Project News

Science Policy Assessment and Research on Climate (“SPARC”)

SPARC has had a very busy past few months.  It held its first team workshop in December.  Elizabeth McNie successfully defended her Ph.D dissertation prospectus which focuses on evaluating the role of science policy decision making in RISA programs, building upon the 2005 SPARC RISA Hawaii Workshop.  A draft report of the 2005 RISA Workshop will be available this summer.  Roger Pielke and Dan Sarewitz will be editing a special issue of Environmental Science and Policy titled Reconciling the Supply of and Demand for Science: The Case of Carbon Cycle Research.   A draft report of the June 2005 workshop “Practical Strategies to Reconciling the Supply of and Demand for Carbon Cycle Science” has been sent to all participants.  And it has several new publications:

• Pielke, Jr., R. A. 2006. Disasters, Death, and Destruction: Account for Recent Calamities, a short essay distributed to accompany the 7th Annual Roger Revelle Commemorative Lecture, Ocean Studies Board, National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, held 15 March at the Baird Auditorium, Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
• Pielke, R. A., 2005. Attribution of Disaster Losses, Science, Vol. 310, December 9, pp. 1615. Response to "Attribution of Disaster Losses" by Evan Mills on pp. 1616.
• Pielke, Jr., R. A., C. Landsea, M. Mayfield, J. Laver and R. Pasch, 2005. Hurricanes and global warming, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 86:1571-1575.

SPARC presentations:

• Dilling, L., Maricle, G., and Pielke, Jr., R. “Applying science policy research: The case of the carbon cycle science program.”  American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting, 29 January-2 February, 2006.
• Dilling, L., Pielke Jr., R. and Sarewitz, D. “Assessing science policies for climate research: New options for organizing research in support of decision making under uncertainty.”  American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting, 29 January-2 February, 2006.
• Dilling, L. “Usable” Carbon Cycle Science: Creating science policies that facilitate the use of research in decision-making.  Natural Resources Ecology Laboratory, University of Colorado, 27 January, 2006.
• Dilling, L.  “Alternatives to the Linear Model: Implications for climate science policies.” Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes, Arizona State University, 19 January, 2006.
• Dilling, L., Pielke Jr, R., and Sarewitz, D.  The missing link: Creating science policies that facilitate the use of research in environmental and water-related decision-making.  American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, 5-9 December 2005.
• Maricle, G. 2006.  Science Policy Assessment and Research on Climate, Coping with Climate Change symposium, 4 April, 2006, Boulder, CO.
• Pielke, Jr., R. A. 2006.  The role of societal and climate factors in historical U.S. hurricane damage, Workshop on Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change, IRI Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, 28 March, New York.
• Pielke, Jr., R. A. 2006. Normalized Hurricane Damage in the United States: 1900-2005, Workshop on Hurricane Research Priorities, National Science Board, 7 February, Boulder, CO.
• Pielke, Jr., R.A., 2006.  Disasters and Climate Policy, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, NC, 9 March 2006.

SPARC Workshops

• Climate Change and Disaster Losses Workshop: Understanding and Attributing Trends and Projections, May 25 and 26, 2006, Hohenkammer, Germany. 
  
  Cosponsored by Munich Re Company, the GKSS Institute for Coastal Research, and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, this workshop brought together experts from around the world to summarize and address the following questions: (1) First, what factors account for the dramatically increasing costs of weather-related disasters (specifically, floods and storms) in recent decades? (2) And, second, what are the implications of these understandings, for both research and policy?   A report and peer-reviewed publication will be produced.
  
  
• Decision Making Under Uncertainty: Scientists’ Ranking Stressors on the Central Arizona Water Supply. -- Fall 2006, Arizona State University. 
  
  Population growth, economic development, and recreational needs compounded by scientific uncertainty associated with climate variability and change are increasing the complexity of water management issues in Central Arizona.  While climate variability and change can affect supply of water, other, local factors can have multifaceted (and sometimes deleterious) stress on water resources.  These factors include land-use/land cover change, pollutant loading, inefficiencies in water supply system, growing demand for landscape watering, and the persistence of water-intensive agricultural systems.  Given the large degrees of uncertainty about climate change and associated variability evaluating sensitivity to other stressors from regional and local levels would be appropriate for assessing societal vulnerability of water resources.  It is in this connection that CSPO is convening a 1 ½ day workshop of scientists (20-25) studying stress on water resources of the arid region of the United States, as part of the Science Policy Assessment and Research on Climate (SPARC) project.  The goals of this workshop are: 1) to generate a ranking based on the relative importance of the various stressors; 2) to identify deficit in current research portfolio, and 3) to increase collaborative research among the scientists.  For more information, contact cspo@asu.edu.

For more information visit the SPARC website.

Presidential Science Advisor Lecture Series

The Center’s lecture series, “Policy, Politics, and Science in the White House:  Conversations with Presidential Science Advisors,” concluded on April 11 with a talk by Dr. Frank Press, science advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977-1980.  Dr. Press addressed a crowd of about 100 people at the University of Colorado and discussed successful and failed efforts to provide science advice to policymakers.  The series has also included talks by Drs. John Marburger (G.W. Bush), John Gibbons (Bill Clinton 1st term), Neal Lane (Bill Clinton 2nd term), George Keyworth (Ronald Reagan), Edward David (Richard Nixon), and Donald Hornig (Lyndon Johnson).

For more information including transcripts and webcasts of past talks visit the series website.  Each science advisor forum will be broadcast on Boulder Municipal Channel 8 television station and also as a live webcast – check the Channel 8 schedule for more information.

The Center is compiling a book based on the series featuring contributions by each of the advisors who appeared in the series and chapters by other authors addressing science and technology policy issues at the federal level.  Publication is expected to occur sometime in 2007.

Science and Technology Policy Certificate Program 

The Science and Technology Policy Certificate Program is now entering its 3rd year.  Ten graduate students have completed the program.  One program alumnus serves on the staff of the House Science Committee, and another will be interning for the second summer with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).