« June 2006 »

An Honorable Retirement for the Shuttle

At Space.com Leonard David has a great news story on the upcoming shuttle launch with some interesting perspectives:

The soon-to-depart shuttle mission evokes a good news/bad news comeback from Joseph Pelton, a research professor with the Institute for Applied Space Research at George Washington University.

"The good news is that the shuttle is still a relatively safe experimental space vehicle with a 1-in-60 to 1-in-100 chance of a category one failure—loss of vehicle, loss of crew. The bad news is that after $2 billion in expenditures for the reflight effort—and now many years after the Columbia failure—critical objectives set by the CAIB have not been accomplished," Pelton told SPACE.com.

Pelton was lead investigator for Space Safety Report: Vulnerabilities and Risk Reduction In U.S. Human Space Flight Programs an independent assessment prepared and released last year by the Space and Advanced Communications Research Institute (SACRI) of George Washington University.

Pelton singled out several remaining key issues: the stiffening of the shuttle outer hull; the ability perform repairs to the shuttle’s thermal protection system in space; and correction of the foam-shedding problem.

"The mantra that NASA developed after Columbia that said ‘find it, fix it and fly safely again’ rings hollow after so much time and money has been spent with such limited results," Pelton explained.

NASA credibility and space funding

"In truth, the problems that NASA continues to experience with its shuttle and the International Space Station program—really the only reason the shuttle is still flying—goes back at least to the Challenger disaster in 1986," Pelton said.

Two major national space commissions back then—one looking into the Challenger accident, the other delving into the future of the American space program—noted that the shuttle was indeed becoming “obsolescent” and that it had to be replaced by another vehicle within at least 15 years, or 2001, Pelton noted.

"Instead of developing alternative plans for the launch of International Space Station components in smaller and more modular parts at that time," Pelton said, "NASA pushed ahead without developing a new vehicle, nor developing a back-up plan.

Now, not only is NASA’s credibility and space funding at risk, Pelton continued, but also at risk are the agency’s international partners that are engaged in the $100 billion station program. “The now ‘tar baby-like tandem’ of the ISS and the space shuttle has done great harm to space programs around the world."

NASA has over-invested in both the shuttle and station initiatives, Pelton said, taking away money from programs that truly matter to the United States and indeed the world.

Never too late to start over

"The truth of the matter is that the shuttle program—an experimental program when designed in the 1970s—should have been grounded years ago. It should be replaced by better, safer, and more cost efficient programs. The development of private space vehicles that are human-rated, something that NASA is currently actively supporting, is clearly the right step forward," Pelton advised.

Ultimately, it is not NASA that is at fault here, Pelton said, pointing to national leadership that has often overruled the space agency on where and how to spend their limited resources. It is never too late to start over, he said, and develop a NASA program that makes sense, balances expenditures, and set priorities that matter to the person in the street.

"The question is not whether NASA should be grounding the space shuttle and putting them in museums,” Pelton concluded, “but what are its backup plans and how can it restore balance to its overall space programs and give new focus to its various NASA centers?"

It is worth noting that under Pelton's estimates of risk (1/60 to 1/100) this equates to a probability of a catastrophic accident at between 15% an 63%(!) over 16 remaining flights. Lets say this again -- if Pelton's risk estimates are correct there is a rather high probability of another lost shuttle.

Space historian Roger Launius asks, appropriately, about the option of allowing the Shuttle to have an "honorable retirement":

Indeed, there is a lot riding on the next shuttle liftoff, beyond technology.

"This is one of the most significant missions of the shuttle program because of the policy implications that it presents," said Roger Launius, Chair, Division of Space History at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Launius underscored the fact that Griffin has stated clearly that if NASA does not fly successfully this time it would mean the end of the program. "That, of course, begs the question [as to] what defines a successful mission?"

The last mission, for all of its challenges, was successful by most measures. It launched, flew, and returned safely; it delivered its supplies and equipment to the ISS; it undertook several safety tests and repairs.

That being the case, several questions percolate to the surface, Launius said.

"Is a level of success commensurate with the last mission sufficient to conclude that the program will continue? If that is not where the bar is set, is it higher or lower? I confess that I have no idea. I also confess that I hope and pray that this mission is a rousing success, by any standard that one might want to apply," Launius told SPACE.com.

Honorable retirement

Launius also senses there is something present with the forthcoming shuttle flight that he hasn’t necessarily experienced before.

"A sustained and underlying depression seems present among those working in the program, some of them for their entire careers," Launius explained. "There is a sense of ending—as well as an ever-present perception of loss and failure—present among many members of the space shuttle team."

Without question, Launius said, the space shuttle will be retired within something less than a decade, whether it is after this next mission or 2010 or sometime a bit later.

"As the space shuttle enters its home stretch, it should be remembered with both praises for its many accomplishments and criticisms for its shortcomings,” Launius suggested. “I am in favor of giving the shuttle an honorable retirement and to give a full measure of respect and thanks to those charged with its operations over the years for their efforts."

In the process of retiring the space shuttle, "I hope NASA will ensure that the knowledge and expertise gained in the shuttle program is preserved and used for the future," Launius concluded.

In my view NASA is acting like an aging boxer, not knowing when to say when. The end result is often not pretty.

Westword on Bill Gray

Here is a pretty thoughtful article on Bill Gray and a number of familiar folks in the hurricane debate.

The Is-Ought Problem

Al Gore obviously hasn't read Andrew Dessler's book:

. . . if you accept the truth of what the scientific community is saying, it gives you a moral imperative to start to rein in the 70 million tons of global warming pollution that human civilization is putting into the atmosphere every day.

This is a fine example of the is-ought problem described by philospoher David Hume. ASU's Brad Allenby has explained why we should care about the is-ought problem in science:

. . . the elite that has been created by practice of the scientific method uses the concomitant power not just to express the results of particular research initiatives, but to create, support, and implement policy responses affecting many non-scientific communities and intellectual domains in myriad ways. In doing so, they are not exercising expertise in these non-scientific domains, but rather transforming their privilege in the scientific domains into authority in non-scientific domains.

Just Barely Unacceptable Risk

The Space Shuttle is set to launch on July 1, 2006. According to NASA officials, this is the first flight being launched in which the risk has been deemed “unacceptable”:

NASA's top safety official and the agency's chief engineer said today they opposed the shuttle Discovery's launch July 1 because of concern about so-called ice-frost ramps on the ship's external tank that could shed foam and cause catastrophic impact damage. In fact, Discovery's flight will be the first in shuttle history with a system formally classified in the "unacceptable risk" category.

Bryan O'Connor, director of Safety and Mission Assurance at NASA headquarters in Washington, and Chris Scolese, the agency's chief engineer, both declined to concur with the decision to launch when signing an official Certificate of Flight Readiness, or CoFR, following a flight readiness review that ended Saturday.

But both men said today they viewed the issue as a threat to the vehicle - not a direct threat to the crew - and as such, they accepted NASA Administrator Mike Griffin's decision to press ahead with launch.

Here is how O’Connor characterized his thinking:

O'Connor today acknowledged a perception problem with the seemingly contradictory positions, but said it was the result of the flight readiness review process and the engineering community's classification of the ice-frost ramps as "probable/catastrophic" in NASA's integrated risk matrix.

"When this first came up, most folks were pretty concerned about it," he said. "That concern level has been going down as we learn more about it, as we refine the models, we look at the data. We haven't changed the design, but there's a little bit of a shift toward more comfort than the other direction.

"I think we're just barely into the unacceptable risk area. I think it's unacceptable to the program to go fly in this condition. But I also believe if it's elevated to the right authority, an administrator (Griffin) who looks at it and with his understanding and his position in the agency who can accept it, then I felt like I was not going to lie down in the flame trench or throw my badge down."

Is NASA playing Russian Roulette with the future of the space program?

A New Paper

The text that accompanied my public lecture last spring for the NAS Ocean Studies Board has now been published in the magazine Oceanography. Here is a citation and link:

Pielke, Jr., R. A. 2006. Seventh Annual Roger Revelle Commemorative Lecture: Disasters, Death, and Destruction: Making Sense of Recent Calamities, Oceanography, 19:138-147. (PDF)

Comments welcomed.

A(nother) Problem with Scientific Assessments

The American Geophysical Union released an assessment report last week titled "Hurricanes and the US Gulf Coast" which was the result of a "Conference of Experts" held in January, 2006. One aspect of the report illustrates why it is so important to have such assessments carefully balanced with participants holding a diversity of legitimate scientific perspectives. When such diversity is not present, it increases the risks of misleading or false science being presented as definitive or settled, which can be particularly problematic for an effort intended to be "a coordinated effort to integrate science into the decision-making processes." In this particular case the AGU has given assessments a black eye. Here are the details:

The AGU Report includes the following bold claim:

There currently is insufficient skill in empirical predictions of the number and intensity of storms in the forthcoming hurricane season. Predictions by statistical methods that are widely distributed also show little skill, being more often wrong than right.

Such seasonal predictions are issued by a number of groups around the world, and are also an official product of the U.S. government’s Climate Prediction Center. If these groups were indeed publishing forecasts with no (or negative) skill, then there would be good reason to ask them to cease immediately and get back to research, lest they mislead the public and decision makers.

As it turns out the claim by the AGU is incorrect, or at a minimum, is a minority view among the relevant expert community. According to groups responsible for providing seasonal forecasts of hurricane activity, their products do indeed have skill. [Note: Skill refers to the relative improvement of a forecast over some naïve baseline. For example, if your actively managed mutual fund makes money this year, but does not perform better than an unmanaged index fund, then your fund’s manager has showed no skill – no added value beyond what could be done naively.] Consider the following:

1. Tropical Storm Risk, led by Mark Saunders finds that their (and other) forecasts of 2004 and 2005 demonstrated excellent skill according to a number of metrics:

Lea, A. S. and M. A. Saunders, How well forecast were the 2004 and 2005 Atlantic and U.S. hurricane Seasons? in Proceedings of the 27th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology, Monterey, USA, April 24-28 2006. (PDF)

For further details see this paper:

Saunders, M. A. and A. S. Lea, Seasonal prediction of hurricane activity reaching the coast of the United States, Nature, 434, 1005-1008, 2005. (PDF)

2. Phil Klotzbach of Colorado State University, now responsible for issuing the forecasts of the William Gray research team, provides a number of spreadsheets with data showing that their forecasts demonstrate skill:

Seasonal skill excel file

August monthly forecast skill excel file

September monthly forecast skill excel file

October monthly forecast skill excel file

Klotzbach writes in an email: "All three of our monthly forecasts have shown skill with respect to the previous five-year monthly mean of NTC using MSE (mean-squared error as our skill metric). Here are our skills (% value is the % improvement over the previous five-year mean):

August Monthly Forecast: 38%
September Monthly Forecast: 2%
October Monthly Forecast: 33%"

3. NOAA’s Chris Landsea provides the following two figures which show NOAA’s seasonal forecast performance.

He writes in an email: "You can see that we do okay in May (4 out of 7 seasons correctly forecasting number of hurricanes for example), but better in August (6 of 8 seasons correct)."

He also provides a link to this peer-reviewed paper:

Owens, B. F., and C. W. Landsea, 2003: Assessing the skill of operational Atlantic seasonal tropical cyclone forecasts, Weather and Forecasting, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp.45-54. (PDF)

From this information, it seems clear that there are strong claims in support of the skill of seasonal hurricane forecasts and relevant peer-reviewed literature. The AGU statement is therefore misleading and more likely just plain wrong. It certainly is not a community consensus perspective that one might expect to find in an assessment report.

What is going on here? Perhaps the AGU's committee was unaware of this information, which if so would make one wonder about their "expert" committee. Given the distinguished people on their committee, I find this an unlikely explanation. Instead, it may be that the issue of seasonal hurricane forecasting has gotten caught up in the "climate wars." William Gray is the originator of seasonal climate forecasts and has rudely dismissed the notion of human-caused global warming, much less a connection to hurricanes. One of the lead authors of the AGU assessment has been in a public feud with Bill Gray and is a strong advocate of a human role in recent hurricane activity. It is not unreasonable to think that the AGU assessment was being used as a vehicle to advance this battle under the guise of community "consensus." It may be the perception among some that if Bill Gray’s or NOAA’s work on seasonal forecasts, which is based on various natural climatic factors, can be shown to be fundamentally flawed, then this would elevate the importance of alternative explanations.

If this hypothesis explaining what is going on is indeed the case, then it would be a serious misuse of the AGU for the advancement of personal views, unrepresentative of the actual community perspective. It would also represent a complete failure of the AGU’s assessment process. Given that there is peer-reviewed literature indicating the skill of seasonal forecasts, and none that I am aware of making the case for no skill, the AGU has given consensus assessments a black eye, and in the process provided incorrect or misleading information to decision makers.

The AGU case may be isolated, but it does beg the question raised by my father and others, how can we know whether scientific assessments faithfully represent the relevant community of experts versus a subset with an agenda posing under the guise of consensus? I am aware of no systematic approaches to answering this question. It is a question that needs discussion, because as political, personal, and other issues infuse the scientific enterprise, blind trust in disinterested science and science institutions no longer seems to be enough.

Quick Reaction to the NRC Hockey Stick Report

My reading of the summary of the report and parts of the text is that the NAS has rendered a near-complete vindication for the work of Mann et al. They report does acknowledge that there are perhaps greater uncertainties in temperature reconstructions, reducing Mann et al.'s claim of warmest decade/year in 1,000 years down to 400. Nonetheless, I see nothing in the report that suggests that Mann's research is significantly flawed, nor any calls for release of his data or algorithms, though the report does say in very general terms that such release is a good idea. I am not a climate scientist, but my reading of the section that deals with criticisms of Mann et al.'s work (starting at p. 105) is that while these critiques raise some interesting points, they are minor issues, and the committee find's Mann et al.’s original conclusion to be "plausible." I’d bet that the word "plausible" will be oft invoked as one of the take home messages of the report.

So what to make of this? The NRC has come to the conclusion that the hockey stick debate is much ado about nothing, and make the further point that this particular area of science is not particularly relevant to detection and attribution of human caused climate change. I am certain that research on this subject will continue, but hopefully this NAS report will allow the rest of us to focus on the policy debate rather than this particular issue of science.

I would have liked to see the report get into far more detail on science policy questions, such as release of data, methods, code, etc. and mechanisms of peer review, and IPCC authors reviewing their own work. However, I recognize that these issues may have been interpreted as outside their charge and the committee was not empanelled for this purpose.

Is this the final word on the "hockey stick"? My guess is that for most people, yes, especially if Representative Boehlert, who requested the report, is satisfied with the answers to his questions.

Eve of the NAS Hockey Stick Report Release

Tomorrow the National Research Council is going to release its report on the so-called “hockey stick” of global temperature trends that was emphasized in the most recent IPCC report. Not long ago we asked the principles involved in the debate to explain to those of us not involved why this debate matters. On the eve of the NRC report, we thought it might be worth revisiting some comments made by the principles in the debate.

According to Steve McIntyre:

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.

Today, McIntyre provides some pre-release comments on the report.

According to Ross McKitrick:

It matters because it concerns the validity of an influential scientific paper. . .

It matters because it exposes the uncomfortable reality about journal peer review. . .

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. . .

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 matters because it exposes an uncomfortable reality about the culture of climate science. . .

From Stefan Rahmsdorf and William Connolley of RealClimate:

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.."

And finally, here was my two cents of thoughts on the various “so what?” reactions.

Please Critique this Sentence

I am working on a new essay on climate policy. I would like your help by critiquing the following sentence, with a particular focus on providing any counter-references from the peer-reviewed literature.

No emissions reduction policy currently under discussion – from changes in personal behavior to those proposed under the Framework Convention on Climate Change – even if successfully implemented will have a discernible effect on the global climate system for at least 50 years.

Now, let me say that this statement, which I believe is scientifically accurate (e.g., see NCAR’s Jim Hurrell testimony) does not mean that we should throw up our hands or stick our heads on the sand about greenhouse gas emissions. But this sentence does have profound implications for thinking about climate policies, their public justifications, and the significance of adaptation. Such implications are typically not front and center in the climate debate, but they should be.

We Are Not Ready

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security released a report yesterday (PDF) detailing a review of the state of emergency preparedness across the United States. Bottom line: we are not as ready as we can or should be. My interpretation – the response to Katrina did not necessarily reflect unique circumstances. This report is a sobering read. Here are a few excerpts:

According to U.S. Census data, the average number of people per square mile in Hurricane Belt States is 711, compared to 94 people per square mile in other States. This high-population density is a further impetus to develop and maintain emergency plans that can help warn, evacuate, shelter, and provide care for large numbers of people. p. 35

Only 27% of State and 10% of urban area [emergency operations] plans were rated as Sufficient in terms of adequacy to cope with a catastrophic event. p. 62

Only 18% of State and 11% of urban area plans were rated as having Sufficient feedback mechanisms to ensure the public is taking appropriate action as directed in disseminated forecasts and messages. . . . Although advances in technology (e.g. Internet, cell phones, pagers) have provided several avenues to communicate to the public, many participants have not effectively employed those resources to expedite or expand the provision of emergency public information. p. 66

DHS Peer Review Teams rated less than 20% of State and 10% of urban area plans as Sufficient in providing time estimates and planning for use of multiple modes of transportation for evacuation of people in different risk zones. Both DHS and DOT found that plans do not adequately address evacuation for the most socially vulnerable population segments. Some participants expressed the belief that they will never experience a catastrophic event as defined in IB197 and mass evacuations were not considered a plausible scenario. p. 67

Emergency public information is critical to reduce loss of life and property and to facilitate emergency response operations. Government at all levels does not adequately address pre-incident public education on preparedness measures, alerts and warnings, evacuation, and shelter procedures. Most Review participants do not have a process to evaluate the effectiveness of public education in these areas or for outreach to people with special needs. p. 74

No ironclad guarantees exist in a profession that combats terrorists and nature. Even the best plans will not always deliver success. The historian Henry Adams said, “In all great emergencies, everyone is more or less wrong.” Planners cannot foresee every outcome, and incident managers cannot anticipate every scenario. While disasters have a language of their own and no plan can guarantee success, inadequate plans are proven contributors to failure. The results of the Nationwide Plan Review support fundamental planning modernization. Vince Lombardi said, “We’re going to relentlessly chase perfection knowing full well we will not catch it because perfection is unattainable. But we are going to relentlessly chase it because in the process we will catch excellence.” p. 80

Oversight Exemptions for NOAA?

Yesterday the House Science Committee, while passing an act formally codifying the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration into law (President Nixon created the agency via Executive Order), dealt with amendments over scientific integrity.

According to CQ.com, Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) offered an amendment providing whistleblower protection for scientists and punishment for employees who tampered with science. The amendment would have also exempted NOAA from the Information Quality Act - legislation that allows the public to petition the government over flawed data. Another amendment, by Rep. Costello (D-IL) would have barred the White House from editing reports prior to submitting them to Congress.

Both amendments failed. Chairman Boehlert released a statement addressing his opposition to the amendments, which can be found here. He argues that the amendments would have prompted some difficult jurisdicitional scrambles (mainly with the Government Reform Committee and the Resources Committee - which also has NOAA oversight). He also argues, I think convincingly, that the amendment is written somewhat broadly, and placed in a bill related to an agency that is not, in the eyes of many, a particularly egregious offender in the debates over political interference in science.

While I understand the sentiments behind the amendments, I'm not in favor of potentially sabotaging legislation that is necessary. A large government agency without formal statutory authority? That needs to be addressed. And adding arguably tangential amendments makes it harder to pass such legislation. A desire for better science should not trump the need for good law.

The Climate Policy Equivalent of Graham-Rudman-Hollings

Graham-Rudman-Hollings refers to U.S. legislation in the 1980s that sought to bring the federal budget deficit under control. It didn’t work because it based its "budget cuts" on projected spending, and thus required cuts from some imaginary baseline of what would have happened absent the "budget cuts." As former Bush Administration spokesman Ari Fleisher explained in 2001:

Graham-Rudman-Hollings was, in essence, an approach based on deficit projections of what government had to do to bring deficits into certain lines. And it lead to a lot of gimmickry, and to other issues that were complicating the process of government.

Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are currently in their "Graham-Rudman-Hollings" phase, and this is a condition, ironically enough, shared by both the current U.S. approach as well as that under the Kyoto Protocol.

Under the Kyoto Protocol there is a complex policy called the "Clean Development Mechanism" that – simplified – provides emissions reductions credits to countries that invest in developing countries to generate clean technologies. According to a recent press release (PDF) from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change:

According to the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat, the Kyoto Protocol’s clean development mechanism (CDM) is as of today estimated to generate more than one billion tonnes of emission reductions by the end of 2012. In addition to the implementation of climate-friendly policies at home, the 1997 landmark treaty allows industrialized countries to meet their emission targets through the treaty’s flexible mechanisms. "We have crossed an important threshold with these emission reductions", said Richard Kinley, acting head of the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat. "It is now evident that the Kyoto Protocol is making a significant contribution towards sustainable development in developing countries".

Emissions reductions are calculated off of a baseline of what would have occurred absent the CDM investment. So it would be more accurate to say that the CDM represents a smaller increase in emissions than otherwise estimated would have occurred. Nonetheless, CDM projects each represent an additive increase in total global GHG emissions.

Now contrast this with the Bush Administration’s stated goal of reducing "greenhouse gas intensity" which is a measure of how much GHGs are produced per unit of economic activity. From an official U.S. government "fact sheet":

In February 2002, President Bush committed the United States to a comprehensive strategy to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of the American economy (how much we emit per unit of economic activity) by 18 percent by 2012. Meeting this commitment will prevent the release of more than 500 million metric tons of carbon-equivalent emissions to the atmosphere.

The Bush plan has been widely criticized for basically following a business-as-usual approach, as reductions in greenhouse gas intensity are occurring throughout many global economies. According to the White House lead on climate change, James Connaughton, last month:

But when it comes to carbon, what we found is by focusing on intensity we can find the lowest hanging fruit for outcomes. It does not diminish the importance of counting absolute reductions.

One formal difference between the Bush plan (a critique is here) and that of the CDM (a critique is here) is that the CDM is part of a framework that seeks to reduce overall emissions. But the practical reality is that both programs, whatever their positive merits, cannot be honestly be justified as "reducing emissions" as they in fact make very small contributions to reducing the increase in GHG emissions. Consider that most countries participating in Kyoto will all but certainly fail to meet their modest emissions reductions targets.

For advocates of immediate action emissions reductions, under all current and proposed policies (that I am aware of) the future looks like an extended period of uninterrupted growth in greenhouse gas emissions, accounting games notwithstanding. All of the debate about action on emissions will be of little practical effect unless there are policy options on the table that can actually achieve real emissions reductions, not just a reduction in the rate of increase. Right now, there does not seem to be evidence of such options, and so long as the climate debate remains in its Graham-Rudman-Hillings phase, don’t expect to see such options, or much more importantly, significant efforts to create them. The conclusions of one scholarly article on Graham-Rudman-Hollings is worth thinking about:

Gramm-Rudman-Hollings legislation has failed to control the budget deficit. However, the yearly ritual of preparing budgets that conform to the legislated requirements of this Act creates the illusion of deficit control and removes the incentive for developing real deficit controls.

It is great to argue that something should be done, but at some point the discussion has to be moved to what actions are worth doing and with what effects.

Willful Ignorance

I find this just amazing:

Beginning next month, Florida researchers won't be able to travel to Cuba to carry out any studies. Although the United States allows such interactions, the state has banned faculty members at Florida's public universities from having any contact with the island nation under a law enacted last week. "This law shuts down the entire Cuban research agenda," says Damián Fernández, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami.

Cuba is one of six countries that the U.S. State Department has designated as a "sponsor of terrorism," although U.S. scholars can travel to Cuba for research if they first obtain a government license. The Florida measure, which passed the state legislature unanimously, essentially closes that loophole by disallowing state-funded institutions from using public or private funds to facilitate travel to such countries. (The list includes North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Sudan.)

"Florida's taxpayers don't want to see their resources being used to support or subsidize terrorist regimes at a time when America is fighting a war on terror," says David Rivera, a Republican Cuban-American state legislator who introduced the bill. Florida researchers won't miss out on anything by not going to Cuba, he adds: "I don't think there's anything there that cannot be studied in the Dominican Republic or other Caribbean islands."

Except Cuba. Duh.

Hurricane Politics

Hurricane Politics

I like Bill Clinton. I wish he were still president (22nd Amendment aside!). But the following characterization of his remarks on hurricane policy is an inevitable consequence of the ongoing debate over hurricanes and global warming, in which hurricanes are used to justify emissions reductions policies:

As Tropical Storm Alberto threatened to strengthen into the ninth hurricane in 22 months to affect Florida, former President Clinton predicted Monday that Republican environmental policies will lead to more severe storms.

Expect to see more of such nonsense in the coming months.

The Curious Case of Storm Surge and Sea Level Rise in the IPCC TAR

Earlier this year while I was involved in preparing our contribution to an exchange with colleagues for the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society on hurricanes, a particular sentence in the response (PDF) to our paper piqued my interest. The sentence read in full:

As summarized in the Working Group II assessment of McCarthy et al. (2001), model projections of the mean annual number of people who would be flooded by coastal storm surges increase several-fold (75–200 million, depending on the adaptive response) for midrange scenarios of a 0.4-m sea level rise by the 2080s relative to scenarios with no sea level rise.

The sentence caught my attention because it was stunningly ambiguous and unclear. What could it mean? So I set out to learn more about it. What I found and my experiences trying to publish what I have found provides some insights into the increasingly curious world of climate science.

The sentence is actually a direct quote from the IPCC Working Group II Third Assessment Report’s Summary for Policymakers, p. 13 (here in PDF). As such it has been widely quoted in the years since the Third Assessment. But a review of how it has been interpreted shows considerable confusion about what it actually means. For example:

A peer-reviewed article in the British Medical Journal came to one conclusion:

"The number of people at risk from flooding by coastal storm surges is projected to increase from the current 75 million to 200 million in a scenario of mid-range climate changes, in which a rise in the sea level of 40 cm is envisaged by the 2080s."

A report by an oil industry group came to a second interpretation (PDF):

"Even a somewhat conservative scenario of a 40-cm [15.8-in.] sea-level rise by the 2080s would add 75 to 200 million people to the number currently at risk of being flooded by coastal storm surges."

The Red Cross offers still another interpretation,

"The average annual number of people whose houses are flooded by storm surges along coastlines is expected to increase from a few million each year to between 75 and 200 million by the year 2080, estimates the IPCC."

Such differing perspectives are chracteristic of this particular bit of the IPCC consensus. No one, it seems, knows what this sentence means. Now this might not be surprising; after all, the IPCC is written by committee and it would not be surprising to see a confusing sentence come out of such a process. However, this is where it gets considerably more interesting. It appears that the IPCC did not explain what the sentence means, and going back to the original scientific source for the statement does not allow one to arrive at a clear interpretation of what it means.

Given that the IPCC is frequently touted as the most highly peer-reviewed document in climate science I found this quite interesting, and somewhat troubling. So I wrote up what I had learned, only to find after months of trying that publishing such a story can be quite challenging.

But before discussing my attempts to publish, let me describe the source of the sentence and the challenges in interpreting what, exactly, it means.

The IPCC WGII SPM points to Section 4.5 of the full assessment report as the source for the sentence. So going to that section, one finds absolutely nothing related to the sentence. However, thanks to Google and the online availability of the IPCC the trail does not end there. Searching on various combinations of "sea level rise" and "storm surge" leads to Chapter 7 of the IPCC which has this passage:

Worldwide, depending on the degree of adaptive response, the number of people at risk from annual flooding as a result of a 40-cm sea-level rise and population increase in the coastal zone is expected to increase from today’s level of 10 million to 22-29 million by the 2020s, 50-80 million by 2050s, and 88-241 million by the 2080s (Nicholls et al., 1999). Without sea-level rise, the numbers were projected at 22-23 million in the 2020s, 2732 million in the 2050s, and 13-36 million in the 2080s. The 40 cm sea-level rise is consistent with the middle of the range currently being projected for 2100 by Working Group I. In 2050, more than 70% (90% by the 2080s) of people in settlements that potentially would be flooded by sea-level rise are likely to be located in a few regions: west Africa, east Africa, the southern Mediterranean, south Asia, and southeast Asia. In terms of relative increase, however, some of the biggest impacts are in the small island states (Nicholls et al., 1999).

Nowhere in this passage is it clear however where the SPM got the 75-200 million number, or what it might mean.

Nicholls et al. 1999 is this paper:

Nicholls J.N., F.M.J. Hoozemans and M. Marchand, 1999. Increasing flood risk and wetland losses due to global sea-level rise: regional and global analyses, Global Environmental Change, 9:S69-S87. (PDF)

And after several careful readings it turns out that all of the questions lead to Table 7 in that paper which I reproduce below.

My first reaction was that the IPCC confused the cumulative people affected by a 1 in 1000 year storm surge event (People to Respond or PTR in the Table 7) with the "mean annual number of people who would be flooded by coastal storm" (AAPF in the Table 7) because these numbers -- 70-205 million -- look pretty close to those in the SPM (75-200 million) and it would perhaps be easy to confuse the last digits. If so then this would be a huge error, conflating a cumulative number with a cumulative number.

So I emailed Robert Nicholls who graciously responded suggesting that there was another possible interpretation that got one reasonably close to the IPCC numbers. That would be taking the Average Annual People flooded under "Evolving Protection" for the 2080s – 88 million – and subtracting the 13 million for the 2080s under evolving protection with no sea level rise, leaving one with 75 million. Very promising.

However, there is no similar calculation that leads to 200 million. The analogous calculation under the "Constant Protection" column is 228-36 = 192 million. One could confuse the different models to arrive at 237(+4)-36 = 205, but this would be an obvious methodological error (comparing across different models) compounded with a typo. And if not a typo why alter the value from 205 to 200? I can't figure it out.

So where exactly the numbers came from remains a mystery. No one I’ve asked knows the answer. It makes no sense to me that the numbers would be generated through some procedure outside the peer-reviewed literature, as this is outside the scope of the IPCC’s mandate. And there appears to be no logical or intuitive combination of values that result in the values that appear in the SPM from Nicholls et al. Of course, the IPCC is a sprawling document, and the derivation of these numbers may yet be hidden somewhere inside, but I haven’t found them. Maybe there is an obvious or straightforward explanation, but I have not heard it.

OK, so what? The IPCC has a sentence that is confusing at best, and more likely is just nonsense. Nonsense happens, right?

Well, no. When I first searched for information about it last February, I found that the sentence in question has been used in official documents related to climate policy by the Japanese (PDF), Canadian, and British governments. From a follow up search that I just conducted it seems that the UK citation has been superceded, but I am sure that it remains in cyberspace somewhere.

The IPCC SPM is used to justify policy actions on climate change, and thus it would seem pretty important that its information be accurate and understandable. In this case, it appears that neither criterion was met.

So I thought – naively -- that this was a pretty interesting story, particularly given that the IPCC is presently in the midst of preparing its fourth assessment, and wrote a short essay describing what I had found – and more importantly had not found -- about the SPM sentence and the main report, when compared to the original literature. I have tried to publish at two outlets that one would think might have an interest in the accuracy of IPCC assessments, only to be turned down, quickly in one case because it didn’t fit a category, and after an extremely long delay in the second case with the chief editor explaining to me, essentially, that the emperor’s clothes are really quite beautiful. The case of storm surge and sea level rise in the IPCC WGII SPM seems to be so obviously an open and shut case – the facts are readily available for anyone to examine for themselves – that I admit some considerable surprise at the difficultly in getting it published. But I suppose that is what blogs are for.

Here is how I opened my essay that I wrote last February:

In the children’s game of "telephone" a group of children sit in a circle and someone starts the game by whispering a phrase to the person seated neat to them and so on all around the circle. After enough transmissions a phrase that begins as "five stories" might come out the end as "jive turkey" to everyone’s delight. The game of telephone provides a cautionary tale for producers and users of scientific assessments. The case of mistaken and misinterpreted information about storm surge impacts illustrates the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests that the IPCC may have its own "jive turkey" problem minus the delight.

I justified why this issue is important as follows:

The IPCC has great potential to inform policy makers, however its credibility rest on being accurate and faithful to the literature. Errors will inevitably occur, but in this case an error in the IPCC’s most important summaries has been used uncritically in policy documents and academic studies, apparently not having been noticed until now. This problem may be more systemic, e.g., I have elsewhere written about the IPCC’s erroneous treatment of non-peer reviewed studies of the attribution of climate disasters to greenhouse gases (e.g., Pielke, 2005). However broad the problem is, as the IPCC gears up for its fourth assessment report it seems critical to carefully evaluate its procedures for accuracy, and for users of the IPCC to understand the strengths and limits of assessments. There is a more fundamental problem and that is the distilling of complex, nuanced research into one-sentence sound bites that perhaps inevitably cannot accurately capture what is to be found in a lengthy scientific article.

I sought to provide a more accurate summary of Nicholls et al. 1999 than one can find in the IPCC TAR, which in fact leads to conclusions at odds with that distilled by those who have misinterpreted the IPCC sentence. In fact, Nicholls et al. proivide considerable support for the argument tha increasing coasal habitation is a far greater issue than sea level rise when it comes to storm surge (surprise, surprise):

A more accurate summary of Nicholls et al. (1999) would start by observing that the paper used a scenario that had that number of people subjected to 1 in 1000 or greater risk of coastal storm surges increasing from 197 million in 1990 to 575 million in the 2080s without any rise in sea level, due only to population growth and demographic changes. Under this scenarios, with sea level rise (and no societal reaction) the 2085 population-at-risk would be 630 to 640 million. With no sea level rise Nicholls et al. (1999) calculate an increase in the average annual number of people flooded rising from 10 million (1990) to 36 million (2085) with 1990 levels of protection. With protection that evolves as a function of GDP (but not otherwise changed due to sea level rise) the number of people flooded increases only by 3 million, from 10 million (1990) to 13 million (2085), even though population-at-risk increased by 378 million people. This suggests that only 0.8% of the additional people who inhabit the coastal zone by 2085 with a 1 in 1000 or greater risk would on average experience an annual flood. This compares with 5.1% of inhabitants who experience a flood in 1990 based on the assumptions of Nicholls et al.

Putting this together, according to Nicholls et al. (1999) population-at-risk increases by 438 million by 2085 while the average annual number of people flooded increases by 78 million people, from 10 million in 1990 to 88 million in 2085 (and by 3 million, from 10 million to 13 million under the no sea level rise scenario). So the IPCC should have reported that:

Nicholls et al. estimate that of the 438 million additional people expected to inhabit the coastal zone by 2085 with a 1 in 1000 or greater rise of storm surge, about 0.7% - 18% of them, or on average between 3 million and 78 million additional people annually would experience the effects of coast flooding under the assumptions of the sensitivity analysis.

The difference between assuming that only 0.8% of the additional people who inhabit the coastal zone at risk to flooding under a scenario of no sea level rise versus 18% under a scenario of sea level rise results from the fact that the methods assumes an appropriate adaptive response in the first case but not the latter. For instance, to reach the 18% portion requires than many people would move to locations far riskier than they choose to inhabit today. Using the same ratio of people who experience floods to those at risk (i.e., assuming that people adapt where they live according to the contemporaneous risk) as Nicholls et al. use for 1990 (i.e., 5.1%) would suggest an additional 22.3 million people would be exposed to floods with a population increase of 438 million. Using the ratio suggested for 2085 under no sea level rise results in an additional 3.5 million people who experience floods. Nicholls et al. provide no reason to expect that society will be significantly more risk averse in 2085 than today, nor why the presence of sea level rise would change the acceptable risk from a scenario of no sea level rise.

I concluded with some words of caution:

These details for just this one study of storm surge are very complicated and to understand them requires a careful examination of the primary literature. Clearly, what appears in the 2001 IPCC bears only a distant relation to what the original study actually said. For this reason, scientific assessments cannot replace the primary literature, and some thought should be given by scholars to how best to deal with knowledge that is highly simplified through assessment and then recirculated into academic inquiry. Like the children’s game of telephone, this is a recipe for miscommunication, mischaracterization of scientific research, and a foundation of knowledge that rests a few feet above the ground. A more appropriate role for assessments would be to focus more explicitly on the information needs of policy makers and focus attention on a wide range policy options and their possible consequences. Efforts to summarize complex science may not ultimately prove useful to policymakers if they result in oversimplifications and mischaracterizations.

Climate science is a curious business, that’s for sure.

New anti-wind politics details. Oh the irony, Senator Warner.

My last post about the politics of wind discussed the Cape Wind project and the cockamamie excuses -- some wrapped in science (surprise!!) -- being used to justify political interference with the project. (For what it's worth, politicians both left and right are fighting both for and against Cape Wind, although from what I can tell the only side to use dubious science as cover so far are the Kennedy's.)

Unfortunately it now appears that a recent Senate stall tactic on Cape Wind has caused a slew of other projects -- nowhere near Cape Cod -- to be stalled. The culprit? Senator John Warner (chair of Armed Services), who put this wordy one-liner in Section 358 (Title III, Subtitle F) of PL 109-163 (FY06 supplemental Defense approps):

Not later than 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Defense shall submit to the Committee on Armed Services of the Senate and the Committee on Armed Services of the House of Representatives a report on the effects of windmill farms on military readiness, including an assessment of the effects on the operations of military radar installations of the proximity of windmill farms to such installations and of technologies that could mitigate any adverse effects on military operations identified.

Apparently Warner's dubious addition (both the FAA and the Air Force had already signed off on Cape Wind) has delayed projects all over the country. The ironic thing about Warner's add? This line from the (original, non-supplemental) FY06 Defense Appropriations Act (HR 2863 / PL 109-148):

That of the funds made available under this heading, $4,250,000 is available for contractor support to coordinate a wind test demonstration project on an Air Force installation using wind turbines manufactured in the United States that are....

So, um, a wind farm out in the middle of the bay could block radar but one in the middle of an Air Force installation is not just ok, it's so ok that we're going to pay a contractor $4.25M to build one there? Brilliant.

Confusion on Science Censorship in US Federal Agencies

There may be a good explanation, but Warren Washington has expressed apparently conflicting views on science censorship in U.S. federal agencies. In today’s Rocky Mountain News Warren Washington, outgoing chairman of the National Science Board (which oversees the National Science Foundation), is quoted as follows:

The American public is not hearing the full story on global warming because Bush administration officials are muzzling government scientists, a top climate researcher said Wednesday.

Warren Washington, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, said that Bush appointees are suppressing information about climate change, restricting journalists' access to federal scientists and rewriting agency news releases to stress global warming uncertainties.

"The news media is not getting the full story, especially from government scientists," Washington told about 160 people attending the first day of "Climate Change and the Future of the American West," a three-day conference sponsored by the University of Colorado's Natural Resources Law Center. . .

Washington said in an interview that the climate cover-up is occurring at several federal agencies, including NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. Forest Service. NOAA operates several Boulder laboratories that conduct climate and weather research.

I was in attendance at the workshop and heard Dr. Washington’s allegations. But unless he has some new information (which he might), but has not released, it is difficult to square these allegations with a recent report of the NSB on this issue. A report (available here in PDF, relevant section begins at p. 6) which was chaired by Dr. Washington found no evidence of suppression. Here is an excerpt:

. . . the Board has reviewed statutes, regulations, agency statements and internal documents related to this issue for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and the Departments of Agriculture (USDA), Energy (DOE), and Health and Human Services (HHS). In addition, the Board requested that the Inspector General (IG) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) poll her counterparts at these agencies for additional relevant information.

The Board would like to acknowledge and thank EPA, NASA, NIH, NOAA, USGS, USDA, and DOE for their responses to our request for information. . .

The survey of the agencies’ IGs indicated that no reports were issued to indicate scientific information was suppressed or distorted at the agencies involved with the Board’s review.

It may be that while there are no formal reports from within various agencies, suppression is nonetheless ongoing. However, I would hope that Dr. Washington would provide the evidence of such continuing suppression if he has it. Otherwise, the allegations of suppression risk undermining the credibility of countless hard-working government scientists and their agencies. As a NOAA spokesman said,

Jordan St. John, a NOAA spokesman, said the allegations against his agency are false.

"NOAA is an open and transparent agency," he said. "It's unfair to the people who work at this agency that this kind of characterization keeps being made. Hansen said it once, and it took on a life of its own and just keeps getting repeated."

But Washington insisted that government officials are "trying to confuse the public" about climate change and the scientific consensus that global warming is a real problem.

The only way to reconcile these different points of view is with data. Without data that suppression continues (beyond the well documented cases of Jim Hansen and the NOAA hurricane press release) it is hard to know what is being referred to. If I see Warren today at the conference, I’ll ask him. The NSB does offer a number of useful recommendations, which I provide here in full:

RECOMMENDATIONS

Based on our analysis, we offer the following recommendations:

• A Government-wide directive should be issued by the Administration that provides overarching principles and clearly articulates the requirement for all agencies to develop unambiguous policies and procedures to encourage open exchange of data and results of research conducted by agency scientists, while preventing the intentional or unintentional suppression or distortion of research findings and accommodating appropriate agency review. A developed set of principles should also state the concomitant responsibility of agency employees regarding the advocacy of public policy that might be implied by their research.

• Agency-wide policies covering the public disclosure of an agency’s research results should be issued and uniformly applied, widely communicated, and readily accessible to all employees and the general public. Like those recently released by NASA, these policies should unambiguously describe what is and is not permitted or recommended. Responsibilities for communicating research results by researchers, public affairs officers, policy makers, and other agency employees should be clearly described. A clear distinction should be made between communicating professional research results and data versus the interpretation of data and results in a context that seeks to influence, through the injection of personal viewpoints, public opinion or formulation of public policy.

• An objective dispute resolution mechanism for disagreements involving the public dissemination of agency research findings should be implemented. This will help ensure the public has access to the research and that scientific findings presented are credible and of the highest quality.

• A Government-wide review should be established to ensure that implementation of these recommendations is conducted in a manner that meets the high standards expected and is consistent across agencies.

From where I sit these make good sense, however, I will point out that this aspiration will forever be problematic: “A clear distinction should be made between communicating professional research results and data versus the interpretation of data and results in a context that seeks to influence, through the injection of personal viewpoints, public opinion or formulation of public policy.”

Comments on Nature Article on Disaster Trends Workshop

Quirin Schiermeier has an article in the current issue of Nature on our recent workshop on disaster loss trends and climate change. The workshop executive summary can be found here and a PDF here. The article, unfortunately, has a few mistakes and is subject to misinterpretation.

1. The Nature article does not recognize that the workshop participants used the IPCC definition of "climate change" to mean a change irrespective of causes. At several points the author of the Nature article conflates "climate change" and "global warming" which is something we at the workshop were careful not to do. Here is the opening paragraph of the Nature story:

Insurance companies, acutely aware of the dramatic increase in losses caused by natural disasters in recent decades, have been convinced that global warming is partly to blame. Now their data seem to be persuading scientists, too. At a recent meeting of climate and insurance experts, delegates reached a cautious consensus: climate change is helping to drive the upward trend in catastrophes. . .

Delegates seem to have found the record persuasive. Their consensus statement, to be released on 8 June, says there is "evidence that changing patterns of extreme events are drivers for recent increases in global losses".

Clearly climate change has played a role in driving recent increases in losses. On attribution to human causes see below.

2. The article does not distinguish my collaborator’s personal views from those of the workshop consensus, thereby creating room for confusion. Here is the relevant passage:

There was no agreement on how big a role global warming has played, however. "Because of issues related to data quality, it is still not possible to determine the portion of the increase in damages that might be attributed to climate change," the workshop concluded.

"Dissent over the issue is clearly waning," says Peter Höppe, head of Munich Re's Geo Risks department, who co-chaired the workshop with Roger Pielke Jr, director of the University of Colorado's Center of Science and Technology Policy Research. "Climate change may not be the dominant factor, but it has become clear that a relevant portion of damages can be attributed to global warming."

The workshop consensus is worth repeating:

11. Because of issues related to data quality, the stochastic nature of extreme event impacts, length of time series, and various societal factors present in the disaster loss record, it is still not possible to determine the portion of the increase in damages that might be attributed to climate change due to GHG emissions

and

13. In the near future the quantitative link (attribution) of trends in storm and flood losses to climate changes related to GHG emissions is unlikely to be answered unequivocally.

3. Nature unfortunately trots out the worn “skeptic” label to describe my views:

Previously sceptical, Pielke says that he is now convinced that at least some of the increased losses can be blamed on climate: "Clearly, since 1970 climate change has shaped the disaster loss record."

He adds a note of caution, however: "Disaster damage is not the place to look for early indications of climate change," he says. "Policy advocates should exercise caution in using disaster losses to justify climate mitigation, lest they go beyond what science can support."

I was accurately quoted, but my use of the term "climate change" was as we used it at the workshop. [Update- Upon checking I was misquoted! See comments. RP] I am increasingly convinced that since 1970 a portion of the increase in disaster losses is due to changes in climate, clearly, and largely due to US hurricanes. But it is less clear that such trends exist if the record dates to 1950 or 1920.

4. Nature cites GermanWatch as a group who has used attributed disaster losses to human-caused climate change, but does not mention that a representative of the group participated in the workshop and signed on to the workshop consensus.

Overall, I am disappointed with this story.

Workshop Executive Summary

Report of the Workshop on
“Climate Change and Disaster Losses - Understanding
and Attributing Trends and Projections”
25-26 May 2006, Hohenkammer, Germany

Introduction

In summer 2005 both Roger Pielke, Jr. of the Center of Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado and Peter Hoeppe of the Geo Risks Research Department of Munich Re learned from each other that each planned to organize a workshop on the assessment of factors leading to increasing loss trends due to natural disasters. Both agreed that such a workshop was timely, especially given the apparent lack of consensus on the role of climate change in disaster loss trends. Roger Pielke, Jr. and Peter Hoeppe decided to have a common workshop in 2006 in Germany to bring together a diverse group of international experts in the fields of climatology and disaster research. The general questions to be answered at this workshop were:

What factors account for increasing costs of weather related disasters in recent decades?

What are the implications of these understandings, for both research and policy?

[click through to read the rest]

The participants were selected by a workshop organizing team that met in December, 2005. Participants were selected for their high level of competence and to represent a wide range of different attitudes to the subject. All participants came into the workshop agreeing that anthropogenic climate change is a concern.

In total 32 participants from 13 countries attended the two day workshop (list of participants attached). “White papers” from 25 participants were submitted in advance and formed the basis of the discussions. The workshop was organized in 4 sessions:

1. Trends in extreme weather events
2. Trends in Damages
3. Data issues – extreme weather events and damages
4. Syntheses discussion

In the syntheses session the discussion was focused on finding consensus positions among the participants on statements about the attribution of disaster losses and the policy implications. These 20 statements are listed in the executive summary and are described in more detail in the full workshop summary report. Specific views of individual participants can be found in their white papers, which each was given the opportunity to revise following the workshop.

The workshop was sponsored by Munich Re, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research, and the GKSS Research Center.

Workshop on
“Climate Change and Disaster Losses - Understanding
and Attributing Trends and Projections”
25-26 May 2006, Hohenkammer, Germany

Executive Summary

The focus of the workshop was on two questions:

What factors account for increasing costs of weather related disasters in recent decades?

What are the implications of these understandings, for both research and policy?

Consensus (unanimous) statements of the workshop participants:

1. Climate change is real, and has a significant human component related to greenhouse gases.

2. Direct economic losses of global disasters have increased in recent decades with particularly large increases since the 1980s.

3. The increases in disaster losses primarily result from weather related events, in particular storms and floods.

4. Climate change and variability are factors which influence trends in disasters.

5. Although there are peer reviewed papers indicating trends in storms and floods there is still scientific debate over the attribution to anthropogenic climate change or natural climate variability. There is also concern over geophysical data quality.

6. IPCC (2001) did not achieve detection and attribution of trends in extreme events at the global level.

7. High quality long-term disaster loss records exist, some of which are suitable for research purposes, such as to identify the effects of climate and/or climate change on the loss records.

8. Analyses of long-term records of disaster losses indicate that societal change and economic development are the principal factors responsible for the documented increasing losses to date.

9. The vulnerability of communities to natural disasters is determined by their economic development and other social characteristics.

10. There is evidence that changing patterns of extreme events are drivers for recent increases in global losses.

11. Because of issues related to data quality, the stochastic nature of extreme event impacts, length of time series, and various societal factors present in the disaster loss record, it is still not possible to determine the portion of the increase in damages that might be attributed to climate change due to GHG emissions

12. For future decades the IPCC (2001) expects increases in the occurrence and/or intensity of some extreme events as a result of anthropogenic climate change. Such increases will further increase losses in the absence of disaster reduction measures.

13. In the near future the quantitative link (attribution) of trends in storm and flood losses to climate changes related to GHG emissions is unlikely to be answered unequivocally.

Policy implications identified by the workshop participants

14. Adaptation to extreme weather events should play a central role in reducing societal vulnerabilities to climate and climate change.

15. Mitigation of GHG emissions should also play a central role in response to anthropogenic climate change, though it does not have an effect for several decades on the hazard risk.

16. We recommend further research on different combinations of adaptation and mitigation policies.

17. We recommend the creation of an open-source disaster database according to agreed upon standards.

18. In addition to fundamental research on climate, research priorities should consider needs of decision makers in areas related to both adaptation and mitigation.

19. For improved understanding of loss trends, there is a need to continue to collect and improve long-term and homogenous datasets related to both climate parameters and disaster losses.

20. The community needs to agree upon peer reviewed procedures for normalizing economic loss data.

A Marginal View on Science Policy

Jack Stilgoe at DEMOS has a good post up on their blog referring to Terrence Kealey’s latest call for government to get out of the science funding business. I agree with Jack’s take on this:

Kealey's view is pretty marginal, and doesn't deserve a huge amount of attention. But it's an interesting reminder of how some people view science as a homogenous factor of production. For Kealey, it's about making sure that "science" gets done, rather than wondering about what science should get done and how.

Have a look at Jack’s post for links to Kealy’s op-ed and very useful background information, including a relevant DEMOS report on the public value of science.

Lloyd's on Climate Adaptation

Lloyd's of London has an interesting new report out on the need for the insurance industry to improve their adaptive capacity in the face of climate change (here in PDF). The report is titled "Climate Change: Adapt or Bust." Here is the executive summary:

1. TOO LITTLE BUT NOT yet TOO LATE. The insurance industry must do more now to understand and actively manage climate change risk.

An increasing wealth of scientific evidence is available to predict the impact of changing weather patterns and future climate change on the insurance industry. So far, efforts to do so have been patchy and there is little evidence of industry behaviour changing as a result. Much of the latest science suggests that climate change will take place faster than we thought. Urgent and active management of climate change – starting with investment in research – is now imperative. It is not too late to change, but change is long overdue.

2. Recent events have shown capital and pricing models to be wanting. We must regularly update and recalibrate our models to keep pace with REALITY.

Catastrophe modellers have now reacted to criticisms following the recent record US hurricane seasons. However, much of this work could and should have been done prior to these events. Going forward, the industry must take a new approach to underwriting, looking ahead and not simply basing decisions on historical patterns. Insurer pricing and capital allocation models must be updated regularly – and not just in extremis – to reflect the latest scientific evidence. Our responsibilities in this regard will be increasingly widely drawn: regulators will require the industry to maintain a level of capital adequate for changing levels of climate change risk.

3. Windstorm trends will put particular pressure on businesses and their insurers.

Based on natural cycles alone, we can expect the current trend towards extreme windstorm events to continue and increase over the next decade. Climate change can only exacerbate this, and insurers must plan for a higher frequency of extreme events, over a longer storm season and over a wider geographical area. Insurers must also take advantage of scientific advances to factor forecasts for the season ahead into their planning, instead of relying only on long-term trends.

4. Climate change means Exposures are changing and new ones emerging.
insurers must regularly review and communicate conditions of coverage.

We foresee an increasing possibility of attributing weather losses to man made factors, with courts seeking to assign liability and compensation for claims of damage. Exposures can also be expected to increase in respect of property, business interruption and political risks, demanding the same response. That means the insurance industry will want to regularly review conditions of coverage against risk appetite, and do more to educate the public about changing exposures. The industry can help by creating incentives for policyholders to reduce risk. Opportunities for those insurance markets which are flexible and innovative will emerge too: as society adapts to the impact of climate change, new technologies will be required and insurance of these developments will be needed.

5. Insurers must prepare for the impact of climate change on asset values. Underwriting for profit will be key,

As major corporate investors, insurers rely on returns from assets to boost their own financial performance. We expect climate change not only to produce extreme capital damaging events, but also to increase uncertainty around corporate business plans and potentially reduce asset values. This makes it even more important for the industry to price risk according to exposure and to underwrite for profit. We also see industry players having increased opportunity to use their influence as investors, in order to encourage responsible and climate proof behaviour from the boards of corporations in which they invest, and with which they do business.

6. Effective partnership with business and government will be key to
managing risk. The insurance industry must engage now.

Based on long experience, Lloyd’s believes that insurance markets operate most efficiently when left to free market forces, and the vast majority of natural perils are insurable – as long as the market is free to price risk adequately. However, if this freedom is removed, or if the pace of climate change grows faster than expected, this could change our view. Industry strategists will want to consider the long-term insurability of weather-related risk. We believe that a meaningful partnership with government and business, supported by a series of practical actions, has the best chance of providing solutions. In particular, this should address the issue of increasing concentrations of population and economic wealth in high risk areas, for example on coasts. This report focuses on adaptation but we recognise that mitigation of the risk itself (ie the reduction of CO2 emissions) is crucial.

Climate Change is a Moral Issue

Quite unintentionally, Dave Roberts of Grist Magazine provides an incredibly clear statement of the insanity of the climate debate:

Advocating that adaptation play a larger role in U.S. policy, in the current political context, does not increase the odds of sensible, balanced climate policy. It simply, if inadvertently, helps the corporatist right cloud the debate and avoid the difficult steps required to cut GHG emissions.

And whatever else we do, that task is paramount.

In an ideal, abstract policy debate, sure, I'd say we should boost our attention to adaptation. But in the current political situation, I don't want to provide any ammunition for the moral cretins who are squirming frantically to avoid policies that might impact their corporate donors. Until they're gone from the scene -- until we have an administration serious about addressing this problem -- I'm going to focus on cutting emissions.

Dave’s honesty is to be applauded, as his view on this subject is widely shared among those in the climate debate but rarely explained so clearly. However, his focus on sticking it to the “moral cretins” he so despises has the side effect of preventing greater help to people like those pictured below waiting for help in the aftermath of hurricane Mitch. There are hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, who sure could use a little help in improving their adaptive capacity irrespective of emissions reductions.

Climate change is indeed a moral issue. But hey, why advocate policies that can directly help suffering people around the world when you can instead stick to your ideological opponents?

Comment from Judy Curry

[Ed.- I want to make sure that Judy's response to my post earlier today is not missed. I will respond in the comments. RP]

Roger,

I make it a practice not to blog, but i want to clarify your misreading of our meeting with Governor Bush. We went to extreme pains NOT to talk about policies or politics. We talked about the science and the risks to Florida. Governor Bush made the important point in our discussion that this whole issue has become very politicized, and said that we needed to take the politics out of this and get to the bottom of the scientific issue of hurricanes and global warming. I wholeheartedly agree.

The most important issue from Florida's point of view is to understand whether the hurricane situation is likely to get worse. We said that there is a considerably risk that it will.
Florida and other coastal cities need to urgently reassess their risk to hurricanes to allow for the risk of increased hurricane activity. No matter what we decide to do about the greenhouse warming issue, the most vulnerable coastal cities need to reconsider their coastal engineering, land use practices, emergency procedures, etc. in view of the risk of increasing hurricane activity and the longer range prospect of sea level rise.

The prospect of increasing hurricane activity has overall raised people's awareness of the global warming issue, but I don't think that many people believe that anything we do re greenhouse gases in the short term will influence the problems that our coastal cities are facing particularly in the next few decades.

The media has often misrepresented my remarks, that is unfortunate but not unexpected I guess. The particular article you refer to was an accurate portrayal of our meeting with Governor Bush. Yes, there are a variety of advocacy groups in Florida that are trying to influence Governor Bush and others to adopt a variety of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Yes those groups believe that hurricanes can help raise awareness of the global warming issue. But no one that I know of is pushing greenhouse gas reductions as a policy to deal with increasing hurricane activity.

Judy

Petropolitics, MoveOn.org, and The Politics of Decarbonization

Thomas Friedman is brilliant at capturing large-scale dynamics of the international scene. In the current issue of Foreign Policy he has an excellent article on the relationship of oil prices and the “pace of freedom” which he argues always move in opposite directions. His article provides a compelling justification for reducing reliance on fossil fuels:

Let me stress again that I know that the correlations suggested by these graphs are not perfect and, no doubt, there are exceptions that readers will surely point out. But I do believe they illustrate a general trend that one can see reflected in the news every day: The rising price of oil clearly has a negative impact on the pace of freedom in many countries, and when you get enough countries with enough negative impacts, you start to poison global politics.

Although we cannot affect the supply of oil in any country, we can affect the global price of oil by altering the amounts and types of energy we consume. When I say “we,” I mean the United States in particular, which consumes about 25 percent of the world’s energy, and the oil-importing countries in general. Thinking about how to alter our energy consumption patterns to bring down the price of oil is no longer simply a hobby for high-minded environmentalists or some personal virtue. It is now a national security imperative.

Therefore, any American democracy-promotion strategy that does not also include a credible and sustainable strategy for finding alternatives to oil and bringing down the price of crude is utterly meaningless and doomed to fail. Today, no matter where you are on the foreign-policy spectrum, you have to think like a Geo-Green. You cannot be either an effective foreign-policy realist or an effective democracy-promoting idealist without also being an effective energy environmentalist.

Reframing the greenhouse emissions issue beyond global warming is important if effective action is going to take place. Support for this assertion comes from a poll taken by participants in nationwide "house parties" organized by MoveOn.org a liberal advocacy group. From an email in my inbox here are the results of this poll:

Health care for all 65091

Sustainable energy independence 61030

Restored constitutional rights 35675

Guaranteed accurate elections 35133

Diplomacy over militarism 28912

High quality education for all 27874

Solutions to global warming 26306

A guaranteed living wage 25527

Publicly funded elections 21096

A balanced federal budget 20945

Look at that -- global warming is #7 while sustainable energy independence is #2. If global warming doesn’t rank higher with MoveOn.org participants, why would anyone expect that it will it ever rank higher among the general public?

There are good reasons to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. Leading with global warming as a promotional strategy may seem like the right thing to do, but as a matter of political expediency, why not go where the policy arguments and political salience are strongest?

Like a Broken Record

We have made the case many times here that reducing greenhouse gases makes good sense for a wide range of reasons, not just climate change, but that it is a poor policy argument to suggest that greenhouse gas reduction can have any effect on hurricane losses in the near term, and only a small effect in the long term due to the inexorable pace societal development along the coast. Just yesterday I was asked in the comments why it is I that on hurricanes and global warming I always “change the subject” from climate science to hurricane policy. Below are some good reasons why we should always ask “so what?” in the context of scientific debates.

In comments made earlier this month Georgia Tech scientist Judy Curry was quoted as advocating emissions reductions as a means to respond to hurricanes (when I contacted Judy about this she said that the media put together two disconnected thoughts to make it sound like she was advocating emissions reductions as hurricane policy, but that she was not):

"We’re seeing an increase in the sea surface temperatures, and increase in the number of storms and in the intensity of those storms," said Dr. Judy Curry.

The question is why? Dr. Judy Curry says part of the reason is us.

Curry is one of the researchers in the forefront of the contentious global warming debate. She says data clearly shows that greenhouse gases we create with our cars, our industrial plants, our very lifestyles are helping to dissolve the polar ice caps and worse, melt the Greenland ice sheet.

"We have the technologies, we still have some time to reduce our greenhouse gases there is no reason we shouldn’t be doing this," said Curry.

And just yesterday another news story cited how greenhouse gas emissions reductions were being advocated in Florida as a response to hurricanes.

Florida's governor cautiously entered the debate Wednesday over whether rising global temperatures are to blame for an increase in the number of strong hurricanes, meeting with two researchers who say global warming is threatening Florida with a long-term future of more bad storms.

Bush met with Peter Webster and Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who published research last year showing an increase in global hurricane intensity, with a doubling of the number of Category 4 or 5 hurricanes since 1970. That increase coincides with a rise of nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit in ocean surface temperatures, they say. . .

The debate is something of a storm itself, and Bush joined it cautiously.

"He said they presented some pretty compelling information," said Bush spokesman Russell Schweiss, declining to say whether Bush agrees that global warming is increasing the number of strong hurricanes. "He encouraged them to continue with their research."

Webster and Curry's meeting came as environmentalists seek to push to the state level efforts to curb the emission of so-called greenhouse gasses that are blamed for causing global temperature increases.

They say President Bush's administration in Washington hasn't done enough to combat greenhouse gas emissions _ and note that Florida could help by cutting emissions since it's the fifth largest producer of such gasses in the United States.

Besides, in hurricane alley, Florida has more to gain from lower emissions than the country as a whole if Webster and Curry's findings are right , said Jerry Karnas of the Florida Wildlife Federation, which set up the meeting.

Bush didn't commit to any policy changes in the meeting.

But Attorney General Charlie Crist, with whom the scientists also met, said he was impressed. Crist is one of several men running to be the next governor.

"It's fairly apparent that (global warming) has increased (hurricane) activity," Crist said after meeting the scientists.

So long as there are bad arguments for good causes valid criticisms of the justifications for those good causes will be enabled from friend and foe alike, and much more importantly, policies might be enacted that cannot do what they are sold on. For some perhaps the ends justifies the means – that is, securing emissions reductions is worth selling them on poor policy arguments. However the irony is that bad arguments are in the end unlikely to be a winning strategy of salesmanship, as you risk being identified as not having a good case to make in the first place. And on greenhouse gas emissions there is a solid policy argument to make, it just doesn’t involve hurricane policy.

Hat tip: Dad

NOAA Protest

Kevin Vranes has the scoop on the protest by some environmental groups calling for the NOAA administrator and NHC director to resign because they haven’t said the politically correct things about hurricanes and global warming. I don’t have much to add to Kevin’s post which is right on target. However, it is worth adding that NHC Director Max Mayfield has co-authored (with me and 3 others) two peer-reviewed papers on the hurricane-global warming issue over the past year. Here is the conclusion from the first paper, which clearly shows the rantings of madmen unfit for public service (PDF):

. . . looking to the future, until scientists conclude a) that there will be changes to storms that are significantly larger than observed in the past, b) that such changes are correlated to measures of societal impact, and c) that the effects of such changes are significant in the context of inexorable growth in population and property at risk, then it is reasonable to conclude that the significance of any connection of human-caused climate change to hurricane impacts necessarily has been and will continue to be exceedingly small.