« November 2005 »

Nano Concerns and the Production of Useful Scientific Information

Nanotechnology holds great promise for industry, business, medicine and more. As government and private industry ramp up support for nanotechnology research and development (about $1billion from the Feds last year alone), one has to wonder… what do we know about the safety of nanotechnology?

In the November 18 issue of Science, Robert Service reports on the truly amazing possibilities in treating cancer with nanotechnology. How’s this for cool: gold-covered nanoparticles that attach to cancer cells and then heat up to more than 40C, cooking the cancer cells to death! Stay tuned for the remake of the Incredible Journey… The article concludes with a brief discussion on the toxicity of nanoparticles, stating, “environmental health and safety agencies around the world continue to grapple with how best to regulate these novel materials.” Despite the promise of nanotech (indeed, it’s already being used in some products), research and development should proceed with one eye on potential benefits, and the other eye on possible harms. We should avoid moving so quickly that we find ourselves with the nanotech equivalent of asbestos, MTBE (methyl tertiary-butyl ether… a gasoline additive now being phased out due to contamination in of groundwater and uncertainty regarding its health effects in large doses), or even worse, the dreaded ‘grey goo’.

However, before any health or environmental agency can regulate nanotechnology, agencies need information about the risks of nanotech. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of total R&D focuses on identifying such risks. Today, however, the NY Times reports, “the much smaller field that investigates the technology’s possible risks is also growing”. The Times continues: “The most comprehensive effort yet to provide such a research database is to go online today at nanotechproject.org… The database, which includes just over 200 research programs, also has a small number of projects financed by the European Union, Germany, Britain, Canada and Taiwan, as well as some work that has been paid for by the private sector.” I encourage you to visit the site, sponsored by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

In addition to the database, the Project’s Director, David Rejeski, recently testified before the House Science Committee. He identified four challenges regarding nanotech safety research needs: more transparency and disclosure of government research; the need for the Fed to address public perception of nanotech risks; perform a thorough analysis of regulatory and oversight institutions in order to assess their ability to address future safety issues; and the need to prepare for the unexpected.

I applaud the Project’s work and I view this as an important step in gathering and collating the necessary information to ensure public safety. While Rejeski rightly drives home the importance of transparency and legitimacy in research needs (a point which cannot be overstated), he missed one important factor concerning the production of useful research. For the scientific research to be useful, it also needs to be relevant. Does the nanotech safety research community know what kind of information policy makers may need? Are the researchers assessing the safety of nanotech at different scales and quantities? Do researchers take into account the political constraints and realities of policy making, that is, the more rapid pace of political decision-making, the need to make decisions under uncertainty, and the shorter strategic planning horizon characteristic of U.S. politics? More importantly, are researchers, regulators, industry, and other concerned stakeholders communicating about what research is available, needed, and useful?

While this point may seem obvious, research on the production of ‘useful’ information for a variety of environmental and health policy issues indicate that science and policy are often disconnected from each other. Scientists produce information that may not be relevant to policy makers, and in turn, policy makers’ information needs go unmet or they may be unaware of existing information. Nanotechnology safety research needs to be relevant, transparent, and intentional. While the promise of nanotechnology is exciting, uncertainties regarding its health and safety effects are too great to for ‘business as usual’ in the production of policy-relevant information. Time to bring scientists, stakeholders, policy makers, and industry together to develop a plan for the production of useful scientific information.

The US Climate Change Science Program and Decision Support

A few weeks ago, the US Climate Change Science Program held a large public workshop with the stated goal of “serving as a forum to address the Program’s progress and future plans regarding its three decision support approaches.” In the Strategic plan, these three approaches are broken down into producing synthesis and assessment reports, developing adaptive management approaches and developing methods to support climate change policy making. This conference was organized around only the first two topics, not explicitly discussing the third.

I attended the workshop, along with about 800 other people. The breakdown of attendees was not given, but among presenters the statistics were clear—scientists and government participants dominated. The paucity of attendance of true “decisionmakers” who might be using the information generated by the program was readily apparent. If taking time to attend a three-day meeting is any indication of who the stakeholders of the CCSP are, the message is obvious: scientists and scientific agencies.

This poses a real problem for a program determined to make its research support decision making, in whatever topic. How can one hope to make a product that is useful to someone without some sense of the market, if you will, for that product? How can a workshop hope to provide useful feedback to program direction if the intended beneficiaries are largely absent? And how does feedback from such a workshop affect agency direction, compared with say, agency steering committees or panels of scientific peer reviewers? As Dr. Mahoney stated quite clearly at the conclusion of the conference, agencies themselves are responsible for the content of the CCSP: as to the funding-- “everything has to go that way” i.e. through the agencies. He acknowledged the limited influence that CSPO (the office that coordinates the CCSP) has in directing the work of the CCSP.

In another clear statement, Dr. Mahoney stated that the mandate of the CCSP is to do “research and observations,” not to be providing decision support. In fact, however, the Global Change Research Program Act specifically states that the program should “provide usable information on which to base policy decisions relating to global change.” This provides plenty of legal authority for program activities, including research and observations, being “usable” for decision making. And while the CSPO may not have the power to ensure the program is usable, the Committee (i.e. the agency managers) overseeing the program certainly does have the mandate to “consult with actual and potential users of the results of the Program to ensure that such results are useful in developing national and international policy responses to global change.”

Which brings me to my final observation. The final session of the meeting was devoted to setting priorities for the future. One of the discussion questions was “What information do we need to better support decision makers and refine CCSP’s future decision support priorities?” Several of the speakers presented interesting and thoughtful ideas for the future evolution of the program, including the need for evaluation of the use of information with respect to outcomes, the need for a dialogue on the appropriateness of CCSP activities to the public need, and the need to pay attention to scales and decision makers beyond the national governmental level. The response of Dr. Mahoney was to emphasize the limited influence of CSPO (his office that coordinates the CCSP), restate the focus of CCSP on research and observations, and to highlight the zero-growth budget prospects for the program, very frank although not very optimistic responses.

Although I certainly enjoyed aspects of the conference, and was pleased to see so many scientists earnestly working at this interface of creating scientific information that is usable to society, I ultimately left feeling that an opportunity had been lost. The amount of funding spent on the types of research highlighted at the conference such as regional integrated sciences and assessments, applications programs and the like is quite small, probably less than 5%, and that would be a generous estimate. The work relating to decision support is that is going on is often marginalized, and institutional structures and incentives for researchers are not well-aligned with providing usable science to improve societal outcomes. It is not clear that the CCSP has seriously taken on the challenge of decision support and how it relates to the current program structure and priorities. The optimist in me hopes that this type of transformation is possible, but it will take more than good intentions and words on a page. It will take leadership, prioritization, planning and political will.

Stem Cells and that "War on Science"

Every so often here we've taken issue with claims of a Republican "war on science." Our view is not a defense of Republican policies, far from it. Our view is that the factors which lead to the misuse of science in politics have less to do with political or ideological affiliation than with the basic dynamics of science in decision making. As a result, improving the use of science in decision making won't occur through mindless partisanship, but by actually paying attention to the dynamics of science in society. The ethical quandaries of he South Korean stem cell research program reported in the New York Times Friday throw another wrench into claim of a Republican "war on scince" and evidence that science abuses routinely span the political spectrum (The American Journal of Bioethics was on top of this and its significance early on, see this post).

Here is an excerpt from the New York Times article,

"The South Korean researcher who won world acclaim as the first scientist to clone a human embryo and extract stem cells from it apologized Thursday for lying over the sources of some human eggs used in his work and stepped down as director of a new research center. After months of denying rumors that swirled around his Seoul laboratory, the researcher, Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, confirmed that in 2002 and 2003, when his work had little public support, two of his junior researchers donated eggs and a hospital director paid about 20 other women for their eggs. On several earlier occasions, he had said that he did not use eggs harvested from subordinates and that no one was paid for egg donations. "Being too focused on scientific development, I may not have seen all the ethical issues related to my research," Dr. Hwang, a veterinarian by training, told a news conference in Seoul on Thursday."

Chris Mooney, passionate partisan and ubiquitous champion of the "war on science" argument (and who we've debated on this issue before), has claimed that President Bush's 2001 exaggeration of the number of stem cell lines available to researchers to be "one of the most flagrant purely scientific deceptions ever perpetrated by a U.S. president on an unsuspecting public."

So if deceiving the public to limit stem cell research is a "war on science" then presumably it is equally improper to deceive the public to advance stem cell research. The alternative is that one adopts an ends-justifies-the-means sort of logic in which the appropriateness of lying is determined to be a function of one's judgments about the value of the desired end. Of course, this sort of logic is exactly what underlies claims of the "war on science" anyway. Of course it also underlies conservatives calls for "sound science."

I didn't like how President Bush justified his stem cell decision in 2001 and I don't approve of Dr. Hwang Woo Suk's ethical lapses. But it should be obvious that these sorts of actions won't be addressed through simply more political partisanship, but through a carefully understanding of the complex factors which shape the use and misuse of science in decision making.

Prometheus Reader Feedback Forum

As we celebrate a Thanksgiving holiday today, we thought that it might be useful to extend thanks to the many Prometheus readers, commentors and emailers. We appreciate the interaction and lively exchanges. We'd like to hear from you feedback about the site, its content and how it might be improved. Feel free to use the comments here or send us an email.

Tom Yulsman on Religion and Science

University of Colorado professor and faculty affiliate to our Center Tom Yulsman has a characteristically thoughful perspective in 20 November The Denver Post titled, "Science and religion face off." Here is an excerpt:

"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 seem to suffer neither from the utopian fantasies and moral degradation predicted by the proponents of intelligent design, nor from the diminution of their spiritual feelings and belief in God..."

Read the whole thing.

Two Perspectives on Katrina

Rick Anthes at UCAR, writes, “There can be little doubt that the failure of society and government on all levels contributed so much to this disaster that it can hardly be called an act of God.” See his essay on the storm here.

Roger Kennedy, historian and former director of the National Park Service, writes, “Post-Katrina policy is being muddled with too much vague talk of “natural disasters” and “acts of God.” Disasters are catastrophes affecting people.” See his essay on the storm in our Center’s Fall newsletter, Ogmius, available here.

Reflections on the Challenge

A few weeks ago we posed a challenge to both parties involved in the so-called "hockey stick" debate to explain why the rest of us ought to care about the debate. We asked, "so what?" We received responses from Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick while everyone on the other side declined to participate, though a few showed up in the comments. Here I'd like to offer a few assorted reflections on the responses and the subsequent discussion.

1. First, thanks to Steve McIntyre (SM) and Ross McKitrick (RM) for providing thoughtful responses. The responses motivated a healthy discussion and for me provided some greater insight into the dynamics of the ongoing debate within the climate community not just over the hockey stick, but broader issues as well.

2. Interestingly enough, the response from SM is completely in agreement with RealClimate contributors Stefan Rahmsdorf (SR) and William Connelley (WC) that the "hockey stick" debate is pretty much irrelevant to the scientific question of whether or not greenhouse gases will affect the future climate. Consider:

SR: "The discussions about the past millennium are not discussions about whether humans are changing climate; neither do they affect our projections for the future."

WC: "Why is this fight important to the rest of us? the answer is: you shouldn't. It isn't.."

SM: "I'm inclined to agree that, for the most part, the Hockey Stick does not matter to the great issue of the impact of 2xCO2."

This agreement is interesting because it means we can move beyond the often invoked assertion that the hockey stick is the keystone supporting the entire scientific basis of climate science. Others may assert that the hockey stick is a scientific keystone, but apparently not the principals involved in this debate.

3. But the agreement among the parties raises a very interesting set of questions that have much more to do with climate science policy than climate policy. First among these questions is a very good point raised by both SM and RM, if the hockey stick doesn't matter to the case for greenhouse gas effects on climate, why was it included and featured in the Summary for Policy Makers in the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? SM provides a compelling answer to this question, "So even if the Hockey Stick did not "matter" to the scientific case, it mattered to the promotion of the scientific case." The role of the SPM and the "promotion" of science by IPCC officials is a fair subject for discussion, independent of the answers to the technical questions M&M are debating with Mann et al.. Ultimately, the hockey stick debate is relevant to policy questions, but these questions have more to do with how we think about and organize science for policy, than any particular questions of climate policy itself.

4. RM suggests that the hockey stick is a symbol of the fidelity of journal peer review, the credibility and legitimacy of the IPCC, and how governments (in this case Canada) use scientific symbols to promote particular policies. It seems to me that MM sure could have made these points a lot more prominently early on. I am more convinced about the importance of the IPCC and journal peer review than the argument about the influence of the hockey stick on Canadian climate policies, but I am open to the case being made. I see that MM briefly raise the issue of journal peer review in their 2005 publication in Energy and Environment (PDF) and nothing comes up in their GRL publication (PDF). SM did raise some of these issues on his blog last February and in a related op-ed. RM raises some of these issues in this conference paper (PDF). But these are pretty hard-to-find nooks and crannies. My unsolicited advice to SM and RM is to spend more time (a lot more time) talking about the "so what?" questions as they pursue the obscure technical details. (By all means pursue the obscure and technical, but if indeed you care about the broader issues, then it is the broader issues that matter most.) They might find themselves with some allies if they talk more about peer review in science and international assessments, for which there are many people with interests and concerns. Pretty much all I do is "so what?" related to climate science, and I did not understand the positions of M&M until they wrote these essays. All of us are more likely a tool of those seeking to use our work for their purposes if we do not clearly and repeatedly (ad nausem) stake out your claim to the "so what?" ground. Perhaps, one reason that the folks on the other side chose not to participate may be their desire to leave the "so what?" ground open for occupation.

5. The concerns raised by SM and RM about the IPCC are part of a much broader set of experiences that raise questions about the credibility, legitimacy and salience of the IPCC. SM is perfectly justified in asking questions about the IPCC. We are all stakeholders in the IPCC process, and there appears to be no independent venue for raising issues about the IPCC process. The reception of the paleo climate community to M&M, regardless of the merits of their claims, is a good reason why such an independent venue makes sense. Certainly M&M could have been more tactful and diplomatically astute in their efforts, but still, the IPCC is the international organization responsible for bringing climate science and economics to policy makers, it can't afford to be petty or aloof. I'd contrast the reception that Wentz and Mears received upon bursting on the scene with evidence that the Spencer/Christy satellite data was flawed. The dynamics here are easy to understand, and they can be found in all sorts of places, but it is the job of the IPCC to treat science and scientists fairly, not to protect a consensus or political symbols.

6. Finally a few comments about the discussion that followed. I continue to be amazed at the degree of tribal behavior that the climate community generates. Different camps give themselves and their opponents cute names -- "hockey team," "skeptics," "contrarians, "mainstream". They meet in club houses like RealClimate and ClimateAudit where they talk amongst themselves. A telling comment appeared early in the exchange when some one asked me if I was "embarrassed" to be providing a forum for RM. This tells me that some folks are less interested in resolving the climate debate than perpetuating it. I suppose the fight is good sport. But if progress is ever going to be made on the issue then people on different sides will have to meet, discuss and compromise. If I were a proprietor of RealClimate or ClimateAudit I would have some very real concerns about creating an "echo chamber". Sometimes I wonder if these sites do less to educate their self-selected visitors than make their proprietors more strident and extreme in their own views, a la Cass Sunstein.

7. Finally, I found it amusing to find myself being attacked simultaneously on both the RealClimate website and the ClimateAudit website for being in the camp of the other. As one post said, "if you are not with us you are against us". This perspective, which is held not only among anonymous blog commentators, but some scientists, issue advocates and politicians helps to explain why the climate debate is locked in stalemate, and everyone chooses to fight about science instead.

Thanks all for participating. If you have any suggestions for topics and contributors that we might invite in the future to engage one another, please send them along.

Hurricanes and Global Warming

It has been called, "absurd," "shameful," and "crazy." Now it can be called something else -- published. Here is our assessment of the current state of the literature on hurricanes and global warming.

Pielke, Jr., R. A., C. Landsea, M. Mayfield, J. Laver and R. Pasch, 2005. Hurricanes and global warming, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 86:1571-1575. PDF)

Comments on the substance of the paper are welcomed.

IPCC and Policy Neutrality?

I have received comments from two scientists, one very high up in the IPCC and strongly worded, complaining about the following short passage I wrote in a book review (PDF) in Nature earlier this year:

"the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has the temerity to claim that it is "policy neutral", yet its website trumpets its success in advocating the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol to the Framework Convention on Climate Change. As science policy has changed, these actions show signs of schizoid behaviour - the result of efforts to keep science both part of and separate from politics at a time of fundamental change in science policy."

The scientists both asked for evidence that the IPCC was not "policy neutral" as it claims to be, clearly finding my assertion jarring in some way. The evidence is here on the IPCC www site in two documents. The first is titled "16 Years of Scientific Assessment in Support of the Climate Convention" (PDF)and the second is a retrospective (PDF) by Bert Bolin, former IPCC chair, which describes the close relationship of the IPCC and Climate Convention (or FCCC), and how the IPCC shifted its organization in response to the Convention. It does not seem at all controversial to assert that the IPCC has been closely bound to the Climate Convention, and that this stance is difficult to square with the IPCC's formal policy of "policy neutrality."

Indeed, we observed here last December that the Norwegian minister of the environment had raised similar concerns about the politicization of the IPCC because of a too-close relationship with the FCCC. And NASA's James Hansen also has expressed concerns about the policy implications of the "close binding" between the IPCC and FCCC. Further, even definition of the phrase "climate change" can lead to policy non-neutrality (PDF).

But to make the point inescapable, imagine the reaction if the CIA put up on its web site a document titled, "Three Years of Intelligence Gathering in Support of the Iraq War." The IPCC has a very important role to play in climate policy. But it seems that it has yet to figure out exactly what that role ought to be. A good place to start would be to clarify what it means by policy neutrality and act accordingly, rather than come after people who point out its inconsistencies.

IPCC Hockey Stick Matters

At some point over the past couple of years, the motivation behind the hockey stick (HS) battles (played both in journal and blog) in most of its guises slipped from "science for science's sake" to "science for public policy's sake." Where it initially concerned a question of validating the original science for a specific study, it later became a question of validating what we think we know about climate change in general, and how we disseminate that knowledge to the policy-making community. Now the hockey debate has slipped further, becoming almost exclusively about credibility (according to some) legitimacy (according to others, although they are not mutually-exclusive groups). The scientific relevance of the HS is still there, but it has become subsumed by the more interesting and easier-to-follow political debate. I'll go further here and also address questions of salience; the distinctions of all three were highlighted aptly by Roger in comment #57 here and in this paper that Roger summarizes.

Perhaps those engaged in the science debate over the HS have belatedly come to realize the larger political reality that shrouds their debate: nobody in the policy-making world cares (in other words, its salience is gone). This does not completely destroy the relevancy of the debate, but it raises an unfortunate problem for the players: they are engaged in the debate because of its perceived effects on the policy-making world. (If the HS had not been included in the TAR SPM, would we be talking about this?) If the debate is irrelevant in any context other than science, the motivations behind the fight should change to something more academic and pastoral. That it has not yet done so, that it continues to invite personal attacks, invective and name-calling among other more relevant commentary, raises a question: do the players still see political advantage to be gained by keeping up the fight?

Hidden between the lines is a stark reality at the intersection of the policy world and science world: as we move closer and closer to the early 2007 release of IPCC 4th Assessment Report (AR4), the 3rd Assessment Report (TAR) hockey stick becomes more and more irrelevant. Inaction was the political response to the 2001 SPM presentation of the hockey stick. The hockey stick both as science and icon could not have been more hyped. But They saw it and They didn't care. By that inaction, the HS lost its salience. The next question is, will they care about the 2007 results?

If not salient to the policy consumer, salient to whom? Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntryre posted lengthy justifications of why their participation in the hockey stick debates matters and why the details of the debate should matter to the rest of us. Despite Stefan's post, Mann and RealClimate authors do the same on their blog, even if not directly answering the current question (e.g.). The dialogue has been revealing, and you can glean what the participants in the debate (commenters especially) care about and thus what this debate has really come to signify.

With its salience gone and with a real need to hash out the science for the science's sake questionable at best, the only reason left for continuing the debate is because the debate has become about something else entirely. To address the ways in which it the HS debate is now solely about credibility and legitimacy, moving from the very obvious to the more subtle:

1- The HS debate is about the credibility of Drs. Mann/Bradley/Hughes (but mostly Dr. Mann since as lead author and the stats jockey of the group, he has logically become the focus of procedural science questions). The credibility of Dr. Mann is crucial for his ability to continue to do science, for his ability to defend his original work and for his ability to comment on the work of others. He has fought hard in the pages of RealClimate and elsewhere to maintain his credibility both by engaging in a science debate and calling on more peripheral and even irrelevant issues such as the funding sources of M&M. (Supporters will likely disagree with this, but face it: if the science is right, the science is right, no matter who funded it.)

2- The debate has enshrouded the legitimacy of the process in constructing the IPCC TAR WG1 report and by extension, in constructing the upcoming AR4 chapters. All sides have a compelling interest in swaying the opinion of the general policy-making body toward questioning or accepting the legitimacy of the assessment process. In this both sides are effectively behaving as lobbyists, and blog commenters might be considered the individual constituents lobbying their local representatives for highway bill money.

3- The debate is also about the credibility of the skeptic community. The debate has encompassed the credibility of two outsiders and their ability to enter an esoteric debate as outsiders, but there's something more subtle at play here. The debate does not reflect on the credibility of individuals in the skeptic community and their ability to comment on climate change science as much as the debate has come to highlight the viability of the very existence of a credible skeptic community.

In this debate, the skeptic community found a legitimate science question to argue, and made a point to which not a few experts in the system said, "you have something there." Whether or not in the end there was much there, there, the point raised by Mr. McIntyre and Mr. McKitrick was appropriate to the scientific discussion. This occurred in the context of gradual diminution of credible skeptic science, illustrated starkly by the harsh reaction to publication of the Baliunas/Soon Climate Research paper. As most reasonable people realize, there is no vast conspiracy to block skeptic papers, a conspiracy that would have to span all the various publishers of all the various journals. Skeptic science is not being published because it's either not there or is not publishable. So to find a worthy item to publish is a crucial step toward credibility for the skeptic community.

4- One of Mr. McIntyre's most prominent talking points in the HS debate concerns access to data (e.g.1, e.g.2, e.g.3). There is a perception from those within academic circles and their funding sources, I think, that repeated requests for data sharing by outsiders is annoying and can be ignored. The researcher's attitude on this may not ever change, but what if the attitude does change for the NSF program manager? Or when will a PM's decision on how far to push his PIs to allow open access shift from his hands to a higher-level directive? This is also a credibility question. If the outsider and/or politically-loud skeptic community gains credibility as capable of solid science, it becomes harder to justify denying either access to data.

This also invites politics back into science from on high: although NSF is largely insulated from election cycle politics, NOAA and NASA, two other major funders of climate change science, as well as other federal agencies with more minor roles, are headed by political appointees. A greater positive collective sense of the credibility of the outsider/skeptic community will give political appointees, should they decide to go in this direction for political reasons, more justification for throwing the doors open to "skeptic science" (whatever that means).

5- It is clear that willingly or unwillingly, the hockey science players on both sides have become political pawns used by sides who have fixed policy positions in mind that will not be swayed by scientific results. It can be said with some confidence that Senator Inhofe and Representative Barton care little what the science says, and one must assume that left-side politicians who have also already staked out a position on climate change (Lieberman and others) would also be loath to switch positions based on murkiness of the science. Because the positions are set for many, the political players now must troll for evidence to support their positions. To do so with a straight face, they must also address the credibility of the science they are citing in Senate/House floor speeches and hearing statements. In this case, the credibility of both sides of the hockey stick debate affects the credibility of politicians engaged in a policy debate.

6- Interestingly, this debate has now produced downchain effects, influencing members of the science community quite removed from the direct hockey debate. Questions raised about the legitimacy of the TAR WGI and SPM writing process have amplified questions about the political or value statements by people closely involved with IPCC, such as Drs. Trenberth and Pachauri. Roger has, quite appropriately, warned Dr. Pachauri here and here and discussed Dr. Trenberth in these posts. At stake is the legitimacy of a product for policy-makers which is supposed to be policy and value neutral.

7- The science always moves on, but its use by non-scientists cycles, filters and percolates its way through the aquifer of public policy. Perhaps grasping this concept consciously or intuitively, all players seem to be trying to position themselves favorably to influence the process in the future. How they do in this debate affects that outcome.

To finish: Intuitively, the players in the game know that their battle is a battle for credibility and that in science, as well as in politics, credibility is the most important requirement to being heard and included. Secondarily, in examining the credibility of the HS, Steve McIntryre has found that there are questions to be raised about the legitimacy of an IPCC process that highlighted the HS so brightly. This is why what began as a technical fight over the meaning of esoteric statistical tests has become so important to so many. Unfortunately, that "many" does not include the audience for which the SPM and the use of the HS therein was originally intended.

Final Version of Paper

The final version of the following paper is now online:

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 2005. Misdefining Climate Change: Consequences for Science and Action, Environmental Science and Policy, 8:548-561. PDF)

Special AGU Session on Katrina

Late in the development of the program for the Amreican Geophysical Union's (AGU) fall meeting, the AGU asked Kerry Emanuel and I to organize a special union session on hurricane Katrina. The session will be held Wednesday 7 December at 13:40. It has just been added to the AGU website here. If you are attending, please drop by, should be very interesting. Here are the speakers and talk titles:

1340 U33C Marriott Salon 7 Scientific Perspectives on Hurricane Katrina: >From Planning to Recovery I

Presiding: K A Emanuel, MIT; R A Pielke, Jr., University of Colorado
1340 Hurricane Katrina, the Response, and the Recovery: Discerning the Real Disaster
*M Davidson
1340 U33C Marriott Salon 7 Scientific Perspectives on Hurricane Katrina: >From Planning to Recovery I

1355 Meteorology of Hurricane Katrina *H Willoughby

1410 Perspectives on the State of Storm Surge Modeling *R Luettich, J Westerink, B Blanton

1425 The Role of Science and Scientists in Responding to Hurricane Katrina: A U.S. Geological Survey Perspective *T Cohn

1440 Normalized Hurricane Losses in the United States: 1900-2005 *R Pielke, Jr., C Landsea, J Gratz

1455 The Hurricanes of 2005: A Reinsurance Perspective *A Castaldi

1510 Science as the Whistleblower for Catastrophic Disasters; What Went Wrong with Hurricane Katrina? *S Laska

1525 Can science better inform policy? Connecting scientific insights to social values for effective policy making in the wake of natural disasters B Holland, *S Peters, J Ramage, D Sahagian

Spinning Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data

In a press release issued today the United Nations tries to put a positive spin on data that tells a far different story. The release states:

"Developed countries, taken as a group, have achieved sizable reductions of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but further efforts are needed to sustain these reductions in gases blamed for global warming and cut them further, a United Nations climate body warned today. The acting head of the secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Richard Kinley, emphasized that a large part of the reductions was achieved in the early 1990s in countries of Eastern and Central Europe undergoing transition to a market economy. "

The release should have said that all of the so-called "reductions" are the result of the collapse of the Soviet Union which led to a one-time accounting quirk based only on the date used as the baseline for measuring reductions (1990). The press release spins off into fantasy land when it states,

""National efforts to implement the Climate Change Convention and to prepare for the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol have already resulted in emission reductions," [Kinley] said of the pact that requires 35 industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5 per cent by the year 2012. Compared to 1990 levels, their GHG emissions were down 5.9 per cent in 2003."

Let's take a look at the data in the report. Russia's decrease in emissions alone accounts for more that the alleged decrease of all 35 countries taken as a group. In other words, if we look at 34 countries rather than 35 (i.e., the 35 minus Russia) there is in fact a net increase in emissions. Perhaps the press release should have said, "Russia Reduces GHG Emissions, Other 34 Taken as a Group See Increases." It gets worse if you include states formerly part of the Soviet Union. If we also remove Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine then the remaining 29 states see an increase in greenhouse gas emissions of 4.7%.

There are other one-time accounting issues. If we also remove Germany, which as a result of reunification saw the dramatic reduction of GHGs from the former East Germany, and the United Kingdom which saw its economy transition due to changes in its economy due to policies put in place under Margaret Thatcher, then the remaining 27 countries see an increase in GHGs of 8.2%.

If we also take the United States out of the mix (in 24th place out of 35 countries), then the remaining 26 countries, which still include a number of eastern European countries affected by the end of the cold war, still see an increase in GHG emissions of 1.5%.

The real story here is not the success of the Kyoto Protocol, but quite the opposite. Emissions "reductions" that have occurred have been the result of one-time events that have nothing to do with climate policy, most notably the economic effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union, but also changing economic policies in the United Kingdom. And even taking the United States out of the mix, the remaining countries have still seen emissions increase. There may indeed be a signal of the Kyoto Protocol in this data, but I sure can't see it. The UN is misleading us all by suggesting otherwise.

In Other News

We have coming up a comment on the "hockey stick so what?" exercise. Until then, enjoy the debate, which had a slow start but has become quite substantive. Here also are a few items worth briefly noting.

1. Dan Sarewitz is profiled in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education. Dan is a close friend and colleague. He is also one of the smartest people you'll ever meet. Read the Chronicle article here here. And you can find his various writings here.

2. For our readers in Italy, I have a new book out in Italian (thanks to a set of excellent translators!). Here are the details:

Pielke, Jr., R. A. 2005. Scienza e politica: La lotta per il consenso. (trad. di B. Giovagnoli), Laterza, Lezioni Italiane, Rome.

A considerably longer version in English should be available in 2006, stay tuned.

3. The American Journal of Bioethics blog has a very thoughtful post on the ethical scandal that appears to be engulfing South Korea's stem cell research program. They are promising more substance on this next week in the AJOB, we'll watch closely.

4. The Washington Post reports a former DuPont employee's claims that the company kept hidden for almost 30 years studies that indicated that chemicals used in making Teflon cause adverse health effects. The Environmental Working Group, which is part of this story as a source of internal DuPont documents, notes in a press release that this comes just, "week before a potentially significant date in the civil suit the Bush administration's EPA has pursued against the company for suppressing health studies on PFOA, which is used in the production of Teflon pan coatings." How to reconcile this lawsuit with claims of a Republican "war on science" I don't know, but people are clever and I am sure will figure out a way.

5. More relevant to a war on science was the release this week by the Government Accounting Office of a report (PDF) on the decision process within the FDA that led to the denial of over-the-counter (oTC) status for the so-called "Plan B" drug. We'll have more on this decision next week. The short story is that the Bush Administration has clearly politicized this issue as a way to satisfy its conservative base who strongly oppose abortion. There is no doubt about this. But is is a mistake for those who wish to see Plan B receive OTC status characterize the decision in one in which science dictates a certain outcome. No. This is about the value of making a decision solely on criteria of health safety of the drug versus bringing in broader criteria of the morality of abortion. The decision at FDA was unusual because such broader criteria are rarely a factor in drug decision making. But in areas like medical marijuana, drinking ages, etc. etc. we see such conflicts arise. To argue that science compels a particular decision, as both sides have here, reflects the fact that everyone wants to hide behind science, on what is fundamentally a political decision for all involved.

Why Does the Hockey Stick Debate Matter?

Post by Ross McKitrick

Roger Pielke Jr. has posed a challenge to Michael Mann and us to briefly explain why each of us thinks the ongoing hockey stick debate matters. The technical content of the debate is summarized elsewhere (here and here; Our papers are linked under the heading “articles” (right hand column), and an overview paper by Ross McKitrick is here) and I won’t re-cap it here. That it matters is demonstrated by the enormous traffic on blog sites, the volume of comments to science journals, the opening of a Congressional investigation, etc. Obviously a lot of people find that it matters.

So: why does it matter?

1. It matters because it concerns the validity of an influential scientific paper. Mann’s 1998 and 1999 papers (which I’ll call “MBH”) have been heavily cited and highly influential. The paleoclimate field seems to have organized itself around them: other papers since then have gained prominence in proportion as they appear to back up MBH, whereas papers that contradict it have little prospect of being published or are relegated to lower-profile outlets. A popular icon in paleoclimate circles these days is what can be called a “spaghetti graph,” showing a pastiche of climate reconstructions from a small group of authors who call themselves the “Hockey Team”. They agree on few details, other than that the Medieval Warm Period is not as warm as the 20th Century.

Yet MBH turns out to have major flaws that fundamentally undermine its conclusions. These issues are interesting in their own right because MBH is a famous paper. But they also have wider scientific implications. MBH was “helped” along to its conclusions by some very convenient decisions about small changes to methodology, small edits to data series and not-so-small decisions about using contaminated bristlecone data. Maybe some of the other studies that appear to confirm MBH were also “helped” along so they would appear to agree with it. Efforts to evaluate the whole spaghetti graph has encountered maddening secrecy by the other authors concerning their data and methods, just as with MBH. But enough has been discovered to support a couple of assertions.

(a) The other spaghetti graph diagrams lack robustness. They all depend on delicate editing of weak data and just-so methodology. None are al dente: these are very soft noodles, and a plateful of weak results does not add up to a strong conclusion.

(b) There is an unexamined problem of spurious statistics in multiproxy constructions. Hockey team methods mine autocorrelated proxy data for simple correlations with autocorrelated temperature data. It is a classic recipe for spurious results, as has long been known in econometrics following the seminar studies of Granger, Engle and Phillips. What was predictable on theoretical grounds is now emerging empirically: proxies that extend past 1980 have no explanatory power for recent temperatures. And by implication, the existing corpus of multiproxy studies provides spurious information about the historical climate. Despite occasional claims of technical rigour, none of the spaghetti graph lines come from papers where the spurious regression problem was dealt with.

2. It matters because it exposes the uncomfortable reality about journal peer review. MBH(98) was published in Nature, considered by some the world’s “leading” scientific journal. Nature never verified that data were correctly listed: as it happens they weren’t. Nature never verified that data archiving rules were followed: they weren’t. Nature never verified that methods were accurately stated: they weren’t. Nature never verified that stated methods yield the stated results: they don’t. Nature undertook only minimal corrections to its publication record after notification of these things, and even allowed authors to falsely claim that their omissions on these things didn’t affect their published results.

In light of this, it is far past time for a wide-ranging discussion on what ‘peer review’ actually is. Policymakers routinely appeal to it as some kind of quality assurance guarantee. But obviously it isn’t. It serves some purpose internal to the world of scientific publishing, but policymakers’ beliefs about what peer review guarantees are for the most part sheer fantasy.

3. It matters because it exposes the uncomfortable reality about the IPCC. The IPCC’s use of the hockey stick was not incidental: it is prominent throughout the 2001 report. Yet they did not subject it to any independent checking: revealing an astonishingly cavalier attitude to the quality of their case. This raises the question of whether anything in the report was subject to serious, independent checking. They allowed chapter authors to heavily promote their own work with little or no oversight. They published false claims about the hockey stick’s statistical robustness and have never made any effort to retract them. On the basis of the MBH claims, their 2001 report reversed their 1990 conclusions about the MWP, and over-rode their 1995 warnings about not relying on bristlecone data, in order to promote the conclusions implied by the hockey stick. They encouraged governments around the world to rely heavily on a graph they themselves had not independently checked. One reason the hockey stick debate matters is because it exposes as worthless the guarantees given up to now about why the world should rely on the IPCC.

In this light I have no patience for the reaction by scientists to the Barton investigation. Why shouldn’t legislators begin asking questions about how the IPCC (and its allies in the science community) produce their reports? Policymakers have strong evidence that the IPCC process did not actually involve the rigorous checks and balances that they boasted of when releasing their 2001 report. It would be negligent of lawmakers not to open a wide-ranging investigation of this. Anyone who thinks the Barton investigation is unnecessary must think that IPCC reports don’t really matter: but they do, which is one reason why the hockey stick debate also does.

4. It matters because it exposes the uncomfortable reality about how governments use scientific information Canada (and many other countries) used the hockey stick heavily in their promotion of the Kyoto Accord. It is still prominent in government publications. Canada boasts of having spent $3 billion on climate change initiatives, much of it going to research. Yet for all the billions of dollars spent, and for all the proliferation of staff working on the matter, no one in government checked the hockey stick. Even when Canada’s chief climate science advisor and the Prime Minister’s own scientific advisor were personally informed about flaws in the hockey stick, no effort was made to remedy the government’s error. We have never been contacted by a single federal government scientist or other staff member for information on this topic, even though Environment Canada has in the past made heavy use of the hockey stick and more recently has issued communications supposedly providing “expert” commentary on my work, commentary that is predictably fallacious. Governments apparently use science when it suits them, as a promotional policy tool, with little regard to the facts of the matter. Perhaps it is naïve of me to have expected otherwise, but the realization still disappoints.

5. It matters because it exposes an uncomfortable reality about the culture of climate science. It took two outsiders to do all this work. Climate scientists in the field ignored the glaring problems in MBH for five years, and only seemed to get engaged after Stephen McIntyre and I began publishing our work. Since then the “engagement” of climate scientists has primarily consisted of ridicule, nitpicking, obstruction and catcalls from prominent scientists, especially those involved with the IPCC and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research on Colorado. The few who have offered support tend to do so privately or anonymously.

We have tried to get data and methods from a long list of IPCC scientists who published prominent papers. The near-universal response is a hostile refusal to disclose, followed by stonewalling, delay and excuses. Lately a few have taken to publishing gripes and grievances about me in Eos. They complain that they don’t have time to archive their data sets, yet they seem to have lots of time to write editorials complaining about my inquiries.

These climate scientists seem to want to have things both ways. They are demanding that society set costly policy based on their work, yet they refuse to allow scrutiny of it. As a resident alien in IPCC-land, I have found it to be a culture of secrecy and conformity, to a degree that is incompatible with a healthy, vigorous intellectual culture. They can’t escape external investigation forever, and when it happens I believe a lot more skeletons will fall out of the closets.

And I do not believe I am alone in drawing such conclusions. The opening of the Barton investigation is the tip of the iceberg. The big scientific organizations that hyperventilated about it failed to note the ridiculous contradiction in their position. They insist that the scientific community should be left alone to handle the task of reviewing and critiquing influential studies, yet they not only failed to do it when it was needed, but routinely acquiesce in the widespread culture of secrecy that effectively prevents it from happening. It was only a matter of time before these issues got put on the table and subject to a top-to-bottom examination. The hockey stick debate seems to have been a catalyst, one more reason it matters to so many.

Does the hockey stick "matter"?

Post by Steve McIntryre

Stefan Rahmsdorf and others (including Roger Pielke, the proprietor of this site) have taken the position that the Hockey Stick is irrelevant to the great issue of the impact of 2xCO2 on global climate. Even the originator of the Hockey Stick, Michael Mann, who received many awards and honors for its construction, ironically has taken the position that it doesn’t “matter”. (I do not believe that he has not returned any of the honors.) I’m inclined to agree that, for the most part, the Hockey Stick does not matter to the great issue of the impact of 2xCO2. However, I believe that it matters (or should matter) to IPCC, to governments that relied on IPCC and to climate scientists who contributed to and supported IPCC and to people who may wish to rely on IPCC in the future.

The Hockey Stick was not, as sometimes portrayed, an incidental graphic, buried in IPCC TAR. Nor was it an icon resurrected by sceptics purely to torment poor Michael Mann. It could almost characterized as the logo for IPCC TAR. Figure 1 below shows Sir John Houghton, at the press conference releasing IPCC TAR, standing in front of the Hockey Stick. The graphic was used repeatedly in IPCC TAR and was one of the most prominent graphics in the Summary for Policymakers. Some governments (and, the Canadian government in particular) relied upon it in their promotion of Kyoto policy even more than IPCC. In the lead-up to adopting Kyoto policy, Canadians were told by their Minister of the Environment that “1998 was the warmest year of the millennium and 1990s the warmest decade”. So even if the Hockey Stick did not “matter” to the scientific case, it mattered to the promotion of the scientific case. Scientists may want to “move on”, but institutions cannot, if they want to maintain any credibility. If the Hockey Stick was wrong, it would be as embarrassing as the failure to find WMD in Iraq. In both cases, the policy might well be justified on alternative grounds, but the existence of the alternative grounds does not mean that responsible agencies should not try to isolate the causes of intelligence failure and try to avoid similar failures in the future.

The issues surrounding the MBH Hockey Stick are complicated by IPCC TAR statements and decisions, which, in retrospect, seem misguided, although there is little to suggest that IPCC AR4 is taking to steps to avoid similar potential problems. The most questionable IPCC statement about the Hockey Stick is that the MBH98 reconstruction had “significant skill in independent cross-validation tests”. I added bold to highlight the plural—a second level to the misrepresentation contained in this claim. The statement appears to have been written by Michael Mann about his own work. It is now known that the MBH98 reconstruction in the controversial 15th century portion failed the majority of cross-validation tests, including the standard R2 test [McIntyre and McKitrick, 2005a]; the source code provided to the Barton Committee shows that the adverse cross-validation R2 statistics were calculated, but not reported. It is also now known that the MBH98 reconstruction does not live up to its warranty that it is robust to the presence/absence of all dendroclimatic indicators, as the reconstruction depends on the inclusion of bristlecones, a series known to be potentially contaminated as a temperature proxy. Again, this adverse information was known to the authors and not reported.

If I were in Houghton’s shoes, I would be mad as a boil about all this. Since Houghton has a sincere belief that the impact of 2xCO2 is the great issue of our times, then, if I were Houghton, I would be particularly angry at being placed in a position where I used this logo and wasn’t fully informed about adverse information pertaining to it. I also wouldn’t be leaving it up to some probably adversarial committee like the Barton Committee to sort this out. I’d be all over the problem so that my community, the community of climate scientists, was not further embarrassed and so that government institutions would be able to rely confidently on the opinions of IPCC.

If I were Houghton, one line of argument that I would not accept is that the other “independent” studies all say similar things. It was the Mann study that I stood in front of. If there are serious problems in it, which were known ahead of time and I didn’t know about them, I would carve everyone involved a new you-know-what. Now for public purposes, I’d feel a lot happier if I could at least retreat to the safe haven of other studies that showed something at least similar to the Mann study. But I’d be pretty worried about them on a couple of counts and I’d want them torn through from top to bottom. The first thing that would worry me is that the studies were not really “independent”. The coauthors all seem to swap places: you see Mann, Jones, Briffa, Bradley, Cook, Schweingruber – all well-known scientists, but all having coauthored together. I’d be worried about a monoculture and want a fresh set of eyes. The second thing that would worry me is that the same proxies are used over and over – the bristlecones, the Polar Urals etc. I’d be worried about systemic problems. I’d be worried that no one seemed to have gone through these other studies like M&M had gone through the MBH studies. Maybe there are more time-bombs. I wouldn’t just passively wait for them to go off.

If I were Houghton, I would be enraged at the public refusal by IPCC authors to show their data and methods. When I read in the Wall Street Journal that Mann had said that he would not be “intimidated” into showing his algorithm, I’d have taken immediate action; I’d have told Mann to stop acting like a prima donna, to archive every line of code and data used in MBH98 and stop fighting a pointless battle that simply embarrassed IPCC and the entire field of climate science. I’d have done more than that. I’d have notified everyone contributing to IPCC that we did not expect the same kind of nonsense any more, that anyone contributing to IPCC would have to ensure that their archives of data and methodology were complete or else we couldn’t use their articles. I’d have done so before I heard from some redneck Republicans.

I would also review how we were checking studies in IPCC AR4. If our very logo for IPCC TAR blew up on us, then something was wrong with our procedures for review. I wouldn’t go around patting ourselves on the back and telling everyone that this was the most “rigorous” review procedure in the history of science, since we’d goofed on such a prominent issue. I’d want to know why we goofed and how to avoid it in the future, or at least, how to minimize the chances of a recurrence. So when some redneck tried to use the Hockey Stick fiasco against IPCC, I’d at least have an answer.

A final thing that I’d ask myself: if this damn chart is “irrelevant” to the great issue of 2xCO2, why did we use it at all? And why did we rely on it so much in our sales presentations? Why didn’t we just talk about the issues that were important and stay away from little irrelevant stuff? Maybe I’d find out, when I investigated, that someone had decided that this was merely for sales promotion – the climate equivalent of a sexy girl sitting on a car. If that were the case, I wouldn’t necessarily be happy about it, but at least I’d understand it. Then I’d want to make sure that we were also selling steak as well as sizzle. I’d sure want to make sure that we’d really done a good job on the issue which Ramsdorff and others now say was the “real” issue: climate sensitivity to 2xCO2.

Here I’d be bothered by how little guidance we actually gave to policymakers interested in an intermediate-complexity analysis of whether 2xC02 will lead to a temperature increase of 0.6 deg C or 2.6 deg C or 5.6 deg C. When I re-examined the TAR, I’d notice that we’d virtually skipped over these matters. I’d think: it’s not enough just to list all the results of different models; let’s try to figure out why one model differs from another, what are the circumstances under which a model gives a low sensitivity and what are the circumstances that a model has high sensitivity – if that’s the “real issue”. When I saw that we’d barely touched this sort of analysis in IPCC TAR, I’d be pretty embarrassed. I would certainly vow that in AR4, we would not repeat the mistake of ignoring the “real issues” in favor of hood ornaments.

The other thing that I wouldn’t do is simply ignore the problem and hope that it goes away of its own accord. I wouldn’t rely on the assurances of Mann and similar protagonists that the various alleged defects do not “matter”. No corporation would do so in similar circumstances and IPCC shouldn’t either. I would long ago have got some independent statistician to see if there really was a problem that I should be worried about. I wouldn’t have stood still for this water torture. I’d tell Mann to co-operate with the investigator and request McIntyre to cooperate. I’d try to get the parties to sign off on an exact statement of points and issues that everyone agreed on and ones that were in dispute. Once I saw what was in dispute, I’d ask for what would be involved to determine once and for all who was right on specific issues. I would long ago have gotten tired of barrages from both sides, where I couldn’t be sure that they were not at cross-purposes.

So does the Hockey Stick matter? Yes, if you’re a climate scientist that believes that the IPCC is an important institution whose opinions should be valued. Mann now thinks that the Hockey Stick does not matter. As so often, life is full of ironies.

The Role of Social Science Research in Disaster Preparedness and Response

Yesterday the House Science Committee held a hearing on the role of social science research in disaster preparedness and response. Here are some excerpts from the prepared testimony:

Susan Cutter (PDF): "The Hurricane Katrina crisis was precipitated by a physical event, but it was the failure of social and political systems that turned the natural disaster into a human catastrophe. As a nation, we need to understand the human decisions and organizational failures that contributed to this disaster so it won't happen again. We need an independent review of the local, state, and federal responses to Hurricane Katrina so we can learn the lessons of what went right and what went wrong in the response and use these to improve our preparedness and responses to future disasters. The social science disaster research community is ready and willing to step up to this challenge and participate in such an independent review. Are you willing to authorize one?"

Shirley Laska (PDF): "I was not participating in some abstract intellectual exercise during the last few years as I was drawing from my own and others' existing research to warn professional group after professional group of an impending Katrina. The result of those warnings not being heeded was the end of my community. And as our warnings were accurate, this doom assessment of the impact is not hyperbole. Recovery of coastal Louisiana from hurricanes Katrina and Rita is in my opinion uncertain. We do not yet know if we have the family, organizational and governmental resources, ability and energy to accomplish it. And the cost to the society is astronomical. This is the outcome of scientists not being heard. And it doesn't get any more personal for a scientist than Katrina has been for me."

Avoiding the Painfully Obvious

Over at RealClimate Gavin Schmidt has written a post defending the IPCC against a critique by Nigel Lawson, a member of the British House of Lords and former chancellor of the exchequer. An exchange I had with Gavin in the comments aptly illustrates why some people agree with Lawson when he claims, "the IPCC's apparent determination to suppress or ignore dissenting views, which has become little short of a scandal, is part of a wider problem."

Lawson has some strong things to say, "The IPCC process is so flawed, and the institution so closed to reason, that it would be far better to thank it for the work it has done, close it down, and transfer all future international collaboration on the issue of climate change to the established Bretton Woods institutions." For his part Schmidt, gives no ground in his defense, "The IPCC makes its assessments in a very thorough writing and review process involving hundreds of scientists, open to critics, with transparent and predefined procedures. That it makes no proclamations in between the full assessments is not a 'scandal', it simply is sticking to its sound and transparent procedures." An open discussion on the IPCC is worth having. But here I'd like to focus in on how an exchange I had with Gavin reinforces one of Lawson's main complaints about the IPCC and the climate science community, an inability to admit error.

Lawson points to those making connections of global warming and hurricanes Katrina and Rita as an indication of scientific excess. Schmidt responds as follows:

"Just how much of an error is revealed by Lawson's last paragraphs in which he, ironically, he uses the notion of a scientific consensus to combat (admittedly widespread) popular claims of a direct link between the individual impacts of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and global warming. Since no scientists have made a claim of direct cause and effect (see our recent post on potential statistical links between hurricane intensity and tropical warming), any scientific assessment (such as the next IPCC report) will certainly not do so either. It is precisely because such anecdotal 'science' is not a balanced picture of the state-of-the-art that IPCC exists in the first place."

I agree with Schmidt's general comments. But I pointed out to Schmidt that he was simply wrong is his assertion that no scientist has made a claim of direct cause and effect. In fact, Kevin Trenberth who, ironically enough, is the lead author of the IPCC chapter on hurricanes, made an explicit connection between global warming and hurricane Katrina just last week in a congressional briefing organized by the American Meteorological Society. In one of Trenberth's slides (PDF), reproduced below, he asks, "how big is the effect from global warming?" and answers, "Implies 1" extra rain near New Orleans" right next to a picture of flooding and damage.

Let's state the obvious. Trenberth is making a clear attribution between global warming and hurricane Katrina, and is suggesting a connection to the flooding. This is troubling because, as I pointed out on RealClimate, "Perhaps there are good scientific reasons for making such a claim, but they probably should go through peer review before being announced as fact (with no sense of uncertainty!) before policy makers. Especially when other scientists, like Kerry Emannuel, assert that such precise attribution is not possible. And further, given that the IADWG has published in JOC May 2005 that attribution of trends in precipitation to GHGs has not yet occurred, it stretches the credulity of this non-climate scientist to think that such precise attribution is possible for specific events." Yet when I pointed this out to Schmidt, instead of admitting the obvious, he says the following:

"... you appear to be putting words into Trenberth's mouth. He does not claim that Katrina was caused by global warming, and I'm surprised that you continue to interpret his words now and last year to conclude this. He has claimed that global warming is changing the background in which hurricanes form (which is clearly true), but that can in no way be construed as arguing that Katrina can be directly attributed to global warming. Trenberth is as aware as we are that individual events are not attributable in the sense that Lawson implies, and any consensus statement on the issue will agree. Let's not be distracted by semantics."

I find this response amazing because Schmidt is telling me not to believe my own eyes. When pressed Schmidt himself falls back on semantics, "I read the slide, and frankly, even if the context in which Trenberth placed the comment is as you assume, it is still not a direct attribution of a specific hurricane to global warming. To keep belabouring this point, it is quite clearly not what Lawson is referring to." Can Schmidt think that such parsing will be taken seriously? How about simply stating that Trenberth is a bit forward on his skis here? Why the denial?

This is exactly the sort of behavior that Lawson has concerns about (and incidently which was cited as a factor in Chris Landsea's resignation from the IPCC.). It is no wonder that some people are losing faith in the IPCC, its leaders and defenders seem to be incapable of admitting the validity of any dissenting views, even when those dissenting views are obviously correct right before your eyes.

The Abdication of Oversight

Last summer we took issue with Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) when he sought to gain political advantage by taking on some climate scientists. I'd bet that the loud reaction to his "investigation" was one factor in Rep. Barton's apparent decision not to follow up as yet. Such external oversight of science and politics can play a positive role in limiting the politicization of science and its negative effects on policy making. Now we have a case of Democrats playing politics through climate science, and a similarly loud reaction would seem to be appropriate from informed observers. Will we see a similar reaction?

Providing ample evidence that the politicization of science by politicians is a bipartisan pastime, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and 150 fellow Democrats have introduced a rarely used "resolution of inquiry" to explore whether the Bush Administration has been hiding evidence that the current hurricane season has been caused by global warming. Kucinich said in press release last week:

""The American public deserve to know what the President knew about the effects climate change would have, and will continue to have, on our coasts. This Administration, and Congress, can no longer afford to overlook the overwhelming evidence of the devastating effect of global climate change. It is essential for our preparedness that we understand global climate change and take serious and immediate actions to slow its effects."

According to an InsideEPA.com news story, which Rep. Kucinich introduced to the Congressional Record (PDF), the "Resolution of Inquiry" is part of a strategy to try to divide moderate Congressional Republicans from the party. According to InsideEPA.com,

"A novel effort by 150 House Democrats to require that the White House turn over documents showing what it knows about climate change effects on U.S. coastal regions may force key Republican moderates to choose party loyalty over their environmental records, or risk leaving themselves open to attacks from conservative opponents in upcoming primaries, sources say... Kucinich's resolution does not specifically mention hurricanes, but congressional staffers familiar with the effort say Congress is growing more concerned that climate change may have increased hurricane severity in light of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. ''This has been a brutal hurricane season and many think climate change will be the defining problem of our generation. We want to know what [President Bush] knew,'' according to one staffer."

InsideEPA.com describes the Democrats strategy as one that seeks to place a few congressional Republicans in a tight spot,

"Observers say the ROI will present House Science Committee Chairman SHERWOOD BOEHLERT (R-NY), Rep. VERNON EHLERS (R-MI) and Rep. WAYNE GILCHREST (R-MD) with a critical choice between siding with their party in deflecting attention from the president's climate policies and their environmental records, which have won them praise and endorsements from environmental groups. Their decisions on the matter may prove crucial during their 2006 primaries, where at least one is expected to face a tough fight against a more conservative GOP candidate."

The InsideEPA.com article goes into some details about why it is that Congressmen Boehlert, Ehlers and Gilchrest are ripe for a squeeze.

What to make of this? Congressional Democrats are playing politics, trying to gain some advantage in the upcoming congressional election, which is what they are supposed to do. With respect to the climate issue, because the Democrats are the minority party they don't have the power to call hearings or otherwise set the agenda, so it might be appropriate to use the "Resolution of Inquiry" to access information. (For details on the congressional "Resolution of Inquiry" see this report (PDF) from the Congressional Research Service at the Federation of American Scientists website.)

No matter where one comes out on the climate issue, it is obvious that the Democrats are playing their politics through science. The tone of his inquiry smacks of black helicopters and the trilateral commission. As a close observer of the hurricane research community in NSF, Navy, and NOAA over the past 10 years, I know that there is no hidden smoking gun waiting to be discovered in the bureaucracy that shows that the Bush Administration had forewarning that this year's hurricane season would be particularly bad, and kept that information under wraps to appease their oil and gas friends. Perhaps the Bush Administration would do such a thing, but in this case it did not, for the simple reason that such information does not exist. It doesn't.

The playing of partisan politics by Democrats through the science of climate change and hurricanes may come at a price in policy effectiveness. As we have stated here many times, there is simply no evidence to suggest that policy makers can modulate hurricane behavior, much less their impacts for the foreseeable future through energy policies. Representative Kucinich and his 150 colleagues risk focusing attention on bad hurricane policies and, as a consequence, overlooking good ones.

This would be a good time for leaders in the scientific community to discuss the policy issues associated with hurricanes and climate change. Is there a smoking gun on the science of hurricanes in the bureaucracy? Can energy policies be an effective tool of disaster mitigation? This would also be a good time for the "war on science" crowd to burnish their alleged bipartisan credentials. Call me a jaded cynic, but my guess is that both groups will be stony silent, reflecting their own committed partisanship. If so, then you will be seeing a very real consequence of the politicization of science - the abdication of oversight.

Scientific Protectionism or Globalization?

Last month the National Research Council released a report titled "Rising Above The Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future." The report argues, "The unmatched vitality of the United States' economy and science and technology enterprise has made this country a world leader for decades, allowing Americans to benefit from a high standard of living and national security. But in a world where advanced knowledge is widespread and low-cost labor is readily available, U.S. advantages in the marketplace and in science and technology have begun to erode. A comprehensive and coordinated federal effort is urgently needed to bolster U.S. competitiveness and pre-eminence in these areas so that the nation will consistently gain from the opportunities offered by rapid globalization."

Writing at SciDev.net Caroline S. Wagner and Calestous Juma take issue with the report's focus on science as a area of competition among nations. They write, "The National Academy of Sciences report encourages an 'us and them' mentality within knowledge systems that can only exacerbate political instabilities and resentment."

Instead, Wagner and Juma argue for a collaborative approach to realizing the benefits of global knowledge,

"Although each countries' individual scientific output is still duly attributed to them, knowledge transcends national boundaries. And the new knowledge networks are being continually created within global networks of colleagues sharing resources and ideas. It would be highly inefficient for every country to recreate the entire infrastructure needed for a robust knowledge economy. Success is defined by the ability to forge links that largely depend on one's attractiveness as a partner. And this is a two-way street. Any nation that sees science and technology as a way to build national strength discovers that the knowledge available from the global network is an asset that can be used, added to, and exploited locally. Scientific protectionism, on the other hand, denies nations access to knowledge that forms the lifeline of any innovation system."

The debate between the NRC and Wagner/Juma is over what sort of problem the United States faces, or even if there is a problem. Before we can understand what sorts of actions make sense, it is important to know what kind of problem those actions are to deal with. The debate is complicated not only because of the complexities of international economics and politics, but also because the supply and demand for scientific expertise have been used somewhat disingenuously by the U.S. scientific community (e.g., see this exchange) in the early 1990s as a Trojan horse argument to justify more funding for research. The issue of national competitiveness and scientific innovation takes the form of debates over immigration policy, science policy, innovation policy and even tax and trade policies. It also manifests itself in debate over the "outsourcing" of jobs, patent and intellectual property rights and the broader debates on globalization and development.

Clearly, this is an important area of discussion with practical implications, and even in the context of decades of discussion of technology policy, we seem to be in the early stages of deciding what sort of issue we are grappling with. Those of us with interests in science and technology policy should be spending some time thinking about these issues, as they are certain to occupy an increasing amount of attention among decision makers.

To learn more about this area, check out this syllabus from a course taught at Harvard by Calestous Juma, "Technological Innovation and Development Policy."

Presentation on Hurricanes and Global Warming

Yesterday I participated in a panel session of the Board on Atmospheric Science and Climate of the National Research Council. Also on the panel were Kerry Emanuel (MIT), Greg Holland (UCAR, and co-author of the recent Webster et al. 2005 paper in Science), and Rick Anthes (UCAR). It was an interesting panel with good questions from the BASC and others who attended.

If you'd like to see what I presented, basically a summary of our forthcoming BAMS paper, you can downoad it is PDF here.

Old Wine in New Bottles

Earlier this week the Harvard Medical School's Center for Health and the Global Environment issued a report titled, "Climate Change Futures: Health, Ecological, and Economic Dimensions" (PDF). Reports on climate change in the "grey literature" are a dime a dozen, but this one is worth singling out.

The report includes a section (pp. 21-25) focused on "Trend Analyses: Extreme Weather Events and Costs," a subject that we have discussed here in some detail. The Harvard Report repeats some of the same old inaccuracies. The report states, "With weather-related los