« February 2006 »

Senators Seeking Response to Climate Change White Paper

From the AGI monthly update:

In early February, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chair Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Ranking Member Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) released a white paper designed "to lay out some of the key questions and design elements of a national greenhouse gas program in order to facilitate discussion and the development of consensus around a specific bill."

Rather than advocate specific viewpoints on a potential greenhouse gas reduction program, the white paper poses four key questions that Senate staff hope will induce discussion between policymakers, industries, and environmentalists.

The questions are:

1. Should regulations apply to specific sectors or to the economy as a whole, and should the regulatory process be “upstream” (targeting energy producers and suppliers) or "downstream" (targeting emitters)?
2. Should regulatory costs be mitigated through allocation or auction of allowances, and who should receive allocated allowances?
3. Should the U.S. system be designed to eventually allow trading with other systems worldwide?
4. Should the U.S. system encourage “comparable actions” by major trading partners?

The committee is currently seeking public comments in response to the White Paper. Comments should be submitted to Climate_Conference@energy.senate.gov by 5 pm EST on Monday, March 13th following the guidelines.

A limited number of responders will be invited to participate in the Conference on Climate Change being held on Tuesday, April 4th.

The full text of the Climate Change White Paper is available here.

Newsweek on Outsourcing

An article about India and concerns about U.S. outsourcing in this week’s Newsweek is relevant to our on going discussion of Rising Above the Gathering Storm and U.S. "competitiveness." It is titled, “Outsourcing: Silicon Valley East Americans once feared their jobs would be shipped to India, but the backlash was overdone. Now everybody's winning,” and can be found here. Here is an excerpt:

Not long ago, what seemed most possible was that India would steal the jobs of American workers. But as George W. Bush visits there this week, he'll find a maturing economy that is no longer all about call centers and basic tech support. Now big American investment banks and drugmakers are joining tech firms on the passage to India. R&D centers are springing up so fast that there's now a shortage of Indian engineers. And the stigma of outsourcing jobs to India is disappearing. American companies once afraid to put their names on the doors of their Indian offices now issue press releases touting their latest investments there. "American firms have gotten over their anxiety about India," says financial-services consultant Harrell Smith of Celent Communications. "Now the new anxiety is if you're not in India."

What happened to the outsourcing backlash? It has been muted by the fact that India didn't suck Silicon Valley dry after all. Actually, U.S. tech employment is growing. There are 17 percent more tech workers in the United States today than back in the bubble days of 1999, says a new study by the Association for Computing Machinery. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the U.S. economy will add 1 million tech jobs over the next decade, a 30 percent increase. "Everyone was worried about the offshoring bogeyman," says Moshe Vardi, an author of the ACM study. "But the big whoosh of jobs to India never happened.'' Indeed, that gush slowed to a steady stream once American companies realized it's tough to set up shop in a country with bad roads and a patchy power grid. Lately, American consulting firms that once predicted runaway growth in outsourcing to India have been slashing their estimates by half or more. Now American companies are hanging on to the high-skilled work that requires face-to-face interaction, while everything that can be done "over the wire" gets shipped offshore.

A Review of Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Part 2

Part 1 of this review focused on Chapter 1 of RAGS. This post focuses on Chapter 2, which is titled, “Why are Science and Technology Critical to America’s Prosperity in the 21st Century?” It seems obvious that science and technology are indeed important to society, and understanding why this is so would be helpful for understanding how to prioritize R&D investments in the context of many other demands on public funds, and the relative desirability different possible R&D portfolios. Unfortunately, this chapter does little more than sandwich reams of information between highly general and simplified assertions of the importance of R&D. RAGS Chapter 2 does very little to answer the question posed in its title. For details, read on.

This chapter begins by simply asserting the answer to the question raised in its title,

The visible products of research, however, are made possible by a large enterprise mostly hidden from public view—fundamental and applied research, an intensively trained workforce, and a national infrastructure that provides risk capital to support the nation’s science and engineering innovation enterprise. All that activity, and its sustaining public support, fuels the steady flow of knowledge and provides the mechanism for converting information into the products and services that create jobs and improve the quality of modern life. Maintaining that vast and complex enterprise during an age of competition and globalization is challenging, but it is essential to the future of the United States.

This series of assertions may seem almost intuitive, and the chapter claims that the relationship of public R&D investments and economic growth are well understood,

“the economic value of investing in science and technology has been thoroughly investigated. Published estimates of return on investment (ROI) for publicly funded R&D range from 20% to 67%.”

However, one of the studies that it cites prominently does not display such confidence or certitude. Scott et al. (2001, available here in PDF) open their report with a telling quote from Georgia Tech’s Barry Bozeman:

In the study of technology transfer, the neophyte and the veteran researcher are easily distinguished. The neophyte is the one who is not confused.

Scott et al. introduce their literature review with a recognition of the challenges faced by scholars trying to understand the complicated relationship of R&D and the economy:

The relationships between public research and innovation are recognised to be an increasingly significant topic in the emerging knowledge economy. However, this is an area beset by high levels of complexity and a surprisingly small amount of empirical research. It is a field where it is easy to be misled by simplistic ideas, or to become confused by such data as do exist and the conflicting interpretations that can be made from them. As this review will show, even now eminent commentators and analysts are grappling with some of the most fundamental dimensions of the relationships between research and innovation, science and technology.

Scott et al. assertion a “small amount of empirical research” does not square with RAGS claim that this area has been “thoroughly investigated.” One might be excused for thinking that RAGS cherrypicked the convenient parts of Scott et al. and ignored the rest. Scott et al. warn the reader that the “intuitive approach” (which RAGS asserts unabashedly) to understanding the role of public R&D in the economy can be misleading:

In the context of limited resources for supporting basic research, and the need to justify the expenditure of these resources, a growing number of policy-makers and academic analysts have become interested in understanding the relationships between basic research and economic activity. Much of this analysis has been underpinned by an attractive intuitive approach to understanding these relationships. This approach is characterised by several logical and sequential steps:

• First, science is mainly seen as a source of new information about how the world works.
• Second, because this information is published openly (as is usual with academic research findings), it is ‘free to all comers’ – a low cost input into economic processes.
• Third, the link between science and technology is obvious: scientific information is used in the creation of new technologies, which are then used in economic activity.
• Finally, given this role of science in the creation of economic returns, it becomes attractive to try to quantify the amount of economic benefit that can be attributed to the basic science elements.

This way of seeing science-technology-economy linkages is so intuitively obvious that for a long time it was simply assumed to be a valid approach. Unfortunately, it contains within it a series of misleading and incomplete ‘mindsets and myths’, the limitations of which have only become apparent through more in-depth investigations in recent years.

Scott et al. are decidedly less sanguine that studies focused on quantifying economic rates of return to research are a useful basis for specific science policy decisions,

Studies that use productivity growth as an indicator of social returns to research investments have a number of problems. In adopting a high level of aggregation in their analysis they rarely control for inter-industry differences in technological opportunity and appropriability. Furthermore, such studies do not reveal how the economic returns are realised and thus do not enable a comparison of the productivity impact of research in different scientific disciplines. A further point to keep in mind is that most measures estimate average rates of return, while marginal rates of return are required for the purposes of resource allocation decisions.

A similar critique can be found in Boskin and Lau (1995). Scott et al. do suggest that R&D provides many benefits to the economy, perhaps even more significantly than narrow studies of economic activity would suggest, through the many “channels” of interconnection between science and the rest of society. They suggest that the management of the relationship of science and society through these channels can be a more useful approach to science policy than by seeking to modulate macro-economic effects in an input-output manner. What is clear from Scott et al. however is that understandings of the relationship of science policy decisions and societal outcomes remain quite murky, unlike the assertions found in RAGS.

RAGS plays fast and loose with the voluminous data that it presents. For instance, RAGS asserts that increasing life expectancy in the United States provides a good indicator of the value of basic research. But this assertion would seem to be countered by the fact that the United States is not even close to first place globally in life expectancy, while countries with longer life expectancy invest far less in health research (and healthcare). The story of life expectancy illustrates the many complexities involved in the relationship of science, technology, and societal outcomes. RAGS presents a large amount of statistical information about how health indicators have improved in the United States over the past century, with the suggestion that these trends were a direct or indirect result of public investments in R&D. This may indeed be the case, but this argument is not developed or made here.

Further, as interesting as it is to see ratios of horses to cars in 1900 versus 1997, it is not clear the relevant of such trivia to the underlying analysis. The most telling conclusion I draw from the various graphs presented about technological progress and market penetration is how spectacularly uncorrelated such trends are with public funding of science and technology. Important questions are raised by thee data, but they are not even touched upon here.

Based on its collection of upward sloping graphs, RAGS takes a page from Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist and Gregg Easterbrook’s The Progress Paradox when it makes the claim that environmental and social indicators are almost universally getting better. It then reiterates its core assumption to explain why we see these improvements:

The science and technology research community and the industries that rely on that research are critical to the quality of life in the United States. Only by continuing investment in advancing technology—through the education of our children, the development of the science and engineering workforce, and the provision of an environment conducive to the transformation of research results into practical applications—can the full innovative capacity of the United States be harnessed and the full promise of a high quality of life realized.

What RAGS has yet to do through Chapter 2 is make an argument in support of this repeated assertion about the importance of R&D. Let me underscore that I also believe that R&D is important, but science policy decision making can and should be based on more than general statements of value. For instance, how might we judge the relative value of one possible R&D portfolio to another? Perhaps RAGS answers this in a subsequent chapter.

A Review of Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Part 1

Given the recent attention to competitiveness by the White House and Congress, I thought that it might be useful to dig into the intellectual foundation that lies underneath. This post is the first in a series and offers a perspective on the recent NRC report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm (RAGS), all 543 pages of it, chapter-by-chapter. I start the review with this post focused on Chapter 1, titled “A Disturbing Mosaic.” We provided an overview of the executive summary of RAGS here.

The summary of my critique of the RAGS report so far is that there is a disconnect between the statement of the problem and the proposed solution. It is a truism that science and technology underpin modern society. And it is also true that the world economy has been transformed by economic globalization. But it does not clearly follow from these initial conditions that a policy focused on increasing investments in basic research in the physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering, and the number of scientists and engineers, will improve U.S. “competitiveness” much less counter the negative effects of globalization. While there are a suite of other policy recommendations to be found in RAGS, the focus is mostly on government funding for science and the production of PhD scientists and engineers. My interpretation of Chapter 1 in RAGS is that its arguments are largely faith-based rather than built on a foundation of policy analysis, but perhaps that is to come in future chapters. Read on for details.

RAGS has been cited as the intellectual foundation for the focus in President Bush’s State of the Union address on “keeping America competitive.” It also has been cited as the basis for a suite of proposed legislative actions now in various stages of development in Congress, most notable the so-called trifecta of PACE bills – Protecting America’s Competitive Edge.

RAGS defines the policy problem to be addressed consistent with the thesis of Thomas Friedman’s book, The World is Flat, which argues that the world in more economically competitive that ever before. RAGS summarizes Friedman’s concerns as follows:

Friedman asks rhetorically whether his own country is proving its readiness by “investing in our future and preparing our children the way we need to for the race ahead”. Friedman’s answer, not surprisingly, is no.

RAGS takes Friedman’s concern as its central focus:

This report addresses the possibility that our lack of preparation will reduce the ability of the United States to compete in such a world. Many underlying issues are technical; some are not. Some are “political”—not in the sense of partisan politics, but in the sense of “bringing the rest of the body politic along”. Scientists and engineers often avoid such discussions, but the stakes are too high to keep silent any longer. Friedman’s term quiet crisis, which others have called a “creeping crisis”, is reminiscent of the folk tale about boiling a frog. If a frog is dropped into boiling water, it will immediately jump out and survive. But a frog placed in cool water that is heated slowly until it boils won’t respond until it is too late. Our crisis is not the result of a one-dimensional change; it is more than a simple increase in water temperature. And we have no single awakening event, such as Sputnik. The United States is instead facing problems that are developing slowly but surely, each like a tile in a mosaic. None by itself seems sufficient to provoke action. But the collection of problems reveals a disturbing picture a recurring pattern of abundant short-term thinking and insufficient longterm investment.

The RAGS focus on “competitiveness” reminds me of a statement by Charles L. Schultze, writing in a book edited by B. L R. Smith and C. Barfield (Technology, R&D, and the Economy, Brookings, 1996), who suggested some principles for thinking about R&D in the economy

First, do not specify the target as increasing competitiveness. Competitiveness is a virtually meaningless, if widely used, word. It can – and has been – used to justify virtually anything.

RAGS then identifies three “clusters” of problems:

*Tilted jobs in the global economy
*Disinvestment in the future
*Reactions to 9/11

Let’s consider each in turn.

“Tilted jobs in the global economy” refers to the reality that companies have access to an employment market that goes well beyond national borders. Far from being a problem, RAGS seems to make the case that the flattening of the global economy is a good thing, both for the U.S. and other countries:

Most economists believe that [David] Ricardo is still correct—that there will be gains for all such nations. They acknowledge that there might be a transition phase in which wages for lower skilled workers in a rich country like the United States will fall. Some say that there is, however, no reason to believe that wages for highly skilled workers will fall in either the short run or the long run. Economist Paul Romer argues that technological change continues to increase the demand for workers with high levels of education. As a result, wages for US workers with at least a college education continue to rise faster than wages for other workers. The low wages for highly skilled workers seen in such countries as China and India are not a sign that the worldwide supply of highly skilled workers is so large that worldwide wages are now falling or are about to fall, says Romer. In those economies, wages for skilled workers are low because these workers were previously cut off from the deep and rapidly growing pool of technological knowledge that existed outside their borders. As they have opened up their economies so that this knowledge can now flow in, wages for highly skilled workers have grown rapidly.”

In spite of this seeming optimism based on the consensus view of economists RAGS then presents a conclusion that I can only conclude must be based entirely on assumptions:

It has also been argued that in a period of tectonic change such as the one that the global community is now undergoing, there will inevitably be nations and individuals that are winners or losers. It is the view of this committee that the determining factors in such outcomes are the extent of a nation’s commitment to get out and compete in the global marketplace. New generations of US scientists and engineers, assisted by progressive government policies, could lead the way to US leadership in the new, flatter world—as long as US workers remain among the best educated, hardest-working, best trained, and most productive in the world.

A few things should be pointed out. First, the United States is by any measure a global economic winner and has been for decades and longer. Second, this part of the report provides no data and no argument to make the case that the “tilting” of the global is in anyway problematic from a national perspective, and the evidence that it does provide suggests that this tilting is instead beneficial. The transition from a description of the realities of globalization to the call for progressive government policies and education of scientists and engineers is abrupt. It may very well be that such actions are needed, but the case has not yet been made thus far in RAGS. Let’s move on.

The second cluster of problems is “disinvestment in the future.” This section starts by citing a public opinion poll to make the case that education is suffering in the United States. It then presents familiar statistics on the average performance of U.S. K-12 students when compared to their OECD counterparts. The chapter then argues that more of the costs of education are being placed upon individuals, rather than the public. RAGS asserts that this has the effect of limiting the access to higher education among low-income students. I would agree that this is indeed a problem. But lets be clear, it is a problem of equity and access, and no connection is made here to the larger thesis of the chapter focused on economic competitiveness.

The section next claims that “the increasing pressure on corporations for short-term results has made investments in research highly problematic.” This section could have been a bit more substantive, and perhaps later in the report we will see such substance. But according to data gathered by the NSF SRS, industry has a long-term trend of increasing investments in research and development, with the NSF’s most recent issue brief noting, “Companies spent $204 billion in current-year dollars on research and development (R&D) performed in the United States during 2003 compared with $193.9 billion in 2002.” Industry outspends the federal government on R&D by about 50%. It is not at all clear that there is a problem in industry related to R&D investments. There is certainly no evidence of “disinvestment.”

The next section asserts that “funding for research in most physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering has declined or remained relatively flat—in real purchasing power—for several decades.” Why does this matter? According to RAGS, there are two reasons. The first is that health care advances depend on such research, “Many medical devices and procedures—such as endoscopic surgery, “smart” pacemakers, kidney dialysis, and magnetic resonance imaging—are the result of R&D in the physical sciences, engineering, and mathematics.” RAGS does acknowledge the meteoric rise in funding for health research over he past decade, but that apparently is insufficient. The second reason why RAGS argues that flat funding for the physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering matters is that it creates incentives for less-risky research, “Many believe that federal funding agencies—perhaps influenced by the stagnation of funding levels in the physical sciences, mathematics and engineering—have become increasingly risk-averse and focused on short-term results.” It is not clear either what this means or why it matters. A focus on high-risk research is a function of research policies and not necessarily the consequence of overall funding levels. For example, one way to encourage “riskier” research in NSF would be to do away with the second review criterion focused on broader societal impacts and focus narrowly on scientific merit. Funding is neither here nor there. Again, there is no evidence of a “disinvestments.”

Let’s now turn to the third problem cluster, “Reactions to 9/11.” RAGS takes issue with three specific areas of U.S. science policy put into place follow 9/11, “visa policies, export controls, and the treatment of “sensitive but unclassified” information.” These are of concern to scientists because of the limitations that each policy places upon the ability to recruit and train foreign students and conduct research alongside foreign colleagues.
Because I work in a university and see the effects of these policies, I am in general agreement with RAGS that they are problematic from the standpoint of fettering research. But at the same time these policies have been put in place as a reaction to the threat of terrorism. Have such policies gone too far? Perhaps. But of course scientists want research to be unfettered by restrictions. So far however RAGS has not provided evidence for understanding the effects of national security policies in a way that would allow for a sense of the tradeoffs involved. Perhaps this is to come in a subsequent chapter.

The chapter ends by asserting – not arguing – its conclusion: “Well-paying jobs, accessible health care, and high-quality education require the discovery, application, and dissemination of information and techniques … This report emphasizes the need for world-class science and engineering—not simply as an end in itself but as the principal means of creating new jobs for our citizenry as a whole as it seeks to prosper in the global marketplace of the 21st century.” That modern society is built upon science and technology is obvious. But the important questions about science and technology are not yet raised by RAGS, much less answered – What information is it that we need? What techniques? How should we think about priorities among different areas of knowledge? How does world-class science and engineering relate to jobs? Perhaps the answers to these questions will be revealed in subsequent chapters.

Thus far, the story is about an ill-defined problem with a crystal-clear solution: more investment in research and development.

New FAQs

We've just posted a few new short FAQs, ostensibly for the media but really for anyone, on subjects that we discuss a lot around here. They are on:

Space Policy
Politicization of Science
Hurricanes and Global Warming
Drought Policy

Find them here. Your comments/suggestions are welcomed.

Reporting on the Jay Keyworth visit

It's a little stale at this point, I realize, but I wanted to give a brief report from our visit with Dr. George Keyworth, science advisor to President Reagan from 1981 -1986. Dr. Keyworth visited Boulder on Jan 31/Feb 1, the main event of which was a public lecture. I went to Dr. Keyworth's talk and interacted with him in a few other venues throughout his visit and here are some of the take-home messages as I heard them.

David Goldston on Science Policy in the U.S. Congress

In our Winter, 2006 newsletter David Goldston, Chief of Staff for the House Committee on Science, provides a perspective on the state of science policy in Congress. Goldston’s essay was invited as a response to his Democratic counter-part (recently retired), Bob Palmer, who prepared a perspective for us last summer titled, Science Policy: The Victim of Partisan Politics”.

Palmer wrote,

The Federal government is not responding to the many political challenges of the day – energy, environment, health care, global economic competition – whose resolution would greatly benefit from the wise application of S&T. When politics is overly fettered by partisanship, so is science – in the sense that its legitimate role in opening up more room for negotiations and the development of policy options is severely limited. This unfortunately is the niche that science policy occupies today.

To which Goldston responds,

In short, this hardly seems the time to lament the lack of debate over science policy in Washington or the unwillingness of Congress to air science issues. What remains to be seen is how much progress a divided Congress will make in an election year in resolving these issues. As of now, the outlook is promising.

We are appreciative of both David Goldston and Bob Plamer for not only engaging each other, but for providing us a rare look at perspectives on Congressional science policy straight from the House Science Committee. Our newsletter can be found here.

New IST Science Policy Blogs

The IQ of the science policy blogosphere just increased. The periodical Issues in Science and Technology, a publication of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, has unveiled several of the authors of its new group blog. They are ASU’s Daniel Sarewitz and OECD’s Jerry Sheehan. For those interested in science policy, they are worth a look and perhaps a link in your favorites. Here is one of Dan Sarewitz’s recent posts:

It comes as a relief to learn, from a recent NY Times article, that scientists have recently gone to Capitol Hill to give Members of Congress and their staff a briefing on “how science works.” It’s a little weird, I guess, that a single briefing could explain what centuries of inquiry and debate by scientists, philosophers, sociologists, historians, and others have failed to achieve, but I accept that one has to simplify these things for the lay audience. According to the article, Science editor Donald Kennedy told the Congressional audience that “the ultimate test of truth in science” is the replication of results: Hmmmm. Well, there’s certainly no way to replicate a billion or so years of Darwinian natural selection, so I guess the theory of evolution must not be science. And obviously you can’t replicate a general circulation model’s prediction of the future behavior of climate, since the future hasn’t happened yet, so apparently climate modeling isn’t science either. I suspect there’s some subtlety here that I’m missing, but I’m sure our elected officials were able to grasp it.

Have a look. We’ll keep you updated as Issues adds more contributors.

Consensus Statement on Hurricanes and Global Warming

Under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization’s Commission on Atmospheric Sciences, its Tropical Meteorology Research Program Panel has just issued a statement on hurricanes and global warming (here in PDF).

The statement is significant not only because it was drafted by nine prominent experts, but because it includes in its authorship Kerry Emanuel, Greg Holland (second author of Webster et al. 2005), Ton Knutson, and Chris Landsea. Frequent readers will recognize these names as people not always in agreement. That they came together to produce a consensus statement is good for the community, and also gives a good sense on where they agree and disagree.

While the statement has enough background and language to allow anyone to selectively cherry pick from it in support of any perspective, here is the take-home message from the statement

“The research issues discussed here are in a fluid state and are the subject of much current investigation. Given time the problem of causes and attribution of the events of 2004-2005 will be discussed and argued in the refereed scientific literature. Prior to this happening it is not possible to make any authoritative comment.”

Therefore, for those of us not involved in primary research on hurricanes and climate change, any conclusions, or predictions about how future research will turn out, about the role of global warming in hurricanes will necessarily be based on non-scientific factors. If you are like the IPCC, then you will assume that observed climate phenomena can be explained by natural variability unless and until the thresholds of “detection and attribution” can be achieved. This is a high threshold for identification of greenhouse gas effects on climate, and it is of course not the only approach that could be taken. But it is the approach of the IPCC.

If you are politically or ideologically motivated to use the threat of stronger hurricanes in pursuit of some goal, then you will bet that a link will indeed be established. And similarly, if you are politically or ideologically motivated to discount the threat of stronger hurricanes in pursuit of some goal, then you will bet that no link is immediately forthcoming.

The reality is that the present state of science does not allow us to come to a conclusion that global warming has affected hurricanes (e.g., see this PDF). It is suggestive, and different experts disagree about what future research will tell us. I’d bet that this condition of uncertainty about future research will be with us for a long time. Thank goodness its resolution is not of particularly large importance for understanding and implementing those actions known with certainty to be most effective with respect to hurricane impacts (e.g., here in PDF).

There is No Line

In today’s New York Times Andy Revkin has a follow up story on politics and NASA media policies. The story shows that we are rapidly on our way to intellectual incoherence on this issue. Consider the following:

"The issue is where does science end and policy begin," said David Goldston, chief of staff to Representative Sherwood Boehlert, chairman of the House Science Committee.

News flash (but not to Prometheus readers!) - There is no line that cleanly divides science from policy. The discussion of the use of the term “climate change” versus the phrase “global warming” clearly shows that there is no getting away from politics in the presentation of scientific issues. As scholars of communication tell us, politics is inherent in the act of communication.

In a more recent example of possible political pressure at the agency, press officers and scientists cited an e-mail message sent last July from NASA's headquarters to its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. It said a Web presentation describing the uncontroversial finding that Earth was a "warming planet" could not use the phrase "global warming." It is "standard practice," the message went on, to use the phrase "climate change." NASA officials said the intent was to use the most general term to describe climate fluctuations. But other public affairs workers and some scientists at the agency called it an effort to avoid mentioning that global temperatures are rising. The e-mail message was written by Erica Hupp, a civil servant at headquarters. She did not reply to several requests for comment, but several people who work with her, and others who preceded her in managing earth-science news in the office, said this was a standing unwritten order from political appointees in public affairs. "There was this general understanding that when something in this field was written about that it was to be described as climate change and not global warming," said Elvia H. Thompson, who recently retired from the same office.

So think about this carefully. The phrase “climate change” was recommended in the Luntz memo as part of a (failed, IMO) strategy to sway public opinion against action on climate change. The phrase “global warming” is preferred by environmental advocacy groups for exactly the same reason. Which phrase do you choose? The choice cannot be determined by science alone. (Though it is worth noting that the science community does indeed prefer the term “climate change”, e.g., it is the IPCC not the IPGW.) As I’ve written here before, even the specific definition of the phrase “climate change” reflects a political position.

Other examples of the use of language as tools of political advocacy in science include the use of the words “fingerprint” (e.g., here) and “harbinger” (e.g., here) as recommended by the Union of Concerned Scientists as means of political advocacy.

Decisions about what press releases are put out and how the content in them is described are always going to be political decisions. There is no scientific basis for deciding what to release or how to frame it. When the Clinton Administration was in office things were spun one way, and when the Bush folks took over things were spun another way. In every case such spinning can be done in a way that does not involve misrepresenting scientific understandings (not that spinners always succeed in this).

There is no line. Looking for one is a wild goose chase. Policies and practices for media relations in science agencies will always be political. And politics is a function of who is in power. If you don’t like it, get involved, run for office, campaign for your favored candidate, get out the vote, participate in special interest advocacy groups, do all of these things. But don’t pretend that science can resolve political disputes. There is no line.

NOAA and Hurricanes

NOAA has edited its press release that originally asserted a “consensus” among NOAA scientists, which we discussed here. How does this change the landscape of the hurricane climate issue? While it is a positive step forward for public relations, it doesn’t alter the current state of the science or most importantly, our understanding of what sorts of policy actions make the most sense in hurricane policy. Read on for details.

The material that NOAA added yesterday to their September 2005 press release reads as follows:

EDITOR’S NOTE: This consensus in this on-line magazine story represents the views of some NOAA hurricane researchers and forecasters, but does not necessarily represent the views of all NOAA scientists. It was not the intention of this article to discount the presence of a human-induced global warming element or to attempt to claim that such an element is not present. There is a robust, on-going discussion on hurricanes and climate change within NOAA and the scientific community.

The headline and paragraph could have more clearly stated:

“Agreement Among Some NOAA Hurricane Researchers and Forecasters”

There is agreement among a number of NOAA hurricane researchers and forecasters that recent increases in hurricane activity are primarily the result of natural fluctuations in the tropical climate system known as the tropical multi-decadal signal.”

The Wall Street Journal discussed this in an article today, and adds this detail:

Scott Smullen, NOAA's deputy director of public affairs, said the article was never meant to be an official position, and added that the use of the word "consensus" was a mistake made by one of his staff members. "There is no consensus," Mr. Smullen said.

As we’ve stated before, NOAA should not be in the business of issuing an agency perspective on areas of science, so from the perspective of NOAA public relations this would seem to be a positive step. But what does it tell us about the science of hurricanes and climate change? Absolutely nothing. It has been no secret that different scientists have different firmly held views about what future research will reveal. Because of the overlay of politics this has become a nasty personal debate among some scientists, fanned by media attention, fame, and hubris. What should we observers expect? Dan Sarewitz provides a guide:

When political stakes associated with a controversy are relatively low, high certainty is more permissible than when the stakes are high (e.g., Collingridge and Reeve, 1986). Fewer disciplines, institutions, and stakeholders are likely to have strong and competing interests in any particular assertion of uncertainty levels. . . But when the costs and benefits associated with action on a controversy begin to emerge and implicate a variety of interests, both political and scientific scrutiny of the problem will increase, as will sources of uncertainty.

In short, we should expect to see many studies on this subject coming out in the peer reviewed literature in coming years. Some will likely be supportive of the notion that GHGs, others will not. Advocates and scientists alike will cherry pick among these to make their case. And because the issue is so politicized only the most high-minded and responsible scientists will avoid getting caught up in mud slinging. From where I sit, both Kerry Emanuel and Chris Landsea, on different sides of this issue, have exemplified such responsibility.

But this public debate over global warming and hurricanes is also dangerous. It completely drowns out discussion, debate, and advocacy about those actions most likely to be effective with respect to hurricane policy. Politics sure is fun, and conflict draws attention. But the reality is that the scientific debate over hurricanes and climate change is going to be with us for many, many years. No matter how it is resolved, if ever, one way or another it won’t be particularly significant for policy. And the U.S. hurricane season is less than 4 months away.

On Having Things Both Ways

From James Hansen’s talk at The New School, 10 February 2006 (here in PDF).

I do not attempt to define policy, which is up to the people and their elected representatives, and I don’t criticize policies. The climate science has policy relevance, but I let the facts speak for themselves about consequences for policy-makers.

But then the very next sentence says:

I intend to show that the answer to the question “Can we still avoid dangerous human-made climate change” is yes, we could, but we are not now on a path to do that, and if we do not begin actions to get on a different path within the next several years we will pass a point of no return, beyond which it is impossible to avoid climate change with far ranging undesirable consequences. Why we are not taking actions to avoid climate change relates to the topic of this conference, which I will address in the latter part of my talk.

I have a lot of respect for Dr. Hansen’s stand against being muzzled in NASA, but his statement on policy suggests that he is either woefully uninformed about the nature of policy and politics or he is willfully couching political advocacy in the cloth of “science.” Further into his presentation he is explicitly political, and sadly misinformed about how politics works:

It seems to me that special interests have been a roadblock wielding undue influence over policymakers. The special interests seek to maintain short-term profits with little regard to either the long-term impact on the planet that will be inherited by our children and grandchildren or the long-term economic well-being of our country. The public, if well-informed, has the ability to override the influence of special interests, and the public has shown that they feel a stewardship toward the Earth and all of its inhabitants. Scientists can play a useful role if they help communicate the climate change story to the public in a credible, understandable fashion.

The public is in fact made up of special interests, which includes groups such as Democrats, Republicans, environmentalists, industrialists, academics, and NASA employees. Politics is not about “overriding special interests” but balancing them. Dr. Hansen would do well to read Federalist 10. After that he should read Sarewitz. With all this talk about scientific literacy of the public, perhaps we might start talking about politcal literacy among scientists. I have no problem with Dr. Hansen talking about policy and politics. I do have a problem with him talking about policy and politics and framing his comments as “science.” This is what politicizes science.

Dr. Hansen aside, perhaps one of the obstacles to developing effective climate policy is that we as a society have placed “Working Group 1” expertise in charge of leading the debate on climate policy when what we really need is the expertise found in “Working Group III” and beyond.

Sarewitz in American Scientist

Dan Sarewitz, director of the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes at ASU, is a close colleague and frequent collaborator. He is also one of our leading thinkers on science in politics and society. He has an essay in the March-April 2006 issue of American Scientist titled “Liberating Science from Politics.” It is relevant to frequent recent discussions on this blog. Below is an excerpt, but do read the whole thing:

”Wouldn't it be wonderful if science—and scientists—were taken more seriously in the political process? Wouldn't democracy be better served? And wouldn't many difficult problems be more rationally resolved? Take the debates over protecting the environment. It certainly seems that, here, science should be able to cut through political controversy and enable beneficial action. Yet experience mostly shows the opposite: Controversies surrounding environmental problems as diverse as global climate change, genetically modified foods, nuclear energy, biodiversity, air and water pollution, and toxic wastes rarely seem to come to a satisfactory resolution. They are instead characterized by long-term intractability and periodic resurgence of bitter partisan dispute—all in the face of a continual expansion of scientific understanding.

Blame for this unsatisfactory state of affairs is usually assigned to the political process itself, especially to those who use science to advance particular ideological agendas. If only, the complaint goes, those (a) conservatives (b) liberals (c) environmentalists (d) industrialists or (e) ignorant members of the public would understand the facts, or stop manipulating the facts for their own political gain, we could arrive at rational solutions to the problems we face.

Yet this sort of complaint—which I have heard, in one form or another, from innumerable scientists—suffers from a profound misunderstanding of the relation between science and politics. The idea that a set of scientific facts can reconcile political differences and point the way toward a rational solution is fundamentally flawed. The reality is that when political controversy exists, the scientific enterprise is ideally suited to exacerbating disagreement, rather than resolving it.”

Read the whole essay here.

Europe's Long Term Climate Target: A Critical Evaluation

Ed.- Richard Tol, a professor at Hamburg, Vrije and Carnegie Mellon Universities. has written an interesting paper forthcoming in the journal Energy Policy critiquing the scientific basis for Europe's temperature target for responding to global warming. Frequent readers of this blog will be familiar with discussions of the FCCC and "dangerous anthropogenic interference." Prof. Tol adds to the diversity of perspectives here at Prometheus and offers a challenging, rigorous critique. Richard was kind enough to summarize his recent paper for us, so please read on. RP

The European Union have set a goal for international climate policy: The world should not warm more than 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures. This is an ambitious target. As the warming response to the enhanced greenhouse effect is so uncertain, it may imply that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide could not rise much above 400 ppm, only some 20 ppm above today. If recent trends continue, the 400 ppm level would be reached by 2020. A 400 ppm target may require zero carbon emissions, worldwide, by 2050.

One may of course dismiss the European target. Who are they to decide on a global target? Perhaps the target is just political posturing and wishful thinking, or maybe it is just the opening bid in international negotiations. Perhaps European policy makers have been led to believe that deep emission reduction is easy and cheap. However, the European Union is a major player in international climate policy, and its 2°C target deserves serious discussion.

Unfortunately, the European Union seems unprepared for such as discussion. The 2°C target can be traced back to a 1995 report of the German government’s Scientific Advisory Council on Global Environmental Change (WBGU). Estimates of the economic impacts of climate change are a crucial argument in the WBGU report. At that time, the best guess for economic damages due to a doubling of the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide was 1.5% of global income. The WBGU raised this to 5.0% without any supporting analysis. Since 1995, economic impact estimates have been revised downwards, but the WBGU has not changed its target.

The WBGU continues to play a substantial role in setting targets for European climate policy. The German government follows its advice. The advisors to the Dutch government just translate its findings. The European Commission leans heavily on its reports. In its latest, 2003, report, the WBGU sticks to the 2°C target. It did revise the justification, however. For this, the WBGU commissioned a report by Bill Hare, a climate campaigner on the payroll of Greenpeace International. The Hare paper is in typical Greenpeace style: Selective citation, quotations out of context, and a focus on alarming examples.

The UK government has not explicitly adopted the 2°C target, but it has been arguing vigorously for stringent emission abatement. The UK position largely rests on two model results, by Nigel Arnell for water and by Pim Martens for malaria. The models predict hundreds of millions of people at risk of malaria and water stress. Unfortunately, these models omit adaptation. Bed nets and perhaps a vaccine could reduce the burden of malaria. Improved irrigation efficiency and desalination can overcome water shortage. Other modellers have been able to include such adaptation, and show that the Arnell and Martens models dramatically overestimate the impacts of climate change

The UK government is obliged to do a cost-benefit analysis of every major project or policy. On climate change, it duly issued a well-crafted report on the social cost of carbon, that is, the target price for carbon permits. The report was well in line with the academic literature, but its summary recommended a number that was an order of magnitude higher than what is typically found in other papers. This has left people wondering, and a review is underway.

The European Commission is also obliged to do a cost-benefit analysis. Its report support the 2°C target. Whereas the UK analysis is sound apart from an unfortunate zero in the summary, the report by the European Commission would fail as a term paper in a course of cost-benefit analysis. In a cost-benefit analysis, one wants to equate the marginal costs and benefits, but the report only looks at total costs and benefits. In fact, the report does not estimate benefits either; it includes all impacts of climate change, not the ones that can be avoided. The impact estimates are over 10 years old, although newer and better studies are available. On the abatement side, the analysis stops in 2025, even though only a fraction of the needed emission reduction will have been achieved by then. The EU report does not review the cost-benefit literature, which reaches different conclusions. A commissioned paper that reached an opposite conclusion was similarly ignored.

I do not believe that there is anything in the literature on the impacts of climate change or the costs of greenhouse gas emission reduction that justifies the deep cuts in emissions necessary to meet the European 2°C target. However, that is not my main point. If policy makers believe that the 2°C target is justified, then they should support that with arguments. Sloppy methodology, selective citations, and exclusive input from environmental NGOs do not make for strong arguments. A democratic government should support its policies with sound science and reasoned judgements. The European climate policy falls short.

A more elaborate account of the 2°C target has been accepted for publication by Energy Policy. An early version can be downloaded here.

Andrew Dessler on Uncertainty

Guest Post by Andrew Dessler

Ed.- Professor Andrew Dessler, of Texas A&M University’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences, has been a frequent and substantive contributor to discussions here at Prometheus for a while now. On the occasion of the publication of his new book (The Science and Politics of Climate Change, co-authored with Edward Parson, Cambridge University Press, 2006), we thought it might be valuable to ask Andrew to present his views of science and policy in the climate issue to stimulate discussion and debate among our readers, and to give Prometheus readers a little diversity in the perspectives presented here. Andrew introduced his book here. This is part two, on uncertainty. RP

Anyone familiar with the climate change debate is familiar with the “scientific uncertainty” argument, which usually goes something like this:

The response to climate change must be based on sound science, not on speculation or theory. There is too much uncertainty and too much that we do not know about climate change. It would be irresponsible to undertake measures to reduce emissions, which could carry high economic costs, until we know that these are warranted.

Political analyst Frank Luntz suggests that this argument can aid in convincing people to oppose action on climate change, especially when used as part of a broader set of arguments that include economic and standard rhetorical components. The foundation of the argument – that there is uncertainty in present scientific knowledge of climate change – is uncontroversial. But is there so much uncertainty that we should delay action on addressing climate change until we know more? According to this argument, the answer is yes.

To dissect this argument, let’s consider three different arenas of decision making under uncertainty:

(1) Criminal trial: Anyone who’s watched TV knows that a criminal defendant in the US is presumed innocent unless the prosecution succeeds in demonstrating guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.” In other words, the decision to act (i.e., convict) requires a high standard of proof. The requirement of overwhelming proof is based on a value judgment about the relative severity of the two possible ways a criminal verdict can err — either by convicting an innocent defendant, or by acquitting a guilty one. Society has long judged it worse to convict an innocent defendant than to acquit a guilty one, so the criminal trial has been biased to make that outcome less likely.

The crucial point here is that the standard for conviction is based on a normative judgment about the relative harm of the two possible errors. The worse we judge a particular error to be, the more we try to make it unlikely by biasing the decision-making process against it. In doing so, we willingly accept a heightened risk of making the other type of error, because we judge it to be less bad.

(2) Civil trial: In civil law – private suits by one party against another, in which usually only monetary damages or requirements to change behavior are at stake – society has judged that there is no clear basis to believe one type of error or the other (i.e. errors that favor the plaintiff or the defendant) to be worse. As a result, civil suits are decided without bias, according to “the preponderance of the evidence.”

(3) National defense: In matters of national security, US policy often takes action based on threats that are not just uncertain but unlikely. In other words, even a slight risk of a threat is sufficient to justify action. The reason is that our government judges that the cost of being unprepared to meet a threat that does materialize is much worse than the cost of preparing for a threat that never materializes. This is well articulated by Secretary of State (at the time) Colin Powell when discussing why the USA was pursuing national missile defense: “[T]here is recognition that there is a threat out there . . . And it would be irresponsible for the United States, as a nation with the capability to do something about such a threat, not to do something about [it] . . . you don’t wait until they are pointed at your heart. You start working on it now.” (Remarks at the International Media Center, Budapest, Hungary, May 29, 2001). This can be considered as a strident articulation of the “precautionary principle”.

What do these three examples tell us about climate change? The “uncertainty” argument we presented at the beginning of this post argues that we should wait until we have overwhelming evidence before acting to address climate change, adopting a standard similar to that for a criminal trial. On the other hand, environmentalists often use Powell’s missile defense argument to advocate immediate action on climate change despite uncertainty.

Which standard for action should we adopt? The choice is not scientific; rather, it reflects a judgment about the relative costs of the possible errors. The argument that climate science is too uncertain to merit action would be appropriate if one judged it a worse mistake to limit GHG emissions too much than not to limit them enough — i.e. that the economic losses from too much mitigation were much worse than the costs of unavoided impacts of climate change.

It is our opinion that this is not the case and that, in fact, the reverse situation appears more likely. If uncontrolled climate change and its impacts turn out to lie at or below the bottom of the present projected range, then an aggressive mitigation program would impose substantial unnecessary costs, presently estimated to lie between a few tenths of a percent and several percent of future GDP. But if climate change and impacts lie near or above the top of the present projected range, then not pursuing aggressive mitigation would likely expose the world’s people to much more severe costs and risks, including a possibility of abrupt, catastrophic changes.

Thus, at its heart, the “scientific uncertainty” argument is not about science at all, but about a judgment about whether it is worse to under or overreact to climate change. Further, the argument is worded so as to imply that the “criminal trial” standard should be applied to GHGs — that GHGs are innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. We believe that a strong argument can be made that this standard is inappropriate and that overwhelming evidence is not necessary in order for us to begin taking action on climate change. We have enough evidence now.

Science Suppression: A Personal Story

During 1993-1994 I was doing research on my dissertation which was focused on the implementation of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), then a new program having been written into law in the fall of 1990. Part of my research involved interviewing people responsible for the creation of the program and its implementation. Many of these people were high-ranking agency officials and very difficult to schedule, so I was only able to interview several of them. In 1994 I wrote up a paper based on my analysis for presentation at the annual meeting of the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) in Washington, DC. I sent copies of the paper to the agency officials that I did get to interview for their reaction, and this is when the fun began.

At the time I was sitting at NCAR courtesy of Mickey Glantz, who later hired me as a post-doc and then a staff scientist in his group. But in 1993-1994 I was an unpaid graduate student taking advantage of Mickey’s gracious offer of a desk and access to NCAR people as I finished up my dissertation. The paper I had drafted for APPAM was critical of the USGCRP arguing that it was structured to produce a lot of good science, but not necessarily well-structured to contribute useful information to decision makers. (For the argument see this 1995 paper – PDF -- which is descendant of the 1994 APPAM analysis).

The reaction to the paper was swift and for a wet-behind-the-ears graduate student a lesson in the politics of science. (I have the email correspondence still from these events.) The few copies of the paper I had mailed to my interviewees had multiplied and had made their way around USGCRP circles, and people were not happy with the paper. There was concern among USGCRP officials that the paper could be damaging in the budget process, particularly since I had an affiliation with NCAR, which they felt gave me some credibility.

One person that I had sent the paper to was a top official in the National Science Foundation (NSF) in charge of the directorate that provided base funding for NCAR. Concern about my paper was expressed by this official to the director of NCAR and the President of UCAR, the body that oversees NCAR. There was quite a hullabaloo surrounding this as NCAR was encouraged to disallow me from conducting research there, and more than gently reminded where its funding came from. In short, USGCRP officials wanted me gone and my paper to disappear.

The good news is that the NCAR leadership stood up for my right to call things as I saw them and stood strong in the face of what must have been very uncomfortable pressure from NSF. After all I was just a nobody grad student and NCAR very easily could have brushed me off to please NSF. Here is an excerpt from an email from a top NCAR official to others in NCAR leadership on this from June, 1994:

Maybe this is a test – can a graduate student write his dissertation on a subject that may imply that a program of our government is not perfect? Is there any such thing as academic freedom or freedom of scientific inquiry, or must we all sing the party line? If a program can’t tolerate criticism – it probably NEEDS to be criticized. I’ve read some of Roger’s work, and I found his criticisms to be generally on point and constructive. I don’t feel we should in any way “distance ourselves” from Roger’s work. But what do I know?

Further good news that resulted from this was that part of the negotiations that resulted was an agreement that I would go to Washington, DC and interview a wide range of people associated with the USGCRP so that they could “set me straight.” Thus, I was able to get access to many people high up in the program who heretofore had been inaccessible to me. I interviewed them and much of what I learned appeared in the final version of my dissertation.

I learned a number of lessons from this experience. First, I learned the importance of some distance from government when doing policy research. Although NCAR works with government funds, its staff are not government employees. NSF could exert pressure through the budget, but did not have direct line authority over NCAR leadership or NCAR scientists. Second, I learned the importance of leadership. NCAR leadership from Mickey Glantz on up to the top was very supportive of research and erring on the side of openness rather than suppression. Third, I learned that incentives for suppressing unwelcome news are strong. I did not ascribe the actions of the NSF official to the politics of the newly elected Clinton Administration or any broader war on policy research, but a misguided effort to exert control over what information came out of NCAR in an effort to protect parochial political interests. Finally, I learned that efforts to suppress typically have the exact opposite effect. Had NSF ignored that paper, no one would have read it, I never would have had additional access to leading USGCRP officials, I probably wouldn’t have received an offer of a post-doc at NCAR, and today I’d be doing something completely different than giving scientists a hard time.

Postscript: More that ten years later a top official involved in the debacle expressed to me regret that it occurred and suggested that with hindsight my analysis at the time did prove to have merit. I appreciated this and remain on fairly good terms with this person, now retired.

More Info - Thanks Gavin!

Ed.- This comment from Gavin Schmidt of NASA appeared in the comments and I thought important enough to bring to the top. Thanks Gavin very much, RP

A couple of points for clarification. Around 20 of the scientific staff at GISS work directly for NASA as civil servants (including me). The rest work for Columbia University or the contractor.

GISS's mission is to research long term climate change, rather broadly defined, it is not to implement government policy. Thus there is no contradiction in Hansen continuing to work on climate science while disagreeing on policy.

The problem with NASA public affairs was not limited to Hansen, but also impacted the rest of us even on issues and media requests that had absolutely nothing to do with any policy questions. Simple requests to explain 'global warming' or discuss the difference between weather and climate were turned down by Deutsch and company, presumably because they felt the mere mention of the science was political.

Political Advocacy and the Ethics of Resigning

At the core of the debate over NASA and NOAA policies for the interaction of scientists with the media lies an implicit and ill-defined distinction between discussions of science and discussions of policy. Most discussions of Dr. Hansen have glossed over the distinction between his right to speak out and his fundamental disagreement with the policies of the U.S. government. Is there a point at which Dr. Hansen, or other government officials in similar situation, have an obligation to resign? The answer is that it is complicated.

Democratic government would be impossible without career government employees whose duty it is to carry out the laws and policies put into place by the properly elected representatives of the people. But is reality, career government employees have considerable discretion in their duties and are key factors in recommending and implementing policy. The debate over James Hansen has thus far failed to engage these complicated issues, falling back on the worn, but safe science-policy distinction.

For example, Michael Griffin, NASA administrator, released a statement on in which he stated, “It is not the job of public affairs officers to alter, filter or adjust engineering or scientific material produced by NASA's technical staff.” And NOAA Administrator Conrad C. Lautenbacher said “I encourage scientists to conduct peer-reviewed research and provide the honest results of those findings.” What is unsaid by NOAA and NASA here is how scientists should manage discussing policy issues when they are in political opposition to the current policies of the U.S. government, which is really at the core of the debate of NASA and NOAA.

A news story from Australia helps to frame the challenge:

A FORMER CSIRO senior scientist and internationally recognised expert on climate change claims he was reprimanded and encouraged to resign after he spoke out on global warming. . . Dr Pearman says he fell out with his CSIRO superiors after joining the Australian Climate Group, an expert lobby group convened by the Insurance Australia Group and environment body WWF in late 2003. A core aim of the group was to encourage Australian political leaders to consider carbon trading — where industry pollution is capped and there are financial incentives to reduce emissions — and other measures including a target to reduce greenhouse gases by 60 per cent by 2050. The Federal Government has said it will not pursue carbon trading at this stage. It accepts that global warming is real and poses a threat to the Australian environment, but does not support mandatory targets for reducing carbon emissions. Dr Pearman, who headed the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research for 10 years until 2002, said he was admonished by his Canberra superiors for "making public expressions of what I believed were scientific views, on the basis that they were deemed to be political views".

What is political advocacy anyway? Political advocacy refers to efforts to reduce the scope of choice available to decision makers, typically to some desired course of action. In the case above, Dr. Pearman was not only acting as a political advocate in arguing for carbon trading, he actively joined groups whose mission was overt political advocacy. For his part, Dr. Pearman doesn’t seem to recognize what political advocacy actually is stating, "In 33 years (with CSIRO), I don't think I had ever felt I was political in that sense. I've worked with ministers and prime ministers from both parties over a long period of time, and in all cases I think I've tried to draw a line between fearless scientific advice about issues and actual policy development, which I think is in the realm of government." The article does not say how active Dr. Pearman was in his political advocacy, but it is conceivable that his advocacy actions were in direct conflict with his duties as a government employee and as such it would be entirely appropriate to ask him to leave. (Much the same if a conscientious objector objected to a war. Rather than force them to fight or allow them to block implementation it would be appropriate to relieve them of their government duties.)

James Hansen has clearly engaged in political advocacy unrelated to his expertise on climate when he came out in support of John Kerry, when he criticized the role of special interests he disagrees with influencing the Bush Administration, and when he offered some comparisons to NOAA press policy, "It seems more like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union than the United States." And James Hansen also engaged in political advocacy related to his expertise when he called for the U.S. government to act on reducing greenhouse gases. All of this seems quite obvious.

Let me emphasize that I think that Dr. Hansen should be able to do all of these things, provided that he is clear that he is offering his opinions and they differ from those of his employer, the government of the United States. He did exactly this in a recent speech,

Hansen prefaced his speech, which focused largely on how quickly humans must act in order to prevent irreversible climate change, by saying he was speaking as an individual. "I'm not speaking for the agency or the government," he said.

But at the same time it is important to recognize how government works in the United States, and most democracies. Far reaching national policies are set by the duly elected representatives of the people, and not unelected government bureaucrats. Governance would be impossible if every government employee sought to implement policies according to their own personal beliefs. As Sobel writes in an excellent article titled “The Ethics of Resigning,”

All senior leaders, whether appointed or career, serve in an administration and for a principle with broader responsibilities. These officials have special obligations to protect and support their principal and administration as the mechanism of democratic accountability in government. They have strong implicit obligations to stay within the policy framework of their administration and not undermine their principal.

Dr. Hansen has every right to disagree with the policies of the U.S. government. But at some point, Dr. Hansen and others in government positions have to decide where their allegiances lie – do they want to work for the government and help to implement those policies that, for better or worse, are the result of the messy process of democracy? Or do they want to throw their efforts behind the aims of special interest groups who are seeking particular political outcomes? There is indeed a choice to be made as they cannot effectively do both. And sometimes, the ethically correct choice in a democracy is to resign and take the honorable position of outspoken political advocate.

J. P. Dobel argues that the decision to resign from a government position has positives and negatives, among them,

. . . resignation can help ensure accountability to democratic institutions . . . exit from an institution can signal to the public the existence of a debate over deeper or more serious issues than had been exposed in public deliberations. A public resignation with voice adds information and credibility to dissent. Like any human action, however, resignation cuts both ways and can also harm accountability. If everyone opposed to a policy exits, the institution loses its capacity for internal reform. Exits of dissenters narrow the range of options within an inner circle, encourage groupthink, and undermine the internal trust and communication needed for honest policy discussion.

Dobel argues that career officials have strong incentives not to resign,

Career officials possess strong independent moral obligations to stay and accede to legal changes in policy as they respond to democrativ accountability and defend the competence of their office. They might believe they can ameliorate the policy, leak, or whistle blow, or work to change the policy.

Bottom line from my perspective:

NASA and NOAA have an obligation to allow career scientists to express their views on science and its relationship with policy.

Career scientists have an obligation to differentiate their personal views from official government policies.

Career scientists need to look inside themselves and ask the difficult question, “If I cannot in good faith fulfill my job and its responsibilities to implement the policies of a democratic government because I disagree with those policies, do I have an ethical obligation to resign and take on a role as political advocate working to change the system?”

If democratic governance is to be possible, then for some people in some situations, the answer to this question should be “Yes.” I don’t know what the answer is for James Hansen, but it is a question that he should ask himself every day that he works to overturn U.S. government policies on climate.

Reference: J.P. Dobel, 1999. The Ethics of Resigning, Journal Policy Analysis and Management, 18:245-263.

Slouching Toward Scientific McCarthyism

In the 20 February 2006 issue of The New Republic, John B. Judis has an article about how the issue of hurricanes and global warming has been handled by NOAA. Judis is engaging in scientific McCarthyism by arguing that certain perspectives on science are invalid because they are viewed as politically incorrect by some.

The transformation of this part of climate science into pure politics is fully embraced by those on the political left and the right, and most troubling is that this transformation is being encouraged by some leading scientists who have taken to criticizing the views of other scientists because they happen to work for the federal government. These scientists know full well how such accusations will be received. What ever happened to sticking to the science? Read on for background and analysis.

Judis alleges that scientists and political appointees in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA (pronounced “Noah”) are together conspiring to suppress scientific knowledge about a linkage of hurricanes and global warming,

Many respected climate scientists, including some who work for NOAA, believe the organization's official line on the link between global warming and hurricanes is wrong. What's more, there is reason to believe that NOAA knows as much. In the broader scientific community, there is grumbling that NOAA's top officials have suppressed dissenting views on this subject--contributing to the Bush administration's attempt to downplay the danger of climate change. Says Don Kennedy, the editor-in-chief of Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, "There are a lot of scientists there who know it is nonsense, what they are putting up on their website, but they are being discouraged from talking to the press about it."

The notion that NOAA has an “official line” on hurricanes put up on their website apparently comes from this press release from 29 November 2005 which includes the following statements:

The nation is now wrapping up the 11th year of a new era of heightened Atlantic hurricane activity. This era has been unfolding in the Atlantic since 1995, and is expected to continue for the next decade or perhaps longer. NOAA attributes this increased activity to natural occurring cycles in tropical climate patterns near the equator. These cycles, called “the tropical multi-decadal signal,” typically last several decades (20 to 30 years or even longer). As a result, the North Atlantic experiences alternating decades long (20 to 30 year periods or even longer) of above normal or below normal hurricane seasons. NOAA research shows that the tropical multi-decadal signal is causing the increased Atlantic hurricane activity since 1995, and is not related to greenhouse warming.

There is consensus among NOAA hurricane researchers and forecasters that recent increases in hurricane activity are primarily the result of natural fluctuations in the tropical climate system known as the tropical multi-decadal signal.

Judis argues that the scientific consensus has moved on:

NOAA's official position reflects what used to be the conventional wisdom on the relationship between global warming and hurricanes. Until recently, most empirical climate studies had focused on the frequency of hurricanes; and most researchers concluded that there wasn't a link to global warming--the frequency was connected to cyclical trends. But, in the last year, two important studies have suggested that there is an observable link between global warming and the growing intensity of hurricanes.

The studies that he refers to are familiar to readers of this bog, Emanuel in Nature and Webster et al. in Science, hereafter E05 and W05. What Judis doesn’t tell his readers is that neither E05 nor W05 are attribution papers – that is, neither paper conducted a rigorous analysis to explain the trends that they have documented. Here is what those papers actually say about attribution:

Emanuel et al. 2005 expresses some doubt as to the cause of the trends that he observes: “Whatever the cause, the near doubling of power dissipation over the period of record should be a matter of some concern”

Webster et al. 2005 more explicitly eschew attribution: “attribution of the 30-year trends [in hurricane intensity] to global warming would require a longer global data record and, especially, a deeper understanding of the role of hurricanes in the general circulation of the atmosphere and ocean, even in the present climate state.”

Now to be fair, Emanuel and the Webster et al. team have stated frequently in public that they firmly believe that the trends that they have documented are in fact caused by global warming. Why is there a difference between the cautious statements these scientists have made in their peer-reviewed publications and what they have said in public? The difference is that between rigorous research and hypotheses about what future research will show. Neither E05 nor W05 fully explain the trends that they see, but as we suggest in or 2005 BAMS review (here in PDF), they are “suggestive” of a linkage. Further peer-reviewed research may indeed demonstrate attribution, but it has not yet, and for those of us without expertise in the science it is probably best to rely on what the peer reviewed literature says rather than picking sides in an unfolding debate yet to appear in the peer-reviewed literature.

Judging by a quote in the Judis article, Donald Kennedy of Science thinks that this issue is important enough to violate his own magazines embargo policy when he says that, “According to Kennedy, forthcoming papers by Emanuel and by Kevin Trenberth of NCAR could strengthen the case for a link between hurricanes and global warming.” Of course it seems obvious that even if such papers are soon to appear, it makes no sense for scientists who are unaware of them to reflect what they say. [My guess is that these papers will offer competing theories to explain recent trends.] But I suppose that the logic here is that such studies merely confirm what those evil NOAA scientists should have known in the first place.

TNR’s Judis appears to acknowledge a “scientific debate” but then writes as if the previous scientific paradigm has been overturned and anyone who says differently must be in cahoots with the Bush Administration’s spin machine or conservative commentators. Bizarrely, Judis criticizes NOAA scientists for making statements fully supportable by peer-reviewed science, and in some cases work that those scientists have published.

NOAA officials have sometimes included carefully crafted caveats designed to deflect criticism from scientists who know about the controversy. But, because they don't acknowledge the debate explicitly, the general public is likely to miss the caveats' significance. Appearing before a subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee on September 20, for instance, Max Mayfield, the director of NOAA's National Hurricane Center, said, "The increased activity since 1995 is due to natural fluctuations and cycles of hurricane activity, driven by the Atlantic Ocean itself along with the atmosphere above it and not enhanced substantially by global warming." NOAA officials also resort to clever ambiguities that elude the public.”

If there is a scientific debate as Judis suggests, should Mayfield have the right to express his views on the science? Didn’t we just go through this with James Hansen? Is it that Mayfiled’s views are not politically correct and so therefore he must be lying to the public? Judis is encouraging scientific McCarthyism.

Judis continues to pile on NOAA administrators and scientists for making statements that are either consistent with existing science or their own personal views on the science,

They deny, for instance, any link between global warming and hurricane "activity"--a term that glosses over the distinction between frequency and intensity. The November issue of NOAA's online magazine declares that "NOAA attributes recent increase in hurricane activity to naturally occurring multi-decadal climate variability" (italics added). In settings where scientists are not likely to be listening, NOAA officials have even dropped the hedged and ambiguous language. On August 30, Conrad Lautenbacher, the head of NOAA, said in Weldon Spring, Missouri, "We have no direct link between the number of storms and intensity versus global temperature rise." The next month, when CBS's "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer asked Mayfield whether the hurricanes had "something to do with global warming," he replied unequivocally, "Bob, hurricanes, and especially major hurricanes, are cyclical." And, at the NOAA press conference, Bell said simply of hurricane intensity: "It'