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A brief account of an aborted contribution to an ill-conceived debate

A guest post by Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch

The July 2008 newsletter of the American Physical Society (APS) opened a debate concerning the IPCC consensus related to anthropogenic induced climate change. We responded with a brief comment concerning the state and changing state of consensus as indicated by two surveys of climate scientists. Data was presented concerning climate scientists assessments of the understanding of atmospheric physics, climate related processes, climate scientists level of agreement with the IPCC as representative of consensus and of the level of belief in anthropogenic warming. (The full manuscript is available here .) Our comment was summarily dismissed by the editors as polemic, political and unscientific. The following is a brief account of this episode.

The APS Forum on Physics and Society states "The Forum on Physics and Society is a place for discussion and disagreement on scientific and policy matters". The Forum on Physics and Society, Newsletter, July 2008 began a debate "concerning one of the main conclusions" of the IPCC. The intended debate was clearly evident in the statement,

There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming ...

There is no reference as to how this statement was determined or its validity known. It is very probably likely to be primarily ethereal.

The intended debate seemed to be aimed at prompting a discussion, or perhaps as the two papers to date seem to suggest, an evaluation of the methods employed in reaching the IPCC conclusion. Two invited articles were published to set off the debate, one pro and one contra to the IPCC conclusion. Oddly enough, neither paper appears to be authored by a climate scientist per se although both present a detailed discussion of atmospheric physics. Subsequent contributions were invited from the "physics" community for "comments or articles that are scientific in nature."

So here we have two editors (who are themselves not climate scientists) soliciting invited papers from authors who, as far as we know, have never had any peer reviewed publications pertaining to climate science, setting off a debate concerning the consensus in the climate sciences by what appears to be a mere declaration of the current state of the consensus. The editors of the newsletter should be commended however for at least stating that the "correctness or fallacy of that [the IPCC] conclusion has immense implications for public policy."

Our interests were drawn by statements found on the web page: 1. the Forums declaration that it is "a place for discussion and disagreement on scientific and policy matters", and 2. the statement "There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming ...". We have been working for some time in the area of assessing the levels of consensus in the climate science community and therefore decided to submit a brief (and rapidly rejected) comment (PDF.) to the debate.

Our stance concerning "consensus" (on any matter) is:

1. Consensus and certainty are two different concepts, which sometimes are parallel, although often not.

2. Consensus is simply a level of agreement among practitioners and might be subject to change over time.

3. Consensus is a level of agreement in belief of the relevance of the theory to the issue and the casual relationship inherent in the theory

and in particular reference to climate science

4. Climate change science is considered to be multidisciplinary and therefore the knowledge claims comprising the consensus is considered to be multidimensional, that is, not able to be captured in a single statement.

In short, consensus is not as simple as a yes - no response. It is a negotiated outcome of multiple levels of expertise.

Now, returning to our submission, or more precisely, the rejection of our submission, the first rejection arrived in a matter of hours. Short and to the point, it said:

The original invitation was for participation in a scientific debate, not a political one. As your attached piece is not primarily of a scientific nature, we cannot consider it for publication in our newsletter. In my editorial comments for the July 2008 issue, I emphasized that we are not interested in publishing anything of a polemical or political nature.

The "emphasized" points are of interest. The paper was neither polemic nor political, as we invite the readers of the blog to verify, however giving the editors the benefit of the doubt, we asked for clarification. Again the APS response was quite rapid:

Your article [...] is not about technical issues concerning climate research. Instead, it is about the opinions of scientists. I would be glad to consider publication of articles, comments, or letters from you that address specific technical issues connected with climate research.

Now, aren’t the "opinions of scientists" the foundation of consensus? The "opinions of scientists" in our analysis represent not a political statement but a scientific comment. The data is empirical and the paper was deliberately devoid of political or polemic statement. Our paper does definitely not address a specific technical issue but it does provide a collective peer assessment of a number of specific technical issues (such as: representation of hydrodynamics and greenhouse gases). Indeed, our concern was to substantiate quantitatively the loose assertion of an anonymous APS officer:

There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming.

An estimate based on data can be read in our short comment.

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.

New Paper on Climate Contrarians by Myanna Lahsen

I'd like to alert readers of this blog to an article of mine just out
in this issue of Global Environmental Change. It analyzes a prominent
subset of US climate contrarians, providing a more multi-faceted and
complex account than generally available of why they chose to join the
anti-environmental backlash. One of them, Frederick Seitz, died recently, making this a poignant time to examine him as well as his
similarly influential colleagues in historical perspective, as I do in
this article. Below is the reference and the abstract of the article:

Lahsen, Myanna. "Experiences of Modernity in the Greenhouse: A Cultural Analysis of a Physicist 'Trio' Supporting the Conservative Backlash Against Global Warming." Global Environmental Change (2008), Vol. 18/1 pp 204-219. (PDF)

In the context of President George W. Bush's rejection of the Kyoto
Protocol intended to combat human-induced climate change, it appears
important to improve understanding of powerful efforts to reframe
global climate change as a non-problem. This paper draws on
ethnographic research among U.S. scientists involved with climate
science and politics to improve understanding of the U.S. controversy
over global climate change by attending to structuring cultural and
historical dimensions. The paper explores why a key subset of
scientists – the physicist founders and leaders of the George C.
Marshall Institute – chose to lend their scientific authority to the
"environmental backlash," the counter-movement that has mobilized to
defuse widespread concern about perceived environmental threats,
including human-induced climate change. The paper suggests that the
physicists joined the backlash to stem changing tides in science and
society and to defend their preferred understandings of science,
modernity, and of themselves as a physicist elite – understandings
challenged by recent transformations in American science and society
that express themselves, among other places, in the widespread concern
about human-induced climate change.

Guest Comment: Sharon Friedman, USDA Forest Service - Change Changes Everything

It is true that the calculus of environmental tradeoffs will be inevitably and irretrievably changed due to consideration of climate change. Ideas that were convenient (convenient untruths) like “the world worked fine without humans, if we remove their influence it will go back to what it should be” have continued to provide the implicit underpinning for much scientific effort. In short, people gravitated to the concept that "if we studied how things used to be" (pre- European settlement) we would know how they "should" be, with no need for discussions of values or involving non-scientists. This despite excellent work such as the book Discordant Harmonies by Dan Botkin, that displayed the scientific flaws in this reasoning (in 1992).

What's interesting to me in the recent article, "The Preservation Predicament", by Cornelia Dean in The New York Times
is the implicit assumption that conservationists and biologists will be the ones who determine whether investing in conservation in the Everglades compared to somewhere else, given climate change, is a good idea - perhaps implying that sciences like decision science or economics have little to contribute to the dialog. Not to speak of communities and their elected officials.

I like to quote the IUCN (The World Conservation Union) governance principles:

Indigenous and local communities are rightful primary partners in the development and implementation of conservation strategies that affect their lands, waters, and other resources, and in particular in the establishment and management of protected areas.

Is it more important for scientists to "devise theoretical frameworks for deciding when, how or whether to act" (sounds like decision science) or for folks in a given community, or interested in a given species, to talk about what they think needs to be done and why? There are implicit assumptions about what sciences are the relevant ones and the relationship between science and democracy, which in my opinion need to be debated in the light of day rather than assumed.

Sharon Friedman
Director, Strategic Planning
Rocky Mountain Region
USDA Forest Service

RMS Response to Forecast Evaluation

Robert Muir-Woods of RMS has graciously provided for posting a response to the thoughts on forecast verification that I posted earlier this week. Here are his comments:

Scientifically it is of course not possible to draw any conclusion from the occurrence of two years without hurricane losses in the US, in particular following two years with the highest level of hurricane losses ever recorded and the highest ever number of severe hurricanes making landfall in a two year period. Even including 2006 and 2007, average annualized losses for the past five years are significantly higher than the long term historical average (and maybe you should also show this five year average on your plot?)

The basis for catastrophe loss modeling is that one can separate out the question of activity rate from the question as to the magnitude of losses that will be generated by the occurrence of hurricane events. In generating average annualized losses we need to explore the full 'virtual spectrum' of all the possible events that can occur. The question about current activity rates is a difficult one, which is why we continue to involve some of the leading hurricane climatologists, and a very wide range of forecasting methodologies, in our annual hurricane activity rate update procedure. In October 2007 an independent expert panel concluded that activity rates are forecasted to remain elevated for the next five years. While this perspective was announced and articulated by RMS, we did not originate it. Each year we undertake this exercise, we ensure that the forecasting models used to estimate activity over the next five years also reflect any additional learning from the forecasting of previous years, including the low activity experienced in 2006 and 2007. We don't 'declare success' that the activity rate estimate that has emerged from this procedure over the past three years (using different forecast models and different climatologists) has scarcely changed, but the consistency in the three 5 year projections is interesting nonetheless.

You may also be surprised to learn that our five-year forward-looking perspective on hurricane risk does not inevitably produce higher losses than all other models, which use the extrapolation of the simple long-term average to estimate future activity. This is as shown in a comparison published in a report prepared by the Florida Commission on Hurricane Loss Projection Methodology for the Florida House of Representatives (see the Table 1 on page 25 of the report, which can be downloaded from here: http://www.sbafla.com/methodology/announcements.asp?FormMode=Call&LinkType=Section&Section=0)

Robert Muir-Wood
RMS

Advise Requested for Survey Analysis

Guest Submission by Hans von Storch and Dennis Bray

In the following we outline a research strategy to characterize sub-groups of climate scientists; the idea is to first propose a short operational list of certain interesting, mostly exclusive but not complete subgroups; these are related to three general criteria.

At this time we ask for comments on both the list of the four categories and on the three general criteria. When we have come to a conclusion with regard to the list and to these criteria, we will try to map the responses collected in our surveys of climate scientists to these groups and criteria – with the idea that in this way we may describe the a host of views , conceptions and perceptions held by these different groups.

We begin with operational definitions of the categories. They are:

1. Advocate Pro.

Scientists in this category are those who are convinced of the reality on ongoing and future anthropogenic climate change. It is the contention of these scientists that climate change will have catastrophic impacts if left unmitigated. This category of scientists perceive it as a moral and professional obligation to alert the public to the impending dangers of climate change and to lobby for political resolve in terms of significant reductions of GHG emissions and the necessary changes in lifestyle and global economy.

2. Advocate Con

Scientists in this category consider the concept of anthropogenic climate change as either insignificant or outright false. They consider the drive towards climate change policy as ill conceived and, sometimes, as a tool to push for a broader environmentalist agenda. Similar to the “advocate pro”, this groups sees lobbying as a necessity, but it is lobbying for goals that stand in opposition to the “advocate pro”.

3. Concerned Pro

Scientists in this category, like those in the “advocate pro” category, are convinced of ongoing and future anthropogenic climate change. They also contend that climate change will have significant impacts. This category differs, however, from the “advocate pro” in as much as these scientists, while accepting as a professional responsibility the undertaking of informing the public to possible dangers, do so without pushing for specific policy choices. In other words, they are information, not solution brokers.

4. Doubters

This category of scientists holds no strong conviction concerning anthropogenic climate change or its potential impacts. In this category, climate change is perceived of as a relevant scientific issue but the challenge is to generate more knowledge. Until further knowledge is available they consider anthropogenic climate change to be a significant, but albeit not dominant, issue.

We want to characterize these four categories by employing three dimensions of scientific perceptions. These dimensions are interpretation, consequence and action. Before providing dimensions we again provide operational definitions of these terms. They are:

1. Interpretation. By interpretation we mean an individual representation of the explanation and signification of climate change. This can range from denial of anthropogenic climate change to being fully convinced of man-made climate change.

2. Consequence. Consequence refers to the perception of climate change impacts. In this dimension, response can range from no or marginal impact through to disaster.

3. Action. This dimension refers to the political including medial engagement deemed appropriate in light of anthropogenic climate change. The range of this dimension is from puzzle solver to activist, with the puzzle solver content to remain within the context of science without public communication.

We would appreciate to hear comments and receive advice on our concepts and definitions.

From a Reader: Blog Intolerance

[A long-time reader who wishes to remain anonymous asked us to post the following excerpt from a Joe Klein column in Time magazine. -Ed.]

This is not the first time this kind of free-range lunacy has been visited upon me. Indeed, it happens, oh, once a week to each of us who post on Swampland (Karen Tumulty, Jay Carney and Ana Marie Cox are the others). A reasonable reader might ask, Why are the left-wing bloggers attacking you? Aren't you pretty tough on the Bush Administration? Didn't you write a few months ago that George W. Bush would be remembered as one of the worst Presidents in history? And why on earth does any of this matter?

First, let me say that I really enjoy blogging. It's a brilliant format for keeping readers up to date on the things I care about—and for exchanging information with them. . .

But the smart stuff is being drowned out by a fierce, bullying, often witless tone of intolerance that has overtaken the left-wing sector of the blogosphere. Anyone who doesn't move in lockstep with the most extreme voices is savaged and ridiculed—especially people like me who often agree with the liberal position but sometimes disagree and are therefore considered traitorously unreliable. Some of this is understandable: the left-liberals in the blogosphere are merely aping the odious, disdainful—and politically successful—tone that right-wing radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh pioneered. They are also justifiably furious at a Bush White House that has specialized in big lies and smear tactics.

And that is precisely the danger here. Fury begets fury. Poison from the right-wing talk shows seeped into the Republican Party's bloodstream and sent that party off the deep end. Limbaugh's show—where Dick Cheney frequently expatiates—has become the voice of the Republican establishment. The same could happen to the Democrats. The spitballs aimed at me don't matter much. The spitballs aimed at Harman, Clinton and Obama are another story. Despite their votes, each of those politicians believes the war must be funded. (Obama even said so in his statement explaining his vote.) Each knows, as Senator Jim Webb has said repeatedly, that we must be more careful getting out of Iraq than we were getting in. But they allowed themselves to be bullied into a more simplistic, more extreme position. Why? Partly because they fear the power of the bloggers to set the debate and raise money against them. They may be right—in the short (primary election) term; Harman faced a challenge from the left in 2006. In the long term, however, kowtowing to extremists is exactly the opposite of what this country is looking for after the lethal radicalism of the Bush Administration.

Chris Landsea on New Hurricane Science

Chris Landsea has submitted a guest post today on a recent paper on hurricanes and global warming. We share Chris' comments below, and welcome reactions and alternative perspectives.

Guest post by Chris Landsea, NOAA

Today a new paper by Gabe Vecchi and Brian Soden has been published:

Vecchi G. A., B. J. Soden (2007), Increased tropical Atlantic wind shear in model projections of global warming, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L08702, doi:10.1029/2006GL028905. (PDF)

My reading of the paper by Vecchi and Soden is that this is a very important contribution to the understanding of how global warming is affecting hurricane activity. The study thoroughly examines how the wind shear and other parameters that can alter the number and intensity of hurricanes because of manmade global warming. What they found - surprisingly - is that in the Atlantic that the wind shear should increase significantly over a large portion of where hurricanes occur - making it more difficult for hurricanes to form and grow. This was identified in all of the 18 global climate models they examined. (Perhaps it's not that surprising given that Knutson/Tuleya 2004 showed some of the same signal for the more reliable models back then. Now the signal is in ALL of the CGCMs.) Even the MPI changes in the Atlantic appear mixed, due to the smaller SST increases there (with more uniform upper trop temp changes) compared with the rest of the global tropics/subtropics.

One implication to me is that this further provides evidence that the busy period we've seen in the Atlantic hurricanes since 1995 is due to natural cycles, rather than manmade causes. We've seen a big reduction in wind shear in the last thirteen hurricane seasons, which is OPPOSITE to the signal that Vecchi and Soden have linked to manmade global warming changes. Another implication is that this paper reconfirms earlier work that suggests that global warming will cause very small changes to Atlantic hurricanes, even several decades from now.

A Defense of Alarmism

[The thoughtful comment below is from David Adam, Environment correspondent for The Guardian was made in response to Mike Hulme's letter to Nature on press coverage of the IPCC report in the UK media. -RP]

Alarmist and proud of it
(Alarm: to fill with apprehension; to warn about danger, alert)

David Adam
Environment correspondent
The Guardian

Some definitions from the Collins English dictionary

Catastrophic: a sudden, extensive disaster or misfortune

Shocking: Causing shock

Terrifying: extremely frightening

Devastating: to confound or overwhelm

Can anyone explain to me why any of those are inappropriate for a report than said human society will 'most likely' raise temperatures by 4C by 2100 unless it takes drastic action (my words, but how else would you desribe a complete overhaul of the lifestyles of millions, if not billions of people) to cut emissions?

here's another:

news: interesting or important information not previously known.

attacking newspapers for picking out the bits of the report that appear to take the debate forwards (the effects of carbon cycle feedbacks for example, which only seem to be shifting the estimates in one direction) is as pointless and idiotic as complaining that a library won't sell you fish.

does the 2006 report not paint a picture that is "worse" than the 2001 report?

again, to the dictionary:

worse: the comparative of bad

Mike accuses us of "appealling to fear to generate a sense of urgency"

Guilty as charged. Is it not frightening? Is it not urgent?

Alarmist and proud of it
(Alarm: to fill with apprehension; to warn about danger, alert)

Benny Peiser Handicaps Climate Politics

Benny Peiser kindly offered a number of comments on a recent thread in which we were less-than approving of the Bush Administration's trans-Atlantic diplomacy on climate change. In order to provide a range of perspectives on the current state of climate politics, which is very much in flux, we have asked Benny Peiser to expand on these comments and offer a perspective on climate politics, particularly U.S.-Europe relations. We welcome posting a range of other perspectives here as well, simply send them to me by email and we'll post them up. Here are Benny's comments:

Post-Kyoto: A whole new ballgame

By Benny Peiser, Liverpool John Moores University (UK)

It is hard these days to keep up with the accelerating reworking of national and international climate policies. On Monday, the US Administration pre-empted a preparatory G8/climate meeting between Angela Merkel and Tony Blair by announcing, in Berlin no less, an energetic, new approach to international climate policy: 'We're doing better in recent years on reducing greenhouse gas emissions than you folks - so why don't you join our technology-driven path to success instead of sending Chinese communists billions of Euros for worthless carbon credits? ' (excuse my rather rough translation of diplomatic niceties)

Today, the European Parliament, in one of its emblematic consensus votes, decided by a majority of 615 - by 25 votes against - that instead of getting wobbly on Kyoto, the EU should enforce a 30% emissions cut by 2020 - and a staggering 80% reduction by 2050. (http://euobserver.com/9/23496). Not that anybody in Europe would take note, given the routine nature of such show of hands.

Tomorrow, Canada's three opposition parties will most likely succeed in winning its Kyoto vote in the House of Commons, thus possibly triggering new elections that may be decided on the contentious climate treaty. http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=2de17e3f-76c1-4cd4-8d8c-849c5d7c872a&k=5894

What these developments have in common is that they are taking place in a significantly reshaped political landscape where traditional positions and habutual disparities on climate change policies have been diluted beyond recognition - if not abandoned for good. In short, what we are witnessing is the internationalisation of what I call the 'Cameron-Effect.'

By this I mean the greening of the conservative parties of the Anglo-Saxon world. This strategy is a mainly PR driven restyling of conservative parties in the European fashion that has transpired over the last ten years or so. What Australia's, Canada's and America's political right is beginning to learn from their British counterparts (and have had to learn under pressure from political opponents) is the need for environmental camouflage - in more or less exactly the same mode socialist, labour and even traditional free market liberals have painted themselves in populist green varnish.

Now that everyone is outdoing each other in green spin and rhetoric, now that every single government on the planet is clamouring for the green vote (left, right and centre), it has become increasingly frustrating for the political left to attack their opponents on environmental credentials. This is one of the reasons why the ostensible conversion of Presidents Bush as a champion of environmental protection is regarded as suspicious if not outrageous as David Cameron's original scheme to don the eco-mantle and call Labour's green bluff.

Which brings us to the touchy Kyoto game. As the economic burden and hurt of EU's Kyoto experiment becomes progressively palpable for ordinary citizens, common businesses and whole sectors of European industries, the opposition to Europe's unilateral policy is mounting. Whether it is growing hostility by the energy intensive manufacturing industry, Europe's airline or Germany's car industries, the traditional ritual of keeping tight-lipped on Kyotoy owing to political correctness has been shattered in recent months. Even Germany's once powerful trade unions have begun to publicly voice their concern about (and started to march in protest against) the detrimental impact of Europe's unilateral climate policy on economic stability and job security.

All things considered, Europe seems to be suffering from a severe bout of Kyoto-schizophrenia. Its governments and political elite (not to mention its science establishment) have invested incalculable amounts of political capital and prestige on the Kyoto Protocol. In more than one way, it has become the foremost and tragic symbol of Europe's "leadership role." A political failure of the Kyoto process would, without a shadow of doubt, cause incalculable trauma to European pride and standing.

Which is why the widely anticipated climb-down on Kyoto-style mandatory emissions cuts and short-term targets that will almost certainly feature in any post-Kyoto agreement that aspires to include China, India and the US is now carefully presented as Angela Merkel's accomplishment or Tony Blair's lasting legacy, etc. In reality, international climate policy will have to become much more realistic (as in Realpolitik). It will almost have to start from scratch if a truly global, transparent and cost-effective agreement is to be achieved in the real world of highly disparate and conflicting interests. As far as I can judge, it remains to be seen whether a face-saving and economically viable compromise can be achieved in the next few years among the world's superpowers.

Will Toor on the CU Power Plant

Will Toor, Boulder County Commissioner (and former Mayor of Boulder and Director of the CU Environmental Center) has provided a thoughtful response to our commentary earlier this week on the new University of Colorado power plant. Here are Will's comments:

Thanks Will!

Will Toor on the CU Power Plant

I think what this issue illustrates is the difficulty of achieving GHG reduction goals without regulatory authority. The City of Boulder, like other local governments, has a number of tools it can use; building codes to compel lower energy use in new and remodeled buildings; incentive programs to encourage investments in increased energy efficiency within existing buildings; transportation programs aimed at reducing vehicle miles travelled; incentive programs aimed at encouraging a shift to more efficient vehicles; and working with the utility to get more renewable energy on the grid. The city may have the ability to require that existing buildings be brought to a higher efficiency standard over some time period. But the city does not have the legal (or practical) ability to set up a cap and trade system, to tax motor fuels, to mandate vehicle standards,or to mandate the fuel mix of the utility. Also, as a state institution, CU is exempt from most regulations that the city may impose. While city action is important, it is pretty clear that regulatory requirements at the state and preferably national level are required.

What is rather fascinating to me is that this is an issue where CU could so easily reduce emissions by purchasing windpower from the local utility, at least during a transition period to some longer term solution, at a very modest cost. All of the moves towards renewable energy at CU have been driven by the university's customers - the students. Students not only voted to tax themselves to pay for windpower for the student controlled buildings, but also taxed themselves to set up funds to invest in energy efficiency and solar, and agreed to a very large fee increase to build new academic buildings only with a commitment from the campus administration that those buildings meet the LEED Gold standard of the US green building council and that the electricity for these buildings come from 100% Green-E ertified renewable sources. CU is unusual in that is has taken significant steps towards sustainability, but these have been driven from the bottom, not by leadership from the level of the chancellor or the president. So it may not be surprising that the chancellor is, at least initially, proposing to ignore the impact of the power plant decision on carbon emissions. However, given the very modest costs involved, I am guessing that the final outcome will be quite different. The surrounding community and students are likely to put some significant pressure on CU to take a different approach; and as a public institution CU now faces a new state administration and legislature that has a clean energy and climate change agenda, and is unlikely to agree to provide tens of millions of dollars of state capital funding for this project without the carbon emissions being addressed.

Hans von Storch on Political Advocacy

[Hans von Storch posted this very thoughtful comment on the thread from last week on the recent partnership of leading climate scientists and the National Association of Evangelicals to advocate for political action on climate change. We think that Hans' comments deserve a bit more prominence so have reproduced them here. -RP]

I remember that there was a few years ago a web page in UK, which made public a statement of a religious group about climate change; a very concerned statement. It was signed by, among others Sir John Houghton (who signed in his capacity of former IPCC chair), Bob Watson and other brass of the IPCC guild [The UK statement referred to can be found here. -RP]. Thus, the disclosure of the encroachment of religion into top climate science levels is nothing new. It would have been better if this group had been open about this fact earlier.

We all are bound by certain culturally constructed values; religion is just one, and it has been particularly barbarian in times. In other times rather humanitarian. For a scientist the problem is that these values interfere with our analytical skills; not in the sense that we would execute statistical tests in a biased manner or that we would fail in our maths. But in the way we ask; in our preparedness to accept certain answers or to remain skeptical to certain answers. And finally, it may lead us to misuse our scientific authority to push for conclusions, which are beyond the realm of science.

None of us is free of this interference: this group is to be applauded for being explicit and honest. But they should also accept that claims of independence have to be given up when speaking about the social implications of anthropogenic climate change. They are, and likely have been, issue advocates. They are certainly still scientists, but they are advocates as well. In a sense they are publicly paid NGOs. NGOs play an important and welcomed role in the public discussion and decision process, like most other lobbying groups – but everybody knows what their agenda is.

Those of us who want to try to limit the influence of our values on our scientific analyses, should try to analyze these values and their potential influence on our professional performance. We should see our present activity in a historical context and reflect upon our cultural and social conditioning. We may be able to limit the degree of subjectivity of our work to some, maybe just a very minor, extent.

Robert Muir-Wood in RMS Cat Models: From the Comments

[We think that Robert Muir-Wood's comments on the Tampa Tribune article that we discussed yesterday deserve to be highlighted. Robert thanks much for participating and adding this context from RMS. -Ed.

Robert Muir-Wood
RMS

It might be useful to provide some more measured background to this story than is to be found in the Tampa Tribune.

The idea for holding an expert elicitation on hurricane activities emerged at RMS during the summer of 2005. Expert elicitations are commonplace in the earthquake community, but, this was the first time (we believe) one had been attempted among climatologists. All those invited to the Oct 2005 meeting were told in the invitation that the purpose of the meeting was 'to predict the activity rate of hurricanes, relevant to impact and loss modeling .. over the next 3-5 years'. Four scientists agreed to attend; Jim Elsner, Mark Saunders, Kerry Emanuel and Tom Knutson. Through the meeting, and in email exchanges in the days thereafter, a consensus was achieved around expected rates of Cat1-5 and Cat3-5 storms in the Atlantic Basin and at US landfall for the period 2006-2010. This consensus does not mean that everyone walks out of the meeting having agreed an identical answer but that everyone's view has been equally weighted in arriving at an expected activity rate.

RMS then took these findings and prepared to implement them in the RMS Hurricane Cat model. In the model Atlantic hurricanes are split into five separate populations according to the area of formation and track. The research to determine which track types were expected to show predominant increases was undertaken by Manuel Lonfat and based on his findings the 'increment of activity' was distributed among the track types to preserve the overall activity rate budget at landfall. There are alternative perspectives on regionalization (as emphasized by Jim Elsner), but as such a high proportion of intense hurricanes affect Florida, the Gulf and the Southeast, for the same increase in activity rates, modeled loss results in these regions are relatively insensitive to reasonable alternative regionalizations.

At the end of this process (in March 2006) a press release was issued along with a white paper describing all the work that had been undertaken - both after being checked with the four experts. Ultimately the results of the implementation of the increase in activity rates were the responsibility of RMS and we did not look to get the experts to endorse the outcome around changes in modeled losses. A scientific paper describing the whole procedure is now in process of being published in a peer reviewed journal.

In October 2006 the expert elicitation was repeated to cover the period 2007-2011. All four original experts were invited and only Jim Elsner declined, citing that he was ‘under contract’ with another modeling organisation. At the second expert elicitation there were seven climatologists, who were presented with results from twenty statistical/climatological forecast models, each being assigned 100c of probability to be assigned among the different models. The results from this exercise (in terms of expected levels of Cat1-5 and Cat 3-5 landfalling activities) were within 1-2% of the mean expected activity rates of the first expert elicitation. Again all the models, their results and the outcome of the elicitation will be published in scientific journals.

The political response to the ‘insurance crisis’ currently underway in Florida is looking for someone to blame. Cat modelers are simply the messengers relaying news concerning the significance of a period of significantly higher hurricane activity that has persisted in 9 out of the last 12 years and that climatologists, as polled at the most recent expert elicitation, expect to continue for a decade or more longer. There is a need to get journalists and politicians in Florida to focus more attention on the reasons for the increase in hurricane activity and, in particular, the role of climate change.

Lahsen and Nobre (2007)

A Summary, by Myanna Lahsen

Lahsen, Myanna and Carlos A. Nobre (2007), "The Challenge of Connecting International Science and Local Level Sustainability: The Case of the LBA," Environmental Science and Policy 10(1) 62-74. (PDF)

This paper identifies some central challenges involved in bringing about applications-oriented research and associated institutions related to sustainability on the basis of “global change science”, using the Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA) as an example. The LBA is an integrated regional study carried out by an international science program – indeed, the largest program in international scientific cooperation ever focused on the Amazon region. Over the last decade, the LBA has carried out over 120 studies and contributed quantitative and qualitative understanding of the functioning of tropical ecosystems and their linkages to the Earth System. It has produced over 700 peer-reviewed publications, the vast majority in international science journals. Additionally, LBA has trained hundreds of young scientists, most of them from Amazonia. In this and other ways, it has self-consciously sought to improve past models of “scientific colonialism” involving Northern-funded science experiments in less developed countries which did little, and usually nothing at all, to improve the knowledge and infrastructure in the latter (note: henceforth, “North” and “South” refer to the global North and South unless otherwise specified).

The LBA fell short in other respects, however, in particular in its explicit goal to produce sound scientific understanding in support of sustainable development. Deforestation of the tropical forests of Amazonia has increased to clearly unsustainable levels and at great social and environmental cost. Sustainable management of ecosystems requires appropriate public policies and regulatory frameworks. Yet translating the scientific knowledge created in LBA into public policies has proven to be much more difficult than its planners anticipated. Key to overcoming the obstacles is greater knowledge and capacity to develop and disseminate appropriate technologies and methodologies for sustainable management of the environment. Few developing countries are making substantial investment to develop this capacity. This is of huge consequence as the funding-structures, interests and incentive structures – and even the knowledge base – of developed-country-dominated international scientific efforts are inadequate to meet present challenges. The LBA serves to illustrate this inadequacy.

Aside from merely identifying humans’ environmental impact, the LBA’s mission, as stated in its planning document, was to help safeguard the Amazon’s basic ecological processes. In addition to its scientific capacity building component, the sustainability dimension is the most obvious point where LBA research could bring benefits at the national and local levels. It is also the least developed dimension of the LBA. An independent mid-term review concluded that the program had performed weakly in the area of identifying and developing social, political and economic implications of the findings, especially as concerns sustainable development in the Amazon region.

One may trace part of the root problem to resource disparities between the global North and South at the levels of human and material resources related to knowledge production and mobilization. These disparities complicate the science-policy interface in less developed countries (Lahsen in press; Lahsen forthcoming (a); Lahsen forthcoming (b) and as such can weaken the effectiveness of efforts to assess and combat human-induced climate and associated effects. It also limits the level of participation and input of less developed countries in international scientific programs and policy efforts, allowing Northern nations, and especially the United States, to overwhelmingly dominate the production and framing of science underpinning international environmental negotiations. Studies suggest that this dominance can translate into political gain and that it at times weakens less developed country representatives’ trust and regard for international environmental assessment and negotiation processes (ibid).

Simply modeling science agendas in the South on those in the North would be a mistake to the extent that this would perpetuate the evaluation criteria and incentive structures that result in high quality research, yes, but without the necessary connection to applications at the regional, national and local levels. Had an Amazon-based institution led the LBA from the planning stages on, for instance, this would not have guaranteed that sustainability concerns would have been more central. Brazilian scientists – especially in the richer South of the country but also those in the Amazon – are increasingly hooked into international science and subject to the same incentive structures as their Northern peers.

Ways must be found to link excellence in research more tightly to urgent environmental and societal problems, attending to the perverse effects of presents incentive structures and heeding insights captured in calls for “sustainability science” (Cash, et al., 2003; Clark 2003; Clark and Dickson 2003; National Research Council 1999).

References:

Cash, David W., William C. Clark, Frank Alcock, Nancy M. Dickson, Noelle Eckley, David H. Guston, Jill Jäger and Ronald B. Mitchell (2003), `Knowledge Systems for Sustainable Development,' Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 100, No. 14, 8 July, pp. 8086-8091.

Clark, William C. (2003), Institutional Needs for Sustainability Science link in PDDF

Clark, William C. and Nancy M. Dickson (2003), `Sustainability Science: The Emerging Research Program,' Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 100, No. 14, 8 July, pp. 8059-8061.

Fogel, Catheleen A. (2002), `Greening The Earth With Trees: Science, Storylines And The Construction Of International Climate Change Institutions,' Doctoral Dissertation (Environmental Studies: University of California, Santa Cruz).

Lahsen, Myanna (in press), `Distrust and Participation in International Science and Environmental Decision Making: Knowledge Gaps to Overcome,' in Mary Pettinger (Ed.), The Social Construction of Climate Change (Ashgate Publishing).

Lahsen, Myanna (forthcoming (a), `Knowledge, Democracy and Uneven Playing Fields: Insights from Climate Politics in - and Between - the U.S. and Brazil,' in Nico Stehr (Ed.), Knowledge and Democracy (Transactions Publishers).

Lahsen, Myanna (forthcoming (b), dependent on acceptance of completed revisions). "Science and Brazilian environmental policy: The case of the LBA and carbon sink science" Climatic Change.

Scott Saleska on Tuning the Climate

[Scott Saleska of the University of Arizona has asked an interesting question in the comments of a post from last week. We have elevated it so that it does go unnoticed. Thanks Scott! -Ed.]

Let's say air capture, or any of the many geoengineering options being widely discussed (e.g. my colleague here at the UofA, Roger Angel's recent idea* to block 1.8% of the incoming energy with a gadget at the L1 Lagrange orbital point), ends up being feasible in a few decades. And let’s say we actually reach the point where we can, as Roger [Pielke, not Angel] suggested, tune the atmosphere’s CO2.

What level do we tune it to? And who gets to decide that level? The "worst off" individual (to follow Rawls famous "Theory of Justice")? Then we probably let the Maldivians decide, since under current projections, sea level rise could completely wipe them off the map. Places like Russia, on the other hand, would probably prefer to have some moderate global warming, because that probably would give them better agriculture in Siberia, and ice-free ports on the north Atlantic.

[* Roger Angel, 2006. Feasibility of cooling the Earth with a cloud of small spacecraft near the inner Lagrange point (L1), PNAS: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/103/46/17184 (subscription require). Or see the free podcast of his recent talk at our Global Climate Change series at University of Arizona, in which he reviewed a whole range of options from solar cells to Paul Crutzen’s aerosols, to his satellites: http://podcasting.arizona.edu/globalclimatechange.html or any of the others who spoke, focusing mostly on science of climate change]

Roger A. Pielke Jr.’s Review of Kicking the Carbon Habit: A Rebuttal by William Sweet

[It is our pleasure to provide a rebuttal by William Sweet, author of Kicking the Carbon Habit, to a review on Mr. Sweet's recent book by Roger Pielke, Jr. which recently appeared in Nature. Mr. Sweet's book can be found online here and purchased through at a discount through Amazon and other online retailers. Pielke's review can be found here in PDF. We thanks Mr. Sweet for his contribution and welcome your comments. -Ed.]

What Just Ain’t So…Also Just Wasn’t Said in the First Place

In a review that appeared in the Oct. 19, 2006 issue of Nature, Roger A. Pielke Jr. praised my Kicking the Carbon Habit for recognizing that there are uncertainties in climate science and yet arguing convincingly that a reasonable person can "still believe that human influence on climate is a problem worth our attention and action." But then he proceeds to claim that the book’s discussion of policy is "regrettably grounded in a fundamental error that surprisingly was not caught in the review process" — an error having supposedly to do with the way the Pacala-Socolow carbon mitigation wedges is presented.

I am not aware that any such error exists, and in a personal communication, Robert Socolow has declared my capsule summary of the wedges model "exemplary." But that is really beside the point. The important thing is that my policy argument, which Pielke radically misconstrues, is not in fact grounded in the Pacala-Socolow model. Rather, it is grounded in story I tell at the critical juncture in Chapter 8 of the Book, the chapter called not coincidentally "Breaking the Carbon Habit." The story has do with Enrico Fermi and the issue of whether Hitler might be able to build an atomic bomb, as seen by Fermi and others at the beginning of World War II.

In a nutshell: Fermi had told the graduate student Isodor Rabi that the idea of an atomic bomb was "nuts." Rabi conveyed that opinion to Leo Szilard, who was sounding the alarm about the possibility of a Nazi nuclear weapon. Szilard suggested Rabi ask Fermi just why he thought the idea was nuts. Rabi did so, and Fermi told him he considered the possibility of a bomb being made successfully was ”remote.” So Rabi asked Fermi what he meant by that. Fermi said that the possibility of a bomb being built successfully was perhaps only about 10 percent. To which Rabi said: "Wait a minute. If I go to the doctor and the doctor tells me that there’s a remote possibility I might die, and that it’s 10 percent, I get excited."

Instantly—and this is mark of intellectual greatness and greatness in leadership as well—Fermi completely changed his mind about the issue. He started to work around the clock on graphite moderation, leading a couple of years later to the famous Chicago pile in which a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was first demonstrated.

The argument in my book is that even if the probability of a climate cataclysm in this century is very small, perhaps (say) only 1 percent, the magnitude of that cataclysm could be so dire, concerted action is warranted right now.* To say, by the way, that I characterize human-induced climate change something worthy of our attention and action is rather an understatement. I consider it the most urgent problem facing humanity today. But my argument about the case for strong immediate action is of a statistical character and is essentially identical to the one laid out by Richard Posner in his book Catastrophe (Oxford, 2004).

This brings me to a second drastic misunderstanding on Pielke’s part — and here I take some responsibility for not having made myself clearer. Kicking the Carbon Habit makes no claims about what is needed to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the long run. In fact it makes no claims about the long run whatsoever, except that the possibility of cataclysmic climate change cannot be ruled out. What the book does is make a case for the United States’ immediately joining in the Kyoto regime and, to that end, for its adopting a program to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by about 25 percent right away.

That means using the low-carbon and zero-carbon technology we can deploy right now, which happens to be the subtitle to the third section of the book. Contrary to what Pielke says in the review, I do not "dismiss the prospects for renewables and carbon sequestration." What I do is show that sequestration, solar energy, and hydrogen-economy technologies are not market-ready at this time and therefore not relevant to what the United States can do to cut its emissions by 25 percent today.

The zero-carbon and low-carbon technologies that are market-ready are conservation (of course in the widest sense), wind energy, natural gas, and nuclear energy. My position is that the United States should adopt a very stiff carbon tax that would result promptly in economy-wide conservation (including in the auto sector), and rapid replacement of dirty coal by some combination of wind, gas, and nuclear.

I do appreciate the positive things Mr. Pielke said in his review. But I would have been a lot happier if it had begun it more like this:

"In a book addressed squarely at American readers, William Sweet argues for prompt ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by the United States, which implies -- and this is the really important point -- adopting a program to immediately cut the country's greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 25 percent. Sweet proposes adoption of a stiff carbon tax, to induce rapid conversion of the coal industry to some combination of nuclear, natural gas and wind, and to prevent any further growth in U.S. energy demand.

"In building his case for that intrinsically controversial position, Sweet presents some important science in a way that's often interesting and even entertaining. However, he fails to address the question of how his aggressive program of U.S. carbon cuts would lead to long-term global stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations. In my view that is a serious shortcoming, because without that link being made, it's hard to see why the United States should do anything at all."

Having not explicitly addressed that important last point in my book, let me do so now. My view is that when we project future energy demand and greenhouse