« April 2008 »

Global Cooling Consistent With Global Warming

For a while now I've been asking climate scientists to tell me what could be observed in the real world that would be inconsistent with forecasts (predictions, projections, etc.) of climate models, such as those that are used by the IPCC. I've long suspected that the answer is "nothing" and the public silence from those in the outspoken climate science community would seem to back this up. Now a paper in Nature today (PDF) suggests that cooling in the world's oceans couldthat the world may cool over the next 20 years few decades , according to Richard Woods who comments on the paper in the same issue, "temporarily offset the longer-term warming trend from increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere", and this would not be inconsistent with predictions of longer-term global warming.

I am sure that this is an excellent paper by world class scientists. But when I look at the broader significance of the paper what I see is that there is in fact nothing that can be observed in the climate system that would be inconsistent with climate model predictions. If global cooling over the next few decades is consistent with model predictions, then so too is pretty much anything and everything under the sun.

This means that from a practical standpoint climate models are of no practical use beyond providing some intellectual authority in the promotional battle over global climate policy. I am sure that some model somewhere has foretold how the next 20 years will evolve (and please ask me in 20 years which one!). And if none get it right, it won't mean that any were actually wrong. If there is no future over the next few decades that models rule out, then anything is possible. And of course, no one needed a model to know that.

Don't get me wrong, models are great tools for probing our understanding and exploring various assumptions about how nature works. But scientists think they know with certainty that carbon dioxide leads to bad outcomes for the planet, so future modeling will only refine that fact. I am focused on the predictive value of the models, which appears to be nil. So models have plenty of scientific value left in them, but tools to use in planning or policy? Forget about it.

Those who might object to my assertion that models are of no practical use beyond political promotion, can start by returning to my original question: What can be observed in the climate over the next few decade that would be inconsistent with climate model projections? If you have no answer for this question then I'll stick with my views.

Tom Friedman on Education

Tom Friedman warms the hearts of policy professors everywhere:

I think it's so great that so many schools are teaching ecology and the environment, and I would have taken that if I could have; I've had to learn that myself. The thing I would love to see? We really need a course in every school on environmental policymaking. Do you know how a utility works? I didn't before I wrote [Hot, Flat, and Crowded]. I had no idea where the regulations got written. You really need a course in policymaking. If you don't understand where the choke points and the leverage points are in the system, you can have all the environmental awareness in the world and you're not going to be able to tilt the system. I'd love to see courses on environment and ecology because you need that foundation in science, but I think you also need to know where the policy is made. It's much more important to change your leaders than your light bulb.

CSU Silencing Bill Gray?

Colorado State is apparently or perhaps will be reducing its media relations support for Bill Gray, as he is simply calling too much attention to the school. Dr. Gray thinks that it has something to do with global warming. I am sure that both the science community and the blogosphere will be rushing to Bill Gray's defense, full of outrage.

ScienceDebate2008 - Lessons Learned?

No, it's not officially dead, but with the recent cancellation of a North Carolina debate that wasn't focused on science, and Senator Clinton's challenge today for an unmoderated debate, the likelihood that the event ScienceDebate 2008 first thought would happen in Pennsylvania, then in Oregon, rapidly approaches zero.

ScienceDebate 2008 has already been criticized here for being confusing about the intended purpose. Others have supported the effort, suggesting that at least it got people motivated about the problem. But ScienceDebate isn't the first groups to assemble a collection of dignitaries to prove the value of their message. Between them, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Scientists and Engineers for America, various groups of scientists for past presidential candidates, and the plethora of business and other consortia agitating for attention to science and technology, we haven't gotten very far. Whether they like it or not, ScienceDebate 2008 happened in Boston this past February during the AAAS meeting.

ScienceDebate 2008 is another example of good intentions horribly executed. Some possible reasons after the jump.

Political Debates Are Ideal as Theater, Little More
If you want to watch a show, then I can understand the appeal of the debates. But that is not the goal of ScienceDebate 2008. From the website:

We believe a debate on these issues would be the ideal opportunity for America and the candidates to explore our national priorities on the issues.

There's a good reason the League of Women Voters quit the debate game 20 years ago. The debates were already being scripted and molded into carefully crafted theater pieces by the candidates and their advisers. The coverage of these debates is not about comparing candidates priorities on the issues, but how answer A to question B would influence the votes of demographic C. Questions about character are no longer "who is your favorite political philosopher and why?" but opportunities to distance a candidate from disagreeable things said by other people. With apologies to Macbeth debates are full of sound and fury, but often signify nothing. I blame nobody for feeling debate fatigue, least of all the candidates.

One Step at a Time
Why start with a debate? Having sat in a few meetings with campaigns discussing their positions on various issues, I know that campaigns are willing to sit down with interested parties, be they niche or broad-based groups. Certainly the journalists in the organizing groups would have campaign contacts. With the strength of their supporters list, ScienceDebate could have held meetings with the various campaigns to better understand the candidates' perspectives on campaign issues, and to communicate the issues of interest related to science and technology. They may also have had the chance to offer their guidance on scientific or technical issues, helping avoid the situation where all three candidates managed to support the dubious claims that vaccines contributed to the rise in autism.

I suspect the idea to start with a debate was the idea that the public needs to know why these issues matter, but my previous point speaks to why debates are lousy education forums. Yes, the science and technology communities have done poorly in convincing the public of the importance of their work. That's part of the reason why candidates can deal with those issues by crafting their position papers and leaving it be. Most voters don't know or don't care.

Grow Your Base
Everything about ScienceDebate 2008 suggests to me an effort to craft a general purpose debate on science and technology. While that appeals to me as a generalist, it misses something politically. By engaging the various science and technology niches, ScienceDebate 2008 could have transcended the perception of a niche into a larger group worthy of attention. There are plenty of groups - inside and outside of science and technology communities - that have a stake in issues related to science and technology. Open government groups may respond to Senator Obama's position on using technology to open government. Business groups will be interested in Senator McCain's proposal to expense investments in technology. Construction groups will be interested in Senator Clinton's proposed fund to support purchases of environmentally sound homes. And by engaging these groups, the message that science and technology matter can spread.

Should I be proven wrong and there will be a ScienceDebate before the general election, I still believe these criticisms are valid. I'm supportive of the goals. The methods leave much to be desired.

Science Advisor Confirms His Existence

Correcting two Nobel Prize Winners, Science Advisor to the President, Dr. John Marburger responded in today's Wall Street Journal to last week's Op-Ed from Drs. David Baltimore and Ahmed Zewail bemoaning the lack of a science debate. Marburger was generally supportive of the piece until he noted what I did in an earlier post here - that the assertion that there is no science adviser nor science office in the White House is false. He was a good sport about it, which is all the better to him.

While I had much evidence to the contrary, a Google search on "presidential science adviser" reassured me that my office and I do in fact exist in the virtual as well as in the real world.

My thanks to the OSTP Communications Director for letting us know of the letter - and that Prometheus is on their radar.

The original Journal piece has since been amended with a correction - something that can't help the advocacy of Baltimore and Zewail. It's hard to respect the arguments of someone who can't get their facts straight.

Malaria and Greenhouse Gases

Did you know that today is "World Malaria Day"? I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't; a search of Google News shows 233 stories on "world malaria day" published in the past 24 hours. A search of "climate change" over the past 24 hours shows 45,819 stories. This post is about the inevitable conflict in objectives that results when we frame the challenge of global warming in terms of "reducing emissions" rather than "energy modernization." The result is inevitably a battle between mitigation and adaptation, when in reality they should be complements.

Why does malaria matter? According to Jeffrey Sachs:

The numbers are staggering: there are 300 to 500 million clinical cases every year, and between one and three million deaths, mostly of children, are attributable to this disease. Every 40 seconds a child dies of malaria, resulting in a daily loss of more than 2,000 young lives worldwide. These estimates render malaria the pre-eminent tropical parasitic disease and one of the top three killers among communicable diseases.

The Economist reported a few weeks ago on efforts to eradicate malaria. The article referenced a study by McKinsey and Co. on the "business case" (PDF) for eradicating malaria. Here are the reported 5-year benefits:

• Save 3.5 million lives

• Prevent 672 million malaria cases

• Free up 427,000 hospital beds in sub-Saharan Africa

• Generate more than $80 billion in increased GDP for Africa

I want to focus on the prospects for increasing African GDP, for as we have learned via the Kaya Identity, an increase in GDP will necessarily mean an increase in carbon dioxide emissions. So what are the implications of eradicating malaria for future greenhouse gas emissions from Africa?

To answer this question I obtained data on African greenhouse gas emissions from CDIAC, and I subtracted out South Africa, which accounts for a large share of current African emissions. I found that the average annual increase from 1990-2004 was 5.2%, which I will use as a baseline for projecting business-as-usual emissions growth into the future.

The next question is what effect the eradication of malaria might have on African GDP. The McKinsey & Co. report referenced a paper by Gallup and Sachs (2001, link) which speculates (and I think that is a fair characterization) that complete eradication could boost GDP growth by as much as 3% per year. This would take African emissions growth rates to 8.2%, which is still well short of what has been observed in China this decade, and thus not at all unreasonable. So I'll use this as an upper bound (not as a prediction, to be clear). So if we graph future emissions under my definition of business-as-usual and also the Gallup/Sachs upper bound, we get the following curves to 2050.

The figure shows that by eradicating malaria, it is conceivable that there will be an corresponding increase in annual African emissions of more than 11 GtC above BAU. Today, the entire world has about 9 GtC. For those following our debate with Joe Romm earlier this week, this would mean that he would have to come up with another way to get 10 more "wedges," as rapid African growth is included in none of the BAU emissions scenarios. Put another way, the success of his proposed policies depends on not eradicating malaria since rapid African GDP growth busts his wedge budget.

The implications should be obvious: If a goal of climate policy is simply to "reduce emissions" then this goal clearly conflicts with efforts to eradicate malaria, which will inevitably lead to an increase in emissions. But if the goal is to modernize the global energy system -- including the developing the capacity to provide vast quantities of carbon-free energy, then there is no conflict here.

This distinction helps to explain why there persists an adaptation vs. mitigation debate, and why it is that advocates of adaptation (to which eradicating malaria falls under) are often excoriated as "deniers" or "delayers" -- adaptation just doesn't help the emissions reduction challenge. The continued denigration of those who support adaptation will continue until we reframe the climate debate in terms of energy modernization and adaptation, which are complementary approaches to sustainable development.

Over at The New Scientist Fred Pearce takes a broader view and warns of "green fascism" on the issue of development and population:

But there is another question that I find increasingly being asked. Should we be trying to stop others having babies, especially people in poor countries with fast-growing populations?

I must say I thought this kind of illiberal thinking had been banished from the environmental movement. But it keeps seeping back. When I give public talks on climate change, I am often asked if all the efforts in the rich world won't be wiped out by rising populations in the poor world.

Isn't overpopulation more dangerous than overconsumption? I say no. But the unpalatable truth is that a lot of environmental thinking over the past half century has been underpinned by an unhealthy preoccupation with the breeding propensity of Asians and Africans. . .

Only recently, US groups opposed to all migration tried to get their policies adopted by the blue-chip environment group, the Sierra Club. To many they sounded like a fringe group. Actually they were an echo of the earlier mainstream.

And the echo is becoming louder. We hear it in the climate change debate. No matter that the average European or North American has carbon emissions 10 times greater than the average Indian or African, somehow it is those pesky breeding foreigners who are really to blame.

And now food shortages are growing and we will get more. Ehrlich, we are bound to be told, was right after all. You have been warned: green fascism could soon be on the march.

It is long overdue to rethink how we think about the climate debate.

Germany's Energy Gap

Der Spiegel has an excellent article on the future of Germany's energy supply. Even with projections of a falling population, Germany has a looming gap between the energy it needs and the energy it projects to be available. Why is this? According to the article:

Nuclear power is too dangerous. Coal is too dirty. Gas involves too much dependence on Russia. And renewables are insufficient. So just where is Germany going to get its power from?

How did Germany, with its forward-thinking renewable policies and ecologically sensitive populace, get into this situation?

The problem is that up until now the Germans have been too passive in working towards achieving an energy supply that satisfies all requirements; in other words, one that is environmentally friendly, safe and cost-efficient at the same time. They have chosen to fritter away the fruits of their prosperity on day-to-day problems instead of investing them in intelligent preparations for the future -- in other words, in energy research.

In fact, Germany actually offers the ideal conditions to achieve even more impressive technological advances than in the past. The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), with its 7,500 staff, is a perfect illustration of this potential.

Engineers on the campus of the KIT are testing, for example, a prototype system that converts straw into fuel. In another lab, engineers are developing a highly efficient geothermal power plant, and in yet another, physicists are building giant magnets for the experimental ITER fusion reactor to be based in France.

Everywhere at KIT, solutions are being developed which will not only help Germany, but also the rest of the world, to overcome the most serious energy problems. But the engineers and scientists at the Karlsruhe technology park sense -- precisely because they are so ambitious -- the limits of what they can do. Peter Fritz, the institute's head of research, says that the threat of an energy gap in Germany is not the only reason that "a great deal of know-how and money needs to be mobilized very quickly."

In comparison to the size of the problem, energy research in Germany has tended until now to be somewhat relegated to the sidelines. But it is also a decisive weak point, including in the debate over the expected power shortfall. This is because cutting-edge research offers the best way to limit the costs associated with a massive expansion of renewable energy.

From a global perspective, government research expenditures have hardly increased since the early 1970s, and the situation is especially bleak in Germany. After the 1973 oil crisis, annual expenditures for energy research, adjusted for inflation, were almost doubled to €1.5 billion ($2.37 billion). But then, as the pressure of high oil prices subsided, research budgets were gradually reduced before reaching a record low of just under €360 million ($569 million) in 2001.

Energy research budgets have gone up again since then, but far too slowly. Ironically, the grand coalition makes no secret of its pride in having brought the government's energy research budget back up to above €500 million ($790 million).

KIT research director Fritz isn't surprised that so many important questions still haven't been answered, including the issue of long-term storage of nuclear waste. "It is critical that we bring expenditures back up to €1.5 billion ($2.37 billion)," he says, and he even has a provocative idea to offer: "The government should sell extended operating periods for German nuclear power plants at auction and invest the proceeds in research."

It's a provocative idea: Use yesterday's dirty technology to make a clean future possible? Nuclear money for the great efficiency revolution?

Even Foreign Minister Steinmeier, the architect of Germany's nuclear phase-out, sometimes succumbs to temptation. "Longer operating lives for nuclear power plants would certainly be the easier approach," he says, but adds: "However, accelerated technology development is much better in the long run and provides us with new export markets."

There is a technology policy lesson for the U.S. to be learned in Germany's energy policies. Specifically, yes do everything that you can in the short-term to make energy more secure, more efficient, and more clean -- and above all, available. But don't forget that to invest in innovation, lest you find yourself in an impossible situation.

Joe Romm’s Fuzzy Math

[UPDATE: Joe Romm replies in the comments: "Roger -- Thanks for catching my C vs CO2 error.those are very hard to avoid. And thank you for this post. I probably should have elaborated on this issue already -- so I'll just do it in a new post, which will take me a few hours to put together. As you'll see, there actually isn't a gap in my math -- there is a gap in Socolow's and Pacala's math that most people (you included) miss. I'll leave it at that, for now, and Post the link when I am finished."]

Readers here will know that Joe Romm has been extremely critical of the idea that we need any new technological advances to achieve stabilization of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at a level such as 450 ppm. Now Joe helpfully lays out his plan for how stabilization at such a low level might be achieved. It turns out that there is a significant gap in Joe’s math. Even the remarkably ambitious (some would say impossibly fantastic) range of implementation activities that he proposes cannot even meet his own stated goals for success. The only way for him to close the mathematical gap that he has is to rely on – get this -- assumptions of spontaneous decarbonization of the global economy (and by this I mean specifically reductions in energy per economic growth and reductions in carbon per unit energy). In fact, the emissions reductions that he needs to occur automatically (i.e., assumed) for his math to work out are larger than those he proposes through implementation.

Joe relies on a useful concept from Pacala and Socolow (2004, PDF) called the "stabilization wedge" defined as follows:

A wedge represents an activity that reduces emissions to the atmosphere that starts at zero today and increases linearly until it accounts for 1 GtC/year of reduced carbon emissions in 50 years.

Each wedge thus equates to a reduction of 25 GtC over 50 years.

Joe starts out by observing that we are at about 8.4 GtC ("30 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year") and "rising 3.3% per year" (for consistency I am expressing all units in GtC, though do note that Joe switches back and forth with carbon dioxide). He says that "We need to peak around 2015 to 2020 at the latest, then drop at least 60% by 2050 (to 4 billion tons a year or less)." Here I think that Joe actually means 4 GtC and not carbon dioxide, which we’ll adopt as Joe’s chosen mid-century target value. Joe presents 14 proposed wedges worth of implementation: 4 are focused on efficiency, 4 on sequestration, and 6 on carbon-free energy totaling about 12.5 terawatts (compare).

OK, let’s look at the math that Joe provides and how his proposed actions square with his goal. Let’s set aside political realism and all that, and just focus on the simple arithmetic of mitigation. If emissions continue to rise at 3.3% per year then by 2058 total global emissions will be about 42 GtC. With Joe’s 14 wedges all successfully implemented that would equate to an emissions reduction of 33% to 28 GtC per year, falling 24 GtC (i.e., 24 wedges)short of his goal of 4 GtC.

Well, you might say that emissions rising at 3.3% per year is unrealistic; after all, in the last two decades of the last century the global economy became more efficient and the world relied on less carbon intensive sources of fuel. The rate of this decline from 1980-2000 was about 1.0% per year, so maybe it’ll happen again at this rate from 2008-2058. Why not? Increasing emissions at the lower rate of 2.3% per year would indeed make a huge difference, meaning that total emissions in 2058 would be about 26 GtC – representing a reduction equal to the contribution of 16 wedges!! Yet even with this generous assumption of 16 free wedges, after we subtract Joe’s 14 wedges we’d still be left with an annual emissions gap of 12 GtC.

But wait, the careful reader might object, and report to us that Joe already assumes vast improvements in efficiencies -- in fact 4 total of his 14 wedges. Is it reasonable to assume that we can get 20 (16 free + 4 from Joe) wedges of improved energy efficiency and decarbonization of the energy supply? Maybe, maybe not, but the assumption sure helps the math. And yet it still doesn’t get us all of the way to Joe’s goal.

What about if we shorten the time frame? Joe did suggest that we need to implement each wedge over four decades and not five: "If we could do the 14 wedges in four decades, we should be able to keep CO2 concentrations to under 450 ppm." Of course, one wedge over four decades is equal to 20 GtC not 25 GtC, so we’ll call this a "short wedge."

A 3.3% growth in emissions to 2048 would result in annual emissions totaling about 31 GtC. Subtracting 14 of Joe’s short wedges would still leave us 13 GtC short of his goal of 4 GtC. OK, I guess that it’s probably time to invoke those assumptions again. With a return to the 1980-2000 rate of decarbonization of the global economy and a 2.3% rate of emissions increase, the 2048 emissions would be about 21 GtC. If we subtract out Joe’s 14 short wedges that still has Joe missing his target by 3 "short wedges," which we could probably erase by upping the assumed decarboniztion of the global economy to about 1.5% per year.

In short, the only way that Joe Romm’s ambitious solution even comes close to the mark is by assuming a significant spontaneous decarbonization of the global economy (i.e., reductions in energy and carbon intensities). Because Joe does not tell us how these spontaneous reductions will occur, his math is, at best, fuzzy. It seems quite odd that Joe, who has said that the fate of the planet is at stake, is willing to bet our future on baseline carbon dioxide emissions increasing at a rate of less than 2.0% per year, plus some fantastically delusional expectations of the possibilities of policy implementation (and the political realism of Joe's solution will have to wait for another post). It may be unwelcome and uncomfortable for some, but Joe’s fuzzy math explains exactly why innovation must be at the core of any approach to mitigation that has a chance of succeeding.

Is it possible that assumed decarbonization of the global economy carries the weight of future emissions reductions? Sure, its possible. Is this something you want to bet on? Maybe some do, but I'd be much more confident with an approach that can succeed even if carbon dioxide growth rates exceed 2.0% per year.

The Central Question of Mitigation

[Updated: In the comments Skipper points out a units error (Thanks!). That would be 20,000 nuclear plants, not 2,000!]

The central question can be found at the bottom of this long, technical post. In 1998 Hoffert et al. published a seminal paper in Nature (PDF) which argued that:

Stabilizing atmospheric CO2 at twice pre-industrial levels while meeting the economic assumptions of "business as usual" implies a massive transition to carbon-free power, particular in developing nations. There are no energy systems technologically ready at present to produce the required amounts of carbon-free power.

Hoffert et al. provide a figure which illustrates the amount of carbon-free energy that will be needed assuming that concentrations of carbon dioxide are to be stabilized at 550 ppm, and the global economy grows at 2.9% per year to 2025 and 2.3% per year thereafter. I have updated this figure to 2008 (estimated) values as indicated below.

The figure shows carbon free energy required to achieve stabilization at 550 ppm carbon dioxide as a function of the rate of average energy intensity decline. The figure also shows 1990 total energy consumption (about 11 terawatts, TW) and the share of this valuefrom carbon-free sources (about 1.2 TW). I have updated both of these values to 2008 using data from the EIA, which I extrapolated to 2008 values, for which I arrive at 17.4 TW of total energy consumption of which 2.4 TW are carbon-free.

Hoffert et al. estimated that we'd need 10-30 TW of carbon free primary energy production by 2050, assuming energy intensity declines of 1.0-2.0% over the first 5 decades of the 21st century. So far at least, that assumption has proved optimistic, as actual energy intensity has increased, as indicated by the blue dot on the leftward-extended horizontal axis. If energy intensity does not improve beyond this value then the world will need 22 TW of carbon-free energy by 2025, and if this value works out to a net 0.5% decline through 2025, then this figure would be halved to 11 TW. For 2050 the values are 51 and 25 TW respectively.

The units of energy can be difficult to interpret. How much is 10 TW of energy? A run-of-the-mill nuclear power plant provides about 500 megawatts; so if you have 2,000 of these then you have 1 terawatt. So 20,000 nuclear plants -- or the equivalent -- by 2025 would do the trick of providing 10 TW.

In a subsequent paper in Science 2002 Hoffert et al. discuss the options available to meet technological challenge of providing 10 TW of carbon-free energy:

Combating global warming by radical restructuring of the global energy system could be the technology challenge of the century. We have identified a portfolio of promising technologies here--some radical departures from our present fossil fuel system. Many concepts will fail, and staying the course will require leadership. Stabilizing climate is not easy. At the very least, it requires political will, targeted research and development, and international cooperation. Most of all, it requires the recognition that, although regulation can play a role, the fossil fuel greenhouse effect is an energy problem that cannot be simply regulated away.

They responded to critiques of their 2002 paper with this (emphasis added):

Market penetration rates of new technologies are not physical constants. They can be strongly impacted by targeted research and development, by ideology, and by economic incentives. Apollo 11 landed on the Moon less than a decade after the program started. We are confident that the world's engineers and scientists can rise to the even greater challenge of stabilizing global warming. But it does not advance the mitigation cause to gloss over technical hurdles or to say that the technology problem is already solved.

Any discussion of the technologies needed to stabilize carbon dioxide concentrations is incomplete without showing the arithmetic of energy production and consumption. This simple math is too often overlooked in the highly politicized to and fro over mitigation.

The central question of the mitigation challenge is thus the following: What technologies will provide the world's future power needs, and do so in a carbon-free manner? Show your work.

A Post-Partisan Climate Politics?

Californina Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger provides a positive and optimistic view of of climate policy in a speech yesterday at Yale. You can watch it here. Here is an excerpt:

So I urge you to continue to be open‑minded on our environment. Do not dismiss or do not accept an idea because it has a Republican label or a Democratic label or a conservative label or a liberal label. Think for yourself. This is especially true on environment. So I have great faith in your ability to find new answers and to find new approaches. Don't accept what the old people say. Don't accept the old ways. Don't accept the old ways or the old politics of Democrats and Republicans. Stir things up. Be fresh and new the way you look at things.

Is a post-partisan climate politics possible?

It Should Be Read by Everyone

These are words that every author likes to see in a book review of their work ;-) In Bioscience this month Robert Lackey, a scientist at EPA, provides a strongly positive review of The Honest Broker. Here are a few of his comments:

The Honest Brokeris a must-read for any scientist with even a modest interest in environmental policy or politics, and I recommend it especially to scientists unfamiliar with the continuing controversy over how scientists misuse science in environmental policy and politics. . . . In summary, The Honest Broker is an important book, and it should be read by everyone.

Get your copy today!

Please Tell Me What in the World Joe Romm is Complaining About?

Joe Romm has continued his hysterical, content-free attacks on me and my colleagues for daring to suggest a view not 100% the same as his own. How dare we. After taking a close look at some of Joe’s writing, it turns out that he seems to agree with just about everything I’ve written on energy policy, and his continued (mis)characterizations of my views simply don’t square with what I’ve actually written.

Here are some examples:

On whether current projections of future emissions growth may possibly underestimate the mitigation challenge, Joe agrees with us that they just might:

[Socolow and Pacala] assume "Our BAU [business as usual] simply continues the 1.5% annual carbon emissions growth of the past 30 years." Oops! Since 2000, we’ve been rising at 3% per year (thank you, China). That means instead of BAU doubling to 16 GtC in 50 years, we would, absent the wedges, double in 25 years. That would mean each wedge needs to occur in half the time, assuming our current China-driven pace is the new norm (which is impossible to know, but I personally doubt it is). . . A similar problem to this is that many of the economic models used by the IPCC assume BAU rates of technology improvement and energy efficiency that are very unlikely to occur absent strong government action, so they are probably overly optimistic.

This last statement is of course exactly what we say in our Nature paper. So our argument about the possibility of understating the magnitude of the mitigation challenge that that Romm has criticized repeatedly (without actually questioning our numbers, but writing a lot of overheated prose), he in fact agrees with. Interesting. Weird.

In addition, I have never written anything against the deployment of existing carbon-free technologies. Quite the opposite. So when Romm says that I have called for an R&D-only approach he is either ignorant or lying, to be blunt. In fact I have argued for a vigorous short-term focus, such as in testimony before the U.S. Congress in 2006 (PDF:

When it comes to effective substantive action on mitigation, I would argue that the available research and experience shows quite clearly that progress is far more likely when such actions align a short-term focus with the longer-term concerns. In practice, this typically means focusing such actions on the short-term, with the longer-term concerns taking a back seat. Examples of such short-term issues related to mitigation include the costs of energy, the benefits of reducing reliance on fossil fuels from the Middle East, the innovation and job-creating possibilities of alternative energy technologies, particulate air pollution, transportation efficiencies, and so on.

And last year Dan Sarewitz and I wrote more specifically of how such a challenge would be met in practice (PDF. After reading Romm's writings, I cannot figure out at all what in the world Joe Romm would disagree with in the following:

Nevertheless, the broad and diverse portfolio of policies and programs necessary to catalyze a long-term technological transformation to a low-carbon energy system is reasonably well understood, even if the path and timing of the transition cannot be precisely engineered. These measures include robust public funding for research spanning the gamut from exploratory to applied; pilot programs to test and demonstrate promising new technologies; public-private partnerships to incentivize private sector participation in high risk ventures (such as those now used to induce pharmaceutical companies to develop tropical disease vaccines); training programs to expand the number of scientists and engineers working on a wide variety of energy R&D projects; government procurement programs that can provide a predictable market for promising new technologies; prizes for the achievement of important technological thresholds; multilateral funds for collaborative international research; international research centers to help build a global innovation capacity (such as the agricultural research institutes at the heart of the Green Revolution); as well as policy incentives to encourage adoption of existing and new energy-efficient technologies, which in turn fosters incremental learning and innovation that often leads to rapidly improving performance and declining costs.

In fact, significant aspects of such a portfolio were proposed and modestly funded during the Clinton Administration in the mid 1990s (Holdren and Baldwin, 2002), but they were politically doomed from the outset because they were too narrowly promoted as climate change policies, rather than as advancing a broad set of national interests and public goals and goods. They did not survive into the Bush Administration; nor did they significantly find their way into the international climate regime. Indeed, the Kyoto approach is a disincentive to implementing many of the sorts of measures listed above because they will not contribute to a nation’s ability to meet its short-term targets.

So Joe Romm’s continued, overheated, and plain weird attacks are difficult to interpret given that that he (a) has written that he agrees with our analysis of the possibility that current baseline expectations for future energy use may underestimate the challenge of mitigation, and (b) he completely ignores the fact that I have consistently supported a broad approach to innovation, including a focus on R&D, but much more. It is true that Joe Romm and I disagree about the value of adaptation, but his complaints of late have been about mitigation. But even if we disagree a bit on the specifics of climate policy, so what? Is his energy really best spent attacking others trying to address this challenge in good faith?

I certainly can’t figure out his incessant attacks and name-calling, but it looks increasingly like they have nothing to do with the merits of our views on mitigation, since they appear to be pretty compatible. Should Joe continue to play the mischaracterization and attack game, I will respond as needed, but I am hoping that he can instead focus on making positive arguments for particular policies, and leave the junior high school chest thumping where it belongs.

Kristof on PWG

Nicholas Kristof has a column in the Sunday NYT on the recent Nature paper by Tom Wigley, Chris Green, and me. Here is an excerpt:

Three respected climate experts made that troubling argument in an important essay in Nature this month, offering a sobering warning that the climate problem is much bigger than anticipated. That’s largely because of increased use of coal in booming Asian economies.

For example, imagine that we instituted a brutally high gas tax that reduced emissions from American vehicles by 25 percent. That would be a stunning achievement — and in just nine months, China’s increased emissions would have more than made up the difference.

China and the United States each produces more than one-fifth of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. China’s emissions are much smaller per capita but are soaring: its annual increase in emissions is greater than Germany’s total annual emissions.

Please read the whole thing.

And if you are new to our site -- Welcome! -- and you can find our Nature paper here (in PDF), a short essay on adaptation here (in PDF), and my book The Honest Broker, here.

Memo to ScienceDebate Supporters - Don't Fudge Facts

Today was the scheduled date for the simultaneously quixotic and pragmatic ScienceDebate 2008. Since it won't be happening, at least in Philadelphia (the organizers are going to try for another date in Portland, Oregon shortly before that state's May 20th primary), there have been some pieces in the blogosphere (particulary scienceblogs.com) bemoaning the absence of interest from the candidates in the debate.

While the non-event of ScienceDebate 2008 is worth analyzing (which I hope to do next week), I wish to take to task two authors of an Op-Ed in the April 17 edition of the Wall Street Journal advocating increased support of science and of ScienceDebate 2008.

Two Nobel Prize winners, David Baltimore (Biology 1975) and Ahmed Zewail (Chemistry 1999) manage the impressive feat of making Dr. John Marburger, the Presidential science adviser, disappear.

The piece is novel perhaps only in its location in the Wall Street Journal. The arguments are standard, and include appeals for increased science support due to economic impact, increased foreign competition (Rising Above the Gathering Storm is referenced, almost de rigueur in such pieces), and decreased opportunities for young scientists. But the authors undercut their arguments with some clear factual errors. To wit:

Today we do not have a presidential science adviser and there is no office of science in the White House.

I suspect the authors were trying to criticize President Bush for appointing Dr. Marburger at a lower level (Science Adviser to the President) than prior science advisers (which were formally titled Assistant to the President). But it reads as though we were back in the Nixon administration, when the science adviser position and the Office of Science and Technology Policy were shuttered.

So Baltimore and Zewail misrepresent the state of science advice, and go on to misrepresent the state of science initiatives.

Last year things seemed hopeful, at least for the physical sciences. The National Academy of Sciences issued a report, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm," that helped drive Congress to pass legislation – the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) – aimed at bolstering the sciences. It was supposed to beef up the study of science in high school. In the end, no money was found to fund the initiative. It was a commitment made, but not kept.

This paragraph is missing a critical adjective in front of funding. The ACI has not been fully funded. Some money has been found to fund parts of the initiative. It still is a setback, but not the catastrophe that no funding would be.

Putting aside the value of their arguments, by fudging the facts Baltimore and Zewail undercut their cause. At the very least they are misleading the public. Should the public figure it out, their reputations - and by extension their arguments - will be discredited. A reasonable response to this would be 'Why should we listen to them if they can't get their facts right?' Baltimore already has enough borderline questionable activity (look into the Baltimore Affair for more information) in his past that he should both know better and be more careful when he makes pronouncements. So should we all.

Climate Change Interview with John Holdren

Regular readers may find it surprising to see me post on climate change, but you don't see this every day.

Harvard's John Holdren is currently on television (at least on the East Coast) discussing climate change for two segments with a national figure. The big deal, which includes the name of the interviewer, after the jump.

If you looked at the timestamp, you might have guessed, but Dr. Holdren is on The Late Show with David Letterman. Dave is being relatively serious, joking only about noticing climate change when a pond in his backyard would boil in the summers. Letterman describes himself as someone who's come around on the issue, and I think it's genuine, as I recall him noting other signs of climate change at various times during his show over the last several years.

Holdren is acquitting himself well, unlike certain other noted scientists who have appeared on popular television to discuss scientific issues (Dr. Agre, I'm looking at you). He's nearly jargon free, and aside from the gaffe of not getting up until after the show breaks for commercial, appeared to be a consummate pro. Nice job.

Those in other time zones can probably catch the show later this evening. Dr. Holdren is the second guest. I suspect it will be available online at some point, if not at CBS.com, then at other providers.

Geoengineering: Who Decides?

An April 16 interview on the BBC (mp3) on the topic of geoengineering by Sarah Montague with Ken Caldeira of Stanford and David Keith from the University of Calgary raises some interesting issues about how the climate science community seeks to influence political outcomes through its decisions about what research to conduct and discuss in public.

Dr. Keith was first asked if geoengineering offers a "realistic prospect for a solution to global warming":

Keith: I think that "solution" is much too big a word. The sort of things we are talking about are not solutions in the sense that they would not compensate for the environmental damage of all of the carbon dioxide we’re putting in the air, but they might still be things that in some bad circumstances we’d want to do to limit the worst damage of that carbon dioxide. So I think of these more as band aids, but band aid is a pejorative word, but it is also something that we use.

Sarah M: And could contribute?

Keith: Yes

After Ken Caldeira recommends doing more research to evaluate the potential effectiveness of geoengineering he is asked whether such strategies could indeed provide "part of the solution";

Caldeira: Yes, none of these solutions will completely reverse the effect of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but as David points out it looks as if many of these schemes have the potential to reduce the consequences of carbon dioxide emissions. . .

The conversation next turned to the political implications of geoengineering, and specifically its effects on what options are considered in debate on climate change.

Sarah M: I suppose the problem with any idea like this [geoengineering] Professor Keith is that you are possibly distracting from the business of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

David Keith: Absolutely, I think that this has been people’s biggest fear in talking about this at all, that the idea that some of this risk management or band aid solutions are out there might make people less committed to cutting carbon dioxide emissions and I think that was a sort of universal fear that you heard at the conference [of the European Geosciences Union] and among various people who work on these technologies is exactly that.

So, to recap: scientists think that geoengineering has the potential "to reduce some of the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions" but some scientists think that scientists should not discuss the prospects for geoengineering because it will distract from other approaches to dealing with greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, decisions about what research to conduct and what is appropriate to discuss is shaped by the political preferences of scientists. This won’t be news to scholars of science in society, but it should be troubling because it is unfortunately characteristic of the climate science community. I personally have seen this dynamic at work when engaging in discussions of adaptation and also the true magnitude of the mitigation challenge.

Of course, neither Caldeira or Keith are among those who want to limit research or talk about geoengineering, but they obviously are well aware of those people among their colleagues (as am I). The interview ends with an rather glib policy recommendation by Caldeira:

Caldeira: . . . The question of which is better to do, which is more environmentally sensitive, to let the polar bears go extinct or put some dust in the upper atmosphere? And I think that it is not clear that choosing the extinction of polar bears is the more environmentally friendly choice.

Perhaps this question was meant to provoke an intellectual "thought experiment," but since it wasn’t presented as such, I’d be interested in hearing from Ken or anyone else about any available research that might suggest that geoengineering offers the prospect of altering the probabilities of future polar bear extinction. It is exactly this sort of imprecise, scientifically unsupportable discussion of policy alternatives that the scientific community should avoid.

Finally, let me make my own position clear. I prefer that both research and discussion of geoengineering take place. I am confident that the vast majority of such technologies can be shown to be a very bad idea on the merits of the policy arguments for and against. The one exception I'd suggest is the direct air capture of carbon dioxide, which some people don’t even include as a geoengineering technology. One thing I am sure of is that scientists should encourage political debate over policy options for responding to accumulating greenhouse gases to take place out in the open, involving policy makers and the public, and resist the urge to try to tilt the political playing field by altering what they allow their colleagues to work on or discuss in public. The climate debate has too much of this behavior already.

Bush CO2 Plan in Context

For those of you who might wish to place the plans announced by President Bush yesterday into context, according to data from the US EIA (xls):

US CO2 emissions from 2026-2030 are projected to increase by only 0.84% per year. So stabilizing at 2025 levels is not an ambitious goal, given the small rate of increase projected to be occurring for the US at that time. To put this another way, the average annual increase in US emissions from 2025 to 2030 will be equal to about 2.5 days of China’s projected 2030 emissions also using projections from the EIA (which in fact probably represents a dramatic underestimate of where China’s emissions are actually headed, as we suggested in Nature two weeks ago). For those wanting to spin things the other way, you might point out that the proposed five year effects on carbon dioxide of Bush's plans 2026-2030 are about twice the magnitude of the proposed five year effects of the Clean Development Mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol.

Mission Creep in the War on Science

While reviewing the policy statements of the remaining presidential candidates with respect to science and technology, I noted what is to me an unfortunate use of the phrase "War on Science."

Before I get into the details, a couple of necessary statements.

I am commenting strictly on the use of language. No endorsement, pro or con, is implied of the particular candidate.

While I welcome comments about what Chris Mooney and others mean for the phrase interpretations of what the "War on Science" is or should be are strictly my own. So are any misinterpretations.

A recent press release on aerospace and aviation funding from Sen. Clinton's campaign appears to expand the meaning of the War on Science.

Most of the press release concerns traditional red meat for the scientific and technical communities. More funding for all the things those communities desire (additional federal research money, more fellowships, more incentives for R&D investment). Nothing objective, nothing new, nothing out of the ordinary. But one sentence caught my eye.

From the press release (specifically from part of a paragraph on initiatives for aerospace research and NASA activities):

Hillary will double NASA’s and FAA's aeronautics R&D budgets as part of her plan to reverse the Bush administration’s war on science.

Sen. Clinton has consistently noted the various efforts of the Bush administration to willfully ignore or squash scientific evidence, as have Prometheus readers. That kind of activity is consistent with how I read Mooney's formulation of the War on Science.

What is new to me is associating increased research budgets with this War on Science. This mission creep is misguided, and if others pick up on this and run with it, what power a War on Science may have will be undercut.

First, while individual areas of research may have suffered a drop in funding, research funding overall has not suffered cuts in overall dollars. Yes, there have been reductions in the rate of growth, but if there really was a battle in the War on Science over research funding, I would expect to see cuts in budgets.

You may be thinking "While the actual dollars may not have been cut, stagnant funding actually restricts the research enterprise." But the value in the War on Science is in perception as much as anything. If the strength of your argument is in the details, it doesn't have the quick punch of big numbers.

Second, and perhaps more important for those with an ideological stake in the conflict, limited research budgets have been a perennial complaint that crosses party lines and presidential administrations. It's not a war when everyone's against you - it's a siege. While I've never thought the War on Science argument held a lot of sway outside of scientific communities, I know arguments for more money don't hold much sway outside of scientific communities, since they compete with other arguments for more money.

This particular use of the War on Science appears to be isolated, but should Senator Clinton become the Democratic nominee, I will keep an eye out for more of this mission creep.

Peter Webster on Predicting Tropical Cyclones

Some wise words from Georgia Tech's Peter Webster on our ability to predict the future incidence of tropical cyclones (or TCs, which includes hurricanes):

Unless we can explain physically the history of the number and intensity of TCs in the recent past, then determining the number and intensity of TCs in the future will be either an extrapolation of very poor data sets or a belief in incomplete and inexact models.

Biofuels and Mitigation/Adaptation

In Europe the debate over biofuels production targets has become the most recent example of the larger debate over mitigation versus adaptation. Biofuels have been held up by some as offering a carbon-neutral alternative to fossil fuels, and thus contributing in some way to the mitigation of climate change. The European Union has gone so far as to adopt biofuel production targets.

At the same time the world has seen food prices increase dramatically in recent times with some people pointing a finger at biofuels as contributing to those price increases. The increased price of food means that those with the most tenuous access to nutrition could slip into malnutrition or worse. This is why one UN official called biofuels production policies a "crime against humanity."

Deutsche Welle has a nice overview:

The European Union said it is sticking to its biofuel goals despite mounting criticism from top environmental agencies and poverty advocates.

"There is no question for now of suspending the target fixed for biofuels," Barbara Helfferich, spokeswoman for EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said Monday, April 14.

But her boss struck a different tone, acknowledging that the EU had underestimated problems caused by biofuels and saying that the 27-nation block planned to "move very carefully."

Yet the EU is wary of abandoning biofuels amid worries that doing so could derail its landmark climate change and energy package. In it, Europe pledged to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2020. Part of the package includes setting a target for biofuels to make up 10 percent of automobile fuel.

Biofuel a culprit in food crisis

Jean ZieglerBildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Ziegler called biofuel a "crime against humanity"

In recent months food prices have increased sharply. Biofuels are seen as one of several culprits. Land that used to be planted with food crops has been converted to biofuel production, which has increased prices.

UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food Jean Ziegler told German radio Monday that the production of biofuels is "a crime against humanity" because of its impact on global food prices.

The UN's Ziegler isn't alone in his criticism of biofuel.

The debate over biofuels illustrates that the debate over mitigation and adaptation is not just academic, but reflected in real world outcomes. It also highlights that policies can have unintended consequences. If we factor in recent research that claims that the carbon-cutting potential of biofules has been overstated, then it appears that the high hopes for biofuels as a contributor to mitigation probably need to be scaled back dramatically.

Food Price FAQs

Here are a few useful FAQs on recent increasing prices of food around the world:

International Monetary Fund (FAQ link)

UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAQ link)

World Bank (Link)

Gary Becker and Richard Posner (Link)

Please feel free to add useful resources in the comments.

Bonehead Moves of the Week

I'll end this heavy week of blogging with an award for the bonehead move of the week. There is in fact a tie for the award between NASA's James Hansen and UK environmental activist Jo Abbess.

James Hansen has undertaken a pressure campaign, apparently orchestrated with Friends of the Earth, on a publisher for some statements on climate change that he disagreed with within a high school textbook. Hansen had the bright idea of engaging this pressure campaign using his official NASA letterhead and thus presumably while being paid by taxpayers. Smart move.

Not to be outdone, Jo Abbess was able to successfully lobby BBC reporter Roger Harrabin to modify a story on climate change to be more to her liking. Abbess had the bright idea to announce her success to the world, including republishing her full email exchange with Mr. Harrabin. Smart move.

Well, if nothing else both of these episodes will surely keep the blogosphere agitated and engaged!

Kudos to Kerry Emanuel

I have always held Kerry Emanuel in high regard, because he calls things like he sees them, but he also listens to others who might not share his views. He is, in short, a great scientist.

So it was not too surprising to see that Kerry's views have evolved on the issue of hurricanes and climate change, as science has progressed. A Houston Chronicle story reports today the following:

One of the most influential scientists behind the theory that global warming has intensified recent hurricane activity says he will reconsider his stand.

The hurricane expert, Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this week unveiled a novel technique for predicting hurricane activity. The new work suggests that, even in a dramatically warming world, hurricane frequency and intensity may not substantially rise during the next two centuries.

The research, appearing in the March issue of Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, is all the more remarkable coming from Emanuel, a highly visible leader in his field and long an ardent proponent of a link between global warming and much stronger hurricanes.

His changing views could influence other scientists.

"The results surprised me," Emanuel said of his work, adding that global warming may still play a role in raising the intensity of hurricanes but what that role is remains far from certain.

I emailed Kerry to ask if the story accurately reflected his views. He replied that it was a bit exaggerated, but basically OK. Those engaged in the political debate over climate change who are skeptical of a link between hurricanes and climate change might try to make some hay from this news report. But here at Prometheus we'd suggest viewing Kerry's evolving view in the much broader context, which we have shared on multiple occasions, namely:

there are good reasons to expect that any conclusive connection between global warming and hurricanes or their impacts will not be made in the near term.

So don't get to excited about the latest paper in hurricane climatology, the field evolves slowly, and the views of of our best scientists evolve with it.

Lucia Liljegren on Real Climate Spinmeisters

Lucia Liljegren has a considered post up on Real Climate's odd post on my recent letter to Nature Geoscience. I apologize for our comment problems on that thread, but perhaps this one will work better, and you can always comment at Lucia's site, or try to get through the screeners at Real Climate. Is it just me or has the Real Climate discussion board become completely empty of anything resembling scientific discussion?

Holding the Poor Hostage

Anyone who wants to see how the misplaced opposition to adaptation actually hurts poor people need look further than thie report out today from ClimateWire:

Environmental and humanitarian activist groups plan to formally ask the World Bank to back away from plans to create a $500 million trust fund aimed at helping poor nations cope with climate change.

The letter, which representatives of several organizations confirmed Thursday is being drafted and will be signed by more than 100 organizations, comes as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund launch their 2008 spring meeting, attended by finance ministers from across the world.

Among the reasons cited for opposing adaptation funds is that the World Bank is supporting the development of a giant coal plant in India:

Groups said their overarching concern, though, is the World Bank's fossil fuel-rich energy portfolio. The bank's approval this week of $450 million for a major coal-fired power plant in India, many said, undermines its attempts to go green.

"There's a lot of concern about the World Bank taking over of the [adaptation program] because of their ongoing funding of fossil fuel projects," said Steve Kretzmann, executive director of Oil Change International, a nonprofit group based in Washington that advocates for clean energy and against foreign aid to the international oil industry.

"It is not a credible institution for managing these funds, especially given its poor environmental track record," added Karen Orenstein, extractive industries campaign coordinator with the environmental nonprofit Friends of the Earth.

"If the World Bank is truly interested in being a leader in fighting climate change, they shouldn't start out by financing a huge mega-coal project," she said.

So you read that right, lets take away money that could have positive benefits improving the lives of people in the developing world because of concerns about a fossil fuel project. This is a real-world example of how continuing efforts to place adaptation in opposition to mitigation have a material effect on people's lives.

Does anyone really think that opposing energy development and adaptation will make the climate agenda more appealing to people in India? Why can't these groups support adaptation and clean energy at the same time, rather than placing them in opposition?

Real Climate on My Letter to Nature Geosciences

The folks at the Real Climate blog have offered up some comments on my letter to Nature Geosciences (PDF) which appeared last week. In the condescending tone that we have come to expect from Real Climate, they helpfully frame their comments in terms of teaching me some lessons. I encourage you to read the whole post, but here is my response (submitted for their posting approval) to their three main points, which I've highlighted in bold:

Thanks for this discussion. Full text of the letter can be found here:

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resource-2592-2008.07.pdf

1. IPCC already showed a very similar comparison as Pielke does, but including uncertainty ranges.

RESPONSE: Indeed, and including the uncertainty ranges would not change my conclusion that:

"Temperature observations fall at
the low end of the 1990 IPCC forecast range
and the high end of the 2001 range. Similarly,
the 1990 best estimate sea level rise projection
overstated the resulting increase, whereas the
2001 projection understated that rise."

2. If a model-data comparison is done, it has to account for the uncertainty ranges - both in the data (that was Lesson 1 re noisy data) and in the model (that's Lesson 2).

RESPONSE: I did not do a "model-data comparison". One should be done, though, I agree.

3. One should not mix up a scenario with a forecast - I cannot easily compare a scenario for the effects of greenhouse gases alone with observed data, because I cannot easily isolate the effect of the greenhouse gases in these data, given that other forcings are also at play in the real world.

RESPONSE: Indeed. However, I made no claims about attribution, so this is not really relevant to my letter.

Thanks again, and I'll be happy to follow the discussion.

Sheila Jasanoff on The Honest Broker

As I have commented here before, one of the pleasures of writing a book is receiving reactions and comments, especially those from people who you have learned from and respected. Sheila Jasanoff, of Harvard University, is one of the giants of the "science and technology studies" community, and in the current issue of the American Scientist, she writes a review of The Honest Broker. But unlike Eugene Skolnikoff, another giant in the field who recently reviewed the book, Professor Jasanoff is far more critical of the book. However, after carefully reading her review, I remain unclear as to what her objections actually are to the book, and this post explains why.

Professor Jasanoff’s summary of the book, which comprises most of the review is excellent and clearly written. It is clear that she read the book closely. Jasanoff offers two critiques of the book.

There are two major difficulties with this analysis. First and most important, scholarship in the field of science and technology studies has shown that the dividing line between forms of political engagement is not fixed in advance but continually shifts in the process of knowledge making.

Right. I agree completely. Professor Jasanoff explains this critique with the following example:

Many choices that were once regarded as matters of lifestyle or values alone ("abortion politics") have been converted into choices that are now constrained by things we know ("tornado politics"). Thus it is no longer appropriate to discriminate against people simply because their skin color is different; today, mainstream biology tells us that such surface appearances do not correlate with significant differences in ability or behavior and hence do not justify racial discrimination in matters of public policy.

Does she really wish to assert that opposition to discrimination has its roots in scientific understandings of biology? How would she explain pre-Darwinian emancipation movements? Such movements were justified in terms of fundamental human rights and values, not science. Similarly, would Professor Jasanoff find discrimination acceptable if science could show some differences in "ability or behavior'? I rather doubt it.

So I certainly agree that community values evolve over time and issues that were once contested can take on a consensus (and of course the directionality can also work in the other direction). So, in the language of the book, issues can at one point in time be characterized best as Abortion Politics, and at another time as Tornado Politics. As I say in the book, context matters. So I am unclear about her objection. But if she is implying that science leads to a broad consensus on values in situations like racial discrimination, then it is safe to say that we disagree.

The second critique is:

A second, and related, point is that science does not always serve the public interest best by widening the scope of policy choice.

This is an unfortunate mischaracterization of the book, because nowhere in the book do I make this claim. In fact, in several places I emphasize the importance of all of the four roles for science that I describe in a healthy democracy. For instance, on p. 136 I write:

Issue Advocacy [that seeks to reduce choice], as important as it is, should always be complimented by scientists choosing to faithfully serve in each of the other roles.

In this context, she takes issue with my critique of the role of scientists in the climate change debate:

Pielke cites the example of climate scientists, who in his view unjustifiably narrowed the debate on policy alternatives by too enthusiastically embracing the Kyoto Protocol. Knowledge about climate change could have supported a far wider set of policies, he argues. There were, however, good political reasons for supporting the Kyoto Protocol at the moment when it was negotiated.Students of international regimes know that treaties are only a formal starting point for international cooperation. Like any good legal framework, a treaty acquires a life of its own. It helps keep parties at the bargaining table to carry on a discussion that may, over time, bring about significant changes in the treaty's original framing assumptions and prescriptions. Support for Kyoto, accordingly, could legitimately have been seen as support for ongoing multilateral conversation—which many people would have regarded as preferable to a situation in which the world's leading climate player, the United States, simply opted out of international deliberations.

Here she is unfortunately far too imprecise. I agree with her 100% that there were indeed good political reasons for supporting the Kyoto Protocol -- Consider that early in the Bush Administration I argued that the President was mistaken in pulling out of the process. My complaint about scientists and Kyoto has been, as Professor Jasanoff accurately writes, that the scientific community contributed to a narrowing of the political debate, and not that there were no good reasons to support Kyoto. As the Kyoto Process reaches what may be an inglorious end, we are now paying the price for allowing Kyoto to be the only game in town.

My view is that climate policies, and indeed many others mired in deep conflict, are enhanced when options are openly discussed, and we avoid premature closure. If Professor Jasanoff is suggesting that climate discussions should focus on Kyoto and only Kyoto, then we do indeed disagree. Interestingly, in the book I make the exact same argument about the role of intelligence in the decision to go to war in Iraq, saying that in this case as well other possible options to a quick invasion were not openly considered, but Professor Jasanoff is silent on that case.

Professor Jasanoff continues along these lines offering the most puzzling comment in the entire review:

[STS scholars] see as problematic scientists' tendency to naturalize or take for granted values and social preferences that are often embedded in the internal workings of science. As a result, many scientific priorities and methodological choices that should be open to wider debate remain insulated from critical scrutiny.

Right. And this seems perfectly consistent with her characterization earlier in the review of what I call "stealth issue advocates":

Pielke's greatest scorn is reserved for those scientist-experts who take politically interested advocacy positions without admitting to themselves or others that this is what they are doing.

Such "stealth issue advocacy" (a subset of what she calls "values and social preferences that are often embedded in the internal workings of science") has been a central theme of Professor Jasanoff’s own work, and I cite her to that effect in the book, the following passage is from her book "The Fifth Branch: Science Advisors as Policymakers":

The notion that scientific advisors can or do limit themselves to addressing purely scientific issues, in particular, seems fundamentally misconceived ... the advisory process seems increasingly important as a locus for negotiating scientific differences that have political weight.

So it is with some surprise that I see Professor Jasanoff’s review close with what appears to be a call for the reification of the separation of science and politics:

Pielke is right to want more honest brokers in the policy process. But expert policy advisers would do best to function as honest brokers of scientific alternatives—disclosing the limits of their information and the extent of their uncertainty in a spirit of professional humility.

I am unclear how this follows from what comes immediately before, or how it contradicts in anyway what I have written in the book:

What STS scholars have insisted on is that the very process of collecting and codifying information is value-laden and should not be insulated from democratic accountability. Nor should ambiguities in the available knowledge be concealed behind monolithic claims of scientific certainty.

I agree and never say anything differently.

I appreciate that Sheila Jasanoff has taken the time to provide a critical reading of the book. Unfortunately, and perhaps as might be expected from the author, I don’t find the critiques stand up to the high standard that Professor Jasanoff has set for herself in the past. Ultimately, readers of the book will have to come to their own judgments.

Has German Policy Harmed Solar Power?

A Guest Post by Greg Nemet, University of Wisconsin.

The Economist has an article this week with the title "bureaucratic meddling has harmed solar power."

The article points out correctly that the cost of solar power has stopped falling in the past couple of years as a result of scarcity of purified silicon, the main material used to make solar panels. It's an informative article…as long as you ignore the headline and the conclusion that governments should not interfere with the development of new technologies.

Any subsidy program will put upward pressure on prices in the near term, as people are generally willing to pay more for something when someone else pays part of the cost. The important question is what happens in the longer term. And despite the recent rise in prices, the subsidy program in Germany and the market for solar it has created over the past eight years, have set in motion promising trends: new purified silicon plants are coming on line that will make the input material for solar panels much cheaper, the rise in silicon cost has led to rapid reductions in the amount of material used, and the scale of demand has made it worthwhile for German machine tool companies to develop PV-specific manufacturing machinery that they now export to low-cost PV factories in China. These developments are highly promising for cheaper PV; and they are very closely tied to important policy innovations, also known as "bureaucratic meddling."

The bigger problem, that the article misses, is that the solar technology being used today is unlikely ever to get cheap enough for truly massive deployment, even if the factors above engender substantial cost reductions in the next several years. In a recent study (PDF), we compared the effects of subsidies and R&D on the cost of solar power and found that you can't get to really cheap solar with subsidies alone. Subsidies can help enable economies of scale and learning-by-doing, but they are not enough. Technology breakthroughs are also needed if PV is going to get cheap enough to compete with coal or gas or, eventually, nuclear power—even with high carbon prices. Some of the technical improvements that will enable commercialization of cheap PV are certainly best left to the private sector. But the history of technology policy suggests that the fundamental breakthroughs required will need to come from more bureaucratic meddling in the form of publicly sponsored R&D funding.

Interview with Frank Laird

Center faculty affiliate Frank Laird is interviewed over at the Breakthrough Institute on energy policy and climate change.

Ted Nordhaus on the Politics of Personal Destruction

Ted Nordhaus eloquently characterizes a disturbing pattern in debate among those calling for action climate change -- avoid debating the merits of policies, and instead smear the character of those making arguments that you disagree with.

Here is an excerpt:

The assumption among environmental leaders was that once the scientific consensus that anthropogenic climate change was occurring was established, this consensus would translate into a consensus as to what to do about it -- a consensus that would embrace the policies long advocated by the national environmental movement, namely the Kyoto framework at the international level and cap and trade legislation at the domestic level.

But a funny thing has happened over the last several years, as opinion about the reality and urgency of the climate crisis has "tipped." The consensus that would allegedly result once broad public acceptance of anthropogenic climate change was achieved has fractured. Efforts to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Accord at the international level have stalled, as developing economies, led by China and India, have balked at any framework that would constrain carbon emissions and slow economic development in the developing world, where most of the growth of carbon emissions over the next century will come from. The fragile coalition of businesses, some segments of the energy industry, and environmentalists that appeared ready to support a domestic cap and trade system has frayed, as the environmental movement has demanded that all carbon allowances be auctioned and business interests have balked at the increasing costs of the regulations. . .

Unfortunately, the response to these developments from some environmentalists has been to attempt to tar those who have challenged the efficacy of the dominant environmental policy framework to address climate change with the same brush that they used to discredit those who denied the existence of anthropogenic climate change back in the 90's, only this time they are attacking respected climate scientists, energy experts, and activists who have no connection to the fossil fuel industry and have long and well documented track records of advocating for strong action to address climate change.

This effort is not entirely unusual in modern American politics. Any observer of recent national elections can attest that it has become par for the course among partisans of both political parties, with the political Right having proven to be particularly adept at such tactics, and most would agree that it has not changed American democracy for the better nor aided the effort to address the great challenges that the nation today is faced with. So it is particularly unseemly for prominent environmentalists, having spent the last decade demanding that policy to address climate change conform to the reality of climate science, are now attempting to destroy, quash, and otherwise discredit good science and important scientific and policy debate because it challenges the immediate political and policy objectives of the movement.

Read the whole thing here.

Carbon Intensity of the Economy

It is always good when debates can be resolved by appeals to data, because it helps to eliminate ambiguity.

Joe Romm expressed concern that I had shown a graph of energy intensity of the global economy to suggest that the overall decarbonization of the global economy did not decrease over the poeriod 1890-1970. That was this figure:

Romm explained to his readers how serious a mistake I had made:

Obviously carbon per GDP can go in a completely different direction than energy per GDP. If Pielke’s analytical mistake isn’t crystal clear to anyone reading this blog, please let me know. So my problem with him isn’t semantics. Pielke’s argument is simply wrong. His analysis is flawed.

OK Joe, lets look at carbon per GDP over the same time period:

Readers are now in a position to judge for themselves whether or not the argument I made is materially affected in this case by using one figure over the other. The alternative perhaps is that Joe Romm is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. As I said, thank goodness for data.

Joe Romm’s Dissembling

Joe Romm is someone who I’ve never met, but he has taken on a somewhat odd obsession with attacking me over the past few weeks, and I have come to the conclusion that he is dishonest and uninterested in constructive discussion.

I have come to this conclusion after reading his most recent diatribe, which takes a semantic issue, inflates it with a lot of heated rhetoric, and pretends that it is something meaningful when it is not.

The molehill that Romm seeks to make a mountain out of is over the difference between "decarbonization of the economy" versus "decarbonization of primary energy supply."

The difference between the concepts, and their relationship, is easily explained by the Kaya Identity, which is the basis for all emissions scenarios, including those used by the IPCC. The Kaya Identity holds that four factors can be used to develop scenarios of future emissions:

P = Population
GDP/P = Per capita wealth
Total Energy/GDP = Energy intensity
Carbon/Total Energy = Carbon intensity

Carbon emissions = P * GDP/P * TE/GDP * C/TE

You can see from the cancellation of the terms that the units match on both sides. If you take carbon intensity and energy intensity together, you get C/GDP which is often referred to as "carbon intensity of the economy" to avoid confusion with "carbon intensity of primary energy." Because total energy of the economy is dominated by fossil fuels, trends in "energy intensity" and "carbon intensity of the economy" are very closely related.

A close look at the Kaya Identity shows that carbon emissions can go down by only one of several ways:

Reduce P
Reduce GDP/P
Reduce TE/GDP
Reduce C/TE

In our Nature article we stated quite clearly that:

Decarbonization of the global energy system depends mainly on reductions in energy intensity and carbon intensity. These result from technological changes that improve energy efficency and/or replace carbon-emitting systems with ones that have lower (or no) net emissions.

In other words, we do not think that either population is going to decrease or per capita wealth, so the focus must be on carbon intensity and energy intensity, which we clearly define as "decarbonization of the global energy system" (and not decarbonization of total energy). We wrote in exactly this manner to be absolutely clear about our meaning.

Similarly in a blog post I wrote:

During and following the industrial revolution, the world experienced a long period of carbonization of the global economy . . .

Note that I did not say "carbonization of total energy supply" as Romm would have his readers believe. Romm is either horribly sloppy in his reading habits or willfully malicious in his intent.

Joe Romm’s focus on semantics and definitions is the classic approach of someone who feels that they can’t win a debate on substance, and must resort to dissembling and misdirection. I for one will no longer give Joe Romm the benefit of the doubt. His actions may fool a few who wish to be fooled, but ultimately he is just discrediting himself with such behavior.

Green Car Congress on PWG

Here is a link to an excellent summary and thoughtful discussion of our Nature Commentary (PWG) at Green Car Congress written by Jack Rosebro.

Joe Romm on Air Capture Research

Joe Romm, whose voluminous, hysterical attacks on me and my co-authors Tom Wigley and Chris Green have become somewhat cartoonish, has far more in common with my views than he thinks. Here is what he says on a recent Real Climate post on air capture:

But we should surely do a fair amount of research on air capture, since, by not later than the 2020s, we’re going to get desperate for emissions reductions, and by the 2030s, we’re going to be very desperate and willing to pursue expensive options we that aren’t yet politically realistic.

Investment in research to support a potential breakthrough new technology -- what a great idea Joe!

Gwyn Prins on PWG in The Guardian

Gwyn Prins, a professor at the London School of Economics who is also a friend and collaborator, has a thoughtful op-ed in The Guardian with his views on the significance of our Nature commentary of last week. Here is an excerpt:

The global economy is not de