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June 16, 2005
Redundant behavior
by Sylvia S Tognetti
The banter about whether or not there is uncertainty about climate change once again exploded in the blogosphere last week, after the New York Times published an article about edits of scientific reports made by now former White House official Phil Cooney, that emphasize areas of uncertainty in climate science, or imply it is greater than it is but, of course, ignoring other kinds of uncertainty, that will only increase under a business as usual scenario. Since this is, like, so redundant, I will lapse into just a bit of redundancy myself...
There may be uncertainty about the magnitude of climate change, and the exact percentage of it that is caused by human activities. But we know, with a high degree of confidence, that changes in greenhouse gas concentrations are coupled to changes in climate and are beginning to go beyond the range of variability known to have occurred in the period for which we have ice core data, now over 400,000 years, which is longer than the span of human existence. The most relevant area of uncertainty is not about the aggregate change in temperature, but about regional impacts, in specific places, which depends not only on climate but also on vulnerability, response capabilities, and future human behavior. Since behavior has much to do with what people actually believe, I am not optimistic (but will save that one for another time). Another relevant area of uncertainty, that some enterprising reporter might want to ask is, how much evidence would it take to satisfy the Bush administration and, whether all obtainable scientific evidence would even make a dent in policy decisions. A memorandum written by Rick Pilz - another former government official who was a Senior Associate in the US Climate Change Science Program, reduces this uncertainty somewhat, by providing a glimpse into the science & policy black box (elephants don't hide very well). Another is whether votes are counted and whether they have anything to do with who is entrusted to make these decisions. For more on this, see the earlier post on Known Unknowns and Known Unknowables. As I said then, if anyone on the White House Cherry Picking Brigade wants to debate the policy implications of the various kinds of climate uncertainty, Bring It On! But I have another observation to add. (more)
To go back to the subject of White House edits of scientific reports, Cooney is a former lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute who has no scientific training, and, until a few days ago, was a White House official at the Council on Environmental Quality - but he has now been hired by Exxon. To anyone who follows the issue, it is just one more smoking gun that comes as no surprise. For context and other recent occurrences of such behavior, see the Pilz memo, and also comments by Roger Pielke and by Chris Mooney, who undoubtedly provides the whole story and all of the relevant references in his forthcoming book, The Republican War on Science
But the NAS seems to continue to adhere to an outdated set of (so far) unwritten rules, which is, in the interest of maintaining civility, to find at least one thing nice to say about a study or a research program before saying why it is otherwise completely flawed or even worse, irrelevant. That approach may still work in the academic community, where professors try to at least be polite when reviewing the work of colleagues who will someday be in the opposite position, or reviewing their work. If they get too polite, it comes out eventually because science is inherently a self-correcting process. But in the lopsided arena of science and policy, saying something nice about scientific research that is entirely flawed just provides one more opportunity for cherry picking by those whose job description is to defend it at all costs. For example, Scott Mclellan claimed the administration's 10 year plan for science was "widely praised by the scientific community, including the National Academy of Sciences." But as Mooney points out, the praise in the NAS report is for responsiveness to previous committee comments. The report goes on to point to the failure to acknowledge and consider the results of the U.S. National Assessment, and to the dangers of oversight and management of the program by high level political appointees, and also questions the capacity to implement the plan.
The only reason this kind of spin works is because of a popular misconception that science provides certainty at all and that it can always be reduced through more research. And because of the way uncertainty is generally abused in decision-making, scientists have often been reluctant to clarify this point. This, in turn, leads to the notion that there is some kind of a linear or deterministic relationship between science and policy. In other words, if we just get the science right, the right policies will follow, which would put scientists in the position of being benevolent dictators. Decision-makers and advocates then need only point to scientific conclusions to justify a policy decision, no matter how controversial, and even if the decision itself has more to do with policy than with science. But we can't know everything. That is why, as the nobel prize-winning economist Herbert Simon put it, rationality is bounded. No matter how good or bad the science, decisions must ultimately be based on judgment, informed or not. Historically, science has more or less played along but lately, like Simon, has been going in a different direction, towards a more dynamic view of ecosytems, as explained in this post and may be also going through a process of self-correction needed to better serve the public interest. Unlike science, politics is not a self-correcting process, or at least, not when there is an elephant in the room who has already decided what he is going to do... To play by the rules of science in the policy process first of all presumes there is some semblance of civility and rule of law.
Disclaimer: If I had time right now, I would go over the entire NAS report myself, of which I have only read bits and pieces, so the material referred to above may have also been cherry-picked, but as I recall, the report accepts the consensus that the human contribution to climate change is significant even if there is uncertainty about exactly how much. Since even small changes that take us beyond normal ranges of variability can have large consequences, and since USA Today proclaimed that that debate is over, lets just say it's "42." Scientific capacity is better spent on monitoring changes and helping to identify feasible response options than arguing with denialists. Kudos to my Congressman, Chris Van Hollen, for being on the list of co-sponsors of Apollo Energy Act introduced by Congressman Jay Inslee, also discussed here... Is yours there yet?
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at June 16, 2005 9:06 PM
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One has to hope no one will get too confused by this largely un-useful debate over policy vs "science". I note that your reference to Post Normal Times brings one to an author who starts off a paragraph asserting that there is a misconception that science provides certainty and that it can be reduced (sic) through more research. He probably meant to say Uncertainty can thereby be reduced. But then he ends the paragraph by writing that "Unlike science, politics is not a self correcting process...."
I have enough trouble working out these matters
without following that confusion!
Then there is Prometheus where it does seem that every pronouncement of scientists who have been good enough to post a few road signs for the rest of us, will be greeted by a dismissive sniff and arch remarks on whether "we" want scientists to step out of their labs and say directory things.
That author seems to regard scientists as sort of servants in the estate of the Squire, seen but not heard to speak as equals. So they are supposed to say, here are all the things you can do (My Lord) in the way of a next step, but not that you should not take it because you are on the edge of a cliff.
May I say us duffers need all the help we can get. We are not surprised to hear that the powers that be will lie like hell, and rewrite reality every day. We definitely do not need more stooges whose greatest boast is they have on some occasion whispered truth to power. We need real scientists to say real things that we need to know, out loud, including their assessment that we are indeed standing on the edge of a cliff. For instance, Real Climate. Later, much later, for this policy crap.
Posted by: garhane at June 22, 2005 2:00 PM
Thank you for your comment. If this discussion has generated confusion perhaps I need to clarify - as there is more than enough of it to go around. First, the main point I was trying to make is that the reason the "powers that be" get away with rewriting reality is because of some sort of expectation that through science, we can know all things and predict the future. This is preposterous. If we have to wait for complete information on anything, decisions would never get made. This confusion about uncertainty makes science a stooge for difficult policy decisions and is highly undemocratic. You can probably come up with "science" to support almost any decision you want to make if you frame the problem right, but then it would just be "policy crap." However, in making those decisions, we still need all the real science we can get, and, since we can't predict outcomes, we need to learn from what is actually happening. As Roger Pielke often points out, sometimes science just shows us more that we don't know, thereby increasing uncertainty. That is no excuse for putting off urgent decisions with high stakes. Second - I don't agree with Pielke on everything. In the 2nd post on this blog, I gave kudos to RealClimate, which provides a real public service by presenting responses to the fraudulent arguments of climate septics, in real time. I have no problem at all with scientists taking stronger policy positions, or evaluating policies to say whether or not they will help to achieve policy objectives, e.g., reduce the hazard of global warming and promote human well-being, and what the trade-offs are, as long as they are humble enough to know that having a degree in physics doesn't necessarily make them experts in ecology or give them the illusion they can control the world. I may post something on this topic after gathering my thoughts a bit more. Since everyone has a bias, including scientists, the key is to just admit it, and to have an independent process of assessment in which the underlying assumptions are transparent and politicians don't get to edit scientific findings. I hope this helps. If you still find it un-useful, there are plenty of other blogs to read...
Posted by: Sylvia S Tognetti at June 23, 2005 6:26 PM