« August 2005 »

Unsolicited Media Advice

As I read about many instances of the immoral exploitation of Katrina's impacts to advance a political agenda, it seems to me that there is a good opportunity for the media to contribute constructively to this issue. So Prometheus-reading reporters, by all means ask your experts if Katrina is a result of global warming. But don't stop there. Please also ask the following question:

"If the US (or the world) were to begin taking more aggressive actions on emissions reductions, when could we expect to see the effects of such policies in the impacts of future hurricanes, and how large would those effects be?"

The question of hurricanes and global warming is interesting scientifically, of course, but for society broadly the question is important for the actions that we might take in the future. So please, go ahead and ask the above question and take the question of hurricanes/global warming to its logical conclusion.

Finally, the considerable misuse of science in the case of Katrina should give serious pause to anyone who thinks that the politicization of science is mainly a US or conservative phenomena. It is not.

Tough Questions on Hurricanes and Global Warming?

Over at GristMill Dave Roberts discusses hurricanes and global warming and asks some "tough questions." The first of these questions focus on whether or not greens should misuse science to achieve their political goals:

"In the end, greens concerned about global warming face a choice. Do they stick to scrupulous standards of scientific accuracy, with all the hedging and qualifying that entails, at the risk of being boring and losing an opportunity to galvanize action? Or do they fudge a bit, propagandize a bit, indulge in a little bit of theater and showmanship?"

Let's take a look at the reasons that Roberts gives for why fudging science might be worth doing (and to be clear, I don't think that Roberts is calling for a misuse of science, but instead suggesting that there is a complicated calculus underlying why one might choose to do so).

First, Roberts states, "arguably the urgency of generating a large-scale response is great enough to warrant some fudging on strict rules of accuracy and precision. Many, many lives are at stake." Surely this is the exact same logic that motivates anti-abortion groups to advance that false claim that abortion causes breast cancer. If the righteousness of a cause dictates when it is appropriate to misuse science, then this is a pretty slippery-sloped end-justify-the-means approach to science.

Second, Roberts notes that the complexity of the climate systems makes it exceedingly difficult to make a scientifically sound linkage between global warming and a particular hurricane, perhaps suggesting that there is some wiggle room in there to assert a linkage, as no one can disprove such an assertion. Undoubtedly this is the exact same logic that underlies the repeated exagerrated claims by some that adult stem cells can be used instead of embryonic stem cells. After all, scientists are pretty smart people and who knows what they might discover in the future? Who is to say that one day they won't be able to replace embryonic stem cells with adult stem cells? To quote Donald Rumsfeld, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Anything goes!

Third, Roberts correctly asserts that a big event opens the door for policy change, "It opens up a cultural space for dialogue and action at a time when getting the collective attention of the American public is extraordinarily difficult." Without a doubt similar words were spoken by Bush Administration officials in the days after September 11 to justify invading Iraq based on false claims of a linkage between 9/11 and Iraq.

Roberts suggests that the question of fudging science is a tough one. Not for me. I'm pretty much all for scrupulous standards of scientific accuracy. Fudging science can certainly lead to some short term political gains, but in the end it is not good for science and certainly not good for democracy.

Final Version of "Hurricanes and Global Warming" for BAMS

The final version of our paper, "Hurricanes and Global Warming (PDF)" is now online. Here is the complete citation:

Pielke, Jr., R. A., C. Landsea, M. Mayfield, J. Laver and R. Pasch, in press, 2005. December. Hurricanes and global warming, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Two things to note. First, if you have the earlier version, toss it out as we have updated the present version to accomodate some recent literature. Second, you'll see that Kerry Emanuel has dropped off as a co-author, for reasons I understand and respect. The publication date is December, 2005 which is just under the wire for inclusion in the next IPCC reports. We welcome all comments and reactions to the paper.

Historical Hurricane Damage

Here are a few estimates of damage from relevant historical hurricanes had they occurred in 2004. I'd guess, and it is nothing more than a guess, that Katrina will exceed the amounts of Betsy, Camille and Hugo but not Andrew.

1965 Betsy $18 billion
1969 Camille $19 billion
1989 Hugo $16 billion
1992 Andrew $66 billion

For methods, see this paper:

Pielke, Jr., R. A., and C. W. Landsea, 1998: Normalized Hurricane Damages in the United States: 1925-95. Weather and Forecasting, American Meteorological Society, Vol. 13, 621-631. (PDF)

On Point Radio Interview

I was on NPR's On Point this morning with MIT's Kerry Emanuel and others to discuss hurricanes and their impacts. When available the show can be found here.

Hurricane Katrina

As Hurricane Katrina churns toward New Orleans, I thought that folks might be interested in seeing what happened when Camille devastaed Louisiana in 1969. In 1999 we produced this report for its 30-year anniversary. In particular, have a look at this photo gallery.

Our research suggests that Camille would have been a $20 billion storm had it occurred in 2004. Camille's track was to the east of New Orleans, sparing the city its full wrath. A direct hit or track to the west of New Orleans could easily result in damages considerably larger than those we estimate for Camille in 2004. Stay tuned, and best wishes for people in the storm's path.

Science and Political Affiliations

The Chicago Tribune has a very interesting article today (Thanks JA!) on the recent study of fetal pain and the political leanings of its authors. Here is an excerpt:

"A research article about when fetuses feel pain is sparking a heated debate over the nexus between science and politics and what information authors should disclose to scientific journals. The report, published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, analyzed previously published research and concluded that fetuses probably don't feel pain until 29 weeks after conception because of their developing brain structures. Undisclosed was the fact that one of the five authors runs an abortion clinic at San Francisco's public hospital and another worked temporarily more than five years ago for an abortion-rights advocacy group. Several ethicists said they consider those points regrettable omissions that left readers without important information. Other experts consider the authors' background irrelevant."

Does it matter what the authors professional or political affiliations happen to be?

The story presents two perspectives. First, no it doesn't matter.

""The standard for disclosure in medical and scientific journals is not your politics. There's no obligation to tell people what your mind-set is ... as long as the data is sound and gathered objectively," said Dr. Alan Leff, a University of Chicago pulmonologist and editor of the Proceedings of the American Thoracic Society . Dr. Philip Darney, chief of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at San Francisco General Hospital, defended that decision, saying in a statement: "The research team does not believe that being an abortion provider is a conflict of interest." Medical journals require authors to disclose financial ties to industry or other funding sources. But there are no standards for disclosing other factors that might influence an author, such as clinical practices or organizational affiliations. Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, the journal's editor-in-chief, said she wasn't concerned by Drey's failure to indicate she performed abortions. "That's part of [an obstetrician's] scope of practice. They don't have to reveal that." ...

"As a scientist, if you think I'm wrong, you probe my data, question my findings and do a critical study--not point your finger and talk about my politics," Caplan said. Rigorous methodology is supposed to minimize the potential for bias in scientific research, he said, "whether studies are done by communists in China or free-marketers in Chicago, whether they're done by left-wingers in Berkeley or right-wingers at the Wharton School here in Pennsylvania.""

Second, it does matter:

"Anti-abortion groups say the authors' affiliations are crucially important. "These are people with years of professional and ideological investment in the pro-abortion cause, not some neutral team of medical professionals," said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee. "We think readers and viewers have a right to know who's filtering the information they're being presented with." ...

... but certain medical issues are so explosive politically--abortion certainly, and perhaps stem cell research and animal rights--that researchers have a special obligation to inform readers of relevant affiliations. The San Francisco researchers "must have known there would be criticism from the right-to-life people," said Dr. Arnold Relman, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. "In a situation as contentious as this, it seems more disclosure should be the rule rather than less." Dr. Marcia Angell, a senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School, is also a former editor of the New England Journal. "Suppose it were the other way," she said. "Suppose there were an article that said that [fetuses] do feel pain and it was written by people who were involved in the right-to-life movement. Would I want to know that? I think I would." With an issue as divisive as abortion, disclosing potentially important associations can only help a journal edit! or, said Sheldon Krimsky, author of "Science in the Private Interest." "It kind of ratchets up everyone's attention to the science and makes them that much more vigilant in detecting potential bias," he said."

Should political affiliations relevant to a paper_s content be disclosed by authored of peer-reviewed articles?

Is there a justification for limiting conflict-of-interest only to financial considerations?

Tough questions.

A Piece of the Action

There is a lot of attention being paid to public bets about the future these days. For example, a climate scientist in Japan, James Annan, has bet two Russian solar physicists, Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev, $10,000 that the earth will warm over the next decade, as measured by the U.S. NCDC over two different 6-year periods. At this point, such bets are little more than political stunts, but if they move us in the direction of actual futures markets on climate forecasts, then I'm all for it.

Just yesterday I read about a $5,000 bet between New York Times columnist John Tierney and energy industry consultant Matthew Simmons (described here) over whether or not the price of oil in 2010 would be over $200 in 2005 dollars. Tierney is taking Simmons to the cleaners. There is already a futures market for oil, and Simmons can get all the action he wants there at a price of $62.39 for Dec 2010. Anyone who thinks oil prices are going up dramatically can purchase futures and then make a killing if they are proven right. Tierney can simply hedge his side of the bet by, for example, buying $5,000 worth of 2010 futures at $62.39. If the price goes down by as much as 50% he is still in the black as he would win the bet. If the price if over $200 he comes out far ahead as he can pay the bet off from the proceeds of his gains. And the best case scenario for him is a price higher than $62.39 and less than $200, in which he collects on the investment and the bet. There are of course more complicated hedges that would involve a smaller outlay than $5000. From a financial perspective he can't lose, which is obviously why he states that he will "consider bets from anyone else convinced that our way of life is "unsustainable." If you think the price of oil or some other natural resource is going to soar, show me the money." (As an aside, all of this raises some questions for me about the thinking behind Simmons' analyses about economics and oil, but that is a subject for another time.)

With all of this excitement going on about betting, I'd like to get a piece of the action. I'd consider a bet along the lines of the following:

a) whether global concentrations of CO2 will be lower than 2005 values at any point over the next 30 years;

b) whether the rate of change in global CO2 concentrations will be negative (i.e., decreasing year over year) over any 3-year period over the next 30 years;

c) whether (b) will occur before atmospheric concentrations reach 400, 450, or 550 ppm.

I'm not no much interested in a bet per se, so mostly this is to see who out there is optimistic about the current approach to climate mitigation. Who out there thinks that the current policy trajectory will be effective from the standpoint of atmospheric concentrations? The three options above are set up to allow for various levels of optimism. Feel free to discuss in the comments. I'll be happy to summarize in a week or so. Any takers?

The Best NASA Can Do?

In last Sunday’s New York Times, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin had a letter in response to critical several Times editorials,

"Terminating the shuttle program abruptly, while attractive from some points of view, carries with it grave consequences for the United States' pre-eminence in space and would be devastating to the work force necessary to conduct any future human spaceflight program."

There are two responses here. First, the current 2010 retirement date is completely arbitrary, and could just as easily be 2009 or 2008 or 2007. The decision should be made based on technical, financial and political realities and not an arbitrary deadline. Second, what if NASA loses another shuttle? That would certainly result in an "abrupt termination" of the program. Would that also be "devastating to the workforce"? I wonder what NASA's contingency plans look like for the loss of another shuttle, which is a realistic possibility.

Griffin continues,

"In the same way, the decision to build the International Space Station with its present partnership arrangements was made more than a decade ago, and that decision, too, carries with it major consequences and obligations not lightly dismissed."

The space station is "complete" when NASA says it is complete. It is a modular system. One reason why the program adopted international partners is the same as why NASA sprinkles contracts widely across congressional districts, to build a constituency for business as usual, to make it hard for politicians to take control of NASA from NASA. Business is usual is great when you are going in the right direction.

Griffin concludes that business as usual is "the best NASA can do for the country." As an outsider to NASA, but also a long-time observer, I'd be interested in the whole set of options that NASA considered when deciding that business as usual is the best available option. One might think that Congress would be interested in this set of options and how they have been evaluated.

Roger Pielke, Sr.

For those of you following the latest climate science/politics tempest involving my father, Roger Pielke, Sr., here is a link to his blog where you can read his unfiltered perspectives on this and other matters. I may be a bit biased, but his site is worth a visit.

For those of you who may not have known that there are two Roger Pielke’s (Sr., him at Colorado State an atmospheric scientist, Jr., me at Colorado studying science policy) and are here by mistake, please feel free to come back to Prometheus after visiting his site.

The Other Hockey Stick

Disaster losses have increased dramatically in recent decades. Yet as discussed here frequently there is no scientific evidence showing that any part of this increase can be attributed to changes in climate, whether anthropogenic in origin or not. This is a long post on this subject. It contains a lot of gory detail on what I consider to be a major misuse of science in the climate debate, viewed through the lens of a recent paper in Science. I focus on this issue mainly because this is an area where I have considerable expertise, and in this context my work is often mis-cited or ignored. This misuse of science is pretty much overlooked by scientists (here is one exception) advocates on either side of the debate, and the media (here is one exception). A number of colleagues and I have a letter on this subject coming out in the November Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (I'll post a pre-publication version of this soon). Also, in partnership with Munich Re we are organizing a major workshop on attribution of causes underlying the observed trend of ever-escalating disaster damages. Munich Re seems very supportive of rigorous science on this topic. So clearly, I intend to pursue this subject.

Some important things to say before proceeding -- As I have written often on these pages, I accept the IPCC WGI consensus position on climate change and I am a strong advocate for policy action on climate change. I am also quite concerned by the role of science and scientists in the highly politicized context of climate.

I have titled this post "The Other Hockey Stick" drawing on some comments made by Hans von Storch in a talk at NCAR last month. The "other hockey stick" refers to the graph used by the IPCC based on Munich re data to show increasing disaster costs and has been widely used to argue for evidence of a climate change signal in disasters. Such claims are made by prominent scientists (such as Rajendra Pachauri and John Houghton) and can be found frequently in the scientific literature. The motivation for the present discussion is a paper in the 12 August 2005 issue of Science. Evan Mills, a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Wrote in the essay,

"According to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment, climate change has played a role in the rising costs of natural disasters." And on the "relative weights of anthropogenic climate change and increased exposure" in the loss trend Mills concludes "quantification is premature." Mills uncritically accepts the IPCC statement, which as I show below is based on a pretty weak source and he is simply wrong on the latter point. Mills either ignores or is unaware of a robust literature on this subject (see here and here and here). Mills' analysis rests on a very thin basis of support. For reasons discussed below, it is amazing to me that Mills' paper survived peer review at Science. It should not have. Whether Science has a quality control problem or an inability to question analyses that may be politically inconvenient, the publication of Mills' paper sure does raise some questions.

Mills has a section of his paper focused on attribution of causes explaining recent trends in disaster losses. Let's take a close look at ten of the sources he cites in that section to support claims of a climate change signal in the damage record:

Kunkel et al. 1999. Mills cites this paper, (on which I am a co-author) to support this claim, "Socioeconomic and demographic trends clearly play important-and likely dominant-roles in the observed upward loss trends." Here is what Kunkel et al. concluded, "the results of the review strongly suggest that the increasing financial losses from weather extremes are primarily due to a variety of societal changes." Perhaps a slightly different characterization than the paper suggests, but lets move on.

Changnon and Demissie, 1996. This paper says nothing about trends in flood damage. What it does say is that in a comparison of urbanizing and rural river basins, there were large societal influences on streamflow in the urbanizing basins. This paper provides no basis for asserting anything related to flood damages.

Zhang et al. 2005. This paper is about the relationship of coastal erosion and sea level rise. It says nothing about trends in disaster losses.

Easterling et al. 2000. This paper states, "Most of the increase has been due to societal shifts and not to major increases in weather extremes. The growth of population, demographic shifts to more storm-prone locations, and the growth of wealth have collectively made the nation more vulnerable to climate extremes." This paper originated in a workshop held in Aspen that I participated in and I was originally a co-author on early drafts of this paper. I dropped off because I thought that the paper's conclusions were not supported by the evidence. In this case, there is an important difference in the cited sentence between the words "Most" and "All". "Most" happens to be grammatically correct, but in this case is synonymous with "All". My concern was that the paper would be mis-cited to assert an attribution when none was found. Here is a good example.

Karl and Trenberth 2003. This paper calls for the development of a global observing system. It says nothing about trends in disasters.

Next the paper asserts that "Global weather-related losses in recent years have been trending upward much faster than population, inflation, or insurance penetration, and faster than non-weather-related events (Fig. 2D). By some estimates, losses have increased by a factor of 2, after accounting for these factors plus increased density of insured values."

It cites 2 references to make this claim. The first reference is to a talk by Howard Kunreuther. I have known Howard for a while and respect him and his work a great deal. I emailed him to ask his source for this claim and interestingly he referred me to the second source cited by Mills. So Mills is citing the same source twice, using two apparently different sources. Not good.

The second source is a 2000 report by Munich Re on catastrophes. The relevant sections of the report can be found at pp. 79-81. Here Munich Re accurately cites my work to correctly argue for the normalization of historical loss data to account for societal changes. Then Munich Re provides some summary data following a black box calculation of changes in disaster damages after normalizing for societal changes. Munich Re finds that global disasters cost an adjusted $636 billion in the 1990s compared with $315 billion in the 1970s, and concludes, " Mills "factor of 2" comes from this calculation (i.e., 636/315).

Methodologically the calculation is suspect for a number of reasons. First, Munich Re provides neither their methods nor data. Second, Munich Re admits that data on changes in wealth are not available around the world and changes in GDP are not always a good proxy for data on wealth. Third, Munich Re's data apparently includes weather and non-weather events (e.g., see figure "d" on page 81, which refers to earthquake damages).

But let's assume that all of these issues raised above can be overcome and in the end there remains a 2 to 1 ratio. The fact is that the large decadal variability in normalized losses makes it quite dodgy to assert a trend between two different ten-year periods over a period of 30 years. Let me illustrate this with an example from our database of normalized hurricane losses. If we adjust the hurricane loss data to 2004 values and then compare decades we see some interesting things. First the ratio of the 1990s:1970s is quite similar to the Munich Re analysis, 2.1 ($91B/$43B). But if we look at other decadal comparisons, the picture looks quite different, 1990s:1940s = 1.0 ($91B/$90B) and 1990s:1920s = 0.6 ($91B/$154B). Bottom line: The Munich Re analysis tells us nothing about attribution.

The Munich Re analysis may prove correct in the end from the standpoint of disasters in the 1970s compared to the 1990s. But all that it would allows us to say is that the 1990s had more costly disasters than the 1970s, and provides absolutely no basis for attribution of the causes of the differences. At a minimum analyses such as Minuch Re's should be submitted for peer review in the scientific literature to allow for an open discussion of data and methods.

Back to the papers cited by Mills:

Association of British Insurers, 2004. Mills cites this report as follows, "The Association of British Insurers states that changes in weather could already be driving UK property losses up 2 to 4% per year (7) owing to increasing extreme weather events."

The executive summary of the AIb report does claim, "Weather risks are already increasing by 2 - 4 % per year on the household and property accounts due to changing weather." But if you read down just a bit further (on p. 8) the executive summary says something a little different "On reasonable projections of extreme events, the pure risk rate for weather catastrophes is already rising at an unseen rate of 2 - 4 % per year." It has now raised the issue of projections. And if you take a look at the Technical Annex to the report, you find something different still, "Thus on the basis of the Foresight Programme view of future flood risk, realistically the risk of flood damage is projected to increase by between 2.1% and 3.9% per annum, or a range of two to four percent per year."

There are two important points here. First, the 2%-4% per year increase in damages is a projection made out over the next 80 years. Second, we discussed the Foresight project quite favorable here last year. The Foresight project was notable because it considered both climate and societal factors in its projections. The 2%-4% number is not based on climate factors alone. Mills' statement is thus incorrect in two ways - the increase in damage is projected, not observed, and it is the consequence of societal and climate factors, not an observed increase in extreme events.

Mills next cites the IPCC WGII, Chapter 8 to justify the claim "According to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment, climate change has played a role in the rising costs of natural disasters." If you go to the IPCC you see that the single basis for this claim is the Munich Re 2000 report discussed above. This is the third different reference to the same analysis. At best this is sloppy citing. At worst it appears as if there is an attenmpt to portray a broader intellectual base of support for these claims than there actually is.

Lastly in this section, Mills et al. 2002 discuss the relationship of lightning claims and temperature, which makes sense as lightning tends to be associated with thunderstorms and thunderstorms occur in summer not winter. As they state "An additional issue is that peak lightning periods occur in summer, when electricity reliability problems are likely to cause other business interruption losses, as suggested by the illustration." There is no data here relevant to understanding historical trends in disasters (or insurance claims).

So here is my tally:

3 sources are each traced back to a single non-peer reviewed source, Munich Re 2000, that raises some serious questions of methods and interpretation.

4 papers are cited but are not at all relevant to the issue of disaster losses or attribution.

1 paper (AIB) is mis-cited, which is easy to see if you actually look beyond the first page of its executive summary. (Ironically, the Foresight report which forms the basis for the AIB claims actually makes a good case for the overwhelming dominance of societal factors in future flood losses in the UK.)

1 paper is cited accurately, Easterling et al., but in my opinion this paper plays fast and lose with language to allow a mis-interpretation of its results.

1 paper Kunkel et al. is cited accurately, though I might take issue with the spin, it is probably within the bounds of appropriateness.

Of 10 citations, 9 are highly questionable. And this is Science magazine.

The bottom line is that the issue of attribution of trends in disaster losses rests on the thin reed of a single citation in the IPCC WG2 Chapter 8 to a 2000 Munich Re report that seems to be cited over and over again. Through citing this report several times via different secondary sources, the citing of multiple irrelevant sources and the careful parsing of two papers, Mills comes to the conclusion that climate change is responsible for some part of the observed trend in losses. There is a much, much larger literature on this subject that Mills does not cite.

These are not characteristics that one expects to see in a paper in Science, arguably one of the two most influential publications on science in the world. I have submitted a brief comment in the form of a letter to Science on this paper referencing some of this broader literature. Let's see what happens.

In the end, scientific research may yet prove that anthropogenic climate change plays a observable role in disaster losses. But today, August 22, 2005, shoddy science, bad peer review and a failure of the science community to demand high standards is not the best recipe for helping science to contribute effectively to policy.

Reader Request: Comments on Michaels and Gray

A Prometheus reader asked if I might read an article by Pat Michaels, affiliate of the conservative Cato Institute and Virginia State Climatologist and an interview with Bill Gray of Colorado State University and offer a critique. Specifically, the reader asked if I might comment on Gray's allegations of funding being cut and whether or not Michaels misrepresented the work of me or Emanuel. So here are some reactions.

Michaels is no stranger to over-the-top rhetoric, and there is some of this here. But in this essay he accurately characterizes my work and quotes me accurately. I'd say more about the relationship of my work and Kerry's recent paper, but I have a comment on Kerry's recent paper submitted to Nature and they require no discussion of finding prior to publication. When that is either published or rejected I'll be happy to say more in this subject. Michaels is correct to call out both Kevin Trenberth and Bill Gray for comments unbecoming a leading scientist. I agree in both cases that the comments are inappropriate.

Michaels does make one important mistake. He mischaracterizes the total funding for climate research citing a total of $4.2 billion. This number surely includes investments in technology which have nothing to do with climate science research. And of the $1.8 billion on climate science the vast majority is spent on satellites. He is correct to suggest that such large funding creates a constituency, but I disagree with him when he argues that climate scientists make decisions on papers based on funding. There are important sociological factors at play, but they are subtle and perhaps not even recognized by many climate scientists.

Bill Gray is by all accounts simply a genius. I've known him for about 10 years and have a lot of respect for him. I like him too; he is a nice guy. I've heard comments to the effect that every scientist studying hurricanes today is a product of Bill Gray's work in one manner or another.

His interview in Discover magazine accurately reflects what I've heard Dr. Gray say in other fora. Gray states, "Our feeling is that the United States is going to be seeing hurricane damage over the next decade or so on a scale way beyond what we have seen in the past." There seems to be a pretty robust consensus on this point among all hurricane scientists.

It is a fact that his funding has been cut in his later years as compared to his earlier years. I'd venture that this has much more to do with changing preferences for model-based research over statistical-based research rather than anything to do with the politics of climate change. Dr. Gray has most likely be the victim of generational change in climate research and the corresponding changes in scientific preferences.

Dr. Gray comments, "Nearly all of my colleagues who have been around 40 or 50 years are skeptical as hell about this whole global-warming thing." This is a very accurate comment. My colleague Myanna Lahsen, an anthropologist, studied the "tribe" of climate modelers for her 1998 dissertation and found a pronounced generational influence on how scientists view the climate debate. Dr. Gray is a great example of this skepticism of some senior scientists. My reading of Myanna's work suggests that the views of some of these senior scientists have much less to do with partisan politics than generational differences.

Dr. Gray says, "So many people have a vested interest in this global-warming thing-all these big labs and research and stuff. The idea is to frighten the public, to get money to study it more. Now that the cold war is over, we have to generate a common enemy to support science, and what better common enemy for the globe than greenhouse gases?"

Just like with Michaels I disagree with this overly simplistic interpretation of what is going on. There are without a doubt strong influences on climate researchers, but they are more subtle and behind-the-scenes than acknowledged here.

Information and Action

An alert Prometheus reader pointed us in the direction of an article in today's New York Times on the effects of Fox News on voting. Here is an excerpt:

"The share of Americans who believe that news organizations are "politically biased in their reporting" increased to 60 percent in 2005, up from 45 percent in 1985, according to polls by the Pew Research Center. Many people also believe that biased reporting influences who wins or loses elections. A new study by Stefano DellaVigna of the University of California, Berkeley, and Ethan Kaplan of the Institute for International Economic Studies at Stockholm University, however, casts doubt on this view. Specifically, the economists ask whether the advent of the Fox News Channel, Rupert Murdoch's cable television network, affected voter behavior. They found that Fox had no detectable effect on which party people voted for, or whether they voted at all."

This view is of course similar to those frequently discussed here, such as the following:

*some believe that the views on climate science advanced by climate skeptics prevents certain actions on climate change, or conversely that the consensus view leads to a different sort of action,

*some believe that views on evolution lead to certain religious beliefs,

*some prominent U.S. leaders would have use believe that the threat of WMDs compels preemptive military action (and there are of course other flavors of this precautionary perspective),

*some argued that the publication Bjorn Lomborg's 2000 book would lead to anti-environmental policies, and so on and on.

The study reported by the New York Times ought to give pause to all of these folks, on all sides of issues, who are waging their political battles through science. There is very little evidence of a political war being waged on science, simply because science is too important to everyone's agenda. What we are seeing are political wars being waging through and with science. This is one subject that has wide bipartisan agreement.

Here is some more from the Times article:

"Why was Fox inconsequential to voter behavior? One possibility is that people search for television shows with a political orientation that matches their own. In this scenario, Fox would have been preaching to the converted. This, however, was not the case: Fox's viewers were about equally likely to identify themselves as Democrats as Republicans, according to a poll by the Pew in 2000. Professors DellaVigna and Kaplan offer two more promising explanations. First, watching Fox could have confirmed both Democratic and Republican viewers' inclinations, an effect known as confirmatory bias in psychology. (Borrowing from Simon and Garfunkel, confirmatory bias is a tendency to hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest.) When Yankee and Red Sox fans watch replays of the same disputed umpire's ruling, for example, they both come away more convinced that their team was in the right. One might expect Fox viewers to have increased their likelihood of voting, however, if Fox energized both sides' bases. The professors' preferred explanation is that the public manages to "filter" biased media reports. Fox's format, for example, might alert the audience to take the views expressed with more than the usual grain of salt. Audiences may also filter biases from other networks' shows."

The bottom line is that the world is much more complicated than a linear path from information to action might suggest.

Finding God in Science

Tom Yulsman writes:

Is evolution compatible with religion?

People on opposite ends of the spectrum in the debate have shown in recent weeks that they do manage to agree on one thing: that the answer is ‘no.’ They frame the debate in black and white terms, leaving no room for nuance and ambiguity. In doing so, they pit religion implacably against science itself, harming both.

On one side of the debate stand proponents of intelligent design, most notably at the Center for Science and Culture of the Discovery Institute. They say they do not reject evolution outright, just the idea that evolution of complex biological structures can happen without intervention by an intelligent designer.

In other words, evolution and religion are perfectly compatible — as long as modern evolutionary biology is rejected and replaced by a religious concept.

The center isn’t really all that shy about making this point, as its now infamous paper called the “The Wedge Strategy” shows. Published in 1999, the document plots a political strategy to replace what it calls the “scientific materialism” of traditional evolutionary biology with a “broadly theistic” worldview. The Wedge Strategy establishes a dichotomy between materialism, which it says has “infected virtually every area of our culture,” and what it describes as “one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built,” namely that human beings are created in the image of God.

“Debunking the traditional conceptions of both God and man, thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud portrayed humans not as moral and spiritual beings, but as animals or machines who inhabited a universe ruled by purely impersonal forces and whose behavior and very thoughts were dictated by the unbending forces of biology, chemistry, and environment. This materialistic conception of reality eventually infected virtually every area of our culture, from politics and economics to literature and art.”

The document describes a litany of horrors resulting from this infection, including the erosion of “objective moral standards,” the undermining of “personal responsibility”, and “a virulent strain of utopianism.”

Focusing on intelligent design, the Wedge Document states that it promises to replace the materialist worldview, as exemplified by evolutionary biology, “with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.” (Emphasis added.)

Let’s put aside the obvious conclusion that the so-called “science” pursued by the institute is motivated not by a desire to seek the truth about nature but by a pre-determined political and Christian religious agenda, invalidating all claims to scientific legitimacy. The central point here is that evolutionary biology, as it is currently accepted by the vast majority of scientists, simply is not consonant with Christian convictions.

What’s so interesting is that polemicists on the opposite end of the political spectrum agree.

As Jacob Weisberg wrote in Slate recently, “That evolution erodes religious belief seems almost too obvious to require argument.” Claiming that evolution “destroyed the faith of Darwin himself” (a gross oversimplification see: here), Weisberg goes on to say that “the acceptance of evolution diminishes religious belief in aggregate for a simple reason: It provides a better answer to the question of how we got here than religion does. Not a different answer, a better answer: more plausible, more logical, and supported by an enormous body of evidence.”

Both Weisberg and his intellectual opponents in the intelligent design community are objectively wrong when they claim incompatibility between evolution and religion. To borrow a turn of phrase from Weisberg, that millions of Christians and Jews, including many scientists, believe both in God and traditional evolutionary biology, seems almost too obvious to require argument. And they suffer neither from utopian fantasies and moral degradation, nor from a diminution of their spiritual feelings and belief in God.

Owen Gingerich is one of many prominent examples of scientists who manage to hold their religious beliefs in harmony with their science. A Christian and a research professor of astronomy and the history of science at Harvard, he told this to NPR recently: “I believe in intelligent design, lower case I and D. And I do have a problem with intelligent design, capital I and capital D, because it's being sold as a political movement, as if somehow it's an alternative to Darwinian evolution.”

Concerning his religious belief, Gingerich says, “When we talk about the concept of God, it is such an infinity it's not really possible for us to wrap ourselves around it and come to terms with precisely what we mean. It's not a father figure sitting up there with the big `on' button and pushing it and the big bang happens.”

Contrary to what Weisberg argues, Gingerich believes that science and religion give different answers about existence. Science is like looking at music written out on a page, Gingerich says. “If you see it on the page, you can analyze all of the notes in great detail, but you won't hear the melody, you won't understand its aesthetic appeal. Without a capital I and a capital D, I am saying that I believe there is purpose and meaning in the universe, that it's not all just a macabre mechanical joke.”

Sir John Polkinghorne:, a theoretical physicist turned Anglican priest sees things similarly: “The fact that we now know that the universe did not spring into being ready made a few thousand years ago but that it has evolved over a period of fifteen billion years from its fiery origin in the Big Bang, does not abolish Christian talk of the world as God's creation, but it certainly modifies certain aspects of that discourse,” he writes.

Polkinghorne seems to be completely comfortable with biological evolution: “Mutations occur through happenstance,” he says. “That produces some new possibility for life, which is then sifted and preserved in the lawfully regular environment which is necessary for the operation of natural selection.”

Science, he says, reveals this duality of existence — chance, which makes all manner of things possible, and necessity, which arises from the fundamental laws of nature. “In every stage of the fruitful history of the universe there is an interplay between chance and necessity. Now, the question is, ‘What do we make of that?’”

Not that blind, stupid chance alone is important. Or that we live in the numbingly mechanical world of biblical literalists. “I believe that the Christian God, who is both loving and faithful, has given to his creation the twin gifts of independence and reliability, which find their reflection in the fruitful process of the universe through the interplay between happenstance and regularity, between chance and necessity.”

Polkinghorne clearly believes in an intelligent designer, but one who operates through traditional evolutionary processes: “To acknowledge a role for tame chance is not in the least to deny the possibility that there is a divinely ordained general direction in which the process of the world is moving, however contingent detailed aspects of that progression (such as the number of human toes) might be.”

Those on the left, like Weisberg, who insist that religion ultimately is incompatible with evolution, seem to have a laughingly naïve view of what belief in God must entail: Not Polkinghorne and Gingerich’s God but a bearded white guy sitting atop a cloud and throwing thunderbolts at us. It goes without saying that the bible anthropomorphizes God, and many Christians and Jews certainly do take it all literally. But in more sophisticated religious conceptions, both Christian and Jewish — including my own Jewish tradition — anthropomorphic descriptions of God are mere metaphors for something beyond real knowing in any kind of literal human terms. In fact, spiritual feeling for many people, myself included, is motivated in part by the realization that everything in this amazing cosmos rests on simple, elegant laws stemming from a singular, ultimately ineffable source.

Grist contributor Dave Roberts argues that it was science that forced God to "retreat" to what he derisively calls this “level of abstraction.” But this just isn’t true. Countless generations of rebbes and devout Jews have been motivated in their spiritual practice by the realization that everything is a harmonious manifestation of what is described in Judaism's central prayer simply as “The One.” In its own way, the prayer anticipates modern cosmology.

Stephen Hawking once wrote that probing the most fundamental mathematical order of nature was like “glimpsing the mind of God.” And it was Einstein who said, “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of human beings.” No Bearded One for him. And certainly this is not Polkinghorne’s God. But neither did the “abstraction,” if it must be called that, diminish Einstein’s deep reverence. Einstein himself described this reverence as "cosmic religious feeling," and he said it was motivated by a “spirit manifest in the laws of the universe – a spirit vastly superior to that of man.”

Another example of a scientist with a spiritual side to his scientific worldview is Joel Primack, a cosmologist who co-developed the 'cold dark matter' theory. He writes of a “sacred dimension to science.” And he once described the ripples observed in the cosmic microwave background radiation – the literal afterglow of the big bang itself — as the “handwriting of God.” These ripples are theorized to have given rise to all of the structure seen in today's universe (with a little help from some cold dark matter...). Primack writes, “When we interpret the ripples in the cosmic background radiation, we are reading God’s journal of the first days. What human action could be more sacred than that?”

There is no denying that an alarmingly large percentage of the population believes the Earth is some 6,000 years old, and that human beings and dinosaurs walked the Earth together. But it does not help the cause of enlightenment to be so anti-religious as to deny that science and deep religious feeling can not only coexist but flourish together.

Science Budgets

This update from the excellent resouce provided by AAAS on R&D funding is worth a read. An excerpt:

"The funding outlook for the federal research and development (R&D) portfolio looks just a little brighter going into the August congressional recess than it did a month ago, and brighter still than when the fiscal year (FY) 2006 budget request was released in February. Because of Senate-proposed increases for biomedical R&D at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and congressional agreement on modest increases for environmental research in July, the federal R&D investment appears headed toward modest increases next year despite tough budget conditions."

What Future for the Space Shuttle?

NASA finds itself at a crossroads. It has safely returned the space shuttle to flight, but the flight also showed that troubles have resurfaced with falling foam. NASA now faces decision about what to do next. I can imagine only a few possible outcomes of this decision making process.

1. NASA pursues business as usual. This would involve seeking an engineering fix for the shuttles foam problem and then seeking to fly through 2010, as current plans call for.

This course of action can lead to three possible outcomes.

1a. NASA returns to return to flight and flies the shuttle the number of times currently scheduled and retires it on schedule.

1b. NASA returns to return to flight and flies the shuttle fewer times than currently scheduled and retires it on schedule.

1c. NASA returns to return to flight and flies the shuttle until it suffers another catastrophic loss or a less consequential engineering failure/problem that forces retirement

2. NASA decides not to deviate from business as usual and retires the Shuttle after deciding what to do with the space station (and Hubble).

As an outsider, it seems to me that there are a lot of incentives for business as usual, and a significant possibility that the Shuttle is flown until it can fly no more. And of course, NASA will face a decision to pursuer business as usual following each successful shuttle flight.

Should NASA decide to retire the Shuttle it brings in a large set of possibilities for U.S. space policy. The President's "vision," such as it is, allows a lot of room for discussion of where, when, how and who. It is never too early to begin a public discussion that involves more stakeholders than just NASA about what future the U.S. and its partners might pursue. To date, neither the President nor Congress has encouraged such a dialogue.

Why ID Won't Go Away

Jacob Weisberg writes at Slate, "That evolution erodes religious belief seems almost too obvious to require argument" (Thanks Chris Mooney for the link). Chris Mooney author of a forthcoming book about how the right abuses science agrees, ironically enough enaging in his own abuse of science, "I agree that evolutionary thinking will tend to eat away religious belief "in aggregate " as Weisberg writes " and then Mooney qualifies this statement with "... but that's different from saying that it's because the two views are in irreconcilable, logical conflict. That's simply not true, as evolution is silent on God's existence." Mooney should have stuck to this last point, rather than trying to have it both ways.

Lets cut to the chase, so long as supporters of teaching evolution claim that this course of action "destroys" (strong version from Weisberg) or "eats away at" (weak version from Mooney) religious belief, then it seems "almost too obvious to require argument" to say that there will be a reflexive response by ID proponents to protect their religious beliefs from being attacked. Weisberg and Mooney would be wise to take a cue from the American Astronomical Society (just substitute "evolution" for "intelligent design"):

"It doesn't help to mix in religious ideas like "intelligent design" with the job of understanding what the world is and how it works. It's hard enough to keep straight how Newton's Laws work in the Solar System or to understand the mechanisms of human heredity without adding in this confusing and non-scientific agenda. It would be a lot more helpful if you would advocate good science teaching and the importance of scientific understanding for a strong and thriving America."

The teaching of evolution should not be presented by its supporters as having implications for mainstream religion. If it does have implications it only does so because people like Weisberg and Mooney are mapping their own religious preferences onto science curriculum, which is the exact complaint that they have made against the ID movement. Evolution is without a doubt solid science. But to suggest that it compels a particular religious perspective is as bad a misuse of science as the ID supporters are committing. Until supporters of evolution get this basic point straight, then expect the ID movement to thrive and the politicization of evolution to persist.

Divergent Views on Science Policy

One interesting characteristic about science policy is that it does not map neatly onto the stereotypical liberal-conservative Manichean worldview. To take just one example, two columns in the past month over at Tech Central Station, a web site run by folks who espouse a "faith in technology and free markets," show wildly divergent views on science policy.

In an essay from 15 July 2005, Sallie Baliunas makes the fanciful suggestion that public demands for relevance from government-supported research have lead to increasing fraud among scientists. She describes how once Richard Feynman was "freed of the impediment of relevance" he was then able to conduct novel research into theoretical physics and collect a Nobel Prize. But Baliunas does not seem to recognize that federal funding for nuclear physics in the twentieth century was motivated by a very practical objective, winning the Cold War. Without the Soviet Union, federal funding for nuclear physics would surely have been considerably less. Just look at the funding trend for this area in the post-Cold War era. She expresses concern that if scientists are asked to perform research with practical applications, it might "drive away Feynman-type thinkers" and also lead to research misconduct by scientists upset that they have not been given a blank check and no accountability.

A very different essay comes from Iain Murray, who writes,

"The distinction between basic science and applied science (and its development) is, at heart, an elitist and artificial one. It is based on a misunderstanding of the scientific dynamic that was set in policy stone by Vannevar Bush, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's top science adviser, during World War II. It relies on what is known as the "Linear Model" of science, which states that "basic research" develops a pool of knowledge from which "applied research" draws practical benefits, which are then developed into economic goods... Science's role in the economy, it appears, is mainly dependent on the technological portion -- the applied research and development -- of the model. Basic research contributes far less than the linear model suggests." Murray's conclusion could not be any more different from Baliunas' view: "When it comes to science policy, the utility of the science is what is important."

On the other side of the political spectrum there is similar incoherence about science policy. And this is a good thing. It reflects the fact that we are in a period of transition from a post-World War II science policy to its successor, and views on science policy have not yet gelled. The exact characteristics of science policy in the 21st century remain unclear, but we'll get there sooner with people like Baliunas and Murray, and their counterparts from other points on the ideological spectrum, engaging in public debate and discussion on what science policy ought to look like. And without a doubt the issues of practical relevance, federal and private funding and, yes, the politicization of science ought to be at the core of any such dialogue.

For more on this subject see this paper:

Pielke, Jr., R.A., and R. Byerly, Jr., 1998: Beyond Basic and Applied. Physics Today, 51(2), 42-46. (PDF)

On Hanging Yourself in Public

Often here at Prometheus we take issue with scientists who assert that a certain view on science compels a specific political agenda. We less frequently comment of the opposite case, scientists who claim that a particular political ideology determines scientific findings. The reasons for this are pretty obvious; hardly any scientist would make such a claim.

But in a stunning example of what appears to be a public career suicide, Climatologist Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist for University of Alabama in Huntsville well known for his long-time collaborations with John Christy on satellite temperature trends, has written an article for Tech Central Station in which he claims that he "came to the realization that intelligent design, as a theory of origins, is no more religious, and no less scientific, than evolutionism."

Now without a doubt there is an important debate underway in some parts of the United States about what should be taught in biology classes. And understanding this debate requires some considerable nuance. It requires, for example, an appreciation that some have used evolution as a vehicle to advance their own views on religion, which in a perverse way helps to motivate the ID movement. Both of these views go well beyond science, as evolution says nothing about religion, one way or the other. Such questions are, in the words of Alvin Weinberg, trans-scientific. And Spencer does a pretty poor job recognizing any sort of nuance in his piece. Contrast Spencer's muddled perspective with the clear views expressed by the president of the American Astronomical Society in a letter to President Bush on this subject (thanks to Chris Mooney and Carl Zimmer): ""Intelligent design" isn't even part of science - it is a religious idea that doesn't have a place in the science curriculum."

One has to question the judgment of Roy Spencer opining in support of ID in a fairly simplistic way on a prominent WWW outlet (and also TCS for allowing him to do so; to be fair to TCS they have published a diversity of views on ID). The lapse in judgment seems particularly egregious occurring in the same week that, as word on the street has it, Science magazine will be publishing several papers that identify errors in his calculations of satellite temperature trends. Irrespective of the merits of his climate research, and by all accounts it is solid science, he will forever be known as the climate scientist who believes in "Intelligent Design." I can see the characterizations now -- "How can you believe the science of someone who doesn't even believe in evolution?"

And this gets us to the larger point here. Spencer, perhaps inadvertently, gives support to the notion that scientific results are simply a function of ideology. This view, in conjunction with a view that "sound science" or "consensus science" compels particular political outcomes, leads to a transitive relationship where ideology determines science and science determines political outcomes, which in other words means that science is simply irrelevant to policy debates, other than a vehicle for ideological expressions. This would be a bad outcome because science matters for policy. Just not in the way that Roy Spencer and Paul Krugman would have you believe.

Drawing a line in the batter's box?

Science policy in sports. It sounds like a pretty good combination until you actually get into the details, and then it gets scary. Arthur Caplan, chairman of the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, had a great op-ed in Newsday yesterday on technology and the elite athlete. Here is an excerpt:

"So what are we going to say when the archer, the chess master, the competitive marksman, the Nascar driver or the women's professional golfer says, "If I take these same drugs I just might get enough of an edge to move ahead of my competition"? Throughout the 1990s when home runs were flying out of baseball stadiums, launched by players who obviously were using steroids, when professional football linemen got huge, when track and field records continued to fall, not much in the way of protest was heard. Americans are in love with those who take risks to break a record, or one another's bones, in the name of sport. Nor do Americans gripe when we show up at the Olympics with our athletes who have the best training, superb diets, and top-flight equipment and whomp the tar out of athletes from poor nations, some of whom seem to have shown up just to get a decent meal. We are used to employing science to our advantage when it comes to sports, so why should we draw the line at genetic engineering or new miracle pills? There is nothing about the reaction to Rafael Palmeiro's downfall that indicates we are ready to deal with the fundamental ethical question raised by his use of steroids - how can we draw the line when it comes to enhancement? Is the point of sport to see what human beings can do without aid of any sort in fair competition? If so, we may need to close the training facilities and cut back on what dietitians and trainers are allowed to do. But if the point of sports is to test the limits of human performance, then we had better get ready to add genetic engineers and a bevy of pharmacologists to the hordes of specialists now working with elite athletes from elementary school to the pros. There is no right answer to what the point of sport is. But Rafael Palmeiro has made it a question no one who cares about sports can avoid."

A New York Times article on records in sports may be and indication where we are headed:

"On Thursday night, members of the Society for American Baseball Research records committee, which has no relationship with Major League Baseball, reconciled their feelings and agreed that little could or should be done to denote any player's use of illegal steroids. Members cited how many artificial factors - like smaller ballparks, harder bats, smaller strike zones, legitimate weight-training and, yes, fielders wearing gloves - have affected statistics since the days of Alexander Cartwright. Determining how a player may have benefited from steroids, they said, would be a foolish exercise, particularly with no effort to revise the totals of players like Cash, Ford and Roe."

Caplan is right, this is an issue that has to be dealt with somehow, but where in sports, if anywhere, do we draw a line between allowed human improvements and those that are disallowed? And who gets to decide?

Paul Krugman, Think Tanks and the Politicization of Science

In his New York Times column last Friday, Paul Krugman makes the case that in recent decades conservative think tanks have focused on "a strategy of creating doubt about inconvenient research results." This interpretation is not quite right, and in fact actually legitimizes the strategies used by conservative think tanks to advance their agenda.

Krugman reinforces the idea that facts compel certain political perspectives, his in fact. He writes that conservative think tanks have "created a sort of parallel intellectual universe, a world of "scholars" whose careers are based on toeing an ideological line, rather than on doing research that stands up to scrutiny by their peers." This is self-serving and implies that peer-reviewed research supports only - surprise - the ideological agenda that Krugman himself espouses.

The approach taken by conservative think tanks, well described in a prescient 1986 essay by Gregg Easterbrook in The Atlantic Monthly ("Ideas Move Nations" available to subscribers here), was indeed focused on creating research that toed an ideological line but in many cases could also stand up to scholarly peer review. Easterbrook emphasized both of these points in his essay, "But now that conservatism is the fashion, the overlap of names and places suggests a society of like-minded people reinforcing one another's preconceived notions and rejecting any thinking that does not fit the mold--practicing what consultants call the art of "directed conclusions." ... [Conservatives] have created an intellectual competitor for the university system, which is good, and rendered it dependent on not offending corporate patrons, which is bad. They have produced a substantial body of worthwhile commentary but few true thunderbolts, considering the sums of money and time invested."

In other words, conservatives have succeeded in exploiting the "excess of objectivity" that characterizes the scientific enterprise, well described by Dan Sarewitz: "Science is sufficiently rich, diverse, and Balkanized to provide comfort and support for a range of subjective, political positions on complex issues such as climate change, nuclear waste disposal, acid rain, or endangered species." In just about every politically contested issue, from WMD in Iraq to the state of the environment, it is possible to start out with an ideological bent and go cherry picking for results that happen to support your perspective.

Krugman's use of the climate change example illustrates his own ironic attempt at cherry picking. He writes, "You might have thought that a strategy of creating doubt about inconvenient research results could work only in soft fields like economics. But it turns out that the strategy works equally well when deployed against the hard sciences. The most spectacular example is the campaign to discredit research on global warming. Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus, many people have the impression that the issue is still unresolved. This impression reflects the assiduous work of conservative think tanks, which produce and promote skeptical reports that look like peer-reviewed research, but aren't."

Too bad the facts don't support these claims. First, a large majority of people support U.S. participation in the Kyoto Protocol, and have consistently supported it (see here and this very recent poll). So whatever the public's views about science, it has not stood in the way of a strong political consensus. Second, a majority of people do in fact support the scientific consensus on climate change (data). Sure, some people doubt the existence of a consensus, and yes I've seen the Luntz memo. But if you look at trends in perspectives on this subject, there is a strong trend in recent years towards greater acceptance of a scientific consensus on climate change (data). You don't have to be a statistician to observe that the corporate campaign to "discredit research" seems to have had exactly the opposite effect. This case does not support Krugman's argument.

But Krugman needs a lack of acceptance by the public of a scientific consensus, so that he can argue that the science compels a particular course of action. If the public largely accepts the scientific consensus and even more strongly support the Kyoto Protocol, and yet policy makers have not taken the political actions Krugman wants to see then it is hard to argue that science compels a particular course of action. The inconvenient reality of public opinion on climate change shows that the current state of affairs is grounded in things like ideologies and values, and not in conservative success in sowing scientific or political doubt. In this instance, Krugman appears to be no different than the conservatives he is criticizing - taking an ideological stance and then searching for evidence to support it. In this case his use of "facts" is just as suspect as those he is criticizing. It is ironic for Krugman to write, "There are several reasons why fake research is so effective. One is that nonscientists sometimes find it hard to tell the difference between research and advocacy." Krugman's view that facts compel political outcomes is exactly the same sort of justification used by conservative think tanks, and sets the stage for partisan battles over facts, rather than the values which really underlie these debates.

Which brings us to intelligent design. To be clear and unambiguous, intelligent design is not science, but an effort by its advocates to smuggle religious teachings into public schools. The strategy that ID advocates are using is not as Krugman would have it, to "spread doubt" about evolution, but indtead to offer up ID as an equally valid, scientific alternative way to view the world (i.e., reflected in the call by ID supporters to "teach both sides"). The effort to secure a place for ID in education reflects the conservatives attempt to capitalize on the historically effective strategy of exploiting the "excess of objectivity." But the ID folks have miscalculated in this case. Unlike most areas of science, in the case of evolution there really is no "excess of objectivity" and Krugman is certainly right about that. But by making the general case that scientific facts compel particular ideological outcomes, Krugman is legitimizing the very strategy employed by conservative think tanks (and today also embraced by liberal think tanks) that debates that are really about values can be effectively turned into debates putatively about science.

On the role of science in politics, Krugman finds considerable room for agreement with his conservative opponents. As much as anything, this area of liberal-conservative agreement helps to explain the increasing politicization of science in the United States.

Flood Damage and Climate Change: Update

Earlier this year I wrote several essays (here and here) that discussed whether or not, and to what degree, climate change (human caused or not) was responsible for the growing costs of disasters around the world. Here is what I concluded:

"1. Anyone making assertions that changes in climate (whether human caused or not) are responsible for any part of the global trend of increasing disaster losses had better provide some new scientific evidence to back up such claims. Future research may tell a different story, but my reading of the current state of science is that, today, such claims are groundless.

2. This series should be viewed as an intellectual challenge to the IPCC WG2 and the climate impacts community. I propose that we in this community first begin with a hypothesis, namely, "All trends observed in recent decades indicating growing damage related to weather and climate can be explained through the growth of societal vulnerability to those trends." Then, the second step is to conduct research that seeks to falsify this hypothesis."

A May paper in the Journal of Climate adds considerable more support for these conclusions, focused on floods. Specifically, the paper by the International Ad Hoc Detection and Attribution Group (Detecting and Attributing External Influences on the Climate System: A Review of Recent Advances, Journal of Climate: Vol. 18, No. 9, pp. 1291_1314, available to subscribers here) is unable to attribute changes in precipitation to a human cause (though they do attribute other changes to the Earth system to a human cause). They write, "because of poor signal-to-noise ratios and model uncertainty, anthropogenic rainfall changes cannot presently be detected even on a global scale."

What does this mean? There is presently no scientific basis for attributing worldwide or regional trends in flood damage to greenhouse gas emissions. None. While scientists may report something different in the future, today it is clearly a misuse of science to allege a connection between greenhouse gases and flood damages. The trend of increasing flood damage is overwhelmingly the result of societal changes. (For a good example of this see this New York Times article on the recent flooding in India.) Prometheus readers: given these new findings, I'd welcome any pointers to claims relating to flood damage and climate change.

Unprincipled Relativism on Science Policy

The Boston Globe reported last Sunday weekend that science and political advocacy are becoming increasingly conflated -- "This dual role of advocate/researcher is becoming more common, especially as advocacy groups realize they can sway more opinions by asserting that their research is based on science, rather than simply on personal belief."

Readers of this blog will know that this is a subject that we've been concerned with for some time now. The Globe article focuses on a few conservative advocacy groups that "use scientific research to justify their opposition to abortion, the morning-after birth control pill and homosexuality," but using science to advance political agendas knows no ideological boundaries. It seems to me that while it is entirely appropriate to watchdog special interest advocacy groups that hide behind science, the area where we should have the most concern is when organizations supposedly working for common interests start advancing special interest agendas behind the fig leaf of science.

Two organizations that we have highlighted in this regard are the President's Council on Bioethics and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Interestingly enough, the reactions I've received to our discussions of these subjects fall pretty much into predictable political categories, with just a few exceptions (Iain Murray at TCS is one such exception, and here.). Those whose political leanings are in the same direction of the advocacy agendas put forward by the Council or the IPCC find little wrong with the advocacy stances taken by these institutions, and those opposed to their advocacy agendas find it improper. So it appears that not only are one's views on science a function of politics, but one's views on science in politics are also a function of political expediency. Too few proponents of action on climate change are willing to engage in discussion on the role of the IPCC in climate policy, and too few supporters of a conservative agenda on bioethics issues are willing to do the same with respect to the Bioethics Council. The result? Unprincipled relativism on science policy, and a general message from experts to the public and policy makers that, in the end, all that really matters is politics, not science, which opens the door for a continued politicization of science.

Stem Cell Politics and Perspectives on Science

Media Matters (MM) has an interesting analysis of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's (R-TN) flip-flopping views on federal funding for stem cell research. Here is an excerpt