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:

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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,

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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:

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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!

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.

“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:

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.

Excess of Objectivity.
Politicization of Science.
Underdetermination.

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.

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?

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.