Archive for October, 2004

Interesting Email

October 7th, 2004

Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.

The announcement below appeared in my email inbox from the Climate-L folks. Note who is responsible for funding the upgrade of the UN FCCC website. Give the U.S. stance on Kyoto, I wonder what is going on there, perhaps a paving of the way for a reentry into the negotiations?

“The UNFCCC secretariat is pleased to announce the relaunch of its official website, which will take place on 11 October 2004.

This relaunch will conclude a major project designed to make information more accessible, introduce a revised navigation structure and automate information management.

The relaunch has been made possible through a generous contribution from the United States of America and has benefited from feedback provided by 450 Party representatives, IGOs and NGOs.

The secretariat hopes that the new website will enhance communications and access to information about the climate change process.”

(Mis)Justifications for Climate Mitigation

October 7th, 2004

Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.

Last week’s Science has a very interesting exchange (subscription required) between Indur M. Goklany, of the Office of Policy Analysis, U.S. Department of the Interior and Sir David A. King, Chief Scientific Adviser to U.K Prime Minister Tony Blair and Head of the Office of Science and Technology.

Goklany writes that King justifies action to mitigate climate change on the argument that because “of continued warming, millions more people around the world may in future be exposed to the risk of hunger, drought, flooding, and debilitating diseases such as malaria. Poor people in developing countries are likely to be most vulnerable.” Goklany responds to this justification by considering the case of malaria:

“… the population at risk of malaria (PAR-M) in the absence of climate change is projected to double between 1990 and the 2080s, to 8,820 million (2). However, unmitigated climate change would, by the 2080s, further increase PAR-M by another 257 to 323 million (2). Thus, by the 2080s, halting further climate change would, at best, reduce total PAR-M by 3.5% [=100 x 323/(323 + 8,820)] (3). On the other hand, reducing carbon dioxide emissions with the goal of eventually stabilizing carbon dioxide at 550 ppm would reduce total PAR-M by 2.8% (2) at a cost to developed nations, according to King, of 1% of GDP in 2050 (p. 177), or about $280 billion in today’s terms (4). But malaria’s current annual death toll of about 1 million could be halved at an annual cost of $1.25 billion or less, according to the World Health Organization, through a combination of measures such as residual home spraying with insecticides, insecticide-treated bednets, improved case management, and more com!
prehensive antenatal care (5). Clearly, implementing such measures now would provide greater malaria benefits over the next few decades than would climate stabilization at any level. It would also reduce vulnerability to malaria from all causes–man-made or natural–now and in the future (3).”

This is a powerful point that deserves a response. Does it make sense ethically and scientifically to invoke malaria as a primary justification for climate mitigation? King’s extremely weak response is to avoid the issue:

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Scientists and the Politics of Global Warming

October 6th, 2004

Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.

Let’s do an experiment …

Last week Von Storch et al. published a paper (registration required, PDF) in ScienceExpress that claimed that the so-called “hockey stick” temperature record of the past 1,000 years is flawed (for a popular summary of the “hockey stick” see this BBC story and for scientific details see the home page of Michael Mann. Yesterday in the New York Times Andy Revkin provided a nice summary of the new paper and its scientific significance.

Last year when a paper by Soon and Baliunas (PDF) was published in the journal Climate Research that criticized the so-called “hockey stick” record of global temperature trends, I commented in an article by David Appell in Scientific American, “You’d be challenged, I’d bet, to find someone who supports the Kyoto Protocol and also thinks that this paper is good science, or someone who thinks that the paper is bad science and is opposed to Kyoto.”

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Research Assistant Professor

October 5th, 2004

Posted by: admin

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS, Denton, TX. Applications and nominations are invited for a two-year position as Research Assistant Professor within the Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies. AOS: Applied Philosophy, in areas such as the environment, biomedicine/bioethics, nanotechnology, engineering, and research ethics. AOC: Open. Experiences in working with scientists and engineers, policy analysts, web design, and in applying for grants are desirable. We anticipate that this position will teach 1 course a semester (spring, fall). Qualifications for the position include: a Ph.D. in Philosophy or in another area of the humanities.

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Ethics and the Anti-Matter Bomb

October 5th, 2004

Posted by: admin

Keary Davidson writes in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle about US Air Force research into using anti-matter for a wide array of weapons, engines, and power sources. The research is a long, long way from deploying any new technology, but still raises many questions fundamental to science policy. The dawn of the nuclear age brought the ethics of scientific advancement to public attention, a debate that continues today in the nuclear and bio-tech industries. Will society develop any technology available to them, or can effective brakes be placed on research? If so would we even want to slow technological progress? These basic philisophic questions appear in much STS literature, from Jacques Ellul’s 1964 book The Technological Society to Francis Fukuyama’s 2002 book Our Postmodern Future, but don’t often appear in science policy debates. Yet how we answer these questions greatly affects the scope and design of basic science policy efforts. Should the research related to nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons be kept secret? Should policy try to contain stem-cell research? How can we minimize unintended consequences?

Data Quality & David Brooks

October 4th, 2004

Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.

Update on NOAA/DQA …

The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness, one of the groups responsible for pushing the Data Quality Act, links to this update on the status of attempts to exempt NOAA from the DQA.

David Brooks, Stalwarts, Dealers

David Brooks’ 2 October 2004 column in the New York times paints a picture of George Bush and John Kerry quite similar to my distinction between stalwarts and dealers.

Exemption Requested from Data Quality Act

October 4th, 2004

Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.

The 29 September issue of the Wall Street Journal (p. 18) has a short editorial (subscription required) that observes:

“We’ve long been skeptics about the science behind the political campaign to regulate greenhouse gasses, so imagine our surprise to discover that some of the global warmists seem to agree. How else to read a paragraph that was included in a recent Senate spending bill exempting climate programs from having to pass scientific scrutiny? The legislative language excuses any “research and data collection, or information analysis conducted by or for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration” (the agency charged with monitoring climate change) from the Data Quality Act, a new law that requires sound science in policymaking. This is the sole exemption in the bill.”

I have no information on this requested exemption other than what the WSJ reports, however, if their interpretation of events has some truth to it …

“Nobody is rushing to take credit for the proposed exemption. But our sources say it was included at the request of Democrats on the Senate subcommittee that wrote the spending bill in question, but that now the exemption is getting the attention of Chairman Judd Gregg, who says he intends to remove it.”

… then whatever the underlying justification, the mere act of trying to win an exemption from the DQA is likely to enhance the legitimacy of the DQA as a “filter” on science and, in my view, may enhance rather than reduce the politicization of science. Stay tuned.