organization" but then I see that it is part of the highly conservative group called Frontiers of Freedom. It is difficult to reconcile the claim of "non-partisanship" with the partisan zeal seen on the Frontiers of Freedom website.

I see also that the CSPP report on my work is cited in a press release by the Free Enterprise Action Fund which is led by Steven Milloy, who is also known as the proprieter of the www.junkscience.com website. The press release states:

"Action Fund Management LLC (AFM), investment adviser to the Free Enterprise Action Fund (www.FreeEnterpriseActionFund.com), asked five insurance companies that it owns to conduct independent analyses of allegations that global warming will increase weather-related losses. We believe environmental activists and their Left-leaning institutional investor allies are trying to take advantage of recent natural disasters like Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma to pressure insurance companies into supporting the Kyoto Protocol and other mandatory restrictions on greenhouse gases," said AFMs Steve Milloy... FEAFs request was spurred by a new report by the Center for Science and Public Policy (CSPP) that concludes global warming is not responsible for increases in weather-related economic losses."

I have two responses to this:

1. The use of my work by Mr. Milloy to argue against Kyoto and greenhouse gas emissions controls was made possible by those who have exaggerated the state of the science of attribution of trends in disaster losses to climate change. There is simply no reason to believe that disaster losses can be modulated intentionally through energy policies. Furture research may yet overturn this conclusion, but to assert otherwise opens the door for legitimate criticism of policy advocacy that asserts the contrary.

2. My views on the role of the United States in international climate negotiations is available on my blog and in my writings. See, for example this post. I think that the United States has an obligation to participate in international climate negotiations. And as I've discussed here on numerous occasions, I also think that reducing greenhouse gases makes good sense, but not as a tool of disaster management. Ironically enough, given the current state of knowledge, suggestions that greenhouse gas controls can be used to manage future disasters probably works against the likelihood that greenhouse gas emissions will actually be reduced.

Bottom line - my work is accurately reported by CSPP and AFM. Policy advocacy, from whatever perspective, ought to be grounded in an expectation that the actions being advocated can actually have their promised effects.

Posted on November 1, 2005 10:15 AM View this article | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Challenge Update

In spite of my less-than-complementary characterization of the hockey stick debate, Steve McIntyre has graciously agreed to provide his thoughts on "so what?", characterizing it as a "fair question." He has even opened up a discussion forum on his blog related to this "challenge", and has already received much advice on how he might craft his reponse.

A couple members of the RealClimate team have weighed in with comments under my original post, and that is appreciated. But as yet, I've received no response to the "challenge." I remain hopeful that one of the team will respond formally to the opportunity to answer the "so what?" question. Many of us are curious about the answer.

Stay tuned!

Posted on November 1, 2005 07:18 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

October 31, 2005

Invitation to McIntyre and Mann - So What?

Over the weekend I read with mild amusement and increasing frustration the latest exchange in the "hockey stick" battle. Given that the "hockey stick" has occupied the attention of climate researchers in professional journals, been discussed on the pages of leading newspapers, and been the subject of a Congressional investigation, you might think that the latest exchange would be over something important. If you happen to be thinking along these lines, you'd be wrong.

Increasingly the back-and-forth over hockey sticks is beginning to look like a testosterone-fueled fight between different cliques of pimple-faced junior high school boys, egged on by a loud group of close observers who for various reasons want to see a brawl. And just like those boys on the playground, these guys are too wrapped up in their own vanity to see that they are making us all look bad, and are risking having our recess cancelled. From my perspective -- that is, one focused on decisions about climate policies or climate science -- the continuing pettiness of the debate on the "hockey stick" suggests that the time might be appropriate for the participants to explain to the rest of us why we should care about their continuing smarminess, else they should all be sent to detention where they can continue their bickering while the rest of us stay on the playground.

So what was the latest exchange about anyway? Given the attention devoted to this subject, perhaps it was about the future of world's energy policies? Perhaps it was about policies for data archiving and peer review of climate research? Maybe even the technical details of using bristlecone pines in paleoclimate temperature reconstructions? The role of politics in climate science? Nope, none of these things. It was about who gets to post comments on whose website. To get a sense of this juvenile exchange, see this post and comments at ClimateAudit and this post and comments at RealClimate. You'll see a lot of finger pointing, chest-thumping and pique over claims back-and-forth over issues like "dishonesty" and deeply wounded egos. And the folks chiming in from the sidelines are just having a ball.

I have written previously here that "I think that the debate over the so-called "hockey stick" temperature reconstruction is a distraction from the development and promulgation of climate policy." But perhaps I am missing something. So I'd like to issue an invitation to both Steve McIntyre and Michael Mann (or another member of his team) to each prepare a short commentary (<1,500 words) which we will post here at Prometheus explaining why those of us not involved in the hockey stick fight should care about the continuing battles. Let me be clear, I am not asking why each of *you* are engaged in this battle. And we don't want to hear about any of the technical issues involved, all of that stuff is readily available. I want to know why *others* should continue to care about it, from your perspective. Why is this fight important to the rest of us?

We will publish both pieces on November 14, 2005, which means we'll need your pieces by November 11, 2005. If you would like to participate but would like more time, simply email me (pielke@colorado.edu) saying as much and we'll extend the deadline. If you don't respond (and so there is no doubt that you'll each get this, as I'll also email this invitation to each of you), we'll take that as a clear indication that there is not in fact a compelling reason that you can offer for us outsiders to care about this debate. And given the way that you've been spending your collective time of late, a response of "too busy" or "over-committed" just won't fly, particularly given our willingness to extend the deadline in a way that suits your schedules.

Please view this as an opportunity to clearly explain the significance of this debate that you've both invested so heavily in. And please apply prisoner's dilemma logic to our request, and assume that the other has accepted our invitation. I am sure that there are others who are looking forward to each of you engaging on this issue - hockey sticks, so what?

Posted on October 31, 2005 10:55 AM View this article | Comments (25) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

October 28, 2005

Welcome Kevin Vranes

Through a complicated process involving discerning the significance of goat entails and astrological interpretation, the CIRES visiting fellows committee decided at the beginning of 2005 to offer a visiting fellowship/post-doc to Kevin Vranes, who some of you may recognize as an occasional contributor to Prometheus. Well, let me say I'm glad they made this decision. Kevin is smart, has excellent training and experience in both science and policy, and is going to add some color around here, I have no doubt.

Check out Kevin's most recent posts over at his group weblog, http://nosenada.org/cblog/. Here is an excerpt:

"It was May 2004 and I had been a Senate staffer for about eight months. Word went out on the wire that there would be two staff briefings on consecutive days for staffers with bosses on the Environment and Public Works Committee. [Yes, that EPW committee. The one chaired by James Inhofe (R-Pluto).] It wasn't made explicit in the announcements, but I could tell that one would be a skeptics day and the other a "climate change is happening" day."

Read the whole post for the whole story.

Vranes' accompanies this post with his 2004 letter to Paul Epstein, which is a classic. If even 10% congressional staff is this thoughtful, then U.S. democracy is in good shape. Here is an excerpt:

"Thank you for briefing Senate staff on climate change and public health today. While I enjoyed the opportunity to have a public discussion on these important issues, and I appreciate your personal mission to educate the public on climate change, I must take exception to the facts and implications you presented. While I share your mission of bringing information about climate change to Congress, I believe you overstated the climate change evidence today to the point of irresponsibility. You, as a scientist and public educator, are not serving the policy-making community well by exaggerating the evidence for consequences of climate change. While talking to Congressional staffers on questions of climate change, you are lecturing to a well-educated and intellectually curious, but largely un-informed crowd. While you may hold personal and/or scientific intuitions about the realities and consequences of climate change, I believe that it is your responsibility, as a working scientist, to present as clear a representation of the facts as possible and to qualify unproven conjecture. By presenting suppositions as fact, confusing unrelated natural mechanisms and citing anecdotal episodes as indicative of larger phenomena without supporting data, you only added to the politicization of this issue."

Read it all.

Kevin will be joining us here at the University of Colorado by January, 2006. Expect Prometheus to get a little more edgy, a bit more sarcastic, and a whole lot more fun than the wonky stuff you are used to. Kevin, we're looking forward to it!

Posted on October 28, 2005 07:58 AM View this article | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

October 26, 2005

Exchange in BAMS on Climate Impacts Attribution, Part 2

Earlier this week I described an exchange in the October, 2005 Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) on the subject of the attribution of the impacts of recent disasters to climate change. Our letter (PDF), which was prepared in response to a December 2004 paper by Epstein and McCarthy (EM), concluded, "Future research may yet reveal a connection between climate change and trends in disaster costs, but at present it is premature to attribute trends in disaster costs to anything other than characteristics of and changes in societal vulnerability."

EM prepared a reply to our letter (PDF) which also appears in the October BAMS. Here I offer a point-by-point rejoinder to their reply.

1. Let's start on where we agree. EM conclude, "The task is to harmonize adaptation with mitigation and do it in such a way as to stimulate the global economy."

Response: Sounds good to me.

2. EM restate their original argument as, "We wrote that both increasing coastal populations and real estate prices have increased exposure to weather-related disasters and that the number of extreme weather events has risen worldwide... We do not attempt to quantify the relative importance of these factors in the well-documented increase in insured and uninsured losses from weather-related disasters. We believe our statement is balanced and true to the current literature."

Response: Where is the evidence that the number of extreme weather events has risen worldwide? The IPCC disagrees (with only one exception). Further, there is a literature that has sought to tease out a climate signal in the disaster record, which is simply ignored by EM. Their statement is in fact contrary to the current literature, including that in the most recent IPCC. Saying otherwise doesn't make it so.

3. EM assert that the IPCC has identified (with various levels of confidence) trends in extreme related to global precipitation and temperature, which is true. In the case of temperature there is no evidence that such increases, e.g., in diurnal temperature ranges, have any relationship to disaster costs. And we have discussed precipitation and floods here in some detail (e.g., see this post). The trends that EM point to in the IPCC are simply off point, and a distraction to this discussion.

4. EM engage in some misdirection when they state, "The World Meteorological Organization (2004) made explicit the connection between an energized climate system and more extreme weather."

First, they cite the wrong reference here, pointing in their references to the 2003 WMO report instead of the 2004 report. Second, and more importantly, the 2004 report (here in PDF) actually has conclusions contrary to those suggested by EM.

"According to the third IPCC Assessment Report the duration, location and frequency of extreme weather and climate events are likely to change, and would result in mostly adverse impacts on biophysical systems. The IPCC also notes that for certain extreme phenomena there is currently insufficient information to assess recent trends, and climate models currently lack the spatial detail required to make confident projections. Therefore the linkages between climate variability and climate change and patterns of natural hazards remain a research topic that needs to be further investigated by the scientific community."

I continue to be amazed to see in this area scholarly citations misused to support otherwise unsupportable assertions.

5. EM then get out on some very thin ice when they cite Mills (2005). We discussed Mills (2005) at length, so no need to revisit that critique. However, this is a good example of how a poor analysis is used to carry weight that it cannot support.

6. EM raise the issue of "the costs of biological sequelae of weather extremes." These costs have not be explored in detail in the literature and I agree with EM that more attention should be paid to them

7. EM state, "We attempt no rank ordering of social vulnerabilities versus climate variability and severity because we think it premature." Premature? Numerous scholars have been actively studying this issue, (I've been involved for close to 10 years), and a robust, peer-reviewed literature has resulted. Clearly, more work should be done in this area, and given its importance, it is hardly premature. It may be that "premature" in this case is just a synonym for "inconvenient."

Bottom line: There is nothing in the EM response to alter our conclusion that "Future research may yet reveal a connection between climate change and trends in disaster costs, but at present it is premature to attribute trends in disaster costs to anything other than characteristics of and changes in societal vulnerability."

Posted on October 26, 2005 08:55 AM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

October 25, 2005

Ideology, Public Opinion, Hurricanes and Global Warming

According to a CNN/Gallup poll released today, a majority of Americans, and a majority of both Republicans and Democrats, “believe that global warming has been at least a minor cause of the number and strength of hurricanes in recent years.” The poll asked, “Thinking about the increase in the number and strength of hurricanes in recent years, do you think global warming has been a major cause, a minor cause, or not a cause of the increase in hurricanes?”

Specifically, the poll found that 60% of respondents believe that global warming was either a major or minor cause of “the increase in hurricanes,” -- 53% of Republicans, 60% of Independents and 82% of Democrats. Clearly, ideology shapes how one views the science.

Interestingly, 36% of respondents think that global warming is a “major cause”, 25% of Republicans, 34% of Independents, and 48% of Democrats. On the flip side, 30% of respondents to the poll believe that global warming was “not a cause,” 44% Republicans, 34% Independents and 12% Democrats. Let’s assume that the most up-to-date state of the science is presented in the recent work of Emanuel and Webster et al. (and, yes, yes, I know that there are responses to these papers in the pipeline, but they are not published yet, and this poll was taken just recently, for a full assessment of the current state of the literature see this paper (PDF)). These works are suggestive that global warming has had at best, only a minor influence on the storms of the Atlantic in recent years (i.e., no one has asserted effects on frequency, and Emanuel claims that an intensity signal at landfall has not been seen, and Webster et al. claim that attribution has not yet been achieved). As Kerry Emanuel, who has asserted that a global warming signal exists in the data on hurricane intensity, notes, “There has been a large upswing in the frequency of Atlantic hurricanes, beginning in 1995. This is owing to natural cycles in North Atlantic climate that we have observed for many decades and, to the best of our ability to discern, has nothing obvious to do with global warming.”

So it is fair to conclude that 66% of respondents to this poll misunderstand the science as reflected in the recent peer reviewed literature – that is, the 36% who assert a that global warming has been a “major cause” and the 30% who assert that global warming is “not a cause.” The ones whose views are consistent with the most recent science on this subject are the 29% who asserted a “minor cause” – 28% Republican, 26% Independent and 34% Democrat.

There numbers raise some interesting questions about the positions that scientists take in public on the relationship of global warming and hurricanes. Some statements by prominent scientists go well beyond what the peer reviewed literature can support; some vehemently assert no linkage, while others claim that global warming is a major factor. With scientists themselves going to extremes, it is no wonder that the public has misunderstandings. In this environment of dueling experts we should expect that the public tends to align their views of science in ways fit best with their ideological predispositions.

Because slightly more people appear to overstate the linkage than underplay it – at least as indicated in this poll – it is logical for those with an interest in the public understanding of science to devote just as much (or slightly more) attention to reigning in some of the exaggerations of the science as to correcting those who underplay the issue. But such balanced perspectives are few and far between. Nuanced messages about the complexities and realities are lost in the fray. It is “global warming: yes or no” with little room for other perspectives.

To be fair, it may be that some the scientists who are claiming no linkage or a strong linkage are simply arguing in public about what they expect future research will show, perhaps motivated a bit by ego considerations. But of course, science is (usually) not decided in the media or by public opinion, but rather on the pages of peer reviewed journals, and these scientists surely know this. So perhaps there are other motivations here.

Could it be that the views of many scientists about the science of hurricanes and climate change are colored by their own political preferences, just like those of the public? Specifically, perhaps those scientists who are asserting loudly in public that global warming is “not a cause” are focusing their message on the 48% of Democrats who believe that global warming is a “major cause.” And similarly, perhaps those scientists who are asserting a “major cause” are focusing their attention on the 44% of Republicans who think that global warming is “not a cause.” Could it be that some scientists, and even professional societies, show little concern about public misunderstandings of science when they are politically convenient, and work to correct them only when the opposite is true? Is concern among scientists about the public misunderstanding of science selective? Shocking if true.

Of course, the entire debate about global warming and hurricanes is a huge distraction from what needs to be done in a practical sense to better prepare for hurricanes and to mitigate climate change. They are two separate problems. (Before you write in, please consider the following homework assignment: Assume that human-caused greenhouse gases are cut by 80% on Jan 1, 2006, describe the effects on hurricane damages in 2050. This is not to diminish GHG reductions, but to make the point that they are not a tool of hurricane policy.) But the debate sure makes for an interesting new playing field for playing out our left-right political battles. It’s just too bad that it is politicizing the scientific enterprise in the process.

For further reading:

Pielke, Jr., R.A. and D. Sarewitz, 2005. Managing the next disaster, Los Angeles Times, September 23. (PDF)

Pielke, Jr., R. A., C. Landsea, M. Mayfield, J. Laver and R. Pasch, 2005 (in press). Hurricanes and global warming, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, December. (PDF)

Posted on October 25, 2005 06:56 PM View this article | Comments (17) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

October 24, 2005

Exchange in BAMS on Climate Impacts Attribution, Part 1

The October issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) has an exchange of letters on trends in climate impacts and the attribution of those trends to human-caused climate change. Our letter was prepared in response to a December paper in BAMS by Paul Epstein and John McCarthy (EM04). EM have a reply (PDF) to our letter which I will discuss in detail in a subsequent post. Here is a list of the authors of our letter.

-ROGER A. PIELKE JR. University of Colorado/CIRES, Boulder, Colorado
-SHARDUL AGRAWALA OECD Environmental Directorate, Paris, France
-LAURENS M. BOUWER Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands
-IAN BURTON University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
-STANLEY CHANGNON University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois
-MICHAEL H. GLANTZ Environmental and Societal Impacts Group, NCAR, Boulder, Colorado
-WILLIAM H. HOOKE Atmospheric Policy Program, AMS, Washington, D.C.
-RICHARD J. T. KLEIN Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Potsdam, Germany
-KENNETH KUNKEL Center for Atmospheric Science, Illinois State Water Survey, Champaign, Illinois
-DENNIS MILETI Department of Sociology, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado
-DANIEL SAREWITZ Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona
-EMMA L. TOMPKINS Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom
-NICO STEHR Zeppelin University, Friedrichshafen, Germany
-HANS VON STORCH Institute for Coastal Research, GKSS Research Center, Geesthacht, Germany

Here is the opening paragraph of our letter (PDF):

"The December 2004 issue of BAMS contains an article warning of the threats of abrupt climate change (Epstein and McCarthy 2004, hereafter EM04). The article seeks to raise awareness of the risks of an abrupt change in climate related to human influences on the climate system, but, in doing so it repeats a common factual error. Specifically, it identifies the recent growth in economic damages associated with weather and climate events, such as Hurricanes Mitch and Jeanne and tornadoes in the United States, as evidence of trends in extreme events, arguing "the rising costs associated with weather volatility provide another derived indicator of the state of the climate system . . . the economic costs related to more severe and volatile weather deserves mention as an integral indicator of volatility." Although the attribution of increasing damages to climate changes is but one of many assertions made by EM04, the repetition of this erroneous claim is worth correcting because it is not consistent with current scientific understandings."

Our concluding paragraph is as follows:

"Concern about the possibility of abrupt climate change, whether human caused or not, is well justified (Alley et al. 2003). However, to connect the economic and other human impacts of disasters that have occurred in recent years and decades to climate changes (human caused or not) is not supported by the robust peer-reviewed literature in this area. Advancing such unsupported connections not only can create inefficiencies in disaster policy (Sarewitz and Pielke 2005), but can also open the door to an "overselling" of climate science and a resulting criticism of advocacy efforts regarding climate change (e.g., von Storch and Stehr 2005). Both science and policy will be better served by aligning the justifications advanced for action with current scientific understandings. Future research may yet reveal a connection between climate change and trends in disaster costs, but at present it is premature to attribute trends in disaster costs to anything other than characteristics of and changes in societal vulnerability."

Please read the whole letter here (PDF).

Posted on October 24, 2005 12:02 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

October 23, 2005

Response from Judy Curry

Judy Curry has taken us up on our offer to respond to my crticism of her comments reported in an online interview. I appreciate the response and accept her apology. Here is what she sent by email:

Roger,

Thanks for pointing this out to me, I've been so busy i hadn't even read the Thacker article (or most of the others). The words in the article attributed to me are not inaccurate, although excerpted and taken out of context. In my interview, on the contrary, I did not have negative things to say about you, I said you did good policy work in atmospheric science (the "prolific writer was intended to be a compliment), although I said that I didn't like your BAMS article. I apologize if it comes across as a personal attack, that was not my intent.

The issue I was trying to make in the interview with Thacker was that there are three different sub groups here: the hurricane forecasters, the climate researchers, and policy scientists. The hurricane-climate change issue is very complex and needs the perspectives of all three. Each has a different perspective, and has the deep understanding of their own area, while having some knowledge of the other areas relevant to this issue. In this whole debate, there has been too much discounting by individuals of the other areas of expertise. To state that you do not have a degree in atmospheric science is not an ad hominem attack. I have stated that I am not an expert on hurricane dynamics. These are facts. Of course, if you put this in a certain context, it can look like an ad hominem attack.

We all have more important things to do than quarrel about the media, like doing more research, publishing papers, and educating the public.

Thanks for the opportunity to reply to this.

Judy

p.s. please feel free to post this wherever

Posted on October 23, 2005 09:44 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

October 22, 2005

Tag Team Hit Job

It can only be a good sign that one's views are having some influence when your critics begin to focus on ad hominem attacks and cartoonish mischaracterizations of your work. This has happened to me in, of all places, an interview of Georgia Tech's Judy Curry by journalist Paul Thacker of Environmental Science & Technology. Here we can set the record straight with respect to some egregious errors and misrepresentations.

Thacker says to Curry, "Another apparent rising media star is Roger Pielke, Jr. I noticed that in a recent news story in Science he was listed as a "climatologist", and he made no attempt to correct that." In fact, I emailed Richard Kerr September 15, 2005 immediately after the Science article came out correcting the mistake. Had Thacker just called me up, I could have easily confirmed this; instead he has tried to suggest something that is not. I have sent to Thacker my email to Kerr and asked Thacker to issue a correction.

Curry responds to Thacker by trying to diminish my academic background, "Well, he's a prolific writer, but he is really a policy person [who] has a qualitative understanding of climate science. He is not a climatologist. I don't know that he's ever even taken a class in atmospheric science. In fact, he got his degree at the University of Colorado, where I used to teach, well before we instituted the program in atmospheric and ocean sciences." I am pretty comfortable with my academic background and publishing record, and feel absolutely no need to defend it here. I simply don't understand Curry's motivation for the ad hom criticism.

Curry then goes on to demonstrate that she has never really read any of my work when she writes, "So he has no formal training in atmospheric science. His mantra, if you will, is, "Let's not worry about why we have climate change; let's look at what we can do to adapt." This is not bad, but in the situation of hurricanes, it's been taken to an absurd position." As I have stated here and in peer-reviewed papers numerous times, climate change is a problem worth worrying about. We have to adapt and mitigate at the same time. Exactly what to do, when, by whom and at what costs are difficult policy questions. Even a cursory reading of my work will show these points. On hurricanes, I simply don't know what Curry is referring to, since she relies on inflammatory language ("mantra" and "absurd") rather than engaging in anything close to substantive debate.

So let's make it easy for Judy, here is a very short op-ed (PDF) on hurricanes in the context of climate change and climate policy that places our views in a nutshell. I am offering an open invitation to Judy Curry to prepare a response of similar length, which we will gladly publish here, to offer a different perspective. Let's talk about the issues, shall we?

Posted on October 22, 2005 07:15 AM View this article | Comments (14) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

October 21, 2005

Another View on Stem Cells

Thanks to Maxine Clarke of Nature who has directed our attention to another perspective on the significance of recent work on stem cells. The article, Irving Weissman, begins,

"Published online this week are two new methods for producing pluripotent stem-cell lines the great future hope of regenerative medicine. Both papers report proof-of-principle tests in mice of techniques that might be used for making human pluripotent stem-cell lines. The protocols each aim to satisfy the religious, ethical and/or political objections of groups that are opposed to some of the methods used in embryonic stem-cell research."

I am no stem cell expert so I wonder, who is right here about the significance of the research reported in Nature, the American Journal on Bioethics or Nature?

Posted on October 21, 2005 10:03 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health

October 19, 2005

Being Accurate is Easy, Right?

The amazing 2005 hurricane season continues with Wilma bearing down on Florida, currently as a S/S category 5 storm. I noticed an interesting difference in presentation between the AP and the NHC discussions of Wilma's intensity. Here is what the AP reported:

"Hurricane Wilma doesn't stop making history: It is the strongest, most intense Atlantic hurricane in terms of barometric pressure and the most rapidly strengthening on record. A hurricane hunter plane flying through the Category 5 storm's eye found a minimum central pressure of 882 millibars, National Hurricane Center forecasters said Wednesday."

Here is what the NHC said,

"AN AIR FORCE RECONNAISSANCE PLANE MEASURED 168 KNOTS AT 700 MB AND ESTIMATED A MINIMUM PRESSURE OF 884 MB EXTRAPOLATED FROM 700MB. UNOFFICIALLY...THE METEOROLOGIST ON BOARD THE PLANE RELAYED AN EXTRAPOLATED 881 MB PRESSURE AND MEASURED 884 MB WITH A DROPSONDE. THIS IS ALL IN ASSOCIATION WITH A VERY SMALL EYE THAT HAS BEEN OSCILLATING BETWEEN 2 AND 4 N MI DURING EYE PENETRATIONS. THIS IS PROBABLY THE LOWEST MINIMUM PRESSURE EVER OBSERVED IN THE ATLANTIC BASIN AND IS FOLLOWED BY THE 888 MB MINIMUM PRESSURE ASSOCIATED WITH HURRICANE GILBERT IN 1988. HOWEVER...ONE MUST BE VERY CAREFUL BEFORE IT IS DECLARED A RECORD MINIMUM PRESSURE UNTIL A FULL AND DETAILED CALIBRATION OF THE INSTRUMENTS AND CALCULATIONS IS PERFORMED. SO PLEASE DO NOT JUMP INTO CONCLUSIONS YET...BE PATIENT."

Is it really too much to expect the AP to use the word "unofficially"?

Posted on October 19, 2005 10:40 AM View this article | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Environment

October 18, 2005

Stem cell solution – not!

At the AJOB blog, David Magnus takes Nature to task for hyping a recent study about obtaining stem cells from mice. In a short entry Magnus writes,

“Shame on Nature for publishing two papers that do not deserve to be in such a prestigious journal. The research that was announced yesterday showing the possibility of supposedly more ethical alternatives to stem cell research is a lot less substance than hype. Neither result is really very surprising (at least in mice). The knockout mouse experiment demonstrates that a gene does pretty much what we thought it does (in mice). And the other experiment shows that cells separated at an early stage of development can do pretty much what we already knew they could do. So why is anyone paying attention to this research? It seems to get its cache not from its scientific merit, but from its political and ethical import. But the ethics behind this are actually far weaker than people realize. Thoughtful opponents of stem cell research are just as likely to oppose this research as they are to oppose somatic cell nuclear transfer. All produce embryos or embryo-like constructs that are extremely unlikely to develop even if we attempted to create a baby. However, for none is it impossible (at least for future technologies if not present ones) that a child might (however improbably) be produced. If ectogenesis became a possibility, the fact that a genetically engineered embryo does not produce placental tissue could in principle be overcome as an obstacle. We do not yet know for certain if a cell broken off from the blastocyst could sometimes become a “twin”. These are actually bad arguments and it is dangerous for science to go down this road—what is the principle? If the goal becomes pursuing science that is unopposed by a minority, then no embryonic stem cell research should be conducted. If we reject that principle (which we should) then this research really doesn’t do much for the research. - David Magnus”

Posted on October 18, 2005 10:18 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health

October 14, 2005

Excellent South Asia Earthquake Resource

And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming ... A colleague of mine here at CIRES, geologist Roger Billham, has an excellent web site on the South Asia earthquake. Roger observes,

"How bad was it? If reports from the Kashmir epicentral region are confirmed, the number of fatalities exceeds 40,000 making it the most fatal earthquake ever to occur in the Indian subcontinent. The number of fatalities in an earthquake is linked to the vulnerability of local buildings, population density, and shaking intensity. In 1935 a Richter magnitude M7.5 strike-slip earthquake near the city of Quetta, the only large settlement in an otherwise sparsely populated region of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Baluchistan, resulted in an estimated 35,000 dead. The M7.8 Kangra earthquake in 1905 caused 20,000 fatalities, and the Mw=7.6 Bhuj 2001 earthquake 18,500."

This figure which shows deaths versus earthquake magnitude is very interesting. Of it Roger notes,

"Deaths vs earthquake magnitude for earthquakes throughout the world 1900-2004 compared to the Kashmir 2005 earthquake. Although a simple relation between earthquake magnitude and the number of resulting deaths can be discerned (gray shading), the fatal consequences of large earthquakes depends more on their proximity to urban populations, the vulnerability of dwellings, and the time of day, than on the energy released. (fig. from Hough & Bilham,2005). The Sumatra/Andaman/Nicobar earthquake resulted in epicentral building collapse and damage, and huge loss of life along a thin but concentrated population on a coastal strip throughout the Indian ocean and Andaman sea."

Lots more here.

Posted on October 14, 2005 12:38 AM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

October 13, 2005

Some Reactions to Chris Mooney

The discussion continues over at TPM Cafe; check it out here.

I do have a few other "down in the weeds" reactions to Mooney's response to my first post.

First, Mooney is caught up on passing a judgment on which political party is better or worse at the politicization of science. He writes, "just because science is always to some extent politicized, that doesn't mean that today's Republicans and Democrats are equally guilty." On this point we seem to be talking past each other. If the issue was campaign finance reform, Mooney would be talking about which party exploited the rules to a greater degree while I'd be talking about how to reform the system so that it works better for all participants. But to get past this, lets just postulate that Republicans have been more effective at exploiting science to achieve political ends. I have discussed this before here.

Second, Mooney's better/worse tendency results in his mischaracterizing my perspective. He writes, "Pielke suggests that I am just as bad on this issue as Senate Environment and Public Works committee chair James Inhofe." I suggested no such thing. Here is what I wrote, "Mooney's argument adopts the exact same tactics of cherry picking and relying on convenient experts as does Senator Inhofe". Mooney's cherrypicking is not as significant as Senator Inhofe's, clearly, given that Mooney is a pundit and the Senator is a policy maker. Without a doubt cherrypicking is endemic (even here at Prometheus!).

Third, Mooney demonstrates that he doesn't get what Dan Sarewitz is arguing when he writes, "Sarewitz more or less suggests that we should just shrug off the political misuse or abuse of science--it's no big deal." Sarewitz does not say this at all, and given that Sarewitz writes often about science and politics, he clearly thinks that it is a big deal. Sarewitz argues that there is no point in trying to achieve political ends through realizing some agreement on scientific facts. I am sure that Sarewitz thinks, as I do, that we should always strive to have the best knowledge possible when making deicsions, but we would be foolish to think that we can adjudicate values discputes through debates over science. I discuss this in my secod post at TPM Cafe here.

Fourth, Mooney (and several commenters at Slate) asks us to "Consider the "intelligent design" movement, a well organized, PR-savvy crusade against evolution that masquerades as science even as it seeks to redefine science itself to include supernatural explanations within the fabric of inquiry. This goes far beyond mere "cherry picking," and becomes a more fundamental assault on the nature of scientific knowledge itself." Well lets consider ID. If you look at the data, a similar number of Democrats as Republicans support the teaching of ID in public schools, with only a slight advantage to Republicans. So are these Democracts who support ID also a party to the "war on science"? It is baffling to me how Mooney can just ignore such data that is inconvenient to his thesis. If anything, data on ID clearly supports my argument that we are looking at a phenomena that is much more complicated than can be described as Rep/Dem.

Finally, let me again thank Chris for the chance to discuss these topics at TPM Cafe. It is a pleasure to participate in an open and wide-ranging discussion of these important topics, even though Chris and I disagree.

Posted on October 13, 2005 12:02 AM View this article | Comments (9) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

October 12, 2005

There is No War on Science

A discussion with Chris Mooney is underwway at TPM Cafe. Check it out here.

Posted on October 12, 2005 12:59 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

October 11, 2005

Miami Herald on Hurricane Research and Operations

Debbie Cenziper has written a very interesting series of investigative articles in the Miami Herald on hurricane research and operations. There is a four-part series with numerous sidebars and accompanying vignettes (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 is forthcoming). The overarching thesis of the series is that the performance of NOAA's National Hurricane Center (NHC) and the Hurricane Research Division (HRD) has suffered because of funding limitations, and that this performance has had material effects on real-world outcomes such as forecasts and warnings. Here are a few interesting excerpts accompanied by my commentary:

"Buoys, weather balloons, radars, ground sensors and hurricane hunter planes, all part of a multibillion-dollar weather-tracking system run by the federal government, have failed forecasters during nearly half of the 45 hurricanes that struck land since 1992."

Interestingly, the hurricane research community has not (to my knowledge) conducted the research that would indicate, quantitatively, the effects of the lack of data or observations on forecast skill. Such information would seem to be essential to argue effectively for more resources.

There is a clear, long-term and highly troubling pattern of the stifling of discussion on this subject among NOAA employees. According to the Herald,

"In 40 Hurricane Center forecast verification reports reviewed by The Herald, almost nothing has been mentioned about vulnerable radars, the diversion of hurricane hunter planes, dropwindsonde failures, broken buoys, gaps in upper-air observations. Going public with such problems would have consequences, said former Hurricane Center Director Neil Frank. ''Woe be to me if I phoned a senator,'' said Frank, now a television meteorologist in Houston. 'There was all this internal pressure. I wasn't free to call and say, `We need more money down here.' '' A 2004 agency memo drives the point home: NOAA chief Conrad Lautenbacher told employees not to talk with lawmakers about budget issues without explicit approval, saying the agency must provide ``a unified message.'' Mayfield, a 33-year NOAA employee, said he has been told repeatedly to work within the bureaucracy's budget process. He's chosen his words carefully, at times drawing criticism from some who say he should have been more outspoken. ''I could be fired,'' Mayfield said."

I have heard similar concerns from NOAA employees who I asked to comment on the Herald series. My advice to the NOAA community is to address these issues empirically. That is, to conduct the research needed to connect federal investments (or lack thereof) with actual performance metrics like miles-of-coastline warned and forecast skill. Absent such information, it is very hard to argue that a particular level of investment is better than another. The funding constraints are very real. I am helping Kerry Emanuel to convene a special session on Hurricane Katrina at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, and we have been unable to secure the participation of a NHC forecaster because the agency has no funds for travel. I understand that no NHC staff may be attending next year's American Meteorological Society annual meeting for the same reason. This strikes me as absurd, given the critical importance of these scientists to the nation.

According to the Herald, "Since 1995, NOAA's Hurricane Research Division lost 11 scientists and has replaced just four, leaving 31 people and a base budget that hasn't topped $3.5 million in more than two decades. A former director and two senior researchers say they've pleaded for 10 years for an increase of at least 50 percent, but NOAA has granted only incremental bumps that barely kept pace with inflation -- or no increases at all. ''Our requests were dead on arrival,'' said former Hurricane Research Division Director Hugh Willoughby, who quit the post in 2002 after seven years of denials. ''Basically, it was a fool's errand.''"

My view is that the performance of NHC and HRD suffers because of limited resources. But the hurricane research and operations community should do their part by conducting rigorous research that establishes a clear connection between resources and performance to allow policy makers to more effectively scale investments with desired performance. In my experience, you can't find a group of more dedicated and competent public servants than in the hurricane community, and it shows in their performance. But for this to sustain requires that we pay close attention to the connections of decisions about science and the consequences of those decisions for outcomes in society.

Posted on October 11, 2005 03:56 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding

October 08, 2005

Next Week at TPM Cafe

Thanks to Chris Mooney for inviting me to participate in a discussion of his book "The Republican War on Science" next week over at TPMCafe. We'll provide links to the discussion as it develops next week (though it is safe to say that there will be more incoming than outgoing traffic to out site!) I am pleased to see that there is interest in an open discussion of the issues raised by Mooney's book, even though he and I disagree on its central thesis.

Posted on October 8, 2005 07:56 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

October 07, 2005

Preprint Available

A forthcoming paper of mine in Environmental Science and Policy is available as a PDF. Here is the title and abstract.

Misdefining ''climate change'': consequences for science and action

Abstract

The restricted definition of ''climate change'' used by the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) has profoundly affected the science, politics, and policy processes associated with the international response to the climate issue. Specifically, the FCCC definition has contributed to the gridlock and ineffectiveness of the global response to the challenge of climate change. This paper argues that the consequences of misdefining ''climate change'' create a bias against adaptation policies and set the stage for the politicization of climate science. The paper discusses options for bringing science, policy and politics in line with a more appropriate definition of climate change such as the more comprehensive perspective used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Posted on October 7, 2005 07:08 AM View this article | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

October 06, 2005

More on the Mooney Thesis

Earlier this week I raised some general issues that I had with Chris Mooney's thesis of a "Republican war on science." With this post I'd like to get more specific, with some comments on Chapter 7 of his book which focuses on climate politics and Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) in particular. Mooney argues that Senator Inhofe is "probably the Republican Party's leading environmental spokesman" and thus focuses his critique of Republican climate policy on a July 28, 2003 speech given by Senator Inhofe on climate change and a congressional hearing called by Senator Inhofe the very next day.

Mooney is perfectly justified in excoriating Senator Inhofe for cherry picking and selectively choosing his experts. But so what? This is a member of Congress acting in a political manner. Congress is a political place (shocker), always has been always will be. There is absolutely nothing unprecedented about Senator Inhofe's intemperate speech or his stacked hearing. Floor speeches and hearings are political theater. They are certainly not fora for scientific discourse, and often not even policy discourse. A 1954 study of congressional hearings provides a glimpse into how little has changed over a half-century,

"Each group seemed to come into hearings with a ready-made frame of reference. Facts which were compatible were fitted into it; facts which were not compatible even when elaborately documented, were discounted, not perceived, or discounted."

(R. K. Huitt, 1954. The congressional committee: A case study, American Political Science Review, 48:340-365.)

Further, Mooney's argument adopts the exact same tactics of cherry picking and relying on convenient experts as does Senator Inhofe.

For example, Mooney is quick to tell us of linkages between scientists that he disagrees with and right leaning groups, i.e., Willie Soon (Marshall Institute, TechCentralStation, Frontiers of Freedom) and David Legates (Marshall Institue, National Center for Policy Analysis). But Mooney seems to think that his readers don't need to know a scientist that he agrees with, Michael Oppenheimer, serves as a "science advisor" to a left leaning group, Environmental Defense, which advocates as its top priority passage of the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act. At a minimum the selective presentation of information distracts from Mooney's argument, because it leads one to ask why the author doesn't trust the reader with this information.

Mooney also argues that "climate change has become an issue on which conservatives have elected to fight over science ... " Well yes, but so too have liberals. We document this quite clearly here (PDF), and it goes well beyond just climate change. Mooney neglects to discuss how liberals have in many cases adopted the mirror image strategies to conservatives, arguing that a consensus on climate science compels their favored actions. Just like uncertainty is not a reason for inaction, nether is certainty a reason for action.

Also, Mooney quotes Tom Wigley as not liking how Senator Inhofe used his work. Wigley is perfectly legitimate in saying so, but I study climate impacts as well and I see nothing inaccurate or misleading in how Senator Inhofe cited Wigley's work. Mooney's citation of Wigley strikes me as a convenient reliance on an agreeable expert, which is exactly what he accuses Senator Inhofe of doing. Again, I have no complaints about this, as this is the nature of political debate. One cherry picks and relies on dueling experts at the risk of being called on it. But it represents no "war on science." In fact cherry picking and selective use of experts depends upon science.

So it's fine with me that Senator Inhofe and Chris Mooney are both selectively marshalling information to put the best spin on their argument. As far as their arguments, I find neither Senator's Inhofe's thesis on climate change nor Mooney's thesis that there is a misuse of science going on here to be very convincing. (I should say as an aside I found Mooney's disrespectful characterization of a fairly elected U.S. Senator completely offensive, e.g., calling him an "absolute know-nothing." Even in the face of ideological disagreements, if we want to be constructive we should at least be civil in our discourse.)

Let me be unambiguous. I disagree with Senator Inhofe's characterization of climate science as a "hoax" and it seems clear to me that he is cherry picking and relying on experts that happen to mesh with his perspective, i.e., he is using "facts" and scientists selectively. He has every right to do so, and Chris Mooney has every right to call him on it. This is called political debate. If you want climate science, go to the Journal of Climate.

Crucially, Mooney provides no evidence (because there is none) to support the most important claim in this chapter: "Not only do [the conservatives] strive to prevent the public from understanding the gravity of the climate situation, but in sowing confusion and uncertainty, they help prevent us from doing anything about it." This statement is demonstrably false. As I have documented here frequently, the public overwhelmingly believes that humans cause climate change, that its impacts are serious, and that the United States should take action. See here and here (PDF). There is absolutely no evidence that scientific uncertainty (manufactured or otherwise) is an obstacle to action on climate change. The real obstacle is a lack of politically viable actions on the table.

Consider that last June, 11 Democrats voted against the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship amendment to the 2005 energy bill and 6 Republicans voted for it. Had the Democrats voted partyline, the bill would have been very close to passing. If the Left wants to make scientific issues partisan, then they'd better figure out how to win some more elections. If in the face of Republican control of government the Left wants to enact policies that advance their interests, then they'd better come up with some options that their own party can support unanimously and continue to find some bipartisan support. Complaining about the misuse of science will be effective only as catharsis.

There is no war on climate science, just your standard political machinations involving cherry picking and dueling experts. If those wanting action on climate change want to see different outcomes in the future, they would be far better served working to develop viable, bipartisan policy options rather than pursuing the impossible task of enforcing some sort of unanimity of views and statements on climate science. If the reality-based community really believes in its own moniker then it should hear these very real, but probably uncomfortable, words from Dan Sarewitz:

"It is not productive to blame politicians for manipulating or distorting objective science to support partisan positions. Of course politicians will look for any information or argument that they can find to advance their agendas -- that is their job. While politicians may not be above playing loose with scientific truth, more often they can and will simply search out -- and find -- a legitimate expert or two who can marshal a technical argument sympathetic to the desired political outcome. It is the job of politicians to play politics, and this -- like the second law of thermodynamics -- is not something to be regretted, but something to be lived with."

Appendix

To be fair there are some other issues that the chapter discusses, and some of these I have addressed elsewhere, but in a way unrelated to Mooney's thesis.

On NYT reports on the editing of agency reports see here and here.

On uncertainty as a red herring, see this post.

On the role of prediction in policy, see this book and here is the last chapter in PDF.

Posted on October 6, 2005 07:32 AM View this article | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

October 04, 2005

Katrina as Category 1 in New Orleans?

An alert reader (thanks JA) passes along this very interesting news story from today's Florida Sun-Sentinel,

"Hurricane Katrina might have battered New Orleans and the Gulf Coast as a considerably weaker system than the Category 4 tempest initially reported. New, preliminary information compiled by hurricane researchers suggests the system struck southeast Louisiana on Aug. 29 with peak-sustained winds of 115 mph. That would have made it a Category 3 storm, still a major hurricane, but a step down from the enormous destructive force of a Category 4. Katrina might have further downgraded to a strong Category 1 system with 95 mph winds when it punched water through New Orleans' levees, severely flooding most of the city and killing hundreds. The levees were designed to withstand a Category 3 storm. If verified, the wind information compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Hurricane Research Division could have chilling ramifications.

Notably, it would leave the specter that if a Category 4 or a Category 5 hurricane were to hit the same region, it would be even more catastrophic. "It's important from a public perception standpoint," said Mark Powell, the research scientist who plotted the new wind measurements, adding that most people think they endured a Category 4. "They won't want to hear it was a Category 3." ... According to hurricane research division findings, Katrina remained a Category 4 until it was about 105 miles south of the Mississippi River delta. In downtown New Orleans, the winds were barely hurricane strength because buildings disrupted the flow, he said. That is information he suspects New Orleans residents don't want to hear. "People go through a bad event like that, and they want to feel it was something it couldn't be prevented," Powell said. "In a lot of cases, it can be prevented.""

Posted on October 4, 2005 03:02 PM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

October 03, 2005

A Few Comments on the Mooney Thesis

With a number of readers writing me and asking for some commentary on Chris Mooney's recent book, "The Republican War on Science," I thought I'd offer a few thoughts. I expect that there will be some comments, questions and criticisms and I am happy to address these in subsequent posts. It is a complicated subject. This post is not a book review, but an attempt to engage the "Mooney thesis" from a big-picture perspective. Mooney's work and accompanying marketing blitz has people talking and debating, and that is quite an accomplishment in today's over-saturated information environment. Chris was kind enough to send to me a signed copy of his book with a "thank you" for always challenging him, and I appreciate that. This post continues in that spirit - seeking to challenge Mooney's thesis in a respectful, intellectually-grounded manner.

However, I'll admit to being reluctant to do so. The Mooney thesis is a clever, even brilliant, wedge device, like a political Rorschach test if you will. It is difficult in this context to engage in intelligent debate about the substance of Mooney's thesis without ideologues being quick to ascribe a political motivation for one's views, and then to ignore the substance. It is not uncommon to see ensuing discussion devolve into angry ad hominem attacks and mindless witnessing to one's own political values. That being said, because Mooney's thesis forces science policy to be discussed in Republican-Democrat terms, it is ironically enough an important factor in the contemporary politicization of science. This is not a statement about Mooney's motivations, but the effects that his work has had on science policy debate and discussions, which I observe in classes and in professional collaborations every day. Such debates are polarized from the start, and getting people to consider the factors that enable the misuse of science is clouded by their partisan lenses. I do believe that there are factors that are independent of party affiliation that enable, and even motivate, the politicization of science.

Here is Mooney's thesis in his own words:

"Everyone, every interest group, politicizes or abuses science to some extent. Everyone cherry-picks information, from time to time, to help bolster a particular agenda. However, there's something that's quite different about this [Bush] administration, when it comes to the extent of the abuses. Hardly a week goes by but we have some new outrage at the science-and-politics interface. So the problem is systemic, not just occasional. My thesis is that this is a political phenomenon that is unique to Republican rule in the United States, and which is epitomized by the Bush administration. This administration is constantly doing favors for its big-business and religious-right constituents. That prejudice drives distortions of science on issues ranging from global warming to sex education."

To make any coherent sense at all, Mooney's thesis requires a rather precarious balancing act. He must admit that all interests abuse science (because they do), but then instead of focusing attention on the conditions that lead generally to such misuse, he justifies his almost exclusive focus on Republicans by claiming that they are somehow worse politicizers, and somewhat less credibly, that "it's a crisis that's only recognized by one side of the political spectrum," the Democrats. Thus, Mooney admits that the Left abuses science, briefly, and then focuses 99% of his attention on the Right as if the abuses by the Left are somehow acceptable or not worth attention in this context. Such an argument will of course be well-received by Democrats and attacked by Republicans, because it pretty much gives a free pass to those who abuse science but happen not to be on the Right.

It seems fairly obvious that one's views on whether Republicans are "worse politicizers" or simply "better politicians" are two sides of the same coin and are simply a function of one's own political views. At the national political level, one needs only to look at the composition of Congress and the current occupants of the White House to observe that Republicans have in recent years been more effective politically than Democrats; it should be no surprise to see this in respect to science policies as well. But in the end, arguing about whether Republicans or Democrats (or Bush or Clinton) are "worse politicizers" strikes me as making about as much sense as arguing about whether the American League or National League represent a better version of baseball - you can waste a lot of time doing it and have a lot of fun, but in the end you are no closer to winning baseball games than when you started the debate. (National League, duh.)

There are of course some readers of this post who may believe that science is, or at least should be, value free, unbiased and kept separate from politics. This belief has been so thoroughly discredited by scholars in the field of science and technology studies that it bears only a passing mention here. I have commented on this point at various occasions in the past on this site, and I am happy to get into specific details in follow up discussions.

Mooney's thesis also requires claims of an "unprecedented mobilization" of scientists in opposition to the Bush Administration in order to assert the uniqueness of the Bush Administration's misuse of science. But history does not bear out this claim. According to longtime science policy observer Daniel Greenberg there is nothing unprecedented about the recent mobilization of scientists in support of or opposition to political candidates. In fact, Greenberg argues that scientists are much less involved in politics than in the past, and not because Bush has shut them out, but because of their own lack of sophistication and naivete, "On the Washington scene today, they are virtually ineffective, if present at all, in the venues that count." When one takes the long view, there is much less to distinguish the actions of the Bush Administration than its predecessors, other than perhaps the jarring ideological and political contrasts with its immediate predecessor in the White House. But make no mistake, there was plenty of politicization of science (PDF) going on under Clinton-Gore, as under every administration in the modern era. The underlying problem is not that one political party devalues science, it is that there are circumstances that enable the misuse of science. We have discussed such circumstances at various occasions here, and among them is the willingness of scientists to serve readily as issue advocates rather than honest brokers. Other relevant circumstances include Sarewitz's argument that an "excess of objectivity" allows most any set of facts to be mapped onto diverse and contradictory value positions, and Sarewitz's argument that it is often political controversy that drives scientific uncertainty, and not vice versa.

Ironically, the Mooney thesis depends upon oft-repeated claims of the significance of the views of a small number of people such as Russell Train and William Ruckelshaus whose sole source of credibility lies in the fact that they are Republicans who have criticized the Bush Administration. This reminds me of the claims made by some that Bjorn Lomborg's "skeptical environmentalist" thesis was somehow more credible because he once was a card-carrying member of Greenpeace. By this logic, my critique of the Mooney thesis should be vastly more credible than most because I am no fan of the Bush Administration. I reject this logic in all three cases. Instead of appeals-to-authority-by-playing-against-type, how about we focus on the content of the arguments and data instead? For instance, this year we have been visited by science advisors to Bush (Marburger), Clinton (Gibbons) and Nixon (David) and still have to come advisors to Clinton (Lane), Johnson (Hornig) and Reagan (Keyworth). Our research (e.g., see this PDF) for these events and discussions with the science advisors clearly indicate that science has always been political across administrations and party affiliations. Why? Because there are important underlying dynamics of politics and policy that enable and even motivate the politicization of science. Most recently Edward David told us story after story of the politicization of science under Nixon (stay tuned, we'll discuss these as soon as the transcript of his talk is available). He also described how he is no fan of the Bush Administration' science policies, but he rejects the idea that things are appreciably different today than when he served. Republicans hold no special claim to uniquely politicizing science; they are just more effective these days a playing national politics. Democrats don't like this, but they should resist enlisting science or science policy as a tool to try to reverse this trend of political domination by Republicans at the national level By trying to score cheap political points under the meme of science politicization, the Left is contributing to the problem that it is decrying.

But seeking political advantage for the Left is exactly where Mooney's thesis leads. Mooney suggests that we can address the politicization of science at the ballot box,

"Ultimately, all of this energy should translate into political action itself: If conservative Republicans have a bad record on science, we need to call them out on their abuses and support candidates (Democrat or Republican) with better records."

It is hard to take seriously Mooney's call for supporting Republican candidates, given his various statements (e.g., "we could cry out warnings to conservatives, begging that they step back from the abyss before it is too late," at p. 248) much less the title of the book carrying his thesis. But he can prove my skepticism wrong by announcing the various Republican candidates that he endorses in the mid-term general elections next year.

Advancing Mooney's thesis at times depends upon its own misuse of science. For instance, in a recent op-ed Mooney writes, "Many scientists feel they have received the back of the hand from this administration -- and not just when it comes to the requests for funding of basic research in Bush's budget." This is far from reality. Under Bush R&D budgets have increased more rapidly than at any time since the Apollo era, with particularly enormous increases in health research. If Republicans are indeed waging a war on science, then it seems that the primary ammunition has been to carpet bomb the R&D enterprise with dollar bills. Similarly, in the same op-ed Mooney makes a convenient but apparently erroneous assertion when he suggests that the head of the FDA recently resigned in part because of controversy of the Plan B issue, when media reports suggest that the reason for his resignation instead had to do with financial disclosures. The presence of such mistakes and mischaracterizations helped to support the part of Mooney's thesis that admits everyone abuses facts to support their arguments, and also my claim that such abuse is not the special province of one political party, or even a sub-set of one political party.

Any thesis that is predicated on distinguishing Republican science from Democrat science is going to lead directly to the politicization of the politicization of science. If the underlying dynamics that the Mooney thesis critiques are those same dynamics that explain the ascendancy of conservatism in contemporary politics (e.g., rise of the religious right, industry influence in politics), then the Mooney thesis becomes nothing more than a Trojan horse for attacking conservatives and advancing liberals. This may all be received as well and good, particularly from the perspective of those with liberal leanings, but they should not pretend that the politicization of science policy is going to do anything to address the politicization of science, because it neglects the dynamics that enable the politicization of science to occur in the first place. (For those wanting to learn more about these dynamics, I'd suggest starting with the works of Sarewitz, Bocking and Jasanoff, and I'd be happy to discuss further in the follow up discussion.) Further, I doubt that the Mooney thesis will even do anything to advance the cause of liberals in modern politics, other than rally the faithful to witness to what they already believed in the first place.

Posted on October 3, 2005 12:34 AM View this article | Comments (22) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Another Misattribution, Climate Scientists Silent

On 28 September 2005 the New York Times ran an editorial titled "Time to Connect the Dots" that argued from attention to greenhouse gas reductions in order to address the threats of global warming on hurricane damages. Here is an excerpt:

"The scientists who have studied the issue have not detected any increase in the number of hurricanes. Yet these same scientists - in research reports appearing in reputable journals like Science, Nature and The Journal of Climate - have detected increases of up to 70 percent in hurricane intensity, a measure that combines the power of a hurricane and its duration. There has been a commensurate increase in damage, mainly because more and more people have stubbornly put themselves at risk by moving to low-lying coastal areas. But the hurricanes' added strength has clearly contributed to the ever-higher toll in lives and property damage."

This last statement is scientifically unsupportable (stay tuned, new peer-reviewed publication on this coming very soon!). The observed changes in the characteristics of storms have not been detected in statistics on loss of lives or property damages. This Times is correct to point to the role of demographics, but goes too far when alleging a relationship of changes in storm characteristics and societal impacts with no science to back up such an allegation.

We could spend all of our time here correcting inaccurate statements from those linking the observed increase in economic damages related to extreme events with changes in climate. Current science (PDF) simply does not support such a linkage. What is more surprising to me is not that such claims are being made (it is an easy error to make, I'll admit, because it seems logical), but that the broad climate science community, which so vigorously argues in public about issues like the temperature of the 15th century and satellite versus temperature records, adopts a stoney silence when it comes to the frequent and highly visible scientific misstatements on the attribution of increasing economic losses. And in fact the climate science community often is guilty of such misstatements empowering others who rely on the statements of scientists to compound the mistaken attribution. Climate scientists should know better. I have frequently wondered why this is so, given that the attribution of factors underlying increasing societal impacts has far more policy relevance (PDF) that the arguments over temperature records, which are really just political symbols in an ideological battle. But perhaps I have just answered my own question.

Posted on October 3, 2005 12:30 AM View this article | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

September 28, 2005

Griffin: The Space Shuttle Was a Mistake

This according to NASA Administrator Michael Griffin in today's USA Today. Here is an excerpt:

"The space shuttle and International Space Station - nearly the whole of the U.S. manned space program for the past three decades - were mistakes, NASA chief Michael Griffin said Tuesday. In a meeting with USA TODAY's editorial board, Griffin said NASA lost its way in the 1970s, when the agency ended the Apollo moon missions in favor of developing the shuttle and space station, which can only orbit Earth. "It is now commonly accepted that was not the right path," Griffin said. "We are now trying to change the path while doing as little damage as we can." The shuttle has cost the lives of 14 astronauts since the first flight in 1982. Roger Pielke Jr., a space policy expert at the University of Colorado, estimates that NASA has spent about $150 billion on the program since its inception in 1971. The total cost of the space station by the time it's finished - in 2010 or later - may exceed $100 billion, though other nations will bear some of that ... Griffin has made clear in previous statements that he regards the shuttle and space station as misguided. He told the Senate earlier this year that the shuttle was "deeply flawed" and that the space station was not worth "the expense, the risk and the difficulty" of flying humans to space. But since he became NASA administrator, Griffin hasn't been so blunt about the two programs. Asked Tuesday whether the shuttle had been a mistake, Griffin said, "My opinion is that it was. ... It was a design which was extremely aggressive and just barely possible." Asked whether the space station had been a mistake, he said, "Had the decision been mine, we would not have built the space station we're building in the orbit we're building it in.""

This is a startling admission from the NASA administrator, and perhaps a positive sign that real change is possible. I do have mixed feelings about the admission. One the one hand, it vindicates the arguments made by a team of scholars that I was part of in the early 1990s under the leadership of Rad Byerly that focused on developing space policy alternatives (PDF) to those presented by NASA. But on the other hand it raises the frequently-asked-question, what good is robust policy analyses if decision makers are unaware of it or for other reasons is not useful in decision making? It would be easy (and oh-so-appealing) to simply conclude that researchers produce knowledge and what decision makers choose to do (or not do) with it is their responsibility. Similarly, it would be easy to simply ask policy researchers to become political advocates. From my perspective, academic policy research can and should be better connected to decision making, and there are alternatives to these two models of interaction. This is a subject that we'll be devoting much time to in the near future.

For further information on the space shuttle and space station see the publications of Rad Byerly here. And also this paper of mine on the space shuttle program:

Pielke Jr., R. A., 1993: A Reappraisal of the Space Shuttle Program. Space Policy, May, 133-157. (PDF)

Posted on September 28, 2005 02:12 PM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

Mr. Crichton Goes to Washington

Today Michael Crichton is scheduled to testify before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. We'll discuss when we learn more and if we deem it worth commenting on. Meantime, it seems clear that Michael Crichton tends to drive climate scientists to froth at the mouth. NASA's Jim Hansen, cited in Crichton's latest book, State of Fear, sent out by email a preemptive attack (PDF) on Crichton. Hansen picks the eve of Crichton's Congressional testimony to take issue with Crichton's characterization of his work in State of Fear. Here is an excerpt from Hansen's fusillade:

"Michael Crichton's latest fictional novel, "State of Fear", designed to discredit concerns about global warming, purports to use the scientific method. The book is sprinkled with references to scientific papers, and Crichton intones in the introduction that his "footnotes are real". But does Crichton really use the scientific method? Or is it something closer to scientific fraud? I have not read Crichton's book ... Crichton writes fiction and seems to make up things as he goes along. He doesn't seem to have the foggiest notion about the science that he writes about. Perhaps that is o.k. for a science fiction writer. However, I recently heard that, in considering the global warming issue, a United States Senator is treating words from Crichton as if they had scientific or practical validity. If so, wow -- Houston, we have a problem!"

For his testimony-eve efforts Hansen may have contributed to the impression among some that Crichton's non-fictional arguments about the role of politics in climate science have some validity. Here is what Crichton said last year on science and politics:

"I'm concerned that science, having ascended to a phenomenal position of power within our society, has provided a temptation for some highly intelligent individuals to join in the political fray, where they really don't belong, where they do it really badly, and where they don't acknowledge they are damaging science as an enterprise. Because science needs to be kept separate from politics And it can be phenomenally dangerous when you start to take as policy something you want to happen and begin to claim it's science-based. Science has to stay independent, it has to stay focused on the data and it cannot be involved in where this is going to lead. In those days it was immigration policy and the "gene pool." Now it's something else. But it's a dangerous, dangerous gangplank to walk down and I hope we don't go further. We need science. Keep the politics out of it."

Lest any new reader to Prometheus think that I support Crichton's views on politics and science, I have often written about the impossibility of cleanly separating science and politics (e.g., here in PDF) -- instead the challenge is to manage the inevitable overlaps. It seems that Crichton's testimony and Jim Hansen's preemptive attack underscore the reality of the inevitable interconnections of science and politics.

Posted on September 28, 2005 06:48 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

September 27, 2005

Is Better Information Always Better?

It is a canon of the academic enterprise that more and better knowledge is always a good thing. However, when it comes to actual processes of decision making, more knowledge does not always lead to better outcomes, and in fact may lead to worse outcomes. In a thoughtful column in a recent edition of the Wall Street Journal, David Wessel takes on this interesting subject. Here is an excerpt:

"How about the service offered by LegalMetric LLC, a start-up founded by patent lawyer Greg Upchurch? Contemplating a patent-infringement case in Delaware? For $795, Mr. Upchurch will tell you which judges rule most swiftly and which tend to favor patent holders. Making a motion for summary judgment? Mr. Upchurch can tell you how the judge has ruled on similar motions versus his peers. These data always have been available in court files, but putting the pieces together was so expensive no one did it. Now, it's on the U.S. federal judiciary's Web site. Mr. Upchurch and his two employees download dockets, key information into a database and push a button so their software generates detailed reports. For lawyer and client, this knowledge can be very valuable. But does it increase the chances that the judge will come to a just decision? It is the sort of information that Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow labeled "socially useless but privately valuable." It doesn't help the economy produce more goods or services. It creates nothing of beauty or pleasure. It simply helps someone get a bigger slice of the pie. Sure, if the product helps win cases, then both sides will buy it -- just as both sides in high-stakes product-liability cases invest in jury-selection experts and software -- and neither will have an unfair advantage. But does that make the society better off? The same question arises in the sophisticated software used to draw the boundaries of U.S. congressional districts so precisely that Republicans and Democrats know which party is almost certain to win. This has enhanced the power of incumbency: In 2004, 401 of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives sought re-election; all but seven won. It also has polarized the U.S. Congress, and made compromises scarce, because with safe districts, legislators have little reason to court the voters in the center. The advantage to individual lawmakers is clear; the value to society is not."

In important respects uncertainty about future outcomes is what allows for risks to be shared equitably. Wessel asks us to imagine what would happen if we had perfect knowledge of the future:

"Imagine a place with uncertain weather where food is plentiful in rainy spots, but not in others. Residents, in essence, buy insurance. The lucky feed the unlucky. No one starves. Then it becomes possible to buy accurate weather forecasts. One who buys the forecast knows whether he needs insurance or not; he profits. But the total amount of food available is unchanged. And if everyone buys the weather forecast, the insurance market becomes impossible. "There is a double social loss -- the resources used unnecessarily in acquiring information and the destruction of a market for risk sharing," Mr. Arrow said when he posed this example in 1973. Eliminating uncertainty makes insurance impossible. That's no small matter: If deciphering the human genome allows each of us to know the precise odds of contracting a dread disease, life and health insurance will be very tricky."

For scientists seeking to justify investments in their area of research, findings such as these make it untenable to simply assert that society will inevitably be better off with more knowledge. Indeed the current debate over stem cell research indicates that some people in society are more than willing to forgo the potential fruits of science in service of other valued outcomes. The value structure of a scientific endeavor seeking to advance knowledge, well-described by Michael Polanyi thirty years ago, is not always the same value structure that underlies the needs of pragmatic decision making or political battles among people who hold different conceptions of how the world should look.

Posted on September 27, 2005 08:19 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Bayh-Dole at 25

Fortune has a very interesting, and highly negative, article about the Bayh-Dole Act and its effects on universities. Here is an excerpt:

"That single law, named for its sponsors, Senators Birch Bayh and Bob Dole, in essence transferred the title of all discoveries made with the help of federal research grants to the universities and small businesses where they were made. Prior to the law's enactment, inventors could always petition the government for the patent rights to their own work, though the rules were different at each federal agency; some 20 different statutes governed patent policy. The law simplified the "technology transfer" process and, more important, changed the legal presumption about who ought to own and develop new ideas-private enterprise as opposed to Uncle Sam. The new provisions encouraged academic institutions to seek out the clever ideas hiding in the backs of their research cupboards and to pursue licenses with business. And it told them to share some of the take with the actual inventors. On the face of it, Bayh-Dole makes sense. Indeed, supporters say the law helped create the $43-billion-a-year biotech industry and has brought valuable drugs to market that otherwise would never have seen the light of day. What's more, say many scholars, the law has created megaclusters of entrepreneurial companies-each an engine for high-paying, high-skilled jobs-all across the land. That all sounds wonderful. Except that Bayh-Dole's impact wasn't so much in the industry it helped create, but rather in its unintended consequence-a legal frenzy that's diverting scientists from doing science."

Posted on September 27, 2005 08:16 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

September 23, 2005

Op-ed in the LA Times

Dan Sarewitz and I have an op-ed on hurricanes, climate change and disasters in today's Los Angeles Times. Here is the opening:

"LIKE A BAD horror movie in which the villain keeps coming back, Hurricane Rita, the 18th storm of the season, is spinning toward an inevitable rendezvous with the Gulf Coast. We've already seen more death and destruction than the last 35 hurricane seasons combined. And many people, including some European and U.S. politicians, are hoping that the carnage - represented most poignantly by the destruction in New Orleans - will help bring this country to its senses on dealing with global warming.

But understanding what this hurricane season is really telling us about why we're so vulnerable to climate-related catastrophes means facing up to an unavoidable fact: Efforts to slow global warming will have no discernible effect on hurricanes for the foreseeable future. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adequately preparing for future disasters are essentially separate problems."

Read the whole thing here.

Posted on September 23, 2005 06:48 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

September 22, 2005

Response from William Colglazier on Science Academies as Political Advocates

In Bridges last July, I questioned the wisdom of science academies acting as political advocates. I argued that, "There are at least three reasons why political advocacy by science academies should be greeted with caution," and these were the practical self-interest of scientists, the broader needs of policy making, and reasons of democratic accountability.

William Colglazier, Executive Officer of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and Chief Operating Officer of its National Research Council provides a rebuttal in the current issue of Bridges. I appreciate that Mr. Colglazier chose to enage this issue. Here are a few excerpts from his rebuttal and my comments in response:

Colglazier: "In our view, the eleven academies statement was consistent with and supported by careful objective studies done by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) over the past 15 years ..."

Response: Of course, my point is that there are any number of policies "consistent with" such "objective studies." Settling on a subset of policy recommendations involves many considerations that go well beyond science. This is the essence of political advocacy, as science is poorly suited to reaching closure on what actions we should take in any given context, which is ultimately a question of values.

Colglazier: "Mr. Pielke asked about democratic accountability when science academies issue findings and recommendations in statements and reports. We view our reports as bringing the best available insights from science and technology to help inform public policy decisions, not engaging in political advocacy or politics."

Response: My commentary was obviously not about academy reports generally, but a single statement. I think that it is quite fair to call a statememt calling for political actions by policy makers issued in order to influence the G8 Summit an act of "political advocacy." There is something very different about this action versus the typicaly science academy study, though Mr. Colgazier directs our attention to the latter with the bulk of his response.

Colglazier: "The eleven science academies that developed the climate change statement for the G8 heads of state meeting at Gleneagles, Scotland, last July will likely join together again to produce additional statements, based on their individual studies, as input to future G8 meetings. One unfortunate aspect of the release of the eleven academies statement on climate change was confusion caused by a press release issued by the Royal Society (RS) of London. That press release went far beyond what the eleven academies statement actually said. The RS press release was not seen in advance by the NAS and did not represent the views of the NAS. So there is still work to be done in developing the right traditions."

Response: I think that the flap over the Royal Society letter helps to make my main point -- " there are real risks for the scientific enterprise when science academies become political advocates." And on Colglazier's recogniztion of work to be done in developing the right traditions, we are in complete agreement.

Posted on September 22, 2005 12:37 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Column in Bridges

My latest column in Bridges, the quarterly publication of Office of Science & Technology at the Embassy of Austria in Washington, DC, is now online. It is titled, "Making Sense of Trends in Disaster Losses," and starts out like this:

"Record rainfall and over a thousand dead in Mumbai. Devastating floods in central Europe. A record hurricane season in the Atlantic, including more than $100 billion dollars in damage from Hurricane Katrina. The summer of 2005 seems to have witnessed more than its fair share of weather-related disasters. And, perhaps understandably, no weather-related disaster occurs without someone linking it to the issue of global warming... But as logical and enticing as it may seem to connect the ever-growing toll of disasters with global warming, the current state of science simply does not support making such a connection."

Read the rest here. Comments welcomed.

If you are interested in science and technology policy, then the entire issue of Bridges is worth your attention.

Posted on September 22, 2005 12:33 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Disasters

Correcting Pat Michaels

Posted by Roger A. Pielke, Jr. (RP) and Kerry Emanuel (KE)

In a column in the Richmond Times-Dispatch Pat Michaels mischaracterizes the role of KE in a paper RP is lead author on forthcoming in BAMS (PDF). Michaels writes,

"A heavily cited paper, published recently in Nature by Kerry Emanuel, claims that hurricanes have doubled in power in the past half-century. It has been the basis for much of the association of Katrina with planetary warming. However, there are three manuscripts in review at Nature disputing this, as well as a recently published paper by Roger Pielke, Jr., in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, downplaying the notion. (As a measure of the acrimony among leading scientists on this subject, Emanuel removed his name as a co-author of this paper shortly before publication.)"

This is incorrect on two counts.

First, KE withdrew with no acrimony. Here is what the two of us jointly wrote on this a few weeks ago:

"The reason that KE decided to withdraw amicably from co-authorship had nothing to do with the paper's summary of research on the societal impacts of hurricanes, as implied here, but instead, a change in KE's views on the significance of global warming in observed and projected hurricane behavior. It is misleading to use KE's withdrawal to dismiss the entire paper. Here is how KE characterized his withdrawal to RP in an email:

"The awkward situation we find ourselves in is bound to occur when research is in rapid flux. Working with both data and models, I see a large global warming signal in hurricanes. But it remains for me to persuade you and other of my colleagues of this, and it is entirely reasonable for you all to be skeptical...it is, after all, very new. It is not surprising, therefore, that what I have come to believe is at odds with any reasonable consensus. The problem for me is that I cannot sign on to a paper which makes statements I no longer believe are true, even though the consensus is comfortable with them."

We remain close, collegial colleagues who are seeking to advance science by challenging each others ideas in the traditional fora of scientific discourse. We hope that the media will recognize that science is complex and legitimate, differing perspectives often co-exist simultaneously. This diversity of perspective is one feature that motivates the advancement of knowledge."

Second, the BAMS paper (PDF) does not "downplay" the relationship of hurricanes and global warming. The paper is an assessment of the authors' best judgments about what can and cannot be said about the relationship based on the peer-reviewed literature. Here is what the paper says about Emanuel (2005):

"Emanuel (2005) reports a very substantial upward trend in power dissipation (i.e., the sum over the lifetime of the storm of the maximum wind speed cubed) in the north Atlantic and western North Pacific, with a near doubling over the past 50 years. The precise causation for this trend is not yet clear. Moreover, in the North Atlantic, much of the recent upward trend in Atlantic storm frequency and intensity can be attributed to large multi-decadal fluctuations. Emanuel (2005) is just published as of this writing, and is certain to motivate a healthy and robust debate in the community."

There will be a place for debating and discussing Emanuel (2005) and its possible implications and that is in the peer reviewed literature.

Posted on September 22, 2005 12:25 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Others | Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

September 21, 2005

Why Should We Believe NASA?

Earlier this week NASA released its plans for the future of the U.S. human spaceflight program. The New York Times has a good series of articles on the plans and reactions to it (here and here). Were I a discerning budget examiner or congressional staffer with a knowledge of the history of the space program, I'd ask NASA why we should believe any of the following statements (borrowed from the Times reporting):

* "Michael D. Griffin, the agency's new administrator, detailed a $104 billion plan that he said would get astronauts to the Moon by 2018."

Does NASA have any credibility on budget or schedule projections? History suggests that cost estimates are overly optimistic and shortfalls are used as a justification to secure budget increases. As one former congressional staffer has commented, "NASA cost overruns represent full employment in some congressional districts."

* "Dr. Griffin said that after adjusting for inflation, the program would cost just 55 percent of what it cost to put a dozen men on the lunar surface from 1969 to 1972."

The spin begins. An actual accounting of Apollo costs (see Table 14.4 here in PDF) indicates that the program actually costs (in 2004 dollars) between $105 to $125 billion. NASA is already either playing fast and loose with the budget numbers or is ignorant of its own budget history. Neither option is particularly encouraging.

* "The new craft, called the crew exploration vehicle, would perch the astronauts' capsule above the rockets that power it into space, rather than alongside them as with the shuttle. NASA officials said it would be 10 times as safe as the shuttle, with a projected failure rate of 1 in 2,000, as opposed to 1 in 220 for the shuttle."

Deja vu. No launch vehicle has ever demonstrated such a success rate. Unrealistic estimates of reliability contributed to the experiences of the Shuttle program. Further, if NASA really believes these numbers, what justification can there be for continuing to fly the Shuttle?

Space policy should be guided by a firm appreciation of history. We have a lot of hard-earned and valuable experience. Here are a few places to start (PDF and PDF).

Posted on September 21, 2005 08:07 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

Revkin on Katrina, Climate Science, Policy

Andy Revkin is one of the nation's most influential and widely respected journalists covering climate (and other environmental) issues. In a news release, the AAAS provides a rare look at the views of someone who plays a significant role in shaping public and policy debate over climate. Here are some interesting excerpts from the AAAS news story:

""We have to understand, and society has to become comfortable with, making decisions in uncertainty," Revkin said in the Robert C. Barnard Environmental Lecture at AAAS headquarters in Washington, D.C. He spoke to an audience of AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellows and others ...

In his lecture, Revkin said that after covering global warming for almost 20 years, he is convinced that there will never be a time when he can write a story that states clearly that global warming "happened today." "It is never going to be the kind of story that will give you the level of certainty that everyone seems to crave," he said. "We are assaulted with complexity and uncertainty. Somehow, we need to convey that in all that information, with those question marks, there is a trajectory to knowledge." American society is uneasy with the equivocal answers that often are the best environmental scientists can provide, said Revkin. Newspapers are uncomfortable with "murk," and politicians and Congress "hate it," he said. Yet, despite the lack of crystal clarity, "you can still make decisions. Uncertainties don't let you off the hook," he said, even though some people in politics have used the uncertainties for that purpose...

The effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans is an example of how society has responded to a risky situation, he said. Since 1969, when Hurricane Camille churned ashore nearby, it was known that New Orleans "was designed to survive a hit from a Category 3 hurricane, but was now living in a Category 5 world," said Revkin. "We were willing to live with that gamble in all of the years since then, and now many people are paying the cost." In the wake of Katrina, he said, Americans must decide how to deal with risks. He said society can either make greater use of science in planning for long-term risks or "we can just hunker down and weather each storm as it comes. I am not sure which way we are going to go yet." ...

Revkin said he finds comfort in the fact that there are still scientists and other people who are trying "in an open-minded and transparent way" to understand how the environment can be preserved and who are "braving the landscape of policy." "It is very easy to be a scientist and just do your work and try to avoid (policy questions)," he said, "but it is getting harder and harder and it is also getting less and less responsible not to get into that landscape.""

Read the full AAAS news story here.

Posted on September 21, 2005 08:02 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

September 20, 2005

Dust Up Over MDGs

Amir Attaran asks in PLoS Medicine of the UN's Millennium Development Goals, "Could it be, despite an appearance of firm targets, deadlines, and focused urgency, that the MDGs are actually imprecise and possibly ineffective agents for development progress?" He answers this question with,

"I argue that many of the most important MDGs, including those to reduce malaria, maternal mortality, or tuberculosis (TB), suffer from a worrying lack of scientifically valid data. While progress on each of these goals is portrayed in time-limited and measurable terms, often the subject matter is so immeasurable, or the measurements are so inadequate, that one cannot know the baseline condition before the MDGs, or know if the desired trend of improvement is actually occurring. Although UN scientists know about these troubles, the necessary corrective steps are being held up by political interference, including by the organisation's senior leadership, who have ordered delays to amendments that could repair the MDGs. In short, five years into the MDG project, in too many cases, one cannot know if true progress towards these very important goals is occurring. Often, one has to guess."

Jeffrey Sachs and colleagues disagree, responding:

"Although Attaran raises important points on the poor quality of data for some indicators used to measure progress on the MDGs, he uses these findings to draw the wrong conclusions. Of course the data on the world's poorest people are weak, as is just about every other effort regarding the poor. Rich countries invest little in helping save the poor from dying of malaria and tuberculosis. It is therefore no surprise that developing countries and the international system lack the resources to measure the diseases' effects well. Attaran's criticisms in this regard are justified, and have been made by many others before him, including many professionals working for the UN system. The world leaders who attended the 2000 Millennium Summit committed to halve poverty in its many forms by 2015, and the MDGs are the result of that political commitment. Attaran ignores that broad goals adopted by world leaders are distinct from the technical question of how to define and measure progress toward those goals."

Attaran offers a rejoinder:

"Writing in response to my article, Jeffrey Sachs and colleagues at the UN Millennium Project, admit that my criticisms are justified. They concede that the same criticisms "have been made by many others before including many professionals working for the UN system". So it does not seem debatable that what I am arguing is truthful: that progress (if any) towards the MDGs is not being measured as the UN claims. I therefore find it hard to understand why Sachs and colleagues have sought to refute my article in such negative terms. Maybe they are rebutting its political implications, which - if you have chaired the UN Millennium Project as Sachs has - and pinned your legacy on that, must touch a nerve. Certainly they do not deny the facts underpinning my argument, which when published in PLoS Medicine referenced 41 articles. Sachs and colleagues' reply contains zero references to the literature - zero references to the evidence. A reply that contains no contrary evidence is not a rebuttal but a polemic."

Read the full text of this exchange here. From where I sit Attaran has both the moral and intellectual high ground here, concluding,

"Imagine if the US president set a Millennium Unemployment Goal to halve the number of people without jobs by 2015. Then suppose some years later, an academic asked the government: "So, how much unemployment is there?" If the government's answer were, "We never measured that, and you're right that we don't know, but shame on you for blaming us", the public outcry would be huge. So would the realisation that the government was unaccountable and disdainful of the people it is meant to protect. This is exactly where the UN finds itself today over several of its most important MDGs: it pushed for goals that its own scientists knew it could not measure. Largely it gets away with that because world's poorest people are seldom in a position to complain. Rebuking me for drawing attention to it is shooting the messenger. This does not solve the problem - which Sachs and colleagues concede exists. We all want the MDGs to succeed, but defending their existence with polemic is not the way. Setting measurable goals, measuring them to guarantee progress, and celebrating the progress as it happens - not just celebrating the goals because they are comforting - is the proper way to dignify and protect the lives of the world's neediest citizens."

Posted on September 20, 2005 07:52 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | International

September 16, 2005

Excellent Book on Think Tanks

I am overdue to comment on an excellent 2004 book by Andrew Rich, Think Tanks, Public Policy and the Politics of Expertise (Cambridge University Press). Anyone who wants to understand the evolution and role of think tanks should read this book (A sample chapter, here in PDF, whets your appetite for the whole thing. Here are some short, thought-provoking excerpts from the book:

pp. 26-27, "The greater substantive potential for policy research early on as opposed to during final deliberation and enactment is recognized by scholars. But this insight does not seem to have guided the behavior of many think tanks, at least not in the past quarter century. In the chapters that follow, I examine what account for these particular developments. I consider the paradox why, at precisely the moment when experts and those who support them are realizing their own power in policy making, those among the that are most conscious of their own potential devote effort where it can achieve the least substantive effect. This development in combination with the harm to collective reputation done by some ideological think tanks results in little evidence that, amid the proliferation of think tanks in American policy making, these think tanks and experts generally are especially - or proportionally - influential. Quite the opposite in fact: Their actual standing may be eroding just as their numbers and scholarly recognition increase."

p. 215, "When think tanks become involved in producing commentary, they abandon the most distinctive niche for experts in the policy process, the point in the process when the contributions of researchers are least contested by other types of actors. Instead, in efforts to attract attention for work that at best serves little substantive role anyway, think tanks compete with scores of non-expert actors involved in policy debates, especially interest groups and lobbyists, that almost invariable have more resources and power than they do. In the competition between interest groups and think tanks to make views influential at latter stages of policy debates, interest groups almost always win out."

p. 216, "At the beginning of the twenty-first century, research is frequently evaluated more in terms of its ideological content and accessibility to audiences than by the quality of its content."

p. 218, " the imbalance between conservative and liberal think tanks seems likely to diminish... "; p. 220, "... whether liberal think tanks become more marketing oriented or whether they increase in numbers to rival conservative organizations, I question whether it matters as much for policy making as some activists believe."

p. 220, "The biggest worry for liberals, conservatives, and scholars alike should be the trend for think tanks - and increasingly experts of all kinds - to produce research that is little more than polemical commentary. This work diminishes the potential for its producers to have substantive influence with policy makers. Even more, this work, especially in its most ideological and most aggressively marketed forms, damages the reputation of experts generally among policy makers. The distinction between experts and advocates is tenuous. As we head into the future, the weakness of that distinction presents a fundamental challenge for think tanks, experts, and those who rely on the. The weakness threatens the quality of policy produced; for if trusted research and analysis is not available, what becomes the foundation for informed policy decisions?"

For those interested in understanding think tanks in contemporary policy and politics, get the book and read it.

Posted on September 16, 2005 08:21 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Generic News Story at Work

It is good to see my generic news story on global warming from May, 2004 being put to good use by the Washington Post in a story today on the new Webster et al. paper in Science. (For those wanting to see an excellent news story on Webster et al. see Richard Kerr in Science.)

Here is the generic news story in full from Prometheus in May, 2004:

Generic News Story on Climate Change

Instructions to editor: Please repeat the below every 3-4 weeks ad infinitum.

This week the journal [Science/Nature] published a study by a team of scientists led by a [university/government lab/international group] [challenging/confirming] that the earth is warming. The new study looks at [temperature/sea level/the arctic] and finds evidence of trends that [support/challenge] the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Scientist [A, B, C], a [participant in, reviewer of] the study observed that the study, ["should bring to a close debate over global warming," "provides irrefutable evidence that global warming is [real/overstated] today," "demonstrates the value of climate science"]. Scientist [D, E, F], who has long been [critical/supportive] of the theory of global warming rebutted that the study, ["underscores that changes in [temperature/sea level/the arctic] will likely be [modest/significant]," "ignores considerable literature inconvenient to their central hypothesis," "commits a basic mistake"]. Scientist [A, B, C or D, E, F] has been criticized by [advocacy groups, reporters, scientific colleagues] for receiving funding from [industry groups, conservative think tanks]. It is unclear what the study means for U.S. participation the Kyoto Protocol, which the Bush Administration has refused to participate in. All agreed that more research is necessary.

Here is a tightly edited version of the Washington Post story:

"A new study concludes that warming sea temperatures have been accompanied by a significant global increase in the most destructive hurricanes, adding fuel to an international debate over whether global warming contributed to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. The study, published today in the journal Science ... Georgia Tech atmospheric scientist Judith A. Curry -- co-author of the study with colleagues Peter J. Webster and Hai-Ru Chang, and NCAR's Greg J. Holland -- said ... "There is increasing confidence, as the result of our study, that there's some level of greenhouse warming in what we're seeing," ... Florida State University meteorology and oceanography professor James O'Brien, who writes for the online free-market journal Tech Central Station, said his survey of government data on Atlantic storms between 1850 and 2005 shows that "there's no indication of an increase in intensity." ... Katrina reanimated a transatlantic argument over global warming policy as critics of the Bush administration have seized on it to promote mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions... Arguing that the science of global warming remains uncertain, President Bush in 2001 disavowed the Kyoto treaty that sets mandatory targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and he has pursued policies calling for more research and voluntary efforts to limit emissions."

Posted on September 16, 2005 08:16 AM View this article | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Kerr on Hurricanes and Climate Change

In Science this week, Richard Kerr has the best summary I've seen of recent scientific studies of hurricanes and climate. The occasion for Kerr's article is a study by Webster et al. on trends in strom frequencies and intensities. Here is the summary of Kerr's article, "Mounting evidence suggests that tropical cyclones around the world are intensifying, perhaps driven by greenhouse warming, but humans still have themselves to blame for rising damage." These articles are freely available here.

Posted on September 16, 2005 08:14 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

September 15, 2005

Politics and Disaster Declarations

In today's New York Times, economist Alan B. Kruger discusses our work on politics and presidential disaster declarations. Here is an excerpt:

"While no one would doubt that a disaster of the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina deserves the full commitment of the federal government, the language in the FEMA law is vague enough to count two feet of snow in Ohio as a major disaster, as was the case last December. Indeed, the law specifically prohibits the use of an "arithmetic formula or sliding scale" to deny assistance. So, disaster requests are not evaluated based on standard quantitative evidence; instead, declarations involve subjective judgment. Not surprisingly, in this vacuum presidents have displayed a tendency to declare more disasters in years when they face re-election. Mary W. Downton of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and Roger A. Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado, Boulder, for example, looked at the flood-related disasters that were declared from 1965 to 1997 in an article published in "Natural Hazards Review" in 2001. Even after accounting for the amount of precipitation and flood damage each year, they found that the average number of flood-related disasters declared by the president was 46 percent higher in election years than in other years. The tendency to declare more disasters during election years is not limited to floods. President Bill Clinton set a record by declaring 73 major disasters in 35 states and the District of Columbia in 1996, the year he was up for re-election. When George W. Bush faced re-election in 2004, he declared 61 major disasters in 36 states - 10 more than in 2003 and tied for the second highest number of major disaster declarations ever, according to data provided by FEMA. The increase from 2003 to 2004 was particularly sharp in the 12 battleground states in which the election was decided by 5 percent or less; these states had 17 major disasters declared in 2004 but only 8 in 2003, and, therefore, accounted for 90 percent of the increase."

The paper that Professor Krueger references is this one:

Downton, M. and R.A. Pielke, Jr., 2001: Discretion Without Accountability: Politics, Flood Damage, and Climate, Natural Hazards Review, 2(4):157-166. (PDF)

[Note: The Garrett and Sobel article referred to by Krueger can be found here and a prepublication version of the same study here (PDF).]

Posted on September 15, 2005 08:31 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

Part III: Historical economic losses from floods - Where does Katrina rank?

In Part I and Part II of his series we discussed some of the methodological challenges in quantifying economic impacts and sought to place Katrina into the context of historical hurricanes. Katrina holds the distinction of not only being one of the most costly hurricanes on record, but also one of the most costly floods.

In its tabulation of losses from extreme weather events, the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) has historically distinguished hurricane damages from flood damages. In a research report to NOAA on flood damage that we completed several years ago we characterized the distinction as follows:

"[Flooding includes] river and coastal flooding, rainwater flooding on level surfaces and low-gradient slopes, flooding in shallow depressions which is caused by water-table rise, and flooding caused by the backing-up or overflow of artificial drainage systems. The NWS includes damage from most types of flooding listed above, but excludes ocean floods caused by severe wind (storm surge) or tectonic activity (tsunami)." The NWS also excludes mudslides from its flood damage totals.

In that report we reanalyzed the historical flood damage record of the NWS by going into NWS archives, exploring historical media reports and cross checking federal and state damage estimates. We think the resulting dataset is the best single source of information on flood damage available in the United States. You can see it here - www.flooddamagedata.org

The data from our report can be converted to 2004 dollars by using the implicit price deflators found in Table B-3 of the Economic Report of the President (multiply 1995 dollars by 1.175 to get 2004 dollars). In millions of $2004 the ten largest flood-damage years from the period 1929-2003 are as follows:

1993: $20,039
1972 : $15,940
1997 : $10,135
1986 : $9,022
1979 : $7,920
2001 : $7,568
1996 : $7,059
1951 : $6,576
1973 : $6,134
1983 : $6,130

But as we have often discussed here, such measures can be misleading because there are profound societal changes that occur over a period of decades. One way to reduce the effects of societal changes is to look at damages per capita. Here are the top 10 flood years 1929-2003 measured on a per capita basis:

1993: $77.74
1972 : $75.94
1951 : $42.46
1997 : $37.85
1986 : $37.57
1937 : $36.11
1979 : $35.19
1965 : $30.20
1973 : $28.95
1955 : $27.31

Damage per capita still underestimates the effects of societal changes, as not only has the population changed, but it has overall become much more wealthy over time, resulting in the potential for much larger losses today than in the past. One way to further adjust the data is to look at damage per unit of national wealth. This graph (PDF) shows this data, and suggests that even as floods have increased in their total costs, their economic effects have diminished as a fraction of wealth.

We strongly encourage anyone who wants to use this data to become familiar with its strengths and limitations which are discussed here and in the publications listed below.

The flooding associated with Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans is, as we've discussed, a very unique case. The only parts of the total event that would be appropriate to include in this database (aside from inland flooding away from the Gulf) would likely be the levee breaks in New Orleans. And even then, if the levee breaks were determined to be the result of storm surge, then the flooding might then be judged an orange in this basket of apples.

But for the sake of discussion, let's assume that the flooding of New Orleans is indeed classified as flood damages and not hurricane damages. At any of the estimates currently available for the costs of draining and rebuilding New Orleans, Katrina's flooding will shatter the record for annual flood costs and per capita flood costs. Under such an allocation of costs, Katrina would likely be listed as the second most costly hurricane on record (after 1926 Miami) and the worst flood event on record. The total damages would thus be a combination of both types of loss estimates. If this seems a be convoluted, I'd agree, but we are constrained in our historical analyses by the methods used to assess damage over time. This is why great caution is needed in assessing Katrina's damages for the purposes of comparing the event with past storms.

For more information on flood damages please have a look at the following:

http://www.flooddamagedata.org

Downton, M., J. Z. B. Miller and R. A. Pielke, Jr., 2005. Reanalysis of U.S. National Weather Service Flood Loss Database, Natural Hazards Review, 6:13-22. (PDF)

Downton, M. and R. A. Pielke, Jr., 2005. How Accurate are Disaster Loss Data? The Case of U.S. Flood Damage, Natural Hazards, Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 211-228. (PDF)

And to see how flood damage has varied with climate trends, please see this paper:

Pielke, Jr., R.A., and M.W. Downton, 2000: Precipitation and Damaging Floods: Trends in the United States, 1932-97. Journal of Climate, 13(20), 3625-3637. (PDF)

Posted on September 15, 2005 08:21 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

September 13, 2005

Of Blinders and Innumeracy

Elizabeth Kolbert has an article in the New Yorker on everyone’s favorite topic these days, hurricanes and global warming. The article is amazing because even though the data is staring Kolbert right in the face, she apparently cannot bring herself to grasp its implications for her argument.

Kolbert describes the problem: “In June, the Association of British Insurers issued a report forecasting that, owing to climate change, losses from hurricanes in the U.S., typhoons in Japan, and windstorms in Europe were likely to increase by more than sixty per cent in the coming decades. (The report calculated that insured losses from extreme storms—those expected to occur only once every hundred to two hundred and fifty years—could rise to as much as a hundred and fifty billion dollars.) The figures did not take into account the expected increase in the number and wealth of people living in storm-prone areas; correcting for such increases, the losses are likely to be several hundred per cent higher.”

Let’s first do some fact checking and take a look at what the Association of British Insurers report (PDF) actually says. Table 6.4 on p. 25 indicates that the ABI analysis shows a current total loss baseline of $16.5 billion for U.S. hurricanes, Japanese typhoons and European windstorms. And on p. 23 it notes that “If carbon dioxide concentrations doubled, total average annual damages from US hurricanes, Japanese typhoons and European windstorms combined could increase by up to $10.5 bn (¥1140 bn, €8.5 bn) from a baseline of about $16.5 bn today, representing an increase of around 65%.” So this is where she gets the more than sixty percent figure. So far so good, although the projected date for these changes in into the 2080s, a little bit further on than “coming decades.” But let’s move on.

But where does the number come from for the effects of societal changes, which she describes as likely to be “several hundred percent higher”? One has to go to the supplementary information to the report (PDF) to find this information. At p. 41 tables 3.8 and 3.9 one finds the data on projected wealth and population growth. Based on the numbers here, the combined effects of population and wealth on storm damages, independent of climate changes, would result in 2085 in total damages of $81.8 billion for U.S. hurricanes, Japanese typhoons and European windstorms, or an increase of $65.3 billion over the 2004 baseline. This is an increase of more than 600%, quite a bit larger than the “several hundred percent” reported by Kolbert.

Now, I do have some questions about the ABI study, which would be worth revisiting in the future, such as why it projects a combined annual rate of increase in wealth and population of only 2% for these regions. (The ABI seems unfazed by the apparent contradictory information it presents: “If Hurricane Andrew had hit Florida in 2002 rather than 1992, the losses would have been double, due to increased coastal development and rising asset values.” This represents about an 8% annual increase.) Also, The ABI’s estimates for increasing damages related to wind storms is roughly an order of magnitude larger than projected by the IPCC in its SAR. Reports such as those produced by the ABI can be extremely valuable, but they’d be more readily understood and placed into context if their analyses were submitted to the peer-reviewed literature.

But let’s press ahead. Kolbert’s column understates what the report actually says about the effects of growing population and wealth by a factor of 3. The ABI finds that future losses to wind storms are about 10 times more sensitive to societal factors than to climate factors. Yet even using the wrong numbers Kolbert writes a paragraph that clearly acknowledges the dominant role of societal changes in shaping future windstorm damages. And yet, when it comes to discussing policy options she focuses exclusively on the less significant factor:

“As the rest of the world has adopted Kyoto—earlier this year, the treaty became binding on the hundred and forty nations that had ratified it—these arguments have become increasingly indefensible, and the President has fallen back on what one suspects was his real objection all along: complying with the agreement would be expensive. “The Kyoto treaty didn’t suit our needs,” Bush blurted out during a British-television interview a couple of months ago. As Katrina indicates, this argument, too, is empty. It’s not acting to curb greenhouse-gas emissions that’s likely to prove too costly; it’s doing nothing.”

I do think that there is more than just political opportunism at work here. I simply don’t think that people are prepared to see the numbers right before their eyes. Part of this dynamic must be the effects of starting with a solution (greenhouse gas reductions) and searching for justifications, but part also must be related to the lure of silver bullet policy solutions rather than the difficult, yet mundane challenges of addressing the day-to-day decisions that cumulatively result in a tremendous increase in vulnerability to disasters. But if we are to address the ever-growing vulnerability of society to weather disasters we cannot continue to ignore the obvious.

Posted on September 13, 2005 07:41 PM View this article | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

New Center Website

Thanks to our webmaster extraordinaire, Mark Lohaus, we have a new design for the website of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research.

Please check it out and feedback is appreciated:

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/

Posted on September 13, 2005 09:54 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

September 12, 2005

Some Thoughtful Perspectives

Chip Geller and Dave Roberts from Grist have a nice piece in the 11 September 2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Here is an excerpt:

"If we could travel back in time 10 years, even 20, and work to prevent last week's misery and loss, reducing greenhouse-gas emissions would be far down the list of pragmatic preventative strategies. We'd start instead with reinforcement of New Orleans' levees, restoration of coastal wetlands, upgrades to regional emergency-response programs, maintenance of FEMA's independence and integrity, meaningful anti-poverty programs and the election of a commander in chief who wasn't so obviously in over his head. The wind and rain may have been natural, but Katrina was very much a human disaster, rotten with racism, willful neglect and criminal incompetence."

Paul Recer also has a very nice essay in today's Slate (Thanks DOK). Here is an excerpt:

"Until the science clarifies, environmental groups that use Katrina as a way to boost their campaign for tougher controls on greenhouse emissions risk provoking a backlash. Exploiting bad news and facile pseudoscience to seek support and fresh donations is a good way to lose credibility. Greenpeace, for instance, looked foolish when it denounced genetically modified foods as "Frankenfoods" that can potentially harm human health. The Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, a respected independent advisory group, concluded in 2004 that foods created by gene manipulation were no more dangerous than crops altered by traditional breeding methods. The animal-rights movement suffered a similar embarrassment when it argued against using laboratory animals for medical research by claiming that computer modeling could accomplish the same research goals as living animals. Donald Kennedy, executive editor in chief of the journal Science, called the claim "a remarkable piece of science fiction."

Environmentalists who want to leverage Katrina are on far more solid ground scientifically and economically in going after the state and federal rules that permit people to build in harm's way. Population growth along the U.S. coastline has exploded in recent years-13 million people now live in Florida's coastal counties alone compared to only about 200,000 a century ago. A USA Today study concluded that about 1,000 people move into U.S. coastal counties each day. The denser population makes the areas more difficult to evacuate: Officials told the Washington Post that it now takes twice as long to evacuate Biloxi and Gulfport, Miss., as it did 10 years ago."

Posted on September 12, 2005 04:53 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

Kristof on Hurricanes

In his column yesterday, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof jumps on the bandwagon suggesting that greenhouse gas policies can be used as a tool to modulate future hurricane behavior. We've covered this subject in some detail here, but there are two points worth making on this column.

First, Kristof goes out of his way to avoid the obvious issue of societal vulnerability. He quoted Kerry Emanuel as follows: "My results suggest that future warming may lead to ... a substantial increase in hurricane-related losses in the 21st century." Kristof's ellipses significantly change the meaning of Emanuel's statement. Here is the full quote from Emanuel's paper (PDF), including the information replaced by Kristof with ellipses, "My results suggest that future warming may lead to an upward trend in tropical cyclone destructive potential, and-taking into account an increasing coastal population- a substantial increase in hurricane-related losses in the twenty- first century." This is playing a bit fast and loose with Emanuel's statement, given that Emanuel says elsewhere, "For U.S.-centric concerns over the next 30-50 years, by far the most important hurricane problem we face is demographic and political." Of course, as we've documented here, for at least the next half century and probably longer, societal vulnerability to hurricanes dominates any projected greenhouse gas effects, so in an essay advocating greenhouse gases as a tool of disaster management, it is obvious why Kristof would want to pretend that this issue doesn't exist.

Second, Kristof relies on the opinions of scientists rather than what you find in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. Now, the scientists that he cites are surely very intelligent people, and the peer reviewed literature has its own flaws, and of course Kristof is a columnist not an IPCC contributor. But it seems to me that we have the peer-reviewed literature for a reason, and that in general it is likely a more reliable guide to what we know than predictions of smart scientists as to what future research will reveal. Kristof relies on the opinions of smart people whose views are convenient to his argument, and ignores the opinions of smart people whose views are inconvenient. This is called cherry picking. One way to adjudicate among different opinions of scientists is to consult the peer-reviewed scientific literature (this is of course what the IPCC does), and when there are different perspectives in the peer-reviewed literature, then that is a reality of science.

Over the last few weeks it has become apparent to me that the controversy over hurricanes and global warming exists because different scientists have different views as to what future research will reveal, and they have been outspoken in advancing these opinions. Bill Gray, for example, expects future research to reveal no discernible connection between hurricanes and global warming. By contrast, Kevin Trenberth believes that a connection will be found. Future research will help to clarify this dispute. But if one takes a look at the peer-reviewed science available today (and later this week), there is in fact a clear consensus on this subject.

In his column Kristof cites the useful, but non-peer-reviewed Real Climate weblog and Emanuel speculating that, "The large upswing [in the PDI] in the last decade is unprecedented, and probably reflects the effect of global warming." This last statement is what scientists call a hypothesis. It may in fact be correct. Bill Gray may also be proven correct. To address such divergent views is one reason why we do research in the first place. We could save a lot of money in research funding if we substituted scientific opinions for research. But lets be very clear --- as of today, as we documented in our BAMS paper, research has not been conducted that would allow for a definitive conclusion on these different opinions on hurricanes and global warming. And unless there are some surprises in the publication pipeline, it does not look like there will be any peer-reviewed scientific studies available by the end of 2005, and thus available to the next IPCC, that clarify the issue of attribution of greenhouse gas effects on hurricanes.

Scientists would do themselves and decision makers a favor by clearly identifying knowledge that can be supported by the peer-reviewed literature and that which is based on opinions by scientists as to what future research will reveal. Our forthcoming BAMS paper on hurricanes and global warming should be interpreted as an assessment of what statements can be made based on the peer-reviewed literature available today. Some scientists of course want to make stronger statements, on one side or the other, and they of course have every right to, but they should be careful to qualify such statements as hypotheses or statements of expectation and not of findings. Otherwise, if scientists' opinions are as good a basis of knowledge as peer-reviewed studies, then what is the point of the peer-reviewed literature at all?

Posted on September 12, 2005 07:46 AM View this article | Comments (14) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters | Environment

September 09, 2005

Part II - Historical economic losses from hurricanes - Where does Katrina fit?

[Note: See the bottom of this post for links to further reading from the peer-reviewed literature]

In purely economic terms, Katrina is certain to be among the costliest disasters in history. As Part I of this series observed, understanding the magnitude of disaster losses is important for a wide range of decisions, including evaluating the effectiveness of disaster mitigation and understanding trends in vulnerability. This post describes the historical record of hurricane damages and seeks to place Katrina's economic impact, at least given what is presently known, into historical context.

Current estimates for the losses associated with Katrina are in the range of $100-$150 billion. For reasons discussed below, this may be an oranges to apples comparison with the longer term historical record on hurricanes. But lets set this aside for the moment and use $125 billion as the total impact of Katrina. (read to the end for a discussion of why these estimates may not be a good comparison with past events.)

Katrina represents, by far, the single largest hurricane disaster in U.S. history. Based on data (PDF) available from the National Hurricane Center (NHC), here are the top 5 storms ranked by total damage in 2004 dollars:

1. Katrina $125B
2. Andrew $26.5B
3. Charlie $15B
4. Ivan $14.2B
5. Frances $8.9B

But frequent readers here will know that simply looking at the total costs can be misleading because storms that hit is the past encountered very different levels of development and population along the coast. Hence, storms of the past would undoubtedly cause far more damage were they to hit with today's levels of coastal development. To account for this Chris Landsea and I developed a methodology for "normalizing" historical losses to present day values (see this paper in PDF). We think that the data represents a fair adjustment to the data because we can identify a climate signal in the resulting dataset (i.e., the ENSO signal, see this paper in PDF and the data are consistent with the estimates of catastrophe models used in the insurance industry, see this paper in PDF) Once the data are adjusted to 2004 values a different picture emerges on the impacts of historical storms. Here is data (in PDF) from the NHC, including Katrina:

1. Katrina $125B
2. 1926 Miami $102B
3. Andrew $43B
4. Galveston 1900 $38B
5. Galveston 1915 $32B

And if you take a close look at this ranking you'll see that only 5 of the top 20 most damaging storms occurred since 1970! We are in the process of updating our analysis of normalized losses and hope to have an updated database following hurricane season this year.

But is $125 billion an accurate estimate for Katrina? Damage estimates are not precise and estimates for individual storms can have large errors (e.g., see this paper in PDF). Consider for example how the total damage for Ivan (2004) was determined. The NHC often uses a simple estimate that total damages are equal to twice the insured damages (and there is empirical evidence to suggest that this is a reasonable assumption, see this paper in PDF). Consider this from the 2004 NHC report on Ivan which describes how the $14.2 billion estimate was arrived at:

"A total of 686,700 claims were filed and the American Insurance Services Group estimates (14 December 2004 re-survey) that insured losses in the United States from Hurricane Ivan totaled $7.11 billion, of which more than $4 billion occurred in Florida alone. Using a two-to-one ratio of insured damages yields an estimated U.S. loss of approximately $14.2 billion."

But this approach can be inaccurate when there are unprecedented federal disaster packages such as we see with Katrina. This creates several problems for our normalized database that we will have to grapple with as we update the data this year. First, large federal disaster packages are a product of the late 20th century (see, e.g., this paper in PDF). There were no such packages before 1950 and without a doubt the costs of, say, the 1926 Miami storm would be far higher today than we estimate simply because of this factor. Second, federal costs throw off the relationship of insured to total losses. I have seen insurance industry loss estimates of up to $30 billion. This would suggest, under the methods used by the NHC to estimate losses in recent decades, that Katrina's total impact would be about $60 billion. Of course the disaster in New Orleans is extremely unique. So we will have to grapple with these issues as we consider how best to add Katrina to the hurricane loss database, and what, if any adjustments should result to estimates from the distant past.

For now, I'd urge some caution in comparing Katrina directly to historical hurricanes. It is certainly safe to say that it is one of the top two most costly storms in the normalized database, and one can make a good argument for it being number one. But we also have to recognize that historical losses (pre-1950) may significantly underestimate the total costs of storms today, particularly for those storms with the largest impacts because of the large role played by the federal government today in disaster assistance.

For further reading (available here):

Pielke, Jr., R. A., and C. W. Landsea, 1998: Normalized Hurricane Damages in the United States: 1925-95. Weather and Forecasting, American Meteorological Society, Vol. 13, 621-631.

Pielke, Jr., R.A., and C.W. Landsea, 1999: La Nia, El Nio, and Atlantic Hurricane Damages in the United States. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 80, 10, 2027-2033.

Downton, M. and R.A. Pielke, Jr., 2001: Discretion Without Accountability: Politics, Flood Damage, and Climate, Natural Hazards Review, 2(4):157-166.

Downton, M. and R. A. Pielke, Jr., 2005. How Accurate are Disaster Loss Data? The Case of U.S. Flood Damage, Natural Hazards, Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 211-228.

Posted on September 9, 2005 09:03 AM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

September 08, 2005

Theodicy

There is a very interesting article in today's New York Times on the notion of "theodicy" a term "coined in the 18th century by the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, derives from Greek roots invoking the "justice of the gods." A theodicy is an attempt to show that such justice exists, to prove that we really do live in what Leibniz insisted was the "best of all possible worlds.""

Here is an excerpt:

"Recently, the philosopher Susan Neiman argued in "Evil in Modern Thought" that the Lisbon earthquake also destroyed an ancient idea that nature could itself be evil. After Lisbon, she argued, moral evil was distinguished from natural disaster. Earthquakes and floods could no longer be fitted into traditional religious theodicies.

But this did not mean, of course, that theodicies faded away. Ms. Neiman argued that for philosophers theology had been replaced by history. The fates of peoples and nations reflected other forces, and disruptions were given other forms of explanation. Hegel saw history as an evolutionary series of transformations in which destruction was as inevitable as birth. Marx believed other kinds of economic and human laws accounted for destruction and evolution. This mostly left natural disasters for the growing realm of science: if they couldn't be prevented, at least their origins could be understood.

Now though, with the prospect of thousands of dead becoming plausible with reports from New Orleans, other forms of theodicy also taking shape. Much debate is taking place about the scale of human tragedy, about procedures and planning and responsibility. And none of that should be ignored. But it is remarkable how this natural disaster has almost imperceptibly come to seem the result of human agency, as if failures in planning were almost evidence of cause, as if forces of nature were subject to human oversight. The hurricane has been humanized.

I don't want to push this too far, of course; human actions, as the Portuguese prime minister knew, are crucial. But this is still an important change in our views of the natural world. In a way, it inflates human knowledge. It confidently extends scientific and political power into the realm of nature. It doesn't really explain catastrophe, but it attempts to explain why we are forced to experience it: because of human failings.

There is a theodicy at work here, in the ways in which the reaction to natural catastrophe so readily becomes political. Nature becomes something to be managed or mismanaged; it lies within the political order, not outside it. Theodicy, if successful, does not overturn belief but confirms it. So, for some commentators, the flood and its aftermath provided confirmation of their previous doubts about the Bush adminstration.

Actually, in some respects, this theodicy has gone even beyond the political: just as a religious theodicy might have shown natural catastrophe to be the result of human misdeed, many of the early commentators about the flood did the same, creating a kind of scientific/moral theodicy in which human sin is still a dominant factor. Last week, for example, Germany's minister of the environment, Jürgen Trittin, said: "The American president has closed his eyes to the economic and human damage that natural catastrophes such as Katrina - in other words, disasters caused by a lack of climate protection measures - can visit on his country."

All of these explanations are subject to examination and debate of course, but in the heart of a secular age, they are also something else. They are theodicies. And in the face of nature's awesome and horrific powers, the prospect of political retribution is as prevalent as the promise of divine retribution once was."

Posted on September 8, 2005 01:03 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

Theodicy

Here is an excerpt:

Posted on September 8, 2005 01:03 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Disasters

Manufactured Controversy: Comments on Today's Chronicle Article

Richard Monastersky has a lengthy article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that discusses at length our forthcoming paper in BAMS on hurricanes and global warming. Monasterky's article includes some very good reporting, particularly at the end, but it also contains some very significant errors and mischaracterizations in the early sections that I address below. The article is most accurate beginning with the Section titled "Hot Air." My main complaint with the article is that it seeks to create the appearance of a conflict where, at least from the text of our BAMS paper, one does not exist.

1. Monastersky starts the article by saying, "When it came to global warming and hurricanes, Kerry A. Emanuel used to be a skeptic." This is an odd choice of words. Emanuel, in his own words is outside the current scientific consensus on this subject, writing of his recent study, "It is not surprising, therefore, that what I have come to believe is at odds with any reasonable consensus." It seems to me that the term "skeptic" should be reserved for those who are challenging a current consensus, rather than as Monastersky would have it, anyone who doesn't believe that global warming affects (fill in the blank). Otherwise, the term "skeptic" becomes a political label. On hurricanes and global warming it is Emanuel who has described himself skeptical of the current consensus.

2. Monastersky characterizes our BAMS paper as "dismissing the idea that climate change would make hurricanes significantly more dangerous." This is a significant misrepresentation of our paper. Our abstract is considerably more nuanced than this, "Looking to the future, until scientists conclude (a) that there will be changes to storms that are significantly larger than observed in the past, (b) that such changes are correlated to measures of societal impact, and (c) that the effects of such changes are significant in the context of inexorable growth in population and property at risk, then it is reasonable to conclude that the significance of any connection of human-caused climate change to hurricane impacts necessarily has been and will continue to be exceedingly small." This is not a dismissal but a frank acknowledgement of the conditions under which we would expect to see a larger significance of the connections of hurricanes and climate change. Monastersky has grossly misrepresented our paper.

3. Monastersky writes, "He withdrew his name from the forthcoming paper that plays down global warming's influence on hurricanes. Then he published a new study in Nature last month, proclaiming the opposite conclusion." No. No. No. Emanuel's paper is not "opposite" of our BAMS paper. We acknowledge the Emanuel paper in our paper and write that Emanuel (2005) is "suggestive" of a connection between hurricanes and global warming. That is hardly opposite. Monasterky is creating a conflict where none exists. Our paper does not "play down" the effect of global warming and hurricanes; it is an accurate assessment of the current literature. Monastersky is creating a straw man.

4. Monastersky contradicts himself in trying to create a conflict where none exists. He writes,

"On one side stand Mr. Emanuel and other researchers who use computer models to predict storm behavior. They see signs that a hotter climate will brew more-damaging storms. On the other side, Mr. Emanuel's former co-authors argue that global warming will have little or no influence on storms. "It seems pretty clear, looking back in time from the perspective of damages, we're not going to find a large change in the behavior of storms," says Roger A. Pielke Jr., an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the lead author of the paper that Mr. Emanuel had once supported."

There are two points here. One is that our paper does not (!) say that global warming will have "little or no influence on storms". Again this is a gross mischaracterization of what we have written. We cite the exact same literature that Emanuel does to describe current projections for future effects of climate change on storms (e.g., Knutson and Tuleya). There is agreement on this point. Second, on the relative effects of climate changes versus societal changes on future damages Emanuel agrees completely with our assessment. Here is what Monasterky writes later in the article, "Nonetheless, [Emanuel] agrees with his former co-authors that the most important factor for increased damage in the near term is coastal development, along with related societal forces." Also, here is what Emanuel says on his WWW page, "There is a huge upward trend in hurricane damage in the U.S., but all or almost all of this is due to increasing coastal population and building in hurricane-prone areas. When this increase in population and wealth is accounted for, there is no discernible trend left in the hurricane damage data." Monastersky is trying to play "one side" against the "other side" but this is simply inaccurate. Both "sides," such as they are, agree that climate change may affect hurricanes and also that societal changes will continue to dominate the damage record decades into the future. This represents a consensus, not conflict. (Also, a small error, I am a full professor, not associate professor.) Emanuel and Landsea may disagree with the merits of Emanuel (2005) and they can play that out in the peer-reviewed literature in the future. None of their disagreement appears in our BAMS paper, because it doesn't appear in the peer-reviewed literature.

5. We submitted the paper originally Nature, not Science as Monastersky reports, and the paper was not sent out for review as being "too specialized" and more appropriate for the disciplinary literature.

Overall, I am disappointed by this piece because it reports this issue in terms of a conflict that doesn't exist. The real story here is one of consensus on important issues. But I guess that just isn't as sexy a story.

Posted on September 8, 2005 10:21 AM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

New Chairman Bioethics Council

The editors of the American Journal of Bioethics report that Leon Kass, current chair of the President’s Bioethics Council, will be replaced by Edmund Pellegrino. They offer a very positive reaction to the news, and a clear slap at Kass:

“It is possible to gush about the White House's decision - a rare opportunity these days - in part because Pellegrino is a good, honest and kind person, but also because Pellegrino is not afraid to engage his academic peers and will not operate like a cheerleader for the administration, nor will he treat the Council like an oversized ethics seminar for neoconservatives. So, for example, I do not expect to hear that the American Enterprise Institute is going to be selling the products of the deliberations by the Council in the future. The sun will never rise on a day where Edmund Pellegrino lobbies Congress as a "private Citizen" for a "second term bioethics agenda," or writes Op Eds defending Presidential stem cell policy while sitting as Chair during a Presidential election year.”

We discussed Leon Kass several times over the past year (here and here). It will be interesting to see what role the Council will play in advising the President under Pellegrino.

Posted on September 8, 2005 07:53 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health

September 07, 2005

Correction of Misquote in AP Story

It has been called to my attention that a widely-circulated AP story article from September 1, 2005 by Joe Verrengia has this statement:

"Roger Pielke Jr., who studies the social impacts of natural disasters and climate change at the University of Colorado, said any link between the intensity of Katrina and other recent hurricanes and global warming is "premature.""

This not quite accurate - the difference here is between "hurricanes" and "hurricane impacts". Here is what we say in our BAMS paper (PDF) on this, and presumably where the reference to "premature" comes from:

"To summarize, claims of linkages between global warming and hurricane impacts are premature for three reasons. First, no connection has been established between greenhouse gas emissions and the observed behavior of hurricanes (IPCC 2001; Walsh 2004). Emanuel (2005) is suggestive of such a connection, but is by no means definitive. In the future, such a connection may be established (e.g., in the case of the observations of Emanuel 2005 or the projections of Knutson and Tuleya 2004) or made in the context of other metrics of tropical cyclone intensity and duration that remain to be closely examined. Second, the peer-reviewed literature reflects a scientific consensus exists that any future changes in hurricane intensities will likely be small in the context of observed variability (Knutson and Tuleya 2004, Henderson-Sellers et al 1998), while the scientific problem of tropical cyclogenesis is so far from being solved that little can be said about possible changes in frequency. And third, under the assumptions of the IPCC, expected future damages to society of its projected changes in the behavior of hurricanes are dwarfed by the influence of its own projections of growing wealth and population (Pielke at al. 2000). While future research or experience may yet overturn these conclusions, the state of knowledge today is such that while there are good reasons to expect that any conclusive connection between global warming and hurricanes or their impacts will not be made in the near term."

And Kerry Emanuel says something quite similar on this subject:

"There is a huge upward trend in hurricane damage in the U.S., but all or almost all of this is due to increasing coastal population and building in hurricane-prone areas. When this increase in population and wealth is accounted for, there is no discernible trend left in the hurricane damage data. Nor would we expect to see any, in spite of the increase in global hurricane power. The reason is a simple matter of statistics: There are far too few hurricane landfalls to be able to discern any trend. Consider that, up until Katrina, Hurricane Andrew was the costliest hurricane in U.S. history. But it occurred in an inactive year; there were only 7 hurricanes and tropical storms. Data on U.S. landfalling storms is only about 2 tenths of one percent of data we have on global hurricanes over their whole lifetimes. Thus while we can already detect trends in data for global hurricane activity considering the whole life of each storm, we estimate that it would take at least another 50 years to detect any long-term trend in U.S. landfalling hurricane statistics, so powerful is the role of chance in these numbers."

Posted on September 7, 2005 11:02 AM View this article | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

September 06, 2005

Making sense of economic impacts - Comparing apples with apples

For further reading:

Downton, M., J. Z. B. Miller and R. A. Pielke, Jr., 2005. Reanalysis of U.S. National Weather Service Flood Loss Database, Natural Hazards Review, 6:13-22. (PDF)

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 2000: Flood Impacts on Society: Damaging Floods as a Framework for Assessment. Chapter 21 in D. Parker (ed.), Floods. Routledge Press: London, 133-155. (PDF)

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 1997: The Social and Economic Impacts of Weather Workshop Report, ESIG/NCAR, Boulder, CO, May.

Accurate estimates of the economic impacts of a disaster's impacts are important for a number of practical reasons. In 1999, the National Research Council (NRC) issued a report titled, "The Impacts of Natural Disasters: A Framework for Loss Estimation" which stated that such data would be useful in making decisions about disasters:

" ... a baseline set of loss data, together with cost and benefit estimates of alternative mitigation measures, would allow the federal government and individuals and firms in the private sector to design and implement cost-effective strategies for mitigating the losses from natural disasters. Insurers could certainly use the data to improve their estimates of future payouts associated with disasters. And researchers and experts in disaster loss estimation could benefit from a standardized data base that would enable them to improve estimates of both the direct and indirect losses of disasters. These improvements in turn would assist policymakers in their efforts to devise policies to reduce the losses caused by future disasters. Beyond providing an indicator of total natural disaster losses to the nation, the framework for loss estimation described in this report would also provide detailed information on losses. A better understanding of issues such as who bears disaster losses, what are the main types of damages in different disasters, and how those losses differ spatially, are of critical importance in making decisions about allocating resources for mitigation, research, and response."

However, the NRC also found, "Despite the frequency and expenses of natural disasters, there exists no system in either the public or private sector for consistently compiling information about their economic impacts." The NRC's conclusions have been echoed by reports from the Heinz Center, Rand (prepared for OSTP), and from scholars such as Mileti, Hooke and Changnon. To date, no such database exists. A good deal of my own research over the past ten years has been motivated by this situation.

Tabulating economic losses is not straightforward. Damage estimates are a function of what is counted, how it is counted, over a certain time and space. In what follows, I present an excerpt from our 1997 book on hurricanes that briefly describes some of the methodological challenges of damage estimation and tabulation. Tomorrow we'll start looking at some actual data.

For those of you who would like a reference to the discussion below, a version of the below also appeared as a short essay in 1997. Here is that reference:

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 1997: Trends in Hurricane Impacts in the United States. Crop Insurance Today, 30(3), 8-10,18. ( PDF, apologies for the poor quality of the copy)

Begin extended excerpt -----------------------------

In the aftermath of any extreme event there is a demand for a bottom-line measure of damages in dollars. There are many valid ways to measure the costs of a hurricane. Any assessment of impacts resulting in a estimate of total damages associated with a disaster must pay explicit attention to assumptions guiding the analysis in order to facilitate interpretation of the estimate. The analyst needs to pay attention to five factors that can undermine damage assessment: Contingency, Quantification, Attribution, Aggregation, and Comparison.

Contingency: The Problem of Multiple-Order Impacts

When a hurricane strikes a community, it leaves an obvious path of destruction. As a result of high winds and water from a storm surge, homes, businesses, and crops may be destroyed or damaged, public infrastructure may also be compromised, and people may suffer injuries or loss of life. Such obvious impacts can be called "direct impacts" because of the close connection between event and damages. The costs associated with direct impacts are generally easiest to assess because they come in discrete quantities. Federal insurance payouts are one measure of direct impacts, as are federal aid, public infrastructure reconstruction, and debris removal. Table 1 (expressed in curren-tyear dollars) shows the direct impacts associated with Andrew's landfall in south Florida in August 1992.

Secondary impacts are those that are related to the direct impacts of a hurricane. Generally, secondary impacts result in the days and weeks following a hurricane's passage. For example, a hurricane may destroy a water treatment plant (Changnon 1996). The direct impact is the cost associated with rebuilding the plant; secondary impacts might include the costs associated with providing fresh water for local citizens. In general, such secondary impacts are more difficult to assess because they require estimation and are part of an existing social process; e.g., estimating the costs of providing fresh water in lieu of that which would have been provided by the plant requires some sense of what would have occurred without the hurricane's impact.

Further order impacts on time scales of months and years occur and can easily be imagined. For example, a hurricane may destroy a number of businesses in a community resulting in a decrease in tourist visits, which in turn leads to a shortfall in sales tax collection. As a result, community services that had been funded from sales tax revenues may suffer, leading to further social disruption and thus additional costs.

Estimation of the costs associated with such impacts is difficult to accomplish with much certainty because of numerous confounding factors. In short, a hurricane serves as a shock to a community that leaves various impacts which reverberate through the social system for short and long periods. Pulling the signal of the reverberations from the noise of ongoing social processes becomes increasingly difficult, as the impact becomes further removed in time and in causation from the event's direct impacts.

Attribution: The Problem of Causation

Related to contingency is attribution. In the aftermath of a natural disaster people are quick to place blame on nature: "The hurricane caused billions of dollars in damages." However, it is often the case that "natural" disasters are a consequence of human failures. Damage is often a result of poor decisions of the past and inadequate preparation rather than simply the overwhelming forces of nature. It is often at the intersection of extreme events and poor preparation that a disaster occurs. An important aspect of learning from a hurricane is to understand what damages and casualties might have been preventable and which were not. Gross tabulations of damages neglect the question of why damage occurred, and often implicitly place blame on nature rather that ourselves.

Quantification: The Problem of Measurement

How much is a life worth? Or put in practical terms, How much public money are people willing to pay to save one more life in the face of an environmental hazard? According to a review by Fischer et al. (1989) the public assigns between $2.0 million and $10.9 million as the value of a human life. The difficulties associated with assigning an economic value to a human life is representative of the more general problem of assessing many of the costs associated with a hurricane's impact. Similar questions might include: What is the value of a lost ecosystem, park, or unrecoverable time in school, etc.? What are the costs associated with psychological trauma? The difficulties in quantifying the cost of a life are representative of the more general problem of placing a dollar value on damages that are not directly economic in nature.

A hurricane impacts many aspects of society that are not explicitly associated with an economic measure (e.g., well-being). As a consequence, any comprehensive economic measurement of a hurricane's impact necessitates the quantification of costs associated with subjective losses. Therefore, the assumptions that one brings to assessment of value can affect the bottom line. Care must be taken to make such assumptions explicit in the analysis.

Aggregation: The Problem of Benefits and Spatial Scale

Hurricanes are not all costs; however estimates of impacts rarely consider benefits. Consider the following example: Following a hurricane that severely damages agricultural productivity in a region, commodity prices rise nationwide. Thus, while farmers in the affect region see losses, farmers outside of the region may actually see significant benefits due to the hurricane. At a national level the hurricane may thus have net economic benefits.

The example of farmers seeing gains or losses, depending upon where they farm, points to two sorts of issues: benefits and spatial scale. Arguably, following every disaster some individuals and groups realize benefits in some way from the event. Should such benefits be subtracted from a hurricane's total impact? Further, the picture of damages depends upon the scale of the analysis. For the same event a county may experience complete devastation, the state moderate impacts, and the nation positive benefits.

Transfers of wealth through disaster aid further complicate the picture. Because there are multiple valid spatial scales from which to view a hurricane's impacts careful attention must be paid to the purposes of loss estimates. Furthermore, it is important to remember that impacts go beyond those things that can be expressed in dollars -- Suffering and hardship are losses independent of scale.

Comparison: The Problem of Demographic Change

As a consequence of the challenges facing meaningful impact assessment, comparing hurricane impacts across time and space is problematic. Past intense hurricanes of the past would certainly leave a greater legacy had they occurred in more recent years. Yet, damage statistics often go into the historical record noting only the event and economic damage (usually adjusted only for inflation). Such statistics can lead to mistaken conclusions about the significance of trends in hurricane damage. Because population and property at risk to hurricanes has changed dramatically this century, such statistics may grossly underestimate our vulnerability. Therefore, care must be taken in the use of bottom line damage estimates to reach policy conclusions.

The Bottom Line: Apples with Apples, Oranges with Oranges

There are many ways in which to measure the costs associated with a hurricane. There is no one "right" way. The method chosen for measurement of the costs of damages depends upon the purposes for which the measurement is made, and therefore must be determined on a case by case basis. No matter what method is employed when assessing or using the costs associated with a hurricane's impact, the analyst need to ensure at least two things. First, the analyst needs to make explicit the assumptions which guide the assessment: What is being measured, how, and why. Second, compare apples with apples and oranges with oranges. If the purpose is to compare the impacts of a recent hurricane with a historical hurricane or a hurricane to an earthquake, the methods employed ought to result in conclusions which are meaningful in a comparative setting...

Society has become more vulnerable to hurricane impacts. The trend of increasing losses during a relatively quiet period of hurricane frequencies should be taken as an important warning. When hurricane frequencies and intensities return to levels observed earlier this century, then losses are sure to increase to record levels unless actions are taken to reduce vulnerability.

Inhabitants along the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf Coasts are fortunate in that hurricane watches and warnings are readily available as are shelters and well-conceived evacuation routes. However, this should not give reason for complacency -- the hurricane problem cannot be said to be solved (Pielke 1997). Disaster planners have developed a number of scenarios that result in a large loss of life here in the United States. For instance, imagine a situation of gridlock as evacuees seek to flee the Florida Keys on the only available road. Or imagine New Orleans, with much of the city below sea level, suffering the brunt of a powerful storm, resulting in tremendous flooding to that low lying city. Scenarios such as these require constant attention to saving lives. Because the nature of the hurricane problem is constantly changing as society changes, the hurricane problem can never be said to be solved.

Works Cited

Changnon, S.A. (ed.) 1996. The Great Flood of 1993: Causes, Impacts, and Responses (Westview Press: Boulder, CO).

Fischer, A., L. G. Chestnut, and D. M. Violette, 1989. The value of reducing risks of death: a note on new evidence, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 8:88-100.

Hebert, P. J., J. D. Jarrell and M. Mayfield, 1996. The Deadliest, Costliest, and Most Intense United States Hurricanes of this Century (And Other Frequently Requested Hurricane Facts) NOAA Technical Memorandum NWS NHC-31 (February). Coral Gables, FL: NHC.

Landsea, C. W., N. Nicholls, W. M. Gray, L. A. Avila, 1996. Downward trends in the frequency if intense Atlantic hurricanes during the past five decades, Geophysical Research Letters, 23:1697-1700.

Pielke Jr., R. A. 1997 (in press). "Reframing the U.S. Hurricane Problem," Society and Natural Resources Volume 10, Number 5, October.

Southern, R. L. 1992. Savage impact of recent catastrophic tropical cyclones emphasizes urgent need to enhance warning/response and mitigation systems in the Asia/ Pacific Region, mimeo

End Excerpt ---------------------------------

Posted on September 6, 2005 07:49 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Environment

Katrina in Context: A Blog Series

On Saturday the New York Times ran a story that described efforts to total the economic impacts of Katrina. The story described the work of a catastrophe modeling firm which estimated that Katrina's costs could top $100 billion. What does this mean? What does this tell us about Katrina in historical perspective? About what we should expect for the future? What knowledge is grounded in peer-reviewed science? What is the significance of understanding Katrina in context for actions that we (and who is we?) might take to increase the odds of better ourcomes in the future?

For those of us interested in policies with respect to hurricanes and other extreme events it is important to accurately place Katrina into historical and future context, so that decisions about the future might be well calibrated with respect to risks and vulnerabilities.

We have conducted a wide range of research over the past 10 years on hurricane and flood impacts, and over the next week or so I will be working through this research so that people interested in impacts and policy can get a better sense of the work that lies behind the discussions that often appear on this site.

There are a lot of possible topics to discuss, and below is the list of subjects that I am starting out with. If you don't see a subject on this list that you'd like to have discussed, just let us know and we'll do the best to accommodate the request.

1. Making sense of economic impacts - Comparing apples with apples
2. Historical economic losses from Hurricanes - Where does Katrina rank?
3. Historical economic losses from floods - Where does Katrina rank?
4. Historical human impacts (non-economic) - Where does Katrina rank?
5. Federal disaster declarations - Understanding hazards and hazard politics
6. Federal disaster declarations - Hurricanes and Hurricane-Spawned Floods
7. Risk management versus vulnerability reduction - Different approaches to policy
8. Climate change, societal change and extreme weather events - Science and Policy
9. Summary Thoughts - What next after Katrina?

Posted on September 6, 2005 07:40 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Environment

September 04, 2005

Intelligence Failure

The Bush Administration's complete lack of preparedness for responding to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans is one of the most significant intelligence failures in history, ranking right up there with Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Ii will be important in the coming months for Congress to investigate this policy failure with every bit of effort that it did after 9/11. Let me say that I have every expectation that the government professionals now fully engaged in the rescue and recovery operations will do an outstanding job. The question that needs to be asked, and it is not too soon to begin asking, is why was the federal government so unprepared for the disaster in the face of robust scientific knowledge about the disaster at all time scales? This is especially in light of the fact that the government completely reorganized itself after 9/11 to improve the nation's preparedness and response to catastrophes.

Like many people, I too was buoyed by the reports in the immediate aftermath of Katrina that New Orleans had dodged another bullet. It is understandable that government officials not involved with disaster preparedness and response (including the President) might have seen these reports and felt the same way. But to learn that the federal government agencies responsible for disaster preparation and management had taken very little action in the days and hours before Katrina's landfall to prepare for the possibility of flooding of New Orleans is simply amazing. I study disasters and find this incredible.

Statements by Bush Administration officials reveal the depth of this intelligence failure. Consider the following comments from Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and FEMA's Michael Brown:

Of Katrina resulting in the failure of the New Orleans levees Chertoff said -- " "That 'perfect storm' of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight." He called the disaster "breathtaking in its surprise." ... Chertoff argued that authorities actually had assumed that "there would be overflow from the levee, maybe a small break in the levee. The collapse of a significant portion of the levee leading to the very fast flooding of the city was not envisioned."" Wrong. It is now well established that what has occurred was foreseeable and foreseen.

Of the time available to prepare, "Chertoff also argued that authorities did not have much notice that the storm would be so powerful and could make a direct hit on New Orleans." Wrong this storm was forecast perfectly and there were days of notice that an extremely powerful storm would hit along the gulf coast. Forecasts cannot get any better. And again, the disaster has been predicted for 30 years.

Chertoff explains on Wednesday that the government was betting on the come: "... in terms of this storm, particularly because it seemed to move to the east at the last minute, and I remember seeing newspaper headlines that said, you know, New Orleans dodged the bullet, on Tuesday morning, and even as everybody thought New Orleans had dodged the bullet Tuesday morning, the levee was not only being flooded, which is, I think, what most people always assumed would happen, but it actually broke."

Two things here. First, planning for the best case scenario is not a good approach to disaster policy. One wobble in a hurricane's path can make a big difference. And second, the Secretary of DHS was getting his information about the storm's impact on Tuesday from newspaper headlines? Are you kidding me?

Then there is the bizarre episode last Thursday of Chertoff arguing with NPR's Jeremy Siegel about whether or not there were in fact people stranded at the New Orleans Convention Center, and calling the news reports "rumor." Do these folks not watch cable news? Is it possible that I had better intelligence at the foot of the Rockies thousands of miles away than the Secretary of Homeland Security?

Later that day FEMA director Michael Brown told CNN on Thursday that they had only learned of people at the convention center on that day, presumably via the questions put to Chertoff:

"ZAHN: Sir, you aren't just telling me you just learned that the folks at the Convention Center didn't have food and water until today, are you? You had no idea they were completely cut off?

BROWN: Paula, the federal government did not even know about the Convention Center people until today."

Chertoff explains the intelligence failure on Sunday by placing blame on state and local officials:

"Well, I mean, this is clearly something that was disturbing. It was disturbing to me when I learned about it, which came as a surprise. You know, the very day that this emerged in the press, I was on a video conference with all the officials, including state and local officials. And nobody -- none of the state and local officials or anybody else was talking about a Convention Center. The original plan, as I understand it, was to have the Superdome be the place of refuge, of last resort. Apparently, sometime on Wednesday, people started to go to the Convention Center spontaneously. Why it is that there was a breakdown in communication, again, I'm sure will be studied when we get to look at this afterwards. FEMA, of course, did not have large -- is not equipped to put large masses of people into an area. FEMA basically plugs into the existing state and local infrastructure. What happened here was essentially the demolishment of that state and local infrastructure. And I think that really caused a cascading series of breakdowns. I mean, let's be honest. This stressed the system beyond, I think, any prior experience anybody's had in this country."

Let me explain why these comments are significant. Chertoff and Brown are the respective heads of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and within DHS, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). These are the federal agencies with lead responsibility for being prepared for and responding to disasters. Understanding and mitigating risk is their jobs.

This commentary is not a cheap political shot at the Bush Administration. They did have the bad luck of being in office when Katrina stuck, but they are nonetheless accountable for government performance in such situations. And there has been a significant policy failure on their watch. Furthermore, in the aftermath of 9/11 the Bush Administration completely reorganized itself to improve the nation's ability to secure itself. Under this new reorganization, DHS has comprehensively failed its first test. Congress needs to find out why, and fix it. We will have more disasters, that is for sure. The time to start asking hard questions is right now.

Posted on September 4, 2005 04:15 PM View this article | Comments (16) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Environment

September 03, 2005

Correction of Errors in Fortune Story

Post co-authored by Roger Pielke, Jr. (RP) and Kerry Emanuel (KE)
--

Over this past week as the horrific disaster along the Gulf coast has developed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we have both been quoted extensively in the media based on our various work on hurricanes. For the most part the reporting of our views has been accurate and responsible. With this short post, we'd like to correct some significant mischaracterizations and errors in a Fortune news story. We address them below.

1. The Fortune story states, "But Emanuel and other experts have warned for over a decade that global warming may be creating an environment prone to more violent storms, droughts and other weather extremes ... " This may be true of "other experts" but it is not an accurate characterization of KE's statements over the past decade.

2. The Fortune story states, "A forthcoming paper co-authored by University of Colorado researcher Roger Pielke Jr. argues that by 2050, hurricane losses due to both coastal population growth and the rising value of coastal property will be 22 to 60 times greater than those that are potentially caused by global warming's effects. Ironically, MIT's Professor Emanuel was a co-author of that paper. But after compiling the startling data on intensifying hurricanes, he says, "I changed my mind" and struck his name from the authors' list."

The reason that KE decided to withdraw amicably from co-authorship had nothing to do with the paper's summary of research on the societal impacts of hurricanes, as implied here, but instead, a change in KE's views on the significance of global warming in observed and projected hurricane behavior. It is misleading to use KE's withdraw to dismiss the entire paper. Here is how KE characterized his withdrawal to RP in an email:

3. The Fortune story states, "Emanuel found that since 1949, the average peak wind speeds of hurricanes over the North Atlantic and the western and eastern North Pacific has increased by a whopping 50%... Meanwhile the duration of the storms, in terms of the total number of days they lasted on an annual basis, rose by roughly 60%." This is a mischaracterization of the recent research conducted by KE, which instead found an increase in the power dissipation of hurricanes, an integrated measure of peak wind speeds and storm duration; it is the cube of the wind speed that has increased by about 50%, not the wind speed itself.

4. Finally, the story misuses the term "hypercanes" which refers to theoretical research conducted by KE and colleagues in the mid-1990s. The term has nothing to do with the present or near-term future. Hypercanes require ocean temperatures of at least 50 C and may have formed shortly after collisions of large extraterrestrial bodies, such as asteroids, with the earth; they will not arise as a consequence of global warming.

Posted on September 3, 2005 09:23 AM View this article | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Others | Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Environment

Hurricane Donations and Comment Function

A reader writes:

"Everyone please give what you can to the hurricane relief efforts. Go to https://give.redcross.org/?hurricanemasthead (here)."

Also we are aware of the problem with the comments and are fixing it. Thanks!

Posted on September 3, 2005 09:01 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

September 02, 2005

"Nobody Could Have Foreseen"

I am just watching CNN and see George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton being interviewed both saying that of the disaster facing New Orleans "nobody could have foreseen" what has occurred.

Well that is clearly wrong. Here is an excerpt from a news story one year ago, which is but one example of many going back decades from the hazards community warning of the exact disaster that we are seeing unfold before our eyes.

"People floating through a polluted stew to treetops, competing with fire ants for a dry perch -- a direct hit here by Hurricane Ivan could be that horrifying, Louisiana storm damage experts say. With New Orleans' saucer-shaped topography that dips as much as nine feet below sea level, there's nowhere for water to go if a storm surge is strong enough to top levees ringing the city. "Those folks who remain, should the city flood, would be exposed to all kinds of nightmares from buildings falling apart to floating in the water having nowhere to go," Ivor van Heerden, director of Louisiana State University's Hurricane Public Health Center, said Tuesday. And that's not all. Flood waters, in addition to collecting standard household and business garbage and chemicals, would flow through chemical plants, "so there's the potential of pretty severe contamination," van Heerden said. LSU's hurricane experts have spent years developing computer models and taking surveys to predict when hurricanes could flood the city and how many people would choose to wait out the storm at home. Both results paint grim pictures. Surveys show about 300,000 of the city's 1.6 million metro-area residents would choose to risk staying inside the city's ring of levees. Computer models show a hurricane of a strong Category 3 or worse (wind speeds of around 120 mph or more), hitting just west of New Orleans, would push storm surges from the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Pontchartrain over the city's levees. New Orleans would be under about 20 feet of water, higher than the roofs of many homes here. Much of town would be inundated for weeks, meaning the hundreds of thousands who evacuated or could be rescued would have to stay with friends, relatives or in sprawling temporary shelters to the north for weeks. The rescue operation, meanwhile, would be among the world's biggest since World War II, when Allied Forces rescued mostly British soldiers from Dunkirk, France, and brought them across the English Channel in 1940, van Heerden predicted."

The real question that will deserve considerable attention from the standpoint of political accountability is -- why was the government so unprepared for a disaster that was well foreseen by experts? For the academic community there will be some tough questions as well - how could it be that knowledge well known in the academy apparently was so far removed from the practice of policy making?

Posted on September 2, 2005 12:26 AM View this article | Comments (11) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Environment

September 01, 2005

A Rant on Ceding the High Ground

When liberal commentators on science decided this week to turn a blind eye to numerous egregious examples of the misuse of the science of hurricanes to advance political agendas focused on bashing George Bush and the US, or lobbying for Kyoto, they ceded the moral high ground on this issue to their conservative opponents. And so James Glassman, of TechCentralStation, happily (and quite properly) takes that unoccupied moral high ground on this issue. It is unfortunate that liberals who should know better, and claim to know better, are simply mute on this issue. Can they not see that their stony silence does far more to damage their credibility than the extreme statements by a few ideologues? Can they not see that their own credibility is enhanced by a bit of self-critique? Can they not see that their opponents gain legitimacy when the moral high ground is ceded?

What is a misuse of science? It seems that for many people it is playing fast and loose with science but (!) only in a situation in which such mischief seeks to advance the agendas of their opponents. The misuse of science in situations that are politically expedient seems to get a free pass, except of course from those who happen to be opposed to the political agendas of those engaging in the misuse. Let's be clear -- conservatives and liberals alike are both guilty of applying ideological blinders to their views of the politicization of science. As a result we have seen, quite ironically, the politicization of the politicization of science.

Here is an essay I wrote on this a few years ago, and an excerpt:

""Junk science," it seems, is merely that science which your political opponents use to support their position. It is ironic that expressions of concern about the politicization of science have become another way for ideologues to advance their particular agendas. In other words, we are witnessing the politicizing of the politicization of science ... Politicization of science is a problem, irrespective of the ideology of those doing the politicizing. Our scientific enterprise is too important to allow putative concerns about the politicization of science to become just another weapon in partisan battle."

That is the end of the rant (for now)!

Posted on September 1, 2005 08:43 AM View this article | Comments (31) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Party ID and ID

Yesterday's New York Times had an interesting article on a recent poll conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The poll has some interesting findings: "John C. Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum, said he was surprised to see that teaching both evolution and creationism was favored not only by conservative Christians, but also by majorities of secular respondents, liberal Democrats and those who accept the theory of natural selection."

Let's take a closer look at the data to understand why Mr. Green might have been surprised.

Of the 53% of Democrats who believe that humans evolved over time, fully 20% believe that evolution was "guided by a supreme being." For Republicans the numbers are 40% and 18% respectively. In other words, given the survey's margin of error, the exact same percentage of Democrats as Republicans believe in "Intelligent Design" (ID). (Republicans do outnumber Democratic Creationists, 51% to 38%.)

When the filter is ideology, there is a similar parity. The poll looked at four "ideological" categories, Conservative Republicans, Moderate/Liberal Republicans, Conservative/Moderate Democrats, and Liberal Democrats. Of these four categories, the percentage of each that believe in ID are respectively 19%, 19%, 22%, 17%, just about within the margin of error. There are more Conservative Republican Creationists than Liberal Democratic Creationists (59% to 29%), but in the middle there are just about no differences: 37% Moderate/Liberal Republican Creationists, 41% Conservative/Moderate Democrat Creationists. I'm not surprised to see where there are more Creationists, but I am surprised at the relative numbers in each category.

There are some other interesting findings in the data, such as similar support across party lines for "teaching creationism instead of evolution" (R = 43%, D = 37%) and "teaching creationism along with evolution" (R = 67%, D = 61%). And there are some pronounced differences according to party identification, such as "who should have primary responsibility for deciding how evolution is taught" (Teachers? R = 19%, D = 35%; Parents? R = 51%, D = 35%). But even here the differences are not as large as one might think (or, at least as much as I would have thought).

Bottom line: These data support the thesis that there is more going on in contemporary politics of science than one political party, or even its most ideological elements (and feel free to place Democratic or Republican parties wherever you'd like in this statement depending on your predilections), seeking to undercut science and the other political party rising to its defense. It really makes for a good story, but it's too bad that it is just not true. It may be that discussions of science policy/science politics are becoming Ann Colter-ized and Michael Moore-ized, which I suppose would be the ultimate result of partisan ideologues waging their wars via the politicization of science.

Posted on September 1, 2005 07:05 AM View this article | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

August 31, 2005

Unsolicited Media Advice

As I read about many instances of the immoral exploitation of Katrina's impacts to advance a political agenda, it seems to me that there is a good opportunity for the media to contribute constructively to this issue. So Prometheus-reading reporters, by all means ask your experts if Katrina is a result of global warming. But don't stop there. Please also ask the following question:

"If the US (or the world) were to begin taking more aggressive actions on emissions reductions, when could we expect to see the effects of such policies in the impacts of future hurricanes, and how large would those effects be?"

The question of hurricanes and global warming is interesting scientifically, of course, but for society broadly the question is important for the actions that we might take in the future. So please, go ahead and ask the above question and take the question of hurricanes/global warming to its logical conclusion.

Finally, the considerable misuse of science in the case of Katrina should give serious pause to anyone who thinks that the politicization of science is mainly a US or conservative phenomena. It is not.

Posted on August 31, 2005 08:37 AM View this article | Comments (13) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

August 30, 2005

Tough Questions on Hurricanes and Global Warming?

Over at GristMill Dave Roberts discusses hurricanes and global warming and asks some "tough questions." The first of these questions focus on whether or not greens should misuse science to achieve their political goals:

"In the end, greens concerned about global warming face a choice. Do they stick to scrupulous standards of scientific accuracy, with all the hedging and qualifying that entails, at the risk of being boring and losing an opportunity to galvanize action? Or do they fudge a bit, propagandize a bit, indulge in a little bit of theater and showmanship?"

Let's take a look at the reasons that Roberts gives for why fudging science might be worth doing (and to be clear, I don't think that Roberts is calling for a misuse of science, but instead suggesting that there is a complicated calculus underlying why one might choose to do so).

First, Roberts states, "arguably the urgency of generating a large-scale response is great enough to warrant some fudging on strict rules of accuracy and precision. Many, many lives are at stake." Surely this is the exact same logic that motivates anti-abortion groups to advance that false claim that abortion causes breast cancer. If the righteousness of a cause dictates when it is appropriate to misuse science, then this is a pretty slippery-sloped end-justify-the-means approach to science.

Second, Roberts notes that the complexity of the climate systems makes it exceedingly difficult to make a scientifically sound linkage between global warming and a particular hurricane, perhaps suggesting that there is some wiggle room in there to assert a linkage, as no one can disprove such an assertion. Undoubtedly this is the exact same logic that underlies the repeated exagerrated claims by some that adult stem cells can be used instead of embryonic stem cells. After all, scientists are pretty smart people and who knows what they might discover in the future? Who is to say that one day they won't be able to replace embryonic stem cells with adult stem cells? To quote Donald Rumsfeld, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Anything goes!

Third, Roberts correctly asserts that a big event opens the door for policy change, "It opens up a cultural space for dialogue and action at a time when getting the collective attention of the American public is extraordinarily difficult." Without a doubt similar words were spoken by Bush Administration officials in the days after September 11 to justify invading Iraq based on false claims of a linkage between 9/11 and Iraq.

Roberts suggests that the question of fudging science is a tough one. Not for me. I'm pretty much all for scrupulous standards of scientific accuracy. Fudging science can certainly lead to some short term political gains, but in the end it is not good for science and certainly not good for democracy.

Posted on August 30, 2005 12:01 AM View this article | Comments (16) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

August 29, 2005

Final Version of "Hurricanes and Global Warming" for BAMS

The final version of our paper, "Hurricanes and Global Warming (PDF)" is now online. Here is the complete citation:

Pielke, Jr., R. A., C. Landsea, M. Mayfield, J. Laver and R. Pasch, in press, 2005. December. Hurricanes and global warming, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Two things to note. First, if you have the earlier version, toss it out as we have updated the present version to accomodate some recent literature. Second, you'll see that Kerry Emanuel has dropped off as a co-author, for reasons I understand and respect. The publication date is December, 2005 which is just under the wire for inclusion in the next IPCC reports. We welcome all comments and reactions to the paper.

Posted on August 29, 2005 04:47 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Historical Hurricane Damage

Here are a few estimates of damage from relevant historical hurricanes had they occurred in 2004. I'd guess, and it is nothing more than a guess, that Katrina will exceed the amounts of Betsy, Camille and Hugo but not Andrew.

1965 Betsy $18 billion
1969 Camille $19 billion
1989 Hugo $16 billion
1992 Andrew $66 billion

For methods, see this paper:

Pielke, Jr., R. A., and C. W. Landsea, 1998: Normalized Hurricane Damages in the United States: 1925-95. Weather and Forecasting, American Meteorological Society, Vol. 13, 621-631. (PDF)

Posted on August 29, 2005 10:35 AM View this article | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Environment

On Point Radio Interview

I was on NPR's On Point this morning with MIT's Kerry Emanuel and others to discuss hurricanes and their impacts. When available the show can be found here.

Posted on August 29, 2005 09:13 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Environment

August 28, 2005

Hurricane Katrina

As Hurricane Katrina churns toward New Orleans, I thought that folks might be interested in seeing what happened when Camille devastaed Louisiana in 1969. In 1999 we produced this report for its 30-year anniversary. In particular, have a look at this photo gallery.

Our research suggests that Camille would have been a $20 billion storm had it occurred in 2004. Camille's track was to the east of New Orleans, sparing the city its full wrath. A direct hit or track to the west of New Orleans could easily result in damages considerably larger than those we estimate for Camille in 2004. Stay tuned, and best wishes for people in the storm's path.

Posted on August 28, 2005 09:51 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Environment

August 26, 2005

Science and Political Affiliations

The Chicago Tribune has a very interesting article today (Thanks JA!) on the recent study of fetal pain and the political leanings of its authors. Here is an excerpt:

"A research article about when fetuses feel pain is sparking a heated debate over the nexus between science and politics and what information authors should disclose to scientific journals. The report, published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, analyzed previously published research and concluded that fetuses probably don't feel pain until 29 weeks after conception because of their developing brain structures. Undisclosed was the fact that one of the five authors runs an abortion clinic at San Francisco's public hospital and another worked temporarily more than five years ago for an abortion-rights advocacy group. Several ethicists said they consider those points regrettable omissions that left readers without important information. Other experts consider the authors' background irrelevant."

Does it matter what the authors professional or political affiliations happen to be?

The story presents two perspectives. First, no it doesn't matter.

""The standard for disclosure in medical and scientific journals is not your politics. There's no obligation to tell people what your mind-set is ... as long as the data is sound and gathered objectively," said Dr. Alan Leff, a University of Chicago pulmonologist and editor of the Proceedings of the American Thoracic Society . Dr. Philip Darney, chief of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at San Francisco General Hospital, defended that decision, saying in a statement: "The research team does not believe that being an abortion provider is a conflict of interest." Medical journals require authors to disclose financial ties to industry or other funding sources. But there are no standards for disclosing other factors that might influence an author, such as clinical practices or organizational affiliations. Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, the journal's editor-in-chief, said she wasn't concerned by Drey's failure to indicate she performed abortions. "That's part of [an obstetrician's] scope of practice. They don't have to reveal that." ...

"As a scientist, if you think I'm wrong, you probe my data, question my findings and do a critical study--not point your finger and talk about my politics," Caplan said. Rigorous methodology is supposed to minimize the potential for bias in scientific research, he said, "whether studies are done by communists in China or free-marketers in Chicago, whether they're done by left-wingers in Berkeley or right-wingers at the Wharton School here in Pennsylvania.""

Second, it does matter:

"Anti-abortion groups say the authors' affiliations are crucially important. "These are people with years of professional and ideological investment in the pro-abortion cause, not some neutral team of medical professionals," said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee. "We think readers and viewers have a right to know who's filtering the information they're being presented with." ...

... but certain medical issues are so explosive politically--abortion certainly, and perhaps stem cell research and animal rights--that researchers have a special obligation to inform readers of relevant affiliations. The San Francisco researchers "must have known there would be criticism from the right-to-life people," said Dr. Arnold Relman, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. "In a situation as contentious as this, it seems more disclosure should be the rule rather than less." Dr. Marcia Angell, a senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School, is also a former editor of the New England Journal. "Suppose it were the other way," she said. "Suppose there were an article that said that [fetuses] do feel pain and it was written by people who were involved in the right-to-life movement. Would I want to know that? I think I would." With an issue as divisive as abortion, disclosing potentially important associations can only help a journal edit! or, said Sheldon Krimsky, author of "Science in the Private Interest." "It kind of ratchets up everyone's attention to the science and makes them that much more vigilant in detecting potential bias," he said."

Should political affiliations relevant to a paper_s content be disclosed by authored of peer-reviewed articles?

Is there a justification for limiting conflict-of-interest only to financial considerations?

Tough questions.

Posted on August 26, 2005 09:50 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health

August 25, 2005

A Piece of the Action

There is a lot of attention being paid to public bets about the future these days. For example, a climate scientist in Japan, James Annan, has bet two Russian solar physicists, Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev, $10,000 that the earth will warm over the next decade, as measured by the U.S. NCDC over two different 6-year periods. At this point, such bets are little more than political stunts, but if they move us in the direction of actual futures markets on climate forecasts, then I'm all for it.

Just yesterday I read about a $5,000 bet between New York Times columnist John Tierney and energy industry consultant Matthew Simmons (described here) over whether or not the price of oil in 2010 would be over $200 in 2005 dollars. Tierney is taking Simmons to the cleaners. There is already a futures market for oil, and Simmons can get all the action he wants there at a price of $62.39 for Dec 2010. Anyone who thinks oil prices are going up dramatically can purchase futures and then make a killing if they are proven right. Tierney can simply hedge his side of the bet by, for example, buying $5,000 worth of 2010 futures at $62.39. If the price goes down by as much as 50% he is still in the black as he would win the bet. If the price if over $200 he comes out far ahead as he can pay the bet off from the proceeds of his gains. And the best case scenario for him is a price higher than $62.39 and less than $200, in which he collects on the investment and the bet. There are of course more complicated hedges that would involve a smaller outlay than $5000. From a financial perspective he can't lose, which is obviously why he states that he will "consider bets from anyone else convinced that our way of life is "unsustainable." If you think the price of oil or some other natural resource is going to soar, show me the money." (As an aside, all of this raises some questions for me about the thinking behind Simmons' analyses about economics and oil, but that is a subject for another time.)

With all of this excitement going on about betting, I'd like to get a piece of the action. I'd consider a bet along the lines of the following:

a) whether global concentrations of CO2 will be lower than 2005 values at any point over the next 30 years;

b) whether the rate of change in global CO2 concentrations will be negative (i.e., decreasing year over year) over any 3-year period over the next 30 years;

c) whether (b) will occur before atmospheric concentrations reach 400, 450, or 550 ppm.

I'm not no much interested in a bet per se, so mostly this is to see who out there is optimistic about the current approach to climate mitigation. Who out there thinks that the current policy trajectory will be effective from the standpoint of atmospheric concentrations? The three options above are set up to allow for various levels of optimism. Feel free to discuss in the comments. I'll be happy to summarize in a week or so. Any takers?

Posted on August 25, 2005 04:20 PM View this article | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

The Best NASA Can Do?

In last Sunday’s New York Times, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin had a letter in response to critical several Times editorials,

"Terminating the shuttle program abruptly, while attractive from some points of view, carries with it grave consequences for the United States' pre-eminence in space and would be devastating to the work force necessary to conduct any future human spaceflight program."

There are two responses here. First, the current 2010 retirement date is completely arbitrary, and could just as easily be 2009 or 2008 or 2007. The decision should be made based on technical, financial and political realities and not an arbitrary deadline. Second, what if NASA loses another shuttle? That would certainly result in an "abrupt termination" of the program. Would that also be "devastating to the workforce"? I wonder what NASA's contingency plans look like for the loss of another shuttle, which is a realistic possibility.

Griffin continues,

"In the same way, the decision to build the International Space Station with its present partnership arrangements was made more than a decade ago, and that decision, too, carries with it major consequences and obligations not lightly dismissed."

The space station is "complete" when NASA says it is complete. It is a modular system. One reason why the program adopted international partners is the same as why NASA sprinkles contracts widely across congressional districts, to build a constituency for business as usual, to make it hard for politicians to take control of NASA from NASA. Business is usual is great when you are going in the right direction.

Griffin concludes that business as usual is "the best NASA can do for the country." As an outsider to NASA, but also a long-time observer, I'd be interested in the whole set of options that NASA considered when deciding that business as usual is the best available option. One might think that Congress would be interested in this set of options and how they have been evaluated.

Posted on August 25, 2005 04:15 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

August 24, 2005

Roger Pielke, Sr.

For those of you following the latest climate science/politics tempest involving my father, Roger Pielke, Sr., here is a link to his blog where you can read his unfiltered perspectives on this and other matters. I may be a bit biased, but his site is worth a visit.

For those of you who may not have known that there are two Roger Pielke’s (Sr., him at Colorado State an atmospheric scientist, Jr., me at Colorado studying science policy) and are here by mistake, please feel free to come back to Prometheus after visiting his site.

Posted on August 24, 2005 02:27 PM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

August 22, 2005

The Other Hockey Stick

Disaster losses have increased dramatically in recent decades. Yet as discussed here frequently there is no scientific evidence showing that any part of this increase can be attributed to changes in climate, whether anthropogenic in origin or not. This is a long post on this subject. It contains a lot of gory detail on what I consider to be a major misuse of science in the climate debate, viewed through the lens of a recent paper in Science. I focus on this issue mainly because this is an area where I have considerable expertise, and in this context my work is often mis-cited or ignored. This misuse of science is pretty much overlooked by scientists (here is one exception) advocates on either side of the debate, and the media (here is one exception). A number of colleagues and I have a letter on this subject coming out in the November Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (I'll post a pre-publication version of this soon). Also, in partnership with Munich Re we are organizing a major workshop on attribution of causes underlying the observed trend of ever-escalating disaster damages. Munich Re seems very supportive of rigorous science on this topic. So clearly, I intend to pursue this subject.

Some important things to say before proceeding -- As I have written often on these pages, I accept the IPCC WGI consensus position on climate change and I am a strong advocate for policy action on climate change. I am also quite concerned by the role of science and scientists in the highly politicized context of climate.

I have titled this post "The Other Hockey Stick" drawing on some comments made by Hans von Storch in a talk at NCAR last month. The "other hockey stick" refers to the graph used by the IPCC based on Munich re data to show increasing disaster costs and has been widely used to argue for evidence of a climate change signal in disasters. Such claims are made by prominent scientists (such as Rajendra Pachauri and John Houghton) and can be found frequently in the scientific literature. The motivation for the present discussion is a paper in the 12 August 2005 issue of Science. Evan Mills, a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Wrote in the essay,

"According to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment, climate change has played a role in the rising costs of natural disasters." And on the "relative weights of anthropogenic climate change and increased exposure" in the loss trend Mills concludes "quantification is premature." Mills uncritically accepts the IPCC statement, which as I show below is based on a pretty weak source and he is simply wrong on the latter point. Mills either ignores or is unaware of a robust literature on this subject (see here and here and here). Mills' analysis rests on a very thin basis of support. For reasons discussed below, it is amazing to me that Mills' paper survived peer review at Science. It should not have. Whether Science has a quality control problem or an inability to question analyses that may be politically inconvenient, the publication of Mills' paper sure does raise some questions.

Mills has a section of his paper focused on attribution of causes explaining recent trends in disaster losses. Let's take a close look at ten of the sources he cites in that section to support claims of a climate change signal in the damage record:

Kunkel et al. 1999. Mills cites this paper, (on which I am a co-author) to support this claim, "Socioeconomic and demographic trends clearly play important-and likely dominant-roles in the observed upward loss trends." Here is what Kunkel et al. concluded, "the results of the review strongly suggest that the increasing financial losses from weather extremes are primarily due to a variety of societal changes." Perhaps a slightly different characterization than the paper suggests, but lets move on.

Changnon and Demissie, 1996. This paper says nothing about trends in flood damage. What it does say is that in a comparison of urbanizing and rural river basins, there were large societal influences on streamflow in the urbanizing basins. This paper provides no basis for asserting anything related to flood damages.

Zhang et al. 2005. This paper is about the relationship of coastal erosion and sea level rise. It says nothing about trends in disaster losses.

Easterling et al. 2000. This paper states, "Most of the increase has been due to societal shifts and not to major increases in weather extremes. The growth of population, demographic shifts to more storm-prone locations, and the growth of wealth have collectively made the nation more vulnerable to climate extremes." This paper originated in a workshop held in Aspen that I participated in and I was originally a co-author on early drafts of this paper. I dropped off because I thought that the paper's conclusions were not supported by the evidence. In this case, there is an important difference in the cited sentence between the words "Most" and "All". "Most" happens to be grammatically correct, but in this case is synonymous with "All". My concern was that the paper would be mis-cited to assert an attribution when none was found. Here is a good example.

Karl and Trenberth 2003. This paper calls for the development of a global observing system. It says nothing about trends in disasters.

Next the paper asserts that "Global weather-related losses in recent years have been trending upward much faster than population, inflation, or insurance penetration, and faster than non-weather-related events (Fig. 2D). By some estimates, losses have increased by a factor of 2, after accounting for these factors plus increased density of insured values."

It cites 2 references to make this claim. The first reference is to a talk by Howard Kunreuther. I have known Howard for a while and respect him and his work a great deal. I emailed him to ask his source for this claim and interestingly he referred me to the second source cited by Mills. So Mills is citing the same source twice, using two apparently different sources. Not good.

The second source is a 2000 report by Munich Re on catastrophes. The relevant sections of the report can be found at pp. 79-81. Here Munich Re accurately cites my work to correctly argue for the normalization of historical loss data to account for societal changes. Then Munich Re provides some summary data following a black box calculation of changes in disaster damages after normalizing for societal changes. Munich Re finds that global disasters cost an adjusted $636 billion in the 1990s compared with $315 billion in the 1970s, and concludes, " Mills "factor of 2" comes from this calculation (i.e., 636/315).

Methodologically the calculation is suspect for a number of reasons. First, Munich Re provides neither their methods nor data. Second, Munich Re admits that data on changes in wealth are not available around the world and changes in GDP are not always a good proxy for data on wealth. Third, Munich Re's data apparently includes weather and non-weather events (e.g., see figure "d" on page 81, which refers to earthquake damages).

But let's assume that all of these issues raised above can be overcome and in the end there remains a 2 to 1 ratio. The fact is that the large decadal variability in normalized losses makes it quite dodgy to assert a trend between two different ten-year periods over a period of 30 years. Let me illustrate this with an example from our database of normalized hurricane losses. If we adjust the hurricane loss data to 2004 values and then compare decades we see some interesting things. First the ratio of the 1990s:1970s is quite similar to the Munich Re analysis, 2.1 ($91B/$43B). But if we look at other decadal comparisons, the picture looks quite different, 1990s:1940s = 1.0 ($91B/$90B) and 1990s:1920s = 0.6 ($91B/$154B). Bottom line: The Munich Re analysis tells us nothing about attribution.

The Munich Re analysis may prove correct in the end from the standpoint of disasters in the 1970s compared to the 1990s. But all that it would allows us to say is that the 1990s had more costly disasters than the 1970s, and provides absolutely no basis for attribution of the causes of the differences. At a minimum analyses such as Minuch Re's should be submitted for peer review in the scientific literature to allow for an open discussion of data and methods.

Back to the papers cited by Mills:

Association of British Insurers, 2004. Mills cites this report as follows, "The Association of British Insurers states that changes in weather could already be driving UK property losses up 2 to 4% per year (7) owing to increasing extreme weather events."

The executive summary of the AIb report does claim, "Weather risks are already increasing by 2 - 4 % per year on the household and property accounts due to changing weather." But if you read down just a bit further (on p. 8) the executive summary says something a little different "On reasonable projections of extreme events, the pure risk rate for weather catastrophes is already rising at an unseen rate of 2 - 4 % per year." It has now raised the issue of projections. And if you take a look at the Technical Annex to the report, you find something different still, "Thus on the basis of the Foresight Programme view of future flood risk, realistically the risk of flood damage is projected to increase by between 2.1% and 3.9% per annum, or a range of two to four percent per year."

There are two important points here. First, the 2%-4% per year increase in damages is a projection made out over the next 80 years. Second, we discussed the Foresight project quite favorable here last year. The Foresight project was notable because it considered both climate and societal factors in its projections. The 2%-4% number is not based on climate factors alone. Mills' statement is thus incorrect in two ways - the increase in damage is projected, not observed, and it is the consequence of societal and climate factors, not an observed increase in extreme events.

Mills next cites the IPCC WGII, Chapter 8 to justify the claim "According to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment, climate change has played a role in the rising costs of natural disasters." If you go to the IPCC you see that the single basis for this claim is the Munich Re 2000 report discussed above. This is the third different reference to the same analysis. At best this is sloppy citing. At worst it appears as if there is an attenmpt to portray a broader intellectual base of support for these claims than there actually is.

Lastly in this section, Mills et al. 2002 discuss the relationship of lightning claims and temperature, which makes sense as lightning tends to be associated with thunderstorms and thunderstorms occur in summer not winter. As they state "An additional issue is that peak lightning periods occur in summer, when electricity reliability problems are likely to cause other business interruption losses, as suggested by the illustration." There is no data here relevant to understanding historical trends in disasters (or insurance claims).

So here is my tally:

3 sources are each traced back to a single non-peer reviewed source, Munich Re 2000, that raises some serious questions of methods and interpretation.

4 papers are cited but are not at all relevant to the issue of disaster losses or attribution.

1 paper (AIB) is mis-cited, which is easy to see if you actually look beyond the first page of its executive summary. (Ironically, the Foresight report which forms the basis for the AIB claims actually makes a good case for the overwhelming dominance of societal factors in future flood losses in the UK.)

1 paper is cited accurately, Easterling et al., but in my opinion this paper plays fast and lose with language to allow a mis-interpretation of its results.

1 paper Kunkel et al. is cited accurately, though I might take issue with the spin, it is probably within the bounds of appropriateness.

Of 10 citations, 9 are highly questionable. And this is Science magazine.

The bottom line is that the issue of attribution of trends in disaster losses rests on the thin reed of a single citation in the IPCC WG2 Chapter 8 to a 2000 Munich Re report that seems to be cited over and over again. Through citing this report several times via different secondary sources, the citing of multiple irrelevant sources and the careful parsing of two papers, Mills comes to the conclusion that climate change is responsible for some part of the observed trend in losses. There is a much, much larger literature on this subject that Mills does not cite.

These are not characteristics that one expects to see in a paper in Science, arguably one of the two most influential publications on science in the world. I have submitted a brief comment in the form of a letter to Science on this paper referencing some of this broader literature. Let's see what happens.

In the end, scientific research may yet prove that anthropogenic climate change plays a observable role in disaster losses. But today, August 22, 2005, shoddy science, bad peer review and a failure of the science community to demand high standards is not the best recipe for helping science to contribute effectively to policy.

Posted on August 22, 2005 09:21 AM View this article | Comments (20) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Reader Request: Comments on Michaels and Gray

A Prometheus reader asked if I might read an article by Pat Michaels, affiliate of the conservative Cato Institute and Virginia State Climatologist and an interview with Bill Gray of Colorado State University and offer a critique. Specifically, the reader asked if I might comment on Gray's allegations of funding being cut and whether or not Michaels misrepresented the work of me or Emanuel. So here are some reactions.

Michaels is no stranger to over-the-top rhetoric, and there is some of this here. But in this essay he accurately characterizes my work and quotes me accurately. I'd say more about the relationship of my work and Kerry's recent paper, but I have a comment on Kerry's recent paper submitted to Nature and they require no discussion of finding prior to publication. When that is either published or rejected I'll be happy to say more in this subject. Michaels is correct to call out both Kevin Trenberth and Bill Gray for comments unbecoming a leading scientist. I agree in both cases that the comments are inappropriate.

Michaels does make one important mistake. He mischaracterizes the total funding for climate research citing a total of $4.2 billion. This number surely includes investments in technology which have nothing to do with climate science research. And of the $1.8 billion on climate science the vast majority is spent on satellites. He is correct to suggest that such large funding creates a constituency, but I disagree with him when he argues that climate scientists make decisions on papers based on funding. There are important sociological factors at play, but they are subtle and perhaps not even recognized by many climate scientists.

Bill Gray is by all accounts simply a genius. I've known him for about 10 years and have a lot of respect for him. I like him too; he is a nice guy. I've heard comments to the effect that every scientist studying hurricanes today is a product of Bill Gray's work in one manner or another.

His interview in Discover magazine accurately reflects what I've heard Dr. Gray say in other fora. Gray states, "Our feeling is that the United States is going to be seeing hurricane damage over the next decade or so on a scale way beyond what we have seen in the past." There seems to be a pretty robust consensus on this point among all hurricane scientists.

It is a fact that his funding has been cut in his later years as compared to his earlier years. I'd venture that this has much more to do with changing preferences for model-based research over statistical-based research rather than anything to do with the politics of climate change. Dr. Gray has most likely be the victim of generational change in climate research and the corresponding changes in scientific preferences.

Dr. Gray comments, "Nearly all of my colleagues who have been around 40 or 50 years are skeptical as hell about this whole global-warming thing." This is a very accurate comment. My colleague Myanna Lahsen, an anthropologist, studied the "tribe" of climate modelers for her 1998 dissertation and found a pronounced generational influence on how scientists view the climate debate. Dr. Gray is a great example of this skepticism of some senior scientists. My reading of Myanna's work suggests that the views of some of these senior scientists have much less to do with partisan politics than generational differences.

Dr. Gray says, "So many people have a vested interest in this global-warming thing-all these big labs and research and stuff. The idea is to frighten the public, to get money to study it more. Now that the cold war is over, we have to generate a common enemy to support science, and what better common enemy for the globe than greenhouse gases?"

Just like with Michaels I disagree with this overly simplistic interpretation of what is going on. There are without a doubt strong influences on climate researchers, but they are more subtle and behind-the-scenes than acknowledged here.

Posted on August 22, 2005 09:12 AM View this article | Comments (13) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

August 18, 2005

Information and Action

An alert Prometheus reader pointed us in the direction of an article in today's New York Times on the effects of Fox News on voting. Here is an excerpt:

"The share of Americans who believe that news organizations are "politically biased in their reporting" increased to 60 percent in 2005, up from 45 percent in 1985, according to polls by the Pew Research Center. Many people also believe that biased reporting influences who wins or loses elections. A new study by Stefano DellaVigna of the University of California, Berkeley, and Ethan Kaplan of the Institute for International Economic Studies at Stockholm University, however, casts doubt on this view. Specifically, the economists ask whether the advent of the Fox News Channel, Rupert Murdoch's cable television network, affected voter behavior. They found that Fox had no detectable effect on which party people voted for, or whether they voted at all."

This view is of course similar to those frequently discussed here, such as the following:

*some believe that the views on climate science advanced by climate skeptics prevents certain actions on climate change, or conversely that the consensus view leads to a different sort of action,

*some believe that views on evolution lead to certain religious beliefs,

*some prominent U.S. leaders would have use believe that the threat of WMDs compels preemptive military action (and there are of course other flavors of this precautionary perspective),

*some argued that the publication Bjorn Lomborg's 2000 book would lead to anti-environmental policies, and so on and on.

The study reported by the New York Times ought to give pause to all of these folks, on all sides of issues, who are waging their political battles through science. There is very little evidence of a political war being waged on science, simply because science is too important to everyone's agenda. What we are seeing are political wars being waging through and with science. This is one subject that has wide bipartisan agreement.

Here is some more from the Times article:

"Why was Fox inconsequential to voter behavior? One possibility is that people search for television shows with a political orientation that matches their own. In this scenario, Fox would have been preaching to the converted. This, however, was not the case: Fox's viewers were about equally likely to identify themselves as Democrats as Republicans, according to a poll by the Pew in 2000. Professors DellaVigna and Kaplan offer two more promising explanations. First, watching Fox could have confirmed both Democratic and Republican viewers' inclinations, an effect known as confirmatory bias in psychology. (Borrowing from Simon and Garfunkel, confirmatory bias is a tendency to hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest.) When Yankee and Red Sox fans watch replays of the same disputed umpire's ruling, for example, they both come away more convinced that their team was in the right. One might expect Fox viewers to have increased their likelihood of voting, however, if Fox energized both sides' bases. The professors' preferred explanation is that the public manages to "filter" biased media reports. Fox's format, for example, might alert the audience to take the views expressed with more than the usual grain of salt. Audiences may also filter biases from other networks' shows."

The bottom line is that the world is much more complicated than a linear path from information to action might suggest.

Posted on August 18, 2005 03:26 PM View this article | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

August 15, 2005

Science Budgets

This update from the excellent resouce provided by AAAS on R&D funding is worth a read. An excerpt:

"The funding outlook for the federal research and development (R&D) portfolio looks just a little brighter going into the August congressional recess than it did a month ago, and brighter still than when the fiscal year (FY) 2006 budget request was released in February. Because of Senate-proposed increases for biomedical R&D at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and congressional agreement on modest increases for environmental research in July, the federal R&D investment appears headed toward modest increases next year despite tough budget conditions."

Posted on August 15, 2005 11:03 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding

What Future for the Space Shuttle?

NASA finds itself at a crossroads. It has safely returned the space shuttle to flight, but the flight also showed that troubles have resurfaced with falling foam. NASA now faces decision about what to do next. I can imagine only a few possible outcomes of this decision making process.

1. NASA pursues business as usual. This would involve seeking an engineering fix for the shuttles foam problem and then seeking to fly through 2010, as current plans call for.

This course of action can lead to three possible outcomes.

1a. NASA returns to return to flight and flies the shuttle the number of times currently scheduled and retires it on schedule.

1b. NASA returns to return to flight and flies the shuttle fewer times than currently scheduled and retires it on schedule.

1c. NASA returns to return to flight and flies the shuttle until it suffers another catastrophic loss or a less consequential engineering failure/problem that forces retirement

2. NASA decides not to deviate from business as usual and retires the Shuttle after deciding what to do with the space station (and Hubble).

As an outsider, it seems to me that there are a lot of incentives for business as usual, and a significant possibility that the Shuttle is flown until it can fly no more. And of course, NASA will face a decision to pursuer business as usual following each successful shuttle flight.

Should NASA decide to retire the Shuttle it brings in a large set of possibilities for U.S. space policy. The President's "vision," such as it is, allows a lot of room for discussion of where, when, how and who. It is never too early to begin a public discussion that involves more stakeholders than just NASA about what future the U.S. and its partners might pursue. To date, neither the President nor Congress has encouraged such a dialogue.

Posted on August 15, 2005 11:01 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

August 11, 2005

Divergent Views on Science Policy

One interesting characteristic about science policy is that it does not map neatly onto the stereotypical liberal-conservative Manichean worldview. To take just one example, two columns in the past month over at Tech Central Station, a web site run by folks who espouse a "faith in technology and free markets," show wildly divergent views on science policy.

In an essay from 15 July 2005, Sallie Baliunas makes the fanciful suggestion that public demands for relevance from government-supported research have lead to increasing fraud among scientists. She describes how once Richard Feynman was "freed of the impediment of relevance" he was then able to conduct novel research into theoretical physics and collect a Nobel Prize. But Baliunas does not seem to recognize that federal funding for nuclear physics in the twentieth century was motivated by a very practical objective, winning the Cold War. Without the Soviet Union, federal funding for nuclear physics would surely have been considerably less. Just look at the funding trend for this area in the post-Cold War era. She expresses concern that if scientists are asked to perform research with practical applications, it might "drive away Feynman-type thinkers" and also lead to research misconduct by scientists upset that they have not been given a blank check and no accountability.

A very different essay comes from Iain Murray, who writes,

"The distinction between basic science and applied science (and its development) is, at heart, an elitist and artificial one. It is based on a misunderstanding of the scientific dynamic that was set in policy stone by Vannevar Bush, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's top science adviser, during World War II. It relies on what is known as the "Linear Model" of science, which states that "basic research" develops a pool of knowledge from which "applied research" draws practical benefits, which are then developed into economic goods... Science's role in the economy, it appears, is mainly dependent on the technological portion -- the applied research and development -- of the model. Basic research contributes far less than the linear model suggests." Murray's conclusion could not be any more different from Baliunas' view: "When it comes to science policy, the utility of the science is what is important."

On the other side of the political spectrum there is similar incoherence about science policy. And this is a good thing. It reflects the fact that we are in a period of transition from a post-World War II science policy to its successor, and views on science policy have not yet gelled. The exact characteristics of science policy in the 21st century remain unclear, but we'll get there sooner with people like Baliunas and Murray, and their counterparts from other points on the ideological spectrum, engaging in public debate and discussion on what science policy ought to look like. And without a doubt the issues of practical relevance, federal and private funding and, yes, the politicization of science ought to be at the core of any such dialogue.

For more on this subject see this paper:

Pielke, Jr., R.A., and R. Byerly, Jr., 1998: Beyond Basic and Applied. Physics Today, 51(2), 42-46. (PDF)

Posted on August 11, 2005 07:36 AM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

August 09, 2005

On Hanging Yourself in Public

Often here at Prometheus we take issue with scientists who assert that a certain view on science compels a specific political agenda. We less frequently comment of the opposite case, scientists who claim that a particular political ideology determines scientific findings. The reasons for this are pretty obvious; hardly any scientist would make such a claim.

But in a stunning example of what appears to be a public career suicide, Climatologist Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist for University of Alabama in Huntsville well known for his long-time collaborations with John Christy on satellite temperature trends, has written an article for Tech Central Station in which he claims that he "came to the realization that intelligent design, as a theory of origins, is no more religious, and no less scientific, than evolutionism."

Now without a doubt there is an important debate underway in some parts of the United States about what should be taught in biology classes. And understanding this debate requires some considerable nuance. It requires, for example, an appreciation that some have used evolution as a vehicle to advance their own views on religion, which in a perverse way helps to motivate the ID movement. Both of these views go well beyond science, as evolution says nothing about religion, one way or the other. Such questions are, in the words of Alvin Weinberg, trans-scientific. And Spencer does a pretty poor job recognizing any sort of nuance in his piece. Contrast Spencer's muddled perspective with the clear views expressed by the president of the American Astronomical Society in a letter to President Bush on this subject (thanks to Chris Mooney and Carl Zimmer): ""Intelligent design" isn't even part of science - it is a religious idea that doesn't have a place in the science curriculum."

One has to question the judgment of Roy Spencer opining in support of ID in a fairly simplistic way on a prominent WWW outlet (and also TCS for allowing him to do so; to be fair to TCS they have published a diversity of views on ID). The lapse in judgment seems particularly egregious occurring in the same week that, as word on the street has it, Science magazine will be publishing several papers that identify errors in his calculations of satellite temperature trends. Irrespective of the merits of his climate research, and by all accounts it is solid science, he will forever be known as the climate scientist who believes in "Intelligent Design." I can see the characterizations now -- "How can you believe the science of someone who doesn't even believe in evolution?"

And this gets us to the larger point here. Spencer, perhaps inadvertently, gives support to the notion that scientific results are simply a function of ideology. This view, in conjunction with a view that "sound science" or "consensus science" compels particular political outcomes, leads to a transitive relationship where ideology determines science and science determines political outcomes, which in other words means that science is simply irrelevant to policy debates, other than a vehicle for ideological expressions. This would be a bad outcome because science matters for policy. Just not in the way that Roy Spencer and Paul Krugman would have you believe.

Posted on August 9, 2005 06:37 PM View this article | Comments (12) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

Drawing a line in the batter's box?

Science policy in sports. It sounds like a pretty good combination until you actually get into the details, and then it gets scary. Arthur Caplan, chairman of the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, had a great op-ed in Newsday yesterday on technology and the elite athlete. Here is an excerpt:

"So what are we going to say when the archer, the chess master, the competitive marksman, the Nascar driver or the women's professional golfer says, "If I take these same drugs I just might get enough of an edge to move ahead of my competition"? Throughout the 1990s when home runs were flying out of baseball stadiums, launched by players who obviously were using steroids, when professional football linemen got huge, when track and field records continued to fall, not much in the way of protest was heard. Americans are in love with those who take risks to break a record, or one another's bones, in the name of sport. Nor do Americans gripe when we show up at the Olympics with our athletes who have the best training, superb diets, and top-flight equipment and whomp the tar out of athletes from poor nations, some of whom seem to have shown up just to get a decent meal. We are used to employing science to our advantage when it comes to sports, so why should we draw the line at genetic engineering or new miracle pills? There is nothing about the reaction to Rafael Palmeiro's downfall that indicates we are ready to deal with the fundamental ethical question raised by his use of steroids - how can we draw the line when it comes to enhancement? Is the point of sport to see what human beings can do without aid of any sort in fair competition? If so, we may need to close the training facilities and cut back on what dietitians and trainers are allowed to do. But if the point of sports is to test the limits of human performance, then we had better get ready to add genetic engineers and a bevy of pharmacologists to the hordes of specialists now working with elite athletes from elementary school to the pros. There is no right answer to what the point of sport is. But Rafael Palmeiro has made it a question no one who cares about sports can avoid."

A New York Times article on records in sports may be and indication where we are headed:

"On Thursday night, members of the Society for American Baseball Research records committee, which has no relationship with Major League Baseball, reconciled their feelings and agreed that little could or should be done to denote any player's use of illegal steroids. Members cited how many artificial factors - like smaller ballparks, harder bats, smaller strike zones, legitimate weight-training and, yes, fielders wearing gloves - have affected statistics since the days of Alexander Cartwright. Determining how a player may have benefited from steroids, they said, would be a foolish exercise, particularly with no effort to revise the totals of players like Cash, Ford and Roe."

Caplan is right, this is an issue that has to be dealt with somehow, but where in sports, if anywhere, do we draw a line between allowed human improvements and those that are disallowed? And who gets to decide?

Posted on August 9, 2005 07:42 AM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health

August 08, 2005

Paul Krugman, Think Tanks and the Politicization of Science

In his New York Times column last Friday, Paul Krugman makes the case that in recent decades conservative think tanks have focused on "a strategy of creating doubt about inconvenient research results." This interpretation is not quite right, and in fact actually legitimizes the strategies used by conservative think tanks to advance their agenda.

Krugman reinforces the idea that facts compel certain political perspectives, his in fact. He writes that conservative think tanks have "created a sort of parallel intellectual universe, a world of "scholars" whose careers are based on toeing an ideological line, rather than on doing research that stands up to scrutiny by their peers." This is self-serving and implies that peer-reviewed research supports only - surprise - the ideological agenda that Krugman himself espouses.

The approach taken by conservative think tanks, well described in a prescient 1986 essay by Gregg Easterbrook in The Atlantic Monthly ("Ideas Move Nations" available to subscribers here), was indeed focused on creating research that toed an ideological line but in many cases could also stand up to scholarly peer review. Easterbrook emphasized both of these points in his essay, "But now that conservatism is the fashion, the overlap of names and places suggests a society of like-minded people reinforcing one another's preconceived notions and rejecting any thinking that does not fit the mold--practicing what consultants call the art of "directed conclusions." ... [Conservatives] have created an intellectual competitor for the university system, which is good, and rendered it dependent on not offending corporate patrons, which is bad. They have produced a substantial body of worthwhile commentary but few true thunderbolts, considering the sums of money and time invested."

In other words, conservatives have succeeded in exploiting the "excess of objectivity" that characterizes the scientific enterprise, well described by Dan Sarewitz: "Science is sufficiently rich, diverse, and Balkanized to provide comfort and support for a range of subjective, political positions on complex issues such as climate change, nuclear waste disposal, acid rain, or endangered species." In just about every politically contested issue, from WMD in Iraq to the state of the environment, it is possible to start out with an ideological bent and go cherry picking for results that happen to support your perspective.

Krugman's use of the climate change example illustrates his own ironic attempt at cherry picking. He writes, "You might have thought that a strategy of creating doubt about inconvenient research results could work only in soft fields like economics. But it turns out that the strategy works equally well when deployed against the hard sciences. The most spectacular example is the campaign to discredit research on global warming. Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus, many people have the impression that the issue is still unresolved. This impression reflects the assiduous work of conservative think tanks, which produce and promote skeptical reports that look like peer-reviewed research, but aren't."

Too bad the facts don't support these claims. First, a large majority of people support U.S. participation in the Kyoto Protocol, and have consistently supported it (see here and this very recent poll). So whatever the public's views about science, it has not stood in the way of a strong political consensus. Second, a majority of people do in fact support the scientific consensus on climate change (data). Sure, some people doubt the existence of a consensus, and yes I've seen the Luntz memo. But if you look at trends in perspectives on this subject, there is a strong trend in recent years towards greater acceptance of a scientific consensus on climate change (data). You don't have to be a statistician to observe that the corporate campaign to "discredit research" seems to have had exactly the opposite effect. This case does not support Krugman's argument.

But Krugman needs a lack of acceptance by the public of a scientific consensus, so that he can argue that the science compels a particular course of action. If the public largely accepts the scientific consensus and even more strongly support the Kyoto Protocol, and yet policy makers have not taken the political actions Krugman wants to see then it is hard to argue that science compels a particular course of action. The inconvenient reality of public opinion on climate change shows that the current state of affairs is grounded in things like ideologies and values, and not in conservative success in sowing scientific or political doubt. In this instance, Krugman appears to be no different than the conservatives he is criticizing - taking an ideological stance and then searching for evidence to support it. In this case his use of "facts" is just as suspect as those he is criticizing. It is ironic for Krugman to write, "There are several reasons why fake research is so effective. One is that nonscientists sometimes find it hard to tell the difference between research and advocacy." Krugman's view that facts compel political outcomes is exactly the same sort of justification used by conservative think tanks, and sets the stage for partisan battles over facts, rather than the values which really underlie these debates.

Which brings us to intelligent design. To be clear and unambiguous, intelligent design is not science, but an effort by its advocates to smuggle religious teachings into public schools. The strategy that ID advocates are using is not as Krugman would have it, to "spread doubt" about evolution, but indtead to offer up ID as an equally valid, scientific alternative way to view the world (i.e., reflected in the call by ID supporters to "teach both sides"). The effort to secure a place for ID in education reflects the conservatives attempt to capitalize on the historically effective strategy of exploiting the "excess of objectivity." But the ID folks have miscalculated in this case. Unlike most areas of science, in the case of evolution there really is no "excess of objectivity" and Krugman is certainly right about that. But by making the general case that scientific facts compel particular ideological outcomes, Krugman is legitimizing the very strategy employed by conservative think tanks (and today also embraced by liberal think tanks) that debates that are really about values can be effectively turned into debates putatively about science.

On the role of science in politics, Krugman finds considerable room for agreement with his conservative opponents. As much as anything, this area of liberal-conservative agreement helps to explain the increasing politicization of science in the United States.

Posted on August 8, 2005 12:41 AM View this article | Comments (11) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

August 04, 2005

Flood Damage and Climate Change: Update

Earlier this year I wrote several essays (here and here) that discussed whether or not, and to what degree, climate change (human caused or not) was responsible for the growing costs of disasters around the world. Here is what I concluded:

"1. Anyone making assertions that changes in climate (whether human caused or not) are responsible for any part of the global trend of increasing disaster losses had better provide some new scientific evidence to back up such claims. Future research may tell a different story, but my reading of the current state of science is that, today, such claims are groundless.

2. This series should be viewed as an intellectual challenge to the IPCC WG2 and the climate impacts community. I propose that we in this community first begin with a hypothesis, namely, "All trends observed in recent decades indicating growing damage related to weather and climate can be explained through the growth of societal vulnerability to those trends." Then, the second step is to conduct research that seeks to falsify this hypothesis."

A May paper in the Journal of Climate adds considerable more support for these conclusions, focused on floods. Specifically, the paper by the International Ad Hoc Detection and Attribution Group (Detecting and Attributing External Influences on the Climate System: A Review of Recent Advances, Journal of Climate: Vol. 18, No. 9, pp. 1291_1314, available to subscribers here) is unable to attribute changes in precipitation to a human cause (though they do attribute other changes to the Earth system to a human cause). They write, "because of poor signal-to-noise ratios and model uncertainty, anthropogenic rainfall changes cannot presently be detected even on a global scale."

What does this mean? There is presently no scientific basis for attributing worldwide or regional trends in flood damage to greenhouse gas emissions. None. While scientists may report something different in the future, today it is clearly a misuse of science to allege a connection between greenhouse gases and flood damages. The trend of increasing flood damage is overwhelmingly the result of societal changes. (For a good example of this see this New York Times article on the recent flooding in India.) Prometheus readers: given these new findings, I'd welcome any pointers to claims relating to flood damage and climate change.

Posted on August 4, 2005 01:50 PM View this article | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Unprincipled Relativism on Science Policy

The Boston Globe reported last Sunday weekend that science and political advocacy are becoming increasingly conflated -- "This dual role of advocate/researcher is becoming more common, especially as advocacy groups realize they can sway more opinions by asserting that their research is based on science, rather than simply on personal belief."

Readers of this blog will know that this is a subject that we've been concerned with for some time now. The Globe article focuses on a few conservative advocacy groups that "use scientific research to justify their opposition to abortion, the morning-after birth control pill and homosexuality," but using science to advance political agendas knows no ideological boundaries. It seems to me that while it is entirely appropriate to watchdog special interest advocacy groups that hide behind science, the area where we should have the most concern is when organizations supposedly working for common interests start advancing special interest agendas behind the fig leaf of science.

Two organizations that we have highlighted in this regard are the President's Council on Bioethics and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Interestingly enough, the reactions I've received to our discussions of these subjects fall pretty much into predictable political categories, with just a few exceptions (Iain Murray at TCS is one such exception, and here.). Those whose political leanings are in the same direction of the advocacy agendas put forward by the Council or the IPCC find little wrong with the advocacy stances taken by these institutions, and those opposed to their advocacy agendas find it improper. So it appears that not only are one's views on science a function of politics, but one's views on science in politics are also a function of political expediency. Too few proponents of action on climate change are willing to engage in discussion on the role of the IPCC in climate policy, and too few supporters of a conservative agenda on bioethics issues are willing to do the same with respect to the Bioethics Council. The result? Unprincipled relativism on science policy, and a general message from experts to the public and policy makers that, in the end, all that really matters is politics, not science, which opens the door for a continued politicization of science.

Posted on August 4, 2005 01:42 PM View this article | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

August 03, 2005

Stem Cell Politics and Perspectives on Science

Media Matters (MM) has an interesting analysis of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's (R-TN) flip-flopping views on federal funding for stem cell research. Here is an excerpt:

"In recent days, the media have left unchallenged Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's (R-TN) July 29 announcement of support for expanding federal funding for embryonic stem cell research beyond the restrictions currently imposed by the Bush administration, even though the justifications Frist provided for shifting his position have been publicly known for years."

One letter to the New York Times on Senator Frist's change in support comes from a supporter of federal funding for stem cell research and expresses hope that it is scientific knowledge that has changed the Senator's political calculus: " let's give Senator Bill Frist the benefit of the doubt; maybe he's been persuaded by the evidence and his heart to change his political stance, not by the need to widen his political base." MM quashes this possibility when they observe,

"The principal reason he gave for the change was that it had become increasingly apparent that there is a smaller number of stem cell lines available for federally funded research than first thought. He emphasized that Bush's policy should be "modified" because "unexpectedly, after several generations" the cell lines have become "less stable and less replicative," and the existing federally funded cell lines are "also grown on mouse feeder cells, which we have learned since will likely limit their future potential for clinical therapy in humans." ... Major news outlets have largely failed to challenge Frist's purported reasons for now supporting the bill. For example, while Frist noted that "Today, only 22 lines are eligible," this number has been publicly known since at least August 24, 2004, when it was reported by The New York Times. Similarly, Frist described the findings regarding problems with the existing stem cell lines as "unexpected" and said those findings differed from what was "initially thought." In fact, stem cell experts have voiced those concerns for years."

Another letter to the New York Times, this time from an opponent of federal funding for stem cell research, provides a different characterization of Senator Frist's actions, "Senator Frist offers us not the logic of reason and principle but of politics - of Machiavelli."

The two letters are suggestive of a general rule of contemporary political debates involving science - when you agree with someone's political stance, then their actions must be motivated by logic and rationality, and when you disagree with their stance, their motivations must mativated by political expediency. In other words, "junk science" underlies the perspectives of your political opponents, while "sound science" underlies the views of your allies. This rule seems to be pretty consistent across the political spectrum.

For my part, it does not seem particularly problematic that Senator Frist's various perspectives on stem cell research - all three or more of them -- are all but certainly located in judgments of political expediency rather than a "data-induced transformation" of perspective. It reinforces the claims frequently made here (and drawing on the work of Dan Sarewitz) that more often than not it is one's political perspectives that shape one's views on science, rather than the other way round. I do agree with MM that the media should be doing a better job examining the justifications Senator Frist gave for his changing views - if they did so, then hiding behind science would be much more difficult. An unhealthy politicization of science is risked when people believe (or act as if) views on science have the power to compel changes in political perspectives. In this manner debates over values become expressed through science, and we risk science becoming politics.

Posted on August 3, 2005 07:06 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health

August 01, 2005

Poverty of Options and a Hybrid Hoax

Here we have often made the claim that discussion of climate policy suffers from a poverty of options. And debate over competing bad options leads only to one place. A wonderful example of this impoverished debate can be found in discussion over hybrid vehicles. Yesterday's New York Times had a forthright and eye-opening article on the new Lexus 400 RXh:

"ONE question lingers after driving the 2006 Lexus RX 400h: How did it come to this, that Toyota is now selling a hybrid gas-electric vehicle with no tangible fuel economy benefits? In my test-driving, the Lexus hybrid, which is based on the gasoline-only RX 330, did not achieve better mileage than the 2005 RX 330 that I drove for comparison. My hybrid tester's window sticker did boast a federal mileage rating of 31 miles per gallon in the city and 27 on the highway, compared with just 18 and 24 for the RX without the hybrid drivetrain. But the government's testing procedure has a habit - one that seems to be exaggerated with hybrids - of rendering fuel economy numbers as relevant to the real world as national energy policies have been to actually reducing dependence on foreign oil. Speaking of which, isn't that what hybrids are all about: conservation, improved fuel economy, weaning the nation off its oil habit? Perhaps not any longer."

This comes on the heels of an incongruous partnership between the Sierra Club and Ford to promote - yes, promote - sales of Ford's new hybrid Escape SUV. Here is an excerpt from a Sierra Club press release:

"Sierra Club Applauds Hybrid Ford Escape By Jill Miller Missouri Conservation Organizer Sierra Club-Global Warming & Energy Program

On August 4 near Kansas City, labor and environmental groups joined forces to applaud the new Ford Escape Hybrid as good for jobs and the environment. National, chapter, and group Sierra Club representatives held a press conference with the United Autoworkers, Steelworkers, The Ecology Center, Burroughs Audubon of Kansas City, the Institute for Labor Studies, and the Apollo Alliance to spread the word about the importance of fuel-saving technology. The press conference produced dozens of media hits in Kansas City and around the country, from Hawaii to New York. The new Escape is the first American-made hybrid, and also the first hybrid SUV to reach the market. The 35 mile-per-gallon Escape is rated as a Partial-Zero Emission Vehicle (PZEV) and meets California's strict air pollution standards - something most people never expected to hear about any SUV. It emits a fraction of the air pollution of a regular SUV, and greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically lower as well. Dave Hamilton, director of the Sierra Club's Global Warming and Energy Program in Washington, D.C., spoke at the press conference, calling Ford's hybrid "a rolling advertisement for better technology and a cleaner environment." He acknowledged that the Sierra Club has been a long-time critic of the U.S. auto industry's inaction on improving the fuel economy of cars and light trucks, but "you have to give credit where credit is due"... With new hybrid models becoming available in the next 6 to 12 months, more and more Americans will be able to find the kind of hybrid they want to drive. Upcoming models include the hybrid Honda Accord, Toyota Highlander, and Lexus RX 400H. A hybrid version of Honda's Civic, and their two-seat Insight, have been available for a few years."

The Sierra Club claims that the Escape gets 35 MPG, but in a real-world test Car and Driver magazine finds that "the Escape's stay with us produced a fuel-economy average of just 25 mpg over its entire 1600-mile stay." In 2004 the U.S. government reported (here, in PDF) that the U.S fleet average fuel economy was just under 25 MPG. In other words, if the Sierra Club is wildly successful in its campaign with Ford and everyone trades in their vehicle for a Ford Escape, then this would have the effect on U.S. fuel consumption of ... nothing, zero, zilch. Now some might say that every Hummer turned in for a hybrid Escape benefits average national fuel economy, and this is certainly true, but it seems to me just as likely that some might decide to get an Escape rather than, say, an Honda Civic, with the opposite effect on national fuel economy.

When the Sierra Club, one of the nation's proudest and most effective environmental organizations, spends its finite resources on promoting a policy option that has very little demonstrable effects on the environment, and may in fact be counter-productive, this suggests to me that there just are not good options available. If this is the case, then where are the good options going to come from?

Posted on August 1, 2005 08:15 AM View this article | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Pope Vs. Lomborg

This month's issue of Foreign Policy has a very interesting set of exchanges between Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club, and Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist. It is an interesting exchange because Foreign Policy has them going back and forth a number of times.

The differences between Pope and Lomborg are not over facts or science, even though they both invoke facts to support their positions. At its core their dispute is over values - which values should be prioritized in our society and through what means. Their debate is a political one and may be just as much about rallying the faithful as it is to swaying the undecides.

Here is an excerpt:

Pope: ... True, we need priorities. And safe drinking water ought to be at the very top of the list. I agree. We also share distress that air pollution is killing so many Americans each year - but that doesn't mean mercury might not be a bigger problem. After all, neurological damage to kids is a very big deal. Having priorities doesn't always mean Sophie's choice. If we clean up coal-fired power plants, we solve both air pollution and mercury with one investment. We don't have to make an all-or-nothing choice between environmental responsibility and economic progress. If we can afford F-16 fighter jets for Pakistan, we can afford clean water and better schools in Karachi ...

Lomborg: ... Prioritizing really means some things must come last. Of course, we can make some investments in the environment without sacrificing economic progress, but we cannot make them all. Because the United States can afford F-16s does not mean it can also afford all environmental initiatives. We have to carefully spend our resources where they will do the most good. The solar installations you champion easily cost $450 apiece. Better-constructed $10 stoves can significantly reduce indoor air pollution. Do we want to help one family a little or 45 families a lot? ...

Pope: ... No, Bjørn, Sophie's choice is avoidable. Bad human decisions, not inescapable reality, make the environment appear to be a "trade-off" with prosperity...

Lomborg: ... You insist that there are no real trade-offs between the environment and prosperity. But money spent on windmills can't also be spent on something else. It is not that environmental projects are not worthwhile. It's just that they are not the only things we need to do...

Posted on August 1, 2005 07:50 AM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Environment

July 29, 2005

We Are Looking for a Post-Doc

The Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) has an opening for a Postdoctoral Research Associate under an NSF-sponsored project called Science Policy Assessment and Research on Climate that is investigating climate science policy. The position will be located in the CIRES Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

DUTIES
- Engage in original research that will characterize the supply of, demand for or reconciliation of supply and demand of climate information.
- Engage in original research on the relative sensitivity of anticipated climate impacts to various causal factors in a range of areas, possibly including, ecosystems, extreme events, water resources.
- Collaborate with colleagues within CIRES on research
- Collaborate with national and international partners
- Publish research results in peer-reviewed fora
- Assist and lead in the development of meetings and workshops in support of project objectives
- Contribute to other, related Center projects in research, education and outreach

REQUIREMENTS
- Recent Ph.D. in a related field.
- Knowledge of climate science and climate policies.
- Experience working on interdisciplinary projects.
- Demonstrated ability to present and perform on a professional level through use of excellent written and verbal communication and interpersonal skills.
- Demonstrated ability to work within a team of researchers.
- Publication of articles in refereed journals and in the non-academic literature.
- Presentation of papers at national or international scientific meetings.
- International interests and experience

The position will be filled as a Research Associate in CIRES, University of Colorado at Boulder, and will be eligible for employee benefits, including 22 days of vacation per year. Screening will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled. Applicants should submit a letter of interest with Job Code, and complete resume and salary history. In addition, the applicant should furnish the names of three individuals familiar with the applicant's professional qualifications for the position to provide references.

To apply, e-mail (jobs@cires.colorado.edu), fax (303.492.1149), or mail information to:
CIRES Human Resources
Job Code PL-1
216 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0216
The University of Colorado at Boulder is committed to diversity and equality in education and employment.

Posted on July 29, 2005 04:01 PM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Job Announcements

EPA Fuel Efficiency

Yesterday's New York Times contained an article about EPA's forthcoming report on fuel efficiency, noting that the report's release has been delayed a week,

"The executive summary of the copy of the report obtained by The Times acknowledges that "fuel economy is directly related to energy security," because consumer cars and trucks account for about 40 percent of the nation's oil consumption. But trends highlighted in the report show that carmakers are not making progress in improving fuel economy, and environmentalists say the energy bill will do little to prod them."

The article also notes that, "The average 2004 model car or truck got 20.8 miles per gallon, about 6 percent less than the 22.1 m.p.g. of the average new vehicle sold in the late 1980's, according to the report." This reminds me of a post here from last March which referred to a bill introduced by Representative Nancy Johnson (R-CT) and cosponsors, called that would require EPA to improve the accuracy of its fuel economy standards, which she claims are overstated. This would seem to be a powerful lever to actually improve fuel standards without entering into the CAFÉ debate.

Question: What happened to this bill? Anonymous insider accounts welcomed.

Here is an excerpt from my March post:

"Nancy Johnson (R-CT) and 24 bipartisan co-sponsors have introduced a bill in Congress that calls for the Environmental Protection Agency to improve the accuracy of its protocol for estimation of vehicle fuel economy (i.e., as measured in miles-per-gallon, mpg). According to a press release issued by Representative Johnson's office, "America's car buyers deserve truth-in-advertising when they buy a new car," said Johnson, who introduced the bill with Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) and over two dozen bipartisan co-sponsors. "The current EPA tests clearly mislead car buyers. Car buyers think they're getting better mileage on the road and a better deal at the pump than they really are. This common-sense bill requires the EPA to update its 30-year-old tests to reflect today's driving conditions." The tests used by the EPA to measure fuel economy - the city/highway gas mileage figures that appear on a new car's sticker - are 30-years-old and are based on car technology from the late 1970s! and 1980s. According to government and auto industry experts, the tests produce gas mileage rates that are inflated from anywhere between 10% and 30%. The inflated rates mislead consumers into thinking they are getting better mileage on the road, and a better deal at the gas pump, than they really are."

Data should be accurate, who is going to argue with that? If the bill becomes law it may lead to profound effects on actual fuel economy and a political battle waged through EPA estimates of fuel economy....

Posted on July 29, 2005 12:18 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Energy Policy

July 28, 2005

A Crisis of Allegiance for the IPCC?

While the details of the new Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate remain to be released, the prospect of a new international agreement on climate change suggests the possibly of competition with the Kyoto Protocol, despite some diplomatic words to the contrary. Some environmental groups, and some UK and Australian officials certainly see the new agreement as an alternative to Kyoto. While there will no doubt be plenty of opportunities to debate the new agreement, its very existence may create a crisis of allegiance for the scientific community. In other words, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) exists to support decision makers on climate change, and has a formal goal of being "policy neutral". We've criticized this charade on numerous occasions (e.g., see this paper). But facing the prospect of two competing international agreements on climate change, can the IPCC maintain the pretension of "policy neutrality"? I don't think so. At long last the IPCC may have to explicitly consider issues of policy, and if so, this would be a very good thing.

Some of the tensions facing the IPCC and its position with respect to international climate politics can be seen in recent contradictory statements of its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri.

Earlier this month he stated that India could not participate in the Kyoto Protocol, "We are not historically responsible for this problem. So the first steps have to be taken by those who are historically responsible -- the developed countries." This statement indicates that he believes that there is no path forward for developing countries under Kyoto, as the justification he gives for India (low per-capita emissions) certainly holds in well-over half the world where emissions are growing fastest. He then subsequently contradicts this statement by criticizing the new Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APPADC) as an alternative to Kyoto, claiming that, "it should not undermine the Kyoto Protocol that has been agreed the world over as the mechanism to tackle climate change." Obviously, if India has rejected Kyoto then it has not been agreed to "the world over." He then says something else that contradicts this criticism of the APPADC, ""I think [the APPADC] is a good idea because the development of these technologies is important and I've always said there has to be a partnership between North and South in these technologies. This is one way of working together It does not interfere with the Kyoto protocol." These are the statements of a politician walking a tight rope, and not particularly well, I'd say.

The IPCC is of the UN body and so to is the Kyoto Protocol (and its parent, the Climate Convention). Some have argued that the IPCC is in practice a subsidiary body to the Climate Convention, despite its language of neutrality. If there are in fact competing international approaches to climate policy, then the IPCC's leadership will have some important decisions to make: Support Kyoto or the APPADC? Support them both? If so, how? It is well understood that science is not neutral with respect to political and policy debates, the very framing of questions can lends support or opposition to particular political agendas. So there is no "hiding behind science" on this issue. Pachauri's recent conflicting statements indicate the challenges facing the community. But perhaps the best news in all of this, regardless of the merits of the Asia-Pacific agreement, is that at long last the scientific community will have to grapple with its role in the policy process.

Posted on July 28, 2005 08:33 AM View this article | Comments (9) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Trial Balloon from Barton Staffer

Yesterday The Toledo Blade published a letter from Larry Neal, Deputy Staff Director of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. In the letter Mr. Neal seems to offer a few olive branches, calling MBH "three honest men" and accepting that the world is warming. Read the whole letter here.

My sense is that the letter in a small newspaper by a staffer is a trial ballon. It may represent the possibility of a more conciliatory approach on this issue for Mr. Barton.

Posted on July 28, 2005 07:33 AM View this article | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science Policy: General

July 27, 2005

Space Shuttle Russian Roulette

It is a relief to see the space shuttle successfully in orbit. But all is not well. The New York Times reported yesterday that "With a new realism born of disaster, NASA says that the risk of catastrophic failure during the space shuttle Discovery's mission is about 1 in 100." This is an astoundingly high risk for an event that is expected to be repeated perhaps several dozen more times in the next 5 years or so.

This level of risk it means that over 25 flights there is a greater than 22% risk of a catastrophic loss of an orbiter. The odds of surviving Russian Roulette (1 bullet in a 6 chambered pistol) are much higher, 16.7% chance of shooting yourself. If the odds of a catastrophic failure are at the observed shuttle success rate of 1 in 57, then the probability of a failure over 25 flights rises to about 37%. NASA is playing a very dangerous game.

Given that the Shuttle is destined to be retired no matter what, costs billions and billions of dollar per year and carries a catastrophic failure probability of Russian Roulette, perhaps it is time to think about retiring it sooner rather than later and investing our space policy resources more rapidly into whatever is to come next.

Posted on July 27, 2005 11:27 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

Secret Climate Pact and IPCC Chairman

Several news agencies are reporting today that the United States is involved in a "secret" climate pact with Australia and a few other countries. Reuters reports,

"The world's top polluter, the United States, is set to unveil a pact to combat global warming by developing energy technology aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions, officials and diplomats said on Wednesday. China and India, whose burgeoning economies comprise a third of humanity, as well as Australia and South Korea are also part of the agreement to tackle climate change beyond the Kyoto protocol."

While there will be plenty of opportunity to discuss the pluses and minuses of the proposal, I find it very interesting and somewhat puzzling to see that the pact has already been endorsed by Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC. Here is how he is quoted by Reuters:

"I think it is a good idea because the development of these technologies is important and I've always said there has to be a partnership between North and South in these technologies. This is one way of working together," said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "It does not interfere with the Kyoto protocol," he said."

I'm not sure how he comes to the conclusion that it does not interfere with Kyoto. Of course it doea. Here is how Australia's environment minister characterized the agreement in the same article:

"Australian Environment Minister Ian Campbell said on Wednesday that the five countries had been quietly working on the pact for months. "It's quite clear the Kyoto protocol won't get the world to where it wants to go ... We have got to find something that works better -- Australia is working on that with partners around the world,""

And the United States is clearly looking to move "post-Kyoto". This new pact is clearly being offered to move beyond Kyoto, and as such presents an alternative strategy to Kyoto going forward.

Irrespective of the merits of the new climate pact, it seems irresponsible at best for the chairman of the IPCC to take a public advocacy position on it, one way or the other. There are plenty of venues for political advocacy on climate, but as we have argued here before, the IPCC ought not be among them.

Posted on July 27, 2005 11:23 AM View this article | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

July 26, 2005

Toledo Blade gets it Right

If the editorial board of the Toledo Blade gets it right on the Hockey Stick, then perhaps there is hope for the WSJ and NYT:

"The real problem is how to depoliticize climate science before matters get worse, and research loses more public credibility. That certainly should be a topic for congressional hearings and funding agencies like the NSF."

Posted on July 26, 2005 11:47 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Some Thoughts on U.S. Weather Policy

Today I am giving a presentation at the "Community Meeting on the Future of the U.S. Weather Prediction Enterprise" on U.S. weather policy - that is, on how decisions are made within the meteorology community to organize research and its connections to operations and end users. If you are visiting this site as a result of my talk today, Welcome!

The meeting has been called because of concerns among some in the meteorology community -- "Although weather prediction in the United States has made significant strides during the past several decades, there are a number of warning signs that U.S. weather prediction and research are not living up to their potential." And a background paper (PDF) by the University of Washington's Cliff Mass provided in advance of the meeting provides a similar message:

"... there is a growing sentiment in the community that weather prediction research and operations in the U.S. have significant problems, and that progress in diagnosing and predicting the weather is far less than our discipline's potential. All too often the large American weather prediction enterprise, both in research and operations, has worked with insufficient coordination and cooperation, resulting in inadequate resources for key tasks, inefficient duplication of effort, slow progress developing essential technologies, and unproductive or inappropriate use of limited manpower. Significant problems have developed because key players in the weather enterprise-operational centers, academic researchers, government laboratories, the user community, and the private weather sector-have not worked together effectively."

I've had the pleasure of working with the weather community - academia, government, private sector, WMO -- for more than a decade and have written a number of pieces on weather policy that both reinforce and contradict aspects of the common problem justifying the present meeting (links to several relevant papers can be foound below).

First, the weather community has not reached its potential. But this should be viewed not as a crisis or situation requiring drastic action. In fact, weather, and weather forecasting in particular, is one of the great technological success stories of the 20th century. The weather community has been so successful that the United States is among the most resilient and well-prepared communities in the world with respect to weather hazards. It should say some thing that weather forecasting only makes the news when there is a significant forecast bust. Can the weather community do even better? Probably, but there is very little latent demand for them to do so.

Second, the weather forecasting community, and especially the research community, has an unhealthy focus on obtaining more resources for the science of meteorology. This does little to distinguish this area of science from most others, but the weather community has both a wonderful track record of sustained and significant federal support, and a string of failures in dramatically increasing that level of support. History is littered with the experiences of weather research programs that failed to break the bank - MESOMEX, SESAME, STORM, USWRP. It is no surprise to me that one of the sessions at this week's meeting is devoted to funding. As this community goes forward, it would be wise to pay close attention to the lessons of past efforts to organize large community programs.

My talk today revisits an essay that I wrote about 5 years ago that I titled "Six Heretical Notions About Weather Policy." Here is a summary of my perspective which I share today in my talk:

The weather community postulates that improved forecasts will benefit society. Thus, the logic about what to do is obvious.

* To improve forecasts we must advance science.

* To advance science we need improved models.

* To test and use improved models we need better observations.

* To assimilate the better observations and run the improved models we need faster computers.

* More funding will enable faster computers, better observations, improved models, and advances in science.

Therefore, more funding for advancements in science, models, observations, and computers are necessary and sufficient to benefit society. A corollary is that the greater the funding to meteorology, the greater the benefits to society. This logic seems so obvious and inescapable that to many in the weatehr community, and as a result great frustration is sometimes expressed when policy makers in places like Congress and the Office of Management and Budget apparently fail to grasp its self-evidence. But well-meaning, but scrutinizing, person might question this logic? In particular, the follow notions might occur to an outsider:

*More data is collected than is ever used in research or operations

*Forecasts are already great -- How good do forecasts have to be?

*The weather community is flush with funding (consider a recent BAMS article by Alan Robock that presented data showing that the average meteorology professor at 16 leading research universities obtains $500,000 of funding per year, totalling more than $115,000,000 in research support.)

*More research has been produced than has ever been incorporated into operations

*Improved value of weather forecasts is constrained by characteristics of use and users and not by forecast accuracy

*The atmospheric sciences community is so large and full of overlaps and redundancy that no one really knows what the universe looks like.

I conclude my presentation with six more heretical notions, updated to 2005:

*New funding - Forget about it!

*The frontiers of weather research lie in sciences other than meteorology

*In the developed world the future benefits to society of weather services are primarily in the private sector

*In the developing world the future benefits to society of weather services are primarily related to basic infrastructure of forecasting-warning-use

*Operations, not research, always has to be at the center of the weather enterprise

*Any effort focused on the weather "research" or "prediction" enterprise is doomed to failure

For further reading:

Pielke Jr., R. A., and M. H. Glantz, 1995: Serving Science and Society: Lessons from Large-Scale Atmospheric Science Programs. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 76(12), 2445-2458. (PDF)

Hooke, W. H., and R. A. Pielke, Jr., 2000: Short-Term Weather Prediction: An Orchestra in Search of a Conductor. Chapter 4 in D. Sarewitz, R. A. Pielke, Jr., and R. Byerly (eds.), Prediction: Science Decision Making and the Future of Nature. Island Press: Washington, DC. 61-84. (PDF)

Pielke, Jr., R. A., and R. Carbone, 2002: Weather Impacts, Forecasts, and Policy: An Integrated Perspective, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 83:393-403. (PDF)

Questions or comments? pielke@colorado.edu

Posted on July 26, 2005 07:48 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Environment

July 25, 2005

The Other Discernable Influence

In his testimony last week NCAR's Jim Hurrell made an interesting comment, "... it should be recognized that mitigation actions taken now mainly have benefits 50 years and beyond now." I wrote here last week that, "This point would seem to be generally appreciated by experts in climate science and policy but is generally lost in the more general debate." But after talking to some folks about my post, it seems that this point is worth some further examination.

So let me pose a few questions to the climate science community. (And in particular, if the RealClimate folks would take a crack at it I'd appreciate it.) These are not economics questions or policy questions, but questions of climate science with relevance to consideration of policy options. And if these questions are dealt with by the IPCC or in the published literature, I am unaware of it, so pointers to references are also appreciated.

(a) If anthropogenic CO2 emissions we instantaneously halted on 31 December 2005, how long would it be before the scientific community could detect and attribute a discernable influence of this policy on the climate system? Specifically, please use the following four variables: atmospheric CO2 concentrations, global average temperature, sea level rise, and extreme weather events (heat waves, hurricanes, floods, etc.).

And there are some obvious permutations also worth considering, such as for example (b) halting CO2 emissions in 2020, (b) cutting CO2 to 1990 levels by 2012, and (c) cutting global CO2 emissions by 50% by 2030.

All replies welcomed, Thanks!

Posted on July 25, 2005 03:08 PM View this article | Comments (15) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

July 21, 2005

A Few Comments on Today's Climate Hearing

This morning the Senate Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing on "Climate Change Science and Economics". I have read through the testimonies of Panel 1 and there is little surprising or new to be found. I do have a 3 more or less random comments below.

1. Nobel laureate Mario Molina states, "Recent estimates indicate that stabilizing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at the equivalent of twice the pre-industrial value of 280 ppm carbon dioxide provides only a 10-20 per cent chance of limiting global average temperature rise to 4 degrees Fahrenheit. Put another way, this means that the odds that average global temperatures will rise above 4 degrees is 80 to 90 percent. Unless society starts taking some aggressive actions now, we are well on our way to reaching perhaps even a tripling of pre-industrial carbon dioxide levels with far greater adverse economic and environmental consequences. The risks to human society and ecosystems grow significantly if the average global surface temperature increases 5 degrees Fahrenheit or more. Such a large temperature increase might entail, for example, substantial agricultural losses, widespread adverse health impacts and greatly increased risks of water shortages. Furthermore, a very high proportion of the world's coral reefs would be imperiled and many terrestrial ecosystems could suffer irreversible damage. The risk of runaway or abrupt climate change also increases rapidly if the average temperature increases above about 5 degrees Fahrenheit. It is possible, for example, that the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets will melt, raising sea levels more than ten meters over the period of a few centuries. It is also possible that the ocean circulation will change abruptly, perhaps shutting down the Gulf Stream."

Comments such as this suggest to me that the international climate policy community is living a lie. Specifically,

Article 2 of the Climate Convention calls for, "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner."

If 4 degrees is set to occur at 80-90% likelihood, then 5 degrees, which Molina clearly views as "dangerous" cannot be far behind. Prevention, simply put is not in the cards. This does not mean that we throw up our hands and do nothing, but it does mean that if we are serious about action that we should start by reopening the objective of the Climate Convention for renegotiation. This observation has been made before. In 1995, Pekka E. Kauppi wrote presciently in Science that the goal of the Framework Convention on Climate Change was either "unattainable or irrelevant If GCM projections are right, the climate will change, there will be dangerous effects and the Convention objective will be unattainable" (Science, 220:1454). It is time to stop living the lie and reconsider Article 2.

2. NCAR's Jim Hurrell observes, "... it should be recognized that mitigation actions taken now mainly have benefits 50 years and beyond now."

This point would seem to be generally appreciated by experts in climate science and policy but is generally lost in the more general debate. Why does this matter? The asymmetry in the timing of costs and benefits makes it incredibly hard to justify action on mitigation - my tongue-in-cheek characterization of this approach to mitigation is "Please bear these costs but you personally will never see any benefits, other than the psychological benefits of aiding future generations." Such arguments don't work for social security and they won't work here. In addition, the reality of the time-lag of benefits illustrates the futility of using current climate events to justify mitigation action. Even if people take action, there can be no scientifically valid argument that such actions will lead to a better climate in their lifetime (warning tongue-in-cheek comment coming) - "Want fewer hurricanes in 2007? Drive a Prius!" Actually, not so-tongue-in-cheek, this exact strategy was tried by Scientists and Engineers for Change and Environment2004.org leading up to the 2004 elections and we all know how Florida turned out. It was a misuse of science to suggest that the 2004 election had any impact on future hurricane frequency. It is similarly a misuse to suggest that climate mitigation should be viewed as an effective policy option for issues such as malaria and disasters.

Again, the point here is not to throw up our hands and do nothing. But the asymmetry is costs and benefits suggest that we might think about different strategies, particular ones that have more of symmetry between the timing of costs and benefits. We've discussed such options frequently here as "no regrets" on both adaptation and mitigation - see these posts (here, here, here. I doubt that much action (i.e., actual emissions reductions, not aspirations) will happen on mitigation until action on decarbonization is framed in terms of its short term costs and benefits.

3. Sir John Houghton, former chairman of the IPCC, states the following, "Data from insurance companies show an increase in economic losses in weather related disasters of a factor of 10 in real terms between the 1950s and the 1990s. Some of this can be attributed to an increase in vulnerability to such disasters. However, a significant part of the trend has also arisen from increased storminess especially in the 1980s and 1990s."

This is simply scientifically incorrect and politically irresponsible. No part of the trend in economic losses related to weather since the 1950s can be attributed to increased storminess (though we'd welcome learning of any research to the contrary). We discussed this in some depth here and here, and even the 2001 IPCC says as much.

If climate scientists want to be believed when they discuss science in highly politicized contexts, then a good place to start would be to be accurate when making scientific claims. It would also be a good idea for scientists to call their colleagues on statements that are unjustified by the scientific literature, even when those colleagues are advocating policies that they themselves may happen to favor. This was the message of Hans von Storch when he visited Boulder a few weeks ago (see this Der Speigel essay). In the long run both science and policy will be better served through candor and community-established norms of scientific rigor, even if there may be short-term political benefits in playing fast and loose with science.

Posted on July 21, 2005 04:21 PM View this article | Comments (21) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

July 20, 2005

Making Sense of University (Re)Organization

John V. Lombardi, chancellor and a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has a great essay on making sense of the seeming nonsense of the bureaucratic structure of universities. He writes,

"How universities are organized can confuse not only the sympathetic, casual observer of higher education but students and staff members as well... Insiders know, however, that all of these organizational permutations reflect not only significant changes in the universe of knowledge but also internal structures of personality, politics, money and power as well as the external pressures of fad, fashion or funding. Academic reorganization is a frequent exercise on university campuses, and often generates tremendous controversy because each effort signifies a potential for gain or loss in academic positioning for money, power and prestige. Although, to outsiders, the warfare that these reorganizations frequently provoke can often appear out of proportion to the stakes involved, insiders know that organizational structure can influence internal distributions of resources. Even more importantly for many faculty and students, the organizational structure serves as a prestige map."

Read the whole essay.

Posted on July 20, 2005 03:31 PM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education

Realism on Climate Change

This week at the XXV International Population Conference of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, in Tours, France, Tim Dyson of the London School of Economics presented a very interesting paper that presents some refreshingly clear thinking on climate change. Dyson's conference presentation is titled, "Development, population, climate change: some painful conclusions."

Here is the abstract to Dyson's paper prepared for the conference:

"On development, demography and climate change: The end of the world as we know it?

Tim Dyson

London School of Economics

Paper prepared for Session 952 of the XXVth Conference of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, Tours, 18-23 July, 2005

Abstract

Adopting a holistic stance, the present paper attempts to provide fresh perspective on global warming and climate change. It does so by considering most major sides of the issue, and, quite consciously, it does so from a distance. Essentially, five main points are made. First, that since about 1800 economic development has been based on the burning of fossil fuels, and this will continue to apply for the foreseeable future. Of course, there will be increases in the efficiency with which they are used, but there is no real alternative to the continued - indeed increasing - use of these fuels for purposes of economic development. Second, due to momentum in economic, demographic, and climate processes, it is inevitable that there will be a major rise in the level of atmospheric CO2 during the twenty-first century. Demographic and CO2 emissions data are presented to substantiate this. Third, available data on global temperatures, which are also presented, suggest strongly that the coming warming of the Earth will be appreciably faster than anything that human populations have experienced in historical times.

The paper shows that a rise in world surface temperature of anywhere between 1.6 and 6.6 degrees Celsius by the year 2100 is quite conceivable - and this is a conclusion that does not require much complex science to appreciate. Furthermore, particularly in a system that is being forced, the chances of an abrupt change in climate happening must be rated as fair. Fourth, while it is impossible to attach precise probabilities to different scenarios, the range of plausible unpleasant climate outcomes seems at least as great as the range of more manageable ones. The agricultural, political, economic, demographic, social and other consequences of future climate change are likely to be considerable - indeed, they could be almost inconceivable. In a world of perhaps nine billion people, adverse changes could well occur on several fronts simultaneously and to cumulative adverse effect. There is a pressing need to improve ways of thinking about what could happen - because current prognostications by environmental and social scientists are often rather restricted and predictable. Finally, the paper argues that human experience of other difficult 'long wave' threats (e.g. HIV/AIDS) reveals a broadly analogous sequence of reactions. In short: (i) scientific understanding advances rapidly, but (ii) avoidance, denial, and reproach characterize the overall societal response, therefore, (iii) there is relatively little behavioral change, until (iv) evidence of damage becomes plain. Apropos carbon emissions and climate change, however, it is argued here that not only is major behavioral change unlikely in the foreseeable future, but it probably wouldn't make much difference even were it to occur. In all likelihood, events are now set to run their course."

This excerpt from the paper is particularly on point:

"Following publication of the IPCC's second report, world leaders met in Kyoto in 1997. But in many respects the ensuing 'Kyoto process' can itself be seen as one chiefly concerned with ways of avoiding making reductions in CO2 emissions. Examples of this tendency include the discussion of 'carbon sequestration' i.e. the planting of trees and other vegetation to help 'neutralize' CO2 emissions. It took considerable time for the limitations of this approach to be appreciated fully - in particular, that over the long run the areas of forest required are incredibly great and that there is no feasible way of stopping the 'respiration' of sequestrated carbon back into the atmosphere (Lohmann 1999). Another approach with a strong element of avoidance - one that has occupied armies of negotiators, lawyers, economists, consultants, etc, the very stuff of Weberian bureaucratization (Prins 2003) - is the construction of 'carbon markets'. The theory is that by enabling 'emissions trading' such markets will allow some countries (usually richer ones, with high emissions) to pay others (usually poorer ones, with low emissions) - essentially as a way of reducing the need to make any reductions at all. The fact is that: None of Kyoto's market measures tackle directly the physical root of global warming: the transfer of fossil fuels from underground, where they are effectively isolated from the atmosphere, to the air. (Lohmann 2001:5).

It was noted above that in the last decade or so virtually all countries have continued to burn greater amounts of fossil fuel. This also applies to those that have arguably been most prominent in supporting the Kyoto process - notably Canada, Japan and those of the EU. Many of these countries are unlikely to meet their CO2 reduction targets agreed under the Kyoto treaty (which finally came into force in 2005). Thus comparing 1990 and 2002, it is estimated that Canada's emissions increased by 22 percent and Japan's by 13. While the CO2 emissions of the EU(15) remained roughly constant, this was mainly due to reductions in Germany and Britain - both of which gained fortuitously from a move away from coaltowards natural gas (which emits less CO2 per unit of energy). Of the remaining countries in the EU(15), only Sweden - which relies heavily on hydro and nuclear - registered a fall in CO2 emissions. Of the 36 'Annex B' countries of the Kyoto treaty (i.e. the industrialized countries, including former eastern bloc nations), only 12 experienced declines in emissions: the three in the EU(15), plus nine former eastern bloc nations. If one excludes these, then CO2 emissions among the remaining 24 Annex B countries rose by 13 percent during 1990-2002 (Zittel and Treber 2003). Of course, the United States, the world's largest emitter of CO2, is not a signatory to the Kyoto treaty. And, to complete the list of predictable social reactions, the 'Kyoto process' has involved no shortage of rather bitter recrimination between representatives of the US and EU countries.

The prospects for an enforceable international agreement to significantly reduce CO2 emissions are very poor. While it may be in the interest of the world as a whole to restrict the burning of fossil fuels, it is in the interest of individual countries to avoid making such changes. Moreover, the enormous complexities involved - many of them created and informed by matters of interest - will also hinder agreement. Doubtless there will be gains in energy use efficiency, shifts towards less carbon intensive fuels, and greater use of renewable energy sources (e.g. solar, wind and tidal power). But except for a massive shift towards nuclear - which has many serious problems attached, and would in any case take decades to bring about - there are limits to what such changes could possibly achieve in terms of CO2 reduction. Other technological ideas - like the development of the so-called 'hydrogen economy', or the extraction of CO2 from coal and its sequestration underground or at sea - are remote, even fanciful ideas as large scale and significant solutions to the problem. Indeed, such notions can themselves be the basis of avoidance inasmuch as they suggest that something is being done. Understandably, poor countries are unlikely to put great effort into constraining their CO2 emissions - especially in the face of massive discrepancies between them and the rich. In sum, for the foreseeable future the basic response to global warming will be one of avoidance and, at most, marginal change. That the absolute amount of CO2 emitted is likely to rise is shown by an examination of basic demographic and emissions data in the next section."

The whole paper is worth reading, and can be found here".

Posted on July 20, 2005 12:46 AM View this article | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

July 19, 2005

Barton- Boehlert Context

Congress has a history, and history shapes context. One factor underlying the Barton-Boehlert spat is no doubt the fact that in the early 1990s Mr. Boehlert was staunchly against the Super-Conducting Supercollider (SSC), a project that he helped to terminate which would have been built in the district of Rep. Joe Barton.

Here is what Mr. Boelhert said about the project in 1991:

"Whose priority is the SSC, anyway? Not the nation's struggling young scientists, who are starving for individual-investigator grants across a wide variety of fields. Not the nation's scientific societies, who support the SSC only to the extent that other needs are met first. Not the nation's leading corporations, who see the SSC as having fewer industrial spinoffs than any other big-science project. Not the House of Representatives, which voted last year to discontinue the project if it was going to cost the federal government more than $5 billion. The SSC is a priority for only three groups: for Texas officials--and we can all understand that--who obtained a giant public works project for their state; for DOE officials, who would rather continually break promises made to Congress than cancel the project; and for a relatively small group of researchers in an esoteric field, who, understandably, think their research is more important than anyone's."

For his part, Mr. Barton took the loss of the SSC hard, as suggested by this news article in Science:

"Memories of the failed Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) die hard, particularly in Texas. Representative Joe Barton (R), who represents the area that was to be the SSC's home, vowed last week to oppose the $450 million contribution that the Department of Energy (DOE) wants to make to another high-energy physics research project, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. Barton, a member of the House Science Committee but not its energy subcommittee, may not have much control over DOE funding. But his statement will play well with constituents, and it concerns DOE officials. The Europeans "didn't help us, and they went out of their way to stop the SSC," Barton complained in a 6 March hearing of the subcommittee. "I'll be beep-beep-beeped if we'll send a dollar to Europe." Barton said that while he does not oppose U.S. scientists working at CERN, he does take issue with the DOE-CERN agreement, which requires the United States to help build portions of the acceler! ator and its detectors through 2004. (The National Science Foundation would chip in about $80 million.) Barton wants the United States to have more administrative oversight at CERN, and he wants the Europeans to promise to assist in building future U.S. facilities. "One congressman can raise a lot of sand," he warned DOE energy research chief Martha Krebs, who was testifying before the panel. "I know where the bodies are buried, and I intend to dig them up," said Barton, who left immediately after making his statement."

Posted on July 19, 2005 11:05 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Prepackaged News, Scientific Content and Democratic Processes

Last February the Government Accountability Office criticized the Bush Administration for its use of "prepackaged news stories." (See this Washington Post report.). Yesterday's Washington Post had an interesting story on how the Environmental Protection Agency has been paying The Weather Channel to produce prepackaged news stories on environmental issues. The Washington Post reported,

"The Environmental Protection Agency paid the Weather Channel $40,000 to produce and broadcast several videos about ozone depletion, urban heat problems and the dangers of ultraviolet radiation as part of the Bush administration's efforts to inform the public about climate change, agency records show."

This is interesting for several reasons. First, it certainly plays against stereotype to hear that the Bush Administration is engaged in covert propaganda on climate change. In addition, a university professor and NRDC official who looked at the news stories found them to be scientifically accurate. It makes me wonder, only partially tongue-in-cheek, how the UCS folks will handle this situation; I can see the headline in their next report, "Bush Administration Guilty of Covertly Promoting Accurate Science on Climate Change." More realistically, I would expect that this situation involving EPA and TWC will be completely ignored by those involved in the debate over the "integrity of science" even though this situation involves a breach of law by agencies under the Bush Administration. Why? It doesn't fit the larger framing! of the issue of the misuse of science by opponents of the Bush Administration. This situation makes things more complicated and thus will be easier to ignore.

More broadly, this situation illustrates the importance of distinguishing process from content. The Washington Post article and the experts they interviewed emphasized the quality of the content of the prepackaged news releases. Here is one example from the story, _Daniel Lashof, science director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's Climate Center, said: "I think they are actually a very good use of EPA resources to reach the public on these issues. The science, I think, is presented accurately in all of them."_ But this misses the point of GAO_s objections, and is also representative of the more general conflation of criteria of content and process. We see this conflation frequently when the focus of attention is exclusively on scientific content rather than the processes that are used to produce, disseminate or use that science. Too often judgments on the fidelity of democratic processes are made based on whether or not one agrees with the content of the discuss! ion and not criteria of what constitutes a healthy process (examples include, Iraq war debate, Lomborg debate, scientific appointments, hockey stick, etc.). In this case involving EPA, it is not good enough in the eyes of GAO that prepackaged news stories are accurate.

Here is what the GAO concluded in its February Circular distributed to federal agencies,

_Prepackaged news stories are complete, audio-video presentations that may be included in video news releases, or VNRs. They are intended to be indistinguishable from news segments broadcast to the public by independent television news organizations. To help accomplish this goal, these stories include actors or others hired to portray "reporters" and may be accompanied by suggested scripts that television news anchors can use to introduce the story during the broadcast. These practices allow prepackaged news stories to be broadcast, without alteration, as television news While agencies generally have the right to disseminate information about their policies and activities, agencies may not use appropriated funds to produce or distribute prepackaged news stories intended to be viewed by television audiences that conceal or do not clearly identify for the television viewing audience that the agency was the source of those materials. It is not enough that the contents of an ag! ency's communication may be unobjectionable. Neither is it enough for an agency to identify itself to the broadcasting organization as the source of the prepackaged news story._

And in May Congressional testimony the GAO explained its reasoning as follows,

"The publicity or propaganda prohibition states, "No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress." GAO has long interpreted this provision to prohibit agencies from, among other things, producing materials that are covert as to origin. Our opinions have emphasized that the critical element of covert propaganda is concealment of the government's role in producing the materials. Agencies have violated this law when they used appropriated funds to produce articles and op-ed pieces that were the ostensible position of persons not associated with the government."

GAO concluded that the use of prepackaged news is wrong independent of the merit of the content of the stories. This is a good lesson for those involved in political debates involving science. Sometimes process trumps content.

Posted on July 19, 2005 07:42 AM View this article | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Article on Democracy and Bush Science Policy

Eric Laursen has an interesting article on science policy in Z Magazine. Here is an excerpt:

"A good many critics on the progressive side - not so much scientists as public policy researchers who study scientific process and outcomes - argue that the U.S. scientific community is in denial since much, if not most, of its work is inherently political and pretending otherwise is only going to make it harder. Debates about genetically engineered food and the future uses of biotechnology and nanotechnology, not to mention the study of stem cell research and AIDS, have cracked open the protective shell that's traditionally allowed scientists to operate in isolation from most political scrutiny. Science is not just science anymore and if the work its practitioners cherish is going to go forward, they'll have to embrace a more democratic model for framing, approving, and reviewing projects and allocating resources. Otherwise, critics warn, the right will use government's control of the purse strings on most large-scale scientific research to mold a new agenda that decimates these fields and awards more and more of the kitty to projects with overtly military and commercial purposes. Moreover, the debate is not just about the utility of "pure" science and the social impact of sex research anymore. The rise of new fields like biomedecine and nanotechnology has shifted scientists' focus to the basic building blocks of matter and human life, potentially enabling them to radically transform the natural world. If a way isn't found to involve the larger community directly in the scientific decision-making process, "democracy" could be reduced to irrelevancy."

Read the whole thing here.

Posted on July 19, 2005 07:16 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

July 18, 2005

Palmer on Partisanship in Science Policy

The July issue of Ogmius, our Center's newsletter, is now out and it features an essay by Bob Palmer, recently retired minority staff director of the House Science Committee.

Bob's essay is titled Science Policy: The Victim of Partisan Politics and he writes in his essay,

"The Federal government is not responding to the many political challenges of the day - energy, environment, health care, global economic competition - whose resolution would greatly benefit from the wise application of S&T. When politics is overly fettered by partisanship, so is science - in the sense that its legitimate role in opening up more room for negotiations and the development of policy options is severely limited. This unfortunately is the niche that science policy occupies today."

Read the whole thing here. (We'd welcome responses to this essay either here on Prometheus or published as a letter to the editor in the next issue.) In our next newsletter, we expect to have a companion piece by David Goldston, current majority staff director for the House Science Committee. Stay tuned.

Posted on July 18, 2005 07:46 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Column in Bridges

I have a column just out in the current issue of Bridges, a publication of the Office of Science & Technology at the Embassy of Austria in Washington, D.C. The title of my essay is "Science Academies as Political Advocates," a subject discussed here on Prometheus not too long ago.

Here is the opening:

"What role should national science academies play in policy and politics? One answer to this question was provided last month when eleven national science academies sent a letter to "world leaders, including those meeting at the Gleneagles G8 Summit in July 2005" advocating a number of specific policy actions on climate change. The letter, from science academies in Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, indicates that these national science academies perceive one of their roles to be overt political advocacy. As the public has demanded a closer connection of science with society, the action of the science academies is part of a broader trend for scientists and scientific institutions to become more involved in the political fray on a wide range of issues involving science. While each individual scientist has a very personal decision to make about whether or not to engage in political advocacy, the! re are real risks for the scientific enterprise when science academies become political advocates."

Read the whole thing here.

Posted on July 18, 2005 07:37 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

July 13, 2005

Space Shuttle Return to Flight

United States space policy remains bound by NASA's decades-old "vision" of voyaging to Mars that shapes everything from agency priorities to its political machinations. Don't be fooled into thinking that this is George Bush's "vision" - it was also his father's and Ronald Regan's, but really it has been NASA's vision, whispered into the president's ear. Perhaps Richard Nixon is the only President not to be swayed by NASA's lobbying for a commitment to go to Mars. Of course, NASA worked around Nixon with its "next logical steps: shuttle-station-Mars" that got us to where we are today. For those interested in some history on the shuttle and space station program that develop these political dynamics, here are a few resources:

On costs of the shuttle program, see this tabulation -- to date over $150 billion and counting.

On why the space shuttle developed as it did, see this analysis:

Pielke Jr., R. A., 1993: A Reappraisal of the Space Shuttle Program. Space Policy, May, 133-157. (PDF)

On the dynamics of the space station program:

Brunner, R., R. Byerly, Jr., and R.A. Pielke, Jr., 1992: The Future of the Space Station Program. Chapter in Space Policy Alternatives, edited by R. Byerly, Westview Press, Boulder, 199-222. (PDF)

Posted on July 13, 2005 07:12 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

July 12, 2005

A Few Commentaries on Lomborg Debate

Last year I co-guest edited a special issue of Environmental Science and Policy on various dimensions of the debate over The Skeptical Environmentalist. Several comments responding to papers in that special issue have now been published, and we have set up a special WWW page for them:

1. Peter Dougherty, an editor at Princeton University Press, provides a commentary (PDF) on Chris Harrison's paper (Chris edited TSE) Dougherty writes,

"The major point Chris Harrison makes in his account of the publication of Lomborg is that the reaction on the part of the book's fiercest critics "went beyond the usual unpicking of a thesis and concentrated instead on the role of the publisher in publishing the book at all." This is a highly unusual, but not unheard of, state of affairs in university press publishing. It invites a publisher to explore the considerations leading up to the publishing decision, and in this case the same publisher's actions in defending its decision after the book's publication. In both cases, Harrison's account reflects a high degree of professionalism on the part of Cambridge University Press."

2. Eva Lövbrand and Gunilla Öberg comment on papers by Dan Sarewitz and one that I wrote. They write (PDF),

"We agree that the linear model of science policy interplay is sadly outdated and in need of replacement, but fear that a renewed demarcation between the realms of facts and value conflicts rather will reinforce than challenge the logic that it rests upon. In order to move forward, we argue that it is necessary to instigate a reflexive and philosophically informed discussion about the situated and provisional nature of scientific advice in environmental policy-making among scientists themselves and those making use of scientific results."

Dan and I write a response (PDF),

"But okay, let us imagine a world in which this ideal discussion between natural scientists and decision makers is actually taking place, with the result that all participants in the conversation understand that knowledge is "situated and provisional," and that facts and values, science and notscience, are not clearly delineated. In this world, are we to expect that the newly enlightened scientists would then initiate "a public discussion about the limits to scientific inquiry and hence [open] up for social monitoring and scrutiny of scientific results [sic]"? Presumably, these enlightened scientists would no longer worry about where their funding will come from, and they would, moreover, be willing to cede their considerable authority to a bunch of social scientists."

You can find the whole series here.

Posted on July 12, 2005 08:15 AM View this article | Comments (9) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Environment

July 11, 2005

You Go Dad!

My father, Roger Pielke, Sr., is a very well-known and widely published professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University. His research group is dipping their toes into the blogging world with Climate Science. Here is their focus:

Welcome to the weblog of the Roger A. Pielke Sr. Research Group.

We are initiating a new blog specifically focused on climate science issues. Among the topics to be presented are views on the science that are not receiving much if any attention in the science community even though the research is appearing in the scientific literature. In addition, this forum provides a venue for the prompt dissemination of new scientific insight, as well as issues with balance in the discussion of the role of human disturbance of the climate system as reported in national and international assessments, and in published papers.

Check it out.

Posted on July 11, 2005 03:12 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

PPT of HVS Talk

For those interested in seeing the powerpoint from Hans von Storch's talk at NCAR last friday, you can download it here:

http://w3g.gkss.de/staff/storch/PPT/paleo/050708.ncar.ppt

Warning: 27.1 MB.

We'll have a summary crafted by several in the audience posted here soon.

Posted on July 11, 2005 08:52 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

July 07, 2005

London

Sympathies to friends, colleagues and all in London and the UK who are dealing with the horrible events of today.

Posted on July 7, 2005 09:00 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

How to break the trance?

On his blog the Albuquerque Journal's John Fleck offers an interesting commentary on the reactions to yesterday's hockey stick post:

"[Pielke says] we're all arguing about the hockey stick as a surrogate for what we're really arguing about. In the process, we all just talk past one another without getting anywhere. The funny thing, in terms of my premise, is the resulting comments. It's a whole bunch of people on both sides of the issue who keep rehashing the same old arguments. It's like they're so entrenched in their pre-rehearsed arguments that they paid no attention to what Roger was saying."

It is almost as if people are in a trance, where they can only see arguments about climate science and nothing else, even though they are really arguing about politics and values. I understand why this occurs and have written about it many times. But what is puzzling to me is why it is so difficult for people to see other perspectives and engage them, even if they disagree. I am not sure what to make of this; one might think that it is a function of the self-selected few with motivation to read blogs and comment. But it seems to me that it is a broader characteristic of the climate debate that infuses the media, the blogosphere and political discussion.

With all of the attention being paid to getting George Bush to accept the science of climate change, many are going to be disappointed when they succeed in this task and policies don't change. As Margaret Beckett, the British Environment Secretary, commented on the climate debate, " the theology is less important than action._ From where I sit it seems like most people have their priorities in the opposite order, theology trumps action. How to break the trance? I don't know.

Posted on July 7, 2005 08:56 AM View this article | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

July 06, 2005

On The Hockey Stick

[Reminder for locals: NCAR MESA Lab, 3PM Friday, talk by Hans von Storch and subsequent panel on hockey stick issues!!]

A while back we commented that here at Prometheus we don’t do hockey sticks. Well, now we do. What follows is an unbearably long post on issues associated with the Hockey Stick. I am sure that it will be of interest only to those with a deep interest in this issue. For others, move along, nothing to see here ...

The “hockey stick” refers to a graph (see figure b here and figure 2.20 here) which shows the results of a reconstruction of global average temperature for 1,000 years. The hockey stick has been the subject of an intensifying debate that now has reach comic/tragic proportions. Last week Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX), Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent letters to three scientists who authored the hockey stick studies, as well as the head of the National Science Foundation and the head of the IPCC, asking for a range of information.

From the perspective of climate science or policy Rep. Barton’s inquiry is simply inane. There will be little insight gained on climate or how we might improve policies on climate change through his “investigation.” As Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) has written in response to Rep. Barton, “These letters do not appear to be a serious attempt to understand the science of global warming. Some might interpret them as a transparent effort to bully and harrass climate change experts who have reached conclusions with which you disagree.... If the Committee indeed has a genuine interest in the science of global warming, you should withdraw these letters and instead schedule a long-overdue Committee hearing on climate change.”

Of course, it is doubtful that Rep. Barton’s Committee (on Energy and Commerce, I remind you) actually has any real interest in the science of climate change, except as a tool of tactical advantage in the continuing political battle over global warming. Rep. Barton and others opposed to action on climate change will continue to gnaw at the hockey stick like a dog on a bone so long as they perceive that it confers some political benefits. The great irony here is that in many instances the supporters of the hockey stick have often been their own worst enemies and fed the flames of this debate, which now threatens the integrity of all of climate science, and to turn all of climate science into climate politics. The debate also consumes a lot of scarce attention on the climate issue – attention that would be better devoted to debates about policy options.

Can the climate science community do anything about this situation? To understand how the hockey stick issue might be de-emphasized and moved beyond requires understanding the debate and its political context.

The hockey stick is a symbol. It represents much more than the results of two studies by Mann et al.; it represents the integrity of the IPCC, claims of a human influence on climate, demands for action on climate change, and no doubt other things as well. Consider the range of emotions and issues evoked when you think of other examples of symbols that condense a great deal meaning – for example, the United States flag, a swastika, or a religious cross. Symbols serve as a sort of short cut when we try to make sense of a complicated world. The manipulation of symbols is consequently a high political art. As political scientist Murray Edelman wrote in his book The Symbolic Uses of Politics (at pp. 31-32), “It is characteristic of large numbers of people in our society that they see and think in terms of stereotypes, personalization, and oversimplifications, that they cannot recognize or tolerate ambiguous and complex situations, and that they accordingly respond to symbols that oversimplify and distort.” It is important to recognize that symbols take on meaning far beyond the “reality” referred to by the symbol. Edelman writes, “… reality can be irrelevant for persons very strongly committed to an emotionally satisfying symbol… commitment to a belief is likely to be strengthened and reaffirmed in the face of clear disproof of its validity where there is a strong prior commitment … and where there is continuing social support of the commitment by others …” This apparent disconnect helps to explain (for both sides) why the larger symbolic and political debate over the hockey stick won’t be resolved by completing claims to factual correctness made by either side.

The hockey stick became a symbol because of the IPCC. In its 2001 report of Working Group 1 the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) included only 5 graphs. The entire report has probably 100 graphs (perhaps more, I have not counted). So the IPCC was in effect saying, “We’ve looked carefully at all of the evidence of climate change and from all of those studies and reports the best example that we’d like to share with you policy makers of changes in the earth’s climate is represented with this graph.” Of course, most Prometheus readers will know that the case for a human influence on climate is well established through multiple independent lines of research. But remember, we are talking about the hockey stick as a symbol. For the uninformed outsider reading the SPM, none of this richness and context would be apparent. The IPCC offers that not only is the hockey stick the best example that it can provide of climate change, but that it has been peer-reviewed at a level more stringent than normal journal articles. Representative of such claims, the scientists at RealClimate have written, “IPCC reports undergo several additional reviews and revisions involving a large number of independent referees. Thus, the IPCC reports undergo a more stringent review process than common papers in the scientific literature.” The hockey stick is thus a powerful political symbol in the climate debate.

With the hockey stick established as a symbol it is to be expected that it attracted both support and opposition as a tactic of politics. Those advocating particular actions on climate change would, for example, prominently display the hockey stick in talks, no doubt referring to its endorsement by the IPCC. Those opposed to action on climate change (or just generally skeptical) would be drawn to the hockey stick target number one in debate over climate change. The hockey stick is debated because it is a key symbol of a an intense and meaningful political debate.

How should an outsider make sense of the hockey stick debate? The debate is technical, and includes references to all sorts of obscure statistical techniques and paleoclimate proxy methodologies, and thus may seem impenetrable. But the technical debate may be less important than the proponents on either side might claim.

The technical debate centers on the authors of the original two hockey stick studies referenced by the IPCC, Mann, Bradley and Hughes (MBH) and their primary antagonists, McIntyre and McKitrick (MM). Mann et al. often make their case at www.realclimate.org and McIntyre (and sometimes McKitrick) make their case at www.climateaudit.org.

There are several characterizations of this debate readily available in the blogosphere. One claims that MM are tools of the oil and gas industry, ready to spread misinformation and lies in order to discredit the noble truth-seeking scientists whose work is beyond reproach, all in hopes of derailing action on climate change. Another characterization holds that MM are the proverbial Davids up against the Goliaths of the IPCC and the global warming juggernaut intent on remaking the world in its environmentally-correct image.

While such stories will resonate strongly with black hat/white hat types, from where I sit the reality seems a bit more complicated. Here is how I see it -- MBH conducted several studies that, by the conventional norms of the climate science community, represented excellent work and were published in leading journals in the field. But the norms of the climate science community for peer review and replication are not widely shared in other fields. So when MM were drawn to MBH (indirectly or directly by the IPCC SPM no doubt) from outside the climate science community with an eye to take a close look at the their work I’d venture that MM likely brought along with them a perspective on norms of peer review and replication quite different from MBH. This alone would be enough to generate some push back from MBH. But add the fact that McKitrick had already established himself as a collaborator with the climate skeptics, and this probably was enough to engender some serious opposition from MBH, who no doubt were used to dealing with their traditional climate skeptic opponents with loudness and bluster. MM did not go away or back down.

Now it turns out that science can be messy and scientists can be among the more disorganized people you might meet (I could show you some offices). Perhaps MBH were both unprepared to deal with an outside request to replicate the entirety of their work, and their behind-the-scenes work had enough inelegant shortcuts and ugly warts involved so as to make a full, public replication maybe uncomfortable and potentially embarrassing. To be clear -- I am not suggesting anything close to scientific misconduct or fraud, but the standard messiness and disorganization associated with the scientific research in this particular community where requests for computer codes and inside info rarely are made. For example, when asked about responding to a letter such as that sent by Rep. Barton to MBH Hans von Storch’s reply exemplified such messiness when he replied, “"If I did get such a letter, I would become desperate," he said. His colleagues often write the code for his studies, and he said, "if I asked my colleagues whether they still had the code, I'm not sure they would."” Climate scientist James Annan makes the point more generally on his blog, “I don't know of any scientist who could answer such questions. It's just not the way our work is done - there is far too much pressure for rapid and new results for us to maintain full "audit trails" and answer an unlimited number of questions from any troublemaker with too much time on their hands. By the time 5 years have passed, our work is either irrelevant and forgotten, or else superceded, either because it really was wrong, or because someone else improved on it.” (See the similar comments of Kooiti Matsuda here.) Other disciplines no doubt have different norms of conduct. Undoubtedly part of the dispute between MBH and MM is about norms of scientific inquiry, something that won’t be resolved through the technical arguments.

Bottom line – It seems reasonable to think that while MBH did not engage in scientific misconduct, that a full public replication of their work may prove potentially uncomfortable or embarrassing. (Note that no matter what it is that MBH are not revealing, it could have no consequences for either the scientific consensus on human influence on climate or perspectives on recent temperature trends in historical perspective, as these issues are supported by a larger literature.) So they resisted, and have stood fast. For their part, MM did not give up. MM publish in the peer reviewed literature, giving some credence to their critique, the Wall Street Journal weighs in, a few guys at NCAR claim to vindicate MBH and now the issue has gone all the way to the U.S. House of Representatives.

In the long run I am confident that the technical dispute between MBH and MM will be resolved in the peer-reviewed literature. But so what? Already research on paleoclimate modeling and proxies by von Storch et al. and Moberg et al. has superceded the work of MBH.

Resolving the technical dispute will do little to address the larger issues of climate science policy or the symbolic and real political implications of the hockey stick debate. Let me conclude this lengthy post with some unsolicited advice for many of the parties in the science community involved in this messy and ugly debate.

1. For the IPCC. You have a real problem here. If you do anything other than staunchly defend the hockey stick, you run the risk of being perceived as taking a step back on climate science (rightly or wrongly). Given the political agenda advanced by IPCC leadership this will be perceived as damaging. But consider also that a step back can serve to increase your credibility. It was clearly a mistake to use the MBH studies in the SPM (this RealClimate post makes this point abundantly clear enough). The case for human impacts on climate is wide and deep. In the future consider some different options for the SPM such as handing off the job of the SPM to a separate group with expertise in such things, or not even doing an SPM. You have a conflict of interest problem (real or perceptual) as well, given that M of MBH was involved with reviewing his own work as an IPCC lead author. Again, this may be acceptable given the norms of the climate science community, but those are not the norms at play in the larger political world of climate science. Consider getting some good advice on institutional design and public relations. And above all, avoid the hubris that too often characterizes climate scientists in their interactions. What works in the academy often does not in the broader world.

2. For MBH. By all means stop invoking the funding and political agenda of your opponents, which you often offer with fire and vitriol. This only serves to legitimize inquiries into your own funding and political agenda. It is easy for me to say, but I recommend not complying with Rep. Barton’s request. Be respectful, but decline or bury him with paper. Let him subpoena you if he dares (and then watch him then get buried). Add no more fuel to the fire, on RealClimate, in the press, etc. Unless you really have something serious to hide, give the world access to your original computer code and whatever else MM are asking for. Whatever benefits you get from invoking the principle of the matter seem to be dwarfed by the continuing reality of having to deal with this issue. Swallow hard, cut your losses and move on.

3. For MM. Continue to publish your work in the peer reviewed literature. Steer clear of those with political designs on your work, you’ll have more standing if you focus on the substance (M has done better than M in this regard.) Work to understand the norms of the climate science community, and don’t place blame for these norms on MBH. You might have a case to make for changing these norms, but make that case in the right venue. Focus more of your attention on the IPCC and its processes rather than MBH. There are larger issues here. Think about taking on another project. I am confident that the hockey stick issue will very soon resemble a dead horse.

Posted on July 6, 2005 12:14 AM View this article | Comments (42) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

July 05, 2005

Hurricanes and Global Warming, Another Comment

I’m back from a wonderful vacation, and will have a post on the Barton letters/hockey stick issue very soon, meantime…

Most Prometheus readers will be familiar with the recent publication of two articles on hurricanes and global warming: one a Perspective in Science by NCAR’s Kevin Trenberth and the other a peer-reviewed, collaborative effort that I participated in to be published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. I've already offered my interpretation on the substance of the two papers here.

I would like to briefly respond to comments made by Kevin in the local Boulder paper a few weeks ago about our paper. Kevin is quoted as saying of our article, '"I think the role of the changing climate is greatly underestimated by Roger Pielke Jr.," Trenberth said Thursday. "I think he should withdraw this article. This is a shameful article."' I find this statement pretty amazing given that the two papers are scientifically consistent with each other.

Upon reading Kevin's strong statements in the press a few weeks ago, I emailed him to ask where specifically he disagreed with our paper and I received no response; apparently he prefers to discuss this issue only through the media. So I'll again extend an invitation to Kevin to respond substantively, rather than simply call our paper 'shameful' and ask for its withdrawal (and I suppose implicitly faulting the peer review process at BAMS): Please identify what statements we made in our paper you disagree with and the scientific basis for your disagreement. If you'd prefer not to respond here, I will eagerly look forward to a letter to BAMS in response to our paper.

Climate change is a big deal. We in the scientific community owe it to the public and policy makers to be open about our debates on science and policy issues. We've offered a peer-reviewed, integrative perspective on hurricanes and global warming. I hold those with different perspectives in high regard -- such diversity makes science strong. But at a minimum it seems only fair to ask those who say publicly that they disagree with our perspective to explain the basis for their disagreement, instead of offering up only incendiary rhetoric for the media. Given that Kevin is the IPCC lead author responsible for evaluating our paper in the context of the IPCC, such transparency of perspective seems particularly appropriate.

Posted on July 5, 2005 11:13 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

July 03, 2005

Upcoming Talk and Panel This Week

For those of you who are local, we are co-organizing a talk and panel discussion with colleagues at NCAR, to take place at the Mesa Lab main seminar room, 3PM on Friday. Here are the details:

July 8, 2005 -
Joint CGD-ISSE & CIRES Seminar - Panel Discussion

Hockeysticks, the tragedy of the commons and sustainability of climate science.

Hans von Storch - Director of Institute of Coastal Research of the GKSS Research Centre in Geesthacht. Professor at the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg , Germany

Panelists: Warren Washington, Caspar Amman and Doug Nychka, NCAR, and Roger Pielke Jr. (CIRES)
Location

Mesa Lab Main Seminar Room
Time 3:00pm

Abstract

The "hockey stick", elevated to icon-status by the IPCC, plays a crucial role in debate regarding climate change. Yet the methods used to develop it have not been completely explicated. We have tested the method in the artificial laboratory of the output of a global climate model, and found it to significantly underestimate both low-frequency variability and associated uncertainties. Our work focuses on multi-century simulations with two global climate models to generate a realistic mix of natural and externally (greenhouse gases, solar output, volcanic load) forced climate variations. Such simulations are then used to examine the performance of empirically based methods to reconstruct historical climate. This is done by deriving "pseudo proxies" from the model output, which provide incomplete and spatially limited evidence about the global distribution of a variable.

Our simulation study was published in "Science" but received less response than expected - almost no open response, a bit in the media; but many colleagues indicated privately that such a publication would damage the good case of a climate protection policy.

In this talk the methodical critique of the hockey stick methods will be presented, followed by a personal discussion about the problem of post-normal climate science operating in a highly politicized environment.?

The presentation will be followed by a panel discussion on the science of the hockey stick in the context of high?profile political issues. Panelists: Warren Washington, Doug Nychka, and Caspar Amman, NCAR and Roger Pielke Jr., Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado (CIRES).

Posted on July 3, 2005 04:30 PM View this article | Comments (12) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

June 16, 2005

Summer Break

I am going offline for a few weeks. I'll be posting again July 5. Meantime, Genevieve, Bets, Kevin, Joel and maybe (if you are lucky) Lisa and Bobbie will be working hard to keep your minds provoked!

Posted on June 16, 2005 03:18 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Site News

Consensus on Hurricanes and Global Warming

"[T]here is no sound theoretical basis for drawing any conclusions about how anthropogenic change affects hurricane numbers or tracks, and thus how many hit land." K. Trenberth, Science, 17 June 2005

Last winter, Chris Landsea caused a flap when he resigned from the IPCC claiming that Kevin Trenberth, the lead author of the IPCC chapter that he was contributing to, had made unfounded statements about hurricanes and global warming in a press conference organized by Harvard to allege a connection between the U.S. hurricane damages of 2004 and human-caused climate change. (Disclaimer: As most regular readers know, Landsea is a long-time collaborator of mine.) In this week's Science, Trenberth has an essay on hurricanes and climate change that should put this issue to rest. Trenberth's essay clearly vindicates Landsea's actions, and, in my opinion, it would not be inappropriate for IPCC officials who failed to support Landsea (Rajedra Pachauri and Susan Solomon) to issue him a public apology. But don't hold your breath.

Let's take a quick look at Trenberth's essay and explain why it vindicates Landsea.

Trenberth confirms in his Science essay what Landsea has claimed, that -- based on what is known today -- "there is no sound theoretical basis for drawing any conclusions about how anthropogenic change affects hurricane numbers or tracks, and thus how many hit land." None. There is no basis for claiming as Trenberth did that the hurricanes of 2004, much less their damages, could be attributed to human emissions of greenhouse gases/global warming. Earlier this year, Trenberth said that his participation in the Harvard press conference was "to correct misleading impressions that global warming had played no role at all in last year's hurricane season." It is good to see this claim corrected.

Trenberth confuses the issue by calling into question the role of hypothesis testing in science (one wonders what this apparently new found perspective on hypothesis testing means for the rest of climate science, but I digress), and some discussion of variables that clearly have some effects on hurricanes (i.e., ENSO), but in the end he concludes "it is not yet possible to say how El Nino and other factors affecting hurricane formation may change as the world warms."

A more comprehensive review of current understandings of hurricanes and global warming can be found in this peer-reviewed paper, forthcoming in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society:

Pielke, Jr., R. A., C. Landsea, K. Emanuel, M. Mayfield, J. Laver and R. Pasch, in press. Hurricanes and global warming, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. (PDF)

Bottom line: Landsea and Trenberth are scientifically on the same page, and the perspectives now being espoused by Trenberth are (in my interpretation) entirely consistent with what Landsea argued at the time he stepped down from the IPCC. Because of Trenberth's change in perspective, Landsea should feel completely vindicated. The IPCC should be big enough to note this and invite Landsea back into the fold.

A final note, NCAR's press release and those who approved it apparently learned little from the controversy as the press release irresponsibly muddies the issue by making it look like there is in fact a clear global warming-hurricane connection and that there is new information in the Trenberth paper. If the Trenberth paper is cited in the media as supporting a hurricane-global warming connection (and we'd welcome any links to media coverage), then I place full responsibility on the unnecessarily obfuscatory NCAR press release which sets the stage for a further mischaracterization of this issue, on which scientists who once differed, now agree. That is the real story.

Posted on June 16, 2005 03:13 PM View this article | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

June 15, 2005

Wise Words on Science Policy

I missed this March, 2004 speech given by Representative Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), chair of the House Science Committee, but it recently crossed my desk and is worth highlighting. The speech (he calls it a "lecture" and you'll see why below) was given to DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory. Here are a few interesting excerpts:

"First, don't start by assuming that folks in Washington are out to get scientists. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, in the proposed fiscal 2005 budget, science agencies are slated to receive some of the largest increases - less than I'd prefer, but more than other agencies. Just about everyone on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue would like to do as much as possible for science - especially for the physical sciences, which have been going through a period of relative neglect as funding for biomedical research has skyrocketed in recent years. So don't start by assuming that Washington's goal is to harm or ignore science. Here's another approach not to take. Don't tell Members of Congress that you're different because you're not looking to help yourselves in the short-run; you're looking for money that is a long-term investment for the entire nation. Sure, science funding is just that sort of investment. But so are education and road building and defense spending and human space flight; the list of possible investments goes on and on. And guess what? Congress is not besieged by groups asking for money that they describe as necessary to help their own narrow interests in the short run. The argument that science funding is a long-term national investment does nothing to set scientists apart. All that sets you apart is that scientists are the only group that thinks they're making a unique argument."

So what should scientists do?

"So you need to argue on the facts. I feel safe in saying, without insulting any of my colleagues, that most of them know even less about synchrotron light sources than I do. They need to hear from you - and especially from those of you in industry and your CEOs - why a light source, or any other piece of equipment or area of research, is important. They - we - need to learn from you what the nation will actually be giving up if you aren't able to succeed. That won't be the end of the story. We in the Congress will still have our duty to choose among competing priorities. The budget is always a constraint, and it's more constraining now that it has been in a long time. Right now, for example, as Science chairman, I especially have to wrestle with the President's proposed space exploration initiative. It's a thoughtful proposal, and no doubt would be worthy of immediate funding in a universe in which money was no object. But we don't live in that universe, and we're not likely to find one like it in the future. So I have to weigh that proposal against other priorities, and get more information about its costs and its benefits and its timing before I can make a decision on how I think we should proceed. As part of my decision-making, one matter I have to weigh is the relative merit of additional funding for NASA versus additional funding for other federal science agencies, particularly NSF, which competes head-to-head for funding with NASA because they're in the same appropriations bill. Believe me, this isn't an easy task. But I couldn't even begin to undertake that kind of analysis if I didn't know what the expenditures of the various agencies might mean to our country. I'm lucky; I've got dozens of staff on the Science Committee who give me that information and help me sort through these questions. But science isn't - and can't be - that kind of focus for every Member; they have to focus primarily on their own Committee assignments and district interests. They won't know anything about any of this unless they hear from people like you - and hear from you regularly, back home, and in a thoughtful manner. Now this may not be the kind of speech - or should I say, 'lecture'? - that you most wanted to hear today. And I'm sure the rest of this conference will focus, as it should, on the many exciting technical questions that designing a new synchrotron poses and on the mind-boggling opportunities that having such a machine would present. But please remember as you have those discussions that a new synchrotron will remain an example of very theoretical physics unless work is done to make funding for it a political reality. I will do everything I possibly can to help you, but I can't do it alone. The future of science funding will depend on many things beyond your control - the macroeconomic situation, the nature of competing needs, etc. But it will also depend on how actively you can make people like me understand why what you're about is important to our nation."

I don't think that he is calling for vacuous advocacy or platitudinal marketing of science, but substantive discussion of the significance of science - what it means in terms of real world outcomes. This is consistent with John Marburger's recent calls for a "science of science policy" and, in the 1990s, Congressman George Brown's provocative perspectives on the societal responsibilities of the scientific community.

Posted on June 15, 2005 12:22 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

June 14, 2005

Betting on Climate

Placing bets on the future state of the climate makes sense, but in a research mode, not just in public displays of "calling out" particular opponents. Several commentators here on Prometheus have directed our attention to discussions of "betting on climate," that is, putting one's money where one's mouth is when making claims about the future state of the climate. James Annan, a scientist at the Frontier Research Center for Global Change in Japan, has been trying unsuccessfully to get prominent climate skeptics on the record in the form of a bet. Mark Bahner has responded by trying unsuccessfully to get James Annan on the record with some sort of bet.

This recent flurry of calling people out (reminds me of elementary schoolyard brawls - "I'm faster than you!" "No you're not!" "Prove it!" "Meet you after school on the playground!") no doubt has a high element of drama. Ronal Bailey takes credit for starting the betting flurry when he apparently misquoted MIT's Richard Lindzen discussing what odds he would take on a bet on the future state of the climate. Underlying all this, as Bailey observes, is the now legendary story of the Erlich/Simon wager which in spite of assertions to the contrary is widely viewed as a vindication of Simon's perspectives over Ehrlich's - of cornucopian correctness and catastrophist error. This is where the drama comes from, as bettors who call people out by name probably see themselves immortalized in future history with a publicly-visible betting victory like Julian Simon experienced.

I think that while such chest thumping displays are certainly entertaining, they tell us little about the broader state of uncertainty among experts or the public. But there is something important here that should not be overlooked. Betting, or more accurately a betting market, can tell us a lot about the state of uncertainty across a large body of experts. In 2001 I wrote an essay on "prediction markets," here is an excerpt:

"Nobel Prize winner Nils Bohr once remarked, "Prediction is difficult, especially of the future." Recognizing the difficulties of prediction, what if there was a way to integrate all available information about the future into a single forecast that would instantaneously incorporate and make available new information? Sound too good to be true? Research in economics and recent developments in the private sector point to a novel way to think about forecasting in the earth and atmospheric sciences.

The basic premise of the approach lies in the efficient market theory from the field of economics and most closely associated with the work of Eugene Fama at the University of Chicago in the 1960s. The efficient market theory holds that the current price of a commodity in an exchange market reflects all available information. When you hear the phrase "you can't beat the market" it is referring to the perspective that the "market" (usually the stock market) is efficient; i.e., if information were available that would allow someone to gain a trading advantage, this information would be reflected instantaneously in the price of the commodity through the actions of buyers and sellers in the marketplace. Whatever advantage the trader thought may have existed is absorbed into the market...

What if a "prediction market" were created that would allow trading based on specific predicted outcomes such as the weather? Could such a market be created that operated efficiently and had sufficient participation to integrate all available information about the future? Here is a research hypothesis: An efficient "prediction market" generally will outperform all competing prediction methodologies in the earth and atmospheric sciences...

Several policy issues come to mind. First, there is an implication for the research community. It would appear to make sense to test the hypothesis about whether "prediction markets" can outperform other approaches to forecasting phenomena related to the earth and atmospheric sciences. Perhaps an equivalent to the Iowa Electronic Market could stimulate such research related to weather forecasting, climate forecasting, and, in principle, any area where predictions are made. Second, if the marketplace can provide skillful forecasts, then perhaps a mechanism might be created for this information to be provided systematically to consumers of forecasts through the public or private sectors, or through a partnership."

There is a brilliant, straightforward (and fundable!) research proposal waiting to be written that develops the idea of prediction markets in the context of climate (and something that with a serious PI I'd be interested in collaborating on). The model to emulate is the Iowa Electronic Exchange, which is funded in part by the U.S. NSF as a research project, to explore how well prediction markets perform in the context of elections and certain measures of economic performance.

I can imagine a whole bunch of interesting datasets that might be collected through a climate prediction market. For example, it would be useful to create a market that is only populated by IPCC authors, a market populated by people with the same expertise as the IPCC authors but not part of the IPCC, different markets for different disciplinary areas of expertise, a market open to the public, and markets based on various metrics of interest to decision makers (beyond global average temperature) such as rainfall in particular locations or the number of hurricanes, etc. etc. Such markets would allow for a robust empirical examination of a wide range of obvious and not-so-obvious questions. (James Annan has set up here a market open to the public focused on global average temperature.)

On the climate issue it is often difficult to separate out the political theater from the serious attempts at research. Prediction markets offer a great opportunity to dramatically advance understandings of expert perspectives on the future state of the climate, as well as the diversity of views within the expert community. But to gain such understanding will require going beyond the schoolyard brawl mentality to real, rigorous research. Who thinks this is going to happen? Wanna bet? I'll meet you on the playground at noon.

Posted on June 14, 2005 06:32 AM View this article | Comments (15) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

June 13, 2005

The Good Explanation - Apologies

Welcome to the weblog… as I sat down to write a disgruntled letter to Donald Kennedy tonight, I went through my old email and discovered that it was Nature, not Science that rejected our hurricane paper without review.

My apologies for the error and for creating short-lived false hopes for conspiracy theorists. We call it like we see it here, especially when we are in error (surely won't be the last time). Meantime, do read the various papers on hurricanes and climate change, a comparison will be informative.

Posted on June 13, 2005 09:41 PM View this article | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Interesting Coincidence

Correction

Posted on June 13, 2005 11:11 AM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

June 10, 2005

New Paper on Hurricanes and Global Warming

We heard earlier this week that a short paper we had started on during last year's hurricane season has now been accepted for publication in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society after successfully completing peer review. With the paper we seek to provide a concise, largely non-technical, scientifically rigorous, globally inclusive, and interdisciplinary perspective on the state of current understandings of hurricanes and global warming that is explicitly discussed in the context of policy. As new research findings are reported in peer-reviewed journals on tropical cyclones (hurricanes) and climate change (global warming), and a corresponding public debate undoubtedly continues on this subject, we thought that it may be useful to provide a forest-level perspective on the issue to help place new research findings into a broader context.

The paper can be found here:

Pielke, Jr., R. A., C. Landsea, K. Emanuel, M. Mayfield, J. Laver and R. Pasch, in press. Hurricanes and global warming, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. (PDF)

Here is an excerpt:

"... claims of linkages between global warming and hurricanes are misguided for three reasons. First, no connection has been established between greenhouse gas emissions and the observed behavior of hurricanes (IPCC 2001; Walsh 2004). Yet such a connection may be made in the future as metrics of tropical cyclone intensity and duration remain to be closely examined. Second, a scientific consensus exists that any future changes in hurricane intensities will likely be small in the context of observed variability (Knutson and Tuleya 2004, Henderson-Sellers et al 1998), while the scientific problem of tropical cyclogenesis is so far from being solved that little can be said about possible changes in frequency. And third, under the assumptions of the IPCC, expected future damages to society of its projected changes in the behavior of hurricanes are dwarfed by the influence of its own projections of growing wealth and population (Pielke at al. 2000). While future research or experience may yet overturn these conclusions, the state of knowledge today is such that while there are good reasons to expect that any connection between global warming and hurricanes is not going to be significant from the perspective of event risk, but particularly so from the perspective of outcome risk as measured by economic impacts."

Read the whole thing here in PDF.

Here are the identities of the authors: Roger Pielke, Jr. is a Professor of Environmental Studies, University of Colorado, Chris Landsea is a Research Meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Hurricane Research Division, Kerry Emanuel is a Professor in the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Max Mayfield is Director of NOAA's National Hurricane Center (NHC), Jim Laver is the Director of NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, and Richard Pasch is a Hurricane Specialist at NOAA NHC.

Posted on June 10, 2005 12:05 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

June 09, 2005

Andy Revkin Responds

[Note- This comment received by email from Andy Revkin, in response to a "heads up" from me, is posted with his permission (granted in a subsequent email to the one below). It is a response to my critique of his story in yesterday's NYT - RP]

"Actually I kind of like it!

You do realize, though, that the norms of journalism still require me to cover something like this, right?

Sadly, the White House is so hermetically sealed on such matters that it has essentially created such stories by making scraps of tea-leaf-like information noteworthy.

Piltz is far less significant than the documents themselves. And while the edits are subtle, as I explained, they create a different tone than the one that was there before. And tone does matter in policy debates, doesn't it?

Also, i interviewed some members of the NRC review panel and they were none too happy to see how the report they assessed was 'pre-spun' to heighten uncertainties. even the most careful reviewer would be apt to read thru some of these changes and never realize the overall pattern created in the document.

Every White House edits reports. No brainer. But shouldn't the characterization of the state of science be assessed by those in the White House with scientific background, i.e, OSTP? Why an ex-oil lobbyist with an economics bachelor's degree?

As for Our Changing Planet 2004-5, same deal. This admin, whether by inattention or on purpose, can't seem to get its story straight on the science of climate change, in part, perhaps, because it's petrified of crossing that next bar and accepting there is a human influence (even though you seem to think they'd have more strategies to fall back on to avoid co2 curbs).

I might consider letting you post this."

Posted on June 9, 2005 06:54 AM View this article | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Others | Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

June 08, 2005

Manufactured Controversy

Today's New York Times has an article by Andy Revkin on the role of a Bush Administration official who edited two high level climate reports, one the annually issued "Our Changing Planet" (past editions here) which provides a very broad overview of climate research in the U.S. Global Change Research Program and the other is the Strategic Plan of the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP). For several reasons I believe that this news story, which will no doubt be warmly welcomed by some, is pretty weak stuff.

Here is why, point-by-point:

1. The Bush Administration has clearly shown willingness to cherry pick and even mischaracterize information in pursuit of its political agenda. The most obvious example is its misuse of intelligence leading to the Iraq war. So it does make sense for outsiders to carefully watch how the Bush Administration uses information in support of its agenda. No problem there.

2. Of the two reports Revkin finds that a high level official edited, one report, the CCSP Strategic Plan was subsequently twice comprehensively reviewed and revised by a scientific committee convened by the National Research Council (NRC). The NRC committee endorsed the scientific content of the plan and recommend that it be implemented "with urgency." Whatever effects the Bush official's edits had on the plan did not stop the NRC from endorsing its scientific content. Thus, we should conclude that the edits were not particularly significant or they did not remain in the final version.

3. In contrast to today's story, the NYT and Andy Revkin reported in August 2004 that the release of the FY 2005 Our Changing Planet represented a "striking shift" in the Bush Administration's stance on climate change - toward accepting the science. I didn't buy that argument then, and commented, "the 2003 edition of Our Changing Planet, while perhaps somewhat more staid in comparison to the 2005 report, nonetheless contains numerous references to human-caused climate change and predictions of its future, negative impacts. The USGCRP is after all a multi-billion research program motivated by evidence that humans are causing climate change and the desire to develop policy responses. It is hard to see what the news here is. The fact that the 2005 report echoes much of the language of earlier reports does not seem to me to be a striking change or motivated by any possible "shift in focus" of the Bush Administration." Revkin can't have it both ways -- Our Changing Planet cannot both serve an example of the Bush Administration's acceptance of climate science and its misuse of climate science.

4. Let's take a look at the specific edits in question. Both examples seem exceedingly insignificant. Two that Revkin cites in detail are: (1) "In one instance in an October 2002 draft of a regularly published summary of government climate research, "Our Changing Planet," Mr. Cooney amplified the sense of uncertainty by adding the word "extremely" to this sentence: "The attribution of the causes of biological and ecological changes to climate change or variability is extremely difficult."" (I do attribution work, related to trends in economic damage, and it is fair to characterize it as difficult or exceedingly difficult.) And (2) "a sentence in the October 2002 draft of "Our Changing Planet" originally read, "Many scientific observations indicate that the Earth is undergoing a period of relatively rapid change." In a neat, compact hand, Mr. Cooney modified the sentence to read, "Many scientific observations point to the conclusion that the Earth may be undergoing a period of relatively rapid change."" Are we really going to ascribe some policy or political significance to the difference between "may" and "is"? It would be naive to expect that political officials do not play a role in spinning high level reports, but if these are the worst examples that the NYT can dig up in this case, then it would seem that the official in question, even if from the oil industry, is editing with a pretty light touch compared with some of the perspectives I have seen from that community.

5. Rick Piltz, a former democratic congressional staffer and USGCRP staffer under the Clinton Administration, who was apparently the source of the documents, claims in the article that the actions of the Bush Administration have "undermine[d] the credibility and integrity of the [U.S. climate science] program." While the Bush Administration may have undermined its own political credibility, it goes too far, way too far, to suggest that anything that the Bush Administration has done has undermined the scientific research being conducted under the CCSP and USGCRP. I'd be surprised if climate scientists accepted such a characterization of their work. Climate science is fully politicized, but the vast majority of bench scientists are doing excellent work, largely unaffected by the controversies at the interface of climate science and politics.

Here is what I wrote last August and I think that it is still true: "The New York Times' apparent strategy of playing "gotcha" with agency documents on the science of climate change is sure to set off an (another) extended series of debates about the science of climate change and who believes or admits what. If so, then score another point for those who desire inaction on climate change because endless debate over the science is about as close a proxy to inaction as you can find. In the end, those pressing the Bush Administration to admit the science of climate change may very well achieve this goal, but they will likely find it to be an empty victory as the Bush Administration can very easily admit the science and then justify its actions on a range of legitimate, non-scientific factors."

In short, the front page New York Times story today is a manufactured controversy.

Posted on June 8, 2005 11:01 AM View this article | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

The Linear Model Consensus Redux

Not too long ago we wrote about the role of the so-called 'linear model' of science and policy: "The linear model is "based on first getting the science "right" as a necessary, if not sufficient, basis for decision making... ". The linear model places science at the center of political debates." On the climate issue at least political opponents share a consensus that the political battle on climate change should be fought through science, which probably explains why the debate continues to focus on science and not policy.

On the one hand, The Royal Society announces its role in the academies' statement with this headline: "Clear science demands prompt action on climate change say G8 science academies". Science does not demand action. People with values demand action. As we've suggested here before, to suggest that science compels a particular action is a mischaracterization of the role of science in policy and politics, and sets the stage for waging politics through science.

On the other hand, George Bush agrees with The Royal Society on the role of science in decision making stating yesterday, "we lead the world when it comes to dollars spent, millions of dollars spent on research about climate change. We want to know more about it. It's easier to solve a problem when you know a lot about it. And if you look at the statistics, you'll find the United States has taken the lead on this research."

Advocates of action on climate change seem to expect that if they can get George Bush to admit certain statements about the science of climate change, then certain actions will necessarily follow. This is exactly how Lord May, President of The Royal Society, characterized the issue:

"The current US policy on climate change is misguided. The Bush administration has consistently refused to accept the advice of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS). The NAS concluded in 1992 that, 'Despite the great uncertainties, greenhouse warming is a potential threat sufficient to justify action now', by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. Getting the US onboard is critical because of the sheer amount of greenhouse gas emissions they are responsible for. For example, the Royal Society calculated that the 13 per cent rise in greenhouse gas emissions from the US between 1990 and 2002 is already bigger than the overall cut achieved if all the other parties to the Kyoto Protocol reach their targets. President Bush has an opportunity at Gleneagles to signal that his administration will no longer ignore the scientific evidence and act to cut emissions."

President Bush responds, "In terms of climate change, I've always said it's a serious long-term issue that needs to be dealt with. And my administration isn't waiting around to deal with the issue, we're acting we're spending a lot of money on developing ways to diversify away from a hydrocarbon society there's a lot of things we're doing in America, and I believe that not only can we solve greenhouse gas, I believe we will."

It is perfectly reasonable to evaluate or criticize the specific policies of the US (or the UK or anyone else) on climate change, we do this all the time here, and I clearly wish there was more discussion of policy in the community. However, to suggest that science demands certain (stated or unstated) policies is a recipe for the continued politicization of climate science, and an approach that plays right into the hands of those advocating business as usual.

Posted on June 8, 2005 07:51 AM View this article | Comments (22) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

June 07, 2005

Science Academies as Issue Advocates

Last week we asked about the role that science academies should play in policy making. Today national science academies from Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States provided one answer to this question in the form of a jointly signed letter (PDF) to “world leaders, including those meeting at the Gleneagles G8 Summit in July 2005.” The letter advocates the following actions:

- Acknowledge that the threat of climate change is clear and increasing.
- Launch an international study to explore scientifically informed targets for atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, and their associated emissions scenarios, that will enable nations to avoid impacts deemed unacceptable.
- Identify cost-effective steps that can be taken now to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions. Recognise that delayed action will increase the risk of adverse environmental effects and will likely incur a greater cost.
- Work with developing nations to build a scientific and technological capacity best suited to their circumstances, enabling them to develop innovative solutions to mitigate and adapt to the adverse effects of climate change, while explicitly recognising their legitimate development rights.
- Show leadership in developing and deploying clean energy technologies and approaches to energy efficiency, and share this knowledge with all other nations.
- Mobilise the science and technology community to enhance research and development efforts, which can better inform climate change decisions.

There are several issues to be raised here:

1. Whatever one thinks of the merits of any one of these advocated actions, it is fair to ask whether or not it is the proper role for national academies to take an explicit advocacy position on highly politicized issues, while at the same time seeking to provide scientific information to inform policy makers. In other words there is at least the appearance of a conflict of interest. The non-partisan position of national academies is an important reason why policy makers turn to national academies, rather than the Sierra Club or Exxon, to provide scientific assessments. By presenting themselves as issue advocates scientific academies are threatening their own authority and legitimacy. As we have written here frequently, one effective way for scientific organizations to serve as honest broker is not to hide behind science, but instead to openly engage and discuss a range of policy options.

2. In the case of the U.S. at least, the most recent study of policy options on climate change was completed in 1992, and did not address some of the options now being advocated. Thus, it does not appear, at least, that some of the issues (e.g., the focus on specific targets for stabilization) being endorsed by the academies are the result of any sort of systematic and transparent evaluation of policy alternatives, but instead, have been selected based on political expediency. In other words, the academies are picking a side in an existing political battle. The lack of attention to research on policy is important because the advocated policy (a) simply cannot work, and (b) is likely to be less effective with respect to its stated goals than other possible policy options.

3. Significantly, the academies uncritically accept the Climate Convention's narrow definition of climate change. "This statement concentrates on climate change associated with global warming. We use the UNFCCC definition of climate change..." even though this narrow view is questionable scientifically and limiting from a policy perspective (see this paper for discussion). Do the national academies have an obligation to evaluate the effects of a definition of climate change that is not used by the IPCC, before uncritically accepting it?

Bottom line: Do we want science academies to engage in issue advocacy?

Posted on June 7, 2005 12:05 PM View this article | Comments (25) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science Policy: General

June 06, 2005

Is Persuasion Dead?

In yesterday’s New York Times Matt Miller has a very thoughtful column, in which has asks, “Is persuasion dead?”

“Speaking just between us - between one who writes columns and those who read them - I've had this nagging question about the whole enterprise we're engaged in. Is persuasion dead? And if so, does it matter? The significance of this query goes beyond the feelings of futility I'll suffer if it turns out I've wasted my life on work that is useless. This is bigger than one writer's insecurities. Is it possible in America today to convince anyone of anything he doesn't already believe? If so, are there enough places where this mingling of minds occurs to sustain a democracy? The signs are not good. Ninety percent of political conversation amounts to dueling "talking points." Best-selling books reinforce what folks thought when they bought them. Talk radio and opinion journals preach to the converted. Let's face it: the purpose of most political speech is not to persuade but to win, be it power, ratings, celebrity or even cash. By contrast, marshaling a case to persuade those who start from a different position is a lost art. Honoring what's right in the other side's argument seems a superfluous thing that can only cause trouble, like an appendix. Politicos huddle with like-minded souls in opinion cocoons that seem impervious to facts.”

Read the whole this here.

I am very sympathetic to his concerns.

Posted on June 6, 2005 08:10 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

When the Cherries Don't Cooperate

Two recent cases, one on stem cells and one on global warming, suggest reasons for caution when cherry picking science to support a political agenda. Quite apart from the misuse of science, from the standpoint of political expediency, cherry picking can backfire.

Wired News had a story on Friday that illustrates some of the dynamics of politicizing science: whether a misuse actually occurs or not, cherry picking can be bad politics. Wired reports, “A spinal-cord patient has charged that Rep. Dave Weldon (R-Florida) used her image without permission and misled Congress and the public by suggesting that her case offers evidence that adult stem cells can help severely injured people walk again. Susan Fajt, who suffered a spinal-cord injury in a car accident in November 2001 that left her with little sensation from her chest down, e-mailed Weldon, who is also a physician, on Wednesday detailing her complaints and requesting an apology.” For its part, Rep. Weldon’s office says that its use of Ms. Fajt’s testimony and image are consistent with Senate testimony she gave recently. Fajt obviously disagrees. Weldon is the big loser politically in this instance, even if, as his spokes person notes, "Rep. Weldon's one-sentence statement regarding Ms. Fajt's treatment was completely consistent with Ms. Fajt's July 14, 2004, testimony before the U.S. Senate." Cherry pick with caution because sometimes the cherries talk back.

In another instance of cherry picking backfiring, two activists seeking to highlight the perils of global warming via a trip to the North Pole abandoned their trip because of "deep snow and drifting pack ice" (as well as polar bears). In this case the activist appeared to be seeking to exploit benign weather as an example of the effects of global warming. The fact that weather conditions are extreme in the arctic is of course not proof that global warming is a hoax, but nor would a successful trip to the North Pole prove the opposite. Some advocates opposed to action on global warming have already sought to use the failed expedition to further their own political agenda. For the explorers, their failed stunt provides some symbolic ammunition for their political opponents, even as both sides are playing fast and loose with the science.

Cherry picking is a tried and true approach to politicizing science, because, in many instances advancing a political agenda does not dependent upon getting the science “right.” But be careful, sometimes people and nature fail to cooperate.

June 03, 2005

Outstanding Article on Politicization of Science

Philipp Steger, editor of bridges -- a publication of Office of Science & Technology at the Embassy of Austria in Washington, D.C. that I have only just recently learned of – has published by far the best analysis I’ve seen (and I’ve seen a lot) of the debate over “scientific integrity” in the Bush Administration. Not only is the analysis nuanced, balanced and sound, but the article introduces some new information from main players in the debate. Below are some extended excerpts from the lengthy article.

[Note – For anyone interested in science and technology policy, I highly recommend bookmarking bridges. It is a high quality publication.]

On the future of this debate: “The persistence of the criticism, the continuous emergence of new cases, the introduction of legislation to "restore scientific integrity," a growing consensus within the most vocal parts of the scientific community that the administration is misusing science, and some prominent Republicans joining the chorus of critical voices, all make it likely that this issue will continue to pursue the administration throughout the President's second term. “I expect the concept of a conspiracy to undermine science's integrity in the Bush administration – whether right or wrong – to persist,” says John Marburger.”

On the persistence of the debate: “The persistence of the debate and the publicity it has received is also a result of how the debate was framed. From very early on, the debate focused not so much on the validity of the individual allegations, as on the overarching claim that the number of cases justifies speaking of a pattern of abuse of science in the administration’s policymaking. This has created an obvious impasse, because such a claim is as hard to refute as it is to prove, unless both sides sit down, agree on a methodology, and spend considerable time and effort at conducting a study that lives up to their agreed-upon methodology and the rigors of scientific inquiry. In this situation, the critics find themselves in the more advantageous position: they have the prima facie evidence in their support: no matter how many claims the administration sets out to refute, a question like why, if the allegations aren’t true, so many accomplished scientists have signed the UCS statement or why the criticism doesn’t abate, will stop the best-intentioned efforts at refutation in their track.”

On how John Marbuger saw his role in responding to critics: “Looking back at OSTP’s response to UCS’s allegations, John Marburger explains: “I did look into every case and I did not find either a pattern of abuse or even very serious cases. I found a few cases of poor judgment where people in agencies did things that ranged from undiplomatic to 'not smart.' But I didn’t see any reason to apologize for these things or even suggest that there was something wrong. For me to send even the slightest suggestion that there might be something wrong and that I am going to 'investigate' would have been a mistake in the charged political atmosphere of the time. Significance would have been attached to such a statement that would not be correct. I very deliberately avoided giving any suggestion that there was something wrong or needing to be investigated.””

Bottom line: “So far, the debate has come to this: the administration expects that the idea of the Bush administration misusing science will not disappear anytime soon. And Kurt Gottfried, on the other side of the fence, harbors no illusions about tangible outcomes of the critics’ efforts: “I doubt that we'll accomplish many tangible results with this administration, but by doing what we do, we create awareness in the scientific community and with the media.” Barry D. Gold, a former staffer at the House Science Committee who is now in charge of science-based conservation programs at the David & Lucile Packard foundation, sums it up well when he says: “Unfortunately, the issue of politicization of science, itself, got politicized.””

On the role of science in policy making: “[T]he debate has eclipsed a crucial issue, namely whether there really is a consensus on the appropriate role of science in policymaking. The debate, by focusing nearly exclusively on the question of whether or not there is a pattern of misuse of science across the administration, has created the impression that a consensus exists on the role science should play in policymaking… The critics are able to make their statements so confidently, without fearing that they will undermine their case, because they implicitly attribute more relevance and objectivity to scientific arguments than to other arguments, and feel that in most of the cited cases the science clearly indicated what the appropriate action was. Both the administration and the critics are using the same textbook model of how science in policymaking works. This model goes something like this: a policymaker, having to decide on a course of action, carefully weighs the various alternatives and the available information on each of them. If part of the information on the various alternatives and their consequences is of a scientific nature, then in most cases the science will clearly and objectively indicate what the appropriate action is. Apart from the fact that in reality decision-makers rarely are the wise, unbiased, and entirely objective people textbooks would have them be, this model fails to consider the real-world phenomenon of “an excess of objectivity.” “Excess of objectivity” is a term coined by Dan Sarewitz, professor of science and society at Arizona State University (ASU) who, in an interview for bridges, claims that “there is plenty of science to go around. You don’t really need to distort the science. All you need to do in many cases is find the right science. That is not an indictment of science or scientists, but a statement about the complexity of reality and nature and the difficulty of defining problems in very narrow ways.” Sarewitz’s statement suggests that the assumed consensus on whether science can objectively indicate the “right” course of action is an illusion. “The scientific finding never tells you what to do. That is always determined by what you are trying to achieve; and what you are trying to achieve is always guided by values and interests. So there is no formula that takes you from a fact to an action,” says Sarewitz, who is also the director of the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes (CSPO) at ASU. Of course, Sarewitz’s belief runs contrary to what is, if not the consensus, definitely the currently predominant view, namely that science does, indeed, indicate which action is appropriate. Says former science advisor Neal Lane: “We expect an agency to say what the scientific information on an issue is and to specify why they have taken a decision that’s contrary to the science.” This widespread expectation, while not demanding that the decision has to be in line with the science, does place scientific arguments on a level above other arguments in the policymaking process. The expectation that decisionmakers should explain a decision perceived as contrary to the science puts the decisionmakers in a situation where they can reasonably respond only by taking recourse to some other scientific information that supports their point of view which, according to Sarewitz’s “excess of objectivity”-argument shouldn’t be too difficult. The decisionmakers who decide to do otherwise and instead admit that the science is not in alignment with their ideological agenda, open themselves up to attacks of disregarding the science for the simple fact that they did not respond with an opposing set of scientific facts.”

Of course, with respect to the last point there are also examples of decision makers who mischaracterize or are mistaken about facts, perhaps because they want to be seen as appealing to some facts (any facts, even facts that are not facts) in support of their position. This then sets the stage for a criticism of their facts in order to under cut their position, and a follow-on debate about science, when in fact the dispute was really about ideology and values all along.

Bottom line: “As understandable and human as the wish to validate one’s arguments with science may be, it certainly doesn’t make political debates any more objective. The baffling debate on the teaching of creationism vs. evolutionism vs. intelligent design may serve as a case in point. What the critics of the Bush Administration’s handling of science in policymaking are saying in essence is that the credibility of science is being misused to further a political agenda. And the administration is responding by saying that it’s not abusing the credibility of science. Hardly anyone seems to wonder whether the tendency to give a priori credibility to science simply because it comes under the cloak of Science may be part of the problem.”

There is much more in the article, read the whole thing here.

Posted on June 3, 2005 12:02 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

June 02, 2005

What Role for National Science Academies in Policy?

A few weeks ago Richard Horton, the editor of the British medical journal Lancet, caused a stir when he published an editorial lambasting the Royal Society. Here is how it was reported in the Telegraph:

"In the latest issue, published today, under the headline "What is the Royal Society for?" Dr Horton argues that the eminent body has produced little of public value in medicine and public health in recent times, and calls for an immediate and radical review of its role. "The Royal Society began as a radical idea - a place to discuss the subversive subject of science and to witness remarkable experiments. "Today [it] is a lazy institution, resting on its historical laurels. Instead of being the intellectual hub of European scientific culture, it has reinvented itself as something far more self-serving and parochial. It is little more than a shrill and superficial cheerleader for British science. "Its modern mission is about domestic image rather than international substance.""

The Royal Society issued a response and Horton a rejoinder, and I would encourage interested readers to have a look. The exchange between The Lancet and The Royal Society raises some important and uncomfortable questions about the role of national science academies in democratic processes.

At Prometheus we have frequently commented on the role of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and its role in policy and politics. For example:

*We criticized a panel comprised to recommend a course of action on the Hubble Space Telescope as being comprised of experts who shared a common bias to save the instrument..

*We praised a panel comprised to identify the benefits to science of extending the TRMM satellite mission as clearly identifying its scope and mandate.

*We applauded the efforts of the interest group NRDC which looked behind the curtain of NRC empanelment processes to show some evidence of high-level influence of the Bush Administration in the composition of a panel looking at the risks of perchlorate.

*We expressed some concerns about the role of NRC in the Yucca Mountain controversy, where decisions putatively about science carry extraordinarily large political consequences.

The reports of the National Research Council (NRC) play a significant role in many contested political issues that involve science. And most such reports are funded by the public through federal agencies, but the NRC is not an agency of government. This situation raises some questions that are rarely asked. For example,

How should the NRC relate to the policy process?

Should it codify this relationship to foster transparency?

In what ways is the NRC accountable to the public?

Should the empanelment process be more transparent?

The charges given to committees are negotiated out of sight. Should this process be more open?

Who oversees the work of the NRC?

Though the analogy is not perfect, the spat between the Royal Society and The Lancet provides an example of what can happen when the role of an institution seeking to provide guidance to decision makers is left unclear. As the U.S. NRC moves to new leadership it would seem appropriate that a high-level consideration and clarification of its role in policy and politics would go a long way toward preemptively dealing with issues at the interface of science and politics such as listed above.

Posted on June 2, 2005 09:05 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

May 31, 2005

University Polices on Academic Earmarks

Princeton’s Alan B. Krueger had an interesting commentary on academic earmarks in last week’s New York Times. Krueger writes,

“Increasingly, universities are being financed like farmers and military contractors, with legislative earmarks. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, there were 1,964 earmarks to 716 academic institutions costing a total of $2 billion in the 2003 fiscal year, or just over 10 percent of the federal money spent on academic research. From 1996 to 2003, the amount spent on academic earmarks grew at an astounding rate of 31 percent a year, after adjusting for inflation. Earmarks contrast with the way the government finances most university projects, which is through open competitions for grants. In these competitions, agencies like the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health review grant applications, often consulting with outside experts, and base awards on the applications' perceived merit. Earmarks are decided by a political process, without external peer review. As academic earmarks have grown, so have universities' lobbying expenditures. Spending on lobbying jumped to $62 million in 2003 from $23 million in 1998, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.”

Krueger cites several studies of earmarking. One study looked at the period 1997-1999 and found, not surprisingly, that the presence of a member of congress on a House or Senate appropriations subcommittee is a critical variable in explaining earmarking awards. The study also found that lobbying efforts have a significant monetary return to universities, which explains the growth in university lobbying efforts. Krueger cites another interesting study,

“A. Abigail Payne, an economist at McMaster University in Canada, has studied how earmarks affect the quantity and quality of academic research, inferring quality from the number of times research studies are cited by subsequent studies. She concludes that ‘earmarked funding may increase the quantity of publications but decrease the quality of the publications and the performance of earmarked funding is lower than that from using peer-reviewed funding.’”

Krueger concludes, “Indications are that academic earmarks crowd out spending on competitive peer-reviewed grants, at least in the short run. The competitive merit-based system that has financed most academic research since World War II is probably one reason the United States has been pre-eminent in science and higher education. If academic earmarks continue to grow at an exponential rate, this system could be in jeopardy. Slowing the growth of academic earmarks would require a concerted effort by American universities to shun the practice, or a new consensus in Congress to finance academic research only through the competitive merit-based process. The Association of American Universities, a group of 62 elite research universities, is currently re-examining its position on earmarks, and could send a strong signal by unequivocally rejecting the practice.”

Here at the University of Colorado-Boulder I serve on the chancellor’s advisory committee on federal relations, which includes lobbying and earmarking. I have proposed that Colorado adopt and publicize a general policy of not accepting academic earmarks, with an ability to make exceptions on a case by case basis. I have proposed that we take a close look at such a policy in place at the University of Michigan as a possible model. It’ll be interesting to see how my colleagues respond to such a proposal. The lure of earmarking is strong. But the consequences are significant.

Posted on May 31, 2005 01:36 PM View this article | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding

May 26, 2005

John Marburger on Science Policy Research

In last week's Science, John Marburger, science advisor to President Bush, calls (PDF, subscription required) for greater attention to science policy research:

"How much should a nation spend on science? What kind of science? How much from private versus public sectors? Does demand for funding by potential science performers imply a shortage of funding or a surfeit of performers? These and related science policy questions tend to be asked and answered today in a highly visible advocacy context that makes assumptions that are deserving of closer scrutiny. A new "science of science policy" is emerging, and it may offer more compelling guidance for policy decisions and for more credible advocacy."

In my view, the "science of science policy" is being practiced most explicitly at Arizona State University's Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes and our own Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado. Dr. Marburger's Science editorial follows up on his recent AAAS speech on the same subject.

Needless to say, we agree about the need for more systematic study of science policy - that is, decisions made about science and decision made with science. Our mission (PDF) here at the University of Colorado is based on the assumption/hypothesis that science policy decision making can be improved by expanding the scope of choice available to science policy decision makers. Perhaps we'll prove ourselves wrong, but we'll sure have fun along the way.

Posted on May 26, 2005 10:31 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

May 25, 2005

Hiding Behind the Science of Stem Cells

David Shaywitz has a nice op-ed in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal on the stem cell issue. The article is not available online. Shaywitz makes the case that the very same conservatives who decry “junk science” are hiding their moral objections to stem cell research behind scientific claims that adult stem cells are a good substitute for embryonic stem cells. Shaywitz writes:

“For true believers, of course, these scientific facts should be beside the point; if human embryonic stem cell research is morally, fundamentally, wrong, then it should be wrong, period, regardless of the consequences to medical research. If conservatives believe their own rhetoric, they should vigorously critique embryonic stem cell research on its own grounds, and not rely on an appeal to utilitarian principles. Instead, there has been a concerted effort to establish adult stem cells as a palatable alternative to embryonic stem cells. In the process, conservatives seem to have left their usual concern for junk science at the laboratory door, citing in their defense preliminary studies and questionable data that they would surely – and appropriately – have ridiculed were it not supporting their current point of view.”

I think that Shaywitz is right on here with the exception of one important point. I don’t think that conservatives (on the stem cell issue or generally) are alone in their concern over “junk science” or unique in their desire to hide behind science. People and interest groups from across the political spectrum have shown considerable willingness to engage in political battles through science. In fact, turning political debates into scientific debates is arguably one of the most robust areas of partisan agreement.

Posted on May 25, 2005 07:27 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Biotechnology

Presentation on Climate Change and Reinsurance

Today I am giving a presentation at a forum on climate change sponsored by the Reinsurance Association of America. For those who are visiting this weblog as a result of my invitation during my talk, welcome! I am serving on a panel with several distinguished scientists from the reinsurance industry:

Dr. Eberhard Faust Head of Climate Risks, Department of Geo Risks Research Environmental Management, Munich Reinsurance Company AG

Gerry Lemcke, Ph.D. Head, Catastrophe Perils Team, Swiss Re America Corporation

My talk focuses on current scientific understandings related to the attribution of trends in the growth of economic damages related to weather and climate extremes. My basic conclusion is that, despite various claims to the contrary in the media and by advocacy groups, looking back in time, the evidence from climate impacts scientists provides very little support for claims that any significant part of the trend of increasing economic losses is the result of changes in the frequency or intensity of weather or climate extremes. (We discussed this in some detail last year here and here). Below you can find a long list of relevant studies.

This conclusion is for two reasons. First, although extreme events have varied at all time scales in their occurrence and magnitude (and such variations can be seen in the impacts records), and one can present historical records of various lengths that show trends, there has been no secular increase in extreme events around the world over recent decades. This conclusion is well supported by the most recent assessment of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A second reason is why the influence of extreme events is hard to detect is that the single most important factor responsible for the trend is increasing population and wealth in exposed locations. Any climate signal in the historical record will be difficult to detect, even after adjusting for societal factors, simply because the size of the climate signal is less than the errors in the societal data.

Looking to the future it is important to consider both possible changes in climate and society. All of the analyses that I am aware of all suggest that societal factors will continue to dominate climate factors, probably overwhelmingly so. We should therefore expect weather and climate-related damage to increase dramatically in future years and decades. This increase will be insensitive to the amount of emissions reductions that might be achieved (either realistically or unrealistically) over coming years and decades. It does not make sense to attempt to modulate future extreme events, and by extension their impacts, with energy policies (although there are other good reasons for thinking about energy policy and CO2 emissions.) Reduction of the economic and other human impacts of weather and climate will be most effective when focused on the societal conditions that lead to ever growing vulnerability.

It is of course important to recognize that science is always a work in progress and new experience or studies might give good reasons for a change in expectations.

For further reading:

Downton, M., J. Z. B. Miller and R. A. Pielke, Jr., 2005. Reanalysis of U.S. National Weather Service Flood Loss Database, Natural Hazards Review, 6:13-22. (PDF)

Pielke, Jr., R. A. and D. Sarewitz, 2005. Bringing Society back into the Climate Debate, Population and Environment, Volume 26, Number 3, pp. 255-268. (PDF)

Sarewitz, D., and R.A. Pielke, Jr., 2005. Rising Tide, The New Republic, January 6. (PDF)

Pielke, Jr., R. A., J. Rubiera, C. Landsea, M. Fernandez, and R.A. Klein, 2003: Hurricane Vulnerability in Latin America and the Caribbean, Natural Hazards Review, 4:101-114. (PDF)

Downton, M. and R.A. Pielke, Jr., 2001: Discretion Without Accountability: Politics, Flood Damage, and Climate, Natural Hazards Review, 2(4):157-166. (PDF)

Changnon, S., R. A. Pielke, Jr., D. Changnon, D., R. T. Sylves, and R. Pulwarty, 2000: Human Factors Explain the Increased Losses from Weather and Climate Extremes. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 81(3), 437-442. (PDF)

Pielke, Jr., R.A., and M.W. Downton, 2000: Precipitation and Damaging Floods: Trends in the United States, 1932-97. Journal of Climate, 13(20), 3625-3637. (PDF)

Pielke, Jr., R. A., R.A. Klein, and D. Sarewitz, 2000: Turning the Big Knob: Energy Policy as a Means to Reduce Weather Impacts. Energy and Environment, Vol. 11, No. 3, 255-276. (PDF)

Landsea, C. L., R. A. Pielke, Jr., A. Mestas-Nuez, and J. Knaff, 1999: Atlantic Basin Hurricanes: Indicies of Climate Changes. Climate Change, 42, 89-129. (PDF)

Pielke, Jr., R. A., and M. Downton, 1999: U.S. Trends in Streamflow and Precipitation: Using Societal Impact Data to Address an Apparent Paradox. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 80(7), 1435-1436. (PDF)

Pielke, Jr., R.A., and C.W. Landsea, 1999: La Nia, El Nio, and Atlantic Hurricane Damages in the United States. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 80, 10, 2027-2033. (PDF)

Pielke, Jr., R. A., and C. W. Landsea, 1998: Normalized Hurricane Damages in the United States: 1925-95. Weather and Forecasting, American Meteorological Society, Vol. 13, 621-631. (PDF)

Posted on May 25, 2005 02:19 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

May 23, 2005

Making Sense of the Stem Cell Policy Debate

It looks like we are seeing another flare up in the debate over stem cell research. Here is an excerpt from what I wrote on this last year in and op-ed in the Rocky Mountain News:

“If you want to liven up conversation at a dinner party, ask the following question: How much money would you take for your pinkie toe?”

Read the whole op-ed here (PDF).

Posted on May 23, 2005 04:40 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Biotechnology

More Cart and Horse

The actions of municipalities in the U.S. and several major companies to respond to human caused climate change by reducing their green house emissions has caused some to suggest that these decision makers have been persuaded by science to change their behaviors. But what if this interpretation of their actions is incorrect?

Surely some people do undergo “data induced transformations” of their policy commitments when presented with new information. But it is probably just as if not more likely that, as Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay have observed, "people generally come to their beliefs about how the world works long before they encounter facts." Such distinctions matter because they shape how people think about science in the politics of climate change. For many people the challenge of climate change is to convince “skeptics” or the uniformed of the scientific consensus on climate change under an expectation that such convincing will invariably lead to certain actions. But what if support for action on climate change has origins in factors other than knowledge of science? (Or alternatively, what if battling over science actually hinders effective policy?)

Consider the following two vignettes:

1. From The Economist last week is this interesting quote from Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE: “We are investing in environmentally cleaner technology because we believe it will increase our revenue, our value and our profits... Not because it is trendy or moral, but because it will accelerate our growth and make us more competitive.”

2. Michele Betsill at Colorado State University has studied cities and climate change. She writes in a 2001 paper,

“The experience of CCP [Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) campaign sponsored by the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives] communities indicates that global climate change is most likely to be reframed as a local issue when city officials recognise that actions to control GHG emissions also address other local concerns already on their agendas. Localisation requires the prior existence of a local hook on which to hang the issue of global climate change. Localising global climate change is an important first step in developing a municipal response to global warming; it helps generate political support for reducing local GHG emissions. However, not all communities are able to move from reframing to policy action. There are several institutional barriers that make it difficult for cities to develop and implement policies and programmes for mitigating climate change: the issue does not fit the way most city governments organise themselves; many city governments lack the administrative capacity to monitor their GHG emissions; and there are often budgetary constraints that make it difficult to invest in emissions reduction activities. Ultimately, motivating local action to mitigate global climate change calls for an indirect strategy, focused on the ways in which emissions-producing activities are embedded in broader community concerns (Rayner & Malone, 1997). The primary benefit of an indirect approach is that it avoids many of the political debates about climate change science that have plagued international efforts to address this issue (Sarewitz & Pielke, 2000). Several officials noted that it really does not matter whether global climate change science is credible. Since the emphasis is on how reducing GHG emissions can help the city address other (more pressing) problems, questions of the scientific basis for climate change rarely come up. When and if they do, city officials can easily reply that these are actions they should take anyway.”

Cart or horse matters a great deal for how we think about, use and prioritize science and advocacy on climate change. Framing has practical implications, and climate change, and the dominant framing of climate change may not be particularly effective from the standpoints of science or action. We have something to learn from the case of policy responses to ozone depletion. The lessons of policy responses to ozone depletion are often characterized as the cart leading the horse, but in reality, the horse did in fact lead the cart. See this paper (PDF) by Pielke and Betsill, which presents a perspective on the lessons of the ozone case.

Posted on May 23, 2005 04:37 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

May 19, 2005

Cart or Horse?

The energy policy debate over climate change has largely been framed as an issue of managing the global climate for long-term benefits with the extra benefits of reducing dependence on foreign oil, increased efficiency and decreased particulate pollution. For example, A New York Times editorial today restates this logic:

“there is some talk that Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman may offer a bill imposing industrywide caps as an amendment on the Senate floor. But a properly drawn energy bill has the potential to do much good, especially if it avoids rewarding the old polluting industries, as the House version does, and focuses instead on putting serious money behind cleaner fuels, cleaner power plants and cleaner cars. That these measures would also ease the country's dependency on overseas oil is, of course, a persuasive side benefit.”

But what if energy policy were to be characterized in terms of a primary need to reduce dependence on foreign oil, increased efficiency and decreased particulate pollution, and with the resulting side benefit of reducing the impacts of humans on the climate system?

The difference in framing is of critical importance for practical action, e.g., it shapes arguments made in advocacy, and influences the role of science in political debates. As progress on reducing emissions has yet to show any signs of success with respect to policy goals (e.g., such as those of the Climate Convention). A large body of experience -- including the adoption of Kyoto, Europe’s policy actions, the possibility of McCain/Lieberman, corporate and state endorsements of emissions limitations, etc. – might suggest that the current framing is not particularly effective. In this circumstance will there come a time when advocates for changes in energy policies consider how things might be done differently? Or are we, for better or worse, on the path that we are on for the long term? Thinking about degree to which changes to energy policy ought to be advocated in terms of their short term versus long term benefits might be a good place to start thinking about new options. Without a doubt, the current debate emphasizes the long term issues over the short term, which, and the Times states, are all but dismissed as merely a side benefit.

Posted on May 19, 2005 09:17 AM View this article | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Energy Policy

May 17, 2005

Is the “Hockey Stick” Debate Relevant to Policy?

On several occasions I have alluded to the fact that I think that the debate over the so-called “hockey stick” temperature reconstruction is a distraction from the development and promulgation of climate policy. And the debate goes on (and on). We have written frequently about the core dynamic of the climate debate in which political opponents pick a scientific sandbox to fight in, with little connection to policy, and fight things out in a public manner under a pretense that the debate has significance beyond science. Over time this skeptic vs. hawk debate has taken place over a supposed CO2 sink in North American, surface vs. satellite temperature trends, hurricanes and climate change and also the “hockey stick” (among other areas). Within science (including my own area of expertise) subject matter experts engage in vocal and at times nasty debates over knowledge. Such dust-ups are characteristic of the academic enterprise. But I’d assert that the battles over climate science go far beyond typical academic wrangling, are really proxy wars over something else. But what is that something else?

It might be political power, i.e., who gets to have a public voice on issues of climate change? Science is widely viewed as authoritative and legitimate, so everyone wants the imprimatur of science on their side. From this perspective the battle over climate science is a battle for standing, with little connection to the substantive connections of the scientific debates and practical decision making. In other words, the battle is over who gets to decide what action we take on climate change and not what actions we should take. This battle for political supremacy is most visible on the rival WWW sites that have sprung up to join the battle over the hockey stick (see RealClimate and ClimateAudit.)

But there is also evidence to suggest that some people believe that the hockey stick is relevant to decision making. For example, in its most recent assessment the IPCC clearly considered the “hockey stick” to be relevant to policy, as it included it prominently it is 2001 “Summary for Policy Makers.” The mission of the IPCC is to be “policy relevant” so presumably it is safe to say that any science that it presents (and particularly in its summary for policymakers) it considers it to be relevant for policy. But because the IPCC does not explicitly discuss policy, there is no way to glean from its reports why it thinks that the hockey stick is policy relevant. Further, the IPCC clearly does not need the hockey stick to assert its scientific authority and legitimacy, so there must be a very real presumption of policy relevance.

[There is also the possibility that the battle over the hockey stick has more to do with personalities and egos than politics or policy. However, while I am sure that personalities and egos play an important role in the evolution of this and the other proxy wars on climate, I do not think that they overshadow the politics and policy issues above.]

So here is my question to Prometheus readers: Is the debate over the “hockey stick” of any policy relevance whatsoever, other than as a battleground for political standing? That is to say, is the future resolution of the “hockey stick” debate at all relevant to understanding (a) our available scope of options on climate change, or (b) how we might evaluate those options? The views of those actually engaged in the “hockey stick” debate are solicited as well – why are you involved in this debate?

Posted on May 17, 2005 10:41 AM View this article | Comments (18) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Science and Policy Guidelines in the UK

The U.K. Office of Science and Technology has recently issued a “consultation (PDF)” requesting guidance on an update to its guidelines on the interface of science and policy. Specifically, “The Guidelines on Scientific Analysis in Policy Making is a high-level document addressing the way in which Government departments obtain and use analysis and advice in policy-making.” It seems to me the that community of scholars who study science and decision making might have some useful input to this consultation.

The draft update observes, “The environment in which Ministers must make decisions is continually changing. In recent years we have seen the level of public interest in evidence based issues increase, and in some cases the level of public confidence in the government’s ability to make sound decisions based on that evidence has decreased. It is therefore essential that an effective advisory process exists which allows decision-makers access to a high-quality and wide-ranging evidence base. This will enable them to make informed decisions, to deal effectively with crises and to ensure that all opportunities are explored to their full potential. In short, we must ensure that:
• key decision makers can be confident that evidence is robust and stands up to challenges of credibility, reliability and objectivity
• key decision makers can be confident that the advice derived from the analysis of the evidence also stands up to these challenges
• the public are aware, and are in turn confident, that such steps are being taken

The principles laid out within these guidelines are consistent with the current better policy making guidelines to which policy makers adhere. They aim to further highlight the importance of the role of evidence in policy making, and to increase the awareness of policy makers on how best to seek good quality evidence from the most credible sources at the most appropriate time.”

Here are the specific questions that input is being requested on.

“In this consultation document the Government invites responses to the following questions:
Consultation Question 1
Peer review and publication can be important factors in the robustness of the evidence used by government departments in policy making decisions, so:
• What should the CSA guidelines say about this? Should we say that best practice is for each department being responsible for ensuring all research/evidence is peer reviewed unless there are very exceptional circumstances? What might those circumstances be?
• How should we deal with ‘breaking news’ where the new evidence might be radically different?
• How should policy makers mitigate the impact of radical evidential change on existing bodies of evidence?
• Should we suggest they attempt a fast track peer review in parallel and share with key experts who can seek to replicate?

Consultation Question 2
Departmental use of the guidelines will be difficult to measure. The guidelines are principle based and in most cases will be woven into departmental guidance on better policy making. It is also important to recognise that departments are subject to a considerable amount of evaluation already, so:
• How should we evaluate? Do we simply say here that OST will work with senior policy makers in each department to ensure that the principles of the guidelines are fully embedded in departmental policy procedures?
• Do we say this will be followed up in greater detail under Science and Innovation Strategy Assessments?
• Should we suggest we will sample significant policy documents/publications to see what they tell us?”

The full “consultation (PDF)” document has instructions for submission of input.

Posted on May 17, 2005 10:37 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | International

May 13, 2005

Letter in Science

I've got a letter in Science this week on Oreskes/consensus. Naomi has a response. I've reproduced both in full below:

Consensus About Climate Change?

In her essay "The scientific consensus on climate change" (3 Dec. 2004, p. 1686), N. Oreskes asserts that the consensus reflected in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) appears to reflect, well, a consensus. Although Oreskes found unanimity in the 928 articles with key words "global climate change," we should not be surprised if a broader review were to find conclusions at odds with the IPCC consensus, as "consensus" does not mean uniformity of perspective. In the discussion motivated by Oreskes' Essay, I have seen one claim made that there are more than 11,000 articles on "climate change" in the ISI database and suggestions that about 10% somehow contradict the IPCC consensus position.

But so what? If that number is 1% or 40%, it does not make any difference whatsoever from the standpoint of policy action. Of course, one has to be careful, because people tend to read into the phrase "policy action" a particular course of action that they themselves advocate. But in the IPCC, one can find statements to use in arguing for or against support of the Kyoto Protocol. The same is true for any other specific course of policy action on climate change. The IPCC maintains that its assessments do not advocate any single course of action.

So in addition to arguing about the science of climate change as a proxy for political debate on climate policy, we now can add arguments about the notion of consensus itself. These proxy debates are both a distraction from progress on climate change and a reflection of the tendency of all involved to politicize climate science. The actions that we take on climate change should be robust to (i) the diversity of scientific perspectives, and thus also to (ii) the diversity of perspectives of the nature of the consensus. A consensus is a measure of a central tendency and, as such, it necessarily has a distribution of perspectives around that central measure (1). On climate change, almost all of this distribution is well within the bounds of legitimate scientific debate and reflected within the full text of the IPCC reports. Our policies should not be optimized to reflect a single measure of the central tendency or, worse yet, caricatures of that measure, but instead they should be robust enough to accommodate the distribution of perspectives around that central measure, thus providing a buffer against the possibility that we might learn more in the future (2).

Roger A. Pielke Jr.
Center for Science and Technology Policy Research
University of Colorado
UCB 488
Boulder, CO 80309-0488, USA

References

1. D. Bray, H. von Storch, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 80, 439 (1999).
2. R. Lempert, M. Schlesinger, Clim. Change 45, 387 (2000).

Response
Pielke suggests that I claimed that there are no papers in the climate literature that disagree with the consensus. Not so. I simply presented the research result that a sample based on the keywords "global climate change" did not reveal any, suggesting that the existing scientific dissent has been greatly exaggerated and confirming that the statements and reports of leading scientific organizations--including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences--accurately reflect the evidence presented in the scientific literature.

Pielke is quite right that understanding the results of scientific research does not implicate us in any particular course of action, and the purpose of my Essay was not to advocate either for or against the Kyoto accords or any other particular policy response. A full debate on the moral, social, political, ethical, and economic ramifications of possible responses to climate change--as well as the ramifications of inaction--would be a very good thing. But such a debate is impeded by climate-change deniers. In this respect, I am in complete agreement with Pielke's conclusion, which was precisely the point of my Essay: Proxy debates about scientific uncertainty are a distraction from the real issue, which is how best to respond to the range of likely outcomes of global warming and how to maximize our ability to learn about the world we live in so as to be able to respond efficaciously. Denying science advances neither of those goals.

Naomi Oreskes
Department of History and Science Studies Program
University of California at San Diego
La Jolla, CA 92093, USA

Posted on May 13, 2005 01:10 AM View this article | Comments (13) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Others | Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

May 11, 2005

Water Vapor and Technology Assessment

A study just out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) provides some reinforcement for the idea of a technology assessment of the environmental effects of fuel cell cars.

Last year a few of us (myself, Bobbie Klein, Genevieve Maricle, Tom Chase) here at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research wrote a letter (PDF) to Science suggesting that water vapor emissions from fuel cell vehicles ought to be considered from the standpoint of a technology assessment, because water vapor can have effects upon the environment. We speculated:

"As fuel cell cars are suggested as a solution to global climate change caused by rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions, they are frequently misidentified as "zero-emissions vehicles." Fuel cell vehicles emit water vapor. A global fleet could have the potential to emit amounts large enough to affect local or regional distribution of water vapor. Variation in water vapor affects local, regional, and global climates (1). Data on such effects are sparse because of complexities in the water vapor life cycle. However, our preliminary calculations indicate that a complete shift to fuel cell vehicles would do little to slow water vapor emissions, which presumably have increased perceptibly in some metropolitan locations through the growth in use of internal combustion engines. In some locations, changes in relative humidity related to human activity have arguably affected local and regional climate (2, 3). Depending on the fuel cell technologies actually employed, relative humidity in some locales might conceivably increase by an amount greater than with internal combustion engines. This increase could lead to shifts in local or regional precipitation or temperature patterns, with discernible effects on people and ecosystems The broad environmental effects of fuel cell vehicles are an issue worth addressing via a technology assessment before implementing a solution (4). Not all problems can be anticipated in this manner, but if some can, then the effort will have been well spent (5). In the case of hydrogen cars, the cure may indeed be better than the disease, but we should make sure before taking our medicine."

Our point was not that the environmental effects of water vapor emissions would necessarily be significant (we haven't done that research), but instead that research should be conducted to explore whether or not (and to what degree) such effects would be significant, even if such research leads to a dismissal of concerns. We received a number of dismissive replies to our letter suggesting that human emissions of water vapor were necessarily irrelevant in the climate system, because of its small contribution to he global water vapor cycle, and as a consequence, this aspect of a technology assessment would be unnecessary. (And ExxonMobil incorrectly states that fuel cells provide "zero vehicle emissions.") While scientific claims of the irrelevance of water vapor emissions may prove correct, it would not preclude the importance of doing a comprehensive technology assessment. After all, CFCs were long thought to be a perfect industrial chemical because they had "no effect" on the environment. And a negative finding from a technology assessment can be just as important as a finding of harm.

A study just out in the PNAS (I don't have a direct link yet) would seem to support our calls for a technology assessment, and was described by SciDev.net as follows:

"Line Gordon, of the University of Stockholm, Sweden, and her colleagues, looked at how much water vapour is being produced around the planet and compared this to estimates of what would have been produced if human activities hadn't modified land-use and vegetation. Their study is the first to look at water vapour flows on a global scale. The researchers found that, worldwide, deforestation has decreased the evaporation of water by four per cent. Overall, this is almost exactly offset by the increase in the release of water vapour from irrigation. But the authors warn that the balance at the global level hides strong regional differences... The combined effect, say that authors, is a substantial difference in the distribution of vapour at a global scale compared to what the distribution would have been without human deforestation and irrigation. Studies in China have shown the changes to vapour flows within a region can affect the monsoon rains across the region. No one has yet studied the interaction between vapour flows and the climate on a global scale. The authors suggest the interaction could be large, and the implications for food security could be severe... [Gordon] underlines the need to start analysing the role of water vapour flows in the global climate. "We need to see how big an effect this can have on a global scale," she says."

Ultimately, water vapor emissions from a global fleet of fuel cell powered autos may indeed prove to be benign or irrelevant. It would certainly be wonderful to find a important energy technology with little downside. But given the low cost of exploring this topic, it would seem to make good sense to perform a comprehensive technology assessment (argued in the peer-reviewed literature) of fuel cell technologies, before committing to a particular technological or policy path. And any such assessment ought to consider water vapor as well.

Posted on May 11, 2005 09:50 AM View this article | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Environment

May 09, 2005

Immigration and Climate Change

The New York Times today has an op-ed on climate change and immigration by Sujatha Byravan, president of the Council for Responsible Genetics, and Sudhir Chella Rajan, head of the Global Politics and Institutions Program at the Tellus Institute. The op-ed revisits an argument made by the authors recently in Nature.

Byravan and Rajan argue that one of the consequences of human-caused climate change "will be rising seas, which in turn will generate a surge of "climate exiles" who have been flooded out of their homes in poor countries. How should those of us in rich countries deal with this wave of immigrants? The fairest solution: allowing the phased immigration of people living in vulnerable regions according to a formula that is tied to the host country's cumulative contributions to global warming."

This op-ed is worth commenting on because it actually talks about policy, and does not take us into the cul-de-sac of "global warming: yes or no?". So let's discuss their recommended policy option. To summarize my critique, Byravan and Rajan take a complicated issue of great importance, displaced peoples, and argue as if a human-caused climate change aspect of this issue can be considered in isolation of that larger problem. This, in a nutshell, represents the core pathology of current discussion of climate policies.

Byravan and Rajan proposal is as follows: "So no matter what we do, a wave of climate change exiles is inevitable. One option for dealing with this is to tighten our borders and inure ourselves to the exiles' cries for help. A more sensible, and just, approach is for the top greenhouse gas emitters - including China and India - to grant entry to the up to 200 million people who could lose their homes to rising seas by 2080. How many should go where? Under our formula, the top cumulative emitter, the United States, would absorb 21 percent of the climate-change exiles a year; the smallest of the 20 major emitters, Venezuela, would absorb less than 1 percent. If such a program were to start in 2010, the United States, for example, would have to be prepared to accept 150,000 to a half-million immigrants a year for the next 70 years or so (to put that in context, the United States now has one million legal immigrants annually)."

My critique of their proposal has two parts. First, Byravan and Rajan's numbers are based on some highly dubious assumptions. They suggest that based on its proportion of historical greenhouse gas emissions the US might be responsible for accepting 21% of climate change immigrants, which they calculate as 150,000 to 500,000 per year. The Times op-ed doesn't say where these numbers come from but we can see their origin from what Byravan and Rajan said in Nature:

"Estimates suggest that roughly 50 million to 200 million people will be displaced by the 2080s, owing to the direct impacts of climate change under a plausible range of emissions scenarios (R. J. Nicholls Glob. Environ. Change14, 69-86; 2004). Assuming that all these climate-change exiles are absorbed by the top ten 'emitter' countries, new annual immigrants would range from a few thousand for the Czech Republic to about three-quarters of a million for the United States."

So 150,000 immigrants refer to the 50 million-over-70-year scenario and the half million immigrants refers to the 200-million-over-70-year scenario. Setting aside uncertainties in projecting future sea-level rise and its impacts on coastal inhabitants, the dodgiest assumption here is that all people projected to be displaced by human caused climate change will seek to relocate in rich countries.

The Indian Ocean tsunami does provide some experience that might be useful in exploring how many displaced coastal residents from developing countries actually seek to migrate to rich countries. According to the Red Cross more than 1.6 million people were displaced by the tsunami. Have all of these people sought to migrate to rich countries? It seems highly unlikely. According to a just-released US AID study in the aftermath of the tsunami, "despite the devastation, the desire for self-sufficiency and a return to normality has led some people to return home already without help from the government or aid agencies. Most people said that if they could not return home, they would like to be relocated as close as possible to their original homes and jobs if the government could guarantee them legal ownership of the land on which their new homes would be built."

A second issue with the numbers is that Byravan and Rajan seek to anchor attention to the current level of United States immigration of ~1 million per year. Under their proposal this would result in a 15% to 50% increase over present day levels, numbers surely designed to capture attention. But a more appropriate base rate is the number of displaced people worldwide. The U.N. High Commission for Refugees estimates in recent years that there are ~17-20 million people who are in some way displaced. Even assuming the worst case assumptions of Nicholls study, it would seem that migration of people associated with climate change is a subset of a much larger challenge of displaced peoples, rather than vice versa.

And this leads to my second criticism of the Byravan and Rajan op-ed, it seeks to redefine a serious humanitarian issue as an issue of human caused climate change. This is (yet) another example of attempts to gerrymander the climate change issue as if it can be addressed in isolation from issues of disease, disasters, poverty, water resources, energy use and now migration. Under Byravan and Rajan's proposal that climate change refugees be allocated to rich countries I wonder how they might identify a "climate change refugee" from the much larger population of displaced peoples. So as to distinguish them from the tens of millions of other displaced people, presumably these future immigrants to the rich world need some proof that their dislocation resulted from the historical emissions of greenhouse gases and not poverty, war, poor governance, bad luck or any this else.

Less charitably, invoking concerns about future migrations of developing world peoples to the north comes close to exploiting existing fears and passions about immigration as a rhetorical political strategy to garner support for action climate change. Issues of displaced peoples and immigration are tremendously important. Climate change is also important. But conflating the two is unlikely to lead to effective policy development in response to immigration or climate impacts.

Posted on May 9, 2005 11:00 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

May 06, 2005

New Publication

Bobbie Klein and I have a new paper out. The paper suggests that the impacts of hurricanes/tropical storms is somewhat greater than conventionally accounted for, when inland flooding is considered in addition to coastal damages.

Here is the abstract:

"Abstract: A problem exists in that the classifications used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for weather-related disasters do not always allow analysts to clearly link declared disasters to their ultimate meteorological cause. This research focuses on those disasters related to flooding resulting from tropical cyclones. Neither FEMA nor the states that request federal disaster aid distinguish flood disasters by their meteorological origin, making it difficult to assess the contributions of various meteorological phenomena to the incidence and severity of Presidential Disaster Declarations. The data presented in this initial analysis indicate that the flood-related impacts of tropical systems are considerably broader and undoubtedly larger in economic magnitude than documented in the official records kept by FEMA."

The whole paper is here.

Posted on May 6, 2005 12:38 PM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Environment

May 05, 2005

Another Recipe for Politicization of Science

Nature reports this week that the U.S. National Science Foundation is moving toward limiting the number of proposals that a particular university can submit,

“In the past few years, the NSF has placed limits on the number of applications that a single institution can submit. Those limits will now become increasingly common, according to Arden Bement, the agency's director. He says the measures are needed to control the number of proposals flooding in to his staff, and to boost the success rate of applications. He stresses that the new policy will affect only large facilities and collaborative grants. "This would not be for individual applications," he says. But universities are starting to speak out about the proposals, warning that the changes are forcing them to become unwilling peer reviewers. Earlier this year, administrators at Princeton University, New Jersey, had to choose one of several proposals for a programme that funded international collaborations, according to Diane Jones, director of the university's office of government affairs. The proposals came from several disciplines and departments, making the choice far from straightforward. "Universities are not set up to do this kind of internal peer review," she says.”

In my experience universities are highly politicized places -- and I don’t mean here the Republican-Democrat sort of politicization, but the sort of politicization associated with turf, disciplinary status, personal feuds, professorial fiefdoms and horse trading and logrolling. Going further down the path of outsourcing peer review to universities is in my view another step towards a continued diminishment of peer review as an effective tool of decision making about science.

Posted on May 5, 2005 12:23 PM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

May 04, 2005

Fun With Cherry Picking

Two blog posts from recent days highlight the cherry picking of information to put a favorable spin on information.

Chris Mooney does a nice job showing differences between a press release on a recent paper by Hansen et al. issued by Columbia University and a version of the same press release issued by NASA. Mooney argues that the differences show that, “The tenor of these edits is all in one direction: Make the findings seem less alarming--i.e., less demanding of political action, and also less newsworthy.” Of course, the authors of the Columbia press release also had decisions to make about how to portray the Hansen paper.

At Climate Audit, a recent post makes the case that the IPCC selectively ignored inconvenient data when creating a graphed showing paleoclimate temperature reconstructions. Climate Audit then presents its recreation of the graph in question with the previously not-included data added and suggests that the IPCC did not include the data because it complicated its conclusions.

Both of these instances are great examples of the “cherry pick -- the careful selection of information to buttress a particular predetermined perspective while ignoring other information that does not. In other words, take the best and leave the rest.” NASA is allegedly trying to present the Hansen paper in a way that puts the current Administration’s climate policies in the best light, and the IPCC is allegedly trying to present data that best support its conclusions. If we get a bit reflexive about this, in a similar manner, Chris Mooney is selectively focusing on data and anecdotes that make the Bush Administration look bad (e.g., he has not vetted every agency press release), and Climate Audit is focused on holding the paleo-climate science community accountable (and similarly has not audited every IPCC graph). Here at Prometheus we selectively focus on examples and cases at the messy interface of climate politics and science (and we tend to focus on problematic aspects of that interface). But of course we should not expect to receive information that is not selective; it would be of little use. Weblogs are useful because they are selective in their presentation of information.

All of this is to say – to quote Dan Sarewitz -- all uses of facts and information are selective. Every single one. There is no alternative. Every time anyone makes an argument and invokes facts or information they have some agenda for doing so (except Michael Crichton, that is). That NASA or the IPCC (or Chris Mooney or Climate Audit or Prometheus) have agendas in not surprising. In neither case do Chris Mooney or Climate Audit allege (I think this is correct) that either NASA or the IPCC has engaged in scientific misconduct. What they are saying is that each organization has acted in ways to present information in a manner that further its own interest , perhaps revealing an underlying agenda, probably political.

Good for Chris Mooney and good for Climate Audit. Such close attention can help both the IPCC and NASA realize that people are paying attention to their use of information and facts. Knowing that people are paying attention will mean that NASA and IPCC may be less likely to go beyond cherry picking to providing information that is mistaken or mischaracterized. NASA and IPCC (and bloggers as well) should care because if people come to learn that their information providers are playing fast and loose with facts and information, then with some audiences their institutional legitimacy and authority may be placed at risk.

Anytime someone uses facts or information to make an argument, that use is selective. Cherry picking is inevitable. But it is important to recognize that how one uses information can either foster or damage legitimacy and authority (on this, see recent reports on use of intelligence leading to the war in Iraq).

Posted on May 4, 2005 05:37 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science Policy: General

May 03, 2005

What Kind of Politicization Do You Want?

In Sunday’s Sacramento Bee Mark B. Brown and Ramshin, both of California State University, Sacramento, observe (free registration required) that while it is impossible to separate science and politics on the stem cell issue, we do have choices about how stem cell science is politicized. They write,

“The controversy over implementation of Proposition 71 is not about whether stem cell research will be politicized but how it will be politicized Prop. 71 was designed to counteract the politicization of science associated with federal science policy. The Bush administration had reportedly slanted the membership and distorted the recommendations of several of its scientific advisory boards. And the president's 2001 restrictions on publicly funded stem cell research have been widely criticized for sacrificing science to ideology. Seeking to avoid such political meddling, Prop. 71 made the institute's advisory committees largely exempt from conflict-of-interest and open meetings laws. It stipulated that the initiative's provisions could not be changed by the Legislature for three years, and then only by a 70 percent vote in both houses. And Prop. 71 declared, "There is hereby established a right to conduct stem cell research." Just as the Bill of Rights protects civil and religious freedoms, Prop. 71 sought to protect science from political interference. So far, none of these efforts to insulate science from politics has worked. But why would they?”

Brown and Ramshin make the case that the issue is not whether or not stem cell science politics will be politicized, it will no matter what. The issue is how it is politicized and Brown and Ramshin make the case that we have choices in this regard.

“Two lawsuits now challenge Prop. 71, and many former supporters have publicly attacked the secretiveness and cronyism at the institute. But even if it is impossible to get the politics out of stem cell research, there are ways to avoid the sort of politicization undertaken by the Bush administration. A constitutional amendment recently introduced by state Sens. Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento, and George Runner, R-Lancaster, and now in committee, offers one option. The amendment, which if passed by the Legislature would require approval by California voters, would make the bodies created by Prop. 71 subject to open meetings and public records laws, as well as conflict-of-interest and financial disclosure requirements. These are worthy goals. They would introduce a more accountable and transparent, and hence more democratic, form of politics into stem cell research.”

Read the whole article here to see Brown and Rashmin’s recommendations for how stem cell science might be politicized consistent with democratic common interests.

Posted on May 3, 2005 08:34 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

April 28, 2005

Bush Administration Goes Nuclear

From the Financial Times Wednesday:

“President George W. Bush will on Wednesday throw his support behind a worldwide expansion of nuclear power and announce plans for a new generation of oil refineries and natural gas terminals in the US… In addition to increasing capacity, Mr Bush believes nuclear power can also be part of the solution to climate change because it does not produce the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.”

From President Bush’s speech referred to by the FT,

“I'm looking forward to going to a G8 meeting in July in Great Britain. And there I'm going to work with developed nations, our friends and allies to help developing nations, countries like China and India to develop and deploy clean energy technology… With these technologies, with the expansion of nuclear power, we can relieve stress on the environment and reduce global demand for fossil fuels. That would be good for the world, and that would be good for American consumers, as well.”

Here is what we said a month ago (just in time!), “All of this looks to me like the Bush Administration is working towards some sort of major new initiative or announcement on nuclear power, all but certainly linked to the climate issue. Such an announcement would be responsive to Tony Blair’s calls for the U.S. to become more engaged in the climate issue, and would also raise some difficult issues for Bush’s historical opponents on the climate issue. The upcoming G8 meeting in Scotland in July would be a perfect opportunity to announce such an initiative.”

Now get ready for that debate.

Posted on April 28, 2005 01:05 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Energy Policy

April 27, 2005

Text of Bob Palmer’s Remarks

Bob Palmer, recently retired after 13 years as Democratic Staff director for the House Science Committee, gave a talk here at Colorado last week. We now have online have an audio file of his talk and also his prepared remarks.

Here are a few teasers:

“…for many years, both in the executive and legislative branches, there has been no consistent or focused debate about the roles of S&T in meeting our broader national goals, as I believe there has been about the rightful place of other aspects of our culture… So regrettably, I’ve concluded that science policy is in anything but a golden age. It is rusty. It is stagnant. Engagement between the two branches and the two political parties is minimal. The great debates of the day are being held somewhere else. To the extent that they occur at all, science policy debates have gone underground. In short, it is an excruciatingly boring and unproductive time for the practice of science policy in the halls of government. Now I apologize to any students who came to this talk excited about their future careers in science policy. You could say that I’m just a bitter, retired-to-Florida, out-of-power Democrat and you could well be right. Let me try to explain why I’ve reached this rather grim conclusion.”

“Do I see any of this bipartisan, government-wide engagement now? The answer is virtually none, not even at the meso-scale level. Why? In my perhaps overly partisan view, the problem started in the late 1980’s, when S&T became politicized in Congress as part of a broader strategy by Republicans to seize back control of the Congress – a goal which they eventually accomplished in the 1994 mid-term elections. It may surprise some of you to hear that the public partisan fight over science policy – exemplified today in the reports by Congressman Henry Waxman and the Union of Concerned Scientists – did not start during this Administration. It has actually been going on in the Congress for about 15 years. There have always been a lot of specific fights on science-related issues on the Hill (for example, building the Clinch River Breeder Reactor in the early 1980’s). But partisan fights were largely non-existent until the late 1980’s when Newt Gingrich – ironically now an outspoken and highly entertaining advocate for science – stirred up his followers in the House of Representatives to fight the Democrats on everything, including science. I can go into specifics in the question-and-answer session if anyone is interested, but let me just say that beginning in the late-1980s, we fought on all sorts of issues and with a spirit of meanness, that had not been seen for decades.”

The whole talk is worth listening to or reading.

Posted on April 27, 2005 03:37 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

April 26, 2005

GAO on CCSP

Last week the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a letter report (PDF) on the structure of the U.S. government's Climate Change Science Program (CCSP). The New York Times characterized the report as follows, "The Bush administration's program to study climate change lacks a major component required by law, according to Congressional investigators. The program fails to include periodic assessments of how rising temperatures may affect people and the environment." The GAO concludes that due to the structure of the CCSP and its process for connecting science with decision makers, "it may be difficult for the Congress and others to use this information effectively as the basis for making decisions on climate policy."

The GAO report was interpreted by the New York Times as a narrow criticism of the Bush Administration, but what is missing is the historical context. The CCSP, and its former incarnation as the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), have always deemphasized research on the impacts of climate change and on mitigation and adaptation responses. It is probably true that the Bush Administration is happy with a CCSP focused on questions of climate science absent an impacts or policy context, but this stance is possible because it overlaps with the long-time interests of the climate science community in avoiding these issues as well.

I'll claim to know something about this subject because my PhD thesis (1994) was an evaluation of the USGCRP's ability to contribute useful information to policy makers, and the dynamics reported on by the GAO go back to the late 1980s. Here is some background (references at the bottom):

First, it is unambiguous that the overarching goal of the U.S. investment in climate research is to support decision making. Here is what the law says: "the goals and priorities for Federal global change research which most effectively advance scientific understanding of global change and provide usable information on which to base policy decisions relating to global change (P.L. 101-606, sec. 104)." The law also explicitly calls for research on adaptation and mitigation. In the early 1990s some in Congress expressed frustration that climate research was advancing knowledge but not particularly useful. Here are two statements of frustration, one from 1989 and the other 1993:

"We [in Congress] are in desperate need of policy assistance. What are the ways - what are some of the things that we could do to increase the policy relevance of scientific research on global change?"

In a 1992 hearing a USGCRP official was asked by a member of Congress if the program "pays sufficient attention to the potential impacts of climate change on human society, and the impacts on society of climate change; that is, the economic issues, the sociological issues, the international issues, the institutional issues". The official replied "we do not, in the USGCRP, support what's called mitigation and adaptation research. . . This program is focusing on some of the fundamental scientific issues". No one seemed bothered by the fact that the law establishing the USGCRP in fact calls for research on mitigation and adaptation.

In 1993 an Office of Technology Assessment evaluation identified a number of gaps in the program: "What are the implications [of climate changes] for forestry, agriculture, and natural areas? What mitigation strategies would slow climate the most? How much would they cost? To whom? How might society respond to changes in climate and global ecosystems? What technologies should be developed?" The USGCRP steadfastly avoided such issues in its research focus, not because of the Clinton-Gore administration, but because the climate science community deemphasized such research (for reasons why see the references below).

In short the USGCRP, now the CCSP, has a long history of neglecting research on impacts, mitigation and adaptation (consider that the 2000 National Assessment was 6 years late and, among many of its problems, served largely as a substitute for research on impacts, mitigation and adaptation). If the scientific community has ever thought that such neglect was problematic, then they could recommend changes to the structure of climate research that would increase the emphasis on impacts, mitigation and adaptation. With very few exceptions the climate science community continues to deemphasize such work.

Framing this issue into a Bush Administration vs. opponents may fit neatly into the politics of the day, but it neglects the underlying incentives and interests of the climate science community that have led it to deemphasize the research identified by the GAO as needed in the USGCRP. If the Bush Administration is hiding behind climate science, it is because the climate science community, as a primary beneficiary of the Bush Administration's approach to climate research, is allowing this to happen.

Here is what Dan Sarewitz and I wrote (PDF) in 2003:

"One way to exercise this leadership and make the CCSP more useful to decisionmakers would be to involve policymakers, in whose name the program is justified, in structuring, implementing, and evaluating the program's research. Practically, this would mean sharing control over resource-allocation decisions with the mission agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Departments of Agriculture, Interior, Energy, Transportation, and Heath and Human Services, whose day-to-day business actually involves decisions related to climate. Another way would be to conduct serious research on the information needs of relevant decisionmakers at the local and regional level-farmers, emergency managers, city and regional planners, natural resource and energy supply managers, to name a few-as a basis for determining areas of research that are most likely to provide support for effective actions. We recognize that these approaches would represent a fundamental shift in the science and policy of climate and would likely result in a significant change in scientific and budgetary priorities for climate research. But if the public, rather than the scientific community, is to be the primary beneficiary of the nation's commitment to climate research, then this is the direction in which we must move."

Read this whole article (here.

References:

Pielke, Jr., R. A. and D. Sarewitz, 2003. Wanted: Scientific Leadership on Climate, Issues in Science and Technology, Winter, pp. 27-30. (PDF)

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 2000: Policy History of the U.S. Global Change Research Program: Part I, Administrative Development. Global Environmental Change, 10, 9-25. (PDF)

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 2000: Policy History of the U.S. Global Change Research Program: Part II, Legislative Process. Global Environmental Change, 10, 133-144. (PDF)

Pielke Jr., R. A., 1995: Usable Information for Policy: An Appraisal of the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Policy Sciences, 38, 39-77. (PDF)

Pielke Jr., R. A., 1994: Scientific Information and Global Change Policymaking. Climatic Change, 28, 315-319. (PDF)

Posted on April 26, 2005 07:43 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

April 25, 2005

How Science Becomes Politics

The climate issue provides an incredibly rich and textured body of experience to explore issues of science and politics. All participants in the political debate over climate policy work hard to define the issue in terms of science. This by itself is of course not so surprising, as anyone who has seen the old television commercial claiming that "4 out of 5 dentists recommend Acme gum for their patients who chew gum" will be familiar with the appeal to scientific authority. What is most interesting to me in the case of the climate debate is the different roles that scientists might play in the political debate over climate, and how scientists have chosen to position themselves and their institutions on the climate issue.

An interview last week on Democracy Now helps to illustrate how advocates try to conflate scientific and political issues, but more importantly, it highlights some of the challenges facing the scientific community as providers of information to policy makers. If scientific debate equals political debate, then we will find that science has simply become another political battleground, and we will lose much of the positive contributions of science in policy (see this PDF for discussion). And as we have asked frequently here of late, should the climate science community position itself more like an issue advocate or honest broker?

The Democracy Now interview focused on the recent feature on climate change politics in Mother Jones magazine that we discussed here last week. In the interview, Ross Gelbspan, a vocal issue advocate, makes the following assertion:

"... the head of this intergovernmental panel on climate change, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, said recently that we have about a ten-year window to make very, very deep cuts in our carbon fuel use, if, quote, "humanity is to survive." This is a scientist. He speaks normally in very conservative and measured language. So, to hear that kind of talk is very, very troubling."

I follow the IPCC pretty closely and we have occasionally commented on Dr. Pachauri's advocacy-oriented statements, but I am unaware of any statements made by Dr. Pachauri referring to the end of humanity if fossil fuel use is not dramatically cut. There are two possibilities here, neither of which is particularly attractive, and both imply choices for the climate science community.

Possibility #1 - Mr. Gelbspan is accurately quoting Dr. Pachauri, which would suggest that the IPCC is continuing down the path of transformation from honest broker (circa 1990) to advocate in support a particular approach to dealing with climate. We'd welcome a reference to Dr. Pachauri's quoted words by Mr. Gelbspan if any Prometheus readers are aware of it.

Possibility #2 - Mr. Gelbspan is not accurately quoting Dr. Pachauri, which would suggest that he is misusing the imprimatur of the IPCC in
pursuit of political advantage, by suggesting that the IPCC (or at least its leadership) has in fact endorsed the approach to the climate issue that Mr. Gelbspan prefers.

If for a moment we assume that Mr. Gelbspan is misquoting Dr. Pachauri, it would seem to be in the best interests of the IPCC to correct the misattribution, as Mr. Gelbspan is a well known and widely cited commentator on climate
politics. Under this scenario, if the climate science community were to simply ignore such misuse of their authority for purposes of advocacy, it raises legitimate questions about the role that climate scientists wish to play in the political debate. Context matters here as many climate scientists have shown little reluctance to speak out in response to certain commentators (compare, e.g., reaction to Michael Crichton). And the context becomes even more relevant when a climate scientist favorably invokes the work of Mr. Gelbspan, reinforcing a connection between climate science and a particular approach to climate politics. Under this scenario, letting misstatements stand while selectively correcting others contributes to the conflation of climate science and climate politics.

These dynamics help to illustrate how an observer (e.g., Gelbspan, Crichton, others) of the political debate on climate might come to (or even seek) the conclusion that climate science and politics are one and the same. From this vantage point, climate scientists become issue advocates whether they like it or not. For some climate scientists this outcome may be perfectly acceptable (see earlier reference to Madisonian democracy), but if climate policy needs consideration of new and innovative options (see earlier reference to Schattschneiderian democracy) then the climate community's collective actions may limit its future contributions to the climate debate to simply a tool of marketing for agendas now on the table. For issue advocates this may be a desirable outcome, but the question that I have for scientists is - is this the direction that you really want science to go?

Posted on April 25, 2005 12:45 PM View this article | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Getting What's Wished For

Early last month a group of 750 scientists signed an open letter to the head of the National Institutes of Health protesting a shift in priorities toward biodefense research and away from some public health research. The letter, which was published in Science, stated, "The diversion of research funds from projects of high public-health importance to projects of high biodefense but low public-health importance represents a misdirection of NIH priorities and a crisis for NIH-supported microbiological research." In other words, the letter suggests that societal needs should play some role in setting research priorities. To support the claim of relative relevance, an appendix to the letter provided a comparison of the number of cases and deaths associated with diseases.

In last week's Nature a Columbia University researcher warns in a letter of the perils of appealing to societal criteria in justifying research priorities:

"I find it striking that those who protest against the funding of biodefence research are proposing instead that public-health menaces should be given the highest priority. By this standard, many of the letter's signatories should voluntarily return their funding for research on Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli and other non pathogens so that it can be appropriately directed towards the obvious public-health threats of HIV and tuberculosis."

He later states, "Using body counts ("Bioweapons agents cause, on average, zero deaths per year") may be useful in the short term to frame the debate, but I fear they will be damaging in the long run. How many of us want to be asked, when our next grant is reviewed: "How many people did your bug kill last year?". I certainly don't. If basic research is relevant to the health of the nation, then make the case that it is so."

Of course, the Columbia researcher is correct that if scientists start
invoking societal needs to justify research priorities, it won't be long before someone interested in targeting science on societal needs raises the notion of the "90/10 gap" (i.e., 90% of global health research funding goes to support research that affects 10% of the global population), and proposes some really dramatic changes to research funding priorities. Bloodless arguments for basic research allow researchers to dodge making any explicit claims about the societal benefits or outcomes research. This of course makes it difficult for policy makers to make effective judgments about competing scientific priorities. It also makes it difficult to target science on areas of societal need.

Posted on April 25, 2005 12:28 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

April 21, 2005

Science, Politics and Deer

The Philadelphia Inquirer has a nice article (free registration required) on the science and politics of deer management. The article observes,

“Science does underpin efforts to manage the deer population through hunting in every state. In practice, however, the science of deer management is no more immune to public pressure than is the science of stem-cell research. At one extreme are those who object to killing animals on moral grounds. At the other are what might be called libertarian hunters. They remember forests abundant with deer over much of the last half-century and blame overzealous government biologists for producing today's comparative scarcity. For their part, a broad consensus of scientists believes that for everyone's benefit, including the deer, hunters must adapt to a new role - as wildlife managers rather than just sportsmen - and game agencies must be willing to put up with the inevitable heat from constituents angry about their added civic responsibility.”

This is also a good example of the limits of “honest broker science.” In this case deer management depends critically on the work of wildlife ecologists, but such work cannot say what the single most appropriate course of action is – science alone cannot reduce the scope of choice. Consequently, any attempt of wildlife ecologists to “stick to the science” of deer population dynamics is bound to map onto one or another political agenda, and risk adversely politicizing science. One way out of this trap would be for wildlife ecologists to clearly link science with a wide range of alternative courses of action, ensuring that their views of the science are incorporated in any policy that is ultimately adopted.

Posted on April 21, 2005 09:27 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

April 20, 2005

Follow up on Food Pyramid

Last week we discussed the U.S. government’s “food pyramid” as an example of the impossibilities of “honest broker science” in cases characterized by conflict over values and uncertainty in knowledge. Yesterday the U.S. Department of Agriculture released its latest incarnation of its food pyramid.

Media coverage of the pyramid suggests a range of different perspectives on the relative success of the pyramid as a means to provide scientific advice to the public. The new pyramid is actually a number of different pyramids that can be tailored to an individual’s unique circumstances. This would seem to be a move in the direction of “honest brokering” of action alternatives. But not all observers see this as a good thing. Here are some examples of reactions from a Washington Post article:

“"The fact that almost all the information is on the Web is a lost opportunity, because only the very most motivated people will go to the Web and dig into this information more deeply," said Walter Willett, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health.”

“"It's positive that what they released can be more personalized," said Elizabeth Pivonka, president of the Produce for Better Health Foundation, a nonprofit group that promotes greater consumption of fruit and vegetables. "And I like the way physical activity is included graphically. But from a negative side, the population most in need doesn't have access to computers, and from a big point of view they missed the opportunity to make a stronger message. . . . It's designed to not call any attention to any negative food group. I hate to say it, but what else would we expect from the USDA?"”

The last comment reflects the view of some who see the pyramid as a reflection of industry influence. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that, “Marion Nestle, nutrition professor at New York University, took one look at the new pyramid and asked: "Where's the food? There's no 'eat less' message here," Nestle said. "There's nothing about soda or snacks or about how many times you should eat."” And the Washington Post article included a similar perspective, “"The new dietary guidelines are the best ever," said Margo G. Wootan, nutrition policy director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group. "They're based on the latest science and they provide very strong advice, but it seems like the USDA dodged the difficult political advice once again and didn't clearly communicate what to eat less of. Given that obesity is the biggest health problem facing the country, that is what is most needed to be communicated."” Clearly, there is no “honest brokering of science” on this issue, even though by all accounts that I have seen the scientific basis of the pyramid is first rate.

I am no expert on food policy, but I would hypothesize that the differences in view on the efficacy of the food pyramid lie in differences in opinion about the role of the expert in a democracy. In other words, some will see the role of the scientist/expert to empower decision makers to take responsibility for their own choices by providing them with a set of options. Other will see the role to be something more along the lines of telling people what action they should take (i.e., narrowing the scope of choice). And of course such perspectives also reflect equity considerations, such as who wins and who loses among the users of the new pyramid (e.g., this is reflected in various comments on whether the expert target the informed and motivated public or the uniformed or otherwise disadvantaged public?). I’d pose the hypothesis that one’s views on the pyramid’s flexible structure will be closely correlated with one’s views on the role of the scientist/expert as an honest broker or issue advocate.

Clearly the pyramid reflects a compromise of perspectives, and there is no such thing as a pure “honest broker.” But it does seem that the present incarnation of the food pyramid reflects a move more in the direction of honest brokering than the previous version. The most important yet unanswered question from my standpoint is: Is there any evidence that the new incarnation better supports decision making than the past version or possible alternatives? The ultimate test of honest brokering and issue advocacy is the pragmatic test.

[If any of our readers is aware of or conducting research on the last question posed above, drop us a note. Thanks!]

Posted on April 20, 2005 10:06 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

April 19, 2005

On Basic Research

On 10 April 2005 Rick Weiss had a commentary in the Washington Post lamenting the apparent decline of basic research. He writes, “the U.S. scientific enterprise is riddled with evidence that Americans have lost sight of the value of non-applied, curiosity-driven research -- the open-ended sort of exploration that doesn't know exactly where it's going but so often leads to big payoffs.”

Daniel Greenberg suggests one way to view such claims, “You hear it repeatedly: The federal government is cutting financial support for scientific research, and America is losing its scientific supremacy. That ominous message, delivered to Congress by money-seeking scientists, is routinely and uncritically parroted by a gullible press. But it's self-serving nonsense.”

Weiss’ article is chock full of contradictions. How does one reconcile “non-applied, curiosity-driven research” with the promise of “big payoffs”? The former suggests that applications should not be the metric of success, while the latter says they should. Weiss cites DOD’s DARPA as an example of the trend away from “basic research.” But as John Giacomoni, a student of mine, points out for our class, the development internet was always driven by considerations of applications and deliverables. DARPA does not have “basic research” as part of its congressionally-mandated mission, only NSF and NASA have such a mandate. In every other federal agency research is a means to an end, not the end itself, or at least this is view from the Hill.

Weiss is similarly off base making reference to the U.S. Geological Survey, “… in geology, scientists have for years sought funds to blanket the nation with thousands of sensors to create an enormous, networked listening device that might teach us something about how the earth is shifting beneath our feet. The system got so far as to be authorized by Congress for $170 million over five years, but only $16 million has been appropriated in the first three of those years and just 62 of an anticipated 7,000 sensors have been deployed. Only in fiscal 2006, thanks to the South Asian tsunami, is the program poised to get more fully funded -- out of a narrow desire to better predict the effects of such disasters here.” It seems somewhat insensitive (at best) to me to suggest that a response to a disaster that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives represents a “narrow desire.” Historically, the USGS, and other earth sciences agencies, have always been motivated by supporting the needs of decisions makers and the public in areas such as weather prediction, resource extraction, pollution regulation and ecosystem management. Science has been central to their successes.

Weiss plays fast and loose with the facts when he claims that “The National Science Foundation in particular, the nation's premier supporter of physical sciences research and science education, has suffered repeated cuts in recent years and now demands that grantees spell out in unprecedented detail how and when their proposed work will pay off.” The NSF did in fact see a budget reduction from FY 2004 to FY 2005, but this is during an extended period of increasing funding of about 40% over 7 years (data here in PDF). And claims of demands for spelling out payoffs don’t square with experience (e.g., see this NAPA study in PDF which found that 73% of reviewers simply ignored the NSF broader impact criterion).

Weiss asks, “Why should we care about this demand for results before the research begins? Isn't exploration for exploration's sake a luxury?” His answer is suggestive of a Catch-22 “First, there are practical reasons to care. At least half of this nation's economic growth during the past half century has been the direct result of scientific innovation…” So research for research sake is justified by its societal benefits? If arguments for support are made in terms of societal benefits, then it would seem appropriate for policy makers to expect such benefits from the research they fund. Weiss also suggests a second reason for supporting curiosity-driven research is intrinsic, the value of knowledge itself (an argument I happen to agree with).

In the post-World War II era the phrase “basic research” has carried two contradictory meanings -- to many scientists it means “pure research” (i.e., no connection to the needs of society) while to most policy makers it means “fundamental to the economy and innovation” (i.e., a close connection to the needs of society). This strategic ambiguity served both parties well for decades, but no longer seems to work. As scientists appetite for funding has grown while government spending has become more tight, demands for public resources from competing interests has taken the form of claims of relative payoffs related to public investments. Scientists have been exceedingly skilled at playing the budget game. But as the scientific community has made claims of ever more benefits from research, it should not come as a surprise that policy makers hear such claims and expect results.

For further reading:

Pielke, Jr., R.A., and R. Byerly, Jr., 1998: Beyond Basic and Applied. Physics Today, 51(2), 42-46. (PDF)

Greenberg, Daniel S. 2001. Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion. 528 p. (University of Chicago Press).

Posted on April 19, 2005 06:52 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

April 18, 2005

More on Real Climate as Honest Broker

In a paper of mine (PDF) last year on the role of scientists in the debate over Bjorn Lomborg's book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, I observed "Some scientists in opposition to Lomborg lent their credibility and stature to interest groups who then used the scientists as the basis for making a political claim." Clearly, the practice of issue advocates using scientists (and scientists offering their services) to further political ends takes place across the political spectrum. In what ways should scientists claiming to be honest brokers bear responsibility for the use of their name, stature and organizations in the political battle of issue advocates?

One reply is that it depends upon what role that scientists and their organizations want to play in the process, honest broker or issue advocate? Here at Prometheus we have commented on organizations (and their representatives) such as the IPCC, Presidents Council on Bioethcs and the Real Climate weblog who appear to conflate the roles of issue advocate and honest broker. Here I'd like to continue a critique of Real Climate by focusing on the role of one of its representatives in the current issue of Mother Jones magazine.

To be fair to Real Climate, I am focusing on them because (a) they are an important experiment at the interface of science and policy/public, their role invites STS-type analyses (b) we have an ongoing and I think unique conversation here on Prometheus with numerous Real Climate scientists on this subject and (c) Real Climate claims to be serving as an honest broker, in contrast to many other groups in the climate arena who clearly identify their role as issue advocates. We have at times taken a similar role in critiquing the IPCC. Also, it is worth repeating that our critique of Real Climate does not imply any affinity with those who critique Real Climate on the basis of the contrarian/mainstream science-cum-political debate on climate change. Our views on both this debate and the policies that we advocate on climate change are well established (e.g., see this PDF).

The current issue of Mother Jones contains an interview with Michael Mann who represents Real Climate as "a resource for people looking for an honest broker...". Mann's interview appears in a special issue that is focused on advocating a particular approach to climate politics that has climate science at the very center of this debate. Mother Jones posits that the political debate over climate is between "environmentalists" and "climate skeptics." Here are some excepts on the MJ perspective:

From an article by Bill McKibben, "To reduce the amount of CO2 pouring into the atmosphere means dramatically reducing the amount of fossil fuel being consumed. Which means changing the underpinning of the planet's entire economy and altering our most ingrained personal habits or now and for the foreseeable future, the climate skeptics have carried the day. They've understood the shape of American politics far better than environmentalists." McKibben, accurately I believe, characterizes "climate skeptics" not by their scientific views, but by their political views. But in the process he equates a view on science with a particular political perspective, thereby turning scientific debate into political debate. In other words, McKibben has left no room for honest brokering of science.

In the second article article, Chris Mooney further reifies the politicization of climate science by explicitly positing the work of Michael Mann to be contrary to the political agendas of conservative issue advocates on climate change, "Nevertheless, the ideological allies of ExxonMobil virulently attack Mann's work, as if discrediting him would somehow put global warming concerns to rest." Irrespective of who is scientifically correct in this debate, issue advocates on both sides have successfully scientized the political debate over global warming so that any defense of Mann's work will take on a political hue, regardless of the intent of the defenders. (We have argued elsewhere that scientists can militate against the scientization of politics and politicization of science through explicit discussion of policy options, see this (PDF).

And in the third article Ross Gelbspan connects the hurricanes of 2004 with global warming and reinforces the scientization of the climate debate, "When four hurricanes of extraordinary strength tore through Florida last fall, there was little media attention paid to the fact that hurricanes are made more intense by warming ocean surface waters... In the early 1990s, when climate scientists began to suspect that our burning of coal and oil was changing the earth's climate, Western Fuels, then a $400 million coal cooperative, declared in its annual report that it was enlisting several scientists who were skeptical about climate change-Patrick Michaels, Robert Balling, and S. Fred Singer-as spokesmen."

In this skeptics-versus-mainstream political context appears Michael Mann's interview in which he sticks close to scientific issues but still makes numerous statements that reinforce those of McKibben, Mooney and Gelbspan. This happens because McKibben, Mooney and Gelbspan have equated scientific views with issue advocacy. For example, Mann says:

On the need for action:

"If you talk about a severe flood or drought or heat wave-if climate change expresses itself in those terms-then people can understand climate change much better. So often those advocating for action, which in my personal opinion is advisable, use those sorts of examples out of context to try to make a point." [Note- Clearly, Mann means that action is advisable, not examples out of context.]

On hurricanes/climate change:

"MM: On the other hand, as sea surface temperature warms, the hurricanes that do end up forming can become far more powerful. There's a great deal of sensitivity to this-it isn't that you just change the sea surface temperature by 1 percent and hurricanes get 1 percent stronger. As you increase sea surface temperatures in the tropics, even by a little bit, you can greatly enhance the maximum potential intensity of a hurricane. It's what we call a "nonlinear" relationship.

MJ: So to say that the Earth is warming and thus there will be more hurricanes hitting Florida is not necessarily true.

MM: Right. It could be true, but we don't know the answer to that question yet. However, the models are quite clear about the storms getting stronger, and the observations on that point thus far seem to be consistent with predictions."

On the role of scientists in the debate against the skeptics:

"MJ: Is this [work of the skeptics] just a big PR campaign?

MM: I'll leave it to you as a journalist to investigate some of the links, some of the funding sources, and come to your own conclusions. Ross Gelbspan-he's a former editor of Boston Globe-has written two books on the connections between industry funding, in particular funding by ExxonMobil, and these climate contrarians. The vast majority of them appear to receive funding from industry sources.

MJ: Earlier this year, the hockey stick was hot topic, yet it seems the debate has died down a little of late. Are they backing off this particular argument?

MM: The contrarians are always jumping from one argument to another. It's sort of like a Hydra-when one of its heads is cut off it merely sprouts another. These contrarians-and interestingly it is often the same group of individuals-first tried to dispute the instrumental record of surface temperature data that demonstrates the dramatic warming of the earth's surface. That was back in the in the early 1990s. They argued that urban heat island issues affected the temperature readings-but of course, scientists had already accounted for that.

Then they moved on to the argument that recent satellite data-which appeared to show less warming than surface data-argued against surface warming. The flaws of this argument were exposed as well, and if you analyze the satellite data properly they actually reaffirm the other evidence of surface warming. So then the contrarians began to go after the "hockey stick" because it was perceived as an icon of the global warming debate. It just goes on and on.

There are quite a few papers undergoing peer review now and studies in press which detail the critical flaws in the arguments that these contrarians have been putting forward about the hockey stick in the past few months. As it plays out in the peer-reviewed literature, it will soon be evident that many of claims made by the contrarians were fraudulent.

MJ: Is it fair to say that this head of the hydra has been cut off?

MM: As far as the legitimate scientific community is concerned, yes. But what's often the case is that contrarians will pretend that they have an argument long after the scientific community has thoroughly discredited it. As long as something sounds good in a sound bite, they'll keep at it.

MJ: This has to be difficult for scientists to combat in the public arena. How do you approach this?

MM: I've been involved with a team of other climate scientists in this project called realclimate.org which is a website with a blog format. It's a commentary site on climate science created by working climate scientists for both the interested public and for journalists.

The idea is to provide a rapid response to developing stories and provide the scientific context that's often missing in the media coverage. We're not circumventing the peer review process, as some have claimed, we're simply trying to provide the context of what existing peer reviewed science has to say about certain issues. And we've had a fair amount of success with this. We've received good media coverage, and have had over 200,000 visitors since we went online in mid-December. So it seems to be serving the purpose that we intended, which is to provide a resource for people looking for an honest broker for stories like the hockey stick attacks and State of Fear, both of which are riddled with fallacies."

For the most part Mann does a very nice job sticking to the science. But in this case "sticking to the science" means taking sides in a political debate that is being waged through the language of science. So it is unavoidable that Mann is either contributing to or being used in issue advocacy. A prominent climate scientist who I have a lot of respect for wrote me an email last week to explain why climate scientists are not too thrilled with being told that efforts to "stick to science" actually wind up contributing to the politicization of climate science:

"So, in climate, when we discuss water vapour feedback, or ice core results, or what climate sensitivity is, regardless of the audience, we feel we can do so without having to always refer to the policy implications. Now along comes an STS academic who states that we can't be doing what we claim to be doing because the whole concept has been completely discredited. Therefore we must either be ignorant of our own motivations and agenda or deliberately downplaying our motivations and agenda to sneakily subvert our readers with policy-driven pseudo-science. Neither of these permitted options is particularly attractive to us scientists, and so (understandably) we are liable to be a little aggressive in resisting the impeccable logic of our fellow academics. Conversations with people who have 'a priori' concluded that you must be either a fool or a knave generally don't go well!"

This is a fair response (I agree with everything except the "pseudo-science" comment - the science can be first rate and the comment still holds.) My reply is still that if scientists want to play in the public and political arenas, there can be no hiding behind the science. And such scientists should not be surprised when they garner the considerable interest of those scholars who study science in society and policy. Honest brokering is an admirable objective, but as the Mother Jones example (and many others in other contexts) progress in that direction will require a greater sophistication about science in policy and politics than the climate community has shown in the past. The alternative is the continued scientization of the political debate over climate, reinforcing the politicization of science.

Posted on April 18, 2005 01:19 PM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

April 15, 2005

Conflicts of Interest

The Marshall Institute, a conservative think tank, recently released a report on "Funding Flows for Climate Change Research and Related Activities" which asserts that, "In today's highly charged environment of climate change policy, efforts are often made to impugn the credibility of those engaged in the debate through assertions that their views are a product of financial relationships rather than sincerely held beliefs or objective research. All too frequently evidence of a financial tie is sufficient to condemn, without proof that the tie altered the views, opinions, or conclusions in any way." After this complaint the Marshall Report joins this game by arguing that corporate funding ties are emphasized but "overlooked are concerns that public funding generates unwelcome pressures on scientists to conform to prevailing beliefs. Public funding is also said to breed alarmism and facilitate distortion in public discourse." (Disclosure: The Marshall Report ranks my employer the University of Colorado as the top recipient of federal funds on climate change, and I have a few federal grants myself.) What should we make of claims of conflicts of interest? Are they restricted to financial conflicts? And can they be avoided?

Discussed below: Conflicts of interest do matter. They are not restricted only to financial considerations, and they cannot be avoided, only managed.

An article in yesterday's USA Today illustrates why debate over conflicts of interest can be damaging to science and its role in policy. The article describes a just-published meta-study of health effects of a certain chemical in plastics, "Is it possible that a chemical's effect is in the eye of the beholder? That's the implication of a paper published this week in a prominent environmental health journal. It concerns a debate over the safety of low doses of a chemical used to make hard, clear plastics such as those found in baby bottles, food-storage containers and the lining of soda cans. When the plastic industry examines the health impact of a ubiquitous chemical called bisphenol A, everything's fine. If the government or a university funds the study, there are big problems."

The study, by Frederick S. vom Saal and Claude Hughes, (available here in PDF) made the interesting discovery that "Source of funding is highly correlated with positive or negative findings in published articles. For government-funded published studies, 94 / 104 (90%) report positive effects at doses of BPA below 50 mg/kg/day. No industry-funded studies (0 / 11 or 0%) report positive effects at these same doses." This leads the authors to suggest two possible reasons for these findings, "1. Are government-funded scientists under real or perceived pressure to find or only publish data suggesting adverse outcomes? 2. Are industry-funded scientists under real or perceived pressure to find or only publish data suggesting negative outcomes?" vom Saal and Hughes clearly come to the conclusion that the government funded studies are those that are correct, while an industry spokesperson countered, "You can have 1,000 studies, but if they're all weak, adding up weak evidence doesn't necessarily give you strong evidence of anything, Jumping to who sponsored it is a way to dodge the facts." And if we believe that sources of funding shape conclusions then we should not be surprised that the von Saal and Hughes study is government funded and the industry spokesperson works for, well, industry. This situation leads to the USA Today's comment that research findings are "in the eye of the beholder," a conclusion sure to infuriate many scientists who reject such relativistic post-modern claims to the subjectivity of knowledge.

It is important to recognize that the chase of chemical risk assessment (and climate change and many others) putatively scientific debates are real proxy wars over politics, that is, over a specific course of action, e.g., to regulate or not. It just so happens that the political battle is taking place through the language of science. A common assumption is that disclosure of sources of financial support is sufficient to address the influences of the conflicts of interest. But as the Marshall Institute report and USA Today article suggest, this may do little to shape a consensus on either science or action. The Marshall folks are suggesting that government studies are biased and vom Saal and Hughes are suggesting that industry is biases. But what if the reality is that everyone has biases and the world in not in fact black or white?

In an editorial in The Lancet (PDF) Richard Horton explains why disclosure of potential financial conflicts of interest alone is insufficient to deal with this issue, and begins to point to a more thoughtful treatment of this issue:

"... the case in favour of full disclosure rests, it seems to me, on three large fallacies. First, there is the fallacy of objectivity, the notion that scientific writing can be free from the common prejudices found in other literatures or journalism-or that if prejudice does exist it can be easily neutralised by a statement of disclosure. Yet interpretations of scientific data will always be refracted through the experiences and biases of the authors. Scientific writing can never escape from being a rhetorical exercise. Advocates of disclosure may argue that some of these potentially malign influences could be limited by focusing on the most serious conflicts. This brings us to the second fallacy-that it is financial conflicts of interest which "cause the most concern". Financial conflicts may be the easiest to identify but they may not be the most influential. Academic, personal, and political rivalries and beliefs are less easily recognised, but each may affect an interpretation. Such biases render the declaration "conflict of interest: none" an impossibility. To put financial conflicts to the fore is to provide a smokescreen for more covert and possibly more influential commitments. The third fallacy is that disclosure can heal the wound inflicted by a financial conflict... "

Horton suggests that there are a range of sources of potential conflict beyond the financial:

"Interests (commitments) facing an investigator

Professional (eg, personal, specialty, departmental, or institutional status) Financial (eg, personal reward; research funding) Patient-related (eg, as a personal physician; payment for study recruitment) Institutional (eg, ethics committee) Grant-related Regulatory (eg, FDA) Scientific publication Mass media Legal (eg, patent protection) Sociopolitical Public interest (eg, research support through taxes, charitable donations)"

Horton concludes that "The only way to minimise bias among interpretations is to allow maximum dialogue from all parties, irrespective of their interests." He is correct in pointing toward procedural remedies. To this I would add that for scientists interested in limiting the morphing of scientific and politic debates, a focus on the choices available to decision makers (i.e., policy) and not just the science can help scientists to counter incentives to wage political battles through science. More in depth and thoughtful treatment of these issues can be found in the papers by Harrison, Oreskes and Herrick in the special issue of Environmental Science and Policy that I co-guest edited last year.

Posted on April 15, 2005 10:00 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

April 14, 2005

Honest Broker, Part II

In the first part of this discussion I outlined the notion of honest broker as contrasted with issue advocate. The former seeks to expand (or at least clarify) the scope of choice available to decision makers, while the latter seeks to reduce the scope of choice, usually to a single preferred alternative. I also made the case for why situations of conflicting values and political uncertainty make it difficult for "honest broker science" that exists completely independent of political battles over the scope of choice (I also pointed to a large literature that makes this case irrefutably). Now, I'd like to illustrate these concepts with examples, many drawn from the Prometheus archives.

NRC Hubble Report. Last July we commented on a report issued by the National Research Council. The report had the title, "Assessment of Options for Extending the Life of the Hubble Space Telescope." From my perspective this title would suggest an analysis more along the lines of The Lonely Planet guide than an advertisement for a single restaurant (read the earlier post if these analogies are unfamiliar). But the NRC report focused on advocating a single action alternative rather than any attempt to assess options. Last July I criticized both the NRC and the media on this, not only because the report took an advocacy stance, but also because it memberships was comprised of people predisposed to save Hubble, "Given that many of the members of the panel have at least the appearance of predispositions to preserve Hubble, it would seem that the NRC would be better served by having its panel present and evaluate the full suite of options open to NASA, rather than taking an advocacy position on a single option. At the very least it is time that the media takes a more critical eye on the composition of NRC panels who, with very little scrutiny, provide guidance that influences policy making." In this case, the NRC committee presented itself as an honest broker but acted more like an issue advocate.

NRC TRMM Report. In contrast to the Hubble Report a subsequent report on the scientific benefits of preserving the TRMM satellite. This report had a different sort of title than did the Hubble report, "Assessment of the Benefits of Extending the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission: A Perspective from the Research and Operations Communities." Like the Hubble report this committee was also comprised of people with a clear stake in and perspective on TRMM. But a key difference is that the TRMM report clearly presented itself not as an honest broker, but as an issue advocate. The committee clearly would like to see NASA extend TRMM, and it tried forthrightly to present the strongest case it could for the scientific and operation benefits of doing so. This is an excellent example of well-done and appropriately-characterized issue advocacy.

IPCC. We've had frequent discussions of the Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change. It seems clear that the IPCC has undergone a transition from a stance more aligned with serving as honest broker to one more aligned with being an issue advocate (there is plenty of data to support this hypothesis, and I'll post a paper on this subject here as soon as accepted for publication). Last October I wrote, "the IPCC suffers because it no longer considers "policy options" under its mandate. Since its First Assessment Report when it did consider policy options, the IPCC has eschewed responsibility for developing and evaluating a wide range of possible policy options on climate change. By deciding to policy outside of its mandate since 1992, the IPCC, ironically, leaves itself more open to charges of political bias. It is time for the IPCC to bring policy back in, both because we need new and innovative options on climate, but also because the IPCC has great potential to serve as an honest broker. But until it does, its leadership would be well served to avoid either the perception or the reality of endorsing particular political perspectives." And I have occasionally pointed out the apparent conflict of the head of the IPCC endorsing specific policy proposals while simultaneously claiming to be "policy neutral." When it offered a wide range of policy options (honest broker) the IPCC was arguably out ahead of policy and politics. Now that it has adopted a much more narrow focus on the parameters of the Framework Convention (e.g., focused on "dangerous interference," mitigation, the FCCC definition of climate change) not only has the IPCC serving more as an "issue advocate" it has become a servant of politics and policy. This is particularly troubling when policy makers now need discussion of new and innovative options on climate policy.

Bioethics. A very similar dynamic has been taking place in the President's Council on Bioethics. The chair of that panel, which has a mandate suggestive of an "honest broker" role, has sought to lobby Congress to adopt a particular set of bioethics policies. I wrote of these dual roles, "If Kass wants to be a political advocate, then he should resign his position of the Bioethics Council and join one of the many conservative advocacy groups that are truly independent of the Bioethics Council. If he wants to serve as an honest broker to the nation as chair of the Bioethics Council, then he should recognize that this means deferring his desire to serve as a political advocate advancing special interests. But he does have to choose, because he can't do both." Presumably, when one agrees to help decision makers understand the choices and consequences associated with their action, they take on a different role than someone trying to sell the decision maker on a single course of action. This seemingly obvious insight is frequently missed, not only in the scientific community, but on issues as important and the role of intelligence in decisions to go to war.

Other discussions from the Prometheus archives are relevant to thinking about a spectrum between issue advocacy and honest brokering as well, including, various AAAS activities, empanelment of scientific advisory committees, science and the 2004 election, and the FDA and drug approval.

As usual, we'd welcome your comments and feedback. I very much appreciate the efforts of those, on the site and off, who motivated me to try to clarify these concepts in a more understandable manner. I am sure that these same folks will let me know how well I've succeeded in this effort.

Posted on April 14, 2005 07:49 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

April 12, 2005

Bush Administration and Climate Science

An editorial in today’s Detroit Free Press has some interesting information related to the Bush Administration’s position on climate science.

“The Bush administration is taking a new tack on global warming, finally conceding that human activities contribute to it. But, unfortunately, it doesn't look as if any of its underlying policies are going to take a similar leap forward. Glen Davies, principal deputy assistant secretary for European affairs at the Department of State, told editorial writers last week that "we accept that the science is clear" on human contributions to global warming -- although not on how much of the problem human activity causes or how fast climate change is occurring. The administration's focus clearly remains on alternative technologies, not mandated cutbacks, and Davies specifically cited hydrogen technology.”

This is interesting for several reasons. First, the fact that this information is being conveyed by a “principal deputy assistant secretary for European affairs” suggests that it is a trial balloon. And even though John Marburger has made similar comments in the recent past, as science advisor he is not is a policy position. Second, the Bush Administration is likely to take heat on this position from two camps. One is the hard-core contrarians who would like to persist in debate over climate science. They will likely make claims that the science is not yet settled. And the second are those opposed to Bush who also would like the debate to continue in the form of climate science. They will make claims about what the Bush Administatrion “really” believes on climate science. Both of these camps would be good examples of the “scientizers” that I characterized last week.

The Free Press editorial concludes with the following:

“The July G8 event would be an opportune time for the United States to do more than tweak its talking points on global warming. A bolder commitment -- to research, to alternative energy and to the right mix of incentives -- is in order.”

Nuclear energy, anyone?

Posted on April 12, 2005 09:21 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Honest Broker, Part I

I have written that an honest broker works to expand (or at least clarify) the scope of choice available to decision makers. I have contrasted this with the issue advocate who works to reduce the scope of choice available to decision makers. These ideas have been developed in several papers of mine (e.g., in PDFs here and here) are central to a book manuscript which I hope to deliver this summer. More fundamentally the notion of the expert as honest broker derives from the writings of E. E. Schattschneider on democracy, and the notion of issue advocate comes straight from the view of democracy advanced by James Madison. Both roles are important to democracy, and they suggest that scientists (and other experts) have choices in how they relate to decisions makers. With this post I'd like to try to explain what I mean by honest broker and issue advocate through a simple analogy.

Imagine that a visitor has come to town for the first time, and wants to fine someplace to eat dinner. How might you provide them with information relevant to the decision where to eat? (Note that this analogy makes things simple by presenting a clearly defined problem with a clearly defined solution. We'll make things more complicated later.) There are several ways that you, the local expert, might provide information.

First, you might try to convince the visitor to eat at a particular restaurant. Maybe you think that the restaurant is really good, or your cousin works there or whatever. Such "issue advocacy" could be very strong if you are focused on advocating a single restaurant, or more relaxed, say if you were directing the visitor to some family of restaurants, say those with Italian food. The defining characteristic of the issue advocate is an effort to reduce the scope of choice for decision making (irrespective of motivation for doing so). More generally, such issue advocacy might be thought of as a kiosk of brochures, each telling you where to eat dinner, making the best case possible for why the restaurant advertised is the one that the visitor should choose. Of course, it is easy to see that this analogy is quite similar to James Madison's conception of democracy in which politics is about the efforts of competing factions to sway decision making in preferred directions.

Second, you might instead provide your visitor with information on all restaurants in the city, basic information on each (cost, menu, etc.) and let the visitor face the challenge of reducing the scope of choice (i.e., making a decision). Such "honest brokering" could also be strong (e.g., a comprehensive guide to all restaurants in the city) or weak (e.g., a guide to all those within a 5 minutes walk). The defining characteristic of the honest broker is an effort to expand (or at least clarify) the scope of choice for decision making. A good example of an honest broker for restaurants might be the Lonely Planet travel guides (or, at least, I'd argue that the Lonely Planet guides serve more as honest brokers than do a kiosk brochure). This analogy draws on the work of the twentieth century political scientist E.E. Schattschneider who wrote of "a realist's conception of democracy" in his book, The Semisovereign people.

A characteristic fundamental to both honest brokers and issue advocates is explicit engagement of decision alternatives (i.e., choices, policy options, forks in the road). It should also be obvious that as an expert, one cannot simultaneously act as an issue advocate and honest broker, though these categories are not black and white, but more of a continuum from strictly reducing choice to expansively presenting options. I'll make this more concrete with some practical examples in a subsequent post.

But at this point scientists and other experts might protest that there is a third category, that of the "honest broker on science." In the analogy of searching for the restaurant, scientists, might claim, is there not room for some one to provide guidance on scientific knowledge of food and health? The answer is that it depends. In some cases there is such a role, but in many cases there is not. Let's follow the analogy a bit further.

In the United States the federal government has come up with something called the "food guide pyramid" which seeks to provide guidelines on a healthy diet. It doesn't purport to tell you what restaurant to eat at, only the scientific basis for what constitutes a healthy diet. At first consideration (at least at my first consideration) the food guide pyramid might seem to offer the prospects of providing objective science to inform decision making which is separate from the process of actually making a decision about where to eat. But, things are just not so simple for two reasons.

First, it turns out that the food guide pyramid is reflective of political debates that take the form of food science. Marion Nestle, who is Professor and Chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University, has written a book called "Food Politics" (University of California Press, 2003) that documents the battle of interests that take place through the guide of food science (e.g., interests of different food companies, the interests of the food industry as a whole). Professor Nestle served on the federal committee that developed the food guide pyramid and commented in the Los Angeles Times that, "Creating the [food pyramid] guidelines is still "political - from start to finish. It's science politics. It's politics politics. It's corporate politics."" The food guide pyramid doesn't tell you exactly where to eat, but for those who look to the pyramid to inform their decisions, the food guide pyramid suggests that some choices are more desirable and others less so. No one should be surprised by this, as scholars in STS have demonstrated in great depth the degree to which considerations of politics and values shape the work of experts seeking to provide guidance to decision makers.

Second, we should not be surprised to learn there are alternative food pyramids available, such as the vegetarian food pyramid, the vegan food pyramid , and the Atkins food pyramid among many others. The degree to which one of these is "better" than another depends upon the criteria one employs to evaluate them. If one values not eating meat, then the vegetarian pyramid may be favored over the U.S. government pyramid. Alternatively, if one values the advertised waist-slimming effects of the Atkins diet over concerns about its health effects that will influence the choice. The point here is that the expertise relevant to a particular decision - where to eat dinner - will in important respects be a function of what the decision maker actually values. Absent knowing such values, then any food pyramid will reflect either the values of those putting the pyramid together, or the experts' interpretation/expectation of what decision makers ought to value. Consequently, it is very easy for the food science expert to act as an issue advocate (e.g., should meat be part of the pyramid?) favoring one set of choices over others, and this is irrespective of their intention of doing so.

So are their any circumstances in which experts can provide "objective" guidance that is independent of the choices to be made? Again the answer is yes and no. Perhaps ironically, objectivity is more possible is cases where the decision context is highly specified or constrained. If you have narrowed down your restaurant choices to, say, three restaurants then you could ask your expert to comment on the healthiness (or vegan-ness, etc.) of each, according to criteria that you would like to see applied. In circumstances where the scope of choice is fixed and the decision maker has a clearly defined technical question, then the expert has a very important role to play in providing "honest broker science." But in situations where the scope of choice is open, decision makers do not have a sense of the values to be served by the decision, much less a fix on the technical questions derived from value commitments, there is very little room for "honest broker science" in the process of decision making and even good faith efforts to provide such a perspective can easily turn into a political battleground (which the technical expert may not even be aware of). (Of course, honest broker science can and frequently does point to the existence of a problem that compels action, but introducing reasons for possible action is quite different than providing guidance on what actions to actually take.)

Dan Sarewitz characterizes the resulting circumstances,

"In areas as diverse as climate change, nuclear waste disposal, endangered species and biodiversity, forest management, air and water pollution, and agricultural biotechnology, the growth of considerable bodies of scientific knowledge, created especially to resolve political dispute and enable effective decision making, has often been accompanied instead by growing political controversy and gridlock. Science typically lies at the center of the debate, where those who advocate some line of action are likely to claim a scientific justification for their position, while those opposing the action will either invoke scientific uncertainty or competing scientific results to support their opposition ... nature itself - the reality out there - is sufficiently rich and complex to support a science enterprise of enormous methodological, disciplinary, and institutional diversity. I will argue that science, in doing its job well, presents this richness, through a proliferation of facts assembled via a variety of disciplinary lenses, in ways that can legitimately support, and are causally indistinguishable from, a range of competing, value-based political positions."

In the absence of political action that restricts the scope of choice and clarifies the role of technical questions in policy, the way out of this circumstance is, as Sarewitz argues, not to appeal to the objectivity of knowledge or to wage a proxy political war through science (either implicitly or under a simple lack of awareness). It is, as I have argued here and elsewhere, for scientists and other experts to openly associate their science with possible courses of action. And the good news is that scientists have choices in how they make such an association. They can work to expand choice or reduce choice. Honest broker or issue advocate? Both roles are important and noble in a functioning democracy. But scientists do have to choose. On highly complex, politically ill-defined issues like climate change there is simply no possibility of successfully hiding behind science, because the choices made about science are unavoidably part of a broader social and political debate. Whether scientists admit, accept or are aware of it, climate policy (as compared to say ozone policy in 1984) is not yet sufficiently developed from a political standpoint to allow much room for the "honest broker on science," claims to the contrary notwithstanding (see this paper for discussion of the ozone case). Consider that even the definition of the phrase "climate change" leads to a bias of some policy options over others, as I have argued here.

In a post soon to follow I will illustrate the concepts of honest broker and issue advocate with examples. Comments on all of this welcomed.

Posted on April 12, 2005 09:18 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Cure = Disease?

Over the weekend the Toronto Globe and Mail had a lengthy article on politics and science (courtesy Chris Mooney). The end of the article contains some interesting comments from Alan Leshner, CEO of the AAAS, describing how AAAS is organizing scientists to combat the politicization of science.

“Dr. Leshner, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, believes firmly that scientists must expand their public role: "When all of this politics, ideology and moralizing started, everybody in the scientific community's initial reaction was to lament the situation. But whining doesn't help. What I believe, and what many of my colleagues believe, is that you need to go out to people where they are, not where we are." That means talking to reporters "as much as we can," he said, and writing commentaries in the mass media. "It's about finding out what [the public's] concerns are and trying to find common ground," Dr. Leshner said. "We need to change our strategy and engage with the public." And that means scientists mounting a political campaign of their own. Dr. Leshner said the AAAS now has an elaborate plan to develop "a cadre of ambassadors of science," to fan out across the country and visit "religious groups, churches, synagogues, mosques, Boys' and Girls' Clubs, Kiwanis and Rotary Clubs . . . to go to where the people are, listen to what they are thinking about . . . let them help shape the research agenda. "The truth is," he said, "they're paying for this [research]. They ought to get something out of it."”

While I am all for public participation in the setting of research agendas, somehow the idea of scientists “mounting a political campaign of their own” does not strike me as a productive way to address concerns about the politicization of science. It may instead result in the exact opposite.

Posted on April 12, 2005 07:36 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

April 11, 2005

STS Contrarianism

One of the great ironies of our recent debate with climate scientists at RealClimate over the possibility of cleanly separating science and politics in efforts to connect science with the public, policy makers and journalists is that there is a vast amount of peer-reviewed literature that says such separation is impossible. The irony of course is that a big part of RealClimate's activities have been to correct the misguided views of the so-called "climate skeptics" or "climate contrarians" who are at odds with more "mainstream" views on climate science. RealClimate's commitment to the primacy of mainstream, peer-reviewed knowledge seems to be fairly narrow in scope as they are perfectly comfortable and confident in dismissing the "mainstream" views of the field of science and technology studies (STS). In jest I wonder if we should we call them "STS contrarians"?

Consider the following excerpt from Shelia Jasanoff's excellent book, "The Fifth Branch: Science Advisors as Policymakers", (at pp. 230-31). In her 1990 book Jasanoff, a leading voice in the discipline of STS, focuses on science advisory bodies and organizations that bring science to decision makers and the public, and I think in 2005 it is fair to include as advisory bodies weblogs seeking to communicate science to decision makers, even though weblogs didn't exist as a means of providing scientific advice in 1990:

"Although pleas for maintaining a strict separation between science and politics continue to run like a leitmotif through the policy literature, the artificiality of this position can no longer be doubted. Studies of scientific advising leave in tatters the notion that it is possible, in practice, to restrict the advisory practice to technical issues or that the subjective values of scientists are irrelevant to decision making."

She also writes (at p. 249) "The notion that scientific advisors can or do limit themselves to addressing purely scientific issues, in particular, seems fundamentally misconceived ... the advisory process seems increasingly important as a locus for negotiating scientific differences that have political weight."

STS contrarianism is of course not limited to the climate debate (though, interestingly, it does seem to have a stronger presence in the earth and environmental sciences than in fields of the life sciences or engineering). But some in the STS community are not particularly concerned. For example, last year with Steve Rayner I guest edited a special issue of the journal Environmental Science and Policy that focused on the efforts of scientists to engage in a political battle over the implications of Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist implicitly through science and not overtly through political or policy debate. In the process of putting that issue together a reviewer commented (I can't remember for which paper) that the various papers seemed to be revisiting the now thoroughly discredited notion that science and politics can in fact be separated. This reviewer was of course from the STS community and simplistic notions of separating science and politics and to him was obviously no longer interesting from a research standpoint.

But this reinforcing set of circumstances - scientists who dismiss or unaware of STS and STS scholars who may be more in interested in the intellectual rather than practical aspects of their field - raises some interesting questions about the role of STS in the sciences, and its own political orientation and agenda. In other words, the same sort of questions that STS often targets at other scientists and disciplines are also applicable to STS.

Michael Guggenheim and Helga Nowotny ask these sort of questions in their excellent essay (PDF) critically assessing the current state of STS.

"STS likewise has never established its own research agenda of unresolved problems. Yet, if it does not want to become trapped in an unending present of joyful repetition, albeit in the guise of rebellion, it will have to create a future that is neither Sisyphus-like, and therefore closed, nor utopian or dystopian, as so many future expectations of other actors in society are when assessing the benefits and burdens of science and technology. In a caricature of its own theoretical stance that scientific problem choice is not the outcome of an inherently rational selection process within science, nor that Nature whispers into the ears of scientists which problems to choose, STS hardly ever showed interest in the functioning of its own processes of problem selection or which issues, originating in wider societal developments, it did take up or not. Nor did it delve into the processes through which contrasting theoretical positions within STS are negotiated or eliminated. What, if anything, did Society whisper into STS ears? If problem choice within STS is at least partly seen to be the outcome of larger societal processes, then a vision of the future would be needed which takes into account the processes of its own professionalisation and its likely effects. This implies the capability to select problems for their own - scientific and intellectual - sake and to transform them into research priorities which are seen as a collective, and not simply as an individual task. It also implies the willingness and capability to transmit the relevance of scientific activities to a wider audience and perhaps even to one's 'clients'."

Important questions for scholars of STS (and its close cousin, science and technology policy or STP, to which I am more closely aligned) are raised by the current state of STS coupled with the presence of STS contrarians in important positions on issues of significance to society. Among these questions:

1. Is it even worth engaging scientists on knowledge of STS? Our dialogue with RealClimate has taken place at the highest levels of professionalism, but my experience suggests that the professionalism of the RealClimate folks is not always the case in such dialogues. Raising issues of science and politics, science and society can be threatening to some scientists and downright offensive to others. At times such dialogues can devolve into ad hominem attacks of one sort or another. I have numerous colleagues who simply choose not to work with or debate scientists on such topics. It is probably no surprise that the areas in science which STS has the most traction happen to be those in which scientists are most open to STS perspectives, such as is the case in bioethics and the life sciences. It should come as no surprise (as Guggenheim and Notwotny observe) that many STS scholars converse among themselves and have little stomach for engaging with practicing scientists, particularly those who practice STS contrarianism. (G & N also raise the possibility that STS can become "captured" by its clientele.)

2. STS requires greater reflexiveness in its studies. This is a point that G & N make well. If STS scholars see their job as simply producing knowledge to be added to the great reservoir of knowledge (i.e., basic research in STST), are they then just buying into the linear model of knowledge production and use that they so often critique as neither descriptively accurate or normatively desirable?

3. STS has an overt political agenda, which is typically some form of the democratization of knowledge. But within STS there are many narrow and wide political agendas (as is present in any area of expertise). If separating science and politics is impossible, as STS scholars have shown, then this must also be the case in STS as well. How does STS handle this reality? (I'd argue that STS scholars need to serve as honest brokers on policy just like other experts.)

Our recent engagement on STS issues with climate scientists should be viewed thus as an experiment. How might we communicate the scientific community the knowledge and lessons learned from those who have expertise in STS (and STP)? Is it worth engaging with rank and file scientists or should the focus of such dialogues be on the scientific elite? What about the public and elected officials? The answers to these questions are not straightforward, and the actions that best serve common interests are not immediately clear.

What is clear is that the STS community has only begun to explore its own significance for science policy and as it broadens its reach, it is surely to continue to prod and provoke scientists who remain comfortable in their outdated views.

Posted on April 11, 2005 01:01 AM View this article | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

April 06, 2005

In Seattle? Two Talks

I’ll be giving two talks in Seattle later this week, organized by the Forum on Science, Ethics and Policy (for info see the FOSEP website) at the University of Washington. Here are the abstracts:

Politicization of Science: A Perspective
Thursday, April 7, 2005
5:30 - 6:30 pm
UW Physics and Astronomy Auditorium, A102

It seems like science is in public view more so today than in the past, and not always for the best reasons. For example, the Union of Concerned Scientists and Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA), have in recent years highlight the "misuse" of science by the Administration of George W. Bush, prompting a vigorous rebuttal. In addition, issues such as scientific advisory panels, prescription drugs, global climate change, stem cell research, and terrorism are forcing science into the public eye. Dr. Pielke's talk will take a critical perspective on the current state of science, policy, and politics in the United States with a particular emphasis on the role of experts in science in policy and politics.

Dealing with Scientific Uncertainty in Policymaking
Friday, April 8, 2005
10:30 - 11:30 am
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Pelton Auditorium

Uncertainty is ever present in decision making. But even as scientists typically have sophisticated understandings of uncertainty itself, such understandings are infrequently accompanied by a corresponding sophistication in decision making in the face of uncertainty. This talk will discuss a range of experiences in dealing with scientific uncertainty in policymaking to suggest how the scientific community might more effectively contribute useful guidance on important policy issues characterized by fundamental uncertainties. Dr. Pielke's talk will emphasize both the use of science in decision making, but also decisions that are made about science, typically under an expectation that the results of resulting research will inform decision making. Consequently, issues of values, ethics and politics are inescapable when one confronts scientific uncertainty in policy making.

Posted on April 6, 2005 10:54 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Site News

A Forecast of Calm on Landsea/IPCC?

The May/June issue of American Scientist has an article by David Schneider on the IPCC/Landsea flap that offers some new comments from the principals involved in that controversy. And I again bring up this issue because hurricane season is right around the corner, when this debate might threaten to come out of its springtime dormancy. The good news is that this controversy need not continue, and the new comments suggest a rapprochement.

Many Prometheus readers will recall that last January NOAA’s Chris Landsea resigned as a contributor to the IPCC after receiving an unsatisfactory response from the IPCC related to his to his concerns that the author (Kevin Trenberth) of the forthcoming IPCC chapter that summarized the science of hurricanes had made statements at a press conference unsupportable in the scientific literature (you can find a number of posts on this issue in the Prometheus archives, and here is one post that might be a good intro).

Schneider reports in American Scientist,

“Trenberth now says that "it was clear [in the press conference] I was not speaking for the IPCC." Yet the moderator for the briefing had introduced Trenberth as "convening lead author of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report." And in his opening remarks Trenberth volunteered, "I was a lead author on the 2001 IPCC report for Working Group One, which deals with the science of climate change, and in fact I was involved in developing some of the information that is in that report dealing with hurricanes."”

Schneider also reports of Landsea, “[Landsea said] “If I had to make a guess for the next 20 years, I'd say it's going to be a lot like the last 10 years." That is not to say that Landsea discounts any influence of a warming planet. "No one should pooh-pooh the possibility that global warming might do bad things," he says. But he stresses that the increase in hurricane wind strength being suggested on the basis of computer modeling is "pretty tiny." And he points out that the monitoring of hurricane winds today has a coarseness of about 5 miles per hour. So the influence of global warming on hurricanes now, if it exists at all, is in the noise. "Even in 2080," he says, "you might not be able to measure it."”

[Schneider also discusses Hans von Storch in the article, which is online here.]

So Trenberth appears to accept that it is a good idea to keep separate the IPCC perspective from that of individual scientists. For his part, Landsea states both an expectation that coming decades will be more active than the long term average and leaves open the possibility of global warming influencing hurricanes (in a “tiny,” undetectable fashion). If these comments are reported accurately then we should be able to get through hurricane season 2005 with out replaying the debate over global warming and hurricanes. (I can imagine the laughter at my naiveté!)

More generally for the role of scientists and leadership in the IPCC, these new comments from Trenberth and Landsea reinforce my own perspective on how this controversy might have been avoided -- “[H]ad Trenberth instead said at that now infamous Harvard press conference, "The IPCC concluded X, Y, and Z about hurricanes in its 2001 assessment, but my personal view is A, B, and C," then I be willing to bet that there would have been no Landsea/IPCC flap.” And to be fair to Kevin, the IPCC leadership easily could have avoided this controversy after the comments had been made with even a half-hearted effort to respond seriously to Landsea’s complaints. On this I wrote, “The IPCC should either ask scientists to refrain from using their IPCC affiliation when making scientific claims that are inconsistent with the IPCC, or conversely, when scientists use their IPCC affiliation to burnish their credentials they should be sure to clearly identify the IPCC's position on the topic being discussed. To do otherwise is to invite the politicization of the IPCC process.”

Posted on April 6, 2005 10:15 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

April 05, 2005

A Taxonomy of Climate Politics

Dan Whipple's UPI column today has some kind words for Prometheus and a response to a post here a few weeks back that took issue with his use of the politically-loaded phrase "climate skeptic." The UPI column today goes over well trodden ground reviewing the surface-troposphere temperature record debate and the "hockey-stick" controversy. Rather than developing a political taxonomy of the climate debate focused on science, I thought that it might be worth focusing on the actual political and policy agendas at play. Please consider the list below as food for thought, experimental, subject to change and not definitive. We'd welcome your comments, additions and subtractions.

Climate realists. The UPI column correctly places me in this camp. But Steve Rayner characterized this community best, "But, between Kyoto's supporters and those who scoff at the dangers of leaving greenhouse gas emissions unchecked, there has been a tiny minority of commentators and analysts convinced of the urgency of the problem while remaining profoundly sceptical of the proposed solution. Their voices have largely gone unheard. Climate change policy has become a victim of the sunk costs fallacy. We are told that Kyoto is "the only game in town". However, it is plausible to argue that implementing Kyoto has distracted attention and effort from real opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect society against climate impacts. While it may not be politically practical or desirable to abandon the Kyoto path altogether, it certainly seems prudent to open up other approaches to achieving global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions."

Scientizers. This large and diverse group actively works to frame the climate issue as a scientific debate under the expectation that if you win the scientific debate then your political agenda will necessarily follow. This group is comprised mostly of scientists of one sort or another. I would include here the dueling science-cum-politics weblogs Realclimate.org and Climateaudit.org (we had an exchange with Reaclimate folks a while back). I would also include here CATO's Patrick Michaels and the IPCC's Rajendra Pachauri (see this post) and others who have a clear political perspective but choose frequently to debate the science as a proxy war. A great irony is that the Scientizers have different political views but share the expectation that science is the appropriate battleground for this debate, and have together thus far successfully kept the focus of attention on the climate science rather than policy and politics.

Energy Policy Free Riders. The climate debate in many ways represents the evolution of an energy policy debate that took place in the 1970s and 1980s. Senator Tim Wirth (D-CO) characterized this perspective in the late 1980s when he said, "We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy" (cited here, in PDF). For this group the current debate over climate change is really all about changing energy policies.

Free Market Free Riders. Like the EP Free Riders the FM Free Riders see the climate debate as the evolution of a preexisting debate over the role of government and the individual in society. A recent column at Tech Central Station presented a strong version of this perspective, "[The Kyoto Protocol] is emblematic of the 'unorthodox' thinking in social sciences. It gave the world Marxism, Stalinism, planned economies and fascism in the past, and supports anti-trade movements, anarcho-socialism, dogmatic pacifism and multicultural relativism today."

International Relations Free Riders. The international relations free riders see the Kyoto Protocol as an extension of recent tensions between the U.S. and Europe, in particular, and have more concern with multilateralism than climate per se. In this group are those who see multilateralism as a solution to international conflicts (climate among them) and others who see it as part of them problem. The IR Free Riders includes the U.S. neoconservatives and their opponents. It also represents a cleavage of optinion between the Bush Administration's approach-to-date on climate and that generally favored by governments in Europe.

There is undoubtedly a larger set of "free riders" who have sought to hitch their own favored agendas (e.g., species preservation, Bush Administration bashing, etc. etc.) to the climate issue, but these seem to be the most significant.

Those who Suffer Climate Impacts. There is an extremely large group of people (and species, ecosystems, etc.) that actually experience the effects of climate in their everyday lives. Too often they are used as symbols (or as potential material witnesses in lawsuits) by one of the groups listed above without real concern for their plight. The hundred of millions of people who suffer the impacts of climate have a real political stake in climate policies and with a few notable exceptions (e.g., see the 2002 Dehli Declaration) have little voice in how climate policy is evolving. (See also this recent paper.)

Undoubtedly there are more camps in this complex tapestry, but further discussion will have to continue another time. I'm off to class.

Posted on April 5, 2005 10:23 AM View this article | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

April 04, 2005

Dilbert on the Honest Broker

Here is a Dilbert strip about the honest broker.

Posted on April 4, 2005 09:11 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Evaluation of Research Portfolios

On Saturday a New York Times article reported,

“The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Pentagon - which has long underwritten open-ended "blue sky" research by the nation's best computer scientists - is sharply cutting such spending at universities, researchers say, in favor of financing more classified work and narrowly defined projects that promise a more immediate payoff… The shift away from basic research is alarming many leading computer scientists and electrical engineers, who warn that there will be long-term consequences for the nation's economy.”

And a few weeks ago Science reported,

“More than 750 U.S. microbiologists--including the president-elect of the American Society for Microbiology in Washington, D.C., Stanley Maloy of San Diego State University, and seven past ASM presidents--sent an open letter to National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Elias Zerhouni this week, complaining that the current spending spree in biodefense is threatening the very foundation of microbiology. While budgets have skyrocketed for exotic agents such as plague, anthrax, and tularemia--each of them negligible as human health threats--research on widespread and perhaps mundane pathogens is falling by the wayside, the letter says, as is work with traditional model organisms such as Kiley's E. coli.”

Each of these stories refer to assertions that one particular research portfolio is somehow “better” than an alternative research portfolio. Such conflicts over different way to put together research portfolios raises what is (or should be) a fundamental question of science policy research: How might we evaluate (and according to what criteria) the relative worth of alternative research portfolios?

This sort of question about science policy decisions is too rarely asked or answered. . Not too surprisingly researchers whose funding may be cut by proposed change are against the changes and those whose funding might increase think the changes make good sense. As a result, we see arguments link the following:

A virologist justifying increased spending on bioterrorism at the expense of infectious diseases – "I'm personally very concerned."

A computer scientist explains why DARPA’s shift to more focused research is a problem, “The federal government is … killing the goose that laid the golden egg.” And another computer scientist explains, “This is the first time in 15 years that I have no DARPA funding.”

These sorts of arguments are not just self-serving, they are essentially content free. Consequently, science policy decision making depends a great deal on those whose funding depends upon the outcome of such decisions to make the case for their own research, leading to what is more often than not a political brawl fought through pressure politics in the budget process.

The Science article suggests the right questions: “Does biodefense deserve all this money? Apart from the five anthrax deaths in 2001, there have been no known bioterrorism deaths in the United States. Natural deaths from many other biodefense agents--such as smallpox, tularemia, and plague--are also low if not zero. Is it worth spending billions of dollars on these agents, when flu alone causes more than 30,000 deaths a year in the United States and food poisoning some 5000?”

Science policy research cannot answer these questions, but it can contribute to the information needs of science policymakers by providing a rigorous (dare we say scientific?) perspective on what alternative research portfolios might look like and their possible implications for decision makers and society more broadly. (And this is the focus of our SPARC project focused on climate change.)

Posted on April 4, 2005 09:06 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

April 01, 2005

Carrying the Can

In this week's Nature representatives of several environmental organizations ask (PDF registration required) for scientists to become more active in educating the public on climate change. They write,

"The science of climate change is under attack; an attack that is coordinated, well-funded and given constant play in the media. The stronger the scientific consensus on climate change becomes, the more the media suggest that the science is uncertain... The impression created in the public mind is that climate scientists are deeply divided, and action to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions would be premature. Yet the consensus among climatologists, glaciologists and atmospheric physicists; that anthropogenic climate change is a reality; is as robust as is likely to be found on any scientific issue. As environmental campaigners, we would like to ask climate scientists everywhere: why are we being left to carry the can?

We're not asking you to become campaigners or to compromise your independence. But we wish you would defend your profession as any other professionals would. This includes training people in media relations, sending eminent delegations to meet editors and senior journalists, writing letters to the papers to correct misleading articles and seeking every opportunity to put the record straight. Isn't it time you started fighting for your science?"

I'd like to question the assertion in the letter that "The impression created in the public mind is that climate scientists are deeply divided, and action to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions would be premature." The letter provides no data to support this assertion and of the opinion data I am aware of, this assertion is simply wrong. Last May I wrote, referring to the United States:

"Granted that the public is not at all scientifically literate about climate change, and granted as well global warming is not among the environmental issues that the public is most concerned about. However, the battle over public opinion about the existence of global warming has been won. Efforts made trying to convince the public that global warming is "real" are pretty much wasted on the convinced. The public overwhelmingly believes global warming to be real and consequential. In fact, I'd even hypothesize that when compared to what the public actually believes about climate change and the future, the IPCC reports would seem pretty tame."

Consider these examples:

A 2002 Harris Poll in the United States, summarizes its findings as "Majorities Continue to Believe in Global Warming and Support Kyoto Treaty."

And a 2004 Gallup Poll in the U.S. reported (subscription required) the following:

"About half of Americans (51%) believe that the effects of global warming have already begun to occur, while another 5% believe they will start within a few years, and 12% expect these effects to happen at some point in their lifetimes. Only 18% believe the effects will be postponed to future generations, and just 11% are completely skeptical, saying that deleterious effects from global warming will never happen. Gallup has not observed any significant change in this assessment over the past seven years. Not only do Americans think global warming is real, but when asked about it last year, 61% also believe that increases in the Earth's temperature result more from the effects of pollution from human activities rather than natural changes, while only 33% believe the effects are the result of natural changes in the environment rather than human activities. This is the crux of much scientific and political debate surrounding global warming, and it appears that Americans are firmly on the side of the environmental movement."

And polls from outside the U.S. find similar or stronger public views that global warming is of concern and has been observed (e.g., see this report (PDF) from the UK).

Given all of this data it seems to me that the only justification I can see for political advocates (on both sides) in the climate debate to ask scientists to "fight for their science" is to seek political advantage by pretending that that the climate debate is about science, when it is really about politics.

So when the authors of the Nature letter ask, "As environmental campaigners, we would like to ask climate scientists everywhere: why are we being left to carry the can?" one response might be that the data suggest that scientists have already ably done their jobs. It is not too far-fetched to think that the so-called "skeptics" are enabled and empowered by those who seek to scientize the climate debate. Perhaps it is time to discuss climate change in terms of policy and politics and to stop asking science to carry the can.

Posted on April 1, 2005 09:04 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

March 31, 2005

Intelligence and Science for Policy

From the cover letter to the Silberman-Robb WMD report (PDF) released today is this paragraph:

"The Intelligence Community needs to be pushed. It will not do its best unless it is pressed by policymakers-sometimes to the point of discomfort. Analysts must be pressed to explain how much they don't know; the collection agencies must be pressed to explain why they don't have better information on key topics. While policymakers must be prepared to credit intelligence that doesn't fit their preferences, no important intelligence assessment should be accepted without sharp questioning that forces the community to explain exactly how it came to that assessment and what alternatives might also be true. This is not "politicization"; it is a necessary part of the intelligence process. And in the end, it is the key to getting the best from an Intelligence Community that, at its best, knows how to do astonishing things."

Seems to me that if we substitute "science" for "intelligence" in this paragraph it holds up equally well.

Posted on March 31, 2005 11:33 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

A Misuse of Science?

GovExec.com reported yesterday that "A House Government Reform subcommittee next Tuesday will examine whether alleged falsified government research documents compromised scientific justification for storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev." The investigation was motivated by the DOE announcing on 16 March possible irregularities in the data or models used to study Yucca Mountain.

At issue is the fidelity (or perceptions thereof) of the science used to justify the decision to select Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository. The Daytona New-Journal editorializes,

"Mistrust has since accompanied any government claim that Yucca is the safe repository the government claims it to be. Mistrust intensified this month when Energy Department e-mails came to light showing that the department was falsifying scientific records at the mountain. Instruments designed to measure electrical, gaseous and liquid conditions inside the mountain were being certified as ready for use before the department even had them in hand, while a United States Geological Survey employee admitted to falsifying other work. The employee claimed he was not the only one doing so. The falsified documents were part of an application process leading up to the licensing of Yucca Mountain's readiness for receiving waste. The licensing is designed to certify that the science used to judge Yucca Mountain safe for receiving waste is reliable. But if the licensing process itself is a lie, what is there to trust about the government's science on Yucca Mountain?"

The alleged falsification of documents occurred 1998-2000 when the administration of Bill Clinton was pushing toward a decision on Yucca Mountain. President Clinton wrote in a 2000 letter to Congress,

"Since 1993, my Administration has been conducting a rigorous world-class scientific and technical program to evaluate the suitability of the Yucca Mountain, Nevada, site for use as a repository. The work being done at Yucca Mountain represents a significant scientific and technical undertaking, and public confidence in this first-of-a-kind effort is essential... There is no scientific reason to delay issuance of these final radiation standards beyond the last year of this Administration; in fact, waiting until next year to issue these standards could have the unintended effect of delaying a recommendation on whether or not to go forward with Yucca Mountain." (Although it is worth noting that since leaving office Clinton has apparently changed his mind and come out against Yucca Mountain.)

Next week's hearing should go some way toward clarifying the details of the current allegations and their political or policy implications for the future of Yucca Mountain and centralized nuclear waste storage. Meantime, I'd like to ask a question. Does the data thus far available suggest a "misuse of science" under the Clinton Administration, somewhat akin to recent allegations made of the Bush Administration? If so why? If not why not?

We'd welcome your thoughts in the comments.

[For background information that might be useful in thinking about this question, please have a look at this report (PDF): Pielke, Jr., R. A. (ed.), 2004. Report on the Misuse of Science in the Administrations of George H.W. Bush (1989-1993) and William J. Clinton (1993-2001). By the Students in ENVS 4800, Maymester 2004, University of Colorado, June.]

Posted on March 31, 2005 11:26 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

March 30, 2005

Science versus Society

Every spring the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) hosts a forum on science and technology policy. This year’s forum is April 21-22 in Washington, DC. The March 28 version of the agenda is online. The forum’s closing plenary session is titled, “SCIENCE VERSUS SOCIETY? WHEN SCIENTIFIC INTERESTS AND PUBLIC ATTITUDES COLLIDE” and is focused on evolution versus creationism, stem cell research and federal funding of research on sexual behavior.

The framing of this particular session is very interesting for several reasons. First, it suggests that science is not only separate from “society” but is somehow in opposition to society. On the evolution versus creationism the speaker is from the National Center on Science Education, and thus will presumably discuss efforts to include creationism or “intelligent design” in public school curriculums. While there is public support for such inclusion, there is also public opposition (see this nice review of polling results by Ohio State’s Matt Nisbet). There is a political debate going on in particular states and schools about education, and while it is entirely appropriate for scientists to take sides in such debates, to suggest that these debates are about science vs. society is just incorrect, not to mention poor public relations for scientists. The debate is about one part of society versus another, or in other words “politics.”

Second, to characterize the issue of stem cell research as a battleground of science versus society is also misplaced. There is some evidence (again from Nisbet’s work) that a majority of the public may support stem cell research. But even if not a majority, it is clear that “society” does not have a unified perspective that is somehow contrary to the perspectives of “science.” Any decision to fund stem cell research with public money is a political decision, not a scientific decision (see my op-ed on this here [PDF]). The third subject, federal funding of research on sexual behavior, is a bit more unclear as the AAAS has not yet identified a speaker, but here as well it is difficult to imagine that there is a unified perspective of “society” that is somehow contrary to a unified perspective of “science.”

If the issue is limitations on research funding or even the training of future scientists (i.e., in elementary education and evolution) then AAAS might consider renaming the panel “When Political Debates Limit the Unfettered Advance of Science.” But if the issue is that the AAAS sees its organization to be politically aligned with one side of each of these debates, then it should clearly come out and say so, e.g., with a panel titled “Political Advocacy Efforts of the AAAS.” There is some evidence that the latter is a motivation. For example, earlier this week the AAAS has taken a political position in a Washington state debate over stem cell research and took a similar political position last year in a debate in Georgia over evolution.

For AAAS to suggest that “science” has a perspective at odds with “society” on the teaching of evolution, stem cell research or funding of research on sexual behavior is to simply reduce “science” to another special interest group in society demanding that its values be served over others. It seems to me that the public is fairly comfortable with science playing such a special interest role in the context of seeking more funding for research (don’t forget what “AAAS” stands for), probably because science has always benefited from widespread, bipartisan public support. But it may be something else altogether when leaders of the scientific community seek to present “science” in terms of societal values shared by only a subset of citizens, and also clearly in opposition to the values of many others. “Science” cannot resolve political debates over what should be taught or what should be funded, only politics can. The AAAS might think carefully about the consequences of conflating “politics” and “science” in the public eye, because this is exactly what might occur with its closing plenary session. I am not 100% certain, but in any battle between “science” and “society” it seems likely that “society” will win out in just about every case.

Posted on March 30, 2005 08:36 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

March 28, 2005

The Coming Debate over Nuclear Power

Here is some background reading on this subject:

From the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, an article by Peter W. Huber and Mark P. Mills titled, “Why the U.S. Needs More Nuclear Power” arguing for more nuclear power. Here is an excerpt:

“Many Greens think that they have a good grip on the likely trajectory of the planet’s climate over the next 100 years…But serious Greens must face reality. Short of some convulsion that drastically shrinks the economy, demand for electricity will go on rising. Total U.S. electricity consumption will increase another 20 to 30 percent, at least, over the next ten years. Neither Democrats nor Republicans, moreover, will let the grid go cold—not even if that means burning yet another 400 million more tons of coal. Not even if that means melting the ice caps and putting much of Bangladesh under water. No governor or president wants to be the next Gray Davis, recalled from office when the lights go out.

The power has to come from somewhere. Sun and wind will never come close to supplying it. Earnest though they are, the people who argue otherwise are the folks who brought us 400 million extra tons of coal a year. The one practical technology that could decisively shift U.S. carbon emissions in the near term would displace coal with uranium, since uranium burns emission-free. It’s time even for Greens to embrace the atom.

It must surely be clear by now, too, that the political costs of depending so heavily on oil from the Middle East are just too great. We need to find a way to stop funneling $25 billion a year (or so) of our energy dollars into churning cauldrons of hate and violence. By sharply curtailing our dependence on Middle Eastern oil, we would greatly expand the range of feasible political and military options in dealing with the countries that breed the terrorists.

The best thing we can do to decrease the Middle East’s hold on us is to turn off the spigot ourselves. For economic, ecological, and geopolitical reasons, U.S. policymakers ought to promote electrification on the demand side, and nuclear fuel on the supply side, wherever they reasonably can.”

Read the whole essay here.

From CSPO’s policy perspective series an article by G. Pascal Zachary titled “Nuclear Resurgence, Part I” that discusses some possible obstacles and promises a second part on potential downsides. Here is an excerpt:

“A global revival of nuclear power is underway, spurred by higher oil and gas prices, rising demand for electricity in Asia, and growing worries of the role of carbon fuels in climate change.

Consider the following: China intends to build 24 to 30 nuclear plants in the next 15 years; this fall, the country issued a bid tender for the first 2 plants. India’s plans are less defined but possibly as ambitious, given the country’s growing need for electricity and its tiny reliance on nuclear power to date. Finland is building two new nuclear plants, Belgium is considering doing so, and France is studying a new generation of reactor technology. Oil-poor Japan, Korea and Taiwan, representing East Asia’s most important economies, are each building nuclear plants. In the U.S., which has the largest number of operating atomic power plants, no new plants are planned, yet operators of existing plants and the Bush administration are promoting a renewed building program around existing reactor technology and a new generation of commercial plants around so-called “high-temperature” reactors that are theoretically safer, cheaper to build and easier to run. Moreover, dozens of American nuclear-power plants, once thought to be destined for closure, are winning life-extension of at least 20 to 30 years, virtually guaranteeing that the U.S. will remain home to the largest number of commercial reactors in the world for the foreseeable future...

In recent months, I have been visiting nuclear power plants, interviewing their managers and the executives of utilities who own them. I have been surveying the recent literature in the field, talking with critics, and pondering the course of what others are identifying as a “nuclear spring.” In two short CSPO “Perspectives,” I will present several key questions arising from a revival of nuclear power. In the second paper, I will raise questions about security of nuclear plants, the potential for terrorist exploitation of these plants and the extent to which nuclear plants spur the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In this first paper, I will briefly survey four important questions about the economic, technical and environmental sustainability of nuclear power.”

Read the whole essay here.

Posted on March 28, 2005 08:35 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Energy Policy

Tragedy, Comedy and Axiology

In today’ Chronicle of Higher Education Thomas H. Benton (a pseudonym) relates (subscription required) his comedic/tragic experiences dealing with the consequences of Weinberg’s axiology of science.

“I was meditating in the men's room down the hall from my office, and it occurred to me that humanities departments often have the worst buildings and facilities on campus. Is your toilet paper a gigantic roll in a locked plastic case (to prevent you from stealing it)? Does the roller have a spindle so stiff that only one sheet of single-ply paper can be removed at a time (to thwart your wastefulness)? Do you use stringy soap that leaves long strands of bubble-gum scented goop between the dispenser and the sink? Do you have spring-loaded faucets that shut themselves off instantly, so that one hand must hold the water on while the other hand half-rinses itself? Do you dry your hands with an abrasive brown paper that seems to be made out of pulverized Egyptian mummies?

The building where I work as an English professor went up about 60 years ago as a state-of-the-art science center. Our small, liberal-arts college has built two new state-of-the-art science centers since then. One was completed just last year after a record-breaking capital campaign, and it is quite luxurious. The restrooms in that new science center have beautiful marble countertops. The chrome faucets do not shut themselves off against your will, and the soap dispensers put a precise dollop of something like shaving cream in your palm with the touch of a button. Even the toilet stalls are wider. It's like the difference between first class and coach. I half expect a washroom attendant to offer me a fresh towel and to brush the lint off my jacket.”

He concludes with suggestion of a few possible new career tracks for humanists:

“Still, even in my present position on the tenure track, I can't help thinking that the humanities faculty is rapidly descending into a stratum so far beneath the scientists that we can't mingle socially without awkwardness. I suppose the humanists look unclubbable. Some of us have taken to wearing denim in case we're called upon in an emergency -- perhaps to prop up a falling roof timber or to man a bucket brigade. Given the surplus of people with humanities Ph.D.'s, in the not-too-distant future the science faculty should be able to recruit our assistant professors as subjects for their experiments. After that, they could be set loose in the biology department's forest preserve, and administrators could hunt them for sport. But, before that happens, I plan to schedule all my classes -- and meditation -- in the new science center. I've already begun doing so. The students in my English classes don't always appreciate having to walk across the campus, but a few of them like the idea that the humanities are being taught in the very heart of the new academic hegemony. But there is a problem. After two semesters, the scientists are becoming aware that one of those vulgar humanists is up to something in their clubhouse. Last fall, they noticed that the desks in one of their orderly, high-tech classrooms had been arranged like a horseshoe instead of in rows. An e-mail memo quickly went around that "desks must be put back in straight lines." Several times I've found my classroom locked. Only scientists have keys to those rooms.”

Find the whole column here (subscription required). And on the less tongue-in-cheek side, have a look at a paper that I collaborated with Carl Mitcham and Bob Frodeman on the humanities as a subject of science policy analysis:

Frodeman, R., Mitcham, C. and R. Pielke, Jr., 2003: Humanities for Policy - and a Policy for the Humanities. Issues in Science and Technology, Fall 2003, pp. 29-32. (PDF)

Posted on March 28, 2005 08:31 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

March 25, 2005

Tyranny of the Plebiscite

From AP Wednesday, “The National Weather Service (news - web sites) will stick with the familiar "skinny black line" on maps projecting the paths of hurricanes, despite concerns that the practice fails to convey the uncertainty in forecasting and can give the public a false sense of security. Scott Kiser, the tropical cyclone program manager with the weather service, made the announcement Wednesday before the opening of the annual National Hurricane Conference. The agency had looked at three options: keeping the skinny line, using a series of large colored dots to represent the projected path, or using large circles that would encompass the projected path and the margin for error. Kiser said the decision to stick with the line was made after the weather service sought opinions from the public, the news media and emergency service workers, receiving 971 e-mailed responses. He said 63 percent favored keeping the skinny line. He summed up the response as: "Show us your best forecast — we're smart enough to figure it out."”

From a 1999 paper of mine looking at the role of NWS forecasts in the flood disaster in the Red River of the North, “Because the NWS issued its river stage predictions in terms of a single number, local decision makers did not have the information necessary to evaluate the risk they faced under alternative courses of action. Effectively, this put the NWS in a position it should not find itself -- of implicitly deciding what level of risk a local community should face (i.e., in this case a river stage of 49 feet). This can lead to misjudged risk assessment, overconfidence in forecasts, and ultimately poor decisions about how to fight the flood. A more appropriate process would have provided local decision makers and the public with probabilities of different levels of inundation, and coupled with other relevant information, the community and particular individuals could have decided how they ought to respond. Some local decision makers in the region want this responsibility, but others do not. Many of the decision makers interviewed expressed the following sentiment: “We don’t want changes, just give us an accurate forecast that the NWS will stand behind.” The local resistance to change is understandable: the effect of providing probabilistic information would result in a shift in responsibility (and accountability) for decision making on the question of “what river height do we prepare for?” from the NWS to the local decision makers. For many local decision makers this added responsibility is not desired. But more generally, few would argue that such decisions belong at the local level and should not be made by the NWS.”

Sometimes, science and technology decisions ought not to be made simply through surveys of the public or decision makers. The NWS has learned this lesson but apparently has not taken it to heart.

Posted on March 25, 2005 07:45 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Risk & Uncertainty

March 24, 2005

Politics and Disaster Declarations

The Florida Sun-Sentinel reported on Wednesday that, “As the second hurricane in less than a month bore down on Florida last fall, a federal consultant predicted a "huge mess" that could reflect poorly on President Bush and suggested that his re-election staff be brought in to minimize any political liability, records show. Two weeks later, a Florida official summarizing the hurricane response wrote that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was handing out housing assistance "to everyone who needs it without asking for much information of any kind."”

Particularly interesting is an earlier finding by the Sun-Sentinel that a considerable amount of disaster aid was distributed outside where the hurricanes had struck, “FEMA has been under scrutiny since the Sun-Sentinel first reported in October that the agency was awarding millions of dollars in disaster funds to residents of Miami-Dade County, even though the county did not experience hurricane conditions. At Nelson's urging, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is investigating. Earlier this month, 14 Miami-Dade residents who received assistance were indicted on fraud charges. As of March 16, FEMA had given $31 million to 12,891 applicants in Miami-Dade for damage claimed from Frances.”

Not surprisingly Democrats have sought to gain some political advantage, “Democrats in Washington said the records confirm suspicions that the federal government used the hurricanes to funnel money to Florida, a key battleground state in the presidential election. "They weren't really asking for information, yet they were just doling out this money like it was Christmas," said Lale Mamaux, spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton. "It's not surprising to learn that [Republicans] played politics with the hurricanes that tragically affected hundreds of thousands of Floridians last year," said Josh Earnest, spokesman for the Democratic National Committee.”

And for their part, FEMA and Republicans denied any link between election-year politics and disaster assistance, “FEMA officials, the governor and the White House have steadfastly denied suggestions that politics played a role in the distribution of hurricane aid in Florida. "The men and women at FEMA don't give a patooey about who the president is or who the governor is," FEMA Director Michael D. Brown told the newspaper's editorial board in October. "Whenever people say stuff like that … we're just offended by that because that's just not how we operate."”

News flash to both Republicans and Democrats – disaster aid has been politicized by both parties for a long time. In 2001 Mary Downton and I published a paper (PDF) titled, “Discretion Without Accountability: Politics, Flood Damage, and Climate,” in which we looked at a 30+ year record of FEMA disaster declarations on floods in the context of flood damage, climate and presidential administrations. What did we find?

Oddly enough, there were 50% more disasters declared in years in which the president was running for reelection that in other years. Also, there was no consistent partisan signal in the data. As you might have expected, Ronald Reagan did not like to give out federal money too quickly, but Jimmy Carter seems to have held an even stronger line on disaster assistance. Bill Clinton famously felt everyone’s pain, and this is reflected in his generous disbursements of disaster declarations, but his predecessor George H. W. Bush was also generous with issuing declarations.

Did the federal government play politics in its response to the 2004 hurricanes in Florida? We should only be surprised if this were not the case. But perhaps the current investigations can lead to improvements in the declaration process. As we wrote in our paper, “Presidential discretion without corresponding accountability may in fact place the disaster declaration process at odds with broader goals of hazard mitigation and sustainable development.”

You can find our paper here (PDF).

Posted on March 24, 2005 08:27 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Connecting Dots for a Nuclear Stratagem

Here are the dots that I am connecting:

According to yesterday’s New York Times,

(1) “In a speech on Monday at a two-day conference on "nuclear energy for the 21st century," Constance Morella, the American ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, told an audience of government officials and nuclear experts from more than 70 countries that American support of nuclear energy "has never been stronger." Nuclear energy is clean, reliable, necessary for the world to have a secure energy supply and "a benefit to humankind," she said. Ms. Morella cited a study estimating that global energy demand was expected to rise by about 60 percent over the next 25 years. "America hasn't ordered a nuclear power plant since the 1970's, and it's time to start building again," she quoted President Bush as saying recently.”

(2) According to an AP story, “In a message to the conference, U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman cited a University of Chicago study that showed nuclear power "can become competitive with electricity produced by plants fueled by coal or gas" because of new technologies delivering more efficient reactors. Echoing recent comments by President Bush, Bodman said: "America hasn't ordered a new nuclear power plant since the 1970s and it's time to start building again."”

(3) When President Bush’s science advisor John Marburger visited us last month he said, “We have a very big job ahead of us. Every country is going to have to use new technology, either to remove the Co2 from emissions from hydrocarbon burning power plants or to use some other way, some alternate method, of energy generation. So, this is what we have got to do and I think that we should get on with it and not get hung up over the Kyoto Protocol.”

(4) Dr. Marburger also said in reply to my question, “What is the future for the next four years on climate change like under the Bush Administration?”

“Well, I think we'll have to wait. I think perhaps the international conferences that are coming up, there is a G8 meeting, I think that there will be opportunities for the President to say what he intends to do. I don't have -- I mean, I can't talk too much of words in the President's mouth, but it is pretty clear where he has been and his commitment to this approach to taking responsibility for CO2 emissions is impressive to me. And I think that we ought to take advantage of the fact that we have a President who is willing to make and to advocate for that kind of investment, whatever we think about the details of the relation between Co2 emissions and actual climate change.”

(5) Condaleeza Rice recently said something similar in response to a question about climate change, “… from our point of view, from the point of view of the President, who has put forward an energy plan, a comprehensive energy plan to the Congress, we need to tap all supplies, all prospective supplies of energy, and that includes nuclear energy. The United States has not been in that business for a long time.”

All of this looks to me like the Bush Administration is working towards some sort of major new initiative or announcement on nuclear power, all but certainly linked to the climate issue. Such an announcement would be responsive to Tony Blair’s calls for the U.S. to become more engaged in the climate issue, and would also raise some difficult issues for Bush’s historical opponents on the climate issue. The upcoming G8 meeting in Scotland in July would be a perfect opportunity to announce such an initiative.

Posted on March 24, 2005 06:40 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Energy Policy

March 23, 2005

Science Advice at the UN

According to David Dickson at SciDev.net, “Kofi Annan, the secretary-general of the United Nations, has announced plans to create a high-level advisory panel to help integrate science and technology into the development efforts of all the member organisations of the UN system.”

Interestingly, the new advisory body will be called the “Council of Development Advisers.” The name of the proposed new council is worth noting because it places a focus on the end (development) not the means (science and technology). Too often efforts to integrate science and technology in decision making wind up substituting means for ends. That is, the focus is on science and technology, and not how we make decisions with or about science and technology to improve outcomes.

Dickson writes that “Annan has also announced that he is to appoint a scientific advisor to provide "strategic forward-looking" scientific advice on policy matters, with responsibility for "mobilising scientific and technological expertise within the United Nations system and from the broader scientific and academic community". One of the key roles of the science advisor will be to work closely with the new council.”

Dickson attributes Annan’s actions to recommendations offered by a task force of a task force of the Millennium Project focused on science, technology and innovation.

The tension between means and ends is sure to play out in this context. One interpretation of the task force’s recommendation is that “Eliminating global poverty, disease and hunger are "utterly affordable" but need concerted action from rich nations, including a massive increase in funding for scientific research addressing the needs of the world's poor.” Many scientists will be certain to pay attention to the phrase “massive increase in funding” however the real challenge is to connect the results of such funding to “addressing the needs of the world’s poor.”

As we’ve discussed here on numerous occasions (see, e.g., here and here) a fundamental challenge of contemporary science policy is not just in advancing science and technology but in making decisions about and with science that improve the human condition.

Posted on March 23, 2005 11:31 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

March 22, 2005

Reaction to UPI Climate Commentary

UPI's Dan Whipple writes an interesting weekly commentary on climate change. This week he writes about the long-term implications of climate change. In this week's essay Whipple is off base on two important points. He writes,

"... nations have to decide what, if anything, to do to deal potentially destructive changes. Some argue to invest now to cut off greenhouse-gas emissions at the source, thereby reducing future impacts, Others counter that the money is better spent fashioning adaptations to a warmer world. Even if the skeptics are correct -- and humans can easily adapt to global warming -- those adaptations are going to cost money. Climate science actually is challenging the conventional way of thinking about investing in the future -- something economists, the guardians of thought about long-term money, are loath to admit. Applying traditional economic tools, such as the discount rate, to investing in the amelioration of global warming, you quickly discover that you cannot justify even a tiny investment to stop or slow it."

A first issue is that in the article in several places Whipple equates "climate skeptics" with those who support adaptation to climate. This is misleading for two reasons. First, most of the so-called climate skeptics are labeled as such because they are in some way skeptical of the "mainstream" perspective on climate science, e.g., as reflected in the IPCC reports. Many in this group do not support adaptation because it would mean admitting that there is a climate problem needing to be adapted to in the first place. Second, many who support adaptation are not skeptical of climate science at all, and would include the authorship of the IPCC which devotes efforts of its Working Group II to issues of adaptation. Perhaps those who expect that adaptation should be part of any response to climate change might be more accurately described as "climate realists."

A second issue is that Whipple's discussion of the discount rate is fundamentally misleading. The discount rate tells us something about the time-value of money (or action, or lives, etc.), it does not tell us how to act. Whipple quotes NYU professor (and someone I've occasionally collaborated with) Dale Jamieson as saying of the discount rate, "If I plant a bomb to go off in Manhattan in 500 years, if we discount that from the present, the discount rate tells us that there is no damage. That can't be right," and Whipple consequently concludes, "That kind of thinking clearly is indefensible." Not only is it indefensible, both Jamieson's analogy and Whipple's conclusion reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of discounting. If there was a bomb planted in NYC to go off in 500 years and it cost, say, $100 to stop it from going off, rather than defusing the bomb today, we would be smart to invest that $100 for 499 years and then spend $100 (which would then be only a fraction of the resulting investment) on defusing the bomb 499 years from now. The discount rate does not say that we should not defuse the bomb. (This analogy is not directly applicable to the climate issue for several obvious reasons.) The real significance of the discount rate in the climate debate is that it tells us that we would be wise to concentrate on those adaptation and mitigation actions that can be justified both on their short-term and long-term benefits -- that is why such measures are called "no-regrets." The discount rate can also motivate us to carefully consider the goals of climate policies.

Posted on March 22, 2005 09:03 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

March 18, 2005

Old Wine in New Bottles

Science magazine has published two articles this week that suggest that “the wheels of global climate change are in motion, and there is little we can do to stop them, at least in the short-term.” These articles, which no doubt are quality science done by accomplished researchers, suggest to me that discussion of climate change increasingly recirculates the same stories and same reactions – a clear sign of gridlock.

There are several relevant points here. First, while the new studies may add some details, the notion that we are committed to changing the climate is an old story. For example, in 1995, Pekka E. Kauppi wrote in Science that the goal of the Framework Convention on Climate Change was either “unattainable or irrelevant … If GCM projects are right, the climate will change, there will be dangerous effects and the Convention objective will be unattainable” (Science, 220:1454). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 1996 that “even with the most ambitious abatement policy, some climate change seems likely to occur” (WGIII, p. 188). And I wrote (PDF) in 1998, “even under a scenario of aggressive mitigation most experts expect climate change.”

Second, new studies reconfirming that we are committed to changing the climate is easily spun by both sides of the current political debate. For example, The Denver Post reports that Gerald Meehl, lead author of one of the two studies in Science this week (the other study was authored by Tom Wigley), “hoped the results are interpreted as cause for action, not pessimism.” On the other side Steve Milloy writes at FoxNews.com, “[Wigley’s results] purport to show that global warming would still occur even if we completely stopped emitting greenhouse gases… neither Kyoto nor Son of Kyoto will accomplish anything — other than, of course, driving the world, particularly developing countries, toward economic ruin.” I’ve seen no interpretations that suggest that the new studies suggest that we need a fundamentally new approach to climate. (See this commentary by Steve Rayner for an example of what a new approach might look like.)

The recirculation of “news” on climate is an obvious sign that debate and discussion remains stuck in a cul-de-sac.

Posted on March 18, 2005 09:52 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Defending Kass but Confirming the Conflict

On Tech Central Station James Q. Wilson, a member of the Prsident’s Council on Bioethics, has a response to Iain Murray’s TCS essay that criticized Leon Kass for advancing “political strategy aimed at achieving certain policy goals [that] renders his position as an honest broker on the issue untenable.” Wilson’s defense of Kass simply dodges the central issue and in the process implicitly confirms the impropriety of Kass simultaneous trying to serve as honest broker and lobbyist. (For background on our discussion of see this post and this post.)

Wilson writes that the Bioethics Council works hard to consider and present a wide range of views, “I have never encountered a more fair-minded chairman than Kass nor a Council composed of so many truly gifted (though philosophically divided) Council members… Try to think of another presidential council that has ever reflected such a wide range of views and expressed them with such clarity. Typically, a presidential body gets its marching orders from the White House and is composed of people whom one can predict will respond to those expectations.” This is certainly wonderful to hear but does not speak to Kass’ role in advancing a legislative agenda while serving as the Council’s chair.

On Kass’ role lobbying Congress for a particular set of policies, Wilson somewhat disingenuously characterizes Kass’ actions as normal scholarly activity, “It is especially unfair to say that Kass suffers from a conflict of interest. The charge seems to rest on a press account that Kass will work with a writer to publish some new arguments in a respectable journal.” Wilson’s interpretation of Kass’ activities is contrary to Kass’ own characterization of his activities in the Washington Post article that Wilson cites:

Wilson then says, somewhat bizarrely, “[Murray’s] criticism is akin to demanding that judges never give speeches or write articles because somehow their independence will be jeopardized. If one employed that argument when one was selecting a chairman, one would have to recruit a philosophical eunuch who had managed to keep all thoughts to himself. But who would hire such a cipher? (All right, there is Justice David Souter, but apart from him . . .?)” We encourage you to have a look for yourself at Kass’ ”journal article”, which is titled, “Bioethics for the Second Term: Legislative Recommendations.” It will be exciting to see what “respected journal” publishes this “article.” Wilson also makes the fatuous assertion that, “There is literally no truth in the argument that Kass's own views were "more likely to get a hearing than those of other well-qualified bioethicists."” This would seem to be contradicted by the fact that both the Washington Post and Science magazine both reported on Kass’ legislative agenda, and did not report on the legislative agenda of anyone else. Does Wilson really think that people are dumb enough to fall for this sort of argument by smoke and mirrors?

The fact that Wilson has sought to provide a defense of Kass but either was unable or unwilling to address the central issue of Kass’ conflict of interest says to me that in preparing his defense of Kass, Wilson must have decided that there is not an effective or acceptable case to be made for Kass to wear two hats at the same time.

Posted on March 18, 2005 08:03 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Biotechnology

March 16, 2005

More on Politics and Bioethics

Last week we made the case that the development and promotion of a “legislative agenda” by Leon Kass, the chair of the President’s Council on Bioethics, meant that he was (mis)using his role as the Council’s chair to advocate a special interest agenda.

“If Kass wants to be a political advocate, then he should resign his position of the Bioethics Council and join one of the many conservative advocacy groups that are truly independent of the Bioethics Council. If he wants to serve as an honest broker to the nation as chair of the Bioethics Council, then he should recognize that this means deferring his desire to serve as a political advocate advancing special interests. But he does have to choose, because he can’t do both.”

This week the Washington Post reports that Representative Diana DeGette (D-CO) has asked the Inspector general of HHS to investigate Kass’ actions,

“… At issue is whether Kass acted inappropriately by helping to lead an effort to craft a legislative "agenda" for Congress that would place new restrictions on embryo research and other areas of reproductive science. In the letter, Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) expressed concern that Kass may have misrepresented his private views as those of the council and that the council's resources may have been used in the effort. The effort brings "a cloud of suspicion" on the bioethics council, she wrote. Kass said he has been very clear with people that his work for the new "bioethics agenda" for Congress -- still in its early stages -- is independent of his work for the council. "No council resources or council time was used," he said yesterday. The inspector general typically takes two weeks to decide whether to take on a congressional request, a spokeswoman said.”

Kass’ legislative agenda is available here from the American Journal of Bioethics Editors Blog, who write,

“…It contains the grand plan for all sorts of bans and restrictions of science to be enacted by the U.S. Congress, and has been unabashedly promoted by Kass - who says that he is not acting as Presidential Council Chair during his lobbying efforts. The agenda is sweeping, conservative, and odd enough that it has angered Republicans in Congress more than Democrats; the latter are beside themselves with joy at watching the right wing rip the Kass document to shreds for being too liberal. Democrats should not be too giddy - much of what is here could be pushed through the executive branch and left to the courts and states to reject.”

The AJB Editors Blog weighed in with a perspective on Kass’ actions similar to that expressed here:

“It isn't that it is a surprising announcement, and the incredible gall of it requires no comment, but what is amazing to most … is how stupid a political move this is for the PCB. This morning, Gladys White put it best on MCW-Bioethics: “I have an old-fashioned idea. That idea is that chairs of Presidential bioethics councils/commissions should, once appointed, go about their business with as much objectivity and neutrality as they can muster in order to facilitate the work of the council and ultimately to serve the American people. I have this idea because in years past it has been the case that chairing these councils or commissions has been viewed as a distinct honor and well worth the price of setting aside personal views at least for the duration of the group's work… Directly lobbying Congress in a role "that is independent of the role bioethics chair" accompanied by a group which "has no name," is unprecedented, unwise and in my view, unacceptable for the chair of a bioethics commission. I don't see how one person can function as a hard-headed lobbyist at one moment and as a neutral objective, bioethics chair at the next. I don't think that this latest development bodes well for the work of the current council or for the future of independent bioethics analysis in the U.S. and I am very sorry to see it.””

And Iain Murray writing at Tech Central Station expresses similar sentiments,

“[Kass’] recent decision to draft a political strategy aimed at achieving certain policy goals renders his position as an honest broker on the issue untenable… The merits of Dr. Kass's preferred policies are irrelevant here. The problem is that by hitching his star to a particular set of policies he has breached the trust set in him by the President, whose executive order creating the council asked it to "explore specific ethical and policy questions related to these developments; [and] to provide a forum for a national discussion of bioethical issues." At the very least, by sheer virtue of his position, his favored policies are more likely to get a hearing than those of other well-qualified bioethicists who do not have the authority of such an office …Such a prospect would seriously undermine in the principle of "procedural justice" -- the right of all sides of a political argument to be heard without fear or favor.”

I have yet to see anyone actually defend Kass’ actions in similar venues, though I’d welcome pointers. I’d also welcome comments and input on Rep. Degette’s letter to HHS IG (does anyone have a copy?) and the legal basis for her complaints. Of course, my objections, and those cited above, go far beyond any possible legal impropriety to the very core of what it means to serve on a government advisory committee and the inevitable trade offs between serving as an honest broker and political advocate.

Posted on March 16, 2005 09:22 AM View this article | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Biotechnology

March 15, 2005

Transcript of Marburger Interview

We have up on our website a transcript of our 14 February 2005 public interview with John Marburger, science advisor to President George W. Bush. Here are some excerpts:

On climate change:

"After the President announced that he would not support the Kyoto Protocol early in 2001, there was a lot of criticism and the President turned to the National Academies and asked them to make a study, which they did in record time, informing him about the validity of the science in the documents that supported the Kyoto Protocol. And before his first trip to Europe in 2001, in July, I guess, or June, the President made a speech to which I commend to all of you. You should go on the White House website and look at the President's speech of June 11, 2001 where he states what the policy is very, very clearly. And he states in his speech, number one, the climate is changing, the surface temperature of the earth is warming, there is a greenhouse effect, Co2 is a greenhouse gas, it has increased substantially since the beginning of the industrial revolution, and it is caused by human activity. He goes on to say that the connection between this massive increase in Co2 and specific aspects of climate change that may impact humans is difficult to infer from the existing things. It requires modeling, the Earth's system. But, he goes on to say that is no reason not to take action. He says the U.S. is prepared to take responsibility for its emissions, and he announces the formation of two programs: one climate change science program, which re- focuses the climate change science activities that had existed there before that, into a sort of a goal- oriented program, and a second one, which is very little acknowledged but which is more important, to invest in a climate change technology program to develop technologies that will replace our existing energy technologies and reduce or eliminate the emission of Co2 into the atmosphere. All of those things are in the speech, and subsequently he has made proposals that have turned into approximately $2.9 billion dollars per year of investment in new technologies to reduce or eliminate the emissions of Co2 into the atmosphere. And yet people can talk about nothing but the Kyoto Protocol, and I think that's very frustrating to him. It's frustrating to me, because if the provisions of the Kyoto Protocol were totally implemented, even if the U.S. participated, it would make negligible difference to the climate by the end of this century that we're currently living in. In order to make a difference to the climate, you have to introduce a very different way of generating and using energy than we do now. There simply isn't any way to do it. You have got to change things very dramatically. We have a very big job ahead of us. Every country is going to have to use new technology, either to remove the Co2 from emissions from hydrocarbon burning power plants or to use some other way, some alternate method, of energy generation. So, this is what we have got to do and I think that we should get on with it and not get hung up over the Kyoto Protocol."

On the UCS and Waxman reports on the misuse of science:

"I didn't like the allegations. I thought they wrapped up a large number of disparate complaints into a, what I called at the time, a conspiracy theory. And that was my biggest objection. I just didn't think it made sense to wrap all of these things up into one big ball and try to draw a conclusion from it. It was not a scientifically -- it was certainly not a study that would have qualified for a good grade in a college seminar. It was not a thoughtful or complete study in any sense, and my response to it was an effort to indicate that there were lots of other things that were omitted from that study and that we needed to address these issues one by one in their context and try to understand them and deal with them. They were all over the map, and I was just offended by the statement."

On asking about voting in advisory committee empanelment:

"I think that it doesn't make sense to ask somebody who they voted for. We have secret ballots in this country, and I don't think that's a very good practice and I wouldn't advise it."

On the role of Scientists and Engineers for Change in the 2004 election:

"... to the extent that people use their common identifier as scientists to justify a non-scientific position, or a position that doesn't have too much to do with science, then that's -- I would question that. Before I would join such a group, I would want to know if, you know, are we saying that this is a position, the position we advocate is based on science or is that what we want people to believe? And so there is a little bit of a problem there, I think, and scientists have a responsibility to try to avoid misleading the public about the basis for their political or religious or ideological beliefs. I mean, that's separate from science. So we do have a responsibility, the scientific community, to try to separate the science from our beliefs or from non-scientific issues."

On the role of the public in science policy:

"... you don't want the public to be involved in telling scientists how to do their work. And, in general, I don't want the public to be telling us about discovery science and basic science and topics in basic research -- only the science community can say that. But the more applied the science is, and the more it relates to things like public health or environment or even military or Homeland Security, then I think that the public has more of a responsibility in defining its expectations. So there's clearly a gradation of types of science that the public should be involved in."

On the move of OSTP from the Old Executive Office Building to the New Executive Office Building:

"I don't think that where we are makes much difference. We are not, after all, in a day-to-day support mode for the President. The President needs people close to him who will support his activities during the day every day as he is challenged. That's not -- science is not a necessary part of that on a day-to-day basis. The time scale of science advice is much longer than that, and we tend to work out science issues with the other staff of people and the Agencies long before they every get to the President."

Other comments:

"I think it's very important for science advisors, the science advisory apparatus, and the image of science to be as non-political as possible."

"I really do think that while there are many societal implications of science and there are many issues, philosophical and ethical issues, associated with applications of science, at the core of it, science really is a method for continually making our ideas about how nature works or how things work around us less and less wrong."

"I wish that we had designed Hubble so that it didn't have to be serviced by a shuttle. We probably could have launched several Hubbles for the cost that we have invested in this one."

"DR. PIELKE: This next question has one word at the top, and would probably be enough to get a response, but I'll read the question. The one word is "evolution," and it says "Why doesn't the White House play a more active role in articulating evolution as good science?"

DR. MARBURGER: Can you really see any White House doing that? Evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology. Period. What else can you say?"

Read the whole transcript here.

Posted on March 15, 2005 07:51 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

March 14, 2005

How to Increase Fuel Efficiency

Nancy Johnson (R-CT) and 24 bipartisan co-sponsors have introduced a bill in Congress that calls for the Environmental Protection Agency to improve the accuracy of its protocol for estimation of vehicle fuel economy (i.e., as measured in miles-per-gallon, mpg). According to a press release issued by Representative Johnson’s office,

““America's car buyers deserve truth-in-advertising when they buy a new car,” said Johnson, who introduced the bill with Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) and over two dozen bipartisan co-sponsors. “The current EPA tests clearly mislead car buyers. Car buyers think they're getting better mileage on the road and a better deal at the pump than they really are. This common-sense bill requires the EPA to update its 30-year-old tests to reflect today's driving conditions.” The tests used by the EPA to measure fuel economy - the city/highway gas mileage figures that appear on a new car's sticker - are 30-years-old and are based on car technology from the late 1970s and 1980s. According to government and auto industry experts, the tests produce gas mileage rates that are inflated from anywhere between 10% and 30%. The inflated rates mislead consumers into thinking they are getting better mileage on the road, and a better deal at the gas pump, than they really are.”

Data should be accurate, who is going to argue with that?

If the bill becomes law it may lead to profound effects on actual fuel economy and a political battle waged through EPA estimates of fuel economy. The reason for this is that the government has in place policies governing what is called “corporate average fuel economy” or CAFE standards. Here is how the CAFE program describes it: “Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) is the sales weighted average fuel economy, expressed in miles per gallon (mpg), of a manufacturer’s fleet of passenger cars or light trucks with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of 8,500 lbs. or less, manufactured for sale in the United States, for any given model year.” For passenger cars the current standards are 27.5 mpg and for light trucks 21,0 mpg (for details go here.).

And here is the part of the CAFE program that is most important with respect to Rep. Johnson’s proposed bill, “Fuel economy is defined as the average mileage traveled by an automobile per gallon of gasoline (or equivalent amount of other fuel) consumed as measured in accordance with the testing and evaluation protocol set forth by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).” The Department of Transportation (DOT) does claim to verify the EPA estimates. Even though Rep. Johnson says that her bill does not “alter or change Corporate Average Fuel Economy requirements,” it could have very significant implications for the auto industry under CAFE.

If it turns out that EPA’s estimates of fuel economy are off by, say, 30% industry-wide, and this is reflected as well in the DOT CAFE program verification of those estimates, then this means that present guidelines of 27.5 mpg and 21.0 mpg are really only leading to fuel efficiency levels of 19.25 mpg and 14.7 mpg! Any changes resulting from Representative Johnson’s bill of the EPA/DOT protocols for estimating fuel efficiency that lead to a downward revision in fuel efficiency estimates will necessarily have the effect of compelling automakers to increase the fuel efficiency of their fleets under CAFE.

If Rep. Johnson’s bill becomes law we will undoubtedly see a vigorous battle over the EPA protocol used to estimate fuel efficiency and a corresponding mapping of political debate over fuel efficiencies onto the technical methods used to calculate them.

Posted on March 14, 2005 04:53 AM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Environment

March 11, 2005

Malaria and Science Policy

According to a report in SciDev.net a new study in Nature suggests that.

“The threat to human health posed by the deadliest form of malaria has been significantly underestimated, especially for regions outside Africa, according to research published today (10 March) in Nature. The study suggests that the Plasmodium falciparum parasite caused 515 million cases of malaria in 2002 – nearly double the World Health Organization (WHO) estimate — and threatens some 2.2 billion people worldwide.”

The Nature paper has started a bit of a “row” over WHO estimates according to The New Scientist which reports,

“Has the World Health Organization underestimated the world's malaria problem? By as much as 50%, according to researchers in Kenya. Not true, the WHO itself insists. At stake is the credibility of the WHO's anti-malaria programmes. In this week's Nature (vol 434, p 214), Bob Snow and colleagues from the Kenya Medical Research Institute in Nairobi calculate that there were 515 million new cases of malaria worldwide in 2002. This is almost double what they quote as the WHO's official figure of 273 million cases. Snow claims that international efforts to control malaria are being damaged because the WHO is underestimating the problem. The WHO disputes this analysis. The figure of 273 million comes from its 1999 World Health Report. The following year it revised its official estimate to between 300 and 500 million cases - roughly the same range as Snow's 300 to 660 million - and that is the figure the WHO says it has been working with ever since.”

The Nature study raises some very basic questions about resource prioritization in areas of research and implementation. Snow et al. write in Nature,

“Interest in mapping the global distribution of malaria is motivated by a need to define populations at risk for appropriate resource allocation and to provide a robust framework for evaluating its global economic impact … Inadequate descriptions of the global distribution of disease risk make it impossible to determine priorities and advise funding agencies appropriately. Redressing these deficiencies with robust data must be a priority if international agencies are to understand the size of the challenge set by their targets over the next ten years.”

How can we make effective decisions about research priorities if we have inaccurate knowledge of important dimensions of the problem that the results of research are supposed to be addressing? This is a fundamental obstacle to effective science policy decision making, but one that can be addressed, as Snow et al. argue, through research itself.

Posted on March 11, 2005 08:14 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health

Book Review in Nature

In the current issue of Nature I have a very positive review of Nature's Experts: Science, Politics, and the Environment by Stephen Bocking (Rutgers University Press: 2004). In the review I write,

“In this excellent book on environmental science and politics, Stephen Bocking grapples with a problem that he characterizes as a riddle: “How can science be part of the political process yet separate?” Or more specifically: “How can we ensure that scientific research provides the information we need to pursue our environmental values and priorities (whether these relate to exploitation or to protection) without science itself becoming subject to the conflicts and controversies of environmental politics?” For decades, the riddle posed by Bocking was answered through a widely shared conceptual model about the role of science in society, presented most influentially in Vannevar Bush’s 1945 report to government, Science: The Endless Frontier.”

Read the whole review here.

Posted on March 11, 2005 07:47 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Environment

March 09, 2005

Politics and Bioethics Advice

Imagine for a moment that the President convenes an advisory committee to provide guidance on the future of the Hubble Space Telescope. The committee is created by executive order and a chair of the committee is selected based on her extensive experience with NASA. The charge to the committee is not to develop consensus recommendations but to fully and fairly explore a range of options and their consequences.

Consider further that the chair of the committee decided to get together with some of her close friends outside the committee in the aerospace industry to develop a white paper advocating a single approach to dealing with Hubble that would advance the interest of her friends, writing in the white paper “we now have an chance to advance our special interests over others and we should take advantage of this opportunity.”

From where I sit this would be completely inappropriate behavior by the committee chair. She would seeking to exploit her position as an honest broker providing guidance to policy makers by using her role as committee chair to gain advantage in political debate. Honest brokering in support of common interests is simply incompatible with political advocacy in support of special interests. The committee chair has to choose.

Back to the real world. Yesterday’s Washington Post reported a situation exactly parallel to the scenario described above. In the real world case, it is the President’s Council on Bioethics whose chair is Leon Kass. The Post reports,

“Frustrated by Congress's failure to ban human cloning or place even modest limits on human embryo research, a group of influential conservatives have drafted a broad "bioethics agenda" for President Bush's second term and have begun the delicate task of building a political coalition to support it. The loose-knit group of about a dozen people -- largely spearheaded by Leon R. Kass, chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, and Eric Cohen, editor of the New Atlantis, a conservative journal of technology and society -- have been meeting since December. Their goal, according to a document circulating among members and others, is to devise "a bold and plausible 'offensive' bioethics agenda" to replace a congressional strategy that has been "too narrowly focused and insufficiently ambitious. We have today an administration and a Congress as friendly to human life and human dignity as we are likely to have for many years to come," reads the document, which was obtained by The Washington Post. "It would be tragic if we failed to take advantage of this rare opportunity to enact significant bans on some of the most egregious biotechnical practices."”

Irrespective of the pluses or minuses of Kass’ group’s proposal, this is simply unethical and a clear example of the politicization of the bioethics panel. Kaas is clearly trading on his position as chair of the President’s council to advance a narrow political agenda.

The Post reports that Kass tries to excuse this clear conflict of interest in narrow financial terms, “Kass emphasized yesterday that his effort to craft a new legislative agenda on cloning, stem cells and related issues was independent of his role as chairman of Bush's bioethics council and that no federal resources have been used by the group, which he said has no name.”

For someone with expertise in ethics this is particularly ironic. (On the issue of independence, consider that if it were, say, a philosophy professor from a university in Texas developing a proposal on bioethics, it is unlikely that the proposal would be reported about in the Washington Post.) If Kass wants to be a political advocate, then he should resign his position of the Bioethics Council and join one of the many conservative advocacy groups that are truly independent of the Bioethics Council. If he wants to serve as an honest broker to the nation as chair of the Bioethics Council, then he should recognize that this means deferring his desire to serve as a political advocate advancing special interests. But he does have to choose, because he can’t do both.

Posted on March 9, 2005 09:32 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Biotechnology

March 08, 2005

Cherry Picking, CBA, GAO and EPA

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report yesterday critical of the cost benefit analysis (CBA) used by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as justification for its proposed approach to the control or mercury. The GAO found,

“GAO identified four major shortcomings in the economic analysis underlying EPA’s proposed mercury control options that limit its usefulness for informing decision makers about the economic trade-offs of the different policy options. First, while Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance directs agencies to identify a policy that produces the greatest net benefits, EPA’s analysis is of limited use in doing so because the agency did not consistently analyze the options or provide an estimate of the total costs and benefits of each option… Second, EPA did not document some of its analysis or provide information on how changes in the proposed level of mercury control would affect the cost-and-benefit estimates for the technology-based option, as it did for the cap-and-trade option. Third, EPA did not estimate the value of the health benefits directly related to decreased mercury emissions and instead estimated only some secondary benefits, such as decreased exposure to har!
mful fine particles. However, EPA has asked for comments on a methodology to estimate the benefits directly related to mercury. Fourth, EPA did not analyze some of the key uncertainties underlying its cost-and benefit estimates.”

At issue here is the inevitable conflict between having an agency responsible for developing an honest-broker approach to inventing and considering policy options while at the same time having a clear preference for one of those options. This sets the stage for a clear conflict between analysis and advocacy. It is a bit like putting an intelligence agency under the Department of Defense. As the Washington Post reported today, “the EPA had tipped the scales to favor the market-based plan.”

The GAO’s recommendation to EPA to reconsider their cost-benefit analysis does not appear to go far enough in dealing with the structural reforms needed to insure the institutional independence and authority needed to proffer analyses free from political suasion.

Posted on March 8, 2005 10:06 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

New Project WWW Page

We are collaborating on a new project with colleagues at the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University. The project is called Science Policy Assessment and Research on Climate or SPARC and it is sponsored by the National Science Foundation’s program on Decision Making Under Uncertainty.

SPARC has a new webpage here. This is how we describe the project,

“Each day, in the face of deep uncertainty, millions of decisions are made that respond to and influence the behavior of climate. How does the nation’s multi-billion dollar investment in climate research affect those decisions? How can the societal value of this scientific investment be enhanced? These are the core organizing questions for Science Policy Assessment and Research on Climate (SPARC) which conducts research and assessments, outreach, and education aimed at helping climate science policies better support climate-related decision making in the face of fundamental and often irreducible uncertainties.”

For those interested in climate science policy, the site offers a number of resources, now in their infancy. There is a library, a weblog - Metis and a guide to our research.

SPARC and its website are evolving. We’d welcome your feedback.

Posted on March 8, 2005 10:04 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

March 07, 2005

Indian Ocean Tsunami and NOAA's Liability

Today's Baltimore Sun contains an op-ed by Daniel Lyons, a Harvard Law School student, discussing the possibility of a lawsuit against the U.S. government for its role in warning countries affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami. He writes,

"Recently, attorney Edward Fagan announced he would file a class-action lawsuit in New York against the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. Incredibly, Mr. Fagan alleges the Hawaii-based research facility should be held liable for failing to warn the world about an earthquake that happened nearly 7,000 miles away in an ocean the institute does not study."

For news stories describing the lawsuit see here and here.

A few years ago Bobbie Klein and I collaborated on a set of papers that sought to summarize the issue of legal liability in the public and private sectors for weather forecasts.

(PDF) Klein, R.A. and R.A. Pielke, Jr., 2002: Bad Weather? Then Sue the Weatherman! A review of legal liability for predictions and forecasts: Part I, Public Sector. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 83:1791-1799.

(PDF) Klein, R.A. and R.A. Pielke, Jr., 2002: Bad Weather? Then Sue the Weatherman! A review of legal liability for predictions and forecasts: Part II, Private Sector. Bulletin of American Meteorological Society, 83: 1800-1807.

We found that "In general, claims against the federal government based on weather forecasting or failing to issue weather warnings have been (and likely will continue to be)resolved in favor of the government on the basis of immunity under the Federal Tort Claims Act." Before proceeding with a discussion of the tsunami, a disclaimer - I am not a lawyer and you are reading a weblog.

OK, here is my two cents on a "tsunami lawsuit." There are various jurisdictions in which a lawsuit might be filed against the U.S. government including federal court, state court and under international law. With respect to federal jurisdiction, history would suggest that the prospects for winning a lawsuit against NOAA are slim to none. Here is what we wrote in our paper,

"... the federal government continues to be immune from lawsuits based on the exercise or failure to exercise a discretionary function or duty, whether or not the discretion is abused (the "discretionary function" exception), as well as from lawsuits arising out of misrepresentation (the "misrepresentation" exception) [28 U.S.C. sec. 2680(a), (h)]. Courts will dismiss a lawsuit against the government without reaching a decision on the merits of the suit if one of these exceptions applies... if a mandatory statute, regulation, or policy leaves no room for discretion and the government complies with the mandate, it is shielded from liability. If the government violates that mandate, it is not shielded from liability. If the government is granted discretion, a strong presumption arises that its decisions are grounded in policy and thus the government is shielded from liability. To get around the discretionary function exception a plaintiff would have to show that the challenged decision, though discretionary, is not grounded in the policy of the regulatory regime. Gaubert made clear that decisions made at the operational level as well as those at the policy-making or planning level are covered by the discretionary function exception if they involve choice and judgment."

There are exceptions however, but they do not seem to be relevant in the case of the tsunami.

"However, it would be too strong a statement to say that the federal government will never face a liability risk in its forecasting enterprise. In instances where all discretion has been removed, if other FTCA requirements were met, the government's failure to follow a mandatory statute, regulation, or policy could expose it to liability... in U.S. v. Gaubert, the U.S. Supreme Court established a two-part test to decide whether the FTCA's discretionary function exception applies. The first part examines whether the challenged conduct was truly discretionary- that is, whether it involved an element of judgment or choice. This requirement is not satisfied-and the suit may therefore proceed-in circumstances where a "federal statute, regulation, or policy specifically prescribes a course of action for an employee to follow," because "the employee has no rightful option but to adhere to the directive." If the conduct involved choice or discretion, the second part of the test requires that the court "determine whether that judgment is of the kind that the discretionary function exception was designed to shield." Because the discretionary function exception's purpose is to "prevent judicial 'second guessing' of legislative and administrative decisions grounded in social, economic, and political policy through the medium of an action in tort," the exception "protects only governmental actions and decisions based on considerations of public policy." When a statute or regulation allows a federal employee to act with discretion, "it must be presumed that the agent's acts are grounded in policy when exercising that discretion." The focus of the inquiry is on the nature of the actions taken and "whether they are susceptible to policy analysis.""

In short, the lawsuit seems pretty far-fetched and frivolous to me. Though if its purpose is to get some publicity, then it has served its purpose.

Note: There is a separate issue currently being debated in the weather community and that is whether or not NOAA's performance could have better during the tsunami if they were focused more on their core mission. This claim has been raised by Barry Myers of AccuWeather and has received a response from the NWS. If debate continues on this subject we'll discuss it, but for now it looks like continuation of the decades-long squabble between the NWS and the commercial weather industry, a topic discussed in depth here.

For further reading:

Loper, R. B., 1988: Red sky in the morning, forecasters take warning: The liability of meteorologists for negligent weather forecasts. Texas Law Rev., 66, 683-713.

Posted on March 7, 2005 10:08 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

March 02, 2005

Adaptation and Climate Policy

In 2002 the World Health Organization reported that, “Climate change was estimated to be responsible in 2000 for approximately 2.4% of worldwide diarrhoea, 6% of malaria in some middle income countries and 7% of dengue fever in some industrialized countries. In total, the attributable mortality was 154 000 (0.3%) deaths …” For the sake of discussion lets assume that this number is not only correct, but that each of the 154,000 deaths are the consequence of climate changes resulting from greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere.

Now consider an editorial in The New York Times from earlier this week,

“Throughout the continent of Africa, thousands of people die needlessly every day from diseases like AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. One hundred years ago, before we had the medical know-how to eradicate these illnesses, this might have been acceptable. But we are the first generation able to afford to end poverty and the diseases it spawns. It's past time we step up to the plate. We are all responsible for choosing to view the tsunami victims in Southeast Asia as more deserving of our help than the malaria victims in Africa. Jeffrey Sachs, the economist who heads the United Nations' Millennium Development Project to end global poverty, rightly takes issue with the press in his book "The End of Poverty": "Every morning," Mr. Sachs writes, "our newspapers could report, 'More than 20,000 people perished yesterday of extreme poverty.' " So, on this page, we'd like to make a first step. Yesterday, more than 20,000 people perished of extreme poverty.”

At 20,000 deaths per day, this equates to 7,300,000 deaths per year. So the ratio of poverty deaths to putative climate change deaths is about 50 to 1.

Does this mean that we should not worry about climate change? No.
Does this mean that we should emit greenhouse gases with reckless abandon? No.

What it does mean is that efforts to justify greenhouse gas mitigation policies on preventing human impacts run up against the reality that if it is human lives that you really care about, then there are obvious, straightforward and comparatively inexpensive ways to reduce human death and suffering that do not involve first reordering the global energy system.

Further, reducing greenhouse gases, per se, will do little or nothing to address the 7.3 million deaths from poverty each year, but addressing the conditions that lead to those 7.3 million deaths has the side benefit of also addressing those very same contributing factors that lead to the 0.15 million deaths attributed to climate change.

From this perspective, adaptation to climate change by focusing on reducing societal vulnerability to climate-related impacts deserves a much more prominent role in discussion of climate change. At the same time, advocates of climate mitigation should think carefully about the use of human death and suffering as a justification for adoption of greenhouse gas emissions -- the numbers don’t make a strong case.

For further reading:

Sarewitz, D., and R.A. Pielke, Jr., 2005. Rising Tide, The New Republic, January 6. (PDF)

Posted on March 2, 2005 01:57 PM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

March 01, 2005

Swiss Re on Disasters

Not too long ago I took Munich Re to task for hyping the connection of disasters and climate change. In stark contrast, Swiss Re, another large reinsurer has issued a report on 2004 disasters that is much more consistent with the current state of scientific knowledge on climate impacts (for a summary see here and here).

Here is what Swiss Re says in its Sigma publication about 2004.

“Is there a connection between high windstorm losses and global warming?

What is the reason for this profusion of windstorm losses in 2004? Is it in some way connected with the global warming that has been so much in evidence in recent decades? It is difficult to say whether and how climate change is having an impact on loss experience, because individual events cannot be cited as proof for or against the effects of climate change.

Rising insured assets and population densities....

More obvious than the influence of global warming is that of ongoing economic, demographic and geographic changes: in the period 1970-2004, the value of insured assets, for example residential, industrial and office buildings, rose rapidly in the industrialized nations. In the line with this rise, insured losses due to natural catastrophes have been following a distinct upward trend since 1970. More and more highly exposed areas, for example storm-prone coast-lines, are being opened up for property development or are becoming even more densely populated.”

Posted on March 1, 2005 04:49 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Risk & Uncertainty

New Paper

Dan Sarewitz and I have a perspective piece out in Population and Environment that provides an updated perspective on ideas that we have been writing about for several years now. The paper is titled, “Bringing Society back into the Climate Debate” and it can be found here.

Here is the abstract:

“Debate over climate change focuses narrowly on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. A common justification for such emissions reductions is that they will lead to a reduction in the future impacts of climate on society. But research from social scientists and others who study environment–society interactions clearly indicates that the dominant factors shaping the impacts of climate on society are societal. A greater appreciation for this body of research would allow for consideration of a broader base of policy options to respond to the challenges of climate change, as well as the composition of climate research portfolios more likely to contribute useful knowledge to decision makers.”

Read the whole thing. We welcome comments and reactions.

Posted on March 1, 2005 04:45 PM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

February 28, 2005

Money, Conflicts of Interest and Openness

On February 20, 2005 Gardiner Harris wrote in the New York Times about the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) deliberations that led to recent coverage about an advisory committee's decision to support use of three drugs, Vioxx, Bextra and Celebrex. Gardiner's article suggests that the FDA is moving toward a new culture of openness.

"Instead of certainty, the agency embraced doubt. Instead of presenting a united front, agency officials bickered openly. Instead of keeping secret its dealings with drug companies, the agency gave a public accounting of lengthy and contentious negotiations with the drug maker Merck... These changes were not voluntary. The FDA has been forced by a series of embarrassing scandals over the past year to transform its "Daddy knows best" culture... [Dr. Lester M. Crawford, head of the FDA said] "Our culture, which has received some criticism in recent months is not to alarm the public when we get a signal. That era is sort of past. What the public, we think, is demanding to know as soon as we know what's going on. And they are fully prepared and adult enough to interpret whether or not this is a final decision." To be sure, the changes so far have been relatively small. But the tentative steps made at this week's meeting seemed to go well, and agency officials have promised more."

Well, be careful what you wish for. Only 5 days later the New York Times reported,

"Ten of the 32 government drug advisers who last week endorsed continued marketing of the huge-selling pain pills Celebrex, Bextra and Vioxx have consulted in recent years for the drugs' makers, according to disclosures in medical journals and other public records. If the 10 advisers had not cast their votes, the committee would have voted 12 to 8 that Bextra should be withdrawn and 14 to 8 that Vioxx should not return to the market. The 10 advisers with company ties voted 9 to 1 to keep Bextra on the market and 9 to 1 for Vioxx's return."

[Note: The information was gathered by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and can be found here.]

The findings of the CSPI are incredible. They show a profound difference in voting between those on the FDA advisory committee with financial ties to the companies producing the Cox-2 drugs and those on the advisory committees without such ties. The apparent solution to this situation - to simply bar those with such conflicts from participating in advisory committees - may not be the best course of action in all such situations. Conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise, are a difficult policy problem in the federal scientific advisory structure.

What is a "conflict of interest" anyway?

In 1993, Harvard's Dennis Thompson provided a useful definition of conflict of interest in The New England Journal of Medicine:

"A conflict of interest is a set of conditions in which professional judgment concerning a primary interest (such as a patient's welfare or the validity of research) tends to be unduly influenced by a secondary influence (such as financial gain)... The secondary interest is usually not illegitimate in itself, and indeed it may even be a necessary and desirable part of professional practice. Only its relative weight in professional decisions is problematic. The aim is not to eliminate or necessarily to reduce financial gain or other secondary interests (such as preference for family and friends or the desire for prestige and power). It is rather to prevent these secondary factors from dominating or appearing to dominate the relevant primary interest in the making of professional decisions."

Reference: Thompson D. F., 1993. Understanding Financial Conflicts of Interest. The New England Journal of Medicine, 329:573-576.

It is safe, I think, to say that financial gain (personal or professional) is among those "secondary influences" that has great potential to influence the advice proffered by experts. But the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which is the legislation that describes the terms for advisory committees to provide advice to government, provides little guidance on what to do about such secondary interests. Here is how one government official described in congressional testimony the provisions of FACA with respect to conflicts of interest:

"The Act does not include provisions covering individual committee member conflicts of interest. The applicability of conflict of interest laws and various ethical requirements for members of advisory committees who serve as Special Government Employees (SGEs), are covered by other laws and regulations issued by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. The Act, however, does include two important provisions designed to promote the objectivity of advisory committee deliberations. First, sections 5(b)(2) and (c) require that "the membership of the advisory committee be fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented and the functions to be performed by the committee." Second, sections 5(b)(3) and (c) require "provisions to assure that the advice and recommendations will not be inappropriately influenced by the appointing authority or by any special interest, but will instead be the result of the advisory committee's independent judgment." Thus, while the Act stresses the importance of assuring an advisory committee's independent judgment, it also requires that the composition of advisory committees reflect the expertise and interests that are necessary to accomplish the committee's mission. The Act does not define those factors that should be considered in achieving "balance.""

[Note: based on this testimony, it would seem that the CSPI is simply wrong when it asserted that the composition of the FDA advisory panel violated the FACA. For background see this overview by Deborah Stein.]

The existence of possible financial conflicts of interest raises some difficult questions, such as:

At what level does a secondary influence become problematic? For a doctor making $250,000 per year, is $5,000 significant? $1,000?

Is a speaking fee (for a lecture) to be treated the same as consulting fees (for work done)?

How should industry-sponsored research funding be handled? It may be the case that the people with the most expertise on the effects of particular drugs are those who have overseen studies sponsored by the industries seeking approval of the drugs.

How should government-sponsored research be handled? Is government research properly considered a secondary interest?

And how far should we go with considerations of finances? Oklahoma Republican Senator James M. Inhofe has raised a few eyebrows by asking a group that has testified before congress on air quality issues to release its financial statements for the past few years. The approach taken by Senator Inhofe does seem pretty heavy handed, but substantively is it any more improper to want to see financial support for an NGO offering government advice than to want to see the same for an FDA advisory committee member?

And what about non-financial secondary interests, such as political, religious and other factors. Are these important? Presumably they are. (E.g., religion would seem to matter on advice on teaching of evolution and there have been many instances in recent years of complaints about the political views of members of federal advisory committees.)

Questions such as these (and there are more) suggest that once one moves beyond the instinctive reflex of suggesting that conflicts of interest should be settled on a case-by-case basis in line with one's own values, it becomes more difficult to identify general policies and procedures to deal with values, interests and the -- for lack of a better term - the quintessential humanness of participants in the political process proffering policy advice. This is a subject worth the attention of the science policy community.

But one point does seem exceedingly clear. Early disclosure of interests and values would seem to be a good thing. And in this regard the FDA is moving in the right direction, but the events of the past week show that it still has a way to go.

Posted on February 28, 2005 09:11 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health

February 25, 2005

More on Why Politics and IPCC Matters

The following is a statement on climate change from earlier this week of Dick Taverne,, a Liberal Democrat in the U.K. Parliament House of Lords. The statement provides more evidence why it is important for the IPCC to ruthlessly protect its position as an "honest broker" on climate policy.

Lord Taverne expresses concerns about the IPCC being "sexed up" and says, "There is a sort of political taboo about the [climate] issue. If you express doubts, you must be in the pay of the oil industry or a Bush supporter. There is a slight whiff of eco-McCarthyism about."

Some might respond to Lord Taverne with a barrage of science and contextual emendations to the examples that he cites. This in my view would be a mistake. Lord Taverne already expresses, "I support measures to curb emissions of carbon dioxide." The more effective response in my view would be for the IPCC to view Lord Taverne's statement as evidence of the effects of the politicization of climate science on those who are the desired audience for the science, and to take those steps necessary to protect its role as an honest broker on climate policy. Looking to the structure of its first assessment report would be a good place to start.

Here is Lord Taverne's complete statement.

"My Lords, I have no very clear view about climate change. Indeed, I am somewhat worried that many people seem to be so sure. The issue is one of great complexity. There are so many factors that interact and have to be judged over such a long timescale that it makes predictions hazardous. About 75 per cent of experts-most, although not all, as some claim-agree that man-made greenhouse gases are a significant factor in global warning and everyone agrees that global warming is taking place. I feel that I must accept that majority view about the contribution of man-made factors, but how much warming will there be, how soon will it happen, what effect will it have and what should we do about it?

On the one hand, there are Sir David King's persuasive warnings both in his evidence to the committee and in his Zuckerman lecture; then there are reports of the melting of the glaciers-to which the noble Lord, Lord Haworth, referred in his eloquent maiden speech-and the polar ice, the recent findings of the heating of the oceans and the potential changes to the Gulf Stream. All of those suggest that we may be facing imminent catastrophe-by imminent, I mean some time in the next 50 to 100 years. Yet, let me list some doubts. The first, the hockey stick model often cited by the IPCC, which shows centuries of no rise in warming with a sudden increase as we started the massive use of fossil fuels has been effectively discredited by Hans Von Storch and others and also by Macintyre and McKitrick who demonstrated that the model was so designed that whatever data is fed into it ends up with a hockey stick curve.

Next, the IPCC's future scenarios are based on economic forecasts. These have been convincingly shown by David Henderson and Ian Castles, two eminent economists, to be flawed. It is likely that they exaggerate future emissions of greenhouse gases. The cavalier dismissal of this careful critique by the panel's president shows him to be a partisan advocate and not an objective chairman. He also likened Lomborg to Hitler. He does not inspire confidence.

An early draft of the IPCC's report stated cautiously that:

"Studies . . . suggest that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are a substantial contributor to the observed warming, especially over the last 30 years. However, the accuracy of these estimates continues to be limited by uncertainties in estimates of variability, natural and anthropogenic forcing, and the climate response to external forcing".

The final summary report said something slightly different-more definite:

"In the light of new evidence and taking into account remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely"-

that means, by their definition, a 66 per cent to 90 per cent chance-

"to be due to greenhouse gas concentrations".

The document seems to have been sexed up.

Recently, Dr Landsea, the Panel's leading hurricane expert, resigned in protest, because the IPCC attributed recent hurricanes to global warming. One year's events were taken as evidence, but, interestingly, barometric fluctuations in Stockholm have shown no systematic change in the frequency and severity of storms since Napoleon's time.

There is evidence that ocean levels in the Maldives are steady and have not risen significantly in the past 1,000 years. There is photographic evidence showing high-water marks in the past higher than those at present.

Next, do we know what percentage of warming is due to solar activity? Some experts say 30 per cent, some say 70 per cent to 80 per cent. What of clouds and aerosols, which can have a cooling effect?

I mention these uncertainties, not because I am a climate change denier, but because we should not be dogmatic. There is a sort of political taboo about the issue. If you express doubts, you must be in the pay of the oil industry or a Bush supporter. There is a slight whiff of eco-McCarthyism about.

I support measures to curb emissions of carbon dioxide, of which the most important would be, first, investment in nuclear energy and then carbon sequestration. I do not see it as a mortal sin to question the Kyoto Protocol, which will reduce warming by one-fiftieth of a degree Celsius by 2050, at considerable economic cost. I doubt if its targets will be reached, and there are no sanctions if they are not. I suspect that there will be less costly and more effective ways of dealing with whatever prospects lie ahead than the Kyoto straitjacket."

Posted on February 25, 2005 07:37 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

February 24, 2005

More on Cat Models

Last year a student of mine, Edouard von Herberstein, wrote a fantastic master's thesis on the use of catastrophe models in insurance and reinsurance decision making. It is hard to find on our WWW site, so it is worth highlighting. Here is the abstract:

Hurricane risk pricing, catastrophe models, and data quality: Why it matters and what should be done about it?

Over the past 20 years, the colossal increase in computing power has allowed computers to simulate very complex systems that require millions of calculations and operations per second. Simulation software is frequently used to forecast weather, exchange rates fluctuations, stock price movement, or global climate. In most cases, computer simulation is the only available tool generating forecasts from complex models. Assuming that the use of more information in more complex simulators reduces uncertainty, decision makers often incorporate these forecasts in their decision processes. In some cases, decision makers give simulation tool results a very large weight in their final decision.

Catastrophe models are a good illustration of very complex computer simulations that largely drive business decisions in the insurance and reinsurance industries. But just as in global climate models, the sensitivity and uncertainty in catastrophe models should not be overlooked when using model output in decision-making. In this project ENVS graduate student Edouard von Herberstein proposes a method to assess the sensitivity of insurance pricing methods to data quality and questions whether these pricing techniques efficiently use the information in hurricane loss models.

See Edouard's complete report here.

Posted on February 24, 2005 12:42 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Risk & Uncertainty

Catastrophe Models: Boon or Bane?

I just returned from a meeting where I had a chance to discuss the role of "catastrophe models" in insurance and reinsurance. Upon returning I thought that it might be worth revisiting an essay I wrote six years ago for a newsletter that we used to publish called the WeatherZine. Here is the essay in full:

WeatherZine, February, 1999

The 1990s have seen the rise of the catastrophe modeling industry in response to demand, primarily from the insurance industry, for quantification of risk. Decision makers seek from catastrophe models some estimate of the risk that they face due to extreme events like hurricanes or earthquakes. A typical model will incorporate information on weather (e.g., hurricane landfall and wind speed probabilities), insurance (e.g., the value of exposed property), and damage potential (e.g., engineering, building materials, construction, codes). The model uses these data to calculate things like probable maximum loss, annual expected loss, and losses due to a specific event. Insured losses are typically much smaller than total economic losses in a catastrophe. Catastrophe models have become fundamental to the existence of financial products such as catastrophe bonds and futures. Even the United States government has begun to develop its own catastrophe models to aid its Federal Emergency Management Agency response to disasters. Clearly, with so many decision makers wanting to understand risk, the rise of the catastrophe model industry should be applauded. But there is reason for hesitation: No one knows how well the models actually perform.

Evaluation of predictions of any sort can be tricky. It involves more than just comparing the prediction with what actually unfolds. For example, in the late 1800s a scientist predicted days on which tornadoes would or would not occur with 96% accuracy. This seemed like a truly remarkable feat until someone noticed that predicting "no tornadoes" every day would have given a 98.5% accuracy rate! For a prediction to show "skill" it must outperform a simple prediction based on persistence. In weather forecasting the simple prediction is climatology; in economics it is called the nave forecast; mutual fund managers use the performance of the S&P 500 as a benchmark. While some in the insurance industry have sought to evaluate models against actual events and historical losses, there exists no community-wide benchmark for evaluation, leaving most users in the dark as to how well the models actually predict catastrophe losses. The State of Florida and particular companies have invested significant effort to evaluate the models, but for the most part these evaluations are based on qualitative criteria such as the credentials of the modelers and whether or not the results "look realistic."

Historically, catastrophe losses have not been particularly amenable to the development of such a benchmark because there is such dramatic change over time in the context in which losses occur. This means that one cannot generate a simple estimate of expected losses based on what has occurred in the past, as actuaries typically do for the insurance industry. Consider that the great Miami hurricane of 1926 caused an inflation-adjusted $100 million in losses. But Miami had only about 100,000 residents at the time. Comparing the losses of 1926 with potential losses of today is like comparing apples and oranges. Even comparing Andrew's losses in 1992 with today's potential losses can mislead. Indeed, underestimates of risk based on improperly aggregating losses over time is one factor that stimulated the rise of the catastrophe model industry.

But even with the difficulties associated with placing catastrophe losses on an actuarial basis, it has been done. Traveler's Insurance Company for many years adjusted catastrophe losses for changing societal conditions as part of an in-house research capability. More recently, work by Changnon et al. (1996) and Pielke and Landsea (1998) have sought to respectively adjust crop/property insurance losses and hurricane losses for changes in society. Such adjustments, properly done for the insurance industry, could form the basis of a community (i.e., public) benchmark against which to evaluate catastrophe models. A catastrophe model would have skill if it were shown to outperform the benchmark. The degree to which the model outperforms the benchmark would determine its relative skill as compared to other models.

On the one hand, it seems logical that evaluation of catastrophe models would be in the interests of the users of the models, but it would also benefit the developers of the models. Public information on relative skill of the models would aid in marketing and pricing of their services. On the other hand, it is also important to recognize that for a subset of users of catastrophe models, the performance of the models is less important than their mere existence. Because the models exist, they allow for the quantification of risk. Because risk can be quantified, financial instruments like bonds and futures can be created and traded in the financial markets. Significant financial returns result to those companies that create and manage these financial instruments made possible by the existence of catastrophe models. And for the most part, these are not the same companies that bear the risk of a catastrophic loss. In the war against catastrophe losses, they are making the bullets, so to speak. This is perhaps one reason why there has not been a greater push to evaluate catastrophe models in a public forum.

Given experience with multi-tens-of-billions of dollars in losses in Hurricane Andrew in Miami and the Great Hanshin Earthquake in Kobi, it is only prudent to ask about the consequences of once again failing to properly calculate the risks of catastrophic losses. Catastrophe models have provided decision makers with a means to better estimate risk, but at the same time in catastrophe bonds and other instruments decision makers have created products that depend upon greater accuracy in awareness of risk. Catastrophe models are here to stay and will likely be used to develop ever more precise predictions of risk (e.g., at the zip code or even household level). Because most everyone pays taxes or has insurance, it would seem to be in the common interest to know how well the models predict by developing a public approach to the evaluation of catastrophe models - before events show us that we waited too long.

For further reading see the publications of Rade Muslin at: http://www.ffbic.com/actuary/papers/index.html; and particularly his paper on "Issues in the Regulatory Acceptance of Computer Modeling for Property Insurance Ratemaking", Journal of Insurance Regulation, Spring, 1997, pp. 342-359. (You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open.)

Posted on February 24, 2005 12:03 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Risk & Uncertainty

February 23, 2005

Marburger’s Prepared Remarks from CU

We have posted John Marburger’s (President Bush’s science advisor) prepared remarks (PDF) delivered at the University of Colorado on February 14, 2005 during our first science advisor symposium. Here is an excerpt,

“The advisory arrangements have changed relatively little since 1950. Presidential science advisors are still mostly physicists known to each other, and national security is still an important focus of science advice (with a new homeland security angle). Given the enormous changes that have occurred in the landscape of science and the technical infrastructure of society, this invariance of the government machinery for science is mildly surprising. It speaks, perhaps, to the wisdom of the postwar policy architects, but it should also awaken a concern that the structure and practice of science policy today may diverge from the functions it needs to perform in a dynamic society...”

Marburger quotes extensively from “two of his favorite articles on science policy,”

“Daniel Sarewitz's 2003 essay "Does Science Policy Exist, and if so Does it Matter?" (available on the website of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University www.cspo.org). At the far end, on the leading edge of the dramatic leap in federal science funding in the early 60's, is Alvin Weinberg's 1961 article "Impact of Large-Scale Science on the United States" [Science magazine vol. 134, 161 (1961)].”

He read an extended quote from Weinberg, making the point that we continue to have, “the need to understand the likely impact on society of different patterns of investment. Here are Weinberg's own words on the matter:

"…it is presumptuous for me to urge that we study biology on earth rather than biology in space, or physics in the nuclear binding-energy region, with its clear practical applications and its strong bearing on the rest of science, rather than physics in the Bev region, with its absence of practical applications and its very slight bearing on the rest of science. What I am urging is that these choices have become matters of high national policy. We cannot allow our over-all science strategy, when it involves such large sums, to be settled by default, or to be pre-empted by the group with the most skillful publicity department. We should have extensive debate on these over-all questions of scientific choice: we should make a choice, explain it, and then have the courage to stick to a course arrived at rationally."

Marburger continues,

“I think one of the important roles of OSTP and national science advisors is to introduce such considerations into the complex process of requesting and appropriating resources, and not simply to be an advocate for everything any scientist wants to do, or to go along with societal inclinations that may be shaped, as Weinberg put it, more by public relations than by an objective assessment of importance to society. The extraordinary flowering of technology in the post WWII period has produced an unprecedented frontier of opportunity in science fields that are strongly linked to societal needs. The expense of pursuing these makes Weinberg's plea even more appropriate today than forty years ago.”

This is strong stuff from any scientists, much less a science advisor. Read Marburger’s remarks here. As soon as we can, we will post on Prometheus notice of when the transcript of my public interview with Marburger is available, which gets into a wide range of issues such as climate change, politicization of science and evolution. Stay tuned. Meantime, keep up with our science advisors series and associated events here.

Note: Sarewitz’s article referred to by Marburger can be found here (PDF).

Posted on February 23, 2005 09:54 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

February 22, 2005

Politicizing Politicization

A widely run Associated Press article yesterday by Paul Recer reminded me how difficult it is to get good analysis from the media (or anybody else) on the issue of the politicization of science. The article included the following,

“The voice of science is being stifled in the Bush administration, with fewer scientists heard in policy discussions and money for research and advanced training being cut, according to panelists at a national science meeting [AAAS meeting in DC]… Rosina Bierbaum, dean of the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment, said the Bush administration has cut scientists out of some of the policy-making processes, particularly on environmental issues… Under Bush, said Bierbaum, the questioning of the proven science has become more important than finding ways to cope with climate change. One result of such actions, said Neal Lane of Rice University, a former director of the National Science Foundation, is that "we don't really have a policy right now to deal with what everybody agrees is a serious problem"…”

It seems to me that some important context was overlooked in this article. It should have noted that Rosina Bierbaum and Neil Lane were both political appointees in the Clinton Administration’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, with Lane serving as presidential science advisor and Bierbaum as one of his deputies. Of course, the following headline just doesn’t have the same zing, “Former Clinton Officials Criticize Bush Science Policies.”

Supporters of President Bush would be unlikely to point out this obvious conflict of interests because by doing so they would draw attention to some real concerns associated with the president’s handling of scientific issues (e.g., see here). Opponents of the president are even more unlikely to point out this conflict because the article was obviously written to score political points.

In 2003 I wrote an essay about the politicization of the politicization of science. Here is an excerpt,

“It has become fashionable for combatants engaged in political debate on topics such as global warming, genetically modified organisms, and stem cell research to highlight the negative consequences for both science and policy making of politicizing science. For example, in the United States Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) recently issued a report alleging that the administration of George Bush systematically abuses science in support of its ideological agenda. And the Hoover Institution published a book – Politicizing Science – which disparages the alleged misuse of science in support of environmental regulation. Making sense of these sorts of accusations is difficult because the accusers are typically far from disinterested observers. Mr. Waxman is engaged in political battle with the Bush administration and many of the authors of essays in the Hoover book are long-time opponents of environmental regulations, as is the Hoover Institution in general… It is ironic that expressions of concern about the politicization of science have become another way for ideologues to advance their particular agendas. In other words, we are witnessing the politicizing of the politicization of science… Politicization of science is a problem, irrespective of the ideology of those doing the politicizing. Our scientific enterprise is too important to allow putative concerns about the politicization of science to become just another weapon in partisan battle.”

It is clear that there is an ample supply of people willing to use concern over the politicization of science as a political bludgeon to score points on the Bush Administration. It is also clear that there are plenty of others aligned with the Bush Administration willing to do exactly the opposite. The question I have is, where are the analysts (including reporters) who care about the politicization of science irrespective of possible advantages that are lent to today’s partisan political battles?

Posted on February 22, 2005 08:18 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

February 21, 2005

Data and Salt

Nature reported last week that a lawsuit is underway to force researchers to reveal the original data that was used in a study that was used to justify a recommendation that all Americans cut back on their salt intake.

“As early as this summer, for example, a US Court of Appeals will judge a plea from the Virginia-based Salt Institute, which represents salt producers. The institute wants direct access to the data behind a study that linked salt consumption to high blood pressure. The trial, funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), studied the impact of dietary sodium intake on blood pressure and the results were published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine and The American Journal of Cardiology. They showed that reducing dietary sodium lowers blood pressure in most people, and this led the government to recommend that Americans consume less salt. Researchers in the trial say that they have released all the data the Salt Institute could want or need — and that it is misusing the act. "It is trying to slice and dice the data set so it finds a group that seems not to have a blood pressure that's responsive to reduction in salt," says Lawrence Appel, a physician at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, and one of the trial's principal investigators. "That's blatantly inconsistent with a scientific approach to analysing clinical data." Last month, the Salt Institute and the US Chamber of Commerce asked the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a decision by a lower court in Virginia. That court had ruled that the NHLBI was within its rights in refusing to release the data that had been requested.”

The lawsuit is being filed under the Data Quality Act (which we discussed here). One of the provisions of the DQA, according to a 2003 news article in Science is that, “According to the White House Office of Management and Budget's interpretation of the act, which took effect last October, agencies that promulgate "influential" results may have to provide enough data and methods for a "qualified member of the public" to conduct a reanalysis.”

The salt case raises some important questions about what is popularly called the “democratization of science.” Arizona State’s David Guston provides a definition,

“Democratizing science does not mean settling questions about Nature by plebiscite, any more than democratizing politics means setting the prime rate by referendum. What democratization does mean, in science as elsewhere, is creating institutions and practices that fully incorporate principles of accessibility, transparency, and accountability.”

Who should have access to data, analytical tools and results of publicly funded research? And particularly that research which is used to justify important decisions?

These are important questions of science policy and the salt case will go some way towards clarifying policy for (lack of) transparency and (non) disclosure in the scientific enterprise. However it turns out, one point seems clear. Demands for transparency and disclosure will increase with the degree to which important decisions are justified based on the results of scientific analyses. For researchers doing policy-relevant work, it is probably a good idea to keep good records.

Posted on February 21, 2005 01:39 PM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

February 18, 2005

Harbingers and Climate Discourse

Over the past year or so, Berkeley linguist George Lakoff has received a lot of attention because of his writing on the framing of political issues and their significance for shaping debate and discourse. (We discussed Lakoff here.) I've thought of framing as I've noticed the apparent increased use by scientists of the unique term "harbinger" to characterize the relationship of contemporary climate events and expected future climate changes. Consider the following examples:

17 Feb 2005 - "Scott L. Schliebe, head of the Fish and Wildlife Service's Polar Bear Project in Anchorage... said "We are seeing harbingers of change which are dictated by climate... It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that [the changes] could affect polar bears..."

3 Feb 2005 - "Steve Schneider from Stanford University, California, said there was clear proof that species were reacting to the 0.7 degrees centigrade warming of the atmosphere that had already taken place over the past century. "This is a harbinger -- nature is already responding,""

7 Nov 2004 - "Four hurricanes in a five-week period could be a harbinger of things to come," said Dr. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School."

21 Oct 2004 - "[Kevin] Trenberth said, "But the evidence strongly
suggests more intense storms and [the] risk of greater flooding events, so that the North Atlantic hurricane season of 2004 may well be a harbinger of the future.''"

23 Sept 2004 - "University of Colorado at Boulder researcher Ted Scambos said... "As temperatures crossed the threshold of melting in the summer months, ice shelves in the area rapidly disintegrated... While the consequences of this area are small compared to other parts of the Antarctic, it is a harbinger of what will happen when the large ice sheets begin to warm""

30 Jan 2003 - "The 1998-2002 drought affected much of the United States as well as southern Europe and southwest Asia. And while they can't be certain, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate scientists Martin Hoerling and Arun Kumar say it may be a harbinger of droughts to come."

And as chance would have it, the term "harbinger" has been proposed by the Union of Concerned Scientists as part of a strategy to advocate support for greenhouse gas reductions to combat climate change. UCS says on its WWW page, "Frustrated because a friend or colleague says global warming is the future's problem? Compelling new evidence demonstrates that global warming is already under way with consequences that must be faced today as well as tomorrow. The evidence is of two kinds:

* Fingerprints of global warming are indicators of the global, long-term warming trend observed in the historical record. They include heat waves, sea-level rise, melting glaciers and warming of the poles.

* Harbingers are events that foreshadow the impacts likely to become more frequent and widespread with continued warming. They include spreading disease, earlier spring arrival, plant and animal range shifts, coral reef bleaching, downpours, and droughts and fires.

UCS is taking steps to bring this evidence to the public's attention, with the goal of building support for action to reduce the heat-trapping gas emissions that cause global warming."

Of course an important role for UCS and other advocacy groups is to work to shape the dialogue on issues. But scientists who use the term "harbinger" in this manner risk playing fast and loose with the science of climate change. It allows a scientist to imply that contemporary events are directly related to CO2-caused climate change but at the very same time it also provides the scientist with a plausible deniability that an explicit connection was implied. It is doublespeak. As Von Storch and Stehr recently wrote,

"... more and more often [scientists] connect current extreme weather events with anthropogenic climate change. To be sure, this is usually carefully formulated; interviews sound something like this: "Is the flooding of the Elbe, the hurricane in Florida, this year's mild winter evidence for the climate catastrophe?" Answer: "That's scientifically unproven. But many people see it that way." Neither of these statements is false. In combination, however, they suggest the conclusion: Of course these weather events are evidence. Only no one ares to say this explicitly either."

Climate science and policy will be better served by scientists who speak directly to the issue of attribution of contemporary events to CO2-caused climate change and not to rely on cute and clever rhetoric.

Posted on February 18, 2005 12:40 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

February 16, 2005

Frankenfood or Fearmongering?

FOSEP, the Forum on Science, Ethics and Policy, is hosted by the Office of Research at the University of Washington, and run by a dedicated group of University of Washington graduate students. They recently sponsored a talk by Michael Rodemeyer of the Pew Initiative on Agricultural Biotechnology on genetically modified foods. The talk is now available online.

Talk details:

"Michael Rodemeyer, J.D.
Executive Director,
Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology

Frankenfood or Fearmongering?
The Science and Politics of Genetically Modified Foods

Friday, February 4, 2005

Last year, American farmers grew more genetically-modified (GM) crops than ever before. About 75% of the processed foods in U.S. stores are estimated to contain ingredients derived from GM crops. Concerns have been raised about food safety and environmental risks, the ethics of seed patenting, and economic impact of GM crops on small farmers. The controversy has spilled over into the international trade arena, leading to a U.S. trade complaint against the EU, where consumer opposition to biotech foods is strong.

Few technologies have generated so much global confusion and conflict as GM food. Why is this technology so controversial? The lecture will review the current state of science on GM crops and discuss the key role of values in shaping public attitudes and the different political responses to the technology around the world."

Posted on February 16, 2005 10:05 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Biotechnology

February 14, 2005

McIntyre on Climate Science Policy

Here at Prometheus we don’t do hockey sticks. (Astute readers will find one oblique reference to it in this paper - PDF.) However, the debate over the hockey stick is worth our attention not only for what it says about the state of climate science and politics, but also because it is significant for how we think about climate science policy. Climate science policy refers to those decisions that we make about climate science, including priorities for research and processes of scientific assessment and evaluation.

Steven McIntyre has posted his thoughts on climate science policy arising from his experiences with taking on the hockey stick. He writes,

“IPCC proponents place great emphasis on the merit of articles that have been “peer reviewed” by a journal. However, as a form of due diligence, journal peer review in the multiproxy climate field is remarkably cursory, as compared with the due diligence of business processes. Peer review for climate publications, even by eminent journals like Nature or Science, is typically a quick unpaid read by two (or sometimes three) knowledgeable persons, usually close colleagues of the author. It is unheard of for a peer reviewer to actually check the data and calculations.”

This observation has also been made in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society in a 2000 commentary by Ron Errico, who writes,

“Too frequently, published papers contain fundamental errors… How can a piece of work be adequately evaluated or duplicated if what was really done or meant is not adequately stated?... My paramount recommendation is that our community acknowledges that a major problem in fact exists and requires ardent attention. Unless this is acknowledged, the community will likely not even consider significant changes. I suspect that too many scientists, especially those with the authority to demand changes, will prefer the status quo.”

Errico’s paper, titled “On the Lack of Accountability in Meteorological Research,” is well worth reading in full. He makes several recommendations that are completely consistent with McIntyre’s recommendations.

McIntyre also comments on the incestuous structure of the IPCC,

“The inattentiveness of IPCC to verification is exacerbated by the lack of independence between authors with strong vested interests in previously published intellectual positions and IPCC section authors… For someone used to processes where prospectuses require qualifying reports from independent geologists, the lack of independence is simply breathtaking and a recipe for problems, regardless of the reasons initially prompting this strange arrangement.”

McIntyre concludes by observing, “Businesses developed checks and balances because other peoples’ money was involved, not because businessmen are more virtuous than academics. Back when paleoclimate research had little implication outside academic seminar rooms, the lack of any adequate control procedures probably didn’t matter much. However, now that huge public policy decisions are based, at least in part, on such studies, sophisticated procedural controls need to be developed and imposed.”

Of course, some scientists will reply to this in exactly opposite fashion, by saying that academics are more virtuous than business people so such checks are unnecessary. But whatever one thinks about the debate over the hockey stick, McIntyre’s views on climate science policy make good sense and are good for the community as a whole.

Posted on February 14, 2005 09:34 AM View this article | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Methane Policy

In The New Republic Gregg Easterbrook describes (subscription required) the Bush Administration’s “Methane to Markets” partnership (EPA site). Easterbrook argues that the Bush Administration has not gotten enough credit in the media for this program, which he characterizes as being as significant as successful implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. He suggests,

“The press corps is pretending the anti-methane initiative does not exist in order to avoid inconvenient complications of the Black Hat versus White Hat narrative it has settled into regarding global warming. In this narrative, the White House is completely ignoring building scientific evidence of artificially triggered climate change; everything Bush does is wicked; everything the enlightened Euros do is noble. The narrative is simple and easy to follow--plus, it's pretty easy to get supporting quotes from Democratic politicians and enviros. The drawback to the narrative is that it isn't true. But why should that stop the nation's reporters and editorialists?”

Easterbrook also observes, “That Bush is not doing enough regarding the greenhouse effect is a different and plausible complaint.”

Easterbrook refers to NASA’s ubiquitous James Hansen to support the importance of methane policy. Hansen wrote five years ago, “Non-CO2 greenhouse gases are probably the main cause of observed global warming, with CH4 causing the largest net climate forcing. There are economic incentives to reduce or capture CH4 emissions, but global implementation of appropriate practices requires international cooperation.” (The full peer-reviewed paper can be found here – PDF.)

Four years ago Easterbrook advocated a methane-first approach and explained why he thought it would meet resistance:

“Last year James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a NASA affiliate, began to champion a methane-first approach. But, for ideological and geopolitical reasons, the idea has yet to catch on. Enviros laud Hansen for declaring in 1988 that he was "ninety-nine percent" certain an artificial greenhouse effect had begun. But many grow spitting mad when he suggests that action against methane offers more bang for the buck than action against carbon dioxide. What the hard-core enviros want is punitive fossil-fuel restrictions that screw big oil and big coal; a relatively painless global-warming fix that lets fossil fuel off the hook would leave the movement's left heartbroken. Moderate enviros worry that a methane-first strategy would cause complacency about carbon dioxide emissions, though Hansen always makes clear that something will eventually need to be done about carbon, too.”

Easterbrook continues this argument in this week’s TNR,

“Yet reporters who write reams about carbon dioxide rarely mention methane, and some environmentalists become actively upset when the potential for methane reduction is raised. Why? Because the United States is the world's number-one emitter of carbon dioxide. (At least for the moment; if current trends hold, China will pass us.) Keeping the focus on carbon dioxide is the blame-America-first strategy. The European Union, on the other hand, is a leading emitter of methane, given the natural-gas energy economies of many Western European nations. Talk about methane reduction makes Europe uneasy. In the regnant global warming narrative, the United States is always bad and the European Union is always good. Raising the methane issue complicates that narrative.”

However one feels about methane policy, Easterbrook’s essay raises the increasingly important question: How do we break out of the two-sided debate on climate change to open discussion of new and innovative options on policy?

(For a discussion of this two-sided debate and why it persists see this 2000 essay that Dan Sarewitz and I wrote – PDF.)

Posted on February 14, 2005 09:31 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

February 11, 2005

Long Live Mode 1 Science – Or Not

An editorial in this week’s science by Alan Leshner, CEO of AAAS, indicates not only that science is changing, but that change may here to stay. Specifically, Leshner writes, “…the relationship between science and society is undergoing significant stress. Some members of the public are finding certain lines of scientific research and their outcomes disquieting, while others challenge the kind of science taught in schools. This disaffection and shift in attitudes predict a more difficult and intrusive relationship between science and society than we’ve enjoyed in the recent past.”

What might we expect of the relationship of science and society? First a bit of background:

Helga Nowotny, Peter Scott and Michael Gibbons write that the role of science in society has changed dramatically over the past decade, a transition they characterize as moving from “Mode 1” science to “Mode 2 science,”

“The old paradigm of scientific discovery (‘Mode 1’) characterised by the hegemony of disciplinary science, with its strong sense of an internal hierarchy between the disciplines and driven by the autonomy of scientists and their host institutions, the universities, was being superseded – although not replaced- by a new paradigm of knowledge production (‘Mode 2’) which was socially distributed, application-oriented, trans-disciplinary and subject to multiple accountabilities.

Those with most to gain from such a thesis espoused it most warmly - politicians and civil servants struggling to create better mechanisms to link science with innovation, researchers in professional disciplines such as management struggling to wriggle out from under the condescension of more established, and more ‘academic’, disciplines and researchers in newer universities, other non-university higher education institutions or outside the academic, and scientific, systems strictly defined. Those with most to lose were most sceptical - researchers in those established disciplines and institutions who feared that the quality of science would be eroded if these levelling ideas gained political currency and that their own autonomy would be curtailed if more explicit links were established between research and innovation.”

Nowotny et al. are among a growing group of scholars and practitioners who argue that the “linear model” of science – from federal funding to basic research to applied research to development to application to societal benefit – is neither descriptively accurate nor normatively desirable.

In a telling passage from his AAAS editorial, Leshner suggests that most scientists want none of this “mode 2” business, “… historically science and technology have changed society, society now is likely to want to change science and technology, or at least to help shape their course. For many scientists, any such overlay of values on the conduct of science is anathema to our core principles and our historic success.” Of course, to see the absurdity of this statement, one need only observe the annual pilgrimage of scientists and their representatives to Washington, DC lining up to lobby for more federal funding for science because of its importance to outcomes valued by the nation (e.g., see this statement by AAAS, “[The AAAS Board] is particularly pleased by the acknowledgment by congressional leaders of the key role played by science and technology in improving the nation's economy and quality of life”).

But even while rejecting the notion of Mode 2 science, Leshner suggests that it is here to stay,

“Still, our recent experiences suggest that the values dimension is here to stay, certainly for a while, and that we need to learn to work within this new context. Protesting the imposition of value-related constraints on science has been the usual response, but it doesn’t work because it doesn’t resonate with the public. An alternative is to adopt a much more inclusive approach that engages other communities assertively in discussing the meaning and usefulness of our work. We should try to find common ground through open, rational discourse… Simply protesting the incursion of value considerations into the conduct and use of science confirms the old adage that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. Let’s try some diplomacy and discussion and see how that goes for a change.”

If Leshner’s perspective is an accurate reflection of general views within the scientific community, then it looks like, while Mode 1 thinking is still strong, there is a window of opportunity for a greater engagement of Mode 2. Scholars of science and technology policy have an opportunity here.

Posted on February 11, 2005 09:32 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

February 10, 2005

Space Shuttle Costs

The table below shows the costs of the Space Shuttle program from its inception through 2003 (in 2003 $). The data come from a paper of mine in 1994 (1971-1993) and the Gehman report on the Columbia accident (1994-2003). The data show that the space shuttle program has cost $145 billion over its existence and about $112 billion since the program became operational. The average cost/flight has been about $1.3 billion over the life of the program and about $750 million over its most recent five years of operations.

According to the FY2006 NASA budget request the Space Shuttle program is expected to cost (in millions of 2004 $) through 2010:

4060.9 2004
4543.0 2005
4530.6 2006
4172.4 2007
3865.7 2008
2815.1 2009
2419.2 2010

Because NASA has costs for the Shuttle program that are not reflected in the shuttle line item, it is appropriate to add 10% to these totals (see Pielke, 1994 for discussion) and also to adjust to 2003 dollars (to make consistent with the data table). If the program is terminated after 2010, then it will have a total lifetime costs of $173,423 million or about $173 billion. If the program averages 4 flights per year upon a return to flight, then the shuttle will fly an additional 22 times, for a total of 134 flights over its lifetime. This will result in a total program cost per flight of $1.3 billion. Interestingly, the average cost per flight from 2004-2010 is also $1.3 billion. The average cost per flight from the middle of 2005 through 2010, assuming 22 flights, is about $1.0 billion.

All of these number fall squarely within the range Rad Byerly and I projected in a 1992 paper on the performance of the space shuttle program through 2010. See the paper here:

Pielke Jr., R.A., and R. Byerly Jr., 1992: The Space Shuttle Program: Performance versus Promise. Chapter in Space Policy Alternatives, edited by R. Byerly, Westview Press, Boulder, 223-245. (PDF)

And for a study of space policy and why the space shuttle program has performed as it has, see this paper:

Pielke Jr., R. A., 1993: A Reappraisal of the Space Shuttle Program. Space Policy, May, 133-157. (PDF)

Costs of the Space Shuttle Program 1971-2003

Roger Pielke, Jr pielke@colorado.edu

University of Colorado Center for Science and Technology Policy Research

	Current	Deflator	Constant '03	Adjusted **	Flights	5-yr MA Cost/Flight	% Change	Notes
1971	$ 78.5	39.713	$ 208.0	$ 208.0
1972	$ 155.9	41.815	$ 392.3	$ 392.3			88.6%
1973	$ 296.7	44.224	$ 706.0	$ 706.0			79.9%
1974	$ 656.7	44.001	$ 1,570.6	$ 1,570.6			122.5%
1975	$1,010.7	43.916	$ 2,421.9	$ 2,421.9			54.2%
1976	$1,813.6	46.256	$ 4,125.9	$ 4,125.9			70.4%	Includes Transitional Quarter
1977	$1,652.5	48.391	$ 3,593.6	$ 3,593.6			-12.9%
1978	$1,645.9	51.085	$ 3,390.5	$ 3,390.5			-5.7%
1979	$1,896.5	52.699	$ 3,787.0	$ 3,787.0			11.7%
1980	$2,125.2	52.579	$ 4,253.4	$ 4,253.4			12.3%
1981	$2,254.7	53.904	$ 4,401.7	$ 4,401.7	1		3.5%2	flights, 1 operational
1982	$3,459.1	52.860	$ 6,886.3	$ 6,886.3	3		56.4%
1983	$3,498.7	55.249	$ 6,663.9	$ 6,663.9	4		-3.2%
1984	$3,445.8	59.220	$ 6,123.1	$ 6,123.1	5		-8.1%
1985	$3,120.1	61.666	$ 5,324.4	$ 5,324.4	9	$ 717.2	-13.0%
1986	$3,344.1	63.804	$ 5,515.4	$ 5,515.4	2	$ 733.4	3.6%
1987	$5,453.2	65.958	$ 8,700.3	$ 8,700.3	0	$ 943.1	57.7%	Challenger replacement
1988	$3,302.7	68.684	$ 5,060.1	$ 5,060.1	2	$ 1,037.0	-41.8%
1989	$4,214.2	71.116	$ 6,235.8	$ 6,235.8	5	$ 1,079.7	23.2%
1990	$4,293.0	72.451	$ 6,235.4	$ 6,235.4	6	$ 1,373.8	0.0%
1991	$4,564.4	72.329	$ 6,640.8	$ 6,640.8	6	$ 1,148.8	6.5%
1992	$4,775.0	74.734	$ 6,723.6	$ 6,723.6	8	$ 783.3	1.2%
1993	$4,078.0	76.731	$ 5,592.7	$ 6,152.0	7	$ 685.1	-16.8%	Discontinuity in data sources Pielke/Gehman
1994	$3,778.7	79.816	$ 4,982.0	$ 5,480.2	7	$ 632.0	-10.9%
1995	$3,155.1	81.814	$ 4,058.2	$ 4,464.0	7	$ 581.5	-18.5%
1996	$3,178.8	84.842	$ 3,942.8	$ 4,337.0	7	$ 526.8	-2.8%
1997	$3,150.9	88.658	$ 3,739.9	$ 4,113.9	8	$ 481.7	-5.1%
1998	$2,927.8	92.359	$ 3,335.9	$ 3,669.5	5	$ 476.2	-10.8%
1999	$3,028.0	96.469	$ 3,303.1	$ 3,633.4	3	$ 514.7	-1.0%
2000	$3,011.2	100.000	$ 3,168.7	$ 3,485.6	5	$ 546.3	-4.1%
2001	$3,125.7	100.506	$ 3,272.7	$ 3,599.9	6	$ 564.6	3.3%
2002	$3,278.8	102.710	$ 3,359.3	$ 3,695.2	5	$ 640.5	2.6%
2003	$3,252.8	105.232	$ 3,252.8	$ 3,578.1	1	$ 784.8	-3.2%
						Avg Cost/Flight	Avg Adj Cost/Flight
Total			$ 140,967.9	$ 145,168.7	112	$ 1,258.6	$1,296.1
1982-2002			$ 108,864.4	$ 112,739.9	110	$ 989.7	$1,024.9
1992-2002			$ 38,755.3	$ 42,630.8	68	$ 569.9	$ 626.9
1998-2002			$ 16,439.7	$ 18,083.6	24	$ 685.0	$ 753.5

Sources

Pielke 1994, Gehman 2003, 2004 Economic Report of the President

** Note on adjusted data, Gehman budgets increased by 10% to make more consistent with Pielke 1994

Posted on February 10, 2005 01:34 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

February 09, 2005

The Cherry Pick

Last year I wrote “ … the cherry pick -- the careful selection of information to buttress a particular predetermined perspective while ignoring other information that does not. In other words, take the best and leave the rest.”

And in an examination of the misuse of science by the Bush I and Clinton Administrations I wrote, “When making an argument people often selectively choose or present information that makes their case look as strong as possible. Not only is this an effective tactic in argumentation; because there are (a) a diversity of perspectives on facts, and (b) many valid ways to understand “facts,” cherry picking is inescapable.”

Along these lines the team at RealClimate has a great post that describes some of the pitfalls of cherry picking: “… for some critics, any argument will do - regardless of its coherence with the argument they had before, or the one they will pick next.”

Dan Sarewitz argues that “…when cause-and-effect relations are not simple or well-established, all uses of facts are selective. Since there is no way to “add up” all the facts relevant to a complex problem like global change to yield a “complete” picture of “the problem,” choices must be made. Particular sets of facts may stand out as particularly compelling, coherent, and useful in the context of one set of values and interests, yet in another appear irrelevant to the point of triviality.”

But what the folks at RealClimate remind us is that if you are cherry picking, be careful, because if you are not careful, the resulting bowl of fruit might also contain some apples and oranges.

Posted on February 9, 2005 09:06 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Letter in TNR

The New Republic printed a letter in its 14 February 2005 issue responding to an article in TNR that Dan Sarewitz and I had last month on climate change and disasters following numerous claims that the Indian Ocean tsunami should motivate action on climate change. Here is the letter:

“In their article on the Indian Ocean tsunami's "real cause," Daniel Sarewitz and Roger A. Pielke Jr. did a good job of severing the perceived connection between global warming and all natural disasters ("Rising Tide," January 17). They failed, however, to provide the simplest and most damaging critique to the argument that the Indian Ocean tragedy is somehow linked to global warming: Tsunamis have practically nothing to do with the atmosphere. They usually result from undersea seismic activity, though collapsing landforms and glaciers can cause them, too. A 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra will produce a tsunami regardless of the atmospheric temperature or composition.

Daniel J. Smith
Iowa City, Iowa”

We did not see fit to make the point that global warming did not cause the tsunami because everyone (in their right mind) knows that (except perhaps the genius at TNR who came up with the subtitle to the article!). Our focus was on the more interesting and difficult challenge of evaluating policy options available to prepare for future disasters.

Posted on February 9, 2005 09:06 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

February 08, 2005

A New Blog on Science Policy

A new blog has just come online, The Post-Normal Times. It is run by an impressive and diverse group. It is worth a bookmark. Here is how they desribe themselves:

"Who We Are"
Controversial public policy decisions that affect many people are unlikely to be accepted unless they are justified, somehow, by those who make them. Often, this is done by invoking some form of authority. For example, in a senate hearing, James Watt - former US Secretary of the Interior - once invoked the rapture when he said "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back" to explain why he was giving away public lands. Others invoke science, which is at its best when, like Galileo, it challenges existing beliefs, and debunks myths, and, also like Galileo, gets corrected when wrong, as was his theory of the tides. At its worst, science provides support for decisions that have already been made, resting on hubris and on myths that must also be debunked, such as the delusion – also attributed to Galileo - that given enough resources, it can explain all things and provide certainty. It is also important to recognize that science is just one of many ways of understanding a world in which changes are increasingly a consequence of human beliefs and behavior. The capacity to respond to complex problems rests on an understanding of this changing context, without which scientific explanations and technical solutions are likely to be irrelevant no matter how precise.

Clarifying various forms of uncertainty is critical to managing public expectations, and maintaining or re-establishing public trust in science. It is also expected to better engage the public, as citizens, in democratic decision-making processes, in which a major area of uncertainty is whether their participation will even make any difference in the final outcome. When science supports high stakes policy commitments, this kind of broader engagement is also what makes it possible to detect and correct errors.

The Post-Normal Times is dedicated to improving the quality of public participation in science-based policy decisions related to the conundrums presented by problems of environmentally sustainable development, by providing multiple and constructive perspectives on complex and controversial science and policy issues. A central focus will be on justifications provided for controversial high-stakes decisions that pertain to complex problems such as climate change, in which the disadvantages of making trade-offs fall disproportionately on those excluded from the decision-making process. But we will also cover post-normal aspects of culture and politics that are the context of science. We particularly seek out the kinds of information often missed in formal reports and normal news sources, for failure to fit into standard categories and established story lines.

Special themes preliminarily identified for coverage include:

• Demythification of science used to support specific and selected policy decisions.
• "Ignorance of ignorance" – i.e., blindspots
• Uses and abuses of uncertainty in decision-making, such as the use of science to avoid actually making a decision
• Paradox and contradiction in existing policies
• Living in Post-Normal Times- a space for reports and commentary on the social and cultural context of science and policy.

This may include essays, reviews of selected books, movies and artists that present emerging perspectives, and scenarios of the future.

Submissions are welcome. Interested contributors should send an e-mail inquiry in advance to the editor at submissions@postnormaltimes.net, presenting a proposed angle for the contribution, so as to insure it fits within the scope of the PNT, and brief biographical information. We also encourage readers to participate by commenting on already posted material."

Posted on February 8, 2005 11:14 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Climate Science and Politics, but not IPCC

I have received some comments asking whether or not I think that IPCC scientists should simply remain mute on issues of climate science or politics. The answer is “no” – in my view IPCC scientists should feel free to speak out as they see fit, but they should be careful when using the authority of the IPCC to establish their credentials. A good example of a scientist speaking out who did not rely on his IPCC credential appeared in The Washington Post on Sunday. The Post contained an article on recent drought in the western United States, including some very strong claims that it has been caused by greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. Here is an excerpt:

“Jonathan Overpeck, who directs the university- and government-funded Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the University of Arizona, said current drought and weather disruptions signal what is to come over the next century. Twenty-five years ago, he said, scientists produced computer models of the drought that Arizona is now experiencing. "It's going to get warmer, we're going to have more people, and we're going to have more droughts more frequently and in harsher terms," Overpeck said. "We should be at the forefront of demanding action on global warming because we're at the forefront of the impacts of global warming. . . . In the West we're seeing what's happening now."”

The statements by Overpeck are quite similar to those made by Kevin Trenberth on hurricanes and discussed at length in the Prometheus archives. But there is one important difference. Like Trenberth, Overpeck is also a Coordinating Lead Author for the IPCC’s fourth assessment report, but Overpeck (or the Post) does not rely on this connection to establish his credentials. Hence, in this case there is no ambiguity about whether or not Overpeck is speaking for the IPCC or himself. I have no complaint on Overpeck making these assertions.

(For more on climate and drought in the U.S. Southwest see this report from Overpeck’s group at Arizona.)

Posted on February 8, 2005 11:12 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

February 04, 2005

We Have an Answer

On Monday I asked, “Some members of the climate science community are gathered this week in Exter, UK at a meeting titled, "Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change." Is this meeting for scientists to inform policy makers on a range of possible goals for climate stabilization and a range of means to achieve those goals, or is it a strategy of political advocacy designed to support adoption of a particular goal over others?”

The Steering Committee for the meeting has published its report summarizing the meeting which provides a definitive answer:

“Limiting climate change to 2 deg C implies stabilizing the atmospheric concentration of all greenhouse gases. The CO2 concentration must not exceed 500ppmv, if the climate sensitivity is 2.5 deg C. Global emissions would need to peak in 2020 and decline to 3.1 GtC/year by 2095… Major investment is needed now in both mitigation and adaptation. The first is essential to minimise future impacts and the latter is essential to cope with impacts which cannot be avoided in the near to medium term.”

If the Exter conference is indicative of the direction that the IPCC will be taking in its Fourth Assessment Report, then it will be remembered as a key milestone in the continuing evolution of the IPCC from honest broker to political advocate.

Posted on February 4, 2005 01:29 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Street Fighting

If anyone wants to understand why science is coming to be viewed as increasingly political one need only look to a quote from Kevin Trenberth in an article in the current issue of the Economist.

“For example, when Kevin Trenberth, head of the IPCC’s panel on hurricanes, recently suggested that there exists a link between climate change and the wave of powerful hurricanes last year, he was immediately challenged. Christopher Landsea, a hurricane expert at America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, resigned from the IPCC panel, arguing that Dr Trenberth’s comments went beyond what the peer-reviewed science could justify. He wrote a public letter complaining that: “because of Dr Trenberth’s pronouncements, the IPCC process has been subverted and compromised, its neutrality lost.”

Dr Trenberth retorts that “politics is very strong in what is going on, but it is all coming from Landsea and colleagues. He is linked to the sceptics.” He explains the remarks in question by saying that he did not suggest climate change was affecting the number of hurricanes, but was affecting their intensity, because of hotter ocean temperatures, a conclusion he says the data readily bears out.”

(For background on the Landsea/IPCC issue please see recent discussion in the Prometheus archives.)

When Trenberth says that Landsea is “linked to the skeptics” (and to be fair to Kevin, several other scientists have also made this observation in debate) he is referring to a reference in Landsea’s open letter to a publication that has been submitted to the Journal of Climate. Here is the reference: “(Michaels, Knappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted)”. Presumably the “Michaels” in this reference is none other than Pat Michaels, a research professor at the University of Virginia who is also affiliated with the Cato Institute. He is an unabashed political advocate who frequently uses science as the basis for his political arguments.

Trenberth is implying that because Landsea has collaborated with Michaels on a peer reviewed paper submitted for publication, that we can dismiss Landsea’s complaints as being politically motivated and without merit. In other words because of the “linkage” we don’t need to actually look to the science to resolve their disagreement.

Ad hominem attacks are part and parcel of a political fight. If scientists want to encourage the evaluation of scientific debates according to who is “linked” with whom rather than on the merits of the claims under dispute, then they should not be at all surprised to see science viewed as just another arena for political battle.

I maintain that Trenberth’s case would be better served if he could simply provide a single peer-reviewed study to back up his scientific claims, rather than engaging in McCarthyesque innuendo. Better yet, had Trenberth instead said at that now infamous Harvard press conference, "The IPCC concluded X, Y, and Z about hurricanes in its 2001 assessment, but my personal view is A, B, and C," then I be willing to bet that there would have been no Landsea/IPCC flap.

And a final note on the futility of the “linkage” argument as a proxy for real scientific debate. Trenberth himself has a very similar “linkage” to a prominent skeptic:

Hurrell, J. W., S. J. Brown, K. E. Trenberth and J. R. Christy, 2000: Comparison of tropospheric temperatures from radiosondes and satellites: 1979-1998. Bull. Amer. Met. Soc., 81, 2165-2177.

Both Trenberth’s and Landsea’s “linkages” are in the process of publishing peer reviewed literature and as such should be evaluated on their merits, and not on the personalities or politics of their authors. But if they really want to play politics, they by all means they use the ad hominem attack. But in pursuing such a strategy, don’t be surprised to see the diminishment of what is valuable about peer review and, ultimately, the further politicization of science.

Posted on February 4, 2005 12:24 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

February 03, 2005

Making Sense of the Climate Debate

Why is it that the climate debate has organized itself around the notion of “dangerous interference”? What consequences does this framing of the problem have for research and action?

I have argued in several papers that the basic dynamics of the climate debate, including the strong incentives to map politics onto science and an institutional bias against adaptation, stem from the exceedingly narrow definition of “climate change” adopted by the Framework Convention on Climate Change. Below is an excerpt from a short paper that makes this case. A reference to a longer, peer-reviewed paper now in press can be found at the bottom. Comments and reactions are welcomed.

An excerpt from: Pielke, Jr., R. A., 2004:What is Climate Change?, Issues in Science and Technology, Summer, 1-4. (PDF)

“Believe it or not, the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), focused on international policy, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), focused on scientific assessments in support of the FCCC, use different definitions of climate change. The two definitions are not compatible, certainly not politically and perhaps not even scientifically. This lack of coherence has contributed to the current international stalemate on climate policy, a stalemate that matters because climate change is real and actions are needed to improve energy policies and to reduce the vulnerability of people and ecosystems to climate effects…

The narrow FCCC definition encourages passionate arguments not only about whether climate change is “natural” or human-caused, but whether observed or projected changes rise to the level of “dangerous interference” in the climate system. The goal of the FCCC is to take actions that prevent “dangerous interference” in the climate system. In the jargon of the climate science community, identification of climate change resulting from greenhouse gas emissions is called “detection and attribution.” Under the FCCC, without detection and attribution, or an expectation of future detection and attribution, of climate changes that result in “dangerous interference” there is no reason to act. In a very real sense, action under the FCCC is necessarily based on claims of scientific certainty, whereas inaction is based on claims of uncertainty… The FCCC definition of climate change fosters debating climate policy in terms of “science” and thus encourages the mapping of established political interests onto science….

This helps to explain why all parties in the current climate debate pay so much attention to “certainty” (or perceptions of a lack thereof) in climate science as a justification for or against the Kyoto Protocol. Because it requires detection and attribution of climate change leading to “dangerous interference,” the FCCC definition of climate change focuses attention on the science of climate change as the trigger for action and directs attention away from discussion of energy and climate policies that make sense irrespective of the actual or perceived state of climate science. The longer the present gridlock persists, the more important such “no-regrets” policies will be to efforts to decarbonize the energy system and reduce human and environmental vulnerability to climate…

Under the FCCC definition of climate change, there is precious little room for uncertainty about the climate future; it is either dangerous enough to warrant action or it is not. Claims about the existence (or not) of a scientific consensus become important as surrogates for claims of certainty or uncertainty. This is one reason why climate change is often defined as a risk management challenge, and scientists promise to policymakers the holy grail of reducing uncertainty about the future. In contrast, the IPCC quietly notes that under its definition of climate change, effective action requires “decision making under uncertainty”—a challenge familiar to decision makers and research communities outside climate science.

The FCCC definition of climate change shapes not only the politics of climate change but also how research agendas are prioritized and funded. One result of the focus on detection and attribution is that political advocates as well as researchers have paid considerably more attention to increasingly irrelevant aspects of climate science (such as were the 1500s warmer than today?) than to providing decision makers with useful knowledge that might help them to improve energy policies and reduce vulnerabilities to climate. It is time for a third way on climate policy.”

If you would like to read a more fully developed argument along these lines please have a look at the prepublication version of this paper:

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 2005 (in press). Misdefining Climate Change: Consequences for Science and Action, Environmental Science and Policy. (PDF)

Posted on February 3, 2005 12:35 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Presidential Science Advisers

Six Presidential Science Advisers To Speak At CU-Boulder In 2005
Feb. 2, 2005

Six presidential science advisers are slated to speak at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2005, beginning with a Feb. 14 event featuring John Marburger, current White House science adviser to President George W. Bush.

Sponsored by CU-Boulder's Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, the year-long series titled "Policy, Politics and Science in the White House: Conversations with Presidential Science Advisers" is free and open to the public. The primary goal is to provide a new perspective on the role of science in policy and politics at the highest levels of government, said Roger Pielke Jr., director of the center.

The Marburger talk will be at 7 p.m. in Room 100 of the Mathematics Building, located at the intersection of Colorado Avenue and Folsom Street on campus.

Former presidential science advisers scheduled to speak on the Boulder campus in 2005 include Neal Lane and John Gibbons, science advisers to Bill Clinton during his two terms, D. Allan Bromley, science adviser to George H. Bush, George Keyworth, science adviser to Ronald Reagan, and Edward David, science adviser to Richard Nixon.

"Science policy issues have captured the public's attention, especially in the past year," said Pielke. "As a result, a lot of interesting science and technology issues that are usually debated in cloistered halls and research institutions are now very public."

Science policy issues that have made headlines in the past year include stem-cell research, global warming, the direction of NASA's research efforts and the recall of high-profile pharmaceuticals for health and safety reasons, he said.

Another goal of the lecture series is to document how science is used and perhaps misused in policy and politics, Pielke said. Each presidential adviser will be asked to discuss a significant science policy issue or issues that arose during his tenure, he said.

"These people come from different political parties and different eras," said Pielke. "We are interested in how the complexities of science policy issues have changed in the White House over time."

The science advisers also will attend classes at CU-Boulder and interact with students, said Bobbie Klein, managing director for the CU science policy center. The visits are expected to include roundtable discussions involving science advisers, students and faculty.

The public talks will include question-and-answer sessions with the audience, said Pielke. The format is expected to be similar to a recent public lecture series at CU-Boulder featuring U.S. Secretaries of the Interior, where speakers fielded written questions from the audience.

Marburger, who also is the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, previously directed the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y. He served as president of the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1980 to 1994 and was a faculty member from 1994 to 1997, teaching and conducting research on optical science.

Marburger came to New York from the University of Southern California, where he was a professor of physics and electrical engineering and served as chairman of the physics department and dean of the College of Letters.

He became president of Brookhaven Science Associates in 1997, a partnership between Stony Brook and Battelle Memorial Institute that successfully competed for the contract to operate Brookhaven National Laboratory.

While at USC, Marburger contributed to the growing field of nonlinear optics, which was created by the invention of the laser in 1960. He developed theories for various laser phenomena and was a co-founder of USC's Center for Laser Studies. His teaching activities included "Frontiers of Electronics," a series of educational programs on CBS television.

The visits to campus by other presidential science advisers include:

* D. Allan Bromley, March 30-April 1;

* John Gibbons, April 28-29;

* Edward David, Sept. 14-15;

* Neal Lane, Oct.5-6;

* and George Keyworth, Nov. 28-30.

Details on their public talks will be made available at a later date.

Pielke said the center plans to videotape the science adviser lectures and hopes to make them available to the public via Internet Webcasts. The public programs eventually may be transcribed and made available to historians, he said.

Additional information regarding the CU series is available on the

Web at: http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/scienceadvisors.

Parking for the Feb. 14 Marburger event in Math 100 is available at meters along Colorado Avenue and in Lot 436 at Colorado Avenue and Regent Drive.

The Center for Science and Technology Policy Research is part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. CIRES is a joint program of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Contact: Roger Pielke Jr., (303) 735-3940
pielke@cires.colorado.edu
Jim Scott, (303) 492-3114

Posted on February 3, 2005 12:57 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

February 02, 2005

Another Published Student Paper

Joel Gratz, Ryan Church, and Erik Noble have published an article in the magazine Weatherwise on lightning safety and sports stadiums. This paper, like Logar and Pollock (2004) mentioned last week, began as a term paper in one of my graduate seminars. A peer-reviewed version is in press. Congrats Joel, Erik and Ryan!

Posted on February 2, 2005 06:48 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

February 01, 2005

flooddamagedata.org

I have collaborated with colleagues Mary Downtown and Zoe Miller on a project sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to reanalyze the historical record of flood damages in the United States. The results of our project can be found here: http://www.flooddamagedata.org. Last week a journal article describing the project came out in Natural Hazards Review:

Downton, M., J. Z. B. Miller and R. A. Pielke, Jr., 2005. Reanalysis of U.S. National Weather Service Flood Loss Database, Natural Hazards Review, 6:13-22. (PDF)

As far as historical data on flood damages in the United States, I believe that this dataset represents the best information available. The data can be used for research purposes, but caution is advised (read the paper). We have a companion article in press describing limitations in disaster loss estimates:

Downton, M. and R. A. Pielke, Jr., 2005 (in press). How Accurate are Disaster Loss Data? The Case of U.S. Flood Damage, Natural Hazards Review. (pre-publication PDF)

Have a look at the project site: (http://www.flooddamagedata.org/ ) And have a look at the paper: (PDF) Here is the abstract:

“Abstract: To understand the nature of increasing flood damage in the United States, accurate data are needed on costs and vulnerability associated with flooding. The National Weather Service (NWS) is the only organization that has maintained a long-term historical record of flood damage throughout the country. The NWS estimates are obtained from diverse sources, compiled soon after each flood event, and not verified by comparison with actual expenditures. This paper presents results of a comprehensive reanalysis of the scope, accuracy, and consistency of NWS damage estimates from 1926 to 2000 and recommends appropriate methods for data use and interpretation. Estimates for individual flood events are often quite inaccurate, but when estimates from many events are aggregated the errors become proportionately smaller. With the precautions described in this paper, the reanalyzed NWS damage estimates can be a valuable tool to aid researchers and decision makers in understanding the changing character of damaging floods in the United States. The reanalyzed data are available at http://www.flooddamagedata.org/.”

Posted on February 1, 2005 07:33 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Risk & Uncertainty | Science Policy: General

January 31, 2005

Politics or Science?

Some members of the climate science community are gathered this week in Exter, UK at a meeting titled, "Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change." Is this meeting for scientists to inform policy makers on a range of possible goals for climate stabilization and a range of means to achieve those goals, or is it a strategy of political advocacy designed to support adoption of a particular goal over others? There is evidence to support both sides of this question, and the presentations, press reports and conclusions from the meeting later this week should allow for a more definitive answer to this question.

Some background

The Exter meeting was first announced in a speech last summer by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in which he called for the meeting to address two "big questions."

"We have to recognise that the commitments reflected in the Kyoto protocol and current EU policy are insufficient, uncomfortable as that may be, and start urgently building a consensus based on the latest and best possible science. Prior to the G8 meeting itself we propose first to host an international scientific meeting at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Exeter in February. More than just another scientific conference, this gathering will address the big questions on which we need to pool the answers available from the science: -What level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is self-evidently too much?; and What options do we have to avoid such levels?"

The phrase "dangerous climate change" used in the meeting's name is a direct reference to the phrase "dangerous interference" which comes from the Framework Convention on Climate Change which states its overall objective in its Article 2,

"The ultimate objective of this Convention and any related legal instruments that the Conference of the Parties may adopt is to achieve, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Convention, stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner."

In recent years advocates for emissions reductions have increasing organized around the phrase "dangerous interference" under the assumption that if they can demonstrate that some threshold of dangerous interference has been or will be exceeded, then given the broad range of signatories to the Climate Convention (including the United States) it will necessarily compel political action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And the threshold that many emissions reductions advocates have organized around is that a human-caused climate change of more than 2 degrees Celsius would represent "dangerous interference." (For those wanting more background on this subject, have a look at this paper (PDF) by Dessai et al.)

Of course, a challenge exists in that definition of "dangerous interference" is subjective and different people will view the concept quite differently. The IPCC noted as much in its 2001 Summary for Policymakers that definition of "dangerous interference" is a political challenge, and not a scientific exercise.

"Natural, technical, and social sciences can provide essential information and evidence needed for decisions on what constitutes "dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system." At the same time, such decisions are value judgments determined through socio-political processes, taking into account considerations such as development, equity, and sustainability, as well as uncertainties and risk."

The organizers of the Exter conference wisely have chosen not to organize their meeting around the Prime Minister's first question and instead have focused on a set of questions to clarify options. Here are the questions that are to be addressed by the conference:

"1. For different levels of climate change what are the key impacts, for different regions and sectors, and for the world as a whole?

2. What would such levels of climate change imply in terms of greenhouse gas stabilisation concentrations and emission pathways required to achieve such levels?

3. What technological options are there for achieving stabilisation of greenhouse gases at different stabilisation concentrations in the atmosphere, taking into account costs and uncertainties?"

So if the conference reports scientific understandings and uncertainties for emissions stabilization scenarios related to (a) a magical instantaneous ending of CO2 emissions, (b) unrestrained emissions (a maximum scenario), and (c) everything in between, then it would clearly give policy makers a sense of what science can say about stabilization scenarios and their consequences. This information would allow policy makers in the the UK, or any other country, to debate and discuss the concept of "dangerous climate change" and, if desired, work towards a political consensus. Such a perspective would be a valuable outcome of the meeting.

But if the meeting results in a recommendation for stabilization at one particular concentration level over others, and increasingly we hear calls for a 2 degree/400 ppm target, then the meeting will have devolved into an exercise in political advocacy under the cover of the authority of science and scientists.

In looking over the abstracts for the meeting there is evidence to support both approaches to the meeting. Given the number of prominent IPCC officials participating, this is a good chance for the IPCC to either reassert its role as honest broker or confirm its tendency towards political advocacy. Lets see what happens.

A last observation, surely the media present will be able to cherry pick from the presentations to support a particular agenda, and some of this appears to have begun. Consider this report from Agence France Presse,

"The three-day conference, running from Tuesday to Thursday in the southwestern English city of Exeter, is bound to have a wide political impact. It will add the objective weight of science to the political pressures on Washington to help curb carbon pollution."

And the BBC also has characterized the meeting's expected outcome in political terms by claiming that scientists will define how dangerous interference "should" be defined, "But Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, a three-day meeting at the Met Office in Exeter, is mainly about the science. The participants, more than 200 in all, will try to agree how to define what is a danger level, and what it should be."

Posted on January 31, 2005 09:51 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

January 28, 2005

A Friday Hodgepodge

With all of the hullabaloo about politics and the IPCC, we have not had a chance this week to post on other issues of science policy. But even so, if you make it to the bottom you'll see that we close this week where we started.

Jessie C. Gruman of the Center for the Advancement of Health writes in a letter in this week's Science, " ... there is no reason to believe that the behavior of the [Bush] administration that has so perturbed the scientific community will change in the coming years. Therefore, it is critical that scientists organize, choose their battles carefully, and guard against self-serving advocacy that undermines science as an objective tool to guide decisions about medicine, public health, safety, the environment, economic development, and national security." In addition to watch dogging the Bush Administration, certainly effort well spent, the scientific community might also devote some effort to guarding against self-serving advocacy. This is important because lack of attention to the latter might make it harder to do the former.

In a column in last Sunday's New York Times, James Fallows discusses the technology policies of the Bush Administration writing, "In its first term, the Bush team made a few important pro-technology choices. Over the next year it will signal whether it intends to stand by them." Fallows highlights the continuing debate about the roles of the public and private sectors in weather services as one area of technology policy where the Bush Administration could make a mark. (In 2001, I made a similar argument.) Fallows oversimplifies the issue however. The current imbroglio over weather services has a 50 year history and current policies have little to do with the Bush Administration. The Bush Administration could yet make a mark on this issue, but understanding the issues at stake and why it matters are necessary first steps. A primer on the issue can be found here.

There is a second point to be made about Fallows' column. In it he quotes Barry Lee Myers, executive vice president of AccuWeather, a leading commercial weather services firm long at odds with the National Weather Service, ""We feel that they spend a lot of their funding and attention on duplicating products and services that already exist in the private sector, And they are not spending the kind of time and effort that is needed on catastrophic issues that involve lives and property, which I think is really their true function." He added that the weather service might have done a better, faster job of warning about the southern Asian tsunami if it had not been distracted in this way." This is a cheap shot by Myers.

At SciDev.net David Dickson has (yet another) thoughtful column titled, "Can Africa pioneer a new way of doing science?". In it he writes, " science and technology must not be seen by policy-makers as determinants of development, in the sense of encouraging the idea greater investment in science and technology will somehow lead automatically to social and economic progress... Rather, both must be seen, as Keith Bezanson and Geoff Oldham argued in this editorial column two weeks ago, as components of broader 'systems of innovation', in which other elements, ranging from intellectual property laws to strengthened university-industry links, have just as essential a role to play." Dickson describes the merits of "Mode 2" science (versus the pitfalls of "Mode 1") and provides a link to a paper (PDF) by Nowoty et al. on Mode 2. It is all well worth reading.

The February 2005 issue of the journal Environmental Science & Policy arrived this week and in it is a paper by Nathaniel Logar and Leslie Kaas Pollock titled, "Transgenic fish: is a new policy framework necessary for a new technology?" According to their abstract, "This paper examines the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval process for transgenic fish and finds if it will likely prohibit effective regulation of this fish, consequently risking the environmental health of aquatic ecosystems. Additionally, the closed-door process causes three problems: (1) concerned interests do not have access to information and are thus forced to rely on speculation, (2) the process is unable to take into account the values of the public and (3) any opportunity for meaningful public comment on environmental impacts is lost. We propose that policy makers consider creating a regulatory framework that is capable of addressing the unique environmental risks posed by transgenic fish and incorporating public participation into the process." Not only is this a good paper but it happens to have originated as a term paper in one of my graduate seminars a few years ago. Nat and Leslie are students in our graduate program in environmental studies. Congrats Nat and Leslie!!

And finally, this week's Science adds a bit more detail to the Landsea/IPCC brouhaha in a news story,

"In an e-mail to Science, IPCC Secretary-General R. K. Pachauri repeated what he had told Landsea: "In their own individual rights, [IPCC authors] are free to express their views on any subject, including various aspects of climate change." Trenberth told Science that "it's ridiculous to suggest I [was] representing the IPCC"; his role as an author was mentioned during the October event merely as "part of my credentials." He also defended his view that changing sea conditions could be contributing to greater hurricane intensity."

It seems a bit precious for the IPCC to tacitly condone the use of IPCC affiliation as part of scientists credentials while at the same giving those same scientists license to say whatever they want on climate change. The IPCC should either ask scientists to refrain from using their IPCC affiliation when making scientific claims that are inconsistent with the IPCC, or conversely, when scientists use their IPCC affiliation to burnish their credentials they should be sure to clearly identify the IPCC's position on the topic being discussed. To do otherwise is to invite the politicization of the IPCC process.

Posted on January 28, 2005 10:26 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

January 27, 2005

A Good Example why Politics/IPCC Matters

Here is a good example why the IPCC should be concerned about the role of its leaders in political advocacy. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, released a press release today titled, “Pachauri Must Resign as Head of UN Climate Panel Activism Compromises Scientific Objectivity.”

The CEI describes itself as “a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to advancing the principles of free enterprise and limited government. We believe that individuals are best helped not by government intervention, but by making their own choices in a free marketplace.” It is safe to say that the CEI is firmly against the Kyoto Protocol and highly skeptical of climate science. So the political agenda supported by CEI is in direct opposition to the political agenda endorsed in recent months by R. K. Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC.

Here is the calculus that I’d like the IPCC folks to understand: Whatever benefits they believe lending the IPCC’s name and authority (as an institution or as individuals) to their favored political causes is more than outweighed by the substantially greater benefits that they provide to their political opponents by defecting from the IPCC’s formal position as honest broker. Not only does this contribute to a loss of legitimacy and authority of the IPCC (which matters to everyone because we need honest brokers) but it is just poorly played politics in support of the causes to which Dr. Pauchari has lent his name and that of the IPCC.

Posted on January 27, 2005 11:25 AM View this article | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science Policy: General

Reader Mail on Political Advocacy

A Prometheus reader emailed with the following request:

"On RealClimate.org's "Anomalous Recent Warmth in Europe" discussion thread, someone yesterday quoted something you wrote about the nature of the politicization of the IPCC, and RealClimate's William Connolley answered that it "appears to be an error or misstatement in [Pielke's] post" and that he doesn't "think the IPCC folk do think its (the IPCC's) role to be a political advocacy" and that all "the IPCC folk quoted were speaking personally." If I understand this correctly -- and maybe I don't -- it strikes me as something that I'd hope you'd clarify personally. Thanks."

Short Answer

The aim of "political advocacy" is to reduce the scope of policy alternatives, typically to a single favored outcome (or in the case of an election, to reduce the field of candidates). Endorsement of a specific policy (or political candidate) when there is a range of alternatives is political advocacy. The actions documented here over recent months by R. K. Pauchuri and scientists in the Harvard press conference are unambiguous examples (of many related to the IPCC) of political advocacy trading on the authority of the IPCC. Political advocacy is an important and honorable part of a healthy democracy. It is, however, not consistent with the role of an honest broker, which is also an important and honorable part of a healthy democracy.

Longer Answer with References

As I wrote on this subject in a paper published last year,

"Addressing the significance of science for decision making requires an ability to clearly distinguish policy from politics. For science, a policy perspective implies increasing or elucidating the range of alternatives available to decision makers by clearly associating the existing state of scientific knowledge with a range of choices. The goal is to enhance freedom of choice. By contrast, a political perspective seeks to decrease the range of alternatives (often to a single preferred option) available to policy makers, i.e., to limit the scope of choice, for example, support of, or opposition to, the Kyoto Protocol. Because scientific results always have some degree of uncertainty and a range of means is typically available to achieve particular objectives, the task of political advocacy necessarily involves considerations that go well beyond science."

So when R.K. Pachauri lends his name and IPCC association to groups who are pushing for specific actions on climate, then this is clearly political advocacy. I discussed this in the context of the IPCC in a 2002 essay in Nature,

"A well known example of such an attempt to provide independent scientific guidance is found in the IPCC, which has largely received positive reviews of its assessments of climate change (see Nature 412, 112; 2001). But the IPCC does not explicitly assess scientific results in the context of particular policies, which may be its greatest weakness. The IPCC only assesses knowledge of climate-change science, impacts and economics, and not their policy significance. Consequently, to understand the significance of the IPCC’s analyses for alternative courses of action, a decision-maker is forced to rely almost exclusively on the interpretations (and misinterpretations) provided by corporations, government agencies or interest groups. Invariably, such interpretations are at odds with one another, yet consistent with all or parts of the IPCC’s results. When well-intentioned IPCC scientists enter the political fray as individuals, the IPCC itself becomes politicized."

Political advocacy is of course essential to a well functioning democracy. But so too is the honest broker. And one cannot simultaneously serve as an advocate and an honest broker. That is, one cannot work to reduce the scope of choice and to expand (or just clarify) the scope of choice at the same time. So the IPCC, and more generally all scientists and science organizations, have choices to make. To be viewed as an honest broker requires not being viewed as working to advance the political agenda of certain groups over others.

But none of this is to suggest that the IPCC should withdraw from discussion of policy. In fact, trying to cleanly separate science from policy can make things worse. To the contrary, the IPCC is at risk of politicization because it tries (WGI at least) to remain mute on policy. An alternative would be to clearly discuss the connection of climate science with climate policy options. As I wrote in 2002,

"One solution in the IPCC case would be to establish a new, independent group on policy, explicitly for assessing the significance of the scientific results in the context of policy. This kind of group could assess a broad range of alternative actions that are consistent with IPCC assessments without endorsing a particular alternative. (This group could also provide valuable feedback to the research community as to the issues that need more attention.)"

An expanded version of this discussion can be found in this paper: Pielke, Jr., R. A., 2003: Il significato della scienza, chapter in P. Dongi (ed.) Il governo della scienza, Laterza, Rome, Italy, pp. 85-105. (Here is a pre-publication English version.

Posted on January 27, 2005 01:12 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science Policy: General

January 26, 2005

There is a Lesson Here

From Robert Bryce, writing in Slate yesterday,

“... a curious transformation is occurring in Washington, D.C., a split of foreign policy and energy policy: Many of the leading neoconservatives who pushed hard for the Iraq war are going green. James Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and staunch backer of the Iraq war, now drives a 58-miles-per-gallon Toyota Prius and has two more hybrid vehicles on order. Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy and another neocon who championed the war, has been speaking regularly in Washington about fuel efficiency and plant-based bio-fuels. The alliance of hawks and environmentalists is new but not entirely surprising. The environmentalists are worried about global warming and air pollution. But Woolsey and Gaffney—both members of the Project for the New American Century, which began advocating military action against Saddam Hussein back in 1998—are going green for geopolitical reasons, not environmental ones.”

Here is what Dan Sarewitz and I wrote on this two years ago,

“We believe that progress on developing cost-effective carbon-free energy sources will be more quickly stimulated through direct investments in energy research and technology justified for their own sake. If nothing else, the focus on climate uncertainty has distracted us from the fact that there are plenty of reasons to improve energy policy, not least of which are the national security benefits gained from energy independence, the environmental and health benefits of cleaner fuels, and the long-term economic efficiencies that can be delivered by renewable energy sources.”

Posted on January 26, 2005 08:27 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Energy Policy

More Politics and IPCC

Last October, when R. K. Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), wrote the forward to a report advocating specific policies on climate change I wrote,

“It is troubling that the Chair of the IPCC would lend his name and organizational affiliation to a set of groups with members engaged actively in political advocacy on climate change. Even if Dr. Pachauri feels strongly about the merit of the political agenda proposed by these groups, at a minimum his endorsement creates a potential perception that the IPCC has an unstated political agenda.”

Dr. Pachauri has once again lent his name, and that of the IPCC, to an advocacy effort on climate change. This time Dr. Pachauri is presented as the “scientific advisor” on a report released earlier this week by the International Climate Change Taskforce (ICCT). The report advocates a range of very specific policy actions on climate change – among them, limiting global carbon dioxide concentrations to 400 ppm, a requirement that G8 countries obtain 25% of their electrivity from renewables by 2025, the phase-out of fossil fuel subsidies, requiring Export Credit Agencies and Multilateral Development Banks to adopt minimum efficiency or carbon intensity standards for projects they support and building upon the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol. The ICCT was organized by a number of self-described progressive think tanks -- the Institute for Public Policy Research in London, the Center for American Progress in Washington DC and The Australia Institute in Canberra.

According to the IPPC website the ITCC’s recommendations are, “aimed at all major governments in the international negotiations, with special emphasis on the United Kingdom (UK), which will hold the Presidencies of the G8 and the European Union in 2005.” Quite simply, there is a clear conflict in Dr. Pachauri seeking to act as an honest broker on climate science as chairman of the IPCC while simultaneously advocating a specific political position in the very process to which he is tasked to provide impartial guidance. The IPCC operates under a guideline that is to be “neutral with respect to policy.” I am unclear as to what this phrase actually means, but I am pretty sure that it is not consistent with overt political advocacy. As a 2001 news article in Nature reported, “The IPCC aims to provide information to policy-makers without endorsing specific policies. As such, it can only work if it is widely perceived to represent a highly credible and unbiased consensus.”

Posted on January 26, 2005 01:07 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

January 25, 2005

Long Live the Linear Model

On Saturday the Washington Post printed two letters in response to my recent op-ed on politics and science advisory committees.

In the first letter, David Apatoff argues, that “No one argues that science can be divorced from politics.” He is wrong in this assertion. The authors of the NRC report my op-ed was a response to and the folks at RealClimate that I’ve been chatting with recently on this subject are among many who suggest otherwise. By the end of his letter Mr. Apatoff seems to provide a contradictory when he emphasizes the possibility of a clean separation of facts and values, “In a democracy, everyone is entitled to his own opinions but not to his own facts.” I am completely in agreement with Apatoff that we should be concerned about the recent trend of the politicization of science.

In the second letter, Gary M. Heiligman writes “True, scientists have political opinions and the advice from government scientists is often politically charged. But the threat of a politically motivated inquisition should not be added to the other barriers to public service.” Mr. Heiliman is shooting the messenger. My op-ed was not calling for the politicization of scientific advisory committees, but for an honest, open-eyed realism to the fact that they are already politicized. Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean that it is not there. With respect to the NRC committee that recommended a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to science advisory committees, consider this irony (that didn’t make it into my op-ed) reproduced from a Prometheus post of last July:

“Take a look at the composition of the National Research Council committee currently studying the presidential appointment process. You’ll find some interesting arithmetic. Of the 11 panel members, 9 have been appointed by past presidents to positions where they oversee or provide scientific advice, and one held office as a congressman (and the eleventh person has not been appointed to any position by a president). As chance has it, of these 10 people there are 5 people who have been appointed by Democratic presidents and 4 who have been appointed by Republican presidents, plus one former congressman (Republican). 5 Democrats, 5 Republicans. How convenient! What luck!

Does anyone out there think that this balance occurred for any reason other than explicit consideration of ensuring political balance on this very visible NRC committee?

How would you feel if all members of the NRC committee had served only Republican presidents? Only Democratic presidents? People would no doubt find a problem with such compositions, because political balance fosters the legitimacy of the Committee’s work.

The composition of the panel looking at Presidential appoints reflects in microcosm the impossibility of separating science and politics. To think otherwise is simply unrealistic.

Panel members appointed by former presidents (plus one former member of congress):

John Porter – former Congressman (Republican)

E. Edward David- -- Science advisor under President Nixon, a Republican

John P. McTague, Science advisor under President Reagan, a Republican

Louis W. Sullivan, secretary of health and human services, appointed by President Bush, Sr., a Republican

Christine Todd Whitman, former Governor (Republican) and EPA Director appointed by President George W. Bush

Frank Press – Science advisor under President Carter, a Democrat

Richard A. Meserve, Chairman of Nuclear Regulatory Commission, appointed by President Clinton, a Democrat

Ernest J. Moniz, Under Secretary of the Department of Energy, appointed by President Clinton, a Democrat

John H. Moxley III, Assistant Secretary of Defense, appointed by President Carter, a Democrat

Maxine L. Savitz, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Conservation at the Department of Energy, appointed by President Carter, a Democrat”

Posted on January 25, 2005 08:30 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

January 24, 2005

Follow Up On Landsea/IPCC

Several news stories have come out flowing Chris Landsea's resignation from the IPCC last week. These news stories provide some additional information that allows for some insight into the scientific dispute between Landsea and NCAR's Kevin Trenberth, as well as into the broader political context of the IPCC.

The Scientific Dispute

Landsea wrote in his letter that he resigned from the IPCC, in part, because "It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming," and one of those colleagues, Trenberth, was the Lead Author for the IPCC responsible for writing the chapter on hurricanes to which Landsea was to contribute. In an article in yesterday's Washington Post Trenberth again asserted that the very active 2004 hurricane season was influenced by global warming:

"Trenberth, who in an interview Friday called Landsea's charges "ridiculous," said he participated last fall in a media conference call organized by Harvard University professors "to correct misleading impressions that global warming had played no role at all in last year's hurricane season." He added he would have welcomed opposing views in the assessment, even though he believes "if global warming is happening, how can hurricanes not be affected? It's part of the overall system.""

And Sunday's Boulder Daily Camera contained a similar report: "In a telephone interview with the Camera, Trenberth said the [Harvard] press conference had been called to rebut statements by Landsea and others who have said "global warming had nothing to do with hurricanes.""

The scientific dispute between Landsea and Trenberth over whether or not global warming played a role in the 2004 hurricane season is easily addressed. Landsea writes that the assertion that the 2004 hurricane season was linked to global warming was not supported by peer-reviewed science, "All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin. The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record." Yesterday's Boulder Daily Camera contains a similar perspective from MIT's Kerry Emanuel, another expert on hurricanes, "I think it's extremely difficult to pin the last season on global warming. That does not preclude that there may be a global warming signal buried in there somewhere, but nobody in my field thinks that we've seen it."

It seems that Trenberth could easily respond to Landsea by producing a single peer-reviewed study supporting his claims. While one such study would not automatically overturn the many studies on hurricanes and climate change (see RealClimate on this general point), it would provide a scientific basis for Trenberth's statements, which Landsea characterized as "far outside of current scientific understanding." For his part, Trenberth had earlier acknowledged that his views on this subject are controversial. Absent at least one peer reviewed study to support Trenberth's claims, it would seem that he is, at best, a bit forward on his skis.

Why does peer review matter? As the folks at RealClimate have recently written peer review is a "necessary but not sufficient condition" for the production of good science. Consequently, "observers would thus be well advised to be extremely skeptical of any claims in the media or elsewhere of some new "bombshell" or "revolution" that has not yet been fully vetted by the scientific community." Presumably a good example of where such skepticism would have been appropriate was in response to the news conference held by Harvard Unveristy in October, 2004 - it was titled, "Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity: Problem Tied to Rising Sea Temperatures From Trapped Greenhouse Gases; Trend Portends More Storm Damage Costs for FL, AL, LA, TX, NC and SC." It was this news conference in which Trenberth and colleagues asserted a link between global warming and the 2004 hurricane season, but provided no peer-reviewed science to back up these claims.

So even if Trenberth's claims about a linkage between global warming and the hurricanes of 2004 are proven correct through future research, public pronouncements on science, particularly in highly politicized contexts, will always be much stronger if they are backed by peer-reviewed scientific knowledge. And right now there does not appear to be a peer-reviewed basis for Trenberth's claims. If the climate science community wants to assert the importance of peer review when evaluating the claims of those scientists opposed to action on climate change (and quite rightfully so in my opinion) then it seems appropriate that scientists who advocate action on climate change should be held to the same standard.

Political Context

A second reason Landsea gave for resigning from the IPCC was the response of IPCC officials to his concerns, "The IPCC leadership saw nothing to be concerned with in Dr. Trenberth's unfounded pronouncements to the media, despite his supposedly impartial important role that he must undertake as a Lead Author on the upcoming AR4." In particular, it seems odd that the head of the IPCC would assert that Trenberth's statements accurately reflected the work of the third IPCC assessment (in 2001), since they clearly do not (and also by Trenberth's admission as well). Landsea wrote much of the IPCC conclusions on hurricanes for the 2001 report, so he ought to know.

But more troubling than a lack of knowledge of the substance of the science of the IPCC reports is the political stance on climate taken by the head of the IPCC. The Independent reported yesterday that the head of the IPCC recently called for deep and dramatic emissions reductions to save humanity.

"Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told an international conference attended by 114 governments in Mauritius this month that he personally believes that the world has "already reached the level of dangerous concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere" and called for immediate and "very deep" cuts in the pollution if humanity is to "survive"."

In taking such a political position in the highly charged context of climate change, Dr. Pachauri has placed himself in a highly conflicted position. If he were to have accepted Landsea's complaint as valid, it could be seen as admitting that an IPCC scientist is "overselling" the science in support of a political agenda. This could harm the prospects for advancing the political agenda that Dr. Pachauri advocates, so there is a strong incentive for Pachauri to dismiss Landsea's concerns. (We have discussed politics and the IPCC on many occasions, here and here.) These dynamics seem consistent with the argument made recently by Von Storch et al., "Judgments of solid scientific findings are often not made with respect to their immanent quality but on the basis of their alleged or real potential as a weapon by "skeptics" in a struggle for dominance in public and policy discourse."

So long as people within the IPCC leadership sees its role as political advocate rather than honest broker, and acts accordingly, we should not be surprised to see future controversies erupt in the IPCC. The solution is not to retreat into the illusion that it can deal only with science, but to openly confront the reality that its very existence is based on the need to connect science with policy.

[Some disclosures: I know both Landsea and Trenberth quite well. I have collaborated with Landsea on a number of occasions, e.g., here. I also have co-authored a book on hurricanes (with my father, published by John Wiley, 1997), and on pp. 186-188 you can see our views on hurricanes and climate change. And you can find various other articles on hurricanes, climate change, etc. that I have authored or co-authored here.]

Posted on January 24, 2005 07:22 AM View this article | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

January 21, 2005

A Third Way on Climate?

Hans von Storch, Nico Stehr and Dennis Bray have written an interesting perspective on climate science and policy, suggestive of a third way beyond the Manichean global warming: yes or no debate. They write,

“The concern for the “good” and “just” case of avoiding further dangerous human interference with the climate system has created a peculiar self-censorship among many climate scientists. Judgments of solid scientific findings are often not made with respect to their immanent quality but on the basis of their alleged or real potential as a weapon by “skeptics” in a struggle for dominance in public and policy discourse.

When we recently established that the method behind the so-called “hockey-stick” curve of Northern Hemisphere temperature is flawed, this result was not so much attacked as scientifically flawed but was seen both in private conversations and public discourse as outright dangerous, because it could be instrumentalized and undermine the success of the IPCC process. Similarly, the suggestion that hitherto excluded research and policy discussions devoted to adaptive measures ought to be undertaken in order to pursue a much more balanced strategy of adaptation to and mitigation of climate change is seen as undermining the Kyoto process…

The concept of anthropogenic climate change is compelling even if the hockey-stick curve is false. Efforts to reduce the release of GHGs into the atmosphere are probably rendered meaningful even if we reduce present and future vulnerability by suitable adaptation measures. Climate science needs to reach a new self-understanding of its own culture”

Their recommendations are worth our attention:

• “We need to deal with the issue of anthropogenic climate change in a sustainable manner. The all too common practices of overselling and of even exaggerating adverse events by some must be strongly discouraged. Examples are the unfalsifiable, and thus useless, claims that current extreme events are, if not proof, strong indications of anthropogenic climate change. Sustainability requires that we tell the full truth as currently understood, irrespective if it fits into the politically correct agenda of the purportedly good case. People make all sorts of decisions under uncertainty — buying insurance, investing in the stock market, often with the advice of supposed financial experts, tolerating genetically modified foods — and there is no reason that uncertainty pertaining to climate change should be disabling.

• We need to respond openly to the agenda-driven advocates, not only skeptics but also alarmists, who misuse their standing as scientists to pursue their private value-driven agendas. This is a tragedy of the commons, namely that the short term gains (in terms of public attention; success of specific political agendas; possible funding) of a few are paid for on the long term by the scientific credibility of the whole discipline. Instead, sustainability requires that the discipline of climate science to provide the public with options of policy responses to the challenge of climate change, and not to prescriptively focus on only one such option (i.e., maximum reduction of GHG emissions).

• Finally we need to accept that climate science (as any other sciences) is a social process. Social and cultural scientists should be invited to analyze this process, to identify hidden limitations and conventions rooted in social and cultural backgrounds of the scientific actors, and to reduce the role of group dynamics on the practice of science.”

Read the whole essay here.

Posted on January 21, 2005 07:59 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

January 19, 2005

Climate Change and Reinsurance, Part 2.5

My recent posts on climate change and reinsurance (Part 1 and Part 2) led to a wide-ranging and fruitful discussion with a number of colleagues in the U.S. and Europe. (Thanks all!)

To bring you up to date, Part 1 made the case for a clear conflict of interest when reinsurers attribute or project increasing disasters because of climate change. Part 2 sough to evaluate the merits of such claims, which to be fair are made by many people well beyond just some in the reinsurance industry. The central question is, when looking to the past, to what degree is climate change responsible for the growth in disasters and disaster costs up to the present? I asserted in Part 2 that the answer is "not at all."

In this post, Part 2.5, I'd like to expand on the information presented in Part 2 drawing on additional information and analyses drawing from my recent discussions with colleagues. Specifically, there seems to be a strong consensus within the climate impacts community that the trends of increasing damage related to storms (whether tropical, extra-tropical, thunder, hail or other extreme weather) is completely the result of trends in societal impacts. Questions were raised about trends in impacts related to floods, heat waves and drought. Let's consider each in turn.

Floods

I noted in Part II that while the IPCC identified some regional trends in the incidence of what it calls "extreme" precipitation, it did not find similar trends in extreme streamflow (i.e., floods). After talking with colleagues and reading up on some of the more recent literature, it seems clear that there is no evidence for global trends in floods, although there may be some regional trends. There is considerable mixed evidence depending upon definitions of "flood" and the time period selected. It will be interesting to see how the next IPCC comes out on this. It is abundantly clear that flood damage is increasing around the world.

While it is conceivable that trends in precipitation and streamflow are responsible for some part of the growing impacts of floods, I await data and analyses making such a case quantitatively and globally. It is both logical and shown in our own research that flood damage tends to increase with aggregate precipitation (i.e., imagine a graph of such a relationship; it necessarily starts at the graph's origin - no precip, no flood damage), but exactly how much and how significant are open questions. My hypotheses, resulting from my work with Mary Downton on this paper .

Pielke, Jr., R.A., and M.W. Downton, 2000: Precipitation and Damaging Floods: Trends in the United States, 1932-97. Journal of Climate, 13(20), 3625-3637,

. are that (a) trends in damage will be most closely connected to trends in precipitation and streamflow at the regional and local level, and (b) attempts to aggregate regional data to national or global levels will necessarily result in a much smaller connection because of the contextual nature of flood impacts. Even if a signal could be found in the noise, it would be tiny when compared with the effects of societal vulnerability on flood damage.

Heat Waves

I am not an expert on heat waves or their impacts, so I called up someone who is, Larry Kalkstein from the University of Delaware. Here is what I asked him:

1. Is there evidence for an increase (globally) in heat waves? 2. Is there evidence for a trend of increasing societal impacts related to heat waves? 3. Is there evidence for growing societal vulnerability to heat waves?

His answers:

1. No. There is no evidence of an increase in the number of heat waves, in the U.S. or globally, but there are regional variations (e.g., Great Britain may have seen an increase). (Note that what he reported to me is completely consistent with the IPCC TAR.)

2. Yes and no. In the United States heat mortality has decreased since the 1960s by about 20-25%, which is less than what others have reported in the literature. Europe, by contrast has seen an increase in heat related mortality over the past decade. But there are large data gaps around the world.

3. Yes. Vulnerability has increased largely because of two factors -- demographics and the costs of energy. There are growing numbers of elderly people, particularly in Europe, and the elderly are more vulnerable to heat. Air conditioning is ever present in the United States, so its availability is less of a problem than is the cost of running the units. Many poor people choose not to run their air conditioners because of the cost, leading to an increase in their vulnerability. The urban structure of Europe makes its populations much more vulnerable to heat related impacts.

My conclusions: There is a lot that we don't know about global trends in the impacts of heat waves. Any trends that exist in the incidence of heat waves would seem to be regional in nature. If so, then we can narrow our focus on the role of climate changes as a factor in trends in impacts to those places that have seen (a) an increase in heat waves, and (b) an increase in impacts. This area would seem to be far smaller than global. Even so, better data will be useful from around the world. But clearly there is no evidence that would allow for a connection to be made between trends in heat waves and their societal impacts. I'll stick with my hypothesis that any trends in impacts are the result of increasing societal vulnerability and ask for falsification.

Drought

What we know about the societal impacts of heat waves seems to similar to what we know about the societal impacts drought. Drought has tremendous societal impacts, yet there seems to be no systematic collection of data on those impacts and how they have changed over time and space. For example, Donald Wilhite's two volumes on drought provide no trend data (Drought: A Global Assessment, 2000. Natural Hazards and Disasters Series, Routledge Publishers, London).

A recent NCAR study argues that one measure of drought shows a significant increase in areal extent over the past 20 years. But a connection to societal impacts remains to be made.

My conclusions on drought echo those on heat waves: There is a lot that we don't know about global trends in the impacts of droughts. There may be robust trends in the incidence of drought that are global in nature. Better data on impacts will be useful from around the world. But clearly there is no evidence that would allow for a connection to be made between trends in drought and their societal impacts. I'll stick with my hypothesis that any trends in impacts are the result of increasing societal vulnerability and ask for falsification.

So the bottom lines:

1. Anyone making assertions that changes in climate (whether human caused or not) are responsible for any part of the global trend of increasing disaster losses had better provide some new scientific evidence to back up such claims. Future research may tell a different story, but my reading of the current state of science is that, today, such claims are groundless.

It is important to reiterate that the discussion thus far has been retrospective, focused only on the attribution of factors responsible for the global trend in disasters. I will next turn to Part 3 which will explore the question, in the future to what extent should we expect climate changes to be responsible for increasing disasters and disaster costs?

Posted on January 19, 2005 08:17 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

January 15, 2005

A Response to RealClimate

In case you missed it Gavin Schmidt, one of the founders of the RealClimate blog, responded thoughtfully to my post "The Uncertainty Trap" where I suggest that their claim to focus on science and not politics "is a noble but futile ambition." He writes in response,

"Let me make one more thing clear: we are not taking a political stand on this [climate debate]. That someone else decides to support their political point by using bogus science is not our fault. If we correct their errors it is because we don't want to see bogus science used at all. It does not necessarily imply that we are taking a stand against their political premise."

Readers of Prometheus will know how much we value the honest broker. And to be sure climate science certainly needs more honest brokers. So RealClimate has great potential to fill a much needed niche. But unless RealClimate carefully considers policy and politics as they go about their business, they run the risk of simply becoming viewed as yet another voice on the internet pushing a political agenda through science, not unlike CO2science.org but with a different slant.

There are a few simple things that RealClimate might do to enhance its role as an honest broker. Here is some unsolicited advice.

1. No free passes.

RealClimate's focus thus far is very much framed in one political direction, e.g., on attacking George Will, Senator James Inhofe, Michael Crichton, McIntyre and McKitrick, Fox News, and Myron Ebell. These criticisms are perfectly justified, but RealClimate shouldn't give a free pass to anyone, especially those whose political agenda they may find more compelling. Here are a few items from the past week that RealClimate might have focused on:

*Worldwatch released its 2005 State of the World report and linked the 2004 Florida hurricane season and typhoons to signs of an "accelerated global warming." There is no scientific basis for making this linkage.

*An AP story linked a spell of warm winter weather in Russia to global warming. Perhaps such a linkage exists, but I'd be surprised if there was a scientific basis for making such a claim.

Excesses abound in the climate debate on all sides. Don't ignore this fact.

2. Be transparent.

Some RealClimate contributors have in other venues openly presented their political and policy commitments on climate change. In some cases these commitments are very strongly held. When such commitments have been made, RealClimate readers will be better served by being open about them. The bios on the site might simply present such information. Don't hide behind science.

3. Diversify.

The blog will be viewed as more legitimate and authoritative as an honest if the set of scientific contributors is comprised so as to have a diversity of political perspectives represented. If everyone who contributes shares a similar perspective, it can be more difficult for the participants to see the biases that result. In addition, it is important to be careful about moderating the posts to ReaClimate. If a diversity of perspectives is allowed to express their views then it will enhance the credibility of the site. This also means allowing legitimate scientists with different points of view to respond to your posts on topics that remain under debate in the scientific literature. Gatekeeping is another means that unstated biases can be reflected.

4. Distinguish policy and politics.

If RealClimate wants to avoid being labeled an advocacy site then rather than pretending to be disconnected from politics it might consider openly discussing policy issues. For example, questions related to policy, but which are apolitical, that might be addressed include:

What effect might emissions reductions of various sizes have on arctic ice cover?

What effect might emissions reductions of various sizes have on sea level rise?

What are the implications of the IPCC and FCCC using different definitions of "climate change"?

The honest broker's role will be better served by working to expand the scope of policy options available for discussion. Everything posted on RealClimate has implications for policy and politics, when not openly confront this reality?

Finally, it is important to understand that there is a large body of scholarship that shows that efforts to focus only on "the science" actually exacerbate the politicization of science. Any scientists claiming to focus on "scientific topics and not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science" should read and carefully think about the following two papers by Daniel Sarewitz:

How science makes environmental controversies worse

Science and Environmental Policy: An Excess of Objectivity

Here at Prometheus we wish the RealClimate folks well, it is a great experiment in honest brokering.

Posted on January 15, 2005 11:36 AM View this article | Comments (9) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science Policy: General

January 14, 2005

The Uncertainty Trap

Scientists are being played expertly in the ongoing political debate about climate change. Here is how the game works. Those opposed to acting on the options currently on the table, like Kyoto or McCain/Lieberman, invoke "scientific uncertainty" about climate change as the basis for their opposition. Of course, the basis for opposition for most of these folks has nothing to do with scientific uncertainty and everything to do with their valuation of the costs and benefits of taking action. As George W. Bush said in 2001, "For America, complying with those [Kyoto] mandates would have a negative economic impact, with layoffs of workers and price increases for consumers." The projected economic impacts of Kyoto are of course uncertain because they are the product of complex computer models based on numerous assumptions and parameterizations. But this uncertainty is not an obstacle to the Bush Administration taking decisive action.

Even though the basis for President Bush's opposition is grounded in how he values expected outcomes, he nonetheless raises scientific uncertainty about climate itself as a basis for his decision, "we do not know how much effect natural fluctuations in climate may have had on warming. We do not know how much our climate could, or will change in the future. We do not know how fast change will occur, or even how some of our actions could impact it. For example, our useful efforts to reduce sulfur emissions may have actually increased warming, because sulfate particles reflect sunlight, bouncing it back into space. And, finally, no one can say with any certainty what constitutes a dangerous level of warming, and therefore what level must be avoided." But his invocation of such uncertainties is just a distraction. Consider that Senator John Kerry who also opposed the Kyoto Protocol, but never invoked scientific uncertainty as the basis for his opposition (he claimed that the fact that developing countries did not participate was the basis for his opposition). Because Bush and Kerry shared opposition to Kyoto but had different views on the science of climate change, this suggests that ones views on climate science are not deterministic of one's political perspectives.

While there is ample evidence that scientific uncertainty is not the main reason behind opposition to action on climate change, advocates of Kyoto and emissions reduction policies more generally have seized upon claims of scientific uncertainty as the linchpin of their advocacy efforts (Why? Read this). In this way, the political debate over climate change takes place in the language of science, with some invoking "scientific uncertainty" as the basis for their preexisting ideological and political views, and others invoking "scientific certainty" (often in response to those invoking "scientific uncertainty"). Whether one likes it or not, claims of uncertainty map onto one political agenda and claims of certainty onto another political agenda. In climate politics there is no such thing as objective or unbiased science, it is all viewed through the lens of the political conflict.

The great irony here is that the debate of certainty and uncertainty is largely disconnected from the real reasons for political debate over climate change, which is based on a conflict over values. There may of course be those few folks whose political perspectives undergo "data-induced transformations" based on science but as Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay have observed "people generally come to their beliefs about how the world works long before they encounter facts."

If this assertion is close to being right, it means that opponents to action on climate change have already taken a big step toward winning the political debate when advocates of action take the bait on uncertainty. By raising uncertainty as a red herring advocates for action spend considerable time and effort trying to disprove allegations of uncertainty as the centerpiece of their efforts, but no matter how this sideshow winds up, it will do little to change the underlying political outcome, as the opponents can just switch their justification to something else while maintaining their political commitment to opposition. This is an exceedingly difficult line of argument for environmentalists and scientists to accept because the former have hitched their agenda to science and the latter's claims to authority lie in science.

The experiences of a new weblog run by a group of climate scientists, realclimate.org, provide a great example of this dynamic. The site claims to be "restricted to scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science." This is a noble but futile ambition. The site's focus has been exclusively on attacking those who invoke science as the basis for their opposition to action on climate change, folks such as George Will, Senator James Inhofe, Michael Crichton, McIntyre and McKitrick, Fox News, and Myron Ebell. Whether intended or not, the site has clearly aligned itself squarely with one political position on climate change. And by trumpeting certainty and consensus, and attacking claims to the contrary, it has fallen squarely into the uncertainty trap.

So if opponents to action on climate change want to distract the attention of some prominent climate scientists, they need simply write the occasional opinion article or give a speech in which they invoke uncertainty about climate change. Meantime, business as usual pretty much gets a free pass.

It would be wonderful if opponents to action on climate change would stop hiding behind science. But the efforts of those scientists who take them on the basis of science are what allow then to hide in plain sight. The way out of this situation is not to engage in endless debate about climate science, but to question whether science is in fact the right battleground for this political conflict.

Posted on January 14, 2005 10:53 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Risk & Uncertainty

January 12, 2005

NRC Perchlorate Report and NRDC Reaction

This week the National Research Council released a report on the "Health Implications of Perchlorate Ingestion." The study is significant because, as the New York Times reported yesterday, "Depending on how federal and state regulators interpret the academy's recommendation, the Defense Department, its contractors and other federal agencies responsible for contamination from perchlorate, a component of solid rocket fuel, could avoid cleanup costs of hundreds of millions of dollars." The political stakes are very high.

The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) responded to the report by claiming that, "the NAS panel's recommendation was likely shaped by a covert campaign by the White House, Pentagon and defense contractors to twist the science and strong-arm the academy." In other words, the NRC report reflects the results of political pressure and maneuvering by Bush Administration officials.

My first reaction to this is, of course it does. Given the political stakes we should only be surprised if the NRC was not pressured by people in the executive branch. It is important to remember that the federal agencies request, pay for, and shape the charge for NRC studies. All heads of federal agencies are political appointees and some of these heads (e.g., DOD) are among the most influential in the Bush Administration. I have participated in and reviewed a number of NRC studies and, while none had the political stakes that the perchlorate study has, in every one agency officials paying for the study had a clear sense of what they'd like to see in the final the report and we not shy in their efforts to influence the panel.

But just because politics is ever present in the NRC process does not mean that we turn a blind eye. Clearly, if policy makers or the public begin to view NRC reports as just another battleground for partisan politics, much of what science has to offer policy making will be lost (for more read this essay).

The NRDC has done an admirable job of uncovering a paper trail showing how much effort Bush administration officials went to shape the panel's composition and its charge. The NRDC efforts should be viewed as a model of oversight of the NRC. And oversight of the NRC is extremely rare, though much needed because what the NRDC has uncovered may be less unique than commonly assumed.

Specifically, the NRDC has found:

1) " ... senior White House officials reviewed and apparently edited a highly technical document charging NAS with evaluating detailed scientific questions." This is significant because the charge given to a committee dictates its scope and how questions are framed. Often the framing of questions bounds the range of policy recommendations that result. It is for this reason that I wrote earlier this week, "More important than the composition of scientific advisory panels is the charge that they are given ...". What is missing in the NRC is an open and transparent process for developing a charge to its committees. If the executive branch officials, both in agencies and the White House, who are paying for the study are responsible for developing with NRC staff the committee's charge, then we should fully expect that the charge will be slanted toward the political views of those funding the study. One option would be for the NRC to require politically charged issues to be funded by a diversity of parties. For example, NRDC could have been invited to be a co-sponsor of the study and thus be allowed to participate in the development of the charge. This may not always be a simple solution, as the government has deep pockets and advocacy groups often do not. But in this case this would have allowed for political compromises to be reached between NRDC and the Bush Administration well before bringing in the experts to answer technical questions.

2) " ... the White House, Pentagon and DOD contractors sought to manipulate the panel's membership to place "friendly" scientists on it." Just like in the development of the charge, the composition of the panel can easily be (and very often is) "stacked" in one direction or another (here is an example). Just as in the discussion of the charge above, such stacking would be less likely if those responsible for funding the study reflected a diverse set of interests. It is hopeless to think that there are unbiased or objective scientists who are untainted by politics out there who could have been placed on this panel. But dealing with the issue of the panel's composition before submitting the technical questions would have gone a long way toward increasing the legitimacy of the report's conclusions. When I wrote earlier this week of "... developing transparent, accountable and effective processes to manage politics in science," an example of such a process is to ensure that a diversity of political perspectives are represented in those who pay for and help to put together such panels. By relying only on the Bush Administration for funding for this study, it opened the door to an undue influence from one political perspective over others.

All of this suggests that the NRC needs to take a long hard look at its efforts to connect scientific advice with the needs of policy makers. The NRC faces a bit of a conflict as well because its studies are paid for by the folks to whom it is providing advice. It can to some degree deal with this by requiring a diversity of funding sources for particular studies and allowing these diverse participants to collectively reach agreement on a committee's charge and composition. The alternative is that we see the political battles fought either inside of the NRC committee or in the public after it is released, which in both cases will diminish the positive role of science in contributing to policy.

Posted on January 12, 2005 11:45 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health

January 11, 2005

A Couple of Newsletters and Essays

Our newsletter, Ogmius, is out today with an essay by Mike Rodemeyer, Director of the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, titled, “Science, Genetically Modified Foods, and the Rumsfeld Doctrine”. He writes,

“The lack of prior experience with biotech foods, combined with the perceived lack of benefit and the absence of any trusted proxy on the safety issue, has led to the current skepticism about safety and hostility toward biotech foods in Europe and other parts of the world. More assurances from scientists that such concerns are misplaced are unlikely to change the dynamic. Fears about the “unknown unknowns” can be overcome only through experience and trust, neither of which can be earned overnight.”

Read the whole thing here.

ASU’s Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes has their email newsletter just out as well. The feature a perspective by Oxford University’s Steve Rayner titled, The International Challenge of Climate Change: Thinking Beyond Kyoto. He writes,

“Unfortunately, support for Kyoto has become a litmus test for determining those who take the threat of climate change seriously. But, between Kyoto’s supporters and those who scoff at the dangers of leaving greenhouse gas emissions unchecked, there has been a tiny minority of commentators and analysts convinced of the urgency of the problem while remaining profoundly sceptical of the proposed solution. Their voices have largely gone unheard. Climate change policy has become a victim of the sunk costs fallacy. We are told that Kyoto is “the only game in town”. However, it is plausible to argue that implementing Kyoto has distracted attention and effort from real opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect society against climate impacts.”

Read the whole thing here.

Posted on January 11, 2005 08:21 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Biotechnology | Climate Change

January 10, 2005

Accepting Politics In Science

I have an op-ed in today’s Washington Post on science advisory committees.

“The current debate over these panels reinforces the old myth that we can somehow cleanly separate science from politics and then ensure that the science is somehow untainted by the "impurities" of the rest of society. Yet paradoxically, we also want science to be relevant to policy. A better approach would be to focus our attention on developing transparent, accountable and effective processes to manage politics in science -- not to pretend that it doesn't exist.”

Read the whole thing here.

Posted on January 10, 2005 08:03 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

January 07, 2005

Climate Change and Reinsurance, Part II

Part I made the case for a clear conflict of interest when reinsurers attribute or project increasing disasters because of climate change. Part III will explore the question, to what extent will climate change be responsible for increasing disasters and disaster costs in the future?

Now in Part II we turn to the merits of these claims, which are made by many beyond just some in the reinsurance industry. This post looks backwards and asks, is climate change responsible for the growth in disasters and disaster costs up to the present? The answer, detailed below, is "Not at all." There is no scientific basis for attributing the increasing trend in disasters to changes in climate, regardless of cause. This is for two reasons. First, the IPCC has found very little evidence for trends in weather extremes, both in its 1996 and 2001 reports. Second, given the magnitude of growth in disasters, there is clearly much going on beyond any possible changes in climate. The reason for increasing loses lies entirely with changes in societal vulnerability to disasters. Dan Sarewitz and I make this case in an article in The New Republic this week.

I was first drawn to this subject in 1995 when I was working at the National Center for Atmospheric Research with Mickey Glantz as a post-doc on a project on extreme weather events and impacts. At that time the trend of increasing disasters and disaster costs was clear. Munich Re observed this in a 1996 press release:

" the trend towards ever more and ever costlier catastrophes continues. In comparison with the 1960s, five times as many natural catastrophes occur nowadays, costing the world's economies - taking inflation into account - eight times and the insurance industry fifteen times as much. The Munich Re sees the main reasons for this trend in the increasing concentration of population and values in the cities, which are constantly growing in size and number and are often located in high-risk zones, and in the greater susceptibility of modern industrial societies to disruptions in the infrastructure."

And in this press release Munich Re was cautiously speculating at changes in climate as a factor contributing to the increasing disasters:

"What is more, in many regions of the world the increasingly discernible changes in the environment and climate are leading to a greater probability of new extremes in terms of temperatures, amounts of precipitation, water levels, wind velocities, and other parameters that are often finally reflected in catastrophes. This is why the Munich Re has long been pleading for measures to be taken with a view to curbing man-made changes in the environment."

But that same year the IPCC released its Second Assessment Report in which it found that while weather extremes varied over different times and places, it could find no coherent secular global trend of increasing extreme events:

"There are inadequate data to determine whether consistent global changes in climate variability or weather extremes have occurred over the 20th century. On regional scales there is clear evidence of changes in some extremes and climate variability indicators (e.g., fewer frosts in several widespread areas; an increase in the proportion of rainfall from extreme events over the contiguous states of the USA). Some of these changes have been toward greater variability; some have been toward lower variability."

So if extreme weather events were not clearly increasing in frequency or magnitude, but disasters were increasing dramatically, then the obvious explanation had to do with, as Munich Re stated, changes in characteristics of populations vulnerable to disasters. So we initiated a range of research projects to explore the sensitivity of trends and projections in disasters to climate factors and societal factors. The results of this research have been about 20 or so peer-reviewed papers that present a consistent message: The historical trend of growing disasters and disaster losses can be explained entirely by changes in society that create greater vulnerability to those losses. Given that the IPCC found in 1996 that there were no apparent trends in weather extremes, this conclusion makes perfect sense. When Munich Re speculated in 1996 about changes in the climate as a cause of increasing disasters, they were simply wrong. They were right when they concluded that the main reasons for the trend of increasing disasters was to be found in societal change.

Now, have things changed in scientific perspectives on extreme events over the past decade? No.

Losses have continued to increase, and the IPCC still has not identified any secular trends in weather extremes, with only one exception. The IPCC found no long-term global trends in tropical or extra-tropical cyclones (i.e., hurricanes or winter storms), in "droughts or wet spells", or in "tornados, hail, and other severe weather". What it did find was "a widespread increase in heavy and extreme precipitation events in regions where total precipitation has increased, e.g., the mid- and high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere." But perhaps paradoxically, it also found "an increase (or decrease) in heavy precipitation events may not necessarily translate into annual peak (or low) river levels". Indeed, while the IPCC found some changes in streamflow, it did not identify changes in streamflow extremes, i.e., floods, and concluded on a regional basis, "Even if a trend is identified, it may be difficult to attribute it to global warming because of other changes that are continuing in a catchment."

So the picture painted by the IPCC in 2001 had considerable more nuance than in 1996, but the underlying message changed very little. The IPCC found no trend in extremes that could explain any of the increasing losses related to extreme events. During this time I was participating in several projects looking at the complex relationship of precipitation and flood damages. We concluded,

" an analysis of the damage record shows that at a national level any trends in extreme hydrological floods are not large in comparison to the growth in societal vulnerability. Even so, there is a documented relationship between precipitation and flood damages, independent of growth in national population: as precipitation increases, so does flood damage. From these results it is possible to argue that interpretations in policy debate of the various recent studies of precipitation and streamflow have been misleading. On the one hand, increasing "extreme" precipitation has not been the most important factor in documented increase in flood damage. On the other hand, evidence of a lack of trends in peak flows does not mean that policy makers need not worry about increasing precipitation or future floods. Advocates pushing either line of argument in the policy arena risk misusing what the scientific record actually shows."

So yes, increasing precipitation contributes to increasing flood damage, but the precise amount of this increase is small and hard to identify in the context of the much larger effects of growing societal vulnerability to flood damages. For the details of our analysis, and an explanation for why regional and local trends are much more significant than global trends for considerations of flood damage, see this paper:

Pielke, Jr., R.A., and M.W. Downton, 2000: Precipitation and Damaging Floods: Trends in the United States, 1932-97. Journal of Climate, 13(20), 3625-3637.

And this report:

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that there is absolutely no scientific basis for attributing any part of the global, decades-long trend of an increasing number of disasters and disaster losses to changes in climate, irrespective of the reasons for those changes. As Dan Sarewitz and I argued in The New Republic this week those who perpetuate such claims, whether they are in the reinsurance industry, the UN, advoacy groups, or the scientific communtiy, are either "ill-informed or dishonest."

Having discussed the past, in Part III we will turn our attention to the future and ask, to what extent will climate change be responsible for increasing disasters and disaster costs in the future?

A Final Note:

To be fair I should be cautious about tarring the reinsurance industry with too broad a brush. Many in the industry are very responsible in making claims about the science of disasters. For example,

"Swiss Re is a specialist in reinsurance: it insures smaller insurers against large-scale disasters. Its records of disasters since 1970 indicate that the rate of natural catastrophes accelerated in the 1990s, which is also the decade when rising global temperatures have become clearly apparent. But Swiss Re executive Henner Alms said the company was "cautious" about attributing this directly to man-made climate change."

Posted on January 7, 2005 11:07 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

January 06, 2005

Climate Change and Reinsurance, Part I

Many scientists, policy makers and activists are quick to point out when industry misuses science or has a conflict of interest when making scientific claims. And right they should. Examples are familiar --smoking, drug approval tests, Erin Brockovich, the fossil fuel industryand climate change and so on. Even though conflicts in interest abound, Iam sure that the vast majority of folks in industry don't misuse science. But because industry can bring so many resources to promote its interests, its advocacy efforts can have a disproportionate impact.

However much to my surprise, not only does the reinsurance industry get what amounts to a free pass from scientists and advocates when they make claims about climate change and disasters, but the United Nations, home to the venerable IPCC, and advocacy groups often partner with reinsurance experts to advance their agenda. Not only does this not make sense for intellectual reasons, as the UN's IPCC is supposed to be the authority of climate science (why do they need reinsurance industry backup?) but also for pragmatic reasons. Doesn't the UN realize that if it partners with a conflicted reinsurance industry, whether or not its claims are correct, itsets the stage for people (like me in this post) to point out this uncomfortable fact? Before evaluating the substance of claims made by reinsurance companies about climate change and disasters, let's first ask if reinsurance has ac onflict in interest when making claims of increasing disasters related to climate change.

The reinsurance industry makes money, by and large, through income that it earns on its investments, and not through the differences between what it collects in premiums and pays out for disasters. But its premiums are important from the standpoint of not just being able to pay out when disasters strike, but crucially for creating a reserve of funds that can be invested and thus generate income for shareholders. The greater the reserve, then the greater the potential income. It seems like pointing out the obvious that the reinsurance industry has a powerful vested interest in charging the highest rates that the market will bear for its products. And the prospect of more disasters means a basis for charging higher rates. Thus, for the moment setting aside whether or not recent disasters are caused by climate change, it seems pretty clear that when the reinsurance industry say that disasters will get worse in the future, they have a clear conflict in interest. The following statements would appear to bear this out:

Consider the following Bloomberg news story from earlier this week:

"Munich Re, the world's largest reinsurer, expects damage from natural disasters to rise ``exponentially'' in the coming years, triggered by human-driven climate changes such as global warming. We're seeing, and this is also shown by the models, that climatic changes will speed up, and that damages will probably not rise just linearly but exponentially,''Peter Hoeppe, Munich Re's head of Geo Risks Research, said in an interview. Weather-related disasters will probably occur with greater frequency and intensity, prompting customers to boost insurance coverage,he said."

And consider this statement from a Deustche Welle article from last October:

"As a business, then, Munich Re says it has to take the current trend of global warming into account. One way to do this is to passing some of the risk on to the customer. "Premiums will have to be increased relatively,"[Munich Re's] Gehard Berz said. "And we have to let our customers know that we, as reinsurer, also have to take more big catastrophes into account, and thus need greater cash reserves. That is our main problem.""

When the reinsurance industry makes claims of increasing disasters, from the perspective of conflict of interest, this is no different than a fossil fuel interest promoting that science that best supports their interests. And it is important to point out that as interests, there is nothing wrong with industry or anyone else promoting its perspective as best it can. There are of course plenty of folks out there watching carefully induustry's scientific claims.

The situation becomes problematic when the supposed honest broker, the United Nations, partners with an industry that has a clear conflict of interest. So to the uniformed outsider a perception may be created of symmetry - oil and gas has its biases and matches up with corresponding political interests, and on the other side, the reinsurance industry has its biases and it also matches up with corresponding political interests. This symmetry lends itself to the view among some that climate change is all about competing political interests, and not much about science.

Because of the reinsurance industry's obvious conflict of interest on climate change, the UN and its IPCC should eschew partnering with it to promote science or politics (or both simultaneously), regardless of the truth or falsity of the claims being made by the reinsurance industry. If the UN IPCC wants to serve as an honest broker then it need to either partner inclusively with diverse set of stakeholders with conflicting interests or simply avoid partnering only with those selected industries that happen to share its biases. And the community of scientists and advocates who are quick to criticize the oil and gas industry (and rightlyso) when it has a conflict of interest or misuses science, should think carefully about giving a free pass to those industries whose conflict of interest happen to be more convenient.

All of this is more significant because the claims about disasters being made by some in the reinsurance industry, and promoted by the UN and others, are simply wrong. Stay tuned for Part II.

Posted on January 6, 2005 10:15 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

January 04, 2005

Social Science Policy

With the exception of hand-wringing about intellectual diversity on campuses, the contemporary S&T policy community spends precious little time on “social sciences policy” – that is, (a) policies for the social science and (b) how the social sciences contribute to decision making. Frances Fukuyama thinks that this is a mistake. He writes in a recent essay,

“The scandal that the media has thus far failed to cover is the utter failure of the American academy to train adequate numbers of people with deep knowledge about the world outside the United States. This failure is linked to the decline of regional studies in American universities over the past generation and the misguided directions being taken by the social sciences in recent years, particularly political science and economics.

The story here is one of colonization of the study of politics by economics. Known as the “queen of the social sciences,” economics is the only discipline that looks like a natural science. Economists are carefully trained to gather data and build causal models that can be rigorously tested empirically. The data that economists work from are quantitative from the start and can be analyzed with a powerful battery of statistical tools.

Economists’ powerful methodology has been a source of envy and emulation on the part of other social scientists. The past two decades have seen the growth of what is known as “rational choice” political science, in which political scientists seek to model political behavior using the same mathematical tools (game theory, for the most part) used by economists. Economists tend to believe that regularities in human behavior are universal and invariant across different cultures and societies (for example, the law of supply and demand is the same in Japan and Botswana). Similarly, rational choice political science seeks to create broad, universally applicable laws of political behavior by generalizing across large numbers of countries rather than focusing intensively on the history and context of individual countries or regions…

It is certainly desirable for a social science to be rigorous, empirical and seek general rules of human behavior. But as Aristotle explained, it should not try to achieve a rigor that goes beyond what is possible given the limitations inherent in the subject matter. In fact, most of what is truly useful for policy is context-specific, culture-bound and non-generalizable. The typical article appearing today in a leading journal like the American Political Science Review contains a lot of complex-looking math, whose sole function is often to formalize a behavioral rule that everyone with common sense understands must be true. What is missing is any deep knowledge about the subtleties and nuances of how foreign societies work, knowledge that would help us better predict the behavior of political actors, friendly and hostile, in the broader world.”

If important problems cannot be addressed with only knowledge from the natural sciences and engineering (and I don’t think they can), then it is necessary that we take on the challenge of social sciences policy. (And this is in addition to more conventional understandings of S&T policy, and also what Bob Frodeman has called humanities policy.) For the S&T community this means clearly distinguishing interdisciplinary policy research from the natural and social sciences, and the humanities, or perhaps as a true integration of these areas. Ideally, the S&T policy community should focus comprehensively on the systematic production of knowledge and its two-way connections to decision making.

End Note: In the 1970s the subject of social sciences “research utilization” occupied the time of a number of policy scholars, and there is some very valuable literature from that era. But as Fukuyama observes, interest in the usefulness of social sciences waned in the 1980s and 1990s. But there are some signs that interest in this topic is picking up again. Here is a recent literature review (Chapter 2) on this subject:

C. Donovan, 2001. Government Policy and the Direction of Social Science Research. PhD Thesis, University of Sussex.

Posted on January 4, 2005 10:34 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

December 30, 2004

Prometheus Office Pool, 2005

1) When the president’s FY 2006 budget is released it will show for NSF (a) a significant cut of 5%, (b) funding increase at the inflation rate, (c) a large increase on the way to a doubling, (d) a cut equal to the overall decline in discretionary spending

2) In 2005 a decision will be made about the Hubble Space Telescope to, (a) be serviced by a robot, (b) be serviced by a shuttle mission, (c) fall into the ocean with no repair mission, (d) put off the decision until 2006

3) When overall FY 2006 federal spending for R&D turns out to show a lower rate of increase (or even a decrease) from recent years members of the scientific community will, (a) break tradition and increasingly take on one another’s programs as a source of funds, (b) criticize the president and congress for punishing scientists for their advocacy in the 2004 election, (c) look increasingly to academic earmarks, (d) make louder pronouncements about a pending shortage of scientists

4) California’s Proposition 71 will be (a) rocked by scandal, (b) hailed for early therapeutic breakthroughs, (c) rarely in the news outside of California, (d) emulated by biotech interests in other states

5) The IPCC will (a) drop all pretensions of honest brokering and explicitly merge with the FCCC’s SBSTA, (b) see a continuing erosion of its legitimacy, (c) set up an external advisory body to help it connect its activities with the needs of policy makers, (d) forbid participation to scientists from countries having ratified the Kyoto Protocol

6) U.S. climate policy will be notable because (a) its dogged pursuit of the status quo, (b) its reengagement with international negotiations, (c) of record increases in funding of climate science, (d) it begins to highlight the inconsistent definitions of “climate change” used by the IPCC and FCCC

7) The president’s science advisor on 31 Dec 2005 will be (a) John Marburger, (b) Norman Augustine, (c) Mary Ann Fox, (d) a vacant position

8) The FDA will be (a) thoroughly investigated by Congress, (b) reorganized to reduce internal conflicts of interest, (c) start advertising to the public that for safety reasons there are drugs it has not allowed to market, (d) be rocked by continuing findings about the health effects of popular drugs recently approved

9) The big international issue in science and technology will be (a) natural disaster reduction, (b) discovery of life beyond earth, (c) concern over signs of an emerging pandemic, (d) abrupt climate change

10) Here at Prometheus we will see (a) an angel bequeathing an endowed chair and other goodies, (b) a steady rise in readership and comments, (c) an end to this blog experiment and retreat to the comforts of the peer-reviewed academic literature, (d) the addition of a few more regular posters.

My guesses: 1. (b), 2. (b), 3. all of the above, 4. (c), 5. (b), but (a) would be possible without the word “explicitly,” 6. (a), (d) is my wishful thinking, 7. (a), 8. (a), 9. (a), 10. I’m counting on (b) and am hopeful for (d) and, of course, (a) would sure be nice.

A final note of heartfelt thanks to Shep Ryen, who has made Promethus not only possible, but a success beyond anything I had imagined when we first cooked it up!

Happy New Year!

Posted on December 30, 2004 05:19 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

December 29, 2004

Basic Research in USDA?

As prospects for growth most every part of the federal budget look dim, including science, scientists and policy makers are looking to game the system to come out ahead in the sub-zero-sum budget game. A good example can be found in the efforts over the past years (or decades, depending on how one measures such things) to create an institutional home for basic research in USDA.

A group of scientists proposed in a report (PDF) last summer that the USDA create a National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) modeled on NIH and NSF. NIFA would focus on fundamental research that may or may not confer practical benefits, so long as it advances knowledge. The proposal recommends funding focused on external peer-reviewed grants, growing to $1 billion/year after five years and a governance structure of scientists and for scientists. One of the justifications given for creating a NIFA is the tradition of earmarking (PDF) USDA research funds, which means that politicians not scientists determine who gets funded. The report recommends that NIFA funding should be “new” money – it should not come from existing USDA or science programs. R&D at USDA totals $2.4 billion in 2005, and USDA was one of only a few agencies to see a substantial increase in 2005 (for analysis see the AAAS (PDF)).

In November, four senators introduced a bill last month to create the NIFA. It seems that the Senators are under the impression that the fundamental research will lead to direct economic and health benefits to the country. Who knows if NIFA will succeed politically in 2005, but it does seem clear that if implemented, NIFA will face some challenges connecting its basic research aims with expectations of relevance, not unlike NSF and NIH. Its champions will be well served to develop a more sophisticated talking point than the following: “"We're not totally naïve. We recognize that everything depends on budget, and budgets are very tight. On the other hand, I would argue that agriculture is terribly important to our country, everything from balancing trade, to protecting our environment, to food safety and anti-terrorism."

For an excellent background on research in USDA, see this 1981 OTA report, An Assessment of the United States Food and Agricultural Research System.

We should expect to see more institutional innovation (compare Proposition 71) as budgets for science are expected to be much tighter in the coming years than they were over the past decade. Such innovations can serve as valuable laboratories to learn about different strategies for supporting science to serve public objectives. If it is well conceived (which it does not seem to be at present), NIPA could be a positive innovation for conducting societally-relevant agricultural research.

Posted on December 29, 2004 02:34 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding

December 27, 2004

Shadow Boxing on Climate

I am amazed by the recent attention being paid to the issue of a scientific consensus on climate change. Naomi Oreskes wrote an article a few weeks back in Science, claiming that a literature review shows that a central statement of consensus reported in the IPCC is indeed a consensus. Since that article was published, debate and discussion (see here and here) has taken place on, among other things, whether it is in fact a unanimous perspective rather than the overwhelming view of most scientists.

Yesterday Oreskes published an op-ed in the Washington Post repeating her arguments. She writes,

“There is a scientific consensus on the fact that Earth's climate is heating up and human activities are part of the reason. We need to stop repeating nonsense about the uncertainty of global warming and start talking seriously about the right approach to address it. The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Program, the IPCC is charged with evaluating the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action. In its most recent assessment, the IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: "Human activities . . . are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents . . . that absorb or scatter radiant energy. . . . [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations."”

I agree 100% with her assertion that we need to “… start talking seriously about the right approach to address it.” But I have a hard time identifying those at the focus of Oreskes’ complaint. Who is it that objects to the IPCC consensus statement? And if these people can be found (one place to look first is climate-related blogs) why do they matter from a policy perspective? I can identify a few influential people who do not seem to be among the dissenters with respect to the IPCC statement Oreskes focuses on.

Bjorn Lomborg: “There is no doubt that global warming is happening or that it is important. Carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels will increase Earth's temperature. That is likely to have an overall negative effect.”

Ronald Bailey: “The main greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide which is accumulating in the atmosphere as a result of the burning of fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide levels have increased from 280 parts per million in 1750 to 372 ppm today. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap heat as it is being radiated out into space and re-radiate back toward the surface.”

Fred Singer: “In fact, the IPCC statement is in many ways a truism. There certainly must be a human influence on some features of the climate, locally if not globally.”

Patrick Michaels: “It has been known since 1872 that water vapor and carbon dioxide are the principal "greenhouse" gases in the atmosphere, and that increasing their concentration should elevate the temperature in the lower atmosphere. What has been a subject of contention ever since, is the amount and character of the warming.”

George W. Bush: “First, we know the surface temperature of the earth is warming. It has risen by .6 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years. There was a warming trend from the 1890s to the 1940s. Cooling from the 1940s to the 1970s. And then sharply rising temperatures from the 1970s to today. There is a natural greenhouse effect that contributes to warming. Greenhouse gases trap heat, and thus warm the earth because they prevent a significant proportion of infrared radiation from escaping into space. Concentration of greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have increased substantially since the beginning of the industrial revolution. And the National Academy of Sciences indicates that the increase is due in large part to human activity.”

Oreskes is absolutely right that we need to open discussion on climate policy options, because the ones now on the table are not up to the task (e.g., see this report by the Pew Center on Climate Change). But we are fooling ourselves if we think that trying to quiet any dissenting voices on the science of climate change is a prerequisite to action. As Oreskes has written in a recent paper on scientific proof in policy debates, “In recent years, it has become common for opponents of environmental action to argue that the scientific basis for purported harms is uncertain, unreliable, and fundamentally unproven. In response, many scientists believe that their job is to provide the “proof” that society needs. Both the complaint and the response are misguided.”

It may be that because the policy challenges of climate change are so frustrating and difficult, a natural reaction is to disengage from matters of policy and retreat to the familiar comfort of arguing about science. But it is thoughtful discussion of policy that we now need.

Posted on December 27, 2004 08:11 AM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

December 23, 2004

Happy Holidays!!

Happy Holidays to All Prometheus Readers! We’ll be back in action next week. Meantime, a Thursday whip:

Obstacles to emissions reductions and alternative energy. In addition to spending time looking at global legal frameworks and regimes, it may be worth also looking at policies at a slightly smaller scale. NPR has a cautionary tale, listen here.

Living with uncertainty, part 1. On the apparent health risks associated with painkillers, Gina Kolata has an excellent article in yesterday’s New York Times on the tradeoffs and uncertainties associated with developing and using new drugs. She relates the view of Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, a cancer surgeon at Harvard, “science simply does not and can not have all the answers. Every drug has risks and benefits, and often it is impossible to know all of them even after a drug is being sold. But that does not mean that drugs are bad or that federal regulators are lax. "It's muddy," Dr. Bresalier said. "Even people who are experts don't have the answers."”

Living with uncertainty, part 2. Yesterday we learned that a recount of the election results for governor in Washington now show a 10 vote margin for the Democratic candidate. Consider this commentary from a few weeks ago, “The difference between Rossi and Gregoire is now less than 0.0015 percent — 1,372,484 votes for Rossi, 1,372,442 votes for Gregoire. If this were a 100-yard dash, Rossi's lead would be slightly more than a millimeter… [Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed] said “said he expects to get an accurate and solid count back from the counties in a hand recount, but there's an inherent variability in election results, which he called "99.9 percent accurate."” You do the math.

Are universities special? When it comes to protecting their patent rights, maybe not says an article in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week. “Through legal maneuvering, Columbia [University won a new patent in 2002 with similar claims as the old ones. Soon, Columbia demanded more royalties -- until 2019 -- from various companies. Many balked… The Columbia case has added fuel to the debate over how aggressive universities should be in securing and protecting patents. Some argue that giving universities free rein to grab patent riches can damage academic values such as open inquiry and stifle basic research, since university scientists typically patent early-stage discoveries… Columbia and its defenders say the university is being unfairly maligned for doing what all patent holders are legally entitled to do.” The article requires a subscription to view: B. Wysocki, Jr. Columbia's Pursuit Of Patent Riches Angers Companies As University Seeks to Extend A $600 Million Bonanza, Biotechs Refuse to Pay Up Debate Over Academic Values, The Wall Street Journal, December 21, 2004; Page A1.

Posted on December 23, 2004 10:18 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

December 22, 2004

What is climate change?

In 2003 I made an argument that the FCCC definition of climate change is an obstacle to action. A short version of this argument was published here (the longer version in press as part of special issue in ESP):

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 2004: What is Climate Change?, Issues in Science and Technology, Summer, 1-4.

Considerable evidence for this perspective can be found in the summary report from the IISD on COP-10, which includes the following telling excerpt:

"Least developed countries - some of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change - failed for the second consecutive year to secure a decision for full-cost funding of adaptation through the Global Environment Facility (GEF). All financial resources for the LDC Fund are channeled through the GEF. The problems encountered by the LDC Fund shed light on the core problem of addressing adaptation in the context of the UNFCCC. Adaptation is an integral part of development, and as such, no project directed at adaptation will fall squarely within the scope of the UNFCCC, but will rather have components that include other aspects of development, such as disaster preparedness, water management, desertification prevention, or biodiversity protection. This problem was highlighted with great honesty by a GEF project director who said that when projects fall under many categories, rather than being easily adopted due to their clear synergies and multiple benefits, they become more complex and difficult to approve due to a series of successive revisions needed by different focal areas.

To add to this problem, adaptation projects are generally built on, or embedded in, larger national or local development projects and, therefore, the funding by the GEF would only cover a portion of the costs. In other words, if a country seeks funding for a project on flood prevention, the GEF would only be able to finance a portion proportional to the additional harm that floods have caused or will cause as a result of climate change, and the rest would have to be co-financed by some other body. The plea from LDCs, particularly the SIDS, lies precisely on this paradox, in that even if funds are available in the LDC Fund, their difficulty of finding adequate co-financing, and the costly and cumbersome calculation of the additional costs, renders the financial resources in the LDC Fund, in practice, almost inaccessible."

The FCCC’s narrow definition of climate change is incompatible with that used by the IPCC and is also a real obstacle to action. This needs more discussion in the community.

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 2004: What is Climate Change?, Issues in Science and Technology, Summer, 1-4.

Posted on December 22, 2004 10:46 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

National Post Op-Ed

Yestreday’s National Post, a Canadian newspaper, carried an op-ed by Terence Corcoran that discussed my 20 December 2004 post on Misuse of Science by UNEP.

A few quick reactions to his discussion:

Mr. Corcoran overall does a nice job relating our perspective, though he is clearly opposed to the Kyoto Protocol, calling it a “giant dead albatross.” From my perspective, while Kyoto or any extensions are not effective tools for modulating the future impacts of climate, there are good reasons why emissions reductions make sense (read this article) and why Kyoto may be politically attractive for the United States (read this post).

He gets my perspective slightly wrong when he says that I am talking about “weather assertions.” My post was not about the frequency of extreme weather events per se, but about trends in the economic impacts associated with extreme weather events. The distinction may seem subtle, but it is absolutely essential to understanding long-term trends. Even so, as recently as the IPCC’s Second Assessment report the scientific community was unable to identify any global trends in the incidence of extreme weather events. But even if there are trends and projections showing an increase (or even a decrease!) in such events, the impacts associated with them both historically and in the future are dominated by social and demographic trends and not climate per se. In other words, expect the economic costs associated with weather extremes to increase dramatically in coming decades no matter what the climate does.

One point should be made clear. Our work on the impacts of extreme events does not lend support to or opposition to Kyoto Protocol, or any other policy related to emissions reductions. It only becomes relevant to this debate when those advocating for the Kyoto Protocol make allegations about past and future weather impacts that are completely contrary to our findings. Our work then becomes a valuable resource to cite for those who are opposed to the Kyoto Protocol. But thi would not occur if UNEP and others would properly justify their arguments in the first place. Meantime, our job is to call ‘em as we see ‘em and hope that this can be a constructive contribution to better aligning arguments made on all sides in political advocacy with the robust finding from our research.

Posted on December 22, 2004 10:39 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

December 21, 2004

This Just In

The annual meeting of the National Association of Science Writers (NASW), to be held February, 2005 in Washington, DC, has organized a session titled,” Framing Science: Has Politics Taken Over the Direction of Scientific Research?”

News flash for the NASW – politics took over the direction of scientific research long ago when the federal government and the scientific community decided respectively to devote and accept large amounts of public money for research. The allocation of taxpayer dollars is a political process – politics has long been in charge of shaping the direction of scientific research. And most folks would say that when it comes to the expenditure of public monies, political accountability is a good thing. If the NASW wants to do a good job with topics of science and politics, it needs to frame the issue accurately, which in this case I don’t think it has.

The panel the NASW looks quite interesting, and potentially valuable, but they have to set it up right first. Here is how the NASW describes the panel:

“An overwhelming amount of scientific research in the United States has long engaged in an intricate dance with politics. Now, however, political views are forcing more drastic changes than ever in the work federally funded scientists can—and cannot—do, observers charge. Has the presidential science advisor's role changed? To what extent is politics manipulating the direction of scientific research these days? And how is the current political climate affecting journalists, PIOs, and other science writers?

Organizer
Laura van Dam, NASW President-Elect and Freelance Editor/Writer

Moderator
Joanne Silberner, Health-Policy Correspondent, National Public Radio

Speakers
Rita Colwell, Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of Maryland and Former Director, National Science Foundation

John H. Marburger III, Director, United States Office of Science and Technology Policy

Congressman Henry Waxman (invited), Ranking Minority Member, House Government Reform Committee; Member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce”

For information on the Conference see here.

Posted on December 21, 2004 10:30 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

December 20, 2004

Misuse of Science by UNEP

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) issued a press release last week that clearly misuses science to advance a political agenda. On what basis do I make this claim? The UNEP press release contains assertions that are squarely contradicted by a substantial body of research colleagues and I have published in the peer-reviewed literature. The misuse of science here is unambiguous.

UNEP is linking the economic impacts of extreme weather in 2004 to human caused climate change and then suggesting that emissions reductions are central to reducing those impacts.

Our research (a concise introductory summary can be found here) clearly shows that a connection between emissions reductions, which may indeed be worth pursuing for other reasons, and future economic impacts related to climate is all but nonexistent. How can this be? Trends in the growth in impacts related to extreme events are dominated overwhelmingly by growing population and wealth in places exposed to weather events, and not trends in the events themselves. We simply cannot modulate future damages via emissions reductions. Instead it is necessary to focus on the reduction of damages by reducing vulnerability, a strategy long-advocated within the hazards community.

Here is what UNEP says in the press release:

“Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) … said: “Climate change is already happening with rapid melting of the Arctic and glaciers world wide. Climate scientists anticipate an increase and intensity of extreme weather events and this is what the insurance industry is experiencing resulting in year on year losses. In many developing countries the impacts of high winds and torrential rains are aggravated by a variety of factors ranging from the clearing for forests making hilly slopes more vulnerable to land slips and slides to a lack of enforcement of building codes. Reducing vulnerability and helping poorer nations cope with the ravages of climate change is vital. Some experts estimate that for every one dollar invested in disaster preparedness, you will save six dollars in reconstruction costs,” he said. “However, it cannot be an alibi for inaction on emission cut backs. In the end, many smaller countries like low-lying small island developing states and countries like Bangladesh, can only adapt for so long before they are eventually over come by the impacts of storm surges and rising sea levels,” said Mr Toepfer… Thomas Loster, a senior executive and climate expert with Munich Re which is part of UNEP’s Finance Initiatives, said: “As in 2002 and 2003, the overall balance of natural catastrophes is again clearly dominated by weather-related disasters many of them exceptional and extreme. Indeed 98 per cent of all losses for 2004 and about 100 per cent of insured losses were weather driven. We need to stop this dangerous experiment human-kind is conducting on the Earth’s atmosphere. According to our latest findings, economic losses from January to October are in the order of $ 90 billion. The average value of the last ten years has been $ 70 billion. Insured losses, driven by weather or climate-related disasters, will amount to more than $ 30 billion, making 2004 the costliest natural catastrophe year ever for the insurance industry world-wide. There are indications that the figures will further increase, “ he said. “I would urge delegates and governments here in Buenos Aires to make a strong commitment to a post Kyoto agenda otherwise the industry’s appetite to finance and insure projects under the instruments of the Kyoto Protocol, such as the Clean Development Mechanism, will be blunted,” said Mr Loster”

And here is how a Bloomberg news article reported on the release: “Hurricanes and other extreme weather caused more than $90 billion of losses in the first 10 months of the year, showing the economic cost of climate change caused by global warming, the United Nations said.”

When the head of UNEP (and the head of the IPCC, see here) insist on misusing science in support of a political agenda, it damages the overall credibility of the IPCC, UNEP and the climate science community generally. And it is made worse because the scientific community stands silently by.

Posted on December 20, 2004 12:28 AM View this article | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

December 17, 2004

A Friday Whip

The Washington Post yesterday reported, “Almost one-fifth of the Food and Drug Administration scientists surveyed two years ago as part of an official review said they had been pressured to recommend approval of a new drug despite reservations about its safety, effectiveness or quality.” This seems to be a case an extreme misuse of science. This is a case worth watching closely.

The NRC released a report yesterday on “radiative forcing” of climate change. Among other interesting content, not only does the report through down some touch challenges for IPCC WGI, it raises a difficult (and ironic) policy quandary – what are the policy implications if action to reduce GHGs actually results in a magnification of climate change impacts (pp. 113-114)?

A new blog has appeared, Real Climate, which promises to restrict discussion “to scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science.” This is an experiment worth watching (and we are). Its recent focus on Myron Ebell, Michael Crichton, and on areas of climate science that are politically controversial suggest that thus far this particular experiment offers plenty of support for recent a recent thesis of Dan Sarewitz: namely how science makes environmental controversies worse.

David Dickson discusses low-tech versus high-tech approaches to meeting the challenges of malaria – vaccines versus bednets, provides an excellent case study of the challenges faced in a wide range of issues.

Tremors in political perspectives seem to be shaking the foundations of some long-held beliefs on climate change, a sign of foundation-shaking earthquakes ahead? For example, over at the conservative-leaning Tech Central Station there are signs in its coverage of COP10 that while their opposition to the Kyoto remains steadfast, their justifications are shifting in striking fashion. Meanwhile, on the other side a essay titled “The Death of Environmentalism” focuses mainly on climate change and has evoked a passionate defense of the status quo. We may be entering an era where the most interesting debates are enviro vs. enviro and skeptic vs. skeptic. Stay tuned …

So much to blog, so little time ….

Posted on December 17, 2004 10:27 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

December 16, 2004

Uncertainty and Decision Making

In many areas of decision making a claim is often made that “reducing uncertainties” are a prerequisite for decision making to occur. Hence, on an issue like climate change we see tens of billions of dollars invested into research justified primarily by a goal of reducing uncertainties to foster decision making. We also see a very public debate, enjoined by scientists, to try to scrub the world clean of any of the last vestiges of lingering uncertainty among the populace (for example, see here). And even the IPCC chairman sees its mission as being “reducing uncertainties.”

All of the focus and allocation of resources to reducing uncertainties raises what I would think ought to be several basic questions:

Is there evidence that reduction of uncertainty actually compels policy action?

Does funding of research actually lead to reduced uncertainty?

Is action impossible is the face of uncertainty?

I’d suggest that the answer to each of these questions is clearly “No”, and there is ample research, theory and experience to back this up (see the end of this post for some links to this literature). But let me illustrate this with an example focused on the 2004 election.

Who won the 2004 election? Well George Bush did, we can be sure of that just by looking to see who is inaugurated next month. But who received more votes? Well, that question, it turns out is a bit more complicated. A paper prepared by Campaignaudit.org, showing research done by students in a fall 2004 class of Communication Technology and Politics at the University of Washington in Seattle, compares error rates in various polling methods with actual margins of victory. They find that in several instances in the 2004 election, the margin of error in polling methods exceeds the margin of victory. This suggests some lingering uncertainty about who actually received the most votes in several states, including Iowa, in the 2004 presidential election. For example, the paper argues that Bush’s margin of victory in Iowa was 0.7% and two different methods suggest that the margin of error in the final tally is 1.0% and 1.3%, meaning that we can estimate the probability that President Bush won, but we cannot not have complete certainty. Here is an excerpt from their paper:

“In this data memo, we explore some of the different ways of estimating the error rate in the 2004 election. There are no pure measures of error in elections, but here we explore three ways of analyzing data about the outcomes of error — technology error, residual votes, and reports of incidents on Election Day. Inherently, this research has political implications, but we first begin by saying something about what this report is not describing. We are not arguing for recalls, recounts, or different political outcomes. We are not recommending one balloting procedure over another. We are not working with statistical models about social inequality, electoral administration and political outcomes. Instead, this is intended to be a focused exploration of margins of error and margins of victory in 2004.”

And if you don’t like this particular analysis of elections and error rates, consider Florida in 2000 or Washington state in 2004 where it is abundantly clear that the margin of victory fell far inside polling margin of error. Who thinks that Washington state will reducing its margin of polling error before installing a governor? Just like in Florida in 2000, a decision will be reached without resolving the fundamental uncertainty. Or to put things another way, it is politics, not information, which is most important for reducing political uncertainty. This is the lesson of policy adoption in just about every major issue of science and policy in recent decades, including the ozone issue (see, e.g., this paper).

If decisions about such apparently simple decision processes as elections are clouded by but not held up by inherent uncertainty, wouldn’t the same be true about more complicated decision processes involving the global environment? Of course. Yet many persist in asserting that reducing uncertainty is a prerequisite for action in a wide range of issues involving science. Why these assertions persist is a topic for another day.

To read more on this, see these two papers by Dan Sarewitz:

(as HTML) Sarewitz, D. 2000. Science and Environmental Policy: An Excess of Objectivity, Chapter
8, pp. 79-98 in R. Frodeman (ed.), Earth Matters: The Earth Sciences, Philosophy,
and the Claims of Community (Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice Hall).

(as PDF) Sarewitz, D. 2004. How Science makes Environmental Controversies Worse,
Environmental Science and Policy, 7:385-403.

Posted on December 16, 2004 10:32 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Risk & Uncertainty

December 15, 2004

IPCC-FCCC Issues at COP 10

The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) performs an invaluable service by providing daily updates from the meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP) to the Framework Convention on Climate Change. This week the IISD is providing daily updates from COP-10 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The IISD’s report of a briefing of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change held on Tuesday, 14 December 2004, raises some interesting issues.

First, the report notes that in his presentation, “Rajendra Pauchari (sic), IPCC Chairman, described IPCC’s mandate, noting that its main purpose is to provide comprehensive scientific assessments that are relevant to policy makers without being prescriptive.” The notion of “relevant, but not prescriptive” is not a clearly defined concept in the IPCC, and it seems to mean in practice that the IPCC will lend support to those policies that it deems important and ignore others, without providing any transparency to this process to outside observers. This is not policy neutral, close to being policy prescriptive, and may or may not be policy relevant. We have discussed this challenge here. The IPCC needs some help thinking about and shaping its role in climate policy.

The IPCC’s odd stance on issues of policy means, oddly enough, that it does not engage in a systematic discussion of post-Kyoto options for climate change and instead focuses its attention on options already on the table, which is a guarantee that the IPCC will be politicized and a great waste of effort, given that the world needs new options on the table. Such a concern was made apparent in the IISD report: “Harald Dovland, Norwegian Ministry of the Environment … expressed concern over the number of [FCCC] SBSTA members attending IPCC meetings, noted the risk of politicizing the IPCC …” The concern expressed about the number of FCCC participants in the IPCC process suggests that the IPCC is increasingly view as a subsidiary instrument of the FCCC and not an independent, honest broker on climate change policy more generally. In its first assessment the IPCC played more of an honest broker role.

A second issue is a comment attributed to Rajendra Pachauri, IPCC Chairman, “Regarding the fourth assessment report due in 2007, he said the working group on basic science needs to reduce key scientific uncertainties.” Given that the IPCC doesn’t actually do any new research, it simply assesses existing research and provides a comprehensive synthesis; it is very difficult to understand how the IPCC can “reduce uncertainties.” At best it can characterize uncertainties. Pushing the IPCC to reduce uncertainties can itself foster politicization of the process. More generally, it is the very notion that reducing uncertainties is a prerequisite to effective policy action on climate change that has helped to foster the state of gridlock we are in today. It seems like gridlock is here to stay for a while.

A final comment is that Dr. Pachauri, “indicated that the IPCC reports are not subject to external evaluation.” Who evaluates the IPCC? Who is it accountable to?

It seems that some very fundamental issues related to the IPCC – its role in policy, its handling of uncertainties, its processes of evaluation and accountability -- are being overlooked.

Posted on December 15, 2004 07:38 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

December 10, 2004

NYT on NRC HST Report

The New York Times noted yesterday,

“After six months of study conducted at Congress's request, the committee of 21 experts said that a robotic mission would hold too many uncertainties, that it would probably be ready too late to extend the telescope's life and that it might actually damage the instrument… Astronomers said they were delighted by the experts' findings.”

Surely The New York Times can do better than simply invoking the generic term “experts”. How about noting the following (and yes, this is an underscore of a point made yesterday):

“… what I’d like to focus on is the characterization of the NRC panel as “outside experts” and the role of NRC in making recommendations to government agencies.

First lets consider the issue of “outside experts.” Presumably, a fair interpretation of the phrase “outside expert” means in this context that the members of the NRC panel are outside of NASA or not subject to benefiting from the decision NASA makes on Hubble. But despite their significant influence on policy, the media (or anyone else for that matter) rarely looks at NRC panels for any actual or perceived conflicts of interest. Of course, the NRC has an internal process that looks at personal financial conflicts of interest (such as owning stock in a company that benefits from a NRC recommendation), but often members of a NRC panel are recipients of government funding for research in areas that they are making recommendations.

Lets take a look at the composition of the NRC Committee on the Assessment of Options for Extending the Life of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The very distinguished panel includes:

- A former director of the Space Telescope Science Institute which manages Hubble.
- A space scientist who has criticized how human spaceflight programs took money from programs such as Hubble
- A scientist who serves on a council that helps to manage Hubble
- An astronaut who helped deploy Hubble from the space shuttle
- Several former NASA employees (e.g., here and here)
- A scientist whose work depends upon Hubble (e.g., here and here)
- A scientist who advocates for space telescope missions.

My point is not that these people are unqualified (they are an impressive bunch), but that they can hardly be characterized as “outside experts.” Almost all have very close ties to NASA or Hubble, including creating, using, or supporting Hubble.”

Posted on December 10, 2004 10:31 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

December 09, 2004

Two Points on the NRC Hubble Study

The NRC study released yesterday on the Hubble Space Telescope concludes:

“The Committee finds that the difference between the risk faced by the crew of a single shuttle mission to ISS – already accepted by NASA and the nation – and the risk faced by the crew of a single shuttle servicing mission to HST, is very small. Given the intrinsic value of a serviced Hubble, and the high likelihood of success for a shuttle servicing mission, the committee judges that such a mission is worth the risk.”

Two quick observations:

First, this report shows the tension between the human space flight program and space science. After almost a half-century of marriage between human space flight and space science, perhaps it is time to consider a divorce?

Second, the NRC decided to advocate a single policy option that best fits the clear bias of the committee. No attempt at honest brokering here. As I wrote here last July,

“My point is not that these people [on the NRC Hubble Committee] are unqualified (they are an impressive bunch), but that they can hardly be characterized as “outside experts.” Almost all have very close ties to NASA or Hubble, including creating, using, or supporting Hubble.

One way to deal with actual or perceived conflicts would be to have the NRC panel take on the task of clarifying alternatives rather than advocating a single option over others.

Given that many of the members of the panel have at least the appearance of predispositions to preserve Hubble, it would seem that the NRC would be better served by having its panel present and evaluate the full suite of options open to NASA, rather than taking an advocacy position on a single option. At the very least it is time that the media takes a more critical eye on the composition of NRC panels who, with very little scrutiny, provide guidance that influences policy making.”

Posted on December 9, 2004 03:52 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

December 08, 2004

Confusion, Consensus and Robust Policy Options

"Consensus science can provide only an illusion of certainty. When consensus is substituted for a diversity of perspectives, it may in fact unnecessarily constrain decision-makers' options."

Naomi Oreskes, a scholar who I have a lot of respect for, caused a stir last week when she published an article in Science making the shocking claim that the consensus reflected in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) appears to reflect, well, a consensus.

Like others, I think that it is clear Oreskes' claim that there are no papers in the climate literature that disagree with the consensus is simply wrong. In fact, logically, this would have to be the case. The word "consensus" means "the judgment arrived at by most of those concerned". Most is not all. The word "unanimity" means, "having the agreement and consent of all." I have seen in email traffic a claim made that there are some 11,000+ articles on "climate change" referenced in the ISI database, and of these about 10% somehow contradict the consensus position.

But so what?

If that number is more like 1% or more like 40% it doesn't seem to me to make any difference whatsoever from the standpoint of policy action. Of course, one has to be very careful using the imprecise phrase "policy action" because people tend to read into that a particular course of action that they themselves advocate. So let me be very clear. In the IPCC one can find statements to use in arguing for support of the Kyoto Protocol. But as well, in the IPCC one can find statements to use in arguing against supporting the Kyoto Protocol. And the same is true for any specific course of action on climate change. The IPCC does not point to, support, or lend credence to any single course of action. There is without a doubt an infinite array of policy options on climate change consistent with the knowledge represented in the IPCC.

So in addition to arguing about the science of climate change as a proxy for open policy debate, we now can add to that arguments about the notion of consensus on the science itself as a proxy for open political debate. My perspective is that neither of these debates should matter, are both a distraction from progress on climate change and a reflection of the tendency of all involved in the debates to politicize climate science. The actions that we take on climate change should be robust to (a) the diversity of scientific perspectives, and (b) the diversity of perspectives of the nature of the consensus. A consensus is measure of central tendency, but it necessarily has a distribution of perspectives around that central measure, and almost all of this distribution is well within the bounds of legitimate scientific debate. Our policies should not be optimized to reflect a single measure of central tendency, but instead, to be robust enough to accommodate the distribution of perspectives around that central measure, thus providing a bit of a buffer against the possibility that we might learn more in the future (on this see the excellent work of Rob Lempert).

For more on my perspective read this essay: Pielke, Jr., R. A., 2001: Room for doubt. Nature, 410:151.

Here is an excerpt from that essay:

"Consider once again global climate change. For many years, policy debate has centred on the degree of certainty that decision-makers ought to attach to competing visions of the future climate. Lost in this doomed enterprise is the point that climate will certainly have an increasingly strong effect on the environment and society, simply because of growing vulnerability related to factors such as population, wealth and use of land. If a goal of climate policy is to reduce the effects of climate on the environment and society, then effective action need not wait until we are more certain about details.

Seen in this light, efforts to reduce uncertainty via 'consensus science' - such as scientific assessments - are misplaced. Consensus science can provide only an illusion of certainty. When consensus is substituted for a diversity of perspectives, it may in fact unnecessarily constrain decision-makers' options. Take for example weather forecasters, who are learning that the value to society of their forecasts is enhanced when decision-makers are provided with predictions in probabilistic rather than categorical fashion and decisions are made in full view of uncertainty. As a general principle, science and technology will contribute more effectively to society's needs when decision-makers base their expectations on a full distribution of outcomes, and then make choices in the face of the resulting - perhaps considerable - uncertainty."

Posted on December 8, 2004 01:15 PM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Science Policy: General

December 07, 2004

Research as Climate Policy

From an article in Voice of America News is this telling quote from U.S. Senior Climate Negotiator Harlan Watson:

“The United States has been criticized for not ratifying the protocol, but the climate negotiator says U.S. environmental efforts should not be scorned by other nations. "I challenge them to match us," he said. "As they say, we spend more on science and technology than anyone else in the world by far." He adds that the United States has spent roughly $23 billion on climate change science since 1990, more than the rest of the world combined.”

Last year Dan Sarewitz and I wrote of this approach to climate change,

“Our position, based on the experience of the past 13 years, is that although the current and proposed climate research agenda has little potential to meet the information needs of decisionmakers, it has a significant potential to reinforce a political situation characterized, above all, by continued lack of action. The situation persists not only because the current research-based approach supports those happy with the present political gridlock, but more uncomfortably, because the primary beneficiaries of this situation include scientists themselves. Things are unlikely to change for the better unless the climate research community adopts a leadership role that places societal responsibility above professional self-interest.”

What would this mean?

First and foremost it would mean abandoning the justification frequently advanced for climate change science that continued investments in climate research will lead to reduced uncertainty which will enable decision making.

Instead climate research has great, and largely untapped, potential to contribute to an expansion of climate policy options available for decision makers’ consideration. On climate change, policy makers don’t need more information, they need more choice.

Posted on December 7, 2004 02:17 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

December 06, 2004

About that NSF Budget Cut

The Washington Post reports today,

“Without a separate vote or even a debate, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) has managed to deliver to a delighted NASA enough money to forge ahead on a plan that would reshape U.S. space policy for decades to come. President Bush's "Vision for Space Exploration," which would send humans to the moon and eventually to Mars, got a skeptical reception in January and was left for dead in midsummer, but it made a stunning last-minute comeback when DeLay delivered NASA's full $16.2 billion budget request as part of the omnibus $388 billion spending bill passed Nov. 20.”

Why is this important? NASA and NSF both sit in the VA-HUD Appropriations subcommittee and consequently must share a common slice of the federal budgetary pie (along with Veterans Administration and Housing and Urban Development). According to today’s Post article Representative DeLay, whose district includes NASA’s Johnson Space Center, was responsible for increasing NASA’s budget from $15.9 billion to $16.2 billion, an increase of $300 million. By contrast, NSF saw its budget cut by $105 million. You can do the math.

This indicates that the NSF cuts were the necessary result of political priority-setting across competing science agencies, and not because money was siphoned off to Punxsutawney Phil or any other of the less plausible interpretations that have been advanced over the past week.

As I wrote in October, “after a decade of record increases it seems unlikely that claims of crisis, balance, or proportional benefit will avoid intra-S&T conflicts resulting from stagnant budgets.”

Posted on December 6, 2004 12:05 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding

December 01, 2004

Sources for Space Policy Commentary and News

A few websites on space policy worth highlighting:

“The Space Review is a new online publication devoted to in-depth articles, commentary, and reviews regarding all aspects of space exploration: science, technology, policy, business, and more.”

http://www.thespacereview.com/index.html

The site also has a companion weblog: http://www.spacepolitics.com/

And a companion news site: http://www.spacetoday.net/

Posted on December 1, 2004 10:11 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

November 30, 2004

NYT as NSF Mouthpiece

I must have missed the announcement, but it appears that the New York Times has merged with the public affairs office of the National Science Foundation. In an article in today’s New York Times Robert Pear editorializes rather than reports, “Congress has cut the budget for the National Science Foundation, an engine for research in science and technology, just two years after endorsing a plan to double the amount given to the agency. Supporters of scientific research, in government and at universities, noted that the cut came as lawmakers earmarked more money for local projects like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and the Punxsutawney Weather Museum in Pennsylvania.”

The article includes quotes from no less than 5 advocates lamenting the budget cuts to the National Science Foundation, and gets no perspective from any independent voices, such as the AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program. In a classic strawman argument the article plays the NSF cuts off of earmarks to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ($350,000) and the Yazoo Backwater Pumping Plant in Mississippi ($12 million). The article attempts to politicize the issue by observing that “Senators Trent Lott and Thad Cochran, both Republicans, defended the project …” while “Melissa A. Samet, a lawyer at American Rivers, an environmental group, said “It’s a horrible project …”.”

The article fails to note that research within NSF actually received small cuts, with the bulk of the cuts coming from “education and human resources.” The article fails to observe that NSF sits in the same appropriations subcommittee as NASA, which received an unexpected and significant 5% increase, along with funding for Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development. Also, the article fails to engage the fact (shown in a graph accompanying the print version) that the NSF budget has already about doubled over the past decade. It also includes various statements about the practical value of NSF research, but does not reconcile this with the NSF’s mission to support science for science sake. The article does not address the fact that earmarks are an issue of science policy, and were discussed in depth by the late Congressman George E. Brown in the 1990s, and more recently by the AAAS.

Lets not mince words here – this article is one of the worst I have ever seen on an issue of science policy. It is all the worse for appearing in one of the nation’s leading newspapers.

Posted on November 30, 2004 12:25 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding

Opening up Space Policy Debate

In the early 1980s James Van Allen criticized NASA for taking money from space science in order to shore up spending on the space shuttle program, calling the expected budgetary carnage “the slaughter of the innocents.” Today we see a very similar dynamic going on in NASA with space science once again being threatened. In a report released earlier this month, the American Physical Society characterized the situation as follows, “Very important science opportunities could be lost or delayed seriously as a consequence of shifting NASA priorities toward Moon-Mars.”

The APS recommends that NASA submit it plans to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for a review. Of course the APS recommends going to the NAS because the NAS is a very strong supporter of science and has been the source of priority-setting activities for all of space science.

In an editorial yesterday, The New York Times noted, “In most years, there has been a budgetary wall between the manned space program and unmanned scientific programs, thus providing some protection for science when the inevitable cost overruns hit the more costly manned flight programs. Now NASA will have great freedom to pillage its scientific accounts to pay for the shuttle or space station or the president's Moon-Mars exploration program, or it can raid one manned program to help pay for another, all subject to final approval by Congress.” The New York Times also recommended that Congress consider terminating the Shuttle and the Space Station.

And the St. Petersburg Times writes in an editorial, “Americans may be mesmerized by the prospect of reaching new frontiers in space, but the nation has hardly had a debate about NASA's mission and the associated costs… But before the agency takes what could be a fundamentally new direction, the administration, Congress and the scientific community need to weigh more thoroughly how the president's plan would serve science and affect other domestic priorities.”

See also this editorial in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer.

Voices such as these suggest that it is time not just for a debate over goals of the nation’s space program but also the means for achieving those goals. NASA is but one of several agencies that has a space program, others include the Departments of Commerce and Defense. And NASA is but one of several agencies that supports earth and space science, others include the National Science Foundation and the Department of Commerce (NOAA). Perhaps it is time to reconsider how space programs in the government are organized. In particular, might there be reason to consider consolidating research for research sake in NSF, and research that is focused on improving government services in NOAA, and then focus NASA on human aeronautics and human space flight?

In the end it may well be decided that the current structure is the best or only one practical. However, space policy needs a healthy debate that engages a wide range of perspectives beyond the status quo. But this debate is only something that can occur with the participation and leadership of the President or Congress.

Posted on November 30, 2004 12:20 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

November 29, 2004

Declare Victory and Move On?

The Kyoto Protocol is going to come into force. Yet many countries are failing to meet their emissions reductions targets. Thus, isn’t it a bit premature to be talking about Kyoto in the past tense?

“I don't want to water it down but (Kyoto targets) were the low-hanging fruits," Klaus Toepfer, head of the U.N. Environment Programme in a Reuters news story.

Posted on November 29, 2004 12:05 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

November 24, 2004

Clear Thinking on Climate Change

Oxford's Steve Rayner is one of the most brilliant minds around on the issue of climate change. This document, which we are pleased to provide in full, is an invited memorandum to the Environmental Audit Committee of the United Kingdom's House of Commons. The title of the memo is "The International Challenge of Climate Change: UK Leadership in the G8 and EU." Rayner writes,

"In the end, climate policy comes down to a question of values - not science. The decision to proceed with effective climate policies cannot wait for a dramatic precipitating event. In fact, it's hard to visualize what such an event might be. But without one it seems that public pressures on government and private sector decision makers may not be sufficient to get them to take and sustain necessary actions. We also know that the public is more likely to be moved by disaster to support emergency relief than it is to offer sustained support for development assistance. Mobilizing public values rather than scientific consensus is the key to successful climate action. These may be good reasons to focus more attention than hitherto on adaptation policies that are more directly linked in the public imagination to the consequences of climate change than is the issue of emissions."

The entire memo should be required reading for anyone interested in the realities of climate policy and clear thinking in the face of those realities. The whole memo can be found here.

Posted on November 24, 2004 05:44 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

November 23, 2004

Wanted: Honest Brokers

The Journal of the American Medical Association has published an important set of articles on the drug approval and post-approval surveillance process. In their overview article Fontanarosa et al. characterize the general problem as follows:

“Physicians and patients expect that when medications are prescribed correctly for labeled indications and are used as directed, these medications generally will have beneficial effects and will not cause significant harm. This confidence in pharmaceutical products reflects trust in the effectiveness and integrity of the drug approval and monitoring process… However, the current approval process for drugs and biological agents in the United States has come under intense scrutiny, most notably because of concerns about influence from industry… In addition, an investigation of 18 FDA expert advisory panels revealed that more than half of the members of these panels had direct financial interests in the drug or topic they were evaluating and for which they were making recommendations.

The drug review process has been described as structurally similar to many decisions made by other regulatory agencies, such that it is characterized by high uncertainty, avoidance of observable error, and low (reputational) reversibility, with drug recalls harming the reputation of the FDA for a faulty approval decision, and often severely affecting the manufacturer. Given that new products are the financial lifeblood of pharmaceutical companies, the stakes are raised higher due to intense lobbying by interested parties such as health professionals and patient advocacy groups, as well as pharmaceutical and technology companies, so it is no wonder that, in 2003, the pharmaceutical industry earmarked $4.9 million to lobby the FDA… While these concerns are noteworthy, they pale in comparison to the shortcomings and failures of the current imperfect system for postmarketing surveillance… Yet the major problem with the current system for ensuring the safety of medications is that drug manufacturers are largely responsible for collecting, evaluating, and reporting data from postmarketing studies of their own products. This approach has many inherent problems. For instance, it appears that fewer than half of the postmarketing studies that manufacturers have made commitments to undertake as a condition of approval have been completed and many have not even been initiated. Moreover, despite the mandatory adverse event reporting system for companies subject to the FDA’s postmarketing safety reporting regulations, drug manufacturers may be tempted to conceal available data that may signal the possibility of major risks. In some cases, the FDA and drug manufacturers may fail to act on that information and fail to conduct appropriate studies to examine a potential risk rigorously and promptly.”

The article concludes:

“The postmarketing surveillance system requires a long overdue major restructuring. Until that occurs—as indicated by the articles in this issue of JAMA, as epitomized by recent evidence of serious harms from widely used and heavily promoted medications, as demonstrated by the influence of industry over postmarketing data, and as illustrated by the lengths to which some manufacturers will go to protect their interests—the United States will still be far short of having an effective, vigilant, and trustworthy system of postmarketing surveillance to protect the public.”

Fontanarosa et al. are exactly right to recognize that the issues faced in postmarketing surveillance of drugs are part of a larger class of issues at the interface of politics, parochial interests, uncertainty, and science. They note that the FDA has asked the Institutes of Medicine to organize a study to “study the effectiveness of the United States drug safety system with emphasis on the post-market phase, and assess what additional steps could be taken to learn more about the side effects of drugs as they are actually used. The committee will examine FDA's role within the health care delivery system and recommend measures to enhance the confidence of Americans in the safety and effectiveness of their drugs.”

Given the attention being paid to advisory panel composition, it will be very interesting to see how the IOM comprises this panel.

This case highlights the need for honest brokers in important political issues with a scientific element. As Dr. Alastair Wood of Vanderbilt University, commented on the issue in today’s New York Times,

"When we have a drug problem it's analogous to a plane crashing off the coast of New York City, and being investigated by the air traffic controllers who controlled the flight and the airline flying the plane. They're not bad people, but it's not the way we do things in this country."

Posted on November 23, 2004 11:43 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health

November 22, 2004

AAAS on 2005 Science Funding

As usual, the AAAS is the place to go for up-to-date information on research and development funding. On their website you find a detailed analysis of the 2005 S&T funding reflected in the FY 2005 omnibus spending bill.

Also from the AAAS, in conjunction with the Washington Science Policy Alliance, the AAAS is hosting a panel on Wednesday, December 1, 2004 on the "Impacts of the 2004 Election on Science and Technology." The panel will be at AAAS headquarters in Washington, DC and while admission is free, an RSVP is required. Details here. If any Prometheus readers attend, we’d welcome a report which we will be happy to post here (with or without attribution, as you’d prefer.)

Posted on November 22, 2004 10:46 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

November 19, 2004

A False Dichotomy

John E. Porter, chairman of the NAS panel that issued a report earlier this week on presidential appointments to advisory panels noted an important distinction in their guidance that policy/political perspective should not be considered in the empanelment process.

"Policy perspectives are appropriate for those placed on committees for their policy insights, but it is not a relevant criterion for selecting members whose purpose is to provide scientific and technical expertise."

This perspective suggests that there is independence between one's political views and one's views on science. Perhaps on some, largely non-controversial issues this is the case. But if the subject is important enough politically so as to warrant a presidential advisory committee, then it is likely that there will be a diverse set of scientific perspectives on the issues, and these are well correlated with political perspectives.

Chris Mooney provides an excellent example of this dynamic, citing a column by Peter Beinart at The New Republic (subscription required). Mooney quotes him as follows:

"In a diverse democracy, there must be a common political language, and that language can't be theological. Sometimes, conservative evangelicals grasp this and find nonreligious justifications for their views. (Christian conservatives sometimes argue that embryonic stem cells hold little scientific promise, or that gay marriage leads to fewer straight ones. On abortion, they sometimes cite medical advances to show that fetuses are more like infants than pro-choicers recognize. Such arguments are accessible to all, and thus permit fruitful debate.)"

As different political interests seek to justify their claims in the language of science, putative scientific debates become in effect political debates. Who can possibly believe that the debate about any part of the climate issue is at its core a scientific debate?

To illustrate the difficulties associated with the NRC guidance on advisory panels consider this challenge. Lets say that the president wanted an advisory panel on hurricanes and climate change. Who should be appointed to that panel? In this context the policy and political perspectives of most experts is either well known in advance, or the significance of their stance on hurricanes and climate change for political outcomes is well known. There is no way to isolate "pure" scientific considerations in this case, or many others with similar characteristics across science. One needs to detach from reality to think that a policy forbidding the consideration of policy/political perspectives can be effectively implemented in practice.

Posted on November 19, 2004 10:32 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

November 18, 2004

NRC on Advisory Committees

Yesterday the National Research Council released a report on the presidential appointments in areas of science and technology, including the empanelment of science advisory committees.

The report recommends, "It is inappropriate to ask [prospective panelists] to provide nonrelevant information, such as voting record, political-party affiliation, or position on particular policies." The NRC justifies this position, in part, with the following statement:

" ... even for committee member selected for reasons unrelated to expertise, political-party affiliation and voting record do not necessarily predict their position on particular policies and should not be used as a means to balance committee perspectives."

This is an incredible statement coming from an NRC committee that is obviously carefully selected to maintain a political balance in its membership. Unless the NRC is suggesting that political and policy positions should be considered only in smoky back rooms, they are suggesting that expertise and politics/policy can be cleanly separated, and that the former are "nonrelevant" - a position in all of its dimensions well-understood to be utopian or delusional by those folks who study such things in the STS community.

The NRC recommendation is a recipie for continued politicization of science in the advisory commmittee empanelment process.

Posted on November 18, 2004 11:02 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Hyperbole and Hyperbole Police

A particularly interesting example of hyperbole on the climate issue was sent in by John Fleck (Thanks!). The incident is interesting no so much because of the hyperbole itself, but because scientists, including some closely affiliated with the IPCC, were willing to take a public stand on the hyperbolic statements.

Here is an excerpt from the New Zealand Herald article that discussed the incident:

""The winner of one of New Zealand's top science medals, Professor Peter Barrett, has backed off a controversial claim that humanity faces extinction within 100 years because of global warming.

Dr Barrett, who was presented with the Royal Society's Marsden Medal in Christchurch last night, gave the Christchurch Press notes for his acceptance speech in which he planned to say: "If we continue our present growth path we are facing extinction - not in millions of years, or even millennia, but by the end of this century."

After a storm of criticism, he changed the word "extinction" in his speech last night to "the end of civilisation as we know it".

Dr Barrett, 64, the director of Victoria University's Antarctic Research Centre, has used ancient air particles trapped in Antarctic ice to show changes in carbon dioxide are linked with changes in the polar ice sheets and the Earth's climate. His work has been widely cited in the world's scientific journals.

But his own colleagues were embarrassed yesterday after his initial speech notes were reported. "I certainly wouldn't be using that language," said Dr Jim Salinger, the lead author for the Australia and New Zealand chapter of the next global assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

Good for Jim Salinger and good for the IPCC.

Posted on November 18, 2004 10:46 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

November 15, 2004

Hyperbole Watch

Following up from a post last week we thought it might be useful to post examples of excessive hyperbole on the climate issue – from all perspectives on the issue. We’ll do this when we see them or when you send them in. Here are a few:

Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas writing for Tech Central Station 11 November 2004 say, “A recent study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research by scientists from Princeton and Duke Universities indicates massive wind farms would significantly increase local surface drying and soil heating, which in turn would impact agricultural or range use on or near the wind farm… Wind farms may not be as benign to the environment and weather as its promoters say”. Question for Drs. Soon and Baliunas: Why so quick to highlight the implications of this single climate modeling study, when in the past you have criticized such models as not being “sufficiently accurate” to guide policy?

"You can kiss the planet goodbye," James Gustave "Gus" Speth, dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, in The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, 13 November 2004. Speaks for itself.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier, the chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), speaking of the United States and arctic peoples in a 13 November 2004 BBC news article, "The short-term economic policy of one country should not be able to trump the entire survival of one people." The BBC article states, “Indigenous people from the Arctic have urged the US to cut greenhouse gas emissions to slow down the current thaw of the polar ice.” Questions for the cryospheric community: What is the relationship between U.S. economic policies and the rate of arctic ice changes? Can we modulate future arctic ice thickness with economic policies? Any studies on these questions?

Posted on November 15, 2004 12:15 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

November 10, 2004

Pontifical Academy of Sciences

Did you know that the Roman Catholic Church has its own academy of sciences? I sure didn’t. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences, located in Rome and dates its origins to 1603, has the following mission:

“The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is international in scope, multi-racial in composition, and non-sectarian in its choice of members. The work of the Academy comprises six major areas: Fundamental science; Science and technology of global problems; Science for the problems of the Third World; Scientific policy; Bioethics; Epistemology.”

There is also a Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.

Earlier this week Pope John Paul II gave a speech to participants in the plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that touched on a wide range of science policy issues. Here are a few of the most interesting excerpts and my commentary.

The Pope strongly believes that scientific research should serve societal ends, in a manner that seems completely consistent with the perspectives of historian Lynn White Jr. (in PDF):

“The creativity which inspires scientific progress is seen especially in the capacity to confront and solve ever new issues and problems, many of which have planetary repercussions. Men and women of science are challenged to put this creativity more and more at the service of the human family, by working to improve the quality of life on our planet and by promoting an integral development of the human person, both materially and spiritually.” At another point the Pope says: “Indeed, the inexhaustible bounty of nature, with its promise of ever new discoveries, can be seen as pointing beyond itself to the Creator who has given it to us as a gift whose secrets remain to be explored. In attempting to understand this gift and to use it wisely and well, science constantly encounters a reality which human beings "find". In every phase of scientific discovery, nature stands as something "given."”

But the Pope also appears to share with Milton Friedman, interestingly enough, the idea that research should be conducted without any external influences – it should be a pure search for the truth, what has at times been called “basic research”: “If scientific creativity is to benefit authentic human progress, it must remain detached from every form of financial or ideological conditioning, so that it can be devoted solely to the dispassionate search for truth and the disinterested service of humanity.” Presumably government support for science, which has financial and political constraints upon it, would also be excluded under this perspective.

Like we’ve said here before, science policy is everywhere.

Posted on November 10, 2004 09:58 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

November 09, 2004

A Hyperbolic Backlash

On occasion here at Prometheus we've observed that within the scientific community proponents of action to mitigate climate change have an increasing tendency to misjustify, overstate, or misuse science in support of their agenda. By engaging in such hyperbole, the scientist-advocates are, ironically enough, adopting some of the exact same tactics that opponents of action to mitigate climate change have been criticized for by many of the exact same proponents of action.

For example, today's Seattle Times contains an article that provides a window into the conflict that is festering within the scientific community about using hurricanes, and in particular the 2004 hurricane season, as a justification for changes to energy policies. Here is an excerpt:

""Four hurricanes in a five-week period could be a harbinger of things to come," said Dr. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. Epstein is among a group of scientists from Harvard and the National Center for Atmospheric Research - a consortium of 68 universities funded by government and private grants - who argue that a rise in global sea temperatures is putting more moisture into the air, increasing the chances not only for more intense hurricanes but also for more rain and severe storms throughout the year. And they say this is only the beginning. Warming, they contend, is an underlying factor contributing to droughts in the
Midwest, heat waves in Europe and typhoons in Japan. Other scientists dispute that gloomy appraisal... "You can never attribute a single season, or even several seasons, to something like global warming," said Gerry Bell, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center. Bell and other NOAA scientists say it's wrong to blame warming for an increase in the number or severity of recent storms... Bell said that blaming global warming for recent storms is overlooking the obvious. "It's like if you see someone take a blowtorch to a house and the house burns down, then arguing that it was the summer heat that caused the fire and overlooking the blowtorch," Bell said. "We don't need to be looking for some amorphous signal that may or may not be there.""

Based on my own research, even if global warming has or will affect hurricanes it is a misjustification to assert that this supports changes in energy policies. The requisite corollary to this statement is that there are plenty of other good reasons for climate mitigation. And recently behind the scenes, I have become aware that this debate over hurricanes is having some implications for scientists within the IPCC and how some policymakers perceive the activities of scientists taking overt advocacy positions.

In addition, today a UK-based group called the International Policy Network (IPN) released a report titled, "The Impacts of Climate Change" which observes:

"The views of pundits and politically motivated activists from myriad disciplines are often aired in the debate about climate impacts. Raising fears of future harms, these people promote proposals which, if implemented by policymakers, would often be more detrimental to humanity than the alleged harms they seek to prevent."

The authors of this report have identified what they believe is some hyperbole in the climate debate and are using that hyperbole as an opening to advance their own political agenda. It is important to note that the IPN mission statement tells us a lot about their political perspective:

"International Policy Network believes that markets and their underlying institutions harness human potential better than any other institutional arrangement, and are the best way to address the poverty and tragedy faced by many people in the world." Their report seeks to head off ad hominem attacks on their work at the outset, writing in the introduction:

"... pundits and activists are able to offer a moral certainty to policymakers that scientists cannot likewise offer. Undoubtedly, some of the former will cast aspersions on the motives of those who contributed to this document. In their minds, those who choose to challenge the 'conventional wisdom' of human-induced climate apocalypse are either the mouthpieces of big corporations, or they are deluded, or both. Other critics will regurgitate the old chestnut that 2500 scientists of the IPCC have reached a consensus. Or, more absurd, 'most scientists' say this or that ... To those who choose the ad hominem approach to criticism: read this report and investigate the scientific literature The motivation of this report is to redress the balance in this debate, and to inspire
policymakers and others to take a more balanced approach."

Let me state that in no way do I endorse the political agenda of the IPN or their report on climate change. But I can say that in the areas of the IPN report that I have expertise (and 4 of my papers are referenced in the report's Section 5) they have not misused my work.

Criticisms such as those reported in the Seattle Times and the IPN are made possible by the hyperbolic excesses of those pushing for certain political outcomes related to climate change. A danger of using science to justify a political agenda is that, by itself, the science may not compel a certain outcome, and thus there are strong incentives to push the science into the realm of hyperbole. The consequences for both science and policy can be serious, with a loss of legitimacy at risk for the former and gridlock for the latter.

I remain optimistic that the IPCC scientific community will to some degree police the public hyperbole, at least among its own, but so far with only a few exceptions the community has remained mute.

Posted on November 9, 2004 03:47 PM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

November 08, 2004

Professors and Policy

The November 5, 200 Yale Herald has a thoughtful article about the role of professors, and Yale professors in particular, as contributors to governmental policy making. The article notes, “One difference between Yale and schools such as Harvard and Princeton is the lack of a professional program in public policy. This goes part way in explaining the disparity between the levels of cooperation in the government.” The article includes a range of perspectives, and is worth a read. It is online here.

Posted on November 8, 2004 11:29 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

November 05, 2004

Ghost of the Golden Fleece

Johns Hopkins Magazine has a lengthy and excellent article on recent debate on politics and science and its impact on researchers at Johns Hopkins. The article includes a very interesting description of the effort of a few members of Congress and a conservative advocacy group to strip NIH funding for a few research projects focused on topics that they disagreed with. Here are few excerpts from the article and my commentary:

"For more than two years, NIH has been under serious political pressure to justify, and in some cases discontinue, its support of research in areas problematic to social and religious conservatives, pressure that is unprecedented, according to many scientists and science advocates"

The article then suggests that the process of peer-review of individual proposals is guided only by science:

"Central to the process [of allocating NIH research funds] is objective evaluation solely on a proposal's scientific merit. Politics, philosophy, religious doctrine - none are supposed to sway the selection of approved applications. Scientists, not politicians or political appointees or advocacy groups or lobbyists, decide who gets funded."

This statement may well be true at the panel evaluation level, but up the food chain the processes of allocating research funds to NIH and across different programs in NIH is very political, and this is as it should be. People with diseases and their representatives advocate for more research to their cause, and NIH itself argues for more funds in the budget process based on the societal benefits expected from the research. To suggest that NIH decision making is "objective" or guided only by scientists is to play right into the hands of those who say that societal values should play a larger role in decisions about science.

This point is clear in a few quotes in the article from floor debate in the House in 2003:

"In July 2003, the House was debating the annual appropriation when Rep. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) took the floor of the House and proposed an amendment to the bill that would prohibit fulfillment of five research grants already approved by NIH [Toomey] said on the floor of the House, "Mr. Chairman, I ask my colleagues, who thinks this stuff up? And worse, who decides to actually fund these sorts of things? Well, unfortunately, the NIH has done so." He added, "And as for those who suggest that we should not interfere with the process by which the NIH decides how to allocate their funds, let me strongly disagree. We have an affirmative obligation in this Congress, as the body that controls the purse strings of the federal government, to supervise and provide oversight."

Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.) rose to defend the studies listed in Toomey's amendment: "I have served on the subcommittee that deals with NIH for a long time, and the one thing I came to understand very quickly is that the day that we politicize NIH research, the day we decide which grants are going to be approved on the basis of a 10-minute debate in the House of Representatives with 434 of 435 members who do not even know what the grant is, that is the day we will ruin science research in this country."

When Toomey's amendment came to a roll-call vote, it lost - but only by two votes, 212-210. The NIH cow appeared to be sacred no longer. Researchers and advocates of publicly funded science were startled by the narrowness of the amendment's defeat."

The effects of Congressional intrusion into the details of NIH science policy decision making are captured well in the following reactions by an NIH researcher and representative of

"[Johns Hopkins' David] Celentano notes the increased attendance at NIH research meetings by politically appointed administrators, and by others: "All of a sudden, we were seeing at the table representatives of the faith community, who were observing these grant reviews. We were told that they'd been invited to the table 'from downtown,' meaning the highest level of HHS. A number of my colleagues said it was incredibly uncomfortable because they'd be discussing a grant and these faith-based people were asking questions."

[Andrea] Lafferty [executive director of the Traditional values Coalition] believes that scientists should be willing to answer such questions. She approves of more citizen involvement in peer review and advising. "There's an arrogance in science. Many people who are scientists don't believe in God because they believe they are God. That's part of the problem. They treat people with any kind of faith as stupid or ignorant, and it's not true."

One reaction in NIH to the increasing politicization of NIH research was recounted by another Johns Hopkins researcher describing how a NIH project officer suggested at a meeting that scientists could get around external scrutiny:

"At that meeting, a project officer stood up and said, 'We have to tell you that there is a new policy at NIH, and the policy is that if any of the following words or terms are in your grant title or abstract, we're going to send it back to you to take them out.' Then she proceeded to list the words: sex worker, injection drug use, harm reduction, needle exchange, men who have sex with men, homosexual, bisexual, gay, prostitute. It was unbelievable. We were literally looking around the room, like, You're kidding me. Everyone sat in silence. I raised my hand and said, 'We're proposing to do a training program in harm reduction throughout Southeast Asia. That's one of our main activities over the next five years because the data tell us that injection drug use remains a problem and there's more injection drug use transmission happening in this region. I want to do that. It's the right thing to do. How do we proceed?' And she said, 'Don't make me speak to you about this in public. There are spies everywhere.' This is at NIH! This is the United States of America! This is not China! I spoke to her afterwards outside the room and she said, 'Look, you can say what you want in the body of the grant. We don't think anybody is going to get to that level. But the title and abstract are part of the database that's searchable by these people, and we're trying to help you avoid not getting funded.'"

It seems to me that if scientists try to get around questions of the relevance or value of their work by mischaracterizing it or throwing a head fake in the abstract or title, then they are just asking for further challenges. Judith Auerbach, vice president for public policy at the American Foundation for AIDS Research, seems to have judged this situation about right:

""[The critics] ask questions about who makes decisions about what science gets funded, and do those people reflect the general interest of the taxpayers. Now that's a legitimate question. I don't think any of us would argue that accountability by federal agencies for programs that spend federal tax dollars is unreasonable. But how you define that accountability and how you go about assessing it is where the problem lies.""

For the scientific community the challenge then is not to seek to win a public, political battle over the right of certain groups to participate in the science policy process, but instead to channel advocates' desire to influence science-related decision making into means of participating in science policy that lead to a healthy connection of science and policy and are not destructive to either the practice of science or its connections with societal needs. While this is obviously easier said in the abstract than done in practice, efforts to engage advocates on the playing field of politics rather than science policy could lead to outcomes for science far worse than the public termination of a few grants at NIH.

Read the whole article here.

Posted on November 5, 2004 12:27 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

November 02, 2004

Politics and the IPCC

Recently we discussed actions of the director of the IPCC and political advocacy, “If the IPCC's role is indeed to act as an honest broker, then it would seem to make sense that its leadership ought not blur that role by endorsing, tacitly or otherwise, the agendas of particular groups. There are plenty of appropriate places for political advocacy on climate change, but the IPCC does not seem to me to be among those places.”

Well a recent story from the Environmental News Network suggests that R. K. Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has continued to engage in political advocacy. Here is an except from the story:

“Although saved recently with Russian help, the Kyoto pact on global warming offers too little to arrest climate change and governments should adopt more radical solutions, the top U.N. climate expert said. "My feeling is that we will probably need to do more than most people are talking about" to combat climate change, said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He welcomed ratification of the Kyoto pact by Russia's lower house of parliament, paving the way for the long-delayed 1997 accord to enter into force in the 126 nations that approved it, even though the world's greatest polluter, the United States, pulled out in 2001. "This mustn't lull us into thinking that the problem is solved," Pachauri said. "Kyoto is not enough. We now have to look at the problem afresh." Kyoto is a first step towards curbing emissions of gases like carbon dioxide, mainly from burning fossil fuels, that scientists blame for trapping heat in the atmosphere like the panes of glass in a greenhouse. Rising concentrations could melt icecaps, swamp low-lying coastal regions, and trigger catastrophic changes to the planet's climate with more volatile weather from typhoons to droughts. Pachauri urged the world to shift strategy from Kyoto's reduction targets for greenhouse gases to long-term global targets on how much of the gases the atmosphere should contain.”

Perhaps most troubling is that Dr. Pachauri explicitly linked his work under the IPCC to efforts in support of political advocacy:

“Pachauri leads work to produce a 2007 U.N. climate report based on research by more than 2,000 scientists, updating a 2001 assessment that concluded there was "new and stronger evidence" that human activities were to blame for rising temperatures. "My hope is that this (2007 report) will be able to fill gaps, reduce uncertainties, and produce a much stronger message," said Pachauri, who is based in New Delhi.”

These statements echo similar comments made by Dr. Pachauri in 2002 following his appointment as IPCC Director:

“There was a need for a dialogue on what commitments nations should make in a second wave after Kyoto, he said. "I think that the science must provide a compelling reason and a logic to take those steps, and this is what I hope the IPCC will be able to do in the future," he added.”

If the IPCC exists solely to motivate action on a particular policy alternative, then it risks becoming an instrument of marketing for decisions already made. This is a long way from where the IPCC was in 1990 when its Working Group III operated under a mandate to empower decision makers by “lay[ing] out as fully and fairly as possible a set of response policy options to global climate change and the factual basis for those options.” It is not at all clear what options on mitigation and adaptation are available for dealing with climate change in the post-Kyoto period, much less their relative costs and benefits, and if the IPCC determines what option should be advocated prior to an open and informed discussion, then it risks morphing into just another interest group selling a preferred solution on climate change, and in the process frittering away its science-based authority and legitimacy.

Folks in the IPCC ought to think carefully about continuing down the path of abandoning their role as honest broker.

Posted on November 2, 2004 12:45 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

November 01, 2004

A Perspective on Science and Politics in the US

Writing in The Guardian a few days ago, Ian Sample has an interesting article on the role that many scientists have taken in this year’s presidential election. He writes,

“The build-up to next week's US election has seen a strange transformation take place in the world of science. The traditional strategy of keeping heads well down when it comes to politics has given way to outright activism. More scientists than ever have waded into the electoral fray, pegging their allegiance firmly to the Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry.

To many, the mobilisation of scientists in favour of Kerry is inevitable, a consequence of the Bush administration's policies on stem cells and climate change. But some scientists believe that by aligning itself so strongly with a particular party, science may have set itself up for a fall. "When the community gets on the political bandwagon, they lose control of how the facts are used," says a source within the US National Academy of Sciences, speaking on condition of anonymity.”

Sample raises an interesting question: What happens when the favored political candidate misuses science?

“While support for Kerry among academic scientists is apparently still strong, the downside of pledging their allegiance is beginning to become clear. The Democratic vice presidential candidate, John Edwards, made many scientists wince when he spoke at a recent rally in Newton, Iowa. "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to get up out of that wheelchair and walk again," he said, referring to the potential therapies that embryonic stem cells might one day offer.

"What's sad is that when he claimed stem cells would enable people to leave their wheelchairs, there wasn't one protest from any of those Nobel prizewinners about such a misuse of science in a campaign statement," says [former House Science Committee Chairman Robert] Walker [a Republican]. He says that Kerry's speeches regularly give the impression that viable stem cell therapies are just a few years away, when most scientists believe they will not be a reality for much longer.

The Iowa rally wasn't the only time that scientists frowned at science being peddled at political meetings. In previous speeches, Kerry has stated that millions of people could be cured by stem cell therapies. The figure is a misrepresentation of data produced by the US National Academy of Sciences, the source said. The list simply gave estimates of the number of people with a range of medical conditions from Parkinson's disease to severe spinal damage. "I was cringing, but it was the Kerry campaign people that distorted the facts."

For now, it seems the scientific community is biting its tongue. "Once the scientific community gets on the side of one candidate or the other, and that candidate goes out making mis-statements about science, is the community obliged to correct them? They're not going to if they want them to win." For the scientific community, the legacy of backing Kerry is likely to hit home some time after the election when the public realises that science may have been hyped throughout. Only then will scientists know whether backing Kerry was more trouble than it was worth. "The bottom line is that the scientific community is experiencing pain enduring this president, so a lot of people would say that no matter what the repercussions, it's worth it."”

On November 3, 2004 (or whenever the election is over!) there will be much work to do at the interface of science and politics.

Posted on November 1, 2004 09:39 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

October 29, 2004

Follow Up on CRS on DQA

Earlier this month we discussed a Congressional Research Service Report on the Data Quality Act (DQA, also called the Information Quality Act - IQA).

The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (CRE) a long-time champion of the DQA, finds fault. in the CRS discussion of the DQA’s legislative history. The CRE discussion includes this summary:

“The [CRS] report states without any caveat whatsoever:

“There were no hearings or debates on this provision and no committee reports were filed. As noted previously, the language was inserted as Section 515 of the more than 700-page Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2001.”

This statement is inaccurate, misleading and not supported by the record of a five year Congressional debate. The Congressional debate surrounding passage of the DQA is presented in painstaking detail in the following sections of this note. All of the source material has been on the CRE website for a number of years.”

You can read the CRE discussion in full here.

Posted on October 29, 2004 10:34 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Science Press Releases, Science Headlines

NASA’s David Morrison has a thoughtful opinion on the pressures that science agencies place upon themselves to get news coverage. He writes:

“Many observers of the science press have noted an increasing tendency for both press releases and printed stories about science topics to exaggerate the uniqueness and impact of new research. The writer of a press release does this to increase the probability that the media will cover the story, and the media reporter will go along with this hyperbole or perhaps expand it further in order to get the story approved for publication by editors or other gatekeepers.”

He observes that when this occurs it can lead to back and forth claims among different scientists:

“The coverage can produce a whipsaw effect, with different scientists successively emphasizing apparently contradictory results. Often, each story is discussed with little reference to the context or possible mitigating evidence that should soften the conclusions and make them more tentative. This is not intended as a general criticism of science reporting. There are many excellent science journalists who understand the issues and provide well-reasoned discussions of context for news stories.”

Here is a good example of an exaggerated press release, which does not even refer to new research, and from Harvard no less:

“EXPERTS TO WARN GLOBAL WARMING LIKELY TO CONTINUE SPURRING MORE OUTBREAKS OF INTENSE HURRICANE ACTIVITY
Problem Tied to Rising Sea Temperatures From Trapped Greenhouse Gases; Trend Portends More Storm Damage Costs for FL, AL, LA, TX, NC and SC.”

And here is a place where you can browse many science-related press releases.

Posted on October 29, 2004 10:31 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

October 28, 2004

A Report Card for President Bush's Science Policies

Earlier this week Democrats on the House Science Committee issued a "report card" on President Bush's and the Republican-controlled Congress' science policies. Not surprisingly, the Democrats give the President a "D." A passing grade, but not by much. Here is how the report card looks:

"The report, entitled Science and Technology: The Untapped American Resource, describes Democratic priorities in these areas, as well as how Republicans in the Administration and Congress have undercut scientific integrity, starved scientific funding, and failed to create effective S&T policy in eight key areas:

*Supporting Technological Innovation to Create Good-Paying Jobs - Republicans have cut key programs which assist small businesses in meeting today's technological challenges. Grade: F

*Leadership in Manufacturing - The nation's manufacturers have no effective advocate in the Bush Administration. Grade: F

*Being Good Stewards of the Nation's Space Program - The civilian space program has been dogged by indecision, false starts, and financial mismanagement. Grade: C-

*The Lack of Scientific Integrity - The use of science in setting health and environmental policy has been corrupted. Grade: D

*Reducing our Dependence on Foreign Oil - Republicans have failed to enact meaningful legislation to deal with energy dependence and record oil prices. Grade: C-

*Securing Cyberspace - There is no effective advocate in the Bush Administration for securing the computer networks which are the backbone of much of our Nation's economy and safety. Grade: D

*Protecting the Right to Vote: Standards for Voting Technologies - The Administration has ignored a 2002 law insuring the reliability of voting machines. Grade: F

*The Future of American Science and Technology - Because of Republicans' fiscal irresponsibility, funding prospects for science and technology programs over the next five years looks bleak. Grade: D"

You can access the whole report here (in PDF).

Two quick comments on the report:

1) A "C-"on space policy? Grade inflation at work here it seems. Undoubtedly this is not an "F" because the Congressional Democrats are as wrapped up in responsibility as Congressional Republicans for NASA's recent failures and current predicament.

2) The grade of "D" on "The Future of American Science and Technology" and accompanying explanation does a better job than most partisan analyses of placing responsibility for the relatively dismal projections of future funding for science and technology with larger decisions made about the federal budget, and not with decisions made specifically about research and development. However, if the report were to have given the Bush Administration a grade simply for the amount of past funding, it would have had to be an "A" given the enormous growth in federal resources devoted to science and technology. Of course an "A" in the magnitude of expenditures is not the same as an "A" in the substance of those expenditures!

Read the whole report here (in PDF).

Posted on October 28, 2004 02:55 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

October 27, 2004

More on Presidential Advisory Committees

Yesterday Representative Brian Baird (D-WA) sent a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft asking for a Justice Department investigation into allegations that the Bush Administration violated the law when appointing some members to presidential science advisory panels. The allegations seem to hinge on whether or not prospective candidates to the advisory panels were asked about their political affiliation.

Baird’s letter states:

“In a letter report to me from the General Counsel of GAO, their characterization of the law surrounding the Federal Advisory Committee process suggests that the law has been broken in at least two cases at the Department of Health and Human Services. In both cases, there were press reports from scientific experts contacted by HHS officials in which those experts reported they were asked about their political affiliation or asked political litmus test questions as part of the vetting process for composing advisory panels… The questions were coming from an official in the HHS Office of White House liaison - a strange office in which to center efforts to put together experts on meaty, difficult scientific issues.

GAO Counsel notes that the Public Health Service Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 201 et. seq. prohibits agencies from using political affiliation in selecting members for advisory committees. This law provides the legal underpinning for both the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse and the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research. In both cases there have been reports of political affiliation or values being used as a filter by political appointees at HHS.”

Baird’s letter is based on a GAO letter report prepared at his request on the legality of asking prospective advisory panel members about their affiliations.

My reading of the GAO report, and note that I am no lawyer, suggests the following conclusions:

1. The use of the phrase “political affiliation” by GAO may refer to specific questions about membership in a political party. It is not clear to me that this phrase encompasses questions such as ‘Do you support the president?” Baird in his letter seeks to conflate the two sorts of questions but the GAO report does not lend itself to such ambiguity using the phrase “political affiliation” throughout.

2. The GAO report clearly distinguishes the appointment of government officials from non-governmental officials. It appears that the rules against inquiring about political affiliation are much stronger in the case of government officials. The GAO report notes:

“Agencies are prohibited under the federal personnel laws from discriminating on the basis of political affiliation when considering regular federal employees in the competitive service for membership on advisory committees. Such discrimination is deemed to be a prohibited personnel practice under 5 U.S.C. 2302(b)(1)(E). Federal advisory committee members generally are representative or SGE members, however, rather than regular federal employees, and 2302(b)(1)(E) generally allows agencies to ask about and consider political affiliation when selecting representative or SGE members.”

3. Finally, footnote 15 of the GAO report seems to be quite relevant here. It states in its entirety:

“As discussed in our report, the Federal Advisory Committee Act requires that committee memberships be "fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented and the functions to be performed by the advisory committee." 5 U.S.C. app. 2, 5(b)(2). The political affiliation of members of particular committees has been deemed relevant in achieving such balance. See, e.g., 47 U.S.C. 303 note (certain Federal Communications Commission advisory committee must be "fairly balanced in terms of political affiliation"); United States Coast Guard, Commandant Instruction 5420.37, Attach. 3 at 1 and 3 (Sep. 23, 1993) (political affiliation information sought for purposes of balance). See also OPM Letter, above (achieving requisite committee member balance may be difficult in some circumstances without considering political affiliation or philosophical positions).”

This suggests to me that for the most part, in the empanelment of presidential advisory panels consideration of political leanings as well as affiliations is allowed, and in some cases required. There are however several instances in which such consideration is formally off limits, particularly when the member of the panel is a government employee, and on particular panels for which such consideration is explicitly prohibited.

Off course, as we’ve written here earlier, from the standpoint of effectively connecting science and policy, it is not so much how a panel is empanelled as what it is they do in practice.

Posted on October 27, 2004 09:55 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

October 26, 2004

Sarewitz on California Proposition 71

In yesterday’s Los Angeles Time, ASU’s Dan Sarewitz makes the case that issues of science policy ought to trump other considerations in the debate over Proposition 71, a citizen ballot initiative that, among other things, proposes to create a $3 billion fund for stem cell research. Sarewitz observes:

“Proposition 71 would put stem cell research out of the reach of democracy — in a move that would seriously undermine the unwritten social contract that exists between government and science in this country… underpinning this contract is an understanding that scientists are accountable not just to themselves but to society, to democratic processes and, ultimately, to the public will. This core of public accountability has been good for science and for society in three important ways. First, it maintains public trust in science through transparency of the legislative process… Second, it ensures that science responds to changing public interests and values… Third, and perhaps most important, democratic accountability protects the public and the public interest from potential abuses… The last 50 years of rapidly advancing American science shows us that democracy and science can fruitfully coexist, even if the relationship is sometimes contentious. If Californians want to fund stem cell research, they could do so through legislation that preserves the balance between scientific autonomy and democratic values by providing for annual appropriation of funds and accountability to elected officials rather than vested interests. Democracy is hard, but it deserves our protection more than anything else. Even more than science.”

Sarewitz’s argument raises broader questions about the role of citizen initiatives in the context of highly complex issues with profound and long-lasting impacts. On the positive side citizen initiatives allow for individuals to participate directly in the selection of specific policies. But on the negative side the initiative process is essentially a binary process – take or leave the initiative that is presented. There is no give and take compromising that is characteristic of legislating. The ballot initiative process is a funny one, because if you put any option up for a vote, people will invariably take sides. But Sarewitz reminds us that it is important to recognize that sometimes we should take a perspective that allows us to see beyond the "yes or no" and look for a third way.

Posted on October 26, 2004 12:16 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health

October 25, 2004

More on Hurricanes and Climate Change

For some reason some members of the scientific community are pushing hard through the media to allege a direct connection between the Florida hurricanes of 2004 and human-caused climate change, so we’re going to revisit the topic (yet) again. Examples include here and here and here and here and here). This organized effort seems quite odd to me for two reasons:

1) There is a strong scientific consensus that if greenhouse gas emissions have an effect on hurricanes, these effects will be quite small as compared to the observed variability in hurricane frequencies and intensities. (See the primer below.)

2) There is overwhelming evidence that the most significant factor in trends in and projections of the damages associated with hurricane impacts is societal vulnerability to those impacts. (See this post and this post.)

One obvious reason for a group of scientists to invoke via the media a connection between this year’s storms and climate change is part of a strategy of political advocacy in support of greenhouse gas reductions. If the issue was simply scientific, then I’d assume that the scientists would just battle their differences out on the pages of peer-reviewed journals, far from the public eye. But the great irony here is that those who invoke the modulation of future hurricanes as a justification for changes to energy policies to mitigate climate change are their own worst political enemy. Not only do they provide a great opening for criticism of their reasoning and science, they are advocating a policy that simply won’t be effective. There are much, much better ways to deal with the threat of hurricanes than with energy policies. There are also much, much better ways to justify climate mitigation policies than with hurricanes.

Last week my colleague and occasional collaborator Chris Landsea, one of the world’s foremost experts on hurricanes, put together the following short primer on hurricanes and climate change, and I’ve shared it here with his permission:

Hurricanes and Global Warming
Chris Landsea (chris.landsea@noaa.gov)
---------------------------------------
There are no known scientific studies that show a conclusive physical link between global warming and observed hurricane frequency and intensity. Whatever suggested changes in hurricane activity that might result from global warming in the future are quite small in comparison to the large natural variability of hurricanes, typhoons and tropical cyclones. For example, the latest GFDL global warming study suggested about a 5% increase in the winds of hurricanes 80 years in the future. This contrasts with the more than doubling that occur now in numbers of major hurricanes between active and quiet decades in the Atlantic basin.

If global warming is influencing hurricane activity, then we should be seeing a global change in the number and strength of these storms. Yet there is no evidence of a global increase in the strength and frequency of hurricanes, typhoons, and tropical cyclones over the past several years.

Beginning in 1995, there has been an increase in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes in the Atlantic basin. However, this increase is very likely a manifestation of a natural multi-decadal cycle of Atlantic hurricane activity that has been occurring likely for the last few hundred years. For example, relatively few Atlantic major hurricanes were observed in the 70s, 80s and early 90s, but there was considerable activity during the 40s, 50s and early 60s. Also, the period from 1944 to 1950 was particularly infamous for Florida - with 11 hurricanes hitting the state during those years.

Total U.S. direct damages from Atlantic hurricanes this year will be on the order of $30 billion, making it about equal to the most damaging year on record - 1992 with the landfall of Hurricane Andrew. However, such increased destruction from hurricanes is to be expected because of the massive development and population increases along the U.S. coastline and in countries throughout the Caribbean and Central America. There is no need to invoke global warming to understand both the 10 years of active hurricane seasons and the destruction that occurred both in Florida and in Haiti this season. The former is due to natural cycles driven by the Atlantic Ocean and the latter is due to societal changes, not due to global warming.

Posted on October 25, 2004 10:59 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Others | Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

October 21, 2004

Bring the Policy Back In

Consider the following imaginary scenario.

NGOs and a few other representatives of the oil and gas industry decide to band together to produce a report on what they see as needed and unnecessary policy actions related to climate change. They put together a nice glossy report with findings and recommendations such as:

*Coal is the fuel of the future, we must mine more.
*CO2 regulations are too costly.
*Climate change will be good for agriculture.

In addition, the report contains some questionable scientific statements and associations. Imagine further that the report contains a preface authored by a prominent scientist who though unpaid for his work lends his name and credibility to the report.

How might that scientist be viewed by the larger community? Answers that come to mind include: "A tool of industry," "Discredited," "Biased," "Political Advocate." It is likely that in such a scenario that connection of the scientist to the political advocacy efforts of the oil and gas industry would provide considerable grist for opponents of the oil and gas industry, and specifically a basis for highlighting the appearance or reality of a compromised position of the scientist.

Fair enough?

Ok, let's return to reality and consider a real world case. In this case the NGOs and other groups represent environmental and humanitarian groups that have put together a report (in PDF) on what they see as needed and unnecessary policy actions related to climate change. They put together a nice glossy report with findings and recommendations such as:

*Limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees (Celsius, p. 4) *Extracting the World Bank from fossil fuels (p. 15) *Opposing the inclusion of carbon sinks in the [Kyoto] Protocol (p. 22)

The report contains numerous references to specific weather events from 2004 as being caused by and evidence of human-caused climate change, which stretches the science to some degree (at least as assessed by the IPCC).

[From the press release is this statement: "This summer has been marred by the havoc wrought across the Caribbean by the hurricanes Jeanne and Ivan, and the worst flooding in recent years in Bangladesh. In a world in which global warming is already happening, such severe weather events are likely to be more frequent, and extreme."]

And here, finally, I get to the main point. The report has a forward written by R. K. Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC has adopted as a mandate an objective of being "policy relevant, but not policy prescriptive" (what this means is actually unclear).

It is troubling that the Chair of the IPCC would lend his name and organizational affiliation to a set of groups with members engaged actively in political advocacy on climate change. Even if Dr. Pachauri feels strongly about the merit of the political agenda proposed by these groups, at a minimum his endorsement creates a potential perception that the IPCC has an unstated political agenda. This is compounded by the fact that the report Dr. Pachauri tacitly endorses contains statements that are scientifically at odds with those of the IPCC. But perhaps most troubling is that by endorsing this group's agenda he has opened the door for those who would seek to discredit the IPCC by alleging exactly such a bias. (And don't be surprised to see such statements forthcoming.) If the IPCC's role is indeed to act as an honest broker, then it would seem to make sense that its leadership ought not blur that role by endorsing, tacitly or otherwise, the agendas of particular groups. There are plenty of appropriate places for political advocacy on climate change, but the IPCC does not seem to me to be among those places.

Let me also be clear on my views on the substance of report itself. Organized by the New Economics Foundation and the Working Group on Climate and Development, the report (in PDF) is actually pretty good and contains much valuable information on climate change and development (that is, once you get past the hype of the press release and its lack of precision in disaggregating climate and vulnerability as sources of climate-related impacts). The participating organizations have done a nice job integrating considerations of climate change and development, a perspective that is certainly needed.

More generally, the IPCC suffers because it no longer considers "policy options" under its mandate. Since its First Assessment Report when it did consider policy options, the IPCC has eschewed responsibility for developing and evaluating a wide range of possible policy options on climate change. By deciding to policy outside of its mandate since 1992, the IPCC, ironically, leaves itself more open to charges of political bias. It is time for the IPCC to bring policy back in, both because we need new and innovative options on climate, but also because the IPCC has great potential to serve as an honest broker. But until it does, its leadership would be well served to avoid either the perception or the reality of endorsing particular political perspectives.

Posted on October 21, 2004 12:32 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Energy Policy

October 20, 2004

Litmus Test Script

In yesterday’s New York Times Andy Revkin had a valuable article on current controversies related to the Bush Administration and science. The article discussed “litmus tests” for scientists asked to serve on advisory panels:

“Despite three years of charges that it is remaking scientific and medical advisory panels to favor the goals of industry or social conservatives, the White House has continued to ask some panel nominees not only about their political views, but explicitly whether they support Mr. Bush. One recent candidate was Prof. Sharon L. Smith, an expert on Arctic marine ecology at the University of Miami. On March 12, she received a call from the White House. She had been nominated to take a seat about to open up on the Arctic Research Commission, a panel of presidential appointees that helps shape research on issues in the far north, including the debate over oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The woman calling from the White House office of presidential personnel complimented her résumé, Dr. Smith recalled, then asked the first and - as it turned out - only question: "Do you support the president?" "I was taking notes," Dr. Smith recalled. "I'm thinking I've lost my mind. I was in total shock. I'd never been asked that before." She responded she was not a fan of Mr. Bush's economic and foreign policies. "That was the end of the interview," she said. "I was removed from consideration instantly."”

For any scientist who may wish to serve on a presidential advisory panel when asked but don’t appreciate being asked about their political views or doesn’t necessarily agree with the president’s policies, we here at Prometheus offer up the following script for use when the White House Office of Presidential Personnel (WHOPP) comes calling (and please feel free to imagine the WHOPP serving a President Bush or a President Kerry, the script stays the same).

“WHOPP: Dr. Smith, we are calling to explore the possibility of the president appointing you to serve on the President’s Scientific Advisory Committee on So and Such. Your accomplishments and resume are extremely impressive.

Dr. SMITH: Why thank you. I am pleased to be considered for this important committee.

WHOPP: As part of our process of empanelment we would like to ask you a few questions …

Dr. SMITH: Of course, go right ahead …

WHOPP: First, Do you support the president?

Dr. SMITH: Of course I support the president. As a recipient of many millions of dollars in federal support for my research on this topic of critical national importance over the past many years I strongly believe that scientists have an obligation to support elected officials by helping to connect scientific and technological expertise with the needs of decision making. While the responsibility for deciding on particular courses of action remains with government officials, I do believe that advisory panels can help to provide some insight to those choices. So I would very much value an opportunity to contribute back to the federal government by serving on a presidential advisory panel and supporting the president in this important role.”

We’ve discussed here before that the issue of presidential appointments is much more complicated than asking or not asking about political affiliations. But let’s be honest, any scientist who cannot handle a question about their political leanings in a politic manner probably doesn’t deserve to be on the panel anyway. The option is always available to tell the WHOPP that oppose (or support, as the case may be) the president politically in whatever direct and colorful language that you’d like. But of course for those who express political opposition you’ve then just given the WHOPP a solid basis for removing you from consideration because of concern that YOUR strongly-held political views will interfere with your role on the panel. Ironic, huh? So long as WHOPPs and the like want to bring political considerations explicitly into the empanelment process, we here at Prometheus recommend that scientists of all political persuasions just stick to the script.

Posted on October 20, 2004 09:43 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

October 19, 2004

A New Essay on Science Funding

I’ve got a new essay on science funding online at CSPO in the Perspective part of their website. In the essay I describe how the federal R&D budget is tabulated and what recent data show. I argue that in terms of aggregate funding for R&D we are at the close of a “second golden age” for science and technology (see Figure 1, PDF). In addition, I hope to provide some good evidence as to why the mindless comparison of federal R&D spending to GDP is not a particularly significant measure of government commitment to science and technology (see Figure 2, PDF). A much more meaningful measure is R&D spending as a fraction of discretionary spending: “…R&D funding as a fraction of discretionary spending has increased from 11.3% in 1982 to 14.3% in 2003. Today, R&D is responsible for as large a portion of discretionary expenditures than at any time in the past 22 years.”

In the paper I write, “Of course, science policy should not be about simply “How much?” but “Why?”. However, the S&T community typically focuses narrowly on “how much?” using a three-part strategy to argue for more public sector resources. It claims crisis, even in times of plenty. It calls for balance, to limit intra-disciplinary, intra-agency debates over priorities. And it claims that societal benefits are proportional to funds invested; more funds are equated with more benefit… A focus on aggregate funding, rather than the marginal benefits of adding or cutting funding for particular programs, may prove problematic as R&D funding all but certainly cannot continue to grow at the pace that it has over the past decade, regardless of who occupies the White House, making tough choices within the scientific community inevitable”

Read the whole thing here.

Posted on October 19, 2004 04:20 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding

October 18, 2004

Satellite Reentry Risks

In 2001 I helped organize a workshop for NASA on the risks and benefits with allowing its TRMM satellite to reenter in controlled versus uncontrolled fashion. At the time we concluded that while it was clear that risks to people were relatively small, NASA did little more than a back of the envelope calculation to quantify those risks.

Over the weekend a Chinese satellite struck a house upon reentry. Apparently no one was injured. This is not the first time that there has been a close call.

As the National Research Council prepares to convene an expert panel to consider the TRMM reentry options and the more general policies for satellite reentry policy, it will be important to place reentry risk assessments on a more solid basis. (For more on TRMM see this post.)

Posted on October 18, 2004 11:03 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

October 15, 2004

It’s Time to Clarify the role of AAAS in Policy and Politics

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a professional society with a mission, just like its name implies, to “To Advance Science and Innovation Throughout the World for the Benefit of All People.” (Note: I am a member of AAAS and serve on a minor committee.)

Of late I have been wondering about the role of the AAAS in matters of policy and politics that go beyond funding for science. While we should expect AAAS to be a vigorous advocate for increased support for science, I have recently wondered about what AAAS’ sees its role as in political controversies that involve science, e.g., on issues like stem cells, global climate change, cloning, etc.

Some insight on this issue can be found in a 1989 AAAS doicument titled AAAS Policy, Guidelines, and Procedures for Communications with Congress. This document observes,

“The AAAS does not engage in political activities,” and “The AAAS does not, as a general policy, engage in direct or grass roots lobbying… Direct lobbying generally is any attempt to influence any legislation through communication with any member or employee of a legislative body (both Congress and state and local legislative bodies). Grass roots lobbying generally is any attempt to influence any legislation through any attempt to affect the opinions of the general public.”

Of course, all similarly incorporated non-profits (i.e., 501 (c) (3)) are required to follow similar rules about advocacy. Such rules are in general pretty easy to get around because they focus on limiting advocacy for specific candidates and legislative proposals (see, e.g., this description).

The AAAS observes, “… activities related to the preparation and distribution of nonpartisan analysis, study or research are not lobbying activities. Such work may even advocate a particular position but it must also contain a sufficiently full and fair treatment of the pertinent facts to enable the formation of an independent opinion.” It further notes, “Generally, the AAAS should seek to express concerns, educate about consequences, and explore options rather than advocating specific legislative actions. However, in any communication that advocates a position — other than in a requested communication — close attention must be given to the requirements for a full and fair treatment of the issue, as discussed earlier.”

So with this background, consider the following press releases from AAAS in 2004:

AAAS Joins Call Against Proposed United Nations Ban on Therapeutic Cloning.

United Nations Environment Programme and AAAS Agree to Partner on Environmental Goals

AAAS signs letter urging President Bush to expand access to embryonic stem cells

At a meeting organized by AAAS and its journal, Science … Climate experts urge immediate action to offset impact of global warming”

Don't Leave Georgia's Children Behind

Each of these reflects a clear advocacy position on a controversial subject. I am not suggesting that AAAS is running afoul of nonprofit rules and regulations. What I am suggesting is that the positions taken by AAAS do not appear to me to be well-grounded in the AAAS’s own guidelines for engaging in policy analysis or advocacy.

For example, I have previously observed that the AAAS June forum on climate change was anything but a “full and fair” treatment of climate policy issues (not because it didn’t reflect scientific consensus, but because it ignored climate policy.) It was a clear effort to support a particular political perspective on climate change through the selective presentation of information.

I’ll admit that I do not have a specific proposal in mind for how the AAAS ought to confront issues of policy and politics. But it seems to me that the AAAS existing guideline to “to express concerns, educate about consequences, and explore options rather than advocating specific legislative actions” is a good place to start. At the same time it does not appear to me that the AAAS has always met this standard, particularly recently. Of course, the standard is a quite inscrutable and imprecise.

Given the attention currently being devoted to the politicization of science, perhaps it is time for the AAAS to revisit its own guidelines and procedures for engaging issues of politics and policy in a way that provides clear leadership for the scientific community. Otherwise, the AAAS leaves itself wide open for criticism of its advocacy efforts.

Posted on October 15, 2004 10:00 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

October 12, 2004

On Cherry Picking and Missing the Point

In an op-ed for the Scripps-Howard news service 27 September 2004, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas cite the paper by Dan Sarewitz that was part of the special issue on “Science, Policy, and Politics” that I guest co-edit for the journal Environmental Science and Policy. They write:

“An upcoming journal paper in Environmental Science & Policy sheds some light on the distortion of climate science by "consensus" politics. Daniel Sarewitz of Arizona State University, who was on one panel that authored a 2003 climate report for the National Academies of Sciences' National Research Council (NRC), provides an inside view of the NRC report's publication process, and details what outsiders may get as "consensus."”

Soon and Baliunas are well known for their political activities opposed to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. In particular they have highlighted the case that the scientific evidence does not justify regulation of emissions of greenhouse gases. As such they have, along with their colleagues and opponents, contributed to the “scientization” of the political controversy on climate change. Here is what Sarewitz has to say about “scientization”:

“Scientization of controversy also undermines the social value of science itself. In the absence of agreed upon values that can inform the articulation of social goals, we cannot recognize the broad range of policy options that might be available to achieve those goals, nor can we possibly know how to prioritize scientific research in support of the goals. Scientific resources end up focused on the meaningless task of reducing uncertainties pertinent to political dispute, rather than addressing societal problems as identified through open political processes.”

So my interpretation of Sarewitz’s paper is that he offers no support for Soon and Baliunas (or, for that matter, their opponents who lean on science) effort to suggest that the “science” compels a particular political outcome. Instead, he is suggesting that we instead need a “third way” on science in politics. A good concise perspective by Sarewitz can be found here.

For Soon and Baliunas to cite Sarewitz in support of their political agenda seems to me to be an example of “cherry-picking” his text and completely missing the main point of his paper.

Posted on October 12, 2004 08:41 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

October 11, 2004

An Equation for Science in Politics: SM = f(PP)

SM = Scientific Merit
PP = Political Perspective

The September, 2004 issue of Physics Today has an interesting story following up on the recent court decision on the status of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. The details of the case itself are interesting (we posted on this here and here), however I’d like to highlight a few passages from the story on how opponents on various sides of the issue characterize science.

The story notes how an opponent to Yucca Mountain characterizes the court’s ruling:

“Out in Nevada, where Yucca Mountain is located, State Attorney General Brian Sandoval all but pronounced the project dead, saying, "Simply put, Yucca is stopped in its tracks because the court recognizes that the project isn't rooted in sound science."”

It then notes how a proponent characterizes the same science:

“Back in Washington, DC, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the organization that represents the nuclear industry, was expressing confidence that DOE would be able to meet the "eventual standard" of radiation safety for Yucca and that "the licensing process for the repository will continue without interruption or delay." NEI added that the "scientific basis for the facility . . . is still sound today."”

Then the Physics Today article comes to this conclusion:

“So the science is sound or it isn't, depending on whether you are in favor of or opposed to the federal government's plans to move some 77 000 tons of high-level radioactive waste into the mountain, beginning in 2010.”

In other words one’s perspective on the science is a function of one’s political views. One reaction to this situation, which is very common today in contested issues with a scientific element, has been to call for “more science” as a way to find unassailable proof or factual truth. But what if science does not provide a way out of difficult, contentious, and political issues like Yucca Mountain (or climate change or genetic modification, etc. etc.) and in fact makes things worse?

Posted on October 11, 2004 09:01 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Energy Policy | Science Policy: General

October 08, 2004

If not Dominance, then What?

Alan I. Leshner, CEO of the AAAS, is the author of the lead Editorial in this week’s Science, titled “U.S. Science Dominance is the Wrong Issue.” Leshner comments:

“…globalization of science is cause for celebration. Better still, more countries are making productive investments in their science infrastructures, and this portends well for the future of all humankind. At the same time, recent weeks have seen strident laments from many American quarters, to the effect that the United States may be losing its longstanding global preeminence in science. Some of that concern was triggered when the U.S. National Science Board issued its Science and Engineering Indicators, 2004 report last May. It showed that the United States is no longer the largest producer of scientific information. The European Union is outpacing the United States in the total number of papers published. Moreover, the U.S. share of major science prizes has decreased significantly over the past decade. For those Americans who take an overly nationalistic view of the scientific enterprise, this might be bad news. From a more global viewpoint, however, these facts signal a long-awaited and very positive trend: Better and better science is being done all over the world.”

Leshner concludes: “The United States should not be wasting energy right now on the question of its global scientific dominance.” This is a position we’ve commented on occasionally here at Prometheus (e.g., here and here).

Leshner’s posits that one of the real problems facing U.S. science is … money! He writes, “How can we recruit the best young people to science careers if they foresee a grim funding picture for their future work?” Of course, it might be possible to argue that $130 billion in funding might still allow the recruitment of a few of the best young people. (Note: Leshner also laments the “overlay of politics, ideology, and religious conviction on the U.S. climate for science.”)

What Leshner’s argument fails to acknowledge is that most of the concern about the U.S. losing its global dominance in science is expressed as a justification for increasing science budgets. (Some examples of such arguments, from many, can be found here and here and here.) So when Leshner argues that we should be less concerned with global dominance and more concerned with budgets, he is taking away one of the key arguments used by advocates who support more federal funding for science and technology.

As Leshner takes away one of the usual justifications for increasing science budgets he does not tell us why instead we should be concerned about current projections on decreasing funds for science. Of course, such projections say nothing about science per se but reflect the fact of projected decreasing funds for just about every area of discretionary government spending. Leshner focuses our attention on the question of “How much?” but not “Why?”

Posted on October 8, 2004 10:19 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding

CRS report on DQA

The Congressional Research Service has a new report out on the Data Quality Act (or as the CRS calls it the Information Quality Act (IQA). The report includes the following ‘Concluding Observations”:

“The determination of whether agencies’ actions are subject to judicial review under the IQA will clearly have a major effect on the act’s implementation. However, even in the absence of judicial review, the IQA can still have a significant impact on federal agencies and their information dissemination activities. OMB’s report on the implementation of the act during FY2003 provided numerous examples of agencies changing their policies and publications in response to administrative requests for correction from affected parties. Those administratively driven policy changes have continued after the one-year period covered by OMB’s report. For example, shortly after the June 2004 court case and DOJ brief, the National Institute on Aging within the National Institutes of Health reportedly agreed to revise its website and printed publications, eliminating statements indicating that smokeless tobacco products are no less safe than cigarettes. The change was reportedly a direct result of an IQA correction request filed by the National Legal and Policy Center. The IQA may also be having an effect on information dissemination in the states. The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness has reportedly drafted and promoted a model state version of the act that is derived from the federal legislation and the OMB guidelines. The State of Wisconsin has adopted data quality legislation, and other states are reportedly planning to do so.”

The report also suggests a number of “Possible Improvements and Modifications.”

For anyone interested in the role of information in decision making in federal agencies, the report is an excellent summary of where things stand in the experiment that is the DQA.

Posted on October 8, 2004 10:14 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

October 07, 2004

Interesting Email

The announcement below appeared in my email inbox from the Climate-L folks. Note who is responsible for funding the upgrade of the UN FCCC website. Give the U.S. stance on Kyoto, I wonder what is going on there, perhaps a paving of the way for a reentry into the negotiations?

"The UNFCCC secretariat is pleased to announce the relaunch of its official website, which will take place on 11 October 2004.

This relaunch will conclude a major project designed to make information more accessible, introduce a revised navigation structure and automate information management.

The relaunch has been made possible through a generous contribution from the United States of America and has benefited from feedback provided by 450 Party representatives, IGOs and NGOs.

The secretariat hopes that the new website will enhance communications and access to information about the climate change process."

Posted on October 7, 2004 10:00 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

(Mis)Justifications for Climate Mitigation

Last week’s Science has a very interesting exchange (subscription required) between Indur M. Goklany, of the Office of Policy Analysis, U.S. Department of the Interior and Sir David A. King, Chief Scientific Adviser to U.K Prime Minister Tony Blair and Head of the Office of Science and Technology.

Goklany writes that King justifies action to mitigate climate change on the argument that because "of continued warming, millions more people around the world may in future be exposed to the risk of hunger, drought, flooding, and debilitating diseases such as malaria. Poor people in developing countries are likely to be most vulnerable." Goklany responds to this justification by considering the case of malaria:

“… the population at risk of malaria (PAR-M) in the absence of climate change is projected to double between 1990 and the 2080s, to 8,820 million (2). However, unmitigated climate change would, by the 2080s, further increase PAR-M by another 257 to 323 million (2). Thus, by the 2080s, halting further climate change would, at best, reduce total PAR-M by 3.5% [=100 x 323/(323 + 8,820)] (3). On the other hand, reducing carbon dioxide emissions with the goal of eventually stabilizing carbon dioxide at 550 ppm would reduce total PAR-M by 2.8% (2) at a cost to developed nations, according to King, of 1% of GDP in 2050 (p. 177), or about $280 billion in today's terms (4). But malaria's current annual death toll of about 1 million could be halved at an annual cost of $1.25 billion or less, according to the World Health Organization, through a combination of measures such as residual home spraying with insecticides, insecticide-treated bednets, improved case management, and more com!
prehensive antenatal care (5). Clearly, implementing such measures now would provide greater malaria benefits over the next few decades than would climate stabilization at any level. It would also reduce vulnerability to malaria from all causes--man-made or natural--now and in the future (3).”

This is a powerful point that deserves a response. Does it make sense ethically and scientifically to invoke malaria as a primary justification for climate mitigation? King’s extremely weak response is to avoid the issue:

“There is no real choice between action on climate change and action on poverty, disease, hunger, and other millennium development goals. These are part of the same sustainable development agenda. Climate change is already affecting developing countries, and it is the poorest regions of the world--such as Africa and Southeast Asia--that are most at risk. The many people who have died and the millions now homeless through the monsoon flooding in Bangladesh will bear witness to that. This kind of event can be expected to become more frequent and more extreme as global warming accelerates, exacerbated by rising sea levels.”

Goklany’s more general conclusion on the importance of vulnerability reduction is well supported by our own research. He writes:

“Similarly, reducing present-day vulnerabilities to the other risk factors mentioned by King (i.e., hunger, water shortage, and flooding) could well provide larger benefits at lower costs over the next few decades than would climate change mitigation efforts that go beyond so-called "no-regret" actions, that is, actions that are worth undertaking on their own merits unrelated to any climate change-related concerns (e.g., elimination of subsidies for fossil fuel usage or land clearance) (3).”

Goklany’s letter is much stronger when he discusses what we ought to be doing on malaria, rather than what we ought not to be doing on energy policy. Goklany misses the fact that the same sort of argument that he presents on vulnerability can also be applied to energy policy, i.e., there are powerful reasons to address energy policy, and climate mitigation is but one of them

The reality is that justifications advanced by folks like King for climate mitigation matter a great deal. They matter for resource allocation decisions on climate policies as well as on science policies. Decisions must be made because allocated because money, time, attention, etc. are scarce, and contrary to what King says, choices about priorities have to be made.

But there is a deeper reason why justifications matter having to do with symbolism, science, democracy, and the framing of problems in a way that motivates particular actions. If the justifications used to advance a particular cause don’t stand up to close scrutiny, then it probably makes sense to rethink policy as the actions advocated may not address the concerns explicit in the justifications. Further, when justifications do not match results, it raises the possibility that those doing the justifying have some unstated agenda. This opens the door for gridlock and a lack of accountability in the decision making process.

Of course, I am squarely in the camp that thinks that climate mitigation policies are presently hopelessly misjustified, but I also believe that that there are strong and valid justifications for changing our approach to energy policies in ways that will reduce the human influence on climate. The biggest challenge facing real (not symbolic) progress climate policy today is not political or technological, but in how we think about the problem.

Posted on October 7, 2004 09:42 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

October 06, 2004

Scientists and the Politics of Global Warming

Let’s do an experiment …

Last week Von Storch et al. published a paper (registration required, PDF) in ScienceExpress that claimed that the so-called “hockey stick” temperature record of the past 1,000 years is flawed (for a popular summary of the “hockey stick” see this BBC story and for scientific details see the home page of Michael Mann. Yesterday in the New York Times Andy Revkin provided a nice summary of the new paper and its scientific significance.

Last year when a paper by Soon and Baliunas (PDF) was published in the journal Climate Research that criticized the so-called “hockey stick” record of global temperature trends, I commented in an article by David Appell in Scientific American, “You'd be challenged, I'd bet, to find someone who supports the Kyoto Protocol and also thinks that this paper is good science, or someone who thinks that the paper is bad science and is opposed to Kyoto."

(Aside: Von Storch resigned (Thanks to D. Appell for the link) as incoming editor of Climate Research over CR’s handling of the Soon/Baliunas paper, and was paraphrased saying of Soon/Baliunas “[Their conclusions] may be true, Von Storch said, but it is not supported by evidence cited in the paper.”)

And I wrote of the CR dust up in a recent paper (PDF) on the politicization of science by scientists, “… advocacy groups opposed to the Kyoto Protocol predictably hailed the [Soon/Baliunas] research as “sound science,” while advocacy groups in support of the Protocol called the paper “junk science”. In this case, more troubling than the “cherry picking” of scientific results by advocates is that many scientist’s evaluations of the scientific merit of the Climate Research paper correlated perfectly with their public expressions of support or opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. Acceptance of the paper’s conclusions was equated with opposition to Kyoto, and correspondingly, rejection of the paper’s findings was equated with support for Kyoto.”

Today one advocacy group funded by the fossil fuel industry and on record as being against emissions reductions states bluntly in a moment of candor their view why this putatively scientific debate matters: “Why are so many researchers concerned with reconstructing a thousand years of Earth's climate history? Some will argue it's actually a political debate; to the winner goes the spoils - passage of or withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol by governments worldwide.”

So, in this highly politicized atmosphere, given how many scientists spoke out in support of or against Mann et al.’s “hockey stick” it will be very interesting to see reactions among scientists to Von Storch’s new paper. (It won’t be so interesting to see how advocacy groups react, as it will be completely predictable.) Specifically, given the close connection of support or refutation of the earlier paper with explicit political agendas, scientists who were critical of Soon and Baliunas may be very hesitant to comment on Von Storch et al., except in a negative way. Conversely, we can expect howls of support from those scientists who supported Soon/Baliunas. So, this suggests a few hypotheses to test in our little experiment:

1. From scientists critical of Soon/Baliunas and supportive of Mann et al. (and for the most part supportive of Kyoto), expect very little in the way of public comment on Von Storch et al.

2. From scientists supportive of Soon/Baliunas and critical of Mann et al. (and for the most part opposed to Kyoto), expect to be hearing lots of reaction to Von Storch et al.

In other words, let’s see if the scientists behave just like the advocacy groups. If these hypotheses are anywhere close to reflecting what goes on, we’ll have some good evidence for how it is that politics influences that practice of climate science. Here at Prometheus we’ll be watching and will report back soon.

Posted on October 6, 2004 08:53 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

October 04, 2004

Data Quality & David Brooks

Update on NOAA/DQA ...

The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness, one of the groups responsible for pushing the Data Quality Act, links to this update on the status of attempts to exempt NOAA from the DQA.

David Brooks, Stalwarts, Dealers

David Brooks’ 2 October 2004 column in the New York times paints a picture of George Bush and John Kerry quite similar to my distinction between stalwarts and dealers.

Posted on October 4, 2004 01:23 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

Exemption Requested from Data Quality Act

The 29 September issue of the Wall Street Journal (p. 18) has a short editorial (subscription required) that observes:

“We've long been skeptics about the science behind the political campaign to regulate greenhouse gasses, so imagine our surprise to discover that some of the global warmists seem to agree. How else to read a paragraph that was included in a recent Senate spending bill exempting climate programs from having to pass scientific scrutiny? The legislative language excuses any "research and data collection, or information analysis conducted by or for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration" (the agency charged with monitoring climate change) from the Data Quality Act, a new law that requires sound science in policymaking. This is the sole exemption in the bill.”

I have no information on this requested exemption other than what the WSJ reports, however, if their interpretation of events has some truth to it …

“Nobody is rushing to take credit for the proposed exemption. But our sources say it was included at the request of Democrats on the Senate subcommittee that wrote the spending bill in question, but that now the exemption is getting the attention of Chairman Judd Gregg, who says he intends to remove it.”

… then whatever the underlying justification, the mere act of trying to win an exemption from the DQA is likely to enhance the legitimacy of the DQA as a “filter” on science and, in my view, may enhance rather than reduce the politicization of science. Stay tuned.

Posted on October 4, 2004 01:20 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

September 30, 2004

CALL FOR PAPERS: 2005 MEPHISTOS CONFERENCE

Mephistos is an international graduate student conference in the History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Science, Technology and Medicine. The purpose of the conference is to stimulate open discussion among graduate students. The graduate community at Brown University, in association with the Committee on Science & Technology Studies, is proud to host the twenty-third annual edition of the event, which will be held on March 5-6, 2005.

The 2005 Mephistos Organizing Committee welcomes proposals for individual papers from graduate students interested in the topics named above and/or the interdisciplinary field of Science & Technology Studies (STS). Please submit all of the following by email to Tanya Sheehan, Chair of the Organizing Committee, at mephistos@brown.edu:

* Cover letter including your name, institutional affiliation (department and college/university), title of proposed paper, complete mailing address, and telephone number(s)
* One-page abstract of the proposed paper (200-300 words-MS Word attachment preferred)
* Curriculum vitae (no more than 3 pages-MS Word attachment preferred)

Only complete submissions received by December 1, 2004 will be considered. Letters of acceptance will be emailed to applicants no later than January 1, 2005. Please keep in mind that Mephistos conference papers are expected to be formal presentations of 20 minutes in length. The 2005 Organizing Committee plans to continue the conference's long tradition of providing modest travel grants to each of the conference speakers.

For further information, please consult the conference website or contact mephistos@brown.edu

Posted on September 30, 2004 02:31 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

September 29, 2004

Hurricanes and Climate Change: On Asking the Wrong Question

Today’s New York Times editorializes on hurricanes and global warming, a popular topic these days.

“Mr. McCain, a co-sponsor with Senator Joseph Lieberman of a bill to impose mandatory caps on industrial emissions of carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas, also ventured where few politicians have dared to go, drawing a link between this calamitous hurricane season and climate change. This is not farfetched: because hurricanes draw their intensity from the heat in ocean waters, and because the oceans (like the rest of the world) are gradually getting warmer, a growing number of reputable scientists say hurricanes are likely to grow in intensity and destructive power, if not frequency.”

Most everyone’s attention is focused on the question, “Will global warming lead to more and/or more intense hurricanes?” and, just as implied in the Times editorial, the answer to the question is received as a proxy for support or opposition to efforts to regulate greenhouse gases. But this is the wrong question. A more appropriate question in the context of policy is the following, “When compared to other available options, how effective are greenhouse gas regulations as a means to modulate future impacts associated with hurricanes (given that the future incidence of hurricanes may indeed be affected by greenhouse gases)?”

This question is almost never asked or answered. In 2000 with colleagues Bobbie Klein and Dan Sarewitz I sought to address this question in our research and we published the following paper:

Pielke, Jr., R. A., R.A. Klein, and D. Sarewitz, 2000: Turning the Big Knob: Energy Policy as a Means to Reduce Weather Impacts. Energy and Environment, Vol. 11, No. 3, 255-276.

I also provide a less technical summary of the same analysis in my 2002 Senate Testimony:

Pielke, Jr., R.A., 2002: Statement of Dr. Roger A. Pielke, Jr. to the Committee on Environment and Public Works if the United States Senate, Hearing on Economic and Environmental Risks Associated with Increasing Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

In that testimony I conclude:

“An implication of this work is that policy related to societal impacts of climate has important and under-appreciated dimensions that are independent of energy policy. It would be a misinterpretation of this work to imply that it supports either business-as-usual energy policies, or is contrary to climate mitigation. It does suggest that if a policy goal is to reduce the future impacts of climate on society, then energy policies are insufficient, and perhaps largely irrelevant, to achieving that goal. Of course, this does not preclude other sensible reasons for energy policy action related to climate (such as ecological impacts) and energy policy action independent of climate change (such as national security, air pollution reduction and energy efficiency). It does suggest that reduction of human impacts related to weather and climate are not among those reasons, and arguments and advocacy to the contrary are not in concert with research in this area.”

To my knowledge these findings are extremely robust from a scientific standpoint, having been published in a wide range of peer-reviewed literature, and have not been refuted. Yet, such findings are just about completely ignored. Very interesting.

Posted on September 29, 2004 10:02 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

September 27, 2004

Non-Results in Clinical Trials and Beyond

Last week’s Economist reports on a major change in the oversight of clinical trials. To date, not all clinical trials have been reported, which means that inconclusive results can be hidden and successful trials highlighted. Why does this matter? Consider what happens when studies are evaluated using the typical 95% threshold of statistical significance, this means that 1 in 20 results, on average, will be spurious just by chance. So when testing the effects of a new drug, with enough clinical trials, there will inevitably be a statistically significant positive result at some point, even if the drug is ineffective. Hence the importance of knowing the results of all clinical trials related to a particular drug.

The Economist notes:
“Legislation is in the works in both houses of America's Congress to reform the reporting of trials. In particular, Chris Dodd, Tim Johnson and Edward Kennedy, three Democratic senators, are expected to propose, within the next week or two, a law that would increase compliance with existing requirements to post trial data to clinicaltrials.gov. It would probably adopt a proposal made by the AMA that registration in a central database be a requirement for the approval of human trials, as well as introducing new requirements to include trial results in the database.”

(For another view see the PhRMA www site here.)

There is no shortage of criticisms of methods used to assess the significance of a finding, whether the effects of a drug or any other cause-effect relationship.

What there is a shortage of (apparently) is the reporting of “non-findings” in pretty much any area of science in which statistical (or other types of) significance testing is reported as a result of research. Whether the issue happens to be the creation of a model of an open system (which can easily be “tuned” to fit data) or the establishment of correlative relationships among variables (which can be mixed and matched, and a hypothesis developed after a match is made), non-findings would seem to be pretty important to understanding the reported results of many areas of science related to decision making, especially those studies that are not easily replicated (i.e., in contrast to those that occur in the controlled setting of a lab). I’ve seen this issue discussed and recognized in disciplines as varied as political science and meteorology, but I've seen little action in reponse.

I often wonder about this when I see colourful Powerpoint presentations in which the speaker shows an image of results related to, e.g., a weather forecast, a climate model scenario, crop production, an ecosystem’s evolution, economic or political outcomes etc. etc. that presents some very close comparison with some verifying data. I am sure that the speaker surely has not chosen the image at random, but to put the best possible face on their research results. But I wonder, what does the entire family of possible images look like? This question is rarely asked or answered.

Because of these dynamics, just as in the case of clinical drug trials, in areas of interdisciplinary science dealing with open or non-stationary systems, much of what we think is significant is likely less significant than we think. At least today I’m 95% certain of this, but ask me 20 times to be sure!

Posted on September 27, 2004 09:12 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health

September 22, 2004

Fellowships from the National Academies

The contribution of science, technology, and engineering to the formulation and implementation of U.S. government domestic and foreign policy has long been recognized as a critical element in good governance. Without an accurate, timely understanding of rapidly advancing science and technology issues, it is increasingly difficult to identify and establish sound governmental policy that meet the needs of modern societies.

In recognition of this, the National Academies sponsors the "Jefferson Science Fellows" (JSF) program to establish a new model for engaging the American academic science, technology, and engineering communities in the formulation and implementation of U.S. foreign policy. The program is administered by the National Academies, philanthropic foundations, and the U.S. Department of State. Nominations are due October 1, 2004. Complete program information is available here.

The National Academies' "Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Internship Program" is also accepting applications from graduate and postdoctoral students for its 2005 sessions. The program is designed to engage science, engineering, medical, veterinary, business, and law students in the analysis and creation of public policy and familiarize them with the interactions of science, technology and government. There is a rolling application deadline for seasonal application periods. For complete information visit here.

More information about both programs, including detailed guidelines, eligibility requirements, and placement/research specifics, is also available from The National Academies, Fellowships Office, 500 Fifth Street NW, GR 322A, Washington, DC 20001; (202) 334-2872.

Posted on September 22, 2004 09:29 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Job Announcements

September 21, 2004

Brian Drain

Something tells me that issues associated with the mobility of skill ed workers in science and engineering require a bit more nuance. Perhaps instead of “brain drain” those thinking about “brain circulation” are onto something. Consider the following:

Scientists and policy makers in the United States are worried about a “brain drain.”

Scientists and policy makers in Canada are worried about a “brain drain.”

Scientists and policy makers in South Africa are worried about a “brain drain.”

Scientists and policy makers in Indonesia are worried about a “brain drain.”

Scientists and policy makers across Africa are worried about a “brain drain.”

Scientists and policy makers in Argentina are worried about a “brain drain.”

Scientists and policy makers across Europe are worried about a “brain drain.”

Scientists and policy makers in Pakistan are worried about a “brain drain.”

Scientists and policy makers in Japan are worried about a “brain drain.”

Scientists and policy makers across Asia are worried about a “brain drain.”

Scientists and policy makers in Australia are worried about a “brain drain.”

Has anyone looked in Antarctica for all of these brains?

Posted on September 21, 2004 03:17 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

September 20, 2004

Climate Models, Climate Politics

An article (registration required) in the New Scientist from this past summer highlights how politicized the practice of climate modeling has become (thanks to John Fleck for the link). The article focuses on how understandings of climate models have become more complex as models become more sophisticated. Here are the story’s last two paragraphs:

“Some climate scientists find these new figures disturbing not just for what they suggest about the atmosphere's sensitivity to greenhouse gases, but also because they undermine existing predictions. Uncertainty about those predictions is stopping politicians from acting to halt global warming. So, they argue, even suggesting that the model results are less certain could be politically dangerous.

But other climate scientists fear creating a spurious certainty about climate change. Since we don't know what the future holds, they say, we shouldn't claim to know. These people see the predictions of climate models as less like a weather forecast and more like a bookmaker setting odds for a high-stakes horse race. There are no "dead certainties". They say that humanity has to act prudently and hedge its bets about future climate change in the absence of certainty. We will, they argue, never be able to see through the clouds, and politicians will just have to accept that.”

An opinion in today’s Tech Central Station by Anthony Lupo shows how climate models are used to political effect:

“Indeed, most of the reporting about catastrophic consequences of climate change are said to have been produced by the latest and most advanced computer modeling technique, so called Climate Circulation Models, or GCMs … Some are optimistic that the support for the global warming theory among the faithful scientists and activists may be about to collapse on itself and it is possible that the increase in frightening rhetoric coming from this crowd through the media is a sign that they are growing more desperate. If this is true, that is a good sign, but it must be cautioned that it took years to build up support for the theory among the general population through these scary scenarios. Since these activists tend to have a political agenda that accompanies their support for policies intended to fight global warming, they will not stop trying to implement this agenda, at least until "The Day After November 2nd".”

Of course, characteristics and output of climate models are used also by proponents of action on climate change. From the WWW site of the Union of Concerned Scientists is this blurb, “California Must Act. A new UCS study shows the Golden State's economy, environment, and public health could suffer severe consequences if it fails to reduce the heat-trapping emissions that cause climate change.”

An irony of this situation is that those who criticize models as inadequate to guide policy are made possible by those who invoke models as windows to the future. This circle of conflict is reinforced by the scientific community as it presses ahead with model development leading to new models, new projections, and new uncertainties that sustains the rhetorical needs of both sides. Missed in this debate, at least by the proponents of action, is that if you are arguing about climate models, you have lost your focus on climate policy, because victory in the scientific debate over models will not lead automatically to a political or policy consensus on climate. For the opponents of action on climate change, mobilizing debate on climate models means control over the scope of discussion on climate policy (and crucially, whether or not the modeling debate is won or lost). And for proponents of action, arguing about models has thus far been an irresistible trap.

But perhaps in the future we’ll be hearing more from those largely silent scientists who espouse the following, unattributed perspective in the New Scientist article (registration required), “There are no "dead certainties". They say that humanity has to act prudently and hedge its bets about future climate change in the absence of certainty. We will, they argue, never be able to see through the clouds, and politicians will just have to accept that.”

Posted on September 20, 2004 08:48 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

September 15, 2004

Just About Right

The New York Times has occasionally come under some criticism here at Prometheus. But in an editorial Tuesday on the politicization of science, the Time gets it just about right when it observes:

“The Bush administration has from time to time found it convenient to distort science to serve political ends. The result is a purposeful confusion of scientific protocols in which "sound science" becomes whatever the administration says it is. In the short run, this is a tactic to override basic environmental protections in favor of industry. In the long run, it undermines the authority of science itself.”

Of course the same might be said of Bill Clinton, Bush Sr., Ronald Reagan, etc. There are of course those who enjoy debating who is a “worse” offender in distorting science – Here is my 2 cents on that topic from an article in the 17 Sept 2004 Chronicle of Higher Education:

“Scientists are thinking too narrowly if they view presidential politics as the forum for resolving the debate, says Roger A. Pielke Jr., director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "It's very plausible to me that the Bush administration is the most egregious offender in misusing science, or the most skilled, depending on your perspective," he says. However, that "doesn't mean that under a Kerry administration, everything would be just fine," he adds. Scientists will still need to work to counter interest groups that spin research results to support their views.”

And while the New York Times doesn’t tell us what is meant by “the authority of science itself,” they certainly don’t imply that science necessarily implies that one political perspective should always win out over another. And this nuance is just about right.

Posted on September 15, 2004 08:32 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

September 14, 2004

CSPO Has New WWW Site and Content

The Consortium for Science Policy and Outcomes (CSPO) at Arizona State University has unveiled a new WWW site with new content and organization. For those of you interested in science and technology policy it is a site you'll want to bookmark.

Here are a few links:

How science makes environmental controversies worse: A new paper in Environmental Science & Policy by Daniel Sarewitz. (This is a paper in the special issue of ESP that I co-guest edited.)

Details on a panel discussion organized by CSPO at ASU 13 October 2004 titled, "Science Defiled - Or Politics as Usual? An Interactive Panel Discussion in conjunction with the Third Presidential Debate".

A new Perspective by Daniel Sarewitz titled "Fundamentals and Fundamentalists". Here is an excerpt:

"For it seems that science policy discourse is remarkably, and maddeningly, bound by a set of definitions and debates that have been more or less in rigor mortis for the past fifty years for all the wonderful insights generated by focusing a variety of social science lenses on the processes of knowledge creation and innovation, in the real world it was, and continues to be, the physical and life sciences who are fighting cold wars, revitalizing industries, bringing home the bacon, remaking society. They have all of the power and influence because they produce, and this power and influence confers upon them the right to be unreflective about why and how they do what they do.

Yet this license to cluelessness may be approaching its expiration date-not because the ideas emerging from science policy scholarship are gaining traction, but because the tensions built into the current system are becoming unavoidable, and the standard response-that all problems can be resolved with more funding, more velocity, more information, more stuff-begins to strain credulity."

Read the whole thing here.

Posted on September 14, 2004 12:30 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

September 13, 2004

Hurricanes and Climate Change

Since I’ve been asked a few times I thought that it might be worth posting an analysis of hurricanes and climate change from work I’ve been involved in. Below is an extended excerpt from a 1999 paper I collaborated on, looking at trends in hurricane incidence and their policy relevance. Even though the paper was published more than five years ago, I think that the analysis remains sound.

Landsea, C. L., R. A. Pielke, Jr., A. Mestas-Nuñez, and J. Knaff, 1999: Atlantic Basin Hurricanes: Indicies of Climate Changes. Climate Change, 42, 89-129.

Here is a link to the paper in PDF.

The paper can also be found here in HTML.

Begin extended except …

“Climate change policy

In 1996, Working Group III of the IPCC estimated increased worldwide damages and loss of life related to hurricane impacts in a doubled CO2 world at $630 million and 8,000 additional lives lost (Watson et al. 1996). Working Group III concluded that these economic losses and lives lost would be prevented with the adoption of emissions reductions policies. There is an obvious inconsistency between the projections by IPCC Working Group III of increased impacts and the conclusions of Working Group I, which stated that ``the state of the science does not allow assessment of future changes" in tropical cyclone indices.

Setting aside for the moment this inconsistency, the logic of the IPCC Working Group III is fundamentally flawed. Even if there were valid theoretical reasons to expect more tropical cyclones in the future related to human-caused climate change, the climatological record gives no indication that society can modulate hurricane impacts through energy policies. That is, as atmospheric CO2 levels have increased, ``there is currently no evidence that there has been systematic changes in the observed tropical cyclones around the globe" (Landsea 1998). The suggestion by the IPCC that a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions will lead to less or less intense tropical cyclones and therefore less impacts to society begs several further questions of relevance to the policy community which have thus far gone unasked and unanswered:

Can the scientific community reliably differentiate future hurricane frequencies and magnitudes based on the various scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions and concentrations (i.e., IS92a-f from Houghton et al. 1992)?

The analysis of climatological information presented in this paper suggests that for many decades to come, detection of a human-forced signal in the tropical cyclone record will be extremely difficult to detect because of both the relatively modest size of the predicted changes in MPI and the rather large apparently natural multidecadal variability (cf. Henderson-Sellers et al. 1998). Therefore, it is unrealistic for policy makers to expect in the near term (i.e., in the next few years) that the scientific community will be able to reliably predict future hurricane incidences differentiated by various emissions scenarios. As Henderson-Sellers et al. (1998) have noted ``global and mesoscale model-based predictions for tropical cyclones in greenhouse conditions have not yet demonstrated prediction skill."

Is there reason to believe that policy makers should expect the policy actions now being contemplated (e.g., the Kyoto Accord to the Framework Convention on Climate Change) will reduce the number of and intensities of future hurricanes that will impact society?

There is no evidence to suggest that society can intentionally modulate tropical cyclone frequencies and magnitudes through energy policies2. Therefore, policy responses to hurricanes ought to focus on the reduction of society's vulnerability to hurricanes, rather than on prevention of the storms themselves (Pielke and Pielke 1997b). For instance, in the context of insurance, Henderson-Sellers et al. (1998) recommend a focus on ``appropriate reserves and restrictive underwriting" rather than on accurate predictions, or by extension, on controlling future hurricane incidences.

Answers to these questions do not exclude the possibility that an anthropogenic forcing might lead to changes (Henderson-Sellers et al. 1998). They do strongly suggest that reliable prediction of future hurricane indices (much less societal impacts) differentiated by various emissions scenarios is beyond the capabilities of the scientific community. Further, if a policy objective is to reduce society's vulnerability to hurricane impacts, then decision makers would be wiser to consider better adapting to documented variability, rather than preventing storms from occurring (Pielke 1998)3.

Natural disaster policy

One of the most striking features of the information presented in section four of this paper are the 19 years which passed between intense hurricane landfalls on the U.S. East Coast from 1966 through 1984. These decades saw much of the population growth and development of coastal communities. Overall, the 19 years prior to 1966 saw 14 intense hurricanes strike the U.S. East Coast. Most of the historical economic losses are the result of storms striking the U.S. East Coast rather than the Gulf Coast (Table 7). Consider also that over the seven year period 1944 to 1950, the state of Florida saw $44.2 billion (normalized to 1995 values, see Pielke and Landsea 1998) in losses, or more than $6 billion per year, while the 46 year period 1951 to 1997 saw a similar total amount of normalized damages, $49.3 billion or about $1.1 billion per year. Most of the damages of the latter period were the result of Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

The review of indices for hurricane climatic changes reveals that from the perspective of societal impacts, recent decades are indeed anomalous. But contrary to conventional wisdom of some in the media, public, and policy communities, recent decades are unique because of the relative infrequency of U.S. landfalls of strong hurricanes, and not because of any upsurge in strong storms (cf. Landsea et al. 1996). Hurricanes arguably are the natural hazard with the greatest potential for economic disruption in the United States, and further, the potential for a large loss of life related to a hurricane's landfall is increasing with coastal development (Pielke and Pielke 1997a). Because the nation's hurricane policies have been typically developed in the immediate aftermath of a disaster (Birkland 1997, Simpson 1998), it would be prudent for the policy community to assess whether or not the lack of hurricane impacts in recent decades has led to an atrophying of the nation's hurricane policies. Some questions to consider include:

Are national, state, and local hurricane policies supported by public and private decision makers in a manner commensurate with the documented vulnerability of society?

How prepared is the U.S. east coast for 14 intense hurricanes in 19 years as occurred in the 1940s-1960s?

How prepared is the nation, and Florida specifically, for a recurrence of the hurricanes of the late 1940s?

Is the time ripe for the United States to develop a national hurricane policy?

Asking and answering questions like these are important steps in reducing the nation's vulnerabilities to hurricane impacts. One benefit of past hurricane impacts is that society has learned many lessons. These lessons provide a basis of experience on which to reduce the nation's vulnerability to hurricane impacts (Pielke and Pielke 1997a). What seems to be lacking is awareness of whether the nation's risk is matched by its response.”

… end of extended excerpt.

Posted on September 13, 2004 12:20 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Dangerous Ideas

The September/October 2004 issue of Foreign Policy is a special issue focused on "The World's most Dangerous Ideas". Foreign Policy describes this issue as follows:

"Ideas matter, and sometimes they can be dangerous.

With this simple conviction, FOREIGN POLICY asked eight leading thinkers to issue an early warning on the ideas that will be most destructive in the coming years. A few of these ideas have long and sometimes bloody pedigrees. Others are embryonic, nourished by breakthroughs in science and technology. Several are policy ideas whose reverberations are already felt; others are more abstract, but just as pernicious. Yet, as the essays make clear, these dangerous ideas share a vulnerability to insightful critique and open debate."

Two of the eight articles, by Robert Wright and Fareed Zakaria, are available without a subscription.

A question follows from Foreign Policy's exercise: How does the knowledge represented in the "dangerous ideas" compare to how we organize ourselves to produce and deal with knowledge? One answer to this question is that there is a considerable mismatch between how we organize the knowledge enterprise and how we organize ourselves to deal with the consequences of knowledge.

Aspects of this problem are discussed by Lightman et al. in their volume "Living with the Genie: Essays on Technology and the Quest for Human Mastery" published by Island Press.

Posted on September 13, 2004 09:19 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | International | Science Policy: General

September 10, 2004

Public Access to Genome Data and the NAS as Policy Advocate

Yesterday the National Academies of Sciences issued a report that recommended, “Current policies that allow scientists and the public unrestricted access to genome data on microbial pathogens should not be changed … [and] concludes that security against bioterrorism is better served by policies that facilitate, not limit, the free flow of this information.”

Some additional scrutiny is called for when the NAS recommends a single a policy recommendation that happens to be focused on satisfying the interests of those making the recommendation. Specifically, the committee making the recommendation is comprised primarily of life scientists who benefit from and are committed to open access to scientific information. As Stanley Falkow, chair of the committee that wrote the report, and professor of microbiology and immunology, Stanford University, stated in the NAS press release, “The current vitality of the life sciences depends on a free flow of data and ideas …”. Thus, there is a built-in bias among the committee to recommend that data be kept open and available. The committee based its recommendation (what it calls “the best policy choice” on p. 8) on criteria that it determined were best for advancing science.

We should be uncomfortable when NRC committees take on an advocacy position related to science. Specifically, the NAS should not be in the business of pushing for a single policy option, particularly one that best serves the needs of its own community. Instead the NRC should carefully evaluate the pluses and minuses of a range of plausible policy alternatives, and then allow government officials to decide which course of action is in the public’s interest. NRC Committees should allow for sufficient disciplinary and other diversity to allow for such policy evaluations. The NRC has access to expertise on every area of science. But it also has access to those with expertise in policy evaluation, this report (and many others) showed no evidence that they consulted or otherwise incorporated such expertise.

As an example of the general problem consider this quote from Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a bioweapons expert at the State University of New York's Purchase College, in this week’s Science “This is the right decision, from the standpoints of both public health and security." First, the NAS should not be in the business of making policy decisions and, second, it is not at all clear that the NAS committee developed or applied criteria of public health or security in performing its policy evaluation.

Posted on September 10, 2004 11:27 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health

September 09, 2004

Stem Cells, Stalwarts and Dealers Redux

In a letter in last week's Science John T. Durkin provides a Stalwart's defense to a Dealer's argument made by Michael S. Gazzaniga in an earlier letter to Science.

This exchange shows that this debate cannot be settled on scientific grounds and why the issue of stem cells is both highly political and closely related to the abortion debate.

Durkin: "The scientist who destroys an embryo to harvest stem cells commits a wrong, for the scientist has denied that embryo the opportunity to grow into an adult. My moral objections to human embryonic stem cell research are not assuaged by severing its connection to reproductive cloning. In my judgment, the developmental events leading from fertilized ovum, to blastula, to embryo, to fetus, to fully formed adult constitute a continuum. It is artificial, and even self-serving, to declare the embryo "not yet human" before some point, and to declare that we may do with that embryo as we will."

Gazzaninga: "Looking at a miniscule ball of cells in a petri dish, so small that it could rest on the head of a pin, one may be hard pressed to think of it as a human being. After all, it has no brain or capacity to think and feel. Merely possessing the genetic material for a future human being does not make a ball of cells a human being. The developing embryo that becomes a fetus that becomes a baby is the product of a dynamic interaction with its in vivo environment, its postnatal experiences, and a host of other factors. A pure genetic description of the human species does not describe a human being."

I discuss these sorts of debates which may be related to science but cannot be addressed by science in this paper:

Pielke, Jr., R. A. 2004. Abortion, Tornadoes and Forests: Thinking about Science, Politics and Policy, Chapter 9, pp. 143-52 in J. Bowersox and K. Arabas (eds.) Forest Futures: Science, Policy and Politics for the Next Century (Rowman and Littlefield).

A pre-publication version here and the published version will be online soon.

Posted on September 9, 2004 10:19 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health

September 08, 2004

University of Washington’s Forum on Science Ethics and Policy

The University of Washington has a new initiative in science policy called the Forum on Science Ethics and Policy. FOSEP is focused on fostering “discussion about the role of science in our society” and building “a network of individuals interested in science ethics and policy in the Seattle area.” FOSEP is a graduate student-created and run effort.

Their next public forum is on stem cells and takes place on October 18, 2004.

Posted on September 8, 2004 09:05 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

September 07, 2004

The Axiology of Science

Alvin Weinberg published a paper in 1971 with this title in which he discussed the value structure of the scientific enterprise. Weinberg’s value structure, which I think survives largely intact today, helps to explain why certain areas and types of science are perceived within the community to have a higher standing than other areas.

I was reminded of Weinberg’s axiology when reading a news article in Science a few weeks ago that included this comment:

“A Slovenian economist has been tapped to be Europe's next commissioner for science and research. Janez Potocnik, lead negotiator for Slovenia's entry into the European Union, is slated to take the reins of E.U. science policy, including the 5-year, $22 billion Framework 6 program that funds trans-European research. The appointment surprised many E.U. watchers, because the 46-year-old Potocnik has no background in the natural sciences. (Outgoing commissioner Philippe Busquin studied physics before entering Belgian politics.)”

Now I don’t know either person, but it would seem to me than training in economics -- a discipline focused on the allocation of finite resources -- might provide a very useful background to someone heading a large multi-disciplinary funding agency. Of course, appointing a non-natural scientist challenges the articles of faith that comprise Weiberg's axiology, hence the "surprise."

Posted on September 7, 2004 03:57 PM View this article | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

Hurricane Frances Damage Estimates

Damage estimates for Hurricanes Frances and Charley are starting to show up, and they seem to be narrowing in on some totals.

Accord to Munich Reinsurance, quoted in this AP article, Frances could result in overall insured damage of $5 billion to $15 billion, but will probably be less than Charley which is estimated at $7.4 billion in insured losses. As a general but very rough rule, total damages are often estimated to be about twice the insured damages.

The New York Times reported yesterday that the total costs of the two storms could reach $40 billion, citing loss estimates from AIR Worldwide of $20 billion in total losses related to Frances, with $5 billion to $10 billion covered by insurance, and similar totals for Charley.

No doubt that 2004 is already an extreme year for Florida’s hurricane damage, but it is far, far from the worst case. Consider that from 1944-1950 the state of Florida experienced what today would be a billion dollar storm in each of those seven years. Here is the data, and here is the analysis.

Also, Mary Downton and I have a paper in press in Natural Hazards that discusses errors in tabulating disaster costs. Here is a link to a prepublication copy:

Downton, M. and R. A. Pielke, Jr. (in press). How Accurate are Disaster Loss Data? The Case of U.S. Flood Damage, Natural Hazards.

Posted on September 7, 2004 08:25 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

September 06, 2004

Upcoming Event at ASU

Science Defiled – Or Politics as Usual?

An Interactive Panel Discussion in conjunction with the Third Presidential Debate

Stem cell research…. climate change…. genetically-modified organisms…. nanotechnology….

The politicization of science has received much media attention of late and how society views science may play a role in the 2004 elections, but do politics have a larger impact on science under the current administration than under previous ones? Is scientific purity possible – or desirable – when the political stakes are high? A panel of experts and policy makers from inside and outside the Beltway will tackle the question of the role of science in the political arena.

Wednesday October 13, 2004

3:30-5:00pm

ASU Main Campus –Armstrong Hall, College of Law

Panelists:

• Shelley Fidler, Principal, Van Ness Feldman

• Randall Lutter (invited), Chief of the Office of Planning, Food and Drug Administration

• Jane Maienschein, Director, Center for Biology and Society, Arizona State University

• Roger Pielke, Director, Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado

Moderator:

Rob Melnick, Director of the Morrison Institute for Public Policy, Arizona State University

Co-Sponsored by the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes and the

Center for Study of Law, Science, and Technology at Arizona State University

To attend, contact CSPO ; for more information visit CSPO.

This event held in conjunction with the Third Presidential Debate at Arizona State University . For more information, visit ASU.

* * * * *

The mission of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University is to ensure that science and technology move forward in harmony with broader public goals and aspirations. CSPO aims to enhance the contribution of science and technology to society's pursuit of equality, justice, freedom, and overall quality of life. The Consortium creates knowledge and methods, cultivates public discourse, and fosters policies to help decision makers and institutions grapple with the immense power and importance of science and technology as society charts a course for the future.

The Center for the Study of Law, Science, and Technology seeks to contribute to the legal system's response to the pervasive and increasing challenges posed by new scientific discoveries and their technological applications. The Center seeks to improve the quality of law and public policy affecting science and technology and supports work in an important reciprocal vein: the scientific study and understanding of law, legal institutions and legal process. The Center encourages interdisciplinary research; promotes development and review of the College of Law curriculum; and provides service for law students, attorneys and others.

Posted on September 6, 2004 12:15 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

September 03, 2004

Population, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, and US-Europe Negotiations

Have international negotiations on climate change failed to adequately address the role of population growth in they structure of international policies?

Consider that the Kyoto Protocol is currently being negotiated on the basis of individual countries contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions based on a 1990 reference point. But this approach biases the Protocol in favor of countries with low population growth rates, as population growth is a significant factor in growing greenhouse gas emissions. Consider these facts:

According to the Population Reference Bureau from 2004 to 2025 the United States is expected to increase in population from 294 million to 349 million (1990 = 249 million). Over this same period, Europe is expected to decrease in population from 728 million to 722 million (1990 = 722 million).

What this means is that assuming that European greenhouse gas emissions remain constant on a per capita basis, then Europe need only follow business-as-usual to equal its 1990 emissions in 2025, as its population is expected to decrease back to 1990 levels. By contrast, the United States is projected to see a 40% increase in its population between 1990 and 2025. This means that for the U.S. to revert back to its 1990 level of emissions it would need to see about a 30% decrease in its per capita emissions.

Based on expected population trends, any treaty based on the total greenhouse gas emissions of countries will strongly favor Europe over the United States. Perhaps this helps to explain not only why U.S. policy makers have not signed on to Kyoto, but also why it has been so easily embraced by European policy makers.

(On per capita emissions see this post.)

Posted on September 3, 2004 09:25 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | International

September 02, 2004

You Heard it Here First

I have no idea who is going to win the upcoming election (though for perspectives see this site and this site). However, if George W. Bush wins, Gregg Easterbrook thinks that “A reelected Bush, if he wants to win favor with historians, will have to do something impressive, statesmanlike, and out of character. Which is why I think a second-term Bush will be the president who imposes global-warming controls.”

While Mr. Easterbrook is most likely not a Prometheus reader, should Bush win a second term and engage the climate issue, just remember our commentary from July 12, 2004:

“While the United States is all but certainly not going to ratify the Kyoto Protocol under any conditions, is just a matter of time, perhaps less than a year, before the United States reengages in the Kyoto process under the Framework Convention on Climate Change. I think that this reengagement in the process will likely occur under a President Kerry or a President Bush.”

If Bush loses or wins and stands fast on his climate policies … well, never mind.

Posted on September 2, 2004 08:22 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Hurricane Francis

It’s been a rough hurricane season, all in one month. Now Hurricane Frances is approaching Florida as a Saffir/Simpson Category 4 storm. Worst case scenarios suggest the potential for a significant disaster. The U.S. National Hurricane Center has had as difficult a year as in recent memory with Charley and Gaston.

I spent a number of years studying hurricanes and their impacts, and know that they can lead to devastating disasters. In the next few days we should all send our best wishes to the forecasters, first responders, and Florida residents who all need a little luck to escape the worst of Frances.

Posted on September 2, 2004 08:18 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

September 01, 2004

Mindset List

Beloit College recently released its widely circulated “Mindset List” which aims to help faculty understand how the world looks from the perspective of entering college freshmen, many of whom this year were born in 1986.

As always, the Mindset List for the Class of 2008 includes a range of interesting and funny observations. It has a few notable oversights (e.g., the internet? The Challenger accident?) and a few mistakes (Mike Tyson, contender? And The Shining predates Johnny Carson’s retirement by 12 years …). But what is most interesting to me about the Mindset List is it overwhelming reliance on allusions relevant exclusively to the Baby Boom generation -- e.g., Desi Arnaz, Orson Welles, Roy Orbison? What about John Belushi, Kurt Cobain, Princess Diana?.

In the future, the folks at Beloit might want to factor in some input from Generation Xers, who are now coming to occupy more and more faculty positions as the oldest of Boomer’s approach and enter their retirement years. This leads me to think that perhaps we are in need of a separate Mindset List to highlight the different perspectives of senior faculty who can remember where they were when Kennedy was shot and junior faculty who too young or weren’t yet born in 1963, but sure know where they were when the heard that the Space Shuttle had exploded in 1986 (e.g., compare this thesis (in PDF)).

Posted on September 1, 2004 10:25 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

August 31, 2004

Jay Kay on the Wisdom of Experts and other Things

A while back I wrote about The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations, by James Surowiecki (Doubleday, 296 pp., $24.95).

In today’s Financial Times a regular columnist, John Kay, a British economist, discusses the wisdom of crowds, and of experts (subscription required but the essay is available free here). An excerpt:

“So the crowd is more likely to be right about things that do not matter, like guessing the weight of an ox or the number of jelly beans in a jar, and the expert is more likely to be right about things that do matter, like flying an aircraft or brain surgery. Where good judgments are important to us, we select people who are likely to be good at making these judgments and train them until they are very good at making these judgments. There are flight academies and medical schools, but no university offers a course on how to guess the weight of an ox or count the number of jelly beans in a jar… it is a mistake to place too much confidence in either great men or the market… Be sceptical: ask why you should buy what others want to sell. Discount the conventional wisdom. Be wise to conflicts of interest. There is wisdom in crowds, but more often wisdom in the wise. And you can beat the market, but not as often as the crowd would have you believe.”

Kay has a range of interesting articles on the site, including a very well-written one about uncertainty, uck, and gure.

Posted on August 31, 2004 10:15 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Risk & Uncertainty | Science Policy: General

Climate Models and Policy

The primary justification for public investments in climate models is that these tools will help to inform decision making related to climate. Of course, for many scientists, climate models are worth creating and studying regardless of their possible utility. But I think it is safe to say that the resources devoted to climate models would be much less if they were only of intrinsic merit.

In this light an article by Andy Revkin in today’s Science Times of The New York Times raises some difficult questions for the climate modeling community. The article carries with it the headline, “Computers Add Sophistication, but Don't Resolve Climate Debate.” The article observes, “…advances in research on climate change do not guarantee that a consensus will soon be reached on what to do about it. Computer models of climate, particularly, have become a lightning rod in the climate debate, and are likely to remain so for years to come.”

In fact, ASU’s Dan Sarewitz makes the provocative case in a recent paper that advances in science in fact may make environmental controversies worse. It is an article of faith among many that more climate science, and in particular, predictive (or projective, or scenario generation, etc.) results from computer models, will facilitate action on climate change. But what if this assumption is wrong?

One difficult question that might be asked is how we might evaluate the policy utility of climate models. [For some thoughts on this see this book.] By contrast the evaluation of climate models scientific progress according to scientific standards is fairly straightforward. A recent article in the UCAR Quarterly on the new version of the NCAR climate model describes some of these criteria:

Resolution: “The high-res CCSM3 features four times the number of data points as CCSM2 for its land and atmosphere components.”

Speed: “Benchmark tests using CCSM's atmosphere and ocean components showed Lightning to be 30% to 40% faster per processor than Blue Sky, the larger IBM cluster used since 2001 for much of NCAR's climate modeling.”

Expandability: “Much of the improvement in CCSM3 is in the model's foundation for follow-up work, such as in biogeochemistry and land-atmosphere interactions.”

But the article provides some reasons for thinking that the science of modeling can never be completed. Consider the following statements:

“The quest for resolution continues, especially in the realm of clouds and convection. Cloud particles form on scales of microns (0.00004 inches), while cloud formation is now simulated in global models on scales closer to 100 km (60 mi). "So there are 11 orders of magnitude separating us from the fundamental phenomena. What we're trying to do is start bridging that gap," says [NCAR scientist William] Collins.”

“Of course, each improvement in a component model makes it more challenging to produce full interactivity in the overall model. That task promises to keep Collins and his colleagues busy for model generations to come. "We're building a railroad from the east to west coast," he says, "and we haven't yet driven the golden spike."”

“Preliminary results indicate that the new version yields greater surface warming than the last version when carbon dioxide is increased to twice its present-day value. Several scenarios for emissions suggest that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 could double by 2100. Researchers have yet to pin down exactly what is making the CCSM3 more sensitive to CO2 …”

[Comment: Today’s climate models are so sophisticated that virtual worlds created in the models can be studied by climate modelers in as much detail as other climate scientists study the real earth.]

And according to NCAR’s Collins, "The model development never ends."

From the perspective of policy makers, never ending model development may not seem particularly attractive. This places climate modelers in a difficult position. If on the one hand, they make the case that models are currently good enough for the needs of policy makers, then they undercut their best justification for significant funding. But on the other hand, if they say that models are not good enough for the needs of policy makers, then they undercut justifications for action on climate change.

I am on who thinks that climate models are very important to both science and policy, just not in the way that has been conventionally assumed. For more on this see our book on Prediction.

Posted on August 31, 2004 08:19 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

August 30, 2004

Politicization of Social Science

Stephen A. Newman, a professor of law at New York Law School, has written a very interesting article titled “The Use and Abuse of Social Science in the Same-Sex Marriage Debate.” The full text is available at the Social Science Network Electronic Research Library.

The abstract describes the paper as follows: “There is no conclusive, scientific answer to the question of what children's development and well-being will be if society permits same-sex marriages… A look back at past societal controversies, over eugenic sterilization and over interracial marriage, highlights the danger of relying on scientific theories to resolve social issues. Science in these past debates too often reinforced societal biases. The four guidelines suggested here for considering the welfare of children in the context of same-sex marriage treat social science studies as one input among others that, when fairly considered, give substantial support to allowing such marriages as a means to promote the welfare of children raised by same-sex couples.”

Within the paper Newman writes:

“The experience with eugenic sterilization and with interracial marriage bans illustrate the dangerous power that prejudice and science, working together, can exert on the law. In our times, opponents of same-sex marriage have called upon scientific experts to testify that same-sex marriage will harm children. Whenever social science reinforces popular prejudice, the social science must be subject to the most searching scrutiny. Because the position that same-sex marriage would damage the well being of children is aligned with the long tradition of anti-gay bias in this country, it deserves careful examination. I will also scrutinize the shortcomings of expert testimony offered in support of same-sex marriage, to fully explore the role of social science in this controversy.”

A popular assumption is that social science research is more readily or directly relevant to policy making than other types of science (e.g., physical, biological, ecological, etc.). Often I have seen physical, biological, etc. scientists calling for collaboration with a social scientist to make their work more policy relevant. Presumably this sort of assumption results from the fact that decisions (i.e., policies) are made by people and social scientists happen to study people. My experiences suggest that this popular assumption is simply incorrect for several reasons.

One reason is that many social scientists strive not to be policy relevant by emulating their peers in the other sciences. For example, the discipline of economics has tried to emulate Newtonian physics, and sociology has tried to emulate biology. In some respects the social sciences are just as reductionist and narrow as their peer disciplines outside of the social sciences. One irony here is that the model of science emulated by many in the social sciences is pretty dated, and increasingly under challenge within the disciplines being emulated.

If this interpretation is close to the mark it helps to explain why traditional social science is open to politicization in exactly the same way as is other forms of science. Consequently, to make research relevant, useful, and avoid its misuse it is simply not enough to “add in” social science expertise, something else is needed …

Newman’s article is worth reading in full and comparing to the pieces prepared in the ESP special issue I mentioned recently.

Posted on August 30, 2004 09:53 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

A Perspective on Scotland’s S&T Policy

John Blundell, director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs in the United Kingdom, writes a perspective in The Scotsman criticizing government investment in science and technology.

The mission of the Institute for Economic Affairs “is to improve public understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society, with particular reference to the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.” So it is not too surprising that its director is critical of government funding for science and technology. Even so, his arguments are worth a look.

Here is an excerpt:

“The official consensus, Right or Left, bright or dim, is that although the results of scientific applications can never be predicted, brainy people given leisure and resources must benefit the rest of us. The economic jargon is that science is a "public good"… The chemist Terence Kealey produced something of a jolt to all this when he published The Economic Laws of Scientific Research in 1996… One of the superstitions Dr Kealey has challenged is the amorphous assumption that state science will enhance or accelerate economic growth. It does not. Ask a few more questions and you wonder why such a mistaken view is so widespread.”

Here is a link to the opinion piece by John Blundell.

Posted on August 30, 2004 09:45 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | International

August 27, 2004

USGCRP and Policy Relevance

Some additional thoughts on the latest climate change flap resulting from an article in yesterday’s New York Times …

The USGCRP was developed in the late 1980s and formalized in legislation in 1990. (I have a lot of background information on this program because I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation in 1994 on its attempts to structure scientific research to inform policy.) The program’s legal mandate calls for it to provide “usable information” to policy makers in response to the challenges of global change, and in particular climate change.

The program’s administrators and participants has treated issues of policy a bit like the proverbial “third rail” – stay away at all costs! It has proven politically expedient to focus instead almost exclusively on scientific research on the global earth system, which has led to a great deal of very good science, but very little information that might be considered “usable” by policy makers. In fact, the research done by the USGCRP has fed endless debate about the science of climate change -- a debate that at least in the eyes of the public, has long been settled.

In an article in today’s Washington Post, following yesterday’s New York Times article, the president’s science advisor John Marburger says the USGCRP annual report has, "no implications for policy." (Thanks to Chris Mooney for the link.)

Marburger’s statement that the USGCRP’s annual report, which reflects approximately $30 billion in public investment in the USGCRP over more than a decade, has “no implications for policy” can be interpreted as nothing other than a massive science policy failure.

How is it possible that the USGCRP was created to inform policy and a leading government official is able to dismiss the program as having no implications for policy? (For answers see this paper, this paper, and this paper.) Can we expect members of the scientific community who have benefited from billions of dollars in public investment in research justified by its policy relevance to stand up and argue that the program does in fact have a mandate to inform policy? (For an answer see this paper.)

Last year, Dan Sarewitz and I wrote of the USGCRP and its umbrella program the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP):

“As a member of Congress asked more than a decade ago: “How much longer do you think it will take before [the USGCRP is] able to hone [its] conclusions down to some very simple recommendations, on tangible, specific action programs that are rational and sensible and cost effective for us to take . . . justified by what we already know?” The organization of the current CCSP offers the following answer: Forever.”

If people desiring action on climate change policies want action, then rather than trying to “box in” the Bush Administration with science, they should instead use the words in law (Public Law 101-606) to hold the government accountable for developing “usable information for policy.” As it currently stands the President, Congress, scientists, and environmental and industry interest groups are happy to argue about the science as if settling that debate will bring us closer to addressing issues of climate and energy policy. It won’t. But a lever for action exists in plain sight.

Posted on August 27, 2004 10:20 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Striking shift? I don’t think so.

Yesterday we commented on a New York Times story that claimed to have identified a “striking shift” in the Bush Administration’s position on climate change. Today’s New York Time’s contains the President’s reaction to this claim:

“On environmental issues, Mr. Bush appeared unfamiliar with an administration report delivered to Congress on Wednesday that indicated that emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases were the only likely explanation for global warming over the last three decades. Previously, Mr. Bush and other officials had emphasized uncertainties in understanding the causes and consequences of global warming. The new report was signed by Mr. Bush's secretaries of energy and commerce and his science adviser. Asked why the administration had changed its position on what causes global warming, Mr. Bush replied, "Ah, we did? I don't think so." Scott McClellan, Mr. Bush's press secretary, said later that the administration was not changing its position on global warming and that Mr. Bush continued to be guided by continuing research at the National Academy of Sciences.”

I think that our interpretation of events on this issue holds up pretty well.

Posted on August 27, 2004 10:14 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

August 26, 2004

The New York Times and Our Changing Planet

Every year since 1989 the U.S. Global Change Research Program has released a report titled “Our Changing Planet” which provides a concise overview of research conducted under the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) as well as a summary of program activities and agency budgets. (The reports from 1995 are available online here.)

Yesterday the USGCRP released its 2005 “Our Changing Planet” report. Somewhat surprisingly the New York Times today, in an article by Andy Revkin, sought to portray this report as a “striking shift in the way the Bush administration has portrayed the science of climate change.”

This is a surprise because the 2003 edition of “Our Changing Planet”, while perhaps somewhat more staid in comparison to the 2005 report, nonetheless contains numerous references to human-caused climate change and predictions of its future, negative impacts. The USGCRP is after all a multi-billion research program motivated by evidence that humans are causing climate change and the desire to develop policy responses. It is hard to see what the news here is. The fact that the 2005 report echoes much of the language of earlier reports does not seem to me to be a striking change or motivated by any possible “shift in focus” of the Bush Administration.

More fundamentally, it appears that some are trying to “box in” the Bush Administration by getting it to admit the consensus view on climate change. Highlighting the scientific consensus as reflected in federal agency documents has been one such strategy (e.g., see this 2003 NPR interview with Andy Revkin on his earlier reporting about how the Administration excised some text on climate change from an EPA repot). The thinking may be that if the Administration is forced to admit the science then particular policies are necessarily compelled. This is a good example of the “linear” thinking that I described (and criticized) in a recent paper on science in politics and policy. The thinking behind such strategies may be that if agreement can be reached (or forced, in this case) on the science, then agreement among political opponents must follow on policy actions.

But what if scientific consensus doesn’t compel political consensus? Specifically, what if the Bush Administration decides to publicly accept the scientific consensus on climate change but then maintains its business-as-usual approach to climate policy justified in terms of jobs or economics, or international trade? This concern was raised by one representative of an environmental group in the Times article:

“At the same time, the report did not please environmental groups, which have repeatedly criticized Mr. Bush for opposing efforts to require restrictions on the gases linked to global warming, though he has gradually come around to the position that warming is at least partly caused by emissions. "The Bush administration on the one hand isn't doing anything about the problem, but on the other hand can't deny the growing science behind global warming," said Jeremy Symons of the National Wildlife Federation.”

The New York Times' apparent strategy of playing “gotcha” with agency documents on the science of climate change is sure to set off an (another) extended series of debates about the science of climate change and who believes or admits what. If so, then score another point for those who desire inaction on climate change because endless debate over the science is about as close a proxy to inaction as you can find. In the end, those pressing the Bush Administration to admit the science of climate change may very well achieve this goal, but they will likely find it to be an empty victory as the Bush Administration can very easily admit the science and then justify its actions on a range of legitimate, non-scientific factors.

Posted on August 26, 2004 09:42 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

Skewering Academia

In an op-ed in yesterday’s Washington Post, James E. McWilliams, an assistant professor of history at Texas State University at San Marcos, lays into the academic enterprise. He writes,

“The few history PhDs who manage to land full-time academic jobs quickly learn that the easiest way to become distinguished in the profession is through a lifetime of scholarly dedication to a single, defining and often very small idea -- one that usually has no bearing on contemporary events. That's precisely how to "make a contribution" -- the be-all and end-all for a serious academic. More often than not, though, that contribution is to our own job security and status within a small club rather than to a public debate badly in need of a broader historical perspective.”

Although I empathize with his frustrations, I don’t think that all of academia is as bleak an enterprise as McWilliams suggests. In particular, academia diverges from McWilliams' characterization with the growth of interdisciplinary, policy-focused graduate programs that are educating a new cadre of graduate students on how to be a specialist in the integration of knowledge as a contribution to real-world concerns. One such program is the University of Colorado’s now-3-year-old experiemnt in its interdisciplinary graduate Environmental Studies Program. But there many others as well.

Posted on August 26, 2004 09:38 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education

Beyond Dominance

It is almost a matter of faith among U.S. policy makers and scientists that the United States should dominate the global scientific enterprise. Concerns are frequently expressed about the U.S. losing it dominance. In a commentary in yesterday’s Financial Times Caroline Wagner, of the Rand Corp and the University of Amsterdam, and Yee-Cheong Lee, president of the World Federation of Engineering Organisations, challenge this perspective. They write:

“…some still see the quest for scientific advancement and technological innovation as a race between nations. A recent report by the National Science Board of the US raised questions about whether America is at risk of losing its role as the world's centre of science and technology innovation.

This is the wrong question to ask in the 21st century. Today science has become a global phenomenon. Nations are part of an expanding knowledge network that has no borders. In the 21st century, security requires sharing rather than protecting knowledge. No country can work at the frontiers of all fields of science. The expanding knowledge frontier means that co-operation is the means of knowledge creation…

The US needs to break out of the "dominance" box of the last century and think beyond a national model of scientific or technological capacity… America stands to benefit more from knowledge and ideas flowing through a networked world than from a world in which countries are competing against each other.”

This op-ed will no doubt be warmly received by those who think that too often science and technology policy is portrayed as a competition – for more funding, for more publications, for more citations, for more prestige, etc., rather than as a means to organize the scientific enterprise to better achieve society’s goals. Wagner and Lee raise some important questions worth thinking about. Their commentary can be found here.

Posted on August 26, 2004 09:35 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | International | Science Policy: General

August 25, 2004

Science Education

We often hear calls for society to become more informed about science. A letter in Nature this week turns this around and calls for scientists to become more informed about society. An excerpt:

“Recent calls by the United Nations (Nature 430, 5; 2004) for stronger science input to support aid policy, in particular for feeding the hungry, are welcome. In the United Kingdom, organizations such as the Department for International Development (DFID) need to improve their use of the science base. But there is also scope for the scientific community to improve its understanding of development issues surrounding agricultural policy, if scientists are to be productively engaged in fighting world hunger and poverty.”

Thanks to SciDev.net for the link.

Posted on August 25, 2004 04:55 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education | Science Policy: General

More on Science Literacy and Democracy

In today’s New York Times, Nicolas Kristof has a column on gene therapies and its effects on people and humankind.

He closes his essay with this comment:

“Perhaps the most important and complex decision in the history of our species is approaching: in what ways should we improve our genetic endowment? Yet we are neither focused on this question nor adequately schooled to resolve it.

So we desperately need greater scientific literacy, and it's past time for a post-Sputnik style revitalization of science education, especially genetics, to help us figure out if we want our descendants to belong to the same species as we do.”

If we have $1.00 to spend on “the most important and complex decision in the history of our species” I wonder what fraction it would make sense to devote to spend on a massive campaign of public education, versus other possible investments.

Kristof provides no data, but I’d guess his call for public education is grounded in his underlying assumptions of democracy (see my post earlier today) rather than any empirical evidence that such campaigns actually led to better societal outcomes. But I’d welcome any evidence to the contrary.

Posted on August 25, 2004 09:28 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education | Science Policy: General

Democracy

The New Yorker online has an excellent article by Louis Menand on voting and democracy, or at least how these issues look through the lens of political scientists.

Menand writes:

“Skepticism about the competence of the masses to govern themselves is as old as mass self-government…”

Political scientists, at least, have given up on the notion that the public can come to well-informed judgments about political candidates, much less complicated issues of policy. The perspective of political scientists raises difficult questions about the viability of “public education” as a strategy for coming to grips with complicated issues like global climate change, genetic technologies, and international terrorism.

But if people aren’t the source of wisdom in a democracy, then where does it come from? Menad offers two alternatives in the form of three theories:

“All political systems make their claim to legitimacy by some theory, whether it’s the divine right of kings or the iron law of history. It’s not that people know nothing. It’s just that politics is not what they know. In the face of this evidence, three theories have arisen. The first is that electoral outcomes, as far as “the will of the people” is concerned, are essentially arbitrary… “

In other words, where the public is concerned, good luck.

Menand summarizes a second perspective in the form of two versions of a theoretical perspective I have called in my classes a “realist’s view of democracy,” using the concepts and ideas of political scientist E. E. Schattsschneider.

“A second theory is that although people may not be working with a full deck of information and beliefs, their preferences are dictated by something, and that something is élite opinion… The third theory of democratic politics is the theory that the cues to which most voters respond are, in fact, adequate bases on which to form political preferences. People use shortcuts—the social-scientific term is “heuristics”—to reach judgments about political candidates, and, on the whole, these shortcuts are as good as the long and winding road of reading party platforms, listening to candidate debates, and all the other elements of civic duty.”

From this perspective, the public can and does play a critical role in a democracy, but that role is mediated by experts, who comprise one part of the elite. How we think about democracy shapes how we think about the role of science, and information more generally, in policy making. All claims about science and its significance in decision making reflect a deeper set of assumptions about democracy, namely that either the public can address complex issues (which has been dismissed by most political scientists), that the public is just ignorant and cannot effectively participate in decision making (a pure elitist perspective), or a more realistic perspective, that experts play a mediating role that allows the public to participate meaningfully in the making of important decisions. Statements related to science and technology policy that invoke public education, literacy, communication, or participation ultimately are grounded (explicitly or implicitly) in one of these views, and I would suggest, are sometimes simply a result of these underlying assumptions about how a democracy ought to work.

The Menand article is well worth reading.

Posted on August 25, 2004 09:25 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Education | Science Policy: General

August 23, 2004

Stem Cells and the Misuse of Science

In today’s Washington Post there is a very interesting op-ed on stem cell science and policy by Ruth R. Faden and John D. Gearhart, both professors at Johns Hopkins.

They write:

“The controversy about stem cells, and the choice between Kerry and Bush on stem cell policy, is not about science; it really is about values -- moral values. The science is clear. The only way to ensure that we realize the promise of stem cell research as quickly as possible is to permit federal funding to be used to create new embryonic stem cell lines and to support research with new lines. President Bush's values are also clear. He believes that the destruction of embryos can never be morally justified, no matter how much human suffering might be alleviated, even if the embryos are only still a clump of cells not visible to the human eye and even if the embryos will be destroyed in any event in fertility clinics where they are no longer needed. We believe that most Americans have different moral values from the president's.”

The latter assertion would seem highly questionable, at least according to recent polls. According to a July 2004 survey by the Gallup organization, when asked if John Kerry or George Bush “Shares your values” the public split 47% to 46% respectively. But it is also clear that public opinion on stem cells depends upon how the issue is framed. According to Matthew Nisbet of Ohio State:

“For [stem cell] funding advocates, the [recent poll] results clearly show that if they can make overwhelmingly salient in media coverage the connections between research and cures, the public is likely to be swayed… Still, in contrast, other commissioned polls indicate that opponents of funding will do best by linking stem-cell research to abortion and make it into a moral and religious issue. In the end, it comes down to a battle to frame media coverage and campaign messages.”

Hence the incentives for John Kerry are to make a clear connection between the research and possible cures and for George Bush it is to link the research to the abortion issue. It seems to me that on stem cells there is ample evidence that both sides have misused science for political gain.

For the Kerry folks there is a political benefit to exaggerate (or “mischaracterize” using our previously discussed misuse typology) the scientific benefits of stem cell research. For Bush folks there is a political benefit to exaggerate (or “mischaracterize”) the significance of his August 2001 decision, both in terms of the benefits (and numbers) of stem cells available for research as well as the benefits of alternative research techniques (e.g., with adult stem cells) that would make embryonic stem cells unnecessary.

As Faden and Gearhart observe, “Translating science into political symbols and slogans comes at a price.” While I agree with Faden and Gearhart that the stem cell issue is about moral values, once advocates from both sides use science to advance those moral values, the issue becomes a matter of science policy and, in the end, about science as well. As much as we may like to make a distinction, in practice separating science from values just doesn’t work.

PS. For an addition perspective on understanding science in the stem cell debate see this op-ed of mine published in the Rocky Mountain News last month.

Posted on August 23, 2004 04:32 PM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health | Science Policy: General

August 20, 2004

"Skeptical Environmentalist" Article Now Online

We've posted my contribution to the ESP specical issue.

Here it is:

Pielke, Jr., R.A., 2004. When scientists politicize science: making sense of controversy over The Skeptical Environmentalist, Environmental Science & Policy, Volume 7, pp. 405-417.

Posted on August 20, 2004 11:21 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Environment

The Politics of Personal Virtue and Energy Policies

In April, 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney was criticized for downplaying the role of conservation as a tool of energy policy. He said,

“Now, conservation is an important part of the total effort. But to speak exclusively of conservation is to duck the tough issues. Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis all by itself for sound, comprehensive energy policy. We also have to produce more. The American people have worked very hard to get where they are, and the hardest working are the least likely to go around squandering energy or anything else that costs money. Our strategy will recognize that the present crisis does not represent a failing of the American people.”

This issue was sort of revisited by the New York Times last Sunday in an article about whether or not it is hypocritical for rich environmentalists to be jetting around on their private jets.

The article observes:

“Environmentalists in particular bear the imprint of their enemies. Most Americans think that so-called greens are "supposed to be dressing in wheat shoes and burlap and driving on donkeys," says Mr. [Bill] Blomquist [a political science professor at Indiana University-Purdue University]. As a result, he says, "any time they're not doing that, they're open to criticism." Environmental advocates privately admit that they'd prefer that their liberal donors fly commercial; some even call them outright hypocrites. But they also stress that policies matter more than purchases. "The Kerry energy plan has as its centerpiece an increase in fuel efficiency for automobiles, and they are a much larger environmental concern [than jets]," says John Coequyt, an energy policy specialist at Greenpeace. "Because there are more of them."”

It seems to me that the statement “[Conservation] is not a sufficient basis all by itself for sound, comprehensive energy policy” is pretty similar to “… policies matter more than purchases.”

The apparent bipartisan consensus that consumer choices about using energy matters less than the bigger picture decisions made by government may be exactly right. However, during an election year maintaining a focus on details of energy policy is difficult because of the importance of the symbols and stereotypes of personal virtue to the political contest. So we risk spending more time discussing who drives what or flies how, to the exclusion of discussing details of possible actions for effectively and beneficially providing the energy that modern society depends on.

Posted on August 20, 2004 11:18 PM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Energy Policy

August 17, 2004

Charley’s Damage in Context

In 1998 Chris Landsea and I published a paper that asked how much damage past hurricanes would cause under contemporary societal conditions (i.e., adjusting for changes in population and wealth.) The table below shows these data updated to 2003. The damage estimates for Charley are not yet in, but the storm will have to result in greater than $11.2 billion in damages to break into the top 15 all time and more than $22.9 billion to break into the top 5.

Top 30 Damaging Tropical Storms and Hurricanes in the continental U.S.

Normalized to 2003 dollars by inflation, personal property increases, and coastal county population changes (1900-2003).

RANK	HURRICANE	YEAR	CATEGORY	DAMAGE (U.S))
1.	SE Florida/Alabama	1926	4	$98,051,000,000
2.	ANDREW (SE FL/LA)	1992	5	44,878,000,000
3.	N Texas (Galveston)	1900	4	36,096,000,000
4.	N Texas (Galveston)	1915	4	30,585,000,000
5.	SW Florida	1944	3	22,870,000,000
6.	New England	1938	3	22,549,000,000
7.	SE Florida/Lake Okeechobee	1928	4	18,708,000,000
8.	BETSY (SE FL/LA)	1965	3	16,863,000,000
9.	DONNA (FL/Eastern U.S.)	1960	4	16,339,000,000
10.	CAMILLE (MS/LA/VA)	1969	5	14,870,000,000
11.	AGNES (NW FL, NE U.S.)	1972	1	14,515,000,000
12.	DIANE (NE U.S.)	1955	1	13,875,000,000
13.	HUGO (SC)	1989	4	12,718,000,000
14.	CAROL (NE U.S.)	1954	3	12,291,000,000
15.	SE Florida/Louisiana/Alabama	1947	4	11,266,000,000
16.	CARLA (N & Central TX)	1961	4	9,587,000,000
17.	HAZEL (SC/NC)	1954	4	9,545,000,000
18.	NE U.S.	1944	3	8,763,000,000
19.	SE Florida	1945	3	8,561,000,000
20.	FREDERIC (AL/MS)	1979	3	8,534,000,000
21.	SE Florida	1949	3	7,918,000,000
22.	S Texas	1919	4	7,253,000,000
23.	ALICIA (N TX)	1983	3	5,501,000,000
24.	ALLISON (N TX)	2001	TS	5,408,000,000
25.	FLOYD (NC)	1999	2	5,264,000,000
26.	CELIA (S TX)	1970	3	4,526,000,000
27.	DORA (NE FL)	1964	2	4,215,000,000
28.	FRAN (NC)	1996	3	4,201,000,000
29.	OPAL (NW FL/AL)	1995	3	4,068,000,000
30.	ISABEL (NC)	2003	2	3,370,000,000

Posted on August 17, 2004 10:36 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Risk & Uncertainty

August 13, 2004

The Insanity of the Climate Change Debate

One definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior and expecting different results. The climate debate is full of people who repeat the same behavior but expect different results.

On the one hand we have the self-described skeptics who seem to think that by highlighting uncertainties in science they can turn around the freight train that is public opinion, scientific consensus, and policy maker’s beliefs that human influences on the climate are worth addressing. In an essay published yesterday on TechCentralStation some familiar skeptics write, “The science is settled. The "skeptics" -- the strange name applied to those whose work shows the planet isn't coming to an end -- have won.”

I’d ask (or perhaps more accurately, request), does this victory mean that skeptics no longer feel a need to debate the science?

On the other hand are the technocrats who seem to think that solving the climate problem is simply a matter of “tuning” climate policies to the desired concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, presumably via some giant control panel with a big knob labeled (Global Atm. CO2 PPM) that policy makers can set like a thermostat. An example of this sort of view appears in an essay in today’s issue of Science where the authors write that “Humanity can solve the carbon and climate problem in the first half of this century simply by scaling up what we already know how to do.” Examples of such “simple” solutions include:

*Increase fuel economy for 2 billion cars from 30 to 60 mpg
*Add 700 GW (twice the current capacity) of nuclear power
*Decrease tropical deforestation to zero instead of 0.5 GtC/year, and establish 300 Mha of new tree plantations (twice the current rate)

What the technocrats fail to appreciate is that even as “solutions” such as increasing fuel economy, adding nuclear power, and eliminating tropical deforestation may be technologically feasible, seeing their actual implementation represents social and political challenges. Solving poverty, disease, and wars are also similarly “simple.” Overcoming these sorts of challenges are in reality not so simple, irrespective of the state of technology.

So if the climate debate were sane we’d stop arguing about issues of science and technology and instead start talking about society and politics, because we’d recognize that all the discussion of science and technology, no matter what side of the debate you are on is unlikely to lead to improvements in energy policies or a reduction in vulnerability to climate impacts. However, I have a sense that we will continue to debate the science and technology of the climate issue and expect different results than we’ve seen to date.

Posted on August 13, 2004 10:58 AM View this article | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change

August 06, 2004

Reader Challenge

In an editorial this week about science in the political process Nature makes the following assertion:

“In the current polarized political climate, it is hardly surprising that some scientists should swing behind Kerry in this way — the research community traditionally votes overwhelmingly Democratic.”

I am unaware of any data that might support this claim. I don’t disagree with the claim; I just have no basis on which to accept it or disagree with it. I am leery of conventional wisdom that lacks an empirical grounding.

So here is the challenge for you: Is anyone aware of a study or survey that would support or refute the Nature claim of the partisan tilt among researchers? Send us (pielke@colorado.edu) your thoughts and we’ll post the results.

Posted on August 6, 2004 11:55 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

Follow up On Fate of TRMM

NASA issued a press release today detailing a reprieve of sorts for the TRMM satellite. (For our earlier discussions of this topic see this post. The press release states that "NASA will extend operation of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) through the end of 2004, in light of a recent request from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)."

But the press release also states that "NASA and NOAA have asked the National Academy of Sciences to convene a workshop next month to advise NASA and NOAA on the best use of TRMM's remaining spacecraft life; the overall risks and benefits of the TRMM mission extension options; the advisability of transfer of operational responsibility for TRMM to NOAA; any requirement for a follow-on operational satellite to provide comparable TRMM data; and optimal use of GPM, a follow-on research spacecraft to TRMM, planned for launch in 2011."

This statement seems a bit odd to me because it appears that NASA has already decided when and how to deorbit TRMM. And it seems unnecessary to convene a workshop in September to provide advice on how to use TRMM for its last 2 months (through November) after 7 years of successful operations. NASA and the scientific community know very well how to use TRMM.

The press release includes this statement, which seems to contradict the above, from Dr. Ghassem Asrar, Deputy Associate Administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, "It's important to note that we are able to extend TRMM for this brief period and are vigilant in maintaining our requirement for a safe, controlled re-entry and deorbit of the spacecraft." So what role exactly will the NRC Workshop play?

One concern is that the NRC Workshop will be used to provide a post-hoc rationalization for decisions already made about the future of TRMM. If so, then this would amount to a form of politicization of the NRC. By paying attention to who is invited to participate in this workshop (and who is not) we can get a sense of what perspectives are being advanced and which are not. As I have argued here in an earlier post the NRC would be better served by not recommending a single option, but a diversity of choices and their implications for decision makers to consider.

Posted on August 6, 2004 11:03 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Space Policy

August 05, 2004

Several Minor Housekeeping Items

We've created a permanent link to my recent op-ed in the Rocky Mountain News on the role of science in the stem cell debate.

The interview I participated in last week on the show "Against the Grain" can be found here (scroll down), but it will only be online for a few weeks.

Posted on August 5, 2004 09:38 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Hodge Podge

August 04, 2004

Space Shuttle Costs and NASA Dynamics

Today, the Washington Post reports, “NASA officials said yesterday that the costs of returning the grounded space shuttle to flight have risen as much as $900 million over original projections, raising the possibility that the agency may have to seek extra money from Congress next year or cut other space programs to fund the shortfall… NASA's announcement came 12 days after a key congressional committee passed a bill cutting the Bush administration's 2005 NASA budget proposal by more than $1 billion, dealing a sharp blow to the president's initiative to return humans to the moon and eventually send them to Mars.”

This situation raises a difficult situation for Congress. Should Congress provide more money for the Shuttle or accelerate its termination? And if Congress provides more money, where should it come from? Other NASA funding in human spaceflight (Mars?) or space science? From money going to Veterans or Housing? There are no easy answers.

In the Post article an unnamed source commented on these challenges, “One knowledgeable Republican source, who refused to be quoted by name because of office policy, acknowledged that Congress had heard about the shortfalls last month, and lawmakers "don't know what to think about it." While NASA is "acting responsibly" by voicing its fears early, the source said, the news "puts additional pressure on an already impossible budget -- and what are you going to take it from? And is this as high as [the shortfall] is going to get?"”

The escalating costs are just the latest example of the dynamics that have shaped U.S. space policy for two decades now. These dynamics have their origins in NASA’s commitment to a large, interdependent program focused on eventually going to Mars. When the whole mission to Mars was rejected decades ago NASA adopted an approach focused on “logical steps” – shuttle, station, and then Mars. But NASA’s ambitious plans lack resilience to perturbations, whether the perturbations are engineering-related or budget-related. When an unforeseen event occurs, like the loss of a shuttle or a budget overrun, its effects cascade through NASA disrupting plans and performance across the agency as it scrambles to adjust. NASA deals with the disruption and we start from scratch again. Meanwhile as NASA deals with these disruptions it makes inefficient progress towards its formal goals (e.g., lowering the costs of access to space) or even its decades-long desire to go to Mars. If this explanation is anywhere close to explaining NASA’s current situation, then simply adding more money in the absence of fundamental policy change may exacerbate rather than dampen these dynamics.

For more on these dynamics see the following two papers:

Pielke Jr., R. A., 1993: A Reappraisal of the Space Shuttle Program. Space Policy, May, 133-157.

Brunner, R., R. Byerly, Jr., and R.A. Pielke, Jr., 1992: The Future of the Space Station Program. Chapter in Space Policy Alternatives, edited by R. Byerly, Westview Press, Boulder, 199-222.

Posted on August 4, 2004 09:46 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Space Policy

August 03, 2004

Radio Interview Q&A

A Prometheus reader posted a few questions after listening to a radio interview on climate change I participated in last week. Here are a few replies:

Comment: “Your points about separating climate and energy policy are interesting. You argue that the climate problem, for a variety of reasons, hasn't galvanized the necessary support for mandatory GHG reductions. You then posit energy independence could serve as the real impetus. You may be right, but do you have any data (public opinion or otherwise) to support this argument?”

Reply: I don’t have any data simply because the approach I am recommending has not been tried. There is some indirect evidence, however. Opinion polls routinely show that among the public, national security is considered more important than climate change. Here is a recent example of such a poll conducted in the U.K. from the BBC. What we do have is considerable evidence on how well the current approach is working. And the evidence shows, as discussed here on numerous occasions, that the current approach is not working very well. At some point it may be worth considering alternative strategies, even if they are untested (or perhaps because they are untested). This was the gist of our 2000 article in the Atlantic Monthly. It may be that the current approach to climate is the best one possible; however, it seems that such an argument is an increasingly hard case to make, particularly since there are many options yet untried.

Comment: “Also, with increasing mandatory action on GHG emissions at the state level (with climate change serving as the rationale) and growing support for legislation like McCain/Lieberman, might we be near a tipping point where the climate problem resonates with politicians enough to influence energy policy effectively ? Or do you still believe energy independence/efficiency arguments will make a more compelling, sensible case?”

Reply: The latter. The state actions and McCain/Lieberman are in my view watered down versions of the current, failing approach to climate policy. For many folks these policies are no doubt symbolically important and emotionally satisfying, but from the standpoint of addressing future climate impacts, these policies are, to say the least, substantively wanting. Ultimately, the proof of performance of any of these policies will lie in (a) the global level of greenhouse gas emissions, and (b) the vulnerability of people and ecosystems to climate.

Posted on August 3, 2004 10:11 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Hodge Podge

August 02, 2004

Op-Ed on Stem Cell Science and Policy

I had an op-ed in Saturday’s Rocky Mountain News in which I try to make sense of the current debate over stem cells. It starts out like this:

“If you want to liven up conversation at a dinner party, ask the following question: How much money would you take for your pinkie toe?”

Read the whole thing here. Your comments are welcomed.

Posted on August 2, 2004 08:41 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Biotechnology | Health

July 29, 2004

UPI Story on Science Funding

Yesterday the UPI ran a very good story on science funding prospects. Here are a few excerpts:

“Though is it widely agreed the U.S. economy is based on discoveries from such research, there is little chance that more money will be found for science this year ... or next year ... or the year after that. The more distant future looks even worse.”

“Part of the reason for the cuts is election-year competition. Funding for NSF falls within a larger bill that also covers the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development. Under the same fiscal roof are EPA and NASA, the only federal agency -- other than the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security -- to receive a budget increase request for FY 2005. The needs of these agencies are real and they are better-connected politically. "This is described by both the majority and minority as a no-winners bill," a senior congressional staffer told United Press International. "The two places that actually got big increases (the VA's Veteran's Health Administration and HUD's Section 8 housing) ... neither of those groups is happy," the staffer said, adding, "both of them would say it is not enough even to maintain current services."”

“The point, said the staffer, is not the specific numbers but the trend. The numbers will change every year but the trend reflects the priority and plans of the administration. Would a Democratic White House or Congress make a difference? "If you look at the macro policy generated by the tax and discretionary and mandatory spending numbers," the staffer said, "it is very hard to see this getting a whole lot better, no matter who is president or who is in control of the House or Senate. The staffer continued, "If there is a change in political control, then there probably will be some change in amounts for discretionary spending -- and science will be one of those areas that I think will compete for that -- but I think that there is a general view that tough times are ahead."”

Here is the link to the whole story.

Posted on July 29, 2004 10:05 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | R&D Funding

July 28, 2004

Radio Interview

Today at 12:30 PM Pacific I’ll be appearing on a radio show called Against the Grain which is carried on KPFA 94.1 FM & KFCF 88.1 FM in Northern and Central California. The topic will be global warming. The program has a nice web archive, so we’ll post a link when available. You can also listen to it live online from this link.

Posted on July 28, 2004 09:39 AM View this article | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Hodge Podge

NRC Report on Genetically Engineered Foods

The NRC is releasing a report today on risks posed by genetically engineered foods. Media coverage suggests different interpretations of what the report says.

A New York Times story today suggests some confusion about whether or not the report says that GE crops are more risky than foods modified using other techniques:

“Genetically engineered crops do not pose health risks that cannot also arise from crops created by other techniques, including conventional breeding … the report said that genetic engineering and other techniques used to create novel crops could result in unintended, harmful changes to the composition of food … The report said that genetic engineering was more likely to cause unintended effects than the other techniques used to develop plants except for the mutation-inducing technique.”

An A.P. story in the Washington Post characterizes the study as follows:

“Federal regulators should look more closely at the potential health effects of some genetically modified plants before they can be grown as commercial crops, a scientific advisory panel said yesterday. It also said regulators should check for potential food safety problems after people eat the products. The report by a committee of the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine said regulators should target tighter scrutiny at genetically engineered varieties that have greater levels of biological differences from current plants.”

The report release will be carried via a webcast today at 11AM Eastern.

Posted on July 28, 2004 09:36 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Biotechnology

July 27, 2004

Distinguishing Climate Policy and Energy Policy: Follow Up

In a post of mine earlier this week I observed that the climate mitigation community has largely ignored the geopolitical rationale for reducing dependence on fossil fuels. In a comment a reader asks for links to a bit more detail on this assertion. Here are a few articles of mine on this topic.

See this 1998 paper and also a related analysis now under review that updates and extends the 1998 argument:

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 1998: Rethinking the Role of Adaptation in Climate Policy. Global Environmental Change, 8(2), 159-170.

Pielke, Jr., R. A. (submitted). Misdefining Climate Change: Consequences for Science and Action, Environmental Science and Policy.

For a somewhat less wonky discussion see this 2000 article in The Atlantic Monthly I co-authored with Dan Sarewitz:

Sarewitz, D., R. A. Pielke, Jr., 2000: Breaking the Global-Warming Gridlock. The Atlantic Monthly, 286(1), 55-64.

Comments welcomed!

Posted on July 27, 2004 10:29 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Energy Policy

Two Views of Science in Society

Today’s New York Times contains two almost diametrically opposed views of science in society.

The first view is presented in a profile of Dr. Gerald D. Fischbach, who has an idealistic view of science unfettered by politics:

“He speaks of "a fundamentalist streak" in the administration's stem cell policy, and] feels passionately that science should not be ruled by politics. "It drives me nuts," he said on a recent morning in his large, airy office on West 168th Street. "When you begin arguments based on convictions and not open to scientific discourse, the whole process starts to crumble, and that worries me, not only with stem cells but in the whole sphere of scientific inquiry," he says. "It gets to a very complex issue of regulation of science. Scientists have to be able to do unfettered research, as long as it is in the boundaries of societal mores. And right now, and I think Ron Reagan is concerned about it, there are more and more regulations of science for political reasons. I think it is very threatening. I think it is as threatening as any time in my lifetime, including the McCarthy era," he says.”

But he fails to acknowledge that setting the “boundaries of social mores” is fundamentally a political act. There is a lot of science that is not conducted (e.g., contemporary versions of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment or areas of WMD development) because such research in some way exceeds socially acceptable boundaries. Thanks to its connections with the abortion issue, in the U.S. stem cell research just happens to be an issue currently close to the boundary of acceptability and politics is the means that our society uses to define where those boundaries lie.

A second Times article by Abigail Zuger, M.D presents a more realpolitik (and more sobering) perspective on science and society:

“Experts hope that, in time, a policy of "transparency," in which all such conflicting interests are exposed to public view, will help to untangle them as well. But these calls for transparency have yet to penetrate to the individual doctor's office, still a black box where conflicts of interest go virtually unchallenged. Studies have shown that gifts from pharmaceutical companies, which can include lavish trips and meals, often sway doctors' prescribing habits. Some professional organizations gently suggest that their members limit their acceptance of this largesse to inexpensive trinkets, like pens, but more draconian edicts have yet to be enacted. Someday, though, perhaps transparency will be the rule in the office too, and every doctor will greet new patients with a mandatory set of suitable disclosures:

"I'm happy to meet you and must inform you that I hold lots of stock in Pfizer and just bought some Bristol-Myers Squibb. You should know that I am a registered Democrat and attend no place of worship. My father had an idiosyncratic near-fatal reaction to a common antibiotic and I've never felt quite the same about that perfectly good drug ever since. I have an aunt I adore who looks a bit like you, and a cousin I never liked who favors the style of jeans you are wearing today. A big payment on my son's college tuition is coming due this Friday. I had an excellent lunch today with a representative from Merck, am getting a headache which your perfume is making much worse, and am desperate to get out of here on time for a change. Now, have a seat, and tell me what brings you in today."”

Dr. Zuger’s hypothetical disclosure, while no doubt tongue-in-cheek, portends a world where science is lost almost completely in the complexities of multitude interests that every person, scientist or not, grapples with in everyday life. While separating science from politics may be fantasy, replacing science with politics would no doubt lead to bad outcomes.

There are no easy answers (which makes science and technology policy an interesting subject!) But you can gain some insight on these issues from this excellent book:

Alan Lightman, Daniel Sarewitz , Christina Desser , 2004. Living with the Genie: Essays on Technology and the Quest for Human Mastery, Island Press, Washington, DC.

Posted on July 27, 2004 09:31 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Science Policy: General

July 26, 2004

Health Research Priorities

In an article in the Lancet, David H Molyneux, of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, challenges current priorities for spending on health issues. He argues that considerable societal benefits can be achieved by focusing attention on diseases that are currently less politically popular, but nonetheless tractable from the standpoint of improving human health outcomes. Here is an extended excerpt:

“The Millennium Development Goals and a plethora of initiatives have focused on the control of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. However, a large group of diseases has been confined to the “other diseases” category by health policy makers and politicians. These so-called neglected diseases are the viral, bacterial, and parasitic infections of the tropics (often vector borne), together with acute respiratory infections and diarrhoeal diseases of children. Despite the availability of cost-effective, stable, and successful control or elimination interventions, large numbers of the world’s poorest people remain afﬂicted or are at risk from this group of diseases. The focus of health policy makers on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, as well as emerging or reemerging diseases causes funding for neglected diseases to be overlooked, with deleterious effects on the social and economic wellbeing of the poorest quintile of populations in the least developed and low-to-middle income countries…

If we are to ensure the efficient use of the substantial resources needed to reduce morbidity and mortality associated with HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, then a small investment in proven, cost-effective interventions against “other diseases”—preferably from the Global Fund resources—will bring sustainable public-health benefits, integrate well with and strengthen the health system, reduce disabling conditions, and bring collateral benefits to the health of the poorest nations. Policy makers are ignoring scientific and operational evidence that interventions against “other diseases” are effective. By concentrating on so few agents, current policies could perpetuate inequity, disrupt health financing policies, divert human resources from achievable goals, and deny opportunities for impoverished health systems to improve. Current policy also raises ethical issues. Resources are being transferred to interventions against the big three that, realistically, have only a limited chance of success as they are reactive and do not adequately control transmission—a pre-requisite for any public health impact. The proactive pro-poor interventions against neglected diseases succeeded by aiming to reduce transmission. Allocation of a small fraction of the Global Fund resources to “neglected” diseases would be likely to achieve broader public health goals.”

The whole article can be found here.

Posted on July 26, 2004 09:40 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Health | R&D Funding

Distinguishing Climate Policy and Energy Policy

Yesterday’s New York Times included interesting story on the expected costs of climate change regulations to the auto industry. This excerpt is worth highlighting:

“"As a U.S. auto analyst, I'm very concerned about the risk side of the equation,'' said [John A. Casesa, an analyst at Merrill Lynch]. "For the domestic auto companies, we've had an accommodating energy policy, but there are new issues like climate change, and there are new geopolitical issues, defense issues, that relate to our energy policy.

"There's the potential for a confluence of events to occur,'' he added. "Americans could be more concerned about climate change, while at the same time we try to reduce our dependence on the Middle East for oil, for national security or political reasons. If these two strands come together, that would put a lot of pressure on policy makers, which would invariably lead back to higher fuel-economy standards.''”

For the most part, advocates of climate mitigation policies have ignored one of these strands.

Posted on July 26, 2004 09:35 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Energy Policy

Bipartisan Call to Save TRMM

Congressman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), Chairman of the House Science Committee, has sent a letter to the President's Science Advisor, John Marburger, asking for his intervention to help prolong the TRMM satellite mission. The appeal to save TRMM is bipartisan. We'll link to Representative Boehlert's letter and press release when we find it on the House Science Committee site.

Posted on July 26, 2004 09:27 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Space Policy

July 23, 2004

An Appeal to the President to Save TRMM

A press release from the minority of the House Science Committee announces:

“Rep. Nick Lampson (D-TX), Ranking Member of the House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee, sent a letter today asking President Bush to reverse NASA’s decision to terminate the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) later this year.”

The letter can be found here.

Rep. Lampson writes, “In the United States, both the National Hurricane Center and the U.S. Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center use TRMM to reduce risk to lives and property from hurricanes and typhoons… I hope that you will intervene to help protect our citizens from the increased risk that would result from a termination of TRMM’s operations this year.”

Of course, if the President asks for hard evidence of increased risk, in response he will only get a suggestive anecdote or two. Three years ago we advised the TRMM community to conduct rigorous research on TRMM’s benefits to society specifically for situation such as this. You can lead a horse to water ...

Posted on July 23, 2004 11:01 AM View this article | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Space Policy

Irony Abounds, Futility Reigns

Take a look at the composition of the National Research Council committee currently studying the presidential appointment process. You’ll find some interesting arithmetic. Of the 11 panel members, 9 have been appointed by past presidents to positions where they oversee or provide scientific advice, and one held office as a congressman (and the eleventh person has not been appointed to any position by a president). As chance has it, of these 10 people there are 5 people who have been appointed by Democratic presidents and 4 who have been appointed by Republican presidents, plus one former congressman (Republican). 5 Democrats, 5 Republicans. How convenient! What luck!