Bridges Column on The Honest Broker
April 17th, 2007Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
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.
April 17th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
Roger,
I’m looking forward to actually getting to read your book (Amazon estimates shipping around May 2). Too many people advocate one-size-fits-all approaches to policy advice and your description in this column suggests comfort with the notion that different circumstances call for different kinds of interactions.
To explore Gore’s medical metaphor and your analysis further: Part of the difference between Hansen and Gore on the one hand and yourself on the other is the metaphor used to frame the climate question.
If Gore and Hansen are right, it’s like a heart attack where we have a brief window in which to act and if we’re prompt and aggressive we have a good chance to largely cure the condition. Here, as you indicate in your column, a purely technocratic approach may be best.
What you’ve argued elsewhere about adaptation and mitigation suggests that climate is more like metastatic cancer where complete mitigation is impossible, aggressive mitigation may carry unacceptable side effects, and palliation (adaptation) is a rational alternative. Here, it’s important to involve decision-makers and stakeholders in detailed and informed discussion of the alternatives.
(For completeness, Lindzen and Michaels think it’s a case of Munchausen syndrome and want to refer the patient for a psychiatric consultation)
So is the choice of metaphor (or “frame,” as is fashionable to say these days) arbitrary, or can expertise offer guidance on choice of metaphor beyond merely putting the expert’s personal preference into fancy pseudo-objective language? I believe there is component of objective truth to the metaphor question, and thus that experts have a role (but a limited one) in selecting and rejecting metaphors, but I’m not clear on how they can discharge this role in a way that’s legitimate and effective.
April 17th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Jonathan- Thanks for your comment. I think your comments are right on. The debate about climate change is as much about what we should do as about who should get to decide. I love your extension of the Gore metaphor!
April 17th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
I’ve ordered your book and should receive it in the last week of april.
Here is a twist to the Doctor analogy of Mr Gore. Not so long ago in the news (I know that MSNBC covered the story) a women was mention as being falsely diagnose with cancer.
She started all the regiment of treatment had many inconvinience including a serious infection with the bacteria C-difficile (not sure what it is in english. After a few month or year of treatment another doctor told her that she didn’t have cancer.
Doctors make alot of mistakes even though medical science is way more advanced and certain than climate science.
April 17th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
For what it’s worth, the Canadian discount gets almost completely eaten up by the shipping to non-Canadian addresses. And the Super Saver Shipping applies only to Canadian addresses.
April 18th, 2007 at 11:16 am
Ex-VP Al Gore’s analogy fails on many levels.
Okay, I’m suddenly told that I am responsible for this baby. I’m told that various people have been measuring the baby’s temperature using various instruments in various ways for the last ten minutes and when I measure the temperature I see that it’s gone up by 0.7°C.
I don’t have a manual so I don’t know what temperature is ideal for the baby.
Then I realize that the baby is significantly older than I am…
Let’s say I took this baby to emergency with it’s 0.7°C “fever” and they discovered that I and many others have been measuring this baby’s temperature obsessively for some undislosed period of time…
April 18th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Nice!
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/gcag/gcag.html#HERE
But what if these charts were all stuck on a +/- 5 degrees centigrade scale? 9 to 19 C range? Certainly an average from 9 to 19 might be okay?
In any case, since 1880, the baby’s normal temperature is 14C, -.73 +.6 That’s my opnion as a medical professional.