« January 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."

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.

What is the scientific consensus on climate change?

Author: Naomi Oreskes
University of California, San Diego

Since the publication in Science of my article, “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” (Science 306:1686, 3 December 2004) and its follow-up piece in The Washington Post, “Undeniable Global Warming, (26 December 2004), a number of people have asked me to clarify what, exactly, I think this consensus is.

This request rather misses the point of my essay, which was to underscore the fact that the scientific societies have already clearly expressed the expert opinions of their membership, and that these statements are readily available and easy to read. Rather than attempt to paraphrase these carefully worded statements, I recommend that anyone who wants to know what climate scientists have to say about climate science, should, quite simply, read what they have to say. (And it takes a lot less time than plowing through all the misrepresentations that now abound on the web.)

Here are the relevant references and links:

American Association for the Advancement of Science,

American Meteorological Society, 2003: “Climate Change Research: Issues for the Atmospheric and Related Sciences,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 85: 508-515. See also this website,

American Geophysical Union, “Human Impacts of Climate,” adopted by unanimous vote of the AGU Council, December 12, 2003,

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Climate Change 2001: Summary for Policymakers

U.S. National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Science of Climate Change, “Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions,” Washington DC: National Research Council: National Academy Press, 2001.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

Bob Park on ISS

Bob Park suggests that the U.S. needs to rethink the costs and benefits of its space policy priorities:

“Last Friday, the reach of man extended 900 million miles to the surface of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. It stands as one of the most notable voyages of exploration in history. Carried piggyback on Cassini since 1997, the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe parachuted 789 miles to reach Titan’s smoggy surface. Huygens had the good fortune to land on solid ground, within sight of the shoreline of a hydrocarbon sea. Over the next several hours, until its batteries finally died, Huygens transmitted everything it had learned back to Cassini, which relayed it to Darmstadt. The data will keep researchers busy for years. Cassini will continue studying Saturn for another four years. Meanwhile, only 90 miles from the surface of Earth, the NASA On-Orbit Status Report notes that the ISS crew checked gear for a 26 Jan space walk, performed periodic microbial air sampling, did routine maintenance on the toilet facilities, performed a 2.5 hour exercise program, had an interview with USA Today and recorded a video message in observance of the 250th anniversary of Moscow State University. Today’s quiz: Which cost the most, Cassini/Huygens or the ISS?”

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”

Total Recall II

Author: Kevin Vranes (website. email)

One day last year while, with some astonishment, listening to Sean O'Keefe blithely tell his Senate overseers whatever they wanted to hear, I couldn't help but wonder how O'Keefe was ever able to talk the White House upper echelon into his nutty manned Mars vision. GW already had the reputation - if not yet the direct sobriquet from Senator McCain - of spending like a drunken sailor (although of course it is Congress that spends, not the President, but editorial writers and talking heads never seem to remember that). It was apparent to most that putting a few people on Mars might be measured in the trillions of dollars (the White House and NASA have sidestepped putting a price tag on moon/Mars, but hinted at about $180B by 2020, which is when the moon bases will be completed and we might be ready to launch to Mars). With the U.S. already in heavy debt and the Chinese and Japanese buying up American dollars just as fast as the Philadelphia mint would print them, spending huge new sums on exploration visions seemed curious.

But no sooner was POTUS running over America with a new grand space vision (which, incidentally, was timed suspiciously close to the Chinese announcement of an intention to go to the moon - causing some to wonder if we were in a new race to repeat something we accomplished forty years previously), than the trickle down began at NASA. Previous grumblings about NASA running NOAA's satellites were renewed, and most Earth scientists who had received NASA grant money were warned of a tighter future (which was later made reality in the FY05 budget).

Somewhere buried in the calculations of the new moon/Mars paradigm is one of NASA's most successful science missions: the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble is aging, its orbit decaying, and in order to keep HST from presenting itself upon some random city, NASA has two choices: boost it and fix it, or fly it into the Indian Ocean. Fixing it adds a new wrinkle, however: financing O'Keefe's new moon/Mars calculus means backing out of the ISS as fast as possible. To O'Keefe, this meant (referring to his Senate testimony last Spring and conversations with NASA employees) that not even one Shuttle flight could be spared to fix Hubble. The only option would be a robotic mission to prevent Hubble from sharing the fate of the Andrea Gail. But a robotic mission to save Hubble is understandably distasteful, with a high price and very high risk.

O'Keefe has always covered his distaste for manned Hubble repair under the cloak of a deep fear for astronaut safety. O'Keefe may honestly fear for astronaut safety, but he never explained the difference in safety between servicing Hubble and continuing to build ISS over the next decade, which will also use the shuttle. His determination to not send astronauts to HST has continued despite the clamoring for a repair mission from most astronauts(the ones who take the risks), the National Research Council, the American Astronomy Society, and dozens of other interested expert groups. After the weight of these communities have done nothing to sway his proclivities, Sean O'Keefe's steadfast refusal to even consider saving the Hubble seems obviously connected to his devotion to retooling NASA for Total Recall II.

News accounts today (link, link, and link) confirm the new prioritization. NASA now plans a robotic mission to Hubble solely designed to de-orbit the telescope, spitting in the face of the nearly $300 million Congress appropriated in FY05 to service Hubble. The reports also confirm that NASA continues to shy away from paying $1 billion to save a highly successful and proven program in favor breaking the bank on a much more expensive project - perhaps eventually in the many trillions - that may never fly anyway.

Now that O'Keefe has announced a move to more lucrative employment in order to send his kids to college, the rest of the scientific community might have expected a manned mission to save Hubble to be back on the table. Apparently it won't be back on the table for the Office of Management and Budget and NASA. The NASA locomotives have begun to lumber away toward manned moon/Mars, and even though the chief engineer has bailed out, not even the astronauts who are volunteering to risk their lives for Hubble can stop the train.

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.]

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.

Landsea on Hurricanes

Author: Chris Landsea

It may be worth pointing out that last October Chris Landsea prepared a primer on hurricanes and climate change for Prometheus. We thought that it might be worth re-posting his views.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Rhetoric of Science and Technology

CALL FOR PAPERS AND PANEL PROPOSALS
National Communication Association Conference
November 17-20, 2005 in Boston, MA USA

The American Association for the Rhetoric of Science and Technology invites submission of program proposals and papers. Submissions may cover any area of rhetoric of science and technology, including the rhetorical analysis of science policy debates, the analysis of scientific texts, the transfer of scientific rhetoric into literary or other contexts, and the rhetorical impact of popular representations of science. We encourage submissions concerning traditional fields (such as physics and biology) and also emerging topics in areas such as environmental science, computer science, information technology, genetics, neuroscience and medicine. In particular, we are especially interested in papers and panels that explore the nexus between science, politics, and public policy.

Copies of Papers/Proposals: Only online submissions in Microsoft Word, PDF, or RTF format will be accepted.

Deadline: Online submission through the All Academic website by February 16, 2005

Access: http://convention2.allacademic.com/nca_index.php

Specify student papers: yes

Specify debut papers: yes

Submitted papers should include:
1) A Title
2) A 250-500 word abstract of the paper
3) A maximum of 25 pages of text
4) No information identifying the author may appear in the paper.
Submitters will be required to upload a copy of their paper into All Academic. To ensure blind review, submitters should remove their name from their paper before uploading the document.
5) Papers must be submitted online in one of the following file formats in order to be accepted: Microsoft Word, PDF, RTF. Compressed or Zip files will not be accepted.

Submitted panels should include:
1) A Title
2) An abstract of no more than 75 words for the convention program (if there are no presentation titles).
3) A list of presenters and their affiliations
4) Titles for each presentation
5) A short abstract (250-400 words) for each presenter

CONTACT: Gordon R. Mitchell, Department of Communication, University of Pittsburgh, 1117 Cathedral of Learning, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, Phone:412-624-8531; Email: gordonm@pitt.edu; Timothy M. O'Donnell, Department of English, Linguistics, and Speech, 316 Combs Hall, 1301 College Ave., Mary Washington College, Fredericksburg, VA 22401, Phone: 540-371-1915; Email: todonnel@mwc.edu

Balancing Water Law and Science

Balancing Water Law and Science
– National Water Research Symposium –
Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Virginia Water Resources Research Center
October 10-12, 2005
Virginia Tech Inn and Skelton Conference Center, Blacksburg, Virginia

Call for Papers

In 1899, the U.S. Congress passed the first statutory environmental law, The Refuse Act. Since then, several federal laws and regulations have been promulgated in the U.S. to manage the nation’s water quantity and water quality, to secure water supplies for an increasing population and enhance economic productivity, and to protect and preserve the nation’s diverse ecosystems. At the same time, significant advances in water science have improved our understanding of water resource issues. However, across the U.S., questions have been raised about the scientific validity of certain regulations and the socio-economic costs attributed to the implementation of some water resource regulations.

The purpose of this symposium is to openly discuss the scientific basis of water laws and regulations, reflect on the conflicts within existing laws and regulations, discuss case studies of interest, and propose conflict resolution strategies. Topical areas of interest include but are not limited to research that addresses the following questions:

1. Do watershed-based management approaches make scientific sense?
2. Is privatization of public water supplies the best way to reduce water costs?
3. What are the scientific bases for state water rights?
4. How do we regulate concentrated animal feeding operations?
5. Do we know how to protect instream uses, including meeting the needs of fish and other aquatic organisms?
6. Is wetland construction a realistic mitigation measure for water resource development?
7. Will climate changes force a change in water law?
8. What water conservation goals are realistic?
9. What is the feasibility of alternative water sources such as desalination and wastewater reclamation? Can these alternative sources replace the need for dam construction?
10. Has the time arrived to integrate land use planning with water management?

The Virginia Water Resources Research Center invites you to submit research abstracts and workshop proposals for the National Water Research Symposium to be held on the Virginia Tech campus on October 10-12, 2005. Basic and applied research papers are solicited in all areas related to water law and science. Researchers from colleges and universities (faculty, graduate and undergraduate students), federal and state agencies, private organizations, law firms, consulting firms, and others are invited to present papers and lead workshops.

Deadlines:
1. Submission of Abstracts and Workshop Proposals March 31, 2005
2. Notification of Acceptance/Rejection May 1, 2005
3. Papers for inclusion in the symposium proceedings August 15, 2005
Abstract Submission
Please submit a 200-250 word abstract that includes the paper title, author(s) and author(s) affiliation, phone number, fax number, and email address of the corresponding author. Indicate if the presenter is a graduate or undergraduate student.

Workshop Proposal Submission:
Submit a 1-2 page workshop outline that includes information on the subject matter and name(s), affiliation(s), email address, and phone number of workshop instructors.

Electronic Submission: E-mail: tyounos@vt.edu

Hard Copy Submission:
National Water Research Symposium 2005
Virginia Water Resources Research Center
23 Agnew Hall (0444)
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA 24061

Author Guidelines for Full Paper Submission:
Full papers will be accepted for publication in the symposium proceedings. Guidelines are posted on symposium website: www.vwrrc.vt.edu/2005symposium

Symposium Participation Policy:
Individuals and organizations presenting papers agree to register and pay the assigned registration fee for the symposium.

For more information or questions, contact Judy Poff by phone (540) 231-8030 or e-mail jupoff@vt.edu. If unavailable, contact Annabelle Fusilier (540) 231-5624.

Chris Landsea Leaves IPCC

This is an open letter to the community from Chris Landsea.

Dear colleagues,

After some prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns.

With this open letter to the community, I wish to explain the basis for my decision and bring awareness to what I view as a problem in the IPCC process. The IPCC is a group of climate researchers from around the world that every few years summarize how climate is changing and how it may be altered in the future due to manmade global warming. I had served both as an author for the Observations chapter and a Reviewer for the 2nd Assessment Report in 1995 and the 3rd Assessment Report in 2001, primarily on the topic of tropical cyclones (hurricanes and typhoons). My work on hurricanes, and tropical cyclones more generally, has been widely cited by the IPCC. For the upcoming AR4, I was asked several weeks ago by the Observations chapter Lead Author - Dr. Kevin Trenberth - to provide the writeup for Atlantic hurricanes. As I had in the past, I agreed to assist the IPCC in what I thought was to be an important, and politically-neutral determination of what is happening with our climate.

Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4's Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic "Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity" along with other media interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and reading transcripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media. These media sessions have potential to result in a widespread perception that global warming has made recent hurricane activity much more severe.

I found it a bit perplexing that the participants in the Harvard press conference had come to the conclusion that global warming was impacting hurricane activity today. To my knowledge, none of the participants in that press conference had performed any research on hurricane variability, nor were they reporting on any new work in the field. 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.

Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricane will likely be quite small. The latest results from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2004) suggest that by around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5% more intense than today. It has been proposed that even this tiny change may be an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of the 21st Century (Michaels, Knappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted).

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. Given Dr. Trenberth’s role as the IPCC’s Lead Author responsible for preparing the text on hurricanes, his public statements so far outside of current scientific understanding led me to concern that it would be very difficult for the IPCC process to proceed objectively with regards to the assessment on hurricane activity. My view is that when people identify themselves as being associated with the IPCC and then make pronouncements far outside current scientific understandings that this will harm the credibility of climate change science and will in the longer term diminish our role in public policy.

My concerns go beyond the actions of Dr. Trenberth and his colleagues to how he and other IPCC officials responded to my concerns. I did caution Dr. Trenberth before the media event and provided him a summary of the current understanding within the hurricane research community. I was disappointed when the IPCC leadership dismissed my concerns when I brought up the misrepresentation of climate science while invoking the authority of the IPCC. Specifically, the IPCC leadership said that Dr. Trenberth was speaking as an individual even though he was introduced in the press conference as an IPCC lead author; I was told that that the media was exaggerating or misrepresenting his words, even though the audio from the press conference and interview tells a different story (available on the web directly); and that Dr. Trenberth was accurately reflecting conclusions from the TAR, even though it is quite clear that the TAR stated that there was no connection between global warming and hurricane activity. 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.

It is certainly true that "individual scientists can do what they wish in their own rights", as one of the folks in the IPCC leadership suggested. Differing conclusions and robust debates are certainly crucial to progress in climate science. However, this case is not an honest scientific discussion conducted at a meeting of climate researchers. Instead, a scientist with an important role in the IPCC represented himself as a Lead Author for the IPCC has used that position to promulgate to the media and general public his own opinion that the busy 2004 hurricane season was caused by global warming, which is in direct opposition to research written in the field and is counter to conclusions in the TAR. This becomes problematic when I am then asked to provide the draft about observed hurricane activity variations for the AR4 with, ironically, Dr. Trenberth as the Lead Author for this chapter. Because of Dr. Trenberth's pronouncements, the IPCC process on our assessment of these crucial extreme events in our climate system has been subverted and compromised, its neutrality lost. While no one can "tell" scientists what to say or not say (nor am I suggesting that), the IPCC did select Dr. Trenberth as a Lead Author and entrusted to him to carry out this duty in a non-biased, neutral point of view. When scientists hold press conferences and speak with the media, much care is needed not to reflect poorly upon the IPCC. It is of more than passing interest to note that Dr. Trenberth, while eager to share his views on global warming and hurricanes with the media, declined to do so at the Climate Variability and Change Conference in January where he made several presentations. Perhaps he was concerned that such speculation - though worthy in his mind of public pronouncements – would not stand up to the scrutiny of fellow climate scientists.

I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound. As the IPCC leadership has seen no wrong in Dr. Trenberth's actions and have retained him as a Lead Author for the AR4, I have decided to no longer participate in the IPCC AR4.

Sincerely, Chris Landsea

Attached are the correspondence between myself and key members of the IPCC FAR, Download file.

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.

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 simpl