Comments on: Policy Research? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Policy Research

By: JamesG

JamesG — Wed, 09 May 2007 11:15:21 +0000

I have a theory that most of the public were really actually looking forward to a bit of warming so the new theory about warming possibly causing cooling via gulf stream shifts started to be really pushed forward. Hence global warming becomes global climate change and all bad weather; hot, cold, wet, dry can be easily attributed to it some way or another. Of course dry areas always get drier, wet areas get wetter, windy areas get windier etc. From whence comes all this pessimism?

By: Roger A. Pielke Sr.

Roger A. Pielke Sr. — Tue, 08 May 2007 22:55:58 +0000

Tom- “Global warming” is just a subset of “climate change” as discussed at Climate Science on May 1 2007 in the weblog entitled “Confusion in the Definitions of Global Warming and Climate Change” [http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/05/01/confusion-in-the-definitions-of-global-warming-and-climate-change/].

People who use the term “climate change” when they mean global system heat changes (i.e. “global warming”) are significantly oversimplifying the climate system.

By: tom

tom — Tue, 08 May 2007 15:13:13 +0000

Can somebody explain why the term ‘climate change ‘ seems to used almost exclusively as opposed to the term ‘global warming”?

By: Roger Pielke, Jr.

Roger Pielke, Jr. — Tue, 08 May 2007 13:07:40 +0000

Fergus- Thanks. Climate research is about 5% of health research and about 25% of energy R&D. It is less than the homeland security R&D budget. If you want some actual numbers see:

http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/tbres08p.pdf

There is really no line item for “perceived threats to national security” other than DHS, and I would not recommend transferring any climate funding to DHS;-) On the other hand, developing effective policies in response to climate change (adaptive) would beenfit from a closer connection to the mission agencies, and national security is an important mission, so there is probably some merit to what you suggest.

Thanks!

By: Fergus Brown

Fergus Brown — Tue, 08 May 2007 12:50:26 +0000

Roger: a bit of a side point, I know, but what is the spend on climate research at the moment? How does this compare/relate to other budgets, for example energy R&D, or spending on ‘perceived threats to national security’? And do you think that the time has come to classify GW as the latter?

By: Roger Pielke, Jr.

Roger Pielke, Jr. — Tue, 08 May 2007 06:22:15 +0000

Hi David-

Jon Oberg was doing policy evaluation research — pretty important if performance matters — and when he brought to his supervisor was punished as the bearer of bad news. Effective implementation depends upon effective evaluation, and effective evaluation is a research function.

Thanks!

By: David Bruggeman

David Bruggeman — Mon, 07 May 2007 20:43:06 +0000

Roger,

What’s the policy research angle? This is more a failure of program implementation and/or evaluation. Neither of these are necessarily connected to policy research.