I was surprised to read in E&E News today a news story on yesterday’s hearing held by the House Science Committee suggesting that the take-home message was that adaptation would be difficult, hence mitigation should be preferred (for subscribers here is the full story). My reading of the written testimony suggested a very different message, and not one I’ve seen in the media. Below are some relevant excerpts from IPCC WG II authors who testified yesterday (emphasis added). I know both and respect their views.

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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.

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My latest column for Bridges is out and in it I provide an overview of my new book. Here is how it begins:

When former US Vice President Al Gore testified before Congress last month he used an analogy to describe the challenge of climate change:

If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don’t say, “Well, I read a science fiction novel that told me it’s not a problem.” If the crib’s on fire, you don’t speculate that the baby is flame retardant. You take action.

With this example Al Gore was not only advocating a particular course of action on climate change, he was also describing the relationship between science (and expertise more generally) and decision making. In Mr. Gore’s analogy, the baby’s parents (i.e. “you”) are largely irrelevant to the process of decision making, as the doctor’s recommendation is accepted without question.

But anyone who has had to take their child to a doctor for a serious health problem or an injury knows that the interaction between patient, parent, and doctor can take a number of different forms. In my new book The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics (Cambridge University Press), I seek to describe various ways that an expert (e.g., a doctor) can interact with a decision maker (e.g., a parent) in ways that lead to desirable outcomes (e.g., a healthy child). Experts have choices in how they relate to decision makers, and these choices have important effects on decisions but also the role of experts in society. Mr. Gore’s metaphor provides a useful way to illustrate the four different roles for experts in decision making that are discussed in The Honest Broker.

The Honest Broker can be found at Amazon US, Amazon UK (and Amazon.ca has it at 40% off) and also through Cambridge University Press.

And as always, OSTINA has produced an excellent issue of Bridges, this one focused on innovation, read the whole thing.

In the comments, Laurens Bouwer, of the Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, who served as an expert reviewer for the IPCC WGII report, provides the following perspective (Thanks Laurens!):

Thanks Roger, for this discussion. It clearly points the fact that IPCC has not done enough to make an unambiguous statement on the attribution of disaster losses in their Working Group 2 Summary for Policymakers (SPM). This now leaves room for speculation based on the individual statements and graphs from underlying chapters in the report, in particular Figure TS-15, Chapters 1, 3 and 7, that all have substantial paragraphs on the topic.

As reviewer for WG2 I have repeatedly (3 times) asked to put a clear statement in the SPM that is in line with the general literature, and underlying WG2 chapters. In my view, WG2 has not succeeded in adequately quoting and discussing all relevant recent papers that have come out on this topic — see above-mentioned chapters.

Initial drafts of the SPM had relatively nuanced statements such as:

Global economic losses from weather-related disasters have risen substantially since the 1970s. During the same period, global temperatures have risen and the magnitude of some extremes, such as the intensity of tropical cyclones, has increased. However, because of increases in exposed values …, the contribution of these weather-related trends to increased losses is at present not known.

For unknown reasons, this statement (which seems to implicitly acknowledge Roger’s and the May 2006 workshop conclusion that societal factors dominate) was dropped from the final SPM. Now the SPM has no statement on the attribution of disaster losses, and we do not know what is the ‘consensus’ here.

Recent discussion of Nisbet/Mooney’s presentation of “framing” in the blogosphere has been interesting, to say the least. I completely agree with the basic theoretical propositions being shared by Matt and Chris, though perhaps in framing framing in terms of a political battle over religion in modern society they may have misframed their argument — at least if selling scientists on the inescapable reality of framing dynamics in public discourse was their goal.

In 1997 I wrote the following on the subject:

The characterization of a particular set of circumstances as a “problem” requires attention to who is claiming that a problem exists, their perspectives, and their ability to act (cf. Lasswell 1971). From the standpoint of effective practical action, it is important that a problem be appropriately framed and presented to those with authority and ability to act. There are many examples of modern-day Cassandras who identify important problems that fail to either reach or be understood by decision makers. Hence, the existence of information related to a problem is not a sufficient condition for addressing the problem; attention to a healthy process that actively links that information with a decision maker’s needs is also necessary.

For the full context, have a look at this paper, especially beginning at page 258:

Pielke, Jr., R. A., 1997: Asking the Right Questions: Atmospheric Sciences Research and Societal Needs. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 78:255-264. (PDF)

Frank Laird, from the University of Denver and also a Center affiliate, has the lead article in our latest newsletter. His topic is peak oil, climate change, and policy choice. Here is an excerpt:

A recent spate of books and articles proclaim the end of oil and an imminent crisis for the world. Likewise, global warming alarms sound from almost every corner of the press. What are policy makers to do? How should policy analysts help decision makers frame the debate and assess the alternatives? Many advocates are trying to do exactly the wrong thing: narrow policy makers’ options through a rhetoric proclaiming that policy makers will have no choice but to adopt their favored technology, so the sooner they get to it, the better. This approach both misunderstands how policy making works and does a disservice to policy makers. . .

Ironically, both renewable and nuclear energy advocates see themselves as possessing the key to an energy-abundant and climate-safe future. Both advocacy communities have been around for decades, have a history of mutual hostility, and think their time is nigh. Yet both groups are using a language of inevitability that suggests a naïveté about public policy, short-changes the policy process, and makes it all the harder to have intelligent, nuanced discussions of the difficult policy choices that lie ahead.

Their central point is that society or governments will have “no choice” but to adopt their preferred solution. They believe that the problems of peak oil and climate change present such severe problems to our society that policy makers will realize that they must adopt nuclear or renewable energy, that the lack of choice will be plain.

This language distorts the reality of policy making and short-changes society by trying to close off debate over the many and possibly creative solutions that policy could bring to bear on these problems. The central fact of policy making is that governments always have a choice. No circumstance, no matter how dire, leaves them with only one choice. To be sure, not all choices are equally good, and anyone familiar with history will know that sometimes governments make bad, even disastrous, choices. But they always have choices to make. Pretending otherwise just misunderstands all we know about public policy.

Read the whole thing.

Two events in February demonstrated an effort to revisit the assumptions behind the processes and study of innovation. The NSF announced aProgram Solicitation in their new program on the Science of Science and Innovation Policy. Submissions are due May 22. This has been in the works at NSF since 2006, and is at least in part a response to the Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Marburger’s call for a ’science of science policy.’ This idea was explored previously on Prometheus. Besides the NSF program, there is a Department of Commerce advisory committee I posted about earlier that is working on how to better measure innovation.

I think both programs are good steps toward a better understanding of science policy, but are at best preliminary steps. (Any judgments about a program that has yet to receive its first grant proposals are by their nature preliminary, so please bear with me). I’ll address this in just a bit, but first some details on the two programs.

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With a reputation for bipartisan cooperation, the House Science and Technology Committee (formerly the House Science Committee) continues to be a strong supporter of federal research and development. But things have changed with the new Congress. Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN), the new chair, finalized the changes in late Januray. Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) is the new Ranking Member.

Per a press release available on the committee’s website the Science and Technology Committee now has 5 subcommittees during the 110th Congress. This is one more than in the previous Congress. The new addition is the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, which is chaired by Rep. Miller (D-N.C.), and Rep. Sensenbrenner (R-WI, and former committee chairman) is the ranking member. They have already held hearings on Office of Management and Budget involvement in agency regulatory development and the influence of agency media policies on scientists. The full committee has already demonstrated its interest in oversight with its own hearings and other activities focused on the executive branch.

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I have a paper accepted for publication that projects into the future a range of possible scenarios for increasing losses related to tropical cyclones around the world.

Pielke, Jr., R. A. (accepted, 2007). Future Economic Damage from Tropical Cyclones: Sensitivities to Societal and Climate Changes, Proceedings of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. (PDF)

The factors that comprise the different scenarios include changes in population, per capita wealth, tropical cyclone intensity, and also damage functions as a function of intensity. [Note: Tropical cyclone frequency is not included as scientists presently do not expect frequencies to increase. However, even if frequencies do increase it is possible in the scenarios to equate the effects of frequency in terms of intensity, as discussed in the paper.] The goal of the paper is to delineate a scenarios space as a function of permutations in these variables in order to assess the robustness of mitigation and adaptation responses to future losses. Here is the abstract:

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The Figure below is found in the IPCC WG II report, Chapter 7, supplementary material (p. 3 here in PDF). I am shocked to see such a figure in the IPCC of all places, purporting to show something meaningful and scientifically vetted. Sorry to be harsh, but this figure is neither. [Note: The reference (Miller et al. 2006) is not listed in the report (pointers from readers would be welcomed).]

I am amazed that this figure made it past review of any sort, but especially given what the broader literature on this subject actually says. I have generally been a supporter of the IPCC, but I do have to admit that if it is this sloppy and irresponsible in an area of climate change where I have expertise, why should I have confidence in the areas where I am not an expert?

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