Not Nearly Top of the League Table

August 21st, 2008

Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.

Over at Dot Earth Andy Revkin points to a call by climate science organizations for a doubling of their current level of funding during the period 2010-2014, asking for almost $20 billion (available here in PDF),as part of the priorities of the next U.S. administration.

The incoherence of the request is remarkable. They invoke Hurricane Katrina as an example of the sort of costly disaster that better models and predictions will help us deal with. However, the forecasts for Katrina were near perfect, and the American Meteorological Society concluded that, “Hurricane Katrina reminds us that even with excellent track forecasts, the United States remains vulnerable to large losses of life from hurricanes.” A large body of research clearly shows that improved forecasts are not the main obstacle to reducing economic or human losses from extreme events, especially in developing countries.

So while it makes sense to invest in the science of modeling and prediction, and maybe even to increase that investment, the transition document fails to make this case. To be fair, now that it has been generally accepted that climate forecasts are plenty good enough for action, we should expect to see a search for new justifications for increased funding, and it will probably take a while for this community to work out the new arguments, as this document indicates.

But if you think that the justifications offered by the climate community are weak, they’ve got a lot of room for additional hyperbole and bad argumentation if they want to catch up to the neurotechnology community which is asking for $1 billion over the next five years to spin up a new U.S. National Neurotechnology Initiative. That initiative is based on a remarkable claim, found in the legislation introduced earlier this year by Senators Murray and Domenici (here in PDF):

Nearly 100,000,000 Americans suffer from brain or nervous system disease, injury, or disorder . . .

That would be 1 in 3 Americans. Like I said, the climate scientists have a ways to go before their poor justifications for new funding sink to this level. Anyone who thinks that they have a more impressive example of a bad justification for increased science funding is invited to share in the comments!

4 Responses to “Not Nearly Top of the League Table”

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  1. cah95046 Says:

    “call by climate science organizations for a doubling of their current level of funding during the period 2010-2014, asking for almost $20 billion”

    If the science is settled then the money should be spent on mitigation or adaptation. Why isn’t it obvious to everyone that much if not most of the AGW alarmism is driven by money. Simple self interest.

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  3. JamesG Says:

    “now that it has been generally accepted that climate forecasts are plenty good enough for action,”
    Generally accepted maybe but entirely faith-based, since there hasn’t been any proper verification of “good enough”. In the absence of said verification, (if you exclude dogma) it’s 50-50, ie the same as having no model at all! But because we are on a rising trend, albeit haltingly, people just assume it’ll continue. Like house prices or stocks perhaps?

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  5. TokyoTom Says:

    Roger, it would be interesting to hear your own thoughts on actual climate science funding priorities, in addition to fuller criticisms of the arguments that have been advanced.

    You might note, by the way, that conservative Jim Manzi (the guy with the lead essay over at Cato) has made a case for a climate change DARPA, with annual funding in the level of single-digit billions, here:
    http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Game+plan:+what+conservatives+should+do+about+global+warming-a0164830927

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  7. Roger Pielke, Jr. Says:

    Hi Tom-

    Dan Sarewitz and I discussed an action-focused approach to climate science funding in this paper:

    Pielke, Jr., R. A. and D. Sarewitz, 2003. Wanted: Scientific Leadership on Climate, Issues in Science and Technology, Winter, pp. 27-30.
    http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/2003.01.pdf

    A more complete treatment can be found here:

    Sarewitz, D. and R. A. Pielke, Jr., 2007. The neglected heart of science policy: reconciling supply of and demand for science, Environmental Science & Policy, Vol. 10, pp. 5-16.
    http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resource-2485-2007.02.pdf