Last year I co-guest edited a special issue of Environmental Science and Policy on various dimensions of the debate over The Skeptical Environmentalist. Several comments responding to papers in that special issue have now been published, and we have set up a special WWW page for them:

1. Peter Dougherty, an editor at Princeton University Press, provides a commentary (PDF) on Chris Harrison’s paper (Chris edited TSE) Dougherty writes,

“The major point Chris Harrison makes in his account of the publication of Lomborg is that the reaction on the part of the book’s fiercest critics “went beyond the usual unpicking of a thesis and concentrated instead on the role of the publisher in publishing the book at all.” This is a highly unusual, but not unheard of, state of affairs in university press publishing. It invites a publisher to explore the considerations leading up to the publishing decision, and in this case the same publisher’s actions in defending its decision after the book’s publication. In both cases, Harrison’s account reflects a high degree of professionalism on the part of Cambridge University Press.”

2. Eva Lövbrand and Gunilla Öberg comment on papers by Dan Sarewitz and one that I wrote. They write (PDF),

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Hans von Storch’s talk last Friday, titled “Hockey sticks and the sustainability of climate science,” was divided into two parts. The second part of the talk dealt with the politicization of climate science and the possibility of negative effects stemming from this, while the first half focused almost entirely on technical details related to climate reconstruction and the algorithms of Mann, Bradley, and Hughes (MBH) that led to the hockey stick. More than a few people in the audience had no more than a passing interest in climate modeling or climate reconstruction. Their presence, and the presence of a crowd large enough to be standing room only, was indicative of one of von Storch’s major points. This point can be paraphrased as, “The political stakes for climate science are quite high, and thus we must be assiduous in presenting our science accurately and truthfully in order to ensure the science’s credibility and long-term sustainability.” von Storch was able to point to the crowded room as evidence for the amount of controversy and emotional investment surrounding the debate on the hockey stick. This made it easier for him to support one of his major points; overselling scientific results can have large consequences for public perceptions of science.

I agree with von Storch’s statement that how we present science can be important. Both von Storch and Roger Pielke Jr. point out that the prominent use of the hockey stick by the IPCC was the impetus for it’s manifestation as a symbol, which opened the door for the current debate. However, I do think that von Storch’s fear that this is damaging to the enterprise of climate science may be overblown.

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The following is a summary of the July 8 Hans von Storch talk and panel discussion, by Erika Engelhaupt, Nat Logar, and Marilyn Averill.
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Hans von Storch presented an analysis of climate reconstruction and climate science politicization titled “Hockeysticks and the sustainability of climate science” at the National Center for Atmospheric Research on Friday, July 8. Dr. von Storch discussed both scientific and political implications of the well-known “hockey stick”, the name given to a reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere temperature over the past 1,000 years by Dr. Michael Mann and colleagues R.S. Bradley and M.K. Hughes , which displays a long period of relatively stable temperature over most of the past millennium (forming the handle of the hockey stick) followed by an abrupt rise in temperature over the past century (the business end of the hockey stick). The hockey stick was made famous in Mann et al’s 1998 paper in Nature and was featured prominently in the IPCC Summary for Policymakers (TAR, 2001). Since then, the hockey stick has sparked significant controversy among climate scientists and policy makers as an important piece of the case for unprecedented 20th century warming. Dr. von Storch presented a critique of the Mann “hockey stick” curve, and then used his comparative modeling findings to ask more subjective questions about the nature of the scientific enterprise in general and of climate science in particular. A panel of respondents provided comments following his talk.

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My father, Roger Pielke, Sr., is a very well-known and widely published professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University. His research group is dipping their toes into the blogging world with Climate Science. Here is their focus:

Welcome to the weblog of the Roger A. Pielke Sr. Research Group.

We are initiating a new blog specifically focused on climate science issues. Among the topics to be presented are views on the science that are not receiving much if any attention in the science community even though the research is appearing in the scientific literature. In addition, this forum provides a venue for the prompt dissemination of new scientific insight, as well as issues with balance in the discussion of the role of human disturbance of the climate system as reported in national and international assessments, and in published papers.

Check it out.

Two major Congressional interjections into science, two tales of coverage and interest by the press and by the science policy blogs. While Rep. Barton was causing a lot of noise in the blogoworld and little in the mainstream press for the past two weeks, another issue was being played hard on the north side of the Capitol. This issue made more mainstream news but I haven’t heard a peep out of other science policy writers or commentators, even though it has to be one of the most beautiful examples of the intersection of science, policy and politics.

If all you want to know is the basics, here they are: Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) has inserted language into the Energy and Water Appropriations bill (S.Rep. 109-084) to kill the Fish Passage Center (FPC) because he doesn’t like the science they’ve been doing. FPC is a small shop based in Portland, OR that does science for the Federal hydro system in support of measures to save ESA-listed salmon. The language that Sen. Craig inserted in the bill is here and decent synopses of the issues are here and here. This GoogleNews search will give good local Pacific Northwest coverage (which is the only place it was covered beyond the WP and CSM). Craig’s action is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of politics/science intersections in this issue, but its boldness makes for a very instructive departure point.

If you want to go deeper into the story, read on.

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For those interested in seeing the powerpoint from Hans von Storch’s talk at NCAR last friday, you can download it here:

http://w3g.gkss.de/staff/storch/PPT/paleo/050708.ncar.ppt

Warning: 27.1 MB.

We’ll have a summary crafted by several in the audience posted here soon.

For those following the track of Hurricane Dennis, this paper (PDF) has good data on hurricane impacts in Cuba since 1901, see in particular Table 3 (and Figure 9) for data on Cuba’s hurricane history.

Pielke, Jr., R. A., J. Rubiera, C. Landsea, M. Fernandez, and R.A. Klein, 2003: Hurricane Vulnerability in Latin America and the Caribbean, Natural Hazards Review, 4:101-114. (PDF)

Guest posting by Hans von Storch

My reaction to Rep. Barton’s requests is split. In his five letters, he is asking for information from two different groups, namely institutions with reviewing responsibilities (IPCC, NSF) and individuals with scientific responsibilities (M, B and H). I find his inquiry of the performance of the institutions IPCC and NSF valid, but the interrogative questioning of the individual scientists is inadequate.

a) Scientists. The scientists have the task to be innovative, creative, to try new avenues of analysis and the like. They have the right to err, the right to suggest explanations and interpretations which may need to be revised at a later time. They should document what they have done, so that others can replicate.

However, this documentation often can not take the form of keeping runnable old codes of the applied algorithms, simply because the software is no longer consistent with quickly replaced hardware. For instance, most of the state-of-the-art coupled AOGCMs used in the mid 1990s are simply no longer available and running at, for instance, the German Climate Computer Center. After replacing a high performance computer with a new system, the standard model codes, including community models, need to be adapted to the requirements and possibilities of the new system, and the old code will often no longer run. This has nothing to do with the norms of the community but simply with technological progress. Also specific commercial libraries of specialized algorithms may no longer be accessible. Data and codes written on old magnetic tapes or even floppies are usually no longer readable.

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Sympathies to friends, colleagues and all in London and the UK who are dealing with the horrible events of today.

On his blog the Albuquerque Journal’s John Fleck offers an interesting commentary on the reactions to yesterday’s hockey stick post:

“[Pielke says] we’re all arguing about the hockey stick as a surrogate for what we’re really arguing about. In the process, we all just talk past one another without getting anywhere. The funny thing, in terms of my premise, is the resulting comments. It’s a whole bunch of people on both sides of the issue who keep rehashing the same old arguments. It’s like they’re so entrenched in their pre-rehearsed arguments that they paid no attention to what Roger was saying.”

It is almost as if people are in a trance, where they can only see arguments about climate science and nothing else, even though they are really arguing about politics and values. I understand why this occurs and have written about it many times. But what is puzzling to me is why it is so difficult for people to see other perspectives and engage them, even if they disagree. I am not sure what to make of this; one might think that it is a function of the self-selected few with motivation to read blogs and comment. But it seems to me that it is a broader characteristic of the climate debate that infuses the media, the blogosphere and political discussion.

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