Their raison d'entrée is, "...electing public officials who respect evidence and understand the importance of using scientific and engineering advice in making public policy."
Good: a group of concerned citizens banding together to advocate their issue.
Bad: Despite a stated aim to be nonpartisan, the group's very birth is a response to partisan politics, which makes it political by default.
The bad doesn't necessarily outweigh the good for SEforA, but it does illustrate what will be its biggest challenge. The challenge won't be affecting races or having an impact on the process, but on becoming staunchly nonpartisan and burnishing time and again its nonpartisan credentials. If it can successfully manage that, then SEforA can become relevant and salient, partnering with politicians from both parties. If not, then SEforA will become a de facto Democrat advocacy group, ignored by the Republicans whenever they are in power. Unfortunately the origins of SEforA speak to its partisan upbringing by using two Clinton Administration science advisors as headliners and using language that sounds like it came straight from Chris Mooney's book and the UCS report: "...when the nation’s leaders systematically ignore scientific evidence and analysis, put ideological interests ahead of scientific truths, suppress valid scientific evidence and harass and threaten scientists for speaking honestly about their research."
Here's hoping that SEforA works immediately toward nonpartisanship, realizing that they will have some work to do in convincing Republicans that their early, seemingly inherent links to the Democratic Party are nonbinding.
The latest issue of Bridges a publication of the Office of Science and Technology of the Austrian Embassy in Washington, DC, is now online. As always Bridges provides a wide range of interesting and stimulating essays and discussions. In particular, Stefan Kalt's column on Heidegger and technology is especially interesting.
My column in this issue is titled "Self-Segregation of Scientists by Political Predispositions" and can be found online here and as a podcast here (and regular Prometheus readers will see that it draws on several earlier discussions on our blog - thanks to all who contributed!). My essay ends with some specific recommendations for scientists -- I think along the lines specifically asked for by Judy Curry recently in the comments. As always, we welcome your feedback and comments.
Inconvenient Truth Panel Discussion at the University of Colorado
For locals:
Al Gore's global warming movie, "An Inconvenient Truth", will be shown on Thursday, September 28 at 7 and 9:15 pm in the Muenzinger Auditorium on the CU-Boulder campus. The Energy Initiative is sponsoring a panel titled "An Inconvenient Truth: Assessing the Science and Policy Implications" immediately following the 7 pm showing in Muenzinger Room E0046. Panelists include Roger Pielke, Jr. and Lisa Dilling of CIRES, Brian Toon of LASP, and Jim White of Environmental Studies.
Admission for the movie: $5 general, $4 w/UCB student ID. Call 303-492-1531 for more info.
There is no charge for the panel discussion and you do not need to have seen the movie beforehand to attend.
There is an old political maxim that it is not the event but the cover-up that gets politicians in trouble. The issue of a two-page NOAA fact sheet and the decision by leadership in NOAA and/or its parent agency, Department of Commerce, to prevent its release is yet another lesson in Politics 101.
The figure below shows a recent version of the NOAA "fact sheet." (Note that I have received multiple copies from independent sources, several of whom -- but not all -- who asked me not to post. Several, but not all, of the documents have different dates, but the differences are not substantive. I present a screen shot of a version so as not to inadvertantly reveal where it came from.)
The document is clearly prepared for public dissemination. It includes the following text that I have circled:
The purpose of this document is to respond to frequently asked questions on the topic of Atlantic hurricanes and climate. This document reflects the current state of the science, which is based on official data sets and results presented in peer-reviewed publications. It does not contain any statements of policy or positions of NOAA, the Department of Commerce or the U.S. Government.
This is obviously not a statment one would find on an internal document. The second page includes the statement at the bottom "Visit us on the web at www.noaa.gov." Surely not a request made to employees.
Compare this to how Nature yesterday (here) reported NOAA Administrator Conrad Lautenbacher's description of the document.
When asked about the document, NOAA administrator Conrad Lautenbacher told Nature that it was simply an internal exercise designed to get researchers to respect each other's points of view. He said it could not be released because the agency cannot take an official position on a field of science that is changing so rapidly.
An internal exercise? Bush Administration appointees it seems can make plenty of smoke appear even when there is no fire.
Here is in its entirety is the NOAA "report" discussed in Nature yesterday. It is in fact titled a "fact sheet" and looks more like a set of talking points than a consensus report. I do not have the figures being referred to in the text. There is absolutely nothing new or surprising in the fact sheet. Why NOAA or DOC officials would not want this released is beyond me. Have a look.
NOAA Fact Sheet: Atlantic Hurricanes and Climate
What has been Atlantic hurricane activity during the 20th Century?
• Atlantic hurricane seasons since 1995 have been significantly more active, e.g. more hurricanes and more intense hurricanes, that the previous two decades (figure 1)
• Earlier periods, such as from 1945 to 1970 (and perhaps earlier), were apparently as active as the most recent decade.
• The past decade has seen increased U.S. landfalls, however periods of even higher landfalls occurred early in the century (figure 2)
• Strong natural decadal variations, as well as changes in data quality, density, sources, and methodologies for estimating hurricane strengths, lie at the heart of arguments whether or not a global warming contribution to a trend in tropical cyclone intensities can be detected.
How have ocean temperatures varied?
• Over the 20th Century, global ocean temperatures and sea surface temperatures in the main development region (MDR) for hurricanes in the tropical Atlantic, (and Gulf of Mexico) have warmed at similar rates, indicating a role for global warming in these regions. (Figure 3)
• Anomalous MDR, tropical Atlantic temperatures were significantly warmer than the global average from about 1930 to 1970 and after 2000 . This warming is attributed to the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO)
What factors influence seasonal to multi-decadal hurricane activity
• Hurricanes respond to a variety of environmental factors besides local ocean temperatures.
• The tropical multi-decadal phenomenon and the El Nino/La Nina cycle are important factors in determining the conditions for seasonal to multi-decadal extremes in hurricane activity.
• Research indicates that global warming can also increase hurricane intensities; there is less evidence for impacts on frequency.
How long will the current active period last?
• Scientists disagree as to whether currently a sound basis exists for making projections on how long the current active period will last. The viewpoints are:
o Limited understanding of natural decadal variability, combined with its irregular temporal behavior, preclude definitive statements about how long the active period will last. (NOAA)
o One might expect ongoing high levels of hurricane activity and U.S. landfalls for the next decade and beyond since the previous active period (1945-1970) lasted at least 25 years. (NOAA)
o Because of global warming the active period could persist
Programs of improvements to data sets, diagnostic studies for improved understanding, and systematic numerical experimentation studies will help to reveal the underlying causes for the recent active period and to predict how long the period of increased activity will last. NOAA is actively engaged in each of these activities.
Key Problems NOAA is working on
• Understanding the dynamics of the AMO, its links to the larger-scale tropical climate variability, and developing an ocean monitoring and decadal prediction capability
• Improving the quality and scope of hurricane relevant data sets
• Numerically simulating and ultimately understanding seasonal to decadal hurricane variability
• Understanding whether or not and to what degree anthropogenic forcing is having an influence on hurricanes
• Developing a predictive understanding of global climate variability and trends and the impacts of these on extreme events
• Making improvements to short range hurricane track and intensity forecasts through improved models and development of additional capabilities for hurricanes.
NOAA Resources for Additional Information
• NWS/NCEP/CPC – intraseasonal to multi-season climate forecasts; seasonal hurricane forecasts; diagnostic studies of major climate anomalies; real time monitoring of climate.
• NWS/NCEP/TPC/NHC – issue daily and seasonal (in conjunction with CPC and HRD) operational hurricane forecasts; maintain and update the official Atlantic and Northeast Pacific hurricane databases from which observational climate studies are conducted
• NESDIS/NCDC – official archive for climate data sets; development of global tropical cyclone databases, analysis of historical frequency and strength of Atlantic Basin hurricanes to support engineering design and levee rebuilding in New Orleans, analyses of climate trends, monitoring and historical perspective on current seasons.
• OAR/AOML/HRD & PHoD – physical understanding of hurricane dynamics through use of research aircraft and field studies; improvements to hurricane track and intensity forecasts; monitoring of Atlantic ocean circulations; studies of Atlantic climate
• OAR/GFDL – studies of climate variability and change; development and use of the required climate models; development of models used for operational hurricane forecasts by NOAA and the NAVY; numerical studies of climate impacts on hurricanes and their decadal variability
• OAR/ESRL – diagnostic studies of climate variability and changes; impacts of climate on extreme events.
• NOAA Climate Office – intramural and extramural support for development of a predictive understanding of the climate system, the required observational capabilities, delivery of climate services.
According to Nature today last spring NOAA convened an internal seven-person team to prepare a consensus report for public release on hurricanes and global warming. According to press reports (e.g., here), the near final report's release was halted in May by (a) Department of Commerce political appointee(s).
I'd like to get the facts straight on this, as they are quite unclear in the media. I'd welcome hearing from anyone with firsthand knowledge of these events. We'd be happy to post a copy of the report as well, anonymity guaranteed.
As far as the science of hurricanes, it is safe to conclude that the mystery report has to be a synthesis of recent work that is publicly available, rather than any new science. What is more troubling to me is how the political ham-handedness (if not worse) of NOAA and its Bush Adminstration handlers works against effective hurricane policy and climate policy. Consider the following statement for the AP news report:
The possibility of global warming affecting hurricanes is politically sensitive because the administration has resisted proposals to restrict release of gases that can cause warming conditions.
The reality, as documented in numerous papers and disucssions here and elsewhere, is that greenhouse gases cannot be an effective tool of hurricane policy. So long as advocates against action on greenhouse gases inside the Administration pretend that there is a linkage between future energy policies and future hurricane impacts by micromanaging information on hurricanes, people unfamiliar with the current state of hurricane science and policy, or those looking for a political bludgeon, will easily conclude something like the following:
"There must be a big connection between changes in energy policies and future hurricane impacts, or else why would the Bush Administration try to supress information? Becuase if there is no evidence of a future connection then NOAA and Bush officials must just be stupid by acting as if there is, right?"
I am quite familiar with recent debates on hurricanes, and frequent readers know that I believe that there is an honest, unsettled debate going on. My own research shows that any action on energy policies cannot have a discernible effect on hurricane impacts as far as the eye can see, so you can guess how I'd answer that last question.
In a paper out yesterday, NASA's Jim Hansen recognizes the difference between a scientist serving as an issue advocate versus as an honest broker of policy alternatives when he writes (PDF):
Inference of imminent dangerous climate change may stimulate discussion of "engineering fixes" to reduce global warming. The notion of such a "fix" is itself dangerous if it diminishes efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, yet it also would be irresponsible not to consider all ways to minimize climate change.
So which is it? Dangerous or irresponsible? Should scientists openly discuss all ways to minimize climate change, including little-mentioned technologies like air capture? Or should scientists seek to limit research agendas in order to take some options off the table and privledge others in political debate?
It can't be both ways at the same time. Should scientists seek to limit choice or expand choice?
Last week we discussed a letter from the Royal Society to ExxonMobil. The interesting discussion that followed focused on the role of scientists in general and national academies specifically in contested political issues that involve science. The issue continues to devleop. Apparently, according to Benny Peiser, the author of the Royal Society letter to ExxonMobil is no longer employed by the Royal Society. The Royal Soceity has not said anything publicly that I am aware of -- eagle-eyed readers please share what you learn.
David Whitehouse, formerly with the BBC, has shared another letter with Benny Peiser, which Benny included in his CCNet mailing list today. I have reproduced Dr. Whitehouse's letter below which provides an overview and analysis of the events of the past week.
Dear Benny,
I confess to having pulled the occasional media stunt in my time (all in the cause of good journalism of course) to get a story aired but I think that the climate change debate over the past week is a good example of how manipulating the media can result in unexpected consequences for those who hang on to the tail of this particular tiger, and frankly how some people ought to be a bit more accurate when they pontificate to the public.
As far as I can see it went like this:
Tuesday 19th September.
Posted on George Monbiot's website and the Guardian's website
(http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/09/19/the-smoke-behind-the-deniers
-fire-3/) was a column which reported that the Royal Society had had enough of those spreading misinformation about climate change. Monbiot adds, "As I reveal on Newsnight (a BBC TV Current Affairs Programme) tonight, the Society has now attempted to strike at the heart of this campaign by sending its first official letter of complaint to a corporation - the oil company Exxon. And yesterday its president, Lord Rees, sent the Telegraph what must be one of the most damning letters it has ever received."
However, Monbiot's polemic did not air on Newsnight on Tuesday but went out on Wednesday instead. Personally, I thought it was sloppy and lacked intellectual rigour. It was what is termed an "authored" piece which means it is a personal view and not dictated by the BBC's standards of fairness and impartiality. Nethertheless, Exxon's request to have a similar time to put its case was turned down by Newsnight. Monbiot's piece included a brief interview with Bob Ward, filmed at the Royal Society. It was followed by a fruitless discussion hosted by Jeremy Paxman between a scientist and a representative of a US lobby group. The most memorable thing about it was Paxman's repeatedly telling the American chap that "you are not a
scientist." I was rather disappointed not to see an interview with Lord Rees about his letter to the Telegraph.
Oh, by the way, Monbiot has a book to plug, "Heat - How to Stop the Planet Burning." (I think the title is all I need to know but I will read it.)
Now I wonder if the fact that Monbiot's Newsnight rant was a day later than he said it would be upset the choreography of this story's emergence?
Wednesday 20th September.
The front page of the Guardian carried details of the now infamous letter by Bob Ward (Senior Manager, Policy Communication, Royal Society) referred to in Monbiot's column which was sent to Exxon on 4th September. The Guardian Science Podcast available later described this story as an 'exclusive!' On the front page the Guardian mentioned no qualms about the ethics of the Royal Society's actions.
On the BBC Today radio programme that morning there was a discussion about GM technology that involved Lord May, former Chief Scientific Advisor to H.M. Government and past President of the Royal Society. After this debate the presenter asked him about the Guardian story. To my mind Lord May's response was extraordinary and demonstrated the problem in the debate. I wasn't impressed by his accuracy.
Lord May said that in 2005 the science academies of the G8 nations plus India, China and Brazil said that the "basic facts of climate change are certain." Actually they did no such thing. As Bob Ward pointed out in his letter to Exxon what the G8+ actually said was "it is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities." To my mind the words "likely" and "most" do not equate with certainty. Lord May went on to chastise those who "misrepresent the certainties of science" presumably unaware that he had done exactly that! [For reference the IPCC say the same thing - "most of the global warming over the past 50 years is likely due to the increase in greenhouse gases - note the key words "most" and "likely."]
Lord May went on to say that the fact that "humans are changing the climate" is as certain as gravitation or evolution. I find this statement surprising even though it is an obvious one as it is recognised by all that humans are changing the climate - what is in debate is the question is the magnitude of the change. Then a spokesman for Exxon, Nick Thomas (Director Public Affairs Exxon) was brought into the discussion who stated Exxon's position which, to my mind, sounded like a fair summary of the G8+ position and the IPCC position (we agree that the word is warming, that CO2 concentrations are increasing, that glaciers are shrinking and that CO2 emissions are certainly one of the contributors to climate change, we recognise man's activities are responsible for climate change.) This statement didn't quite go as far as many would wish but, given the uncertainties in the science, it was OK, I thought.
But Lord May was unconvinced. He maintained that this contradicted the US National Academy of Sciences and that what he had heard from Nick Thomas was a "misrepresentation of the facts." Having listened to the exchange several times I have to say I think Lord May is wrong about that.
The Guardian story aired on BBC News TV throughout the day (Wednesday 20th) pretty much in the form that the Guardian had used, i.e. the Royal Society - upholder of the consensus - had had enough of lies and misinformation spread by the likes of a big bad energy company like Exxon. There the story would perhaps have lain except for the next edition of the BBC's Today radio programme.
Thursday 21st September.
The Today programme asked if the Royal Society was right to police the scientific consensus this way. Bob Ward defended his actions. You can read the transcript of that discussion in a recent CCNet.
Later.
The coverage thereafter was different, as those who have read CCNet in recent days have seen. Dominic Lawson writing in the Independent on the 22nd wondered if the release of the Royal Society's letter on the 20th was anything to do with Monbiot's book?
Heaven forfend, Bob Ward wrote in a letter to the Independent on the 25th in which he says, "I can absolutely refute Lawson's laughable suggestion that it (presumable the letter) was part of a campaign to promote George Monbiot's new book."
I think this is another example of the sleight of hand that Bob Ward employed in his letter to Exxon. Even if the initial impetus for the letter had nothing to do with Monbiot, it is surely stretching belief beyond credulity that its appearance on the front page of the Guardian at the same time as Monbiot's column and Newsnight piece was unrelated!
So what was achieved?
Bob Ward made the big mistake of writing such a letter to Exxon in completely the wrong way, allowing it to be made public and becoming the topic of discussion. When a senior manager of policy communication becomes the story and not the policy itself, it is, as Alistair Campbell discovered, not a good thing. The Royal Society looks bad having tried to enforce a consensus even though, as many have pointed out, they must have been aware of the role of consensus in science. It also looks bad having sent such disgraceful (and counterproductive) letters to journalists. We also learnt that even those authorities who have scaled the august heights of science and are laden with honours are not immune to being sloppy with the facts and with a false impression of the "certainties of science."
But perhaps the cause of science has been advanced during this week for it has forced a discussion and appraisal of how so-called sceptics are being treated in this important debate and steered the global warming debate towards a scientific course and away from the rocky shoals of you are either for us or against us. It has made many examine the role of the Royal Society in scientific debate and public relations and, perhaps most importantly, once again we have been reminded that as far a science is concerned being an authority, individual or corporate, ultimately means little.
Also Monbiot does have some words of wisdom one can take away from this mess: "Be wary of self-appointed experts." Exactly.
Thoughts on an Immediate Freeze on Carbon Dioxide Emissions
Last week I discussed Al Gore’s call for an “immediate freeze” on U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. I dismissed this as being in the realm of fantasy, but the notion of freezing U.S. carbon dioxide emissions motivated me to investigate the issue a bit further. The following data and analyses report what I’ve learned.
Data on projected carbon dioxide emissions is available from the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) here (xls). It is presented in tons of carbon dioxide so it needs to be converted to tons of carbon (divide by 3.664). In 2006 the U.S. is projected to emit 1.63 gigatons of carbon (GtC). This is projected to increase to 2.21 GtC by 2030. EIA projections go to 2030, so that is what I use below.
What accounts for this increase? There are two important factors. One is the projected increase in U.S. population and the other is the projected increase in per capita emissions. I gathered data on projected population increases from the U.S. Census here (xls) and data on projected per capita carbon dioxide emissions here (pdf). I also gathered data on projected immigration from the Congressional Budget Office here (pdf) (note that in the calculations below I use the Social Security Administration’s Intermediate projections). These various data allow the projections to be disaggregated. Here is what I found.
U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions 2007-2030
Projected population growth accounts for 64% of the increased U.S. carbon emissions.
Of this growth 40.5% comes from births in the U.S. and 23.5% comes from immigration (i.e., 40.5 + 23.5 = 64).
The remaining 36% comes from an increase in the per capita production of carbon dioxide which EIA estimates to increase by 11% by 2030. (Note that the per capita increase is not included in the above estimates of the effects of population growth. If included they raise the values by about 2.9% -- 43.4% -- and 1.1% -- 24.6% -- respectively).
How much carbon emissions are we talking about under an immediate U.S. freeze?
The accumulated U.S. emissions in excess of its 2006 value 2007-2030 equal 7.0 GtC. What would it mean to global carbon emissions if the United States were in fact frozen at their 2006 levels? In 2030 accumulated global emissions would be 228 GtC versus 235 GtC (world data here in xls).
But let’s go further, what if the United States were to become immediately carbon neutral starting in 2007? Through 2030 accumulated global carbon emissions would then be 189.0 GtC. In 2030 global emissions would be 9.72 GtC, or about equivalent to what the world is projected to see with the U.S. under business-as-usual in 2018.
What to conclude from all of this? Here are a few things:
1. The majority of increasing emissions in the United States comes from its population growth. About 37% of this increase (i.e., 23.5/64) is due to emissions from immigration. It is not inaccurate to say that through immigration the United States is "offsetting" the emissions from other parts of the world to some degree, since their net emissions will decrease to to emigration. But it is also true that most (if not all) immigrants are coming to the U.S. from countries with far lower per capita emissions, so there is a net increase in global emissions from immigration to the U.S. Of course, the factors which lead the U.S. to such high emissions in the first place are what drive much of the motivation for immigration. Will policy makers talk of stopping immigration as a climate policy? I doubt it, but it is interesting to consider.
2. Per capita increases in carbon emissions, at 11% by 2030 seem quite small and in principle could be relatively easily addressed through improvements in efficiency. Transfer and adoption of many European practices to the U.S. would I think be more than sufficient to meet an 11% goal.
3. An immediate freeze of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, even if possible, would have exceedingly little effect on the overall challenge of reducing global carbon emissions. It would reduce the accumulated global total by 2030 by about 3% and delay any projected effects of climate change by about 6 months.
4. If we go to the extreme and assume that the U.S. becomes carbon neutral in 2007, this would have a clearly discernible effect on accumulated emissions but really wouldn’t much change the overall challenge of reducing global carbon emissions. If the U.S. were carbon neutral starting in 2007 then it would reduce the accumulated global total by 2030 by about 20% and delay any of the projected effects of climate change by about 12 years. The relative importance of the U.S. as a contributor of to carbon dioxide emissions is projected to decrease from 21.9% of global annual emissions in 2006 to 18.6% in 2030.
All of the projections above from EIA, Census, SSA, and CBO are made in the face of considerable uncertainties. For example, this recent paper (in PDF and peer-reviewed journal version) suggests that, under some scenarios, demographic factors may in fact lead to a decrease in U.S. per capita emissions as the population ages.
Whatever the future holds, it is clear from this data that while the United States is the largest contributor to carbon dioxide emissions, it nonetheless produces a small share of total global emissions. Given that the majority of its emissions come from its growing population, this places the U.S. at a disadvantage with countries with slower rates of population growth when emissions reductions are accounted on a national basis (discussed here). A continued discussion of climate policy in terms of nations seems to be more divisive than anything else from the standpoint of policy development. Politically, however, the focus on the U.S. does serve a function in both domestic and international politics and in my view goes far beyond the issues related to climate change.
This is how the Daily Camera, our local Boulder paper, opened an interview with me, parts of which appeared in today's paper. You can hear my answer to this question, and many better questions (but maybe not better answers;-), in a 20 minute podcast of the entire interview, available here (mp3). The reporter, Todd Neff, did a nice job. He was quite familar with some of the recent discussions on Prometheus and his questions in the interview reflected that.
A university class with about 90 students has been assigned Prometheus, and several other weblogs, as part of its reading assignments this semester. Welcome! The course instructor has emailed me to ask if I would write up a short note about what purpose our weblog serves and to offer some pointers to a few key posts on various topics. This seems like a worthwhile exercise, so here goes.
Prometheus began as a term project of a student, Shep Ryen, who like many of our student since graduated has gone on to power and influence ;-) He named it, came up with the design, and got it off to a running start. We have always seen Prometheus as taking advantage of the blog format to create a place where we can discuss a wide range of issues of science and technology policy. In practice, the site focuses on the subjects on which its contributors write about. I’ve been the most active blogger and since a lot of my work focuses on climate policy (and climate science policy), many of my posts wind up on climate policy issues. A recurring interest of mine, and subject of a forthcoming book, is the role of scientists in policy and politics.
We never anticipated a wide readership, being a niche subject area that sometimes delves into the minutia of science-policy issues. But we do have what I have often characterized as the best commenters in the blogoshpere on any site on any subject. In the comments you’ll find leading academics, reporters, policy makers, and informed general readers. The comments are a tremendous asset and by themselves worth the effort to run the blog. Not everyone agrees with everything written here, and that is I think a compelling strength of the dialogue.
The blog serves many purposes. It obviously serves an outreach function, helping us to promote our Center’s research. It serves as a resource where we’d like to store ideas and references. It serves as a test drive facility for ideas and arguments. It serves as a salon where we can engage in meaningful conversations and learn from each other. It serves as a place where people who disagree on topics, like hockey sticks or hurricanes, have engaged one another directly or indirectly. It also serves as a resource where we can focus attention on issues of science in society, a topical area that does not have too many venues for such open discussion that the blog format is ideally suited for. In short it serves a lot of purposes, and we continue to do it because it has been rewarding for us.
For the full list of "hockey stick" posts, including more recent stuff on the congressional hearings, Wegman and NRC reports, please search the site for "hockey stick."
David Whitehouse on Royal Society Efforts to Censor
David Whitehouse is a former online science editor for the BBC. He has sent a letter to Benny Peiser, a prominent climate provocateur from the University of Liverpool who oversees the CCNet mailing list. Benny included Dr. Whitehouse’s correspondence on the Royal Society’s letter to ExxonMobil (PDF) in his compilation yesterday (Guardian story here). There is also apparently a second letter from the Royal Society to journalists, asking them to ignore people with perspectives outside the IPCC consensus.
Let me say in no uncertain terms that in my opinion the actions by the Royal Society are inconsistent with the open and free exchange of ideas, as well as the democratic notion of free speech. Here in the U.S. we have recently won a battle to allow scientists employed by government to speak freely even if their views are inconvenient to the current Administration. Such lessons should work in all directions. The Royal Society is seeking to use the authority of science to limit open debate. This is not, to put it delicately, the most effective use of scientific authority in political debates. Climate scientists and advocates confident of their positions should welcome any and all challengers, and smack them down with the power of their arguments, not the weight of their influence or authority. A strategy based on stifling debate is sure to backfire, not just on the climate issue, but for the scientific enterprise as a whole.
Here is Dr. Whitehouse’s letter, which I endorse 100%:
Dear Benny,
I wonder if I am not alone in finding something rather ugly and unscientific about the letter the Royal Society has sent to EssoUK (part of Exxon). It is reproduced in today's Guardian newspaper.
It demands EssoUK stop giving money to groups and organisations who do not believe that human activities are totally responsible for global warming. It also asks EssoUK to provide details of all the groups it funds so that the Royal Society can track them down and vet them, "so that I can work out which of these have been similarly providing inaccurate and misleading information to the public," the letter says.
My disquiet about this is nothing to do with the status of the debate about anthropogenic global warming but about the nature of the debate and the role of the Royal Society in it and the sending of such a hectoring and bullying letter demanding adherence to the scientific consensus.
Theories come and go. Some become fact, others do not. As scientists our ultimate loyalty is not to theory but to reason and to open enquiry even when some think it ill judged. We should value that above all and I am surprised the Royal Society is acting this way. Einstein once said, "Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."
However the Royal Society sees its role in debates about science, is it appropriate that it should be using its authority to judge and censor in this way?
Al Gore gave a major speech on climate policy yesterday at NYU. Here are some excerpts and my reactions:
On the nature of climate policy debates:
Merely engaging in high-minded debates about theoretical future reductions while continuing to steadily increase emissions represents a self-delusional and reckless approach. In some ways, that approach is worse than doing nothing at all, because it lulls the gullible into thinking that something is actually being done when in fact it is not.
I could not agree more.
On what we should do first:
Well, first of all, we should start by immediately freezing CO2 emissions and then beginning sharp reductions. . . An immediate freeze has the virtue of being clear, simple, and easy to understand. It can attract support across partisan lines as a logical starting point for the more difficult work that lies ahead.
This seems to be in the realm of fantasy. Carbon dioxide emissions cannot simply be "frozen." This seems like exactly the sort of "high-minded debate about theoretical future reductions" that he just warned us about.
On international climate policy:
A responsible approach to solving this crisis would also involve joining the rest of the global economy in playing by the rules of the world treaty that reduces global warming pollution by authorizing the trading of emissions within a global cap.
At present, the global system for carbon emissions trading is embodied in the Kyoto Treaty. It drives reductions in CO2 and helps many countries that are a part of the treaty to find the most efficient ways to meet their targets for reductions. It is true that not all countries are yet on track to meet their targets, but the first targets don’t have to be met until 2008 and the largest and most important reductions typically take longer than the near term in any case.
The absence of the United States from the treaty means that 25% of the world economy is now missing. It is like filling a bucket with a large hole in the bottom. When the United States eventually joins the rest of the world community in making this system operate well, the global market for carbon emissions will become a highly efficient closed system and every corporate board of directors on earth will have a fiduciary duty to manage and reduce CO2 emissions in order to protect shareholder value.
This is misleading. The Kyoto "bucket" is full of holes, and not just from those countries that are not participating. Most European countries are failing to meet their targets under the treaty. To suggest that if the United States joins the Kyoto Protocol it will lead to an "efficient closed system" fails to mention that most of expected future emissions are not covered by Kyoto and that there are no plans for them to be.
On the practical actions needed:
Third, a responsible approach to solutions would avoid the mistake of trying to find a single magic "silver bullet" and recognize that the answer will involve what Bill McKibben has called "silver-buckshot" - numerous important solutions, all of which are hard, but no one of which is by itself the full answer for our problem.
One of the most productive approaches to the "multiple solutions" needed is a road-map designed by two Princeton professors, Rob Socolow and Steven Pacala, which breaks down the overall problem into more manageable parts. Socolow and Pacala have identified 15 or 20 building blocks (or "wedges") that can be used to solve our problem effectively - even if we only use 7 or 8 of them. I am among the many who have found this approach useful as a way to structure a discussion of the choices before us.
Gore repeats which has become a common myth – that if we reduce emissions by 7 or 8 of Socolow and Pacala’s "wedges" we will "solve the problem effectively." This is incredibly misleading and grossly oversimplifies the challenge of stabilizing carbon dioxide emissions. We discussed this at length here.
On particularly promising options:
First, dramatic improvements in the efficiency with which we generate, transport and use energy will almost certainly prove to be the single biggest source of sharp reductions in global warming pollution. . .
To take another example, many older factories use obsolete processes that generate prodigious amounts of waste heat that actually has tremendous economic value. By redesigning their processes and capturing all of that waste, they can eliminate huge amounts of global warming pollution while saving billions of dollars at the same time. . .
. . . we should develop a distributed electricity and liquid fuels distribution network that is less dependent on large coal-fired generating plants and vulnerable oil ports and refineries.
Small windmills and photovoltaic solar cells distributed widely throughout the electricity grid would sharply reduce CO2 emissions and at the same time increase our energy security. Likewise, widely dispersed ethanol and biodiesel production facilities would shift our transportation fuel stocks to renewable forms of energy while making us less dependent on and vulnerable to disruptions in the supply of expensive crude oil from the Persian Gulf, Venezuela and Nigeria, all of which are extremely unreliable sources upon which to base our future economic vitality. It would also make us less vulnerable to the impact of a category 5 hurricane hitting coastal refineries or to a terrorist attack on ports or key parts of our current energy infrastructure. . .
. . . A second group of building blocks to solve the climate crisis involves America’s transportation infrastructure. We could further increase the value and efficiency of a distributed energy network by retooling our failing auto giants - GM and Ford - to require and assist them in switching to the manufacture of flex-fuel, plug-in, hybrid vehicles. . .
Shifting to a greater reliance on ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, butanol, and green diesel fuels will not only reduce global warming pollution and enhance our national and economic security, it will also reverse the steady loss of jobs and income in rural America. Several important building blocks for America’s role in solving the climate crisis can be found in new approaches to agriculture. . .
Similarly, we should take bold steps to stop deforestation and extend the harvest cycle on timber to optimize the carbon sequestration that is most powerful and most efficient with older trees. . .
His best line:
It is, in other words, time for a national oil change. That is apparent to anyone who has looked at our national dipstick.
On nuclear power:
Many believe that a responsible approach to sharply reducing global warming pollution would involve a significant increase in the use of nuclear power plants as a substitute for coal-fired generators. While I am not opposed to nuclear power and expect to see some modest increased use of nuclear reactors, I doubt that they will play a significant role in most countries as a new source of electricity. The main reason for my skepticism about nuclear power playing a much larger role in the world’s energy future is not the problem of waste disposal or the danger of reactor operator error, or the vulnerability to terrorist attack. Let’s assume for the moment that all three of these problems can be solved. That still leaves two serious issues that are more difficult constraints. The first is economics; the current generation of reactors is expensive, take a long time to build, and only come in one size - extra large. In a time of great uncertainty over energy prices, utilities must count on great uncertainty in electricity demand - and that uncertainty causes them to strongly prefer smaller incremental additions to their generating capacity that are each less expensive and quicker to build than are large 1000 megawatt light water reactors. Newer, more scalable and affordable reactor designs may eventually become available, but not soon. Secondly, if the world as a whole chose nuclear power as the option of choice to replace coal-fired generating plants, we would face a dramatic increase in the likelihood of nuclear weapons proliferation. During my 8 years in the White House, every nuclear weapons proliferation issue we dealt with was connected to a nuclear reactor program. Today, the dangerous weapons programs in both Iran and North Korea are linked to their civilian reactor programs. Moreover, proposals to separate the ownership of reactors from the ownership of the fuel supply process have met with stiff resistance from developing countries who want reactors. As a result of all these problems, I believe that nuclear reactors will only play a limited role.
Gore’s technological optimism on just about every other area of climate change policy does not square with his technological pessimism about nuclear power. My guess – and it is only an uninformed guess – is that Gore’s views on nuclear power provide the strongest signal that he is positioning himself for a run at the Presidency in 2008. His views on nuclear power seem carefully crafted so as not to offend his base of political support. Otherwise, why wouldn’t he call in grand fashion (as he has in every other area) for solving the problems of nuclear power that accompany its abundant carbon free energy? If we can freeze carbon dioxide levels we can sure keep nuclear material safe.
On coal:
The most important set of problems by that must be solved in charting solutions for the climate crisis have to do with coal, one of the dirtiest sources of energy that produces far more CO2 for each unit of energy output than oil or gas. . . Fortunately, there may be a way to capture the CO2 produced as coal as burned and sequester it safely to prevent it from adding to the climate crisis. It is not easy. This technique, known as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is expensive and most users of coal have resisted the investments necessary to use it. However, when the cost of not using it is calculated, it becomes obvious that CCS will play a significant and growing role as one of the major building blocks of a solution to the climate crisis.
Here we see the technological optimism that is absent in his views on nuclear power.
Carbon Dioxide Emissions at Stake in the EPA Lawsuit
I put this in the comments of an earlier thread, but I thought worth highlighting as well. What are potential effects of EPA regulation of carbon dioxide from automobiles?
It projects out to 2030 that the accumulated global carbon dioxide emissions will be 235 GtC. It also projects that of this total about 15 GtC will come from the use of petroleum in the United States. Let's assume all of this comes from cars. Lets further assume the EPA regulates carbon dioxide such that no emissions are allowed.
This would reduce the global total emissions of carbon dioxide from 235 to 220 GtC by 2030 (assuming regulations start January 1, 2007). (The ratio presumably gets smaller further into the future as global emissions are projected t increase faster than US auto emisssions.) I don't think that current climate models are able to differentate bewteen a world with these two values of carbon dioxide emissions, much less predict how one might be different than another.
In short the effects of EPA regulation would likely be nil. So is the lawsuit about publicity? Compelling U.S. participation in an international agreement? Because it sure does not look like it is about reducing the impacts of carbon dioxide on anything perceptible in the United States.
... with new authority and independence. Senators Collins and Lieberman, Chair and Ranking Member of the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs negotiated with a few House committees and the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations subcommittee to insert most of their S.3721 (the "Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006") into the conference report of the Homeland Security appropriations bill.
(As far as I can tell none of this language got a committee markup or saw floor debate or markup in either chamber. It may be good language, but it is authorization language being inserted without debate into an appropriations bill.)
A press release out of the committee can be found here, and in part says:
...FEMA would be strengthened and become an independent entity within the Department of Homeland Security with the same protections currently provided to the U.S. Coast Guard, nearly identical to the Collins-Lieberman FEMA legislation.
...
FEMA becomes a distinct entity within DHS – as are the US Coast Guard and the Secret Service - and is therefore protected from future reorganizations by DHS.
The Administrator of FEMA is the principal advisor to the President for emergency management. The language is modeled after the Joint Chiefs of Staff language.
The Administrator has authority to report directly to Congress and may be designated as Cabinet level at the President’s discretion during disasters.
Reunites Preparedness and Response with FEMA so that the Administrator is responsible for all phases of emergency management (preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation).
Stricter qualification requirements for Administrator of FEMA.
...
It creates a system for ensuring that FEMA is engaged in appropriate planning, training and exercise programs with its counterparts at the federal, state and local levels. It also requires that FEMA establish specific performance measurements against which to measure progress in planning, training and exercises towards establishing readiness.
Establishes a national disaster recovery strategy to assist with the recovery from future catastrophes such as Hurricane Katrina.
Here (in PDF) is a refreshingly blunt speech from NASA Administrator Michael Griffin on recent issues of science in NASA. No bureaucratic mombo-jumbo here. Here are some choice excerpts:
On science as a priority:
I have on many occasions heard the accusation that NASA has betrayed the scientific community because, it is said, the Vision for Space Exploration was "sold" as being "affordable", to be “go as you can pay”. To many scientists, that means very explicitly that Exploration is to be funded after, and only after, all prior science commitments were satisfied. The idea seems to be that, after we've done JWST, Europa, SIM, TPF, and every other mission in the pre-VSE NASA budget, then and only then can we embark upon renewed human Exploration of deep space. Well, that is simply not how it works. "Affordable" does not mean that all of Science is of higher priority than anything in Exploration. The programs above were approved in an earlier time, with different budget assumptions for NASA. There have been very significant budget cuts and many unplanned requirements for funding since the Vision for Space Exploration was announced. The impact of those cuts cannot fall to any single entity in NASA's portfolio. “Go as you can pay” applies to all of NASA, not just to isolated pieces of its portfolio.
On exploration having intrinsic and economic benefits apart from science:
But, as always, there is another view, best and most tersely captured by the President’s Science Advisor, Jack Marburger, in his March '06 speech at the AAS Goddard Symposium. Jack noted that the Vision for Space Exploration is fundamentally about bringing the resources of the solar system within the economic sphere of mankind. It is not fundamentally about scientific discovery. To me, Marburger’s statement is precisely right.
So a key point must be made: Exploration without science is not "tourism". It is far more than that. It is about the expansion of human activity out beyond the Earth. Exactly this point was very recently noted and endorsed by no less than Stephen Hawking, a pure scientist if ever there was one. Hawking joins those, including the Chairman of the NASA Advisory Council, who have long pointed out this basic truth: The history of life on Earth is the history of extinction events, and human expansion into the Solar System is, in the end, fundamentally about the survival of the species. So to me exploration is, in and of itself, equally as noble a human endeavor as is scientific discovery.
On complaints about NASA’s spending priorities:
Finally, there is the issue of control. Many members of the scientific community fully understand that the President and Congress have made decisions about the Shuttle and ISS programs that will not be undone. They understand that the proportion of funding at NASA that goes to SMD is at an historic high, and that they should pocket their gains over the last decade and remain quiet, lest someone notice! They understand that NASA is unlikely to grow in real terms, and that therefore many projects which all of us would like to do earlier, will in fact be done later. They get all of that.
The problem is that these folks do understand these real-world limitations, and in a world with such limitations, they want to be in charge of the distribution of resources. Put bluntly, they want to exercise the inherent authority of government to decide what is being done with the money which is available for science at NASA, but without having to come to Washington, put on a NASA badge, make all the associated sacrifices, and live with the consequences of their decisions, which mostly means that when you decide to do one thing, you are also deciding not to do something else that someone else would like to do, and you have to be publicly accountable for that fact.
On scientists as advisors to NASA:
Some of these external folks really seem to believe that NASA program selection and planning should be vetted through “the community" for approval. It is one thing to say that, broadly, we should be guided by the decadal plans of the NAS, the organization to which Congress looks for strategic advice in such matters. I emphatically support this view, while also being of the belief that sometimes, circumstances change on time scales shorter than a decade, and also that sometimes good advice comes from other directions. But it is another thing entirely to suggest that "the community" has an inherent right to review and modify our annual budget. To me, one of the most disturbing aspects of this practice is that the very same people who stand to benefit from particular distributions of NASA funding would be advising NASA as to what those distributions ought to be.
Let us for a moment consider the situation in the abstract. The market for scientific goods and services, while dominated in the space sciences by the government, is nonetheless a market like any other. So, each year the President and Congress (mostly upon the advice of scientists) determine that the pursuit of certain goals in space and Earth science is in the best interests of the United States. Each year, the Congress approves the purchase, through NASA, of scientific goods and services to that end. As with most markets, there are more parties desiring to provide such products than can be procured, and so a variety of closely supervised competitive procurement mechanisms are employed to determine the successful suppliers of these products. Thus, from a legal, contractual, and managerial perspective, members of the external scientific community are suppliers to NASA, not customers.
My point is that if we were to substitute above any other noun besides “science”, the inherent conflict between the role of the scientific community as a purveyor of products to the government, and its role as the primary source of advice as to which products the government should purchase, would not be tolerated. Yet, the scientific community simply must be involved if we are to set intelligent priorities among the nation’s various scientific goals. The whole process is ethically defensible if, and only if, a proper “arm’s length” separation is maintained between advisors and implementers
On NASA scientists seeking to influence the advisory process:
. . . it was my observation that NASA managers have sometimes used these advisory committees to assist in shaping the direction of our programs to a degree that I find unseemly, in view of the inherent potential for conflicts that I have outlined above, and in a manner tending to reduce responsibility and accountability on the part of NASA officials.
On the distinction between advice and authority:
How many of you present here today, and who are organizational managers at any level, would appreciate external advisors – or even other managers – bypassing you to provide “tactical” advice to those who report to you? Any takers for this approach to organizational governance? And if not, would it make a difference if the staff members and the advisors are “scientists” as opposed to other employees?
Moving on, it has also been alleged that, in reshaping the advisory committee reporting structure, I am “preventing scientists from talking to scientists". This is also nonsense. As far as I am concerned, anyone can talk to anyone, and probably should! I desperately hope that the staff of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate converses widely and frequently within the community. The NASA scientific staff absolutely must be of the scientific community, and active in it, to be effective in the planning and execution of their work. But the rendering of formal advice from an advisory committee to officials of a Federal agency is hardly “scientists talking to scientists”, nor should it be.
In fact, with regard to scientific advisory committee input to NASA, the real issue is not whether “scientists can talk to scientists”, but whether the Administrator is to be included in the conversation! By requiring formal advice to be debated in and provided through the NAC, the scientific community’s advice to NASA comes to the Administrator and simultaneously to the Science Mission Directorate. Under the prior structure, with numerous committees reporting directly to lower-level organizational managers, the Administrator usually had no direct knowledge as to the advice being provided to the Agency by external groups. This is not a responsible approach to organizational management.
Thus, at this point, I am back to basic organizational management principles. Responsibility and accountability for planning and executing NASA’s science program must rest with NASA’s managers, not the external scientific community. Execution of these responsibilities must be appropriately informed, and to this end we must, and will, make intelligent use of our advisory committee structure. But the final responsibility and accountability for Agency programs can lie nowhere other than with us, the NASA staff.
A group of climate scientists has submitted an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court in support of the petitioners, the State of Massachussetts et al. against the EPA. The lawsuit has to do with the regulation of carbon dioxide by the EPA (details can be found here).
One of the participating climate scientists emailed me and asked that I post their brief and ask for comments here on Prometheus, which we are happy to do. The brief can be found here in PDF.
We'd welcome comments on either the substance of the brief or the advocacy of these scientists. I'll start things off with some comments after the jump.
I am not a lawyer, nor am I in the business of predicting Supreme Court judgments. But I do have a few more-or-less random and perhaps not-well-thought-through thoughts about the case.
1. In my judgment EPA clearly has the authority to regulate CO2, despite what they have said to the contrary. The decision to regulate anything is at its core a political decision. So it seems that the EPA position that they do not have authority should be overturned.
2. As I understand the CAA the decision to propose regulations is at the judgment of the EPA Administrator, and given that the costs and benefit of CO2 regulation are legitimately contested, I do not see the Supreme Court mandating how exactly the EPA administrator should exercise his/her judgment. In such cases over history major policy decisions like this are more appropriately made by the legislature, and I can imagine the SC following this thinking as well. The most relevant legislative precedent would seem to be the provisions included in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977 which added a section for the regulation of ozone depleting chemicals. Presumably, if this provision was not needed, then Congress would not have seen fit to add it. I'd suppose that the SC might want to see similar explicit legislative guidance provided for CO2 before supporting its regulation. But maybe not ...
3. Even if the SC does mandate the initiation of a regulatory process I am doubtful that regulations -- or meaningful regulations -- would ever occur, under the Bush Administration or any other. This is because all federal regulations have to pass cost-benefit test under OMB/OIRA. Under the standard approach to C/B analysis the discount rate used will provide a very high bar for any regulation in which costs are borne today and benefits decades in the future. A second factor is the role of adaptation of these long time scales which according to much of the climate impacts literature in many cases (in the US, at least) has great potential to reduce many of the possible impacts. The regulatory system is not well designed for dealing with problems with a large asymmetry in the timing of costs and benefits, particularly in contexts where there are a diverse and legitimate range of perspectives. In this instance the response to ozone depletion is a very poor precedent. Once substitutes were developed the short-term costs dropped to near zero (and maybe even negative) making regulation a relatively simple action. A more appropriate analogy related to ozone may be methyl bromide - an ozone-depleting chemical used on strawberries - which is not currently regulated because the short-term costs are very high due to the fact that there are (as yet) no viable substitutes.
As far as overt political advocacy by scientists, I certainly am not against it, but it does have consequences for both individuals and for the community. The decision to become a political advocate is not unlike the decision of a medical researcher to take funds from a big company. Lots of people do it, it does have positives, but would we want every medical researcher doing it? Indvidual decisions by scientists have collective consequences. I do think it is a bit disingenuous of a few of the scientists who have publicly stated that they are focused not on advocacy but correcting the scientific record. Lets be clear, taking sides and participating in a court case is not about science; it is about politics.
The Bush administration plans to announce as early as next week a goal of stabilizing carbon dioxide levels in the global atmosphere at 450 parts per million by the year 2106, congressional and non-government sources told Platts Wednesday.
Such an announcement, if true, might lead to the establishment of new regulatory policies -- either voluntary or mandatory -- for the power sector and other sources of CO2 emissions.
But a high-ranking source at the White House Council on Environmental Quality rejected the suggestion, saying the administration has no plans to unveil any new climate-change policies.
Rumors that the White House plans to unveil a new global warming policy have been circulating since August 27, when Time magazine reporter Mike Allen, citing unnamed administration sources, wrote that President Bush's views on the phenomenon "have evolved."
In the news story there is a telling response from a representative of the Sierra Club who apparently has decided that anything the Bush Administration does necessarily is wrong, but in expressing his opposition fails to grasp the fact that the effects of stabilization at a particular level are time invariant -- that is, as far as the effects of carbon dioxide on climate change, the precise path to stabilization is not important, the time-integrated emissions are what matters because of the long atmospheric residence time of carbon dioxide.
Dave Hamilton, director of the Sierra Club's global warming and energy programs, said that while the 450 ppm number was fine, the timeline is not.
"We've got to make 450 [ppm] by mid-century, not next century," he said, adding that the administration's plan "would not stave off the worst impacts of global warming."
I am doubtful that the Bush Administration will suggest dramatic new policies on climate change. But let's see what happens. Meantime, the strategy of advancing incorrect policy arguments to support apparent predetermined opposition to policies not yet proposed might be rethought.
Abandoned mine language making its way through the Senate again
At the behest of corporate actors in the west, for the past few years Congress has been nipping at the edges of one of the thornier environmental policy issues in the west -- abandoned mines. Today the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee marked up S.1848 -- the "Cleanup of Inactive and Abandoned Mines Act" -- sponsored by Colorado Senators Salazar and Allard (neither of whom sit on EPW -- Allard did in the last Congress).
Abandoned mines are a contentious issue out west. You can get a sense of the issues here, here or here. (Or maybe since there's no wikipedia page on it, it's not such an important issue?)
Congress originally dealt with AM's in the 1999 Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) bill. Sec. 560 of S.507 allowed the federal government to "to address water quality problems caused by drainage and related activities from abandoned and inactive noncoal mines." (Note the word "noncoal.") It demanded a 50-50 federal/non-federal cost-share when the AM was not on Federal land. But in the end the provision was doomed to be ineffective from the start as it only authorized a total of $5M.
In 2004 the Senate moved AML in Section 4401 of S.2773, the Water Resources Development Act of 2004. That provision moved a bigger portion of the clean-up to the non-federal party (now a 25-75 split) and directed that the non-federal interest pay 100% of the operation and maintenance of the site, but it increased the authorization for the program almost ten times to $45M. One of the more interesting additions in that provision, however, was the "No effect on liability" provision: "The provision of assistance under this section shall not relieve from liability any person that would otherwise be liable under Federal or State law for damages, response costs, natural resource damages, restitution, equitable relief, or any other relief."
In the end, the AML in the 2004 WRDA bill was not contentious, but WRDA has had trouble passing for other reasons. But the AML issue has remained and
gained enough traction to warrant its own bill.
Today's markup of S.1848 moves forward a new wrinkle in the AML situation: exempting "good Samaritans" from liability when they move toward cleaning up a mine problem not of their own making. (Background needed: in American law when a party buys land they are assuming the liability of the former owners for any environmental problems that exist or were caused downstream. In some cases companies have purchased such tainted property anyway, but in others it prevents sale. When the original party goes bankrupt the land becomes abandoned and this usually leaves taxpayers in the lurch for cleaning up the mess.) In the proposed bill, a "good Samaritan":
(A) is unrelated, by operation or ownership (except solely through succession to title), to the historic mine residue to be remediated under this section;
(B) had no role in the creation of the historic mine residue;
(C) had no significant role in the environmental pollution caused by the historic mine residue; and
(D) is not liable under any Federal, State, or local law for the remediation of the historic mine residue.
The contentious part of the bill is the exemptions it gives to good Samaritans in mine clean-up. Sect 3(g)(1)(C), "provides to the permittee, in carrying out the activities authorized under the permit, protection from actions taken, obligations, and liabilities arising under the environmental laws specified in the permit." Where "environmental laws" are defined in Sect 3(a)(3)(A-J) as:
(A) the Toxic Substances Control Act (15 U.S.C. 2601 et seq.);
(B) the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (33 U.S.C. 1251 et seq.);
(C) the Safe Drinking Water Act (42 U.S.C. 300f et seq.);
(D) the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq.);
(E) the Solid Waste Disposal Act (42 U.S.C. 6901 et seq.);
(F) the Clean Air Act (42 U.S.C. 7401 et seq.);
(G) the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act of 1978 (42 U.S.C. 7901 et seq.);
(H) the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (42 U.S.C. 9601 et seq.);
(I) applicable environmental laws of a State; and
(J) applicable environmental ordinances of a political subdivision of a State.
Concern over blanket exemption from liability under these law seems reasonable. However, the bill also sets out a very strict permitting process in which a mine may only be cleaned up in a state which has a "State Remediation Program" and any good Samaritan must apply through this program. Fines for violating the permit are set at $10K/day. Permits must also run through the EPA and may only be granted if the EPA determines, "the project will not degrade any aspect of the environment in any area to a significant degree" and "the project will meet applicable water quality standards, to the maximum extent reasonable and practicable under the circumstances." [Sect 3(f)(1)(A)(i-iv)]
According to Congressional Quarterly, Senator Boxer (CA) offered a substitute amendment that would have created a federal grant program for clean-up without the liability waivers, but it was rejected 7-11 (that would be party-line with one D voting against her, for those keeping score at home).
It's not clear to me where this legislation is going from here, but I suspect it'll be fairly non-contentious and get through the Senate. Enviro groups have their concerns (see this article) but to my eye the EPA permitting provisions seem a pretty solid backstop to the liability relief provisions. I have no idea where the House will take this, but I expect the western reps will try to run it through.
The Promotion of Scientific Findings with Political Implications
In the Houston Chronicle today, Eric Berger has a thoughtful article about the state of the debate over hurricanes and global warming. One question that it raises is the degree to which scientists should be actively engaged in partnering with advocacy organizations to promote their work. Here is an excerpt from the Chronicle article:
While nearly all scientists agreed Earth has warmed considerably in the last century, there was no consensus on whether that warming world was causing more and stronger hurricanes to form.
Now some of those scientists have changed their minds, saying a consensus has indeed emerged.
Such talk was sparked Monday when 19 respected climate scientists published a research paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluding that human burning of fossil fuels has warmed the oceans, providing the fuel for tropical cyclones to become monster hurricanes.
"The work that we've done closes the loop," said Tom Wigley, an author of the new paper and a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
The message for the public should be clear, added Robert Correll, a senior fellow of the American Meteorological Society: Humans are the "primary driving force behind increased hurricane activity."
In a post-Katrina world, this is a question public policy-makers and the public have sought an answer to, leading to a flurry of research in the last year.
But some researchers who study the complicated interplay between hurricanes and global warming suggest little has changed in the last few months to suggest that scientists have come to a consensus.
"Honestly, I don't think anyone's changed their mind," said Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University. "To me, this looks like the same people saying the same thing over and over again."
Earlier this year, Klotzbach published a paper suggesting that, despite a rise in ocean temperatures during the last 20 years, hurricane activity worldwide has decreased.
When Klotzbach published his paper, however, he did not issue a press release or organize a teleconference.
This week's PNAS article was accompanied by a teleconference with Correll, Wigley and two other prominent hurricane scientists, Kerry Emanuel and Greg Holland.
"What concerns me," Klotzbach said, "is the politicization of this issue."
The teleconference being referred to was organized by a group called Resource Media which describes itself as "dedicated to making the environment matter. We provide media strategy and services to non-profits, foundations and other partners who are working on the front lines of environmental protection." Resource Media’s "partners" are a long list of environmental advocacy groups. I’ve personally given money to some of these groups, and in most cases I am not opposed to their advocacy. But I am concerned about scientists who align themselves with one political agenda in a politically contentious debate putatively over science. This feeds the pathological politiicization of science.
On this subject last March I wrote about how a different group of hurricane scientists participated in a media briefing organized by the group TechCentralStation, an organization that values "the power of free markets, open societies and individual human ingenuity to raise living standards and improve lives." Here is what I said then about the self-segregation of scientists according to their political predispositions:
Let’s take a look at this behavior from two perspectives. First, from the perspective of the individual scientist deciding to align with an interest group, it should be recognized that such a decision is political. There is of course nothing wrong with politics, it is how we get done the business of society, and organized interest groups are fundamental to modern democracy. Nonetheless, an observer of this dynamic might be forgiven for thinking when they see scientists self-select and organize themselves according to political predispositions that different perspectives on scientific issues are simply a function of political ideologies. We can see how contentious political debates involving science become when filtering science through interest groups is the dominant mechanism for connecting science to policy.
Aligning with powerful interests can certainly help a scientist to amplify their message in the media and elevate their prominence in political debates. This sort of amplification has long been a tactic of the political right, and it seems that the left is rapidly catching up. But the battle over perceptions of science in the media is not the same as scientific debate.
Resource Media’s campaign is disingenuous because it presents the scientific debate over hurricanes-climate change as if it has been settled, and the climate scientists they are promoting have contributed to this misinterpretation. Consider that the PNAS paper being promoted this week focuses on a subject that has never been at issue in the scientific debate:
National Hurricane Center scientist Chris Landsea said warmer water doesn't lead necessarily to stronger hurricanes.
"I agree with the paper's conclusion that the warming trend in the tropical oceans is likely due, at least in part, to greenhouse gases," Landsea said. "But this paper certainly isn't the 'key link' between hurricanes and climate change. Its focus is on something that I thought was settled quite some time ago."
As far as the scientific debate over hurricanes and climate change. It remains exactly where it has been for the past year – a debate.
On the very professional (but password protected) website that Resource Media has set up to promote the latest paper, they provide a long list of publications related to the hurricane-global warming debate, but conspicuously fail to include any work by Landsea, including his comments on Emanuel’s work, Chan, including his comments on Webster et al., or a link to the joint statement led by Kerry Emanuel and colleagues (including several who participated in the Resource Media teleconference) on the policy significance of this debate. Do they take reporters for rubes? Do they think that reporters are not aware of the broader literature? Do they not know that most reporters know a promotional campaign when they see one?
Such tactics have been criticized as cherrypicking and misrepresentation by critics of the use of science by those on the political right, and appropriately so. It seems to me that cherrypicking and misrepresentation is improper no matter who is doing it. Advocacy groups and politicians will always make the best case they can for their agenda, at the known risk of being called out by the other side.
However, when scientists willingly participate in such tactics to promote their research, and presumably a political agenda hitched to that research, they place their long-term credibility at risk. On the climate issue, many of the scientists who have aligned themselves with the political right have seen their credibility evaporate, even as they have received considerable media attention. The hurricane scientists who are now amplifying their message by aligning with the political left should take a close look at this lesson from recent history, as it may foretell their own future.
The Economist's survey of climate change describes the challenge of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations as follows:
The concentration of CO2 in the air has risen from 280ppm before the industrial revolution to around 380ppm now, and the IPCC reckons that if emissions continue to grow at their current rate, by 2100 this will have risen to around 800ppm. Depending on population changes, economic growth and political will, this could be adjusted to somewhere between 540ppm and 970ppm. The prospect of anything much above 550ppm makes scientists nervous.
But a close examination of research in this area does appear to lend anything but pessimism to the notion that stabilization at 550 ppm is even possible. Forget about 500 or 450.
By contrast, the Economist suggests some optimism for reaching a 550 ppm target. My reading of the Economist survey on climate change suggests that this optimism may be the result of its confusion between stabilizing emissions reductions with stabilization of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide -- a common error in discussions of climate change. This distinction is important because it can lead one to dramatically underestimate the magnitude of the challenge represented by achieving stabilization at levels such as 450, 500, or 550 ppm carbon dioxide.
Indeed, it seems that this misplaced optimism has led the Economist to conclude, "The technological and economic aspects of the problem are, thus, not quite as challenging as many imagine. The real difficulty is political." This line of thinking is the same as that presented in the IPCC’s Working Group III, but it is not at all reflective of a consensus. For instance, the IPCC’s conclusion that climate change is not a technological but a political challenge was strongly criticized by Hoffert et al. (2002) as reflecting a "misperception of technological readiness" and they conclude that "although regulation can play a role, the fossil fuel greenhouse effect is an energy problem that cannot be simply regulated away."
A closer look at the studies referred to by the Economist in its survey on prospects for stabilization of carbon dioxide concentrations is a somewhat sobering exercise. The Economist writes,
If an answer is to be found, it lies in using a combination of economics and a broad range of technologies. Robert Socolow, an economist at Princeton University, offers an encouraging way of thinking about this. His “stabilisation wedges” show how different ways of cutting emissions can be used incrementally to lower the trajectory from a steep and frightening path towards a horizontal one that stabilises emissions at their current level.
What Socolow has proposed is an approach to getting a start on the challenge of stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions at a level that might make stabilization still feasible, not an answer to the challenge of stabilization. A closer look at Socolow’s work suggests less reason for optimism than reported by the Economist.
Socolow suggests that under business-as-usual carbon dioxide emissions will continue to increase at a rate of 1.5% per year. This growth rate would result in an additional 525 gigatons of carbon (GtC) being added to the atmosphere by 2054, and at that time an annual rate of emissions of 15.0 GtC. Socolow argues that to eventually achieve stabilization at 550 ppm requires that the annual rate of emissions 2004-2054 not exceed an annual average of 7.0 GtC. Perhaps the simplest way to think about this is that under Socolow’s assumptions the emissions of carbon dioxide by 2054 would need to be reduced by about 53%. Socolow’s approach is valuable in that it has proposed a wide range of approaches that in some combination might feasibly make some progress toward a reduction of 53% in emissions by 2054.
But even assuming the tremendous achievement of a 53% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions would not be enough to stabilize carbon dioxide emissions at 550 ppm. It is absolutely essential to recognize that constant emissions at the present level will not lead to a stabilization of emissions concentrations in the atmosphere. As Pierre Friedlingstein and Susan Solomon wrote in PNAS last year,
It is worth recalling that constant emissions will lead to a linear increase in atmospheric CO2, not to stabilization. Atmospheric CO2 stabilization can be reached only with an emission scenario that eventually drops to zero.
By "zero" this means net of carbon dioxide "sinks." If the oceans and land serve as "sinks" (i.e., they have a net uptake of carbon dioxide) then in order for the atmosphere concentrations to reach stabilization, then human emissions need not be zero but cannot exceed the net "sink." This is described by Socolow et al. (2004) on pp. 14-15 of this paper in PDF). Socolow et al. suggest that the sink level is about 2.5 GtC per year, although they acknowledge that the figure is highly uncertain. Thus, under Socolow et al.’s sink estimate, in order to achieve stabilization of atmospheric concentrations at below a doubling of pre-industrial levels requires that over the period 2054-2104 annual emissions must be reduced by 4.5 GtC, from the 7 GtC that their scenario has for 2054. This rate of reduction corresponds to about a 2% annual decrease in carbon dioxide emissions.
Based on this scenario, we can then determine the aggregate carbon dioxide emissions implied over 2054-2104, which are about 225 GtC. Thus under Socolow’s assumptions, over the period 2004-2104, to achieve stabilization at 550 ppm requires that total emissions not exceed more than 658 GtC (i.e., 433 + 225, for the figure of 433 GtC allowed 2004-2054 see Table S1 in Pacala and Socolow’s SOM). Under Socolow’s business-as-usual, the total carbon dioxide emissions 2004-2104 are about 1630 GtC. Thus, over this period there needs to be a reduction in total emissions of about 60%.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency’s figures for global carbon dioxide emissions 2004 and 2005 saw about 7.04 and 7.25 GtC of carbon dioxide and 2006 is estimated at about 7.45 GtC. Adding these up results in about 21.7 GtC. Subtracting this from Socolow’s allowable 658 GtC 2004-2104 results in about 636 GtC. One way to think about this is that the world has a carbon dioxide emissions budget of 636 GtC to "spend" by 2104. Under business-as-usual (i.e., EIA estimates to 2030, Socolow’s growth of 1.5% after) this level of aggregate emissions will be exceeded by about 2057. Faster growth rates would of course reach that point faster.
Presumably, those who say that we have no more than ten years to get started on this challenge probably recognize that under business-as-usual by 2015 about an additional 100 GtC will be emitted into the atmosphere, drawing down Socolow’s allowable "budget" to 536 GtC to be "spent" over the following 88 years.
For my part, I fail to see any meaningful difference between 636 GtC to be spent over 98 years (or an average of 6.5 GtC/year) and 536 GtC to be spent over 88 years (6.1 GtC/year). If we can reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the business-as-usual average level of about 16.2 GtC/year 2004-2104 to an average of 6.5 GtC year over that period, then surely squeezing out an additional 0.4 GtC year would not be a show stopper.
Let me suggest another possibility. Under the assumptions presented here (i.e., from Socolow’s recent work) stabilization at 550 is not in the cards. If indeed it is true that waiting ten years is too late, then one has no choice but to conclude that starting immediately is too late as well. This is likely to be an unwelcomed and unacceptable conclusion to many, I know.
What would this conclusion mean for climate policy? Here are a few thoughts.
1. Serious thought and research needs to be given to the prospect of stabilization levels much higher that currently being discussed. What are their policy implications for mitigation and adaptation?
2. The EU, for instance, needs to move discussion beyond its fantasy of stabilization at 450 ppm (see Richard Tol on this here).
3. If stabilization at higher than 550 ppm is determined to be "dangerous interference" in the climate system, then the Framework Convention on climate change needs to be renegotiated from the bottom up. Specifically, its Article 2 needs to be recognized as no longer relevant, and no longer an effective guide to action.
4. Much, much more attention needs to be given to adaptation and its role in climate policy.
5. To continue prospects for successful mitigation policy in the face of the reality that mitigation cannot achieve the goals once set for it will require renewed attention to no-regrets policies.
6. Those who say that abandoning a 550 ppm (or lower) target represents "giving up" or "throwing in the towel" will be setting the stage for a backlash when it inevitably becomes inescapable that those targets are not going to be achieved. At some point policy must be grounded in reality.
7. The longer advocates of mitigation continue to hold unrealistic goals for mitigation policies, the longer it will be before realistic policies are being discussed with a greater chance for policy success.
There are of course a lot of assumptions in the above discussion of Socolow’s work, though I have tried to select those most favorable to stabilization. And there are of course many studies of stabilization paths and scenarios (e.g., as cited by IPCC WGIII). Perhaps this broader literature leads to different conclusions than those presented here. I would be interested in hearing from anyone with a substaintive case to be made for why prospects for stabilization at 550 ppm are more optimistic than the gloomy picture painted here.
The Washington Post has a good news story on the possibility of "ethically acceptable" stem cell research that helps clarify the confusion created by an over-hyped story in Nature, involving business interests, a misleading press release, and a erroneous reporting of the story by Nature. But the over-hyping may be the least important aspect of this situtation for proponents of stem cell research. Firt, here is an excerpt from the Post story:
Two senators who strongly support human embryonic stem cell research lashed out yesterday at the scientist who recently reported the creation of those cells by a method that does not require the destruction of embryos, saying the scientist and his company have harmed the struggling field by overstating their results.
"It's a big black eye if scientists are making false and inaccurate representations," a combative Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said during a hearing of the Senate Appropriations labor, health and human services subcommittee, which he chairs. . .
Specter and [Senator Tom] Harkin [D-IA] focused on what they said was the main reason for the confusion: the company's [ACT] news release, which said the team had derived stem cells "using an approach that does not harm embryos."
The approach -- removing single cells -- may be harmless when only one cell is removed, the senators agreed. But in this case, it did harm embryos because the scientists, wanting to make the most of the few embryos donated for the work, took many cells from each.
Similarly, the release quoted [ACT scientist Robert] Lanza as saying: "We have demonstrated, for the first time, that human embryonic stem cells can be generated without interfering with the embryo's potential for life." . . .
Harkin said: "ACT should have made it more clear from the beginning that none of the embryos survived." He added that he suspected the wording was intentionally misleading to raise the company's long-suffering stock price. The stem cell field, he said, has "been hyped too much. We need to come back to Earth."
But Ronald M. Green, a Dartmouth University ethicist who was among several who approved the experimental protocol, told the senators they were wrong to belittle the findings or the way they were reported.
"We're speaking here of an enormous breakthrough in American medicine," said Green, who said his only financial link to the company was the approximately $200 per day he was paid -- more than a year ago -- for attending a handful of meetings to review the research.
Not addressed by the senators was a plainly incorrect announcement sent to science reporters by the journal Nature itself.
"By plucking single cells from human embryos, Robert Lanza and his colleagues have been able to generate new lines of cultured human embryonic stem (ES) cells while leaving the embryos intact," the release said.
That erroneous description -- written not by scientists at Nature but by the journal's lay staff -- was corrected after news stories were published.
Nature later apologized to reporters, blaming the mistake on "internal communication problems."
Over-hyped science? Financial ties to industry? Misrepresentation in a peer-reviewed journal? Where is the War-on-Science crowd when you need them? Oh yeah, this doesn’t involve the Bush Administration . . .
Less tongue-in-cheek, and more significantly, what has been completely overlooked here is the complete tactical blunder by ACT, Nature, and the general media in suggesting that in order to be “ethical” stem cell research should not destroy embryos. The acceptance of this point basically legitimizes the central objection to such research advanced by stem cell research opponents. It consequently takes off the table the argument that the benefits of possible medical advances might be balanced against the offense to certain groups in society. Over the long run, it may be that waging the debate over stem cells from the turf occupied by its opponents does more to limit its proponents than their ham-handed efforts to over-hype the science.
As the American Journal of Bioethics writes of this debacle on its blog:
Can't we just be honest and say that we favor embryonic stem cell research, at least for now, since that's what happens at ACT (and since it is true), even though the research destroys embryos?
On August 23 here we took the group Ceres to task for misrepresenting our work in a report on insurance and climate change. I am happy to report that Evan Mills and Ceres have graciously followed up with me seeking to correct the presentation of our work in the report (PDF). Here is what the report now says:
Thanks to a workshop held by Munich Re and the University of Colorado at Boulder, a previous debate has evolved into a consensus that climate change and variability are playing a role in the observed increase in the costs of weather-related damages, although participants agreed that 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.
Thanks very much to Evan and Ceres for following up!
For those who would like to discuss the finer points of my blog writing skills, and the deeper perhaps even sinister implications of my particular word choices, please use this earlier thread;-)
For everyone else, Kenneth Blumenfled has graciously gotten us back on track in a comment reproduced below. For those wanting to discuss the substantive issues associated with my earlier post, the key elements of which I reproduce below, please use this one! Thanks!
Here are some questions worth asking about the hockey stick experience that are not receiving enough attention:
1. The Chronicle article notes that the author(s) of the hockey stick article were responsible for its inclusion in the IPCC report. What are the issues associated with having people (not just limited to the HS, of course) involved with assessing their own work? This would never fly for, say, journal peer review or the drug approval process. Other experience suggests that science can be misrepresented when people review their own work in assesments for policy makers. What are the alternatives? What are the general lessons for the emapnelment of science assessment bodies?
2. The Chronicle article noted of the IPCC's presentation
