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March 30, 2006

Difficult science - in a parallel universe

by Sylvia S Tognetti

For the sake of expedience, I put up Jerry's comments in the last post without much pause for reflection as I was absorbed by other things at the moment, one of which was the seminar on the Crooked Timber blog regarding Chris Mooney's book, the Republican War on Science, which is becoming more interesting than the book itself, and is not unrelated to the topic of "hard and difficult science" - which I'll come back to. First, let me back up. RWOS is great journalism. It didn't get me very excited at first because, conceptually, it doesn't offer much that is new for someone who has worked in the science and policy field for over 20 years. Still, it merits a place on the shelf closest to my desk because it provides documentation, not just of assaults on environmental science, but on science across many fields related to controversial policy issues, or of what John Quiggin calls the construction of a whole parallel universe based on "sound science" that is fabricated by networks of right wing think tanks, industry funded scientists and unqualified opinion writers, through which "approved views are amplified by the echo chamber of repeated mutual quotation until they appear as established facts." And even using post-modernist and social constructivist arguments! Lets call it the twilight zone, where the true believers also isolate themselves by going to separate universities like Liberty College.

The fabrication and distortion of evidence is qualitatively different and yes, worse, than pretending that science of any kind dictates a particular policy decision. This is a persistent problem but is old news. The so-called climate sceptics usually don't even try to defend their contentions in any substantive way - usually it is enough to make headlines. Benny Peiser, who clings to his conclusion even after finally admitting to errors in how he made his case, being just one example.

Given that context, other issues with RWOS seemed like minor quibbles not worth getting into - for now. For example, Mooney's tendency to romanticize science doesn't seem any different or worse than what many scientists themselves do and that he himself acknowledges. So, while romanticization of science and privileging scientific justifications for decision-making above all else are important topics, I regarded it as one that could be treated separately from the book - and will surely come back to this in future posts. However, by documenting this parallel universe, RWOS does what the best science does, which is lay a foundation from which a whole area of discussion and inquiry can emerge, that goes well beyond what is actually in the book, as to why it is happening. This is what is going on in the Crooked Timber seminar. It is also much more interesting than getting into food fights with so-called climate sceptics who use fraudulent technical arguments for which my patience is thin - so I am grateful that there are other blogs like RealClimate sorting all of that out and setting the record straight. But lest we forget, this is a diversion from issues of how to actually respond to changes in climate whether it be through various forms of mitigation, adaptation or better yet, multitasking.

The seminar commentary that most got my attention was that of Daniel Davies regarding the cause of all this, and whether it is associated with a peculiarly American brand of anti-intellectualism. What he suggests is that it represents a kind of "authoritarian irrationalism" that is "rooted in status insecurity and a consequent distrust of ambiguity" - which gives the PR industry the raw material with which to fabricate "sound science." As he also points out, this is what makes it impossible for any journalism to adequately deal with nuance and ambiguity. I am not familiar with his sources but it sounds very much like what John Barry describes as being at the root of much racism and the rise of the KKK in his book, The Rising Tide, about the Mississippi flood of 1927 and how it changed the country. A creepy book because it sounds so much like what is going on today, even more so after Katrina. I have also had my own share of conflict with well-meaning editors and PR people regarding the use of inappropriate soundbites and metaphors.

I'm not sure that this syndrome is particularly American or whether the Europeans just have a better way of keeping it in check, rooted in lessons learned the hard way. Roberto Benigni has made a career out of making fun of irrational authority, which gives it more transparency. But his is also a sense of humor that has deep cultural roots in what I'll just call a "Low Tolerance for Irrational Authority".

I have also made reference to "Low Ambiguity Tolerance" in the media in an earlier post about the post-normal hurricane season and global warming:

Global warming? Or flip flop, from inactive to active hurricane period? Or both? Or is this debate merely an artifact of the media's obsession with finding a smoking gun - which makes a better story line, given Low Ambiguity Tolerance among consumers of news? And of presenting complex and multifaceted science and policy issues as a two sided debate.... or maybe it is the policy process itself that has a Low Ambiguity Tolerance.

It has certainly been a great source of material for Roger Pielke Jr., who seems to have made a career out of arguing nuances that get glossed over in policy discourse. As it has been for me - much of my work on payments for watershed services dives in to all those messy issues that get glossed over in project planning phases but that are inevitably faced when anybody tries to actually implement such a concept. Anyway, thanks to Daniel Davies for explaining the source of LAT.

John Quiggin also discusses how Post-Modernism has served to further the war on science by providing arguments with which to challenge the privilege that science is given over other criteria for decision-making, so that it can be replaced with "politically reliable alternatives such as 'sound science'. Post-Modernism is a school of thought which probably had some excesses - I've only read a sampling of it myself but, Davies also makes the observation "that it is in the American university system that quite sensible French theories of literary criticism have been given a specifically irrationalist interpretation that was never really there in the originals." So I suspect that the culprit really isn't Post-Modernism but the abuse and misinterpretation of it, the same way that uncertainty is abused, as a license for arbitrary and capricious policy decisions.

Going back to the subject of hard science and difficult science - Jerry Ravetz and another commenter, Eli Rabett, both had reservations about David's broad definition of science to include "any systematic open inquiry into the nature of reality" in which he includes novels and poetry. According to Eli, this definition is more akin to the German concept of Wissenschaft, that roughly translates to "the pursuit of knowledge." But he also provides a link to a translation of an article about the collapse of the dream of a Grand Unified Theory as physics comes to terms with string theory and the possibility of an unknowable multiverse, which to some, would mean the end of science as we otherwise know it, and relegate physics to the status of esoteric religious theory. Jerry provides a reminder that defining what is and isn't included in science is not quite so simple and ponders whether it is realistic to always assume there is a ‘we’ available for taking a unified authoritative stand with respect to the problem of quality control.

While David's definition of science is indeed general to the point that it may not be very helpful, it does highlight important issues about the process of science, the purpose of which is not to construct a parallel universe, but through openness to mutual challenge and correction, to find areas of agreement or overlapping consensus. This is important because science is always conditional, and therefore, only presents a partial even if valid source of insight. As a process therefore, it may not be so different from that of story telling, as it is described by Leslie Marmon Silko, a contemporary native American author, who describes the process of storytelling in indigenous Pueblo communities of the Southwestern US in a book about Pueblo migration stories:

Communal storytelling was a self-correcting process in which listeners were encouraged to speak up if they noted an important fact or detail omitted. The people were happy to listen to two or three different versions of the same event of the same hummah-hah story. Even conflicting versions of an incident were welcomed for the entertainment they provided. Defenders of each version might joke and tease one another but seldom were there any direct confrontations. Implicit in the Pueblo oral tradition was the awareness that loyalties, grudges, and kinship must always influence the narrator’s choices as she emphasizes to listeners that this is the way she has always heard the story told. The ancient Pueblo people sought a communal truth, not an absolute truth. The them this truth lived somewhere within the web of differing versions, disputes over minor points, and outright contradictions tangling with old feuds and village rivalries.

It is also not so different from how I once heard an Arctic indigenous person describe traditional knowledge (at a workshop I had the opportunity to attend several years ago in Yellow Knife, regarding regional impacts of climate change in the Mackenzie Basin) - as a process of community dialog that enables them to reconcile different perspectives. By reconciling the historical knowledge of the elders with the regional changes witnessed by the young people, they had been able to confirm many of the changes that scientists reported and attributed to climate change. This person also pointed out that traditional knowledge systems are dynamic and exist because survival depends on it and have enabled them to take immediate action as a group. Inherent is a method of transmission across generations as well as communication in the present. What is new is the context of rapid global change and the need to reconcile local, regional and global knowledge - for which that workshop provided a forum.

What is important here, is the objective of even doing science, to find enough agreement about what is going on in a situation of high stakes in which facts are uncertain, values are in conflict, and decisions and actions are urgent - which will sound familiar to anyone familiar with the concept of "Post-Normal Science." The value of multiple perspectives is to provide a system of checks and balances against inevitable blinders and biases. But this approach also presumes some measure of civility, intellectual integrity, and a shared goal of finding mutual accommodation and ultimately, to survive in changing conditions. Given the existence of the parallel universe documented in RWOS, this presumption may also be naive. I shudder to think of the alternative. If we put science on too much of a pedestal, we risk falling into the same trap as the fundamentalists, which can only fuel more polarization - note Tom Delay's new talking point in his continuing attack on the rule of law, and the last check on power outside of blogostan, that there is a "War on Christianity" - ugh. That doesn't have to mean being so open-minded as to let ones brains fall out. But to wrap this up for now, as the hard sciences come to grips with the collapse of the dream of a Grand Unified Theory, and confront the complexity of the multiverse there may be something that can be learned from the difficult sciences - and I look forward to more participation of blogs like Crooked Timber in discussions about science. They have been on the PNT blogroll for awhile.

[revised 4-3-06 - I removed the Doonesbury link because I had misread it. But the point is, when you have parallel universes without even any attempt at finding common ground well, Iraq may not be the only place that civil war breaks out. I don't really think that will happen here, but I could be wrong. If things got any closer to going over the edge, it is possible that those more interested in Jennifer Aniston's hair might actually start paying attention to what else is going on. (I threw in that last reference as an experiment - to see what impact it has on google traffic...]

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 12:09 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

March 27, 2006

More on "hard science and difficult science"

by Sylvia S Tognetti

From Jerry Ravetz:

I would like to comment on David Waltner-Toews’s discussion of ‘hard science and difficult science’ (March 09). I think that his two senses of ‘science’ are not perfectly equivalent. The ‘systematic, open inquiry into the nature of reality’ is quite general, while the criterion ‘open to mutual challenge and correction’ is rather more specific. He uses the latter to exclude various sorts of enquiry, including corporate ‘science’ and religious pronouncements. I am not convinced that these exclusions are so simple.

There are some sorts of enquiry that are only partly open, including those in the private-corporate sector and also in defense. Indeed, most working ‘scientists’ operate under conditions of less than full openness. But they are still generally subject to ‘mutual challenge and correction’ by peers within a closed community. One might well object to secrecy in science on all sorts of grounds, including its eventual deleterious effect on quality; but that is not the same as deeming it to be something other than science.

As to ‘religious pronouncements’, in the case of the major Western religions they are all partly based on history. It may well be that the fundamental correctness of an entire religion cannot be proved or disproved by historical arguments, but within (and even across) religions there are lively and fruitful debates that invoke history, as well as all other humanistic disciplines. It is a common fallacy among the non-religious that all religious believers have abandoned reason and argument; it does us no good to maintain it.

It could be that a programme whereby ‘we’ maintain quality control, ‘differentiating ‘flaky’ from innovative, unusual or simply different’ cannot be realized. I am not being gloomy here, but using this paradoxical statement to make the point that in such extreme situations quality control is contested as much as the doctrines themselves. Are my own writings flaky, innovative, unusual or just different? I am sure that there will be intelligent arguments for each interpretation. I am not challenging the existence of the problem of quality control, or even of its possible resolution; but I am reminding ourselves that assuming that a ‘we’ is available for taking a unified authoritative stand, may be unrealistic.

Anyway, thanks to David for a most insightful piece, that has provoked me into these reflections.

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 12:34 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Climate and economic models

by Sylvia S Tognetti

Catching up on a topic I didn't quite get around to commenting on before - whether or not to believe climate models, and if so, which one, has been the subject of a number of posts in the science-policy blogosphere. Several weeks ago, Chris Mooney summarized a debate he had with Ron Bailey (at least formerly in the sceptic camp) in which the major difference was not whether humans are changing the climate, but whether or not the effects will be significant. It isn't clear from Mooney's account whether Bailey was able to provide any basis for his belief that the changes are likely to be small. And Mooney, not having a basis for choosing one model over another, doesn't find much to disagree with him about except about the degree to which science has been politicized. Hmmm - perhaps this is a sign of progress towards more substance in the climate debate? It seems that climate modelers have the same problem, as noted by William Connolley, a climate modeler, in another post, commenting on a debate between other climate modelers regarding whether IPCC scenarios understate the risks and what to tell non-scientists:

I have much sympathy for most likely response of the system rather than the risk-weighted outcome (its not technically true: the scenarios are not probability-weighted; but you know how it goes). When I give general-public talks (and you can find the stock one I do, by following a few levels of links from this , if you want to) I downplay the overenthusiasm you find in the media for disaster scenarios, but always with the ever-so-slightly guilty feeling that I may be wrong. I point that out too - I try to mention the uncertainty - but I have the impression that people have problems keeping up with everything and are going to miss the subtle side messages.

And Connolley again, in a more recent post remarking on a speech given by Freeman Dyson, who seems more interested in promoting heresy among young scientists than in what he is talking about:

In the speech, FD is talking to new PhD's about how he hates the whole PhD system, so he needs some good heresies, but predictably enough he pushes his point too far: The first of my heresies says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. Well obviously he isn't qualified to speak. But he doesn't even give any indication that he knows what he is talking about, which is at least desirable before speaking.

First off, lets suppose that the climate models have absolutely zero value for predicting the future (I don't believe it, but lets suppose). How does that allow you to conclude that the fuss is exaggerated? How does he know the models are erring on the high side? They may just as well be erring on the cautious side (and there is some reason to believe that, since there may be unexpected surprises that, err, aren't in the models because we don't know about them).

Secondly, the climate modellers (unlike, apparently, FD) are aware that the models are uncertain: its hard not to be, when the IPCC report gives a range of 1.5-4.5 for the climate sensitivity (although there is increasing evidence that about 3.0 is probably close to the right answer).

If FD means the fuss over the impacts... then he should say so.

FD continues: climate models... do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust... do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand... the climate model experts end up believing in their own models. All this is well over the top. But it can be re-written, substituting "climate" for "econmics". Then FD would have something real to complain about: economic models are used far more extensively for policy than climate models are, yet they lack the physical basis that climate models do have. They miss out all sorts of things in the messy muddy world. Why does FD (and indeed so many other septics) have such a blind spot for them?

I don't have a degree in meteorology either, but a paper of mine did get cited in the TAR WGIII report in a section on decision-making frameworks. Dyson is right, of course, that "The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand." (Hey, I live in a place I call "Muddy Spring.") But bad arguments are often believable precisely because they are embedded in some truth so that they sound truthy (as Stephen Colbert might say). And the premise that the world is muddy and messy can also a good reason to err on the side of caution....

What model we believe, and what we are willing to do in response to what it tells us, generally has something to do with how we think the world works and the degree to which it is thought to be robust and resilient to disturbances - which has something to do with values. For example, according to classifications given in cultural theory (developed by Thompson and Rayner), those who think the ecosystem is highly resilient and robust, and likely to return to some ideal state of equilibrium after a disturbance, would probably expect changes in climate to be insignificant, and favor policies through which to exert control over the environment (Thompson and Rayner label these as "individualists" but since this is a blog, I'll call them the control freaks). Fatalists, who believe nature is capricious and unpredictable, and human nature as selfish and greedy, are unlikely to manage resources at all because hey, why bother? Then there are the hierarchists, who believe nature is resilient within thresholds and who favor interventionist and bureaucratic management styles. Lastly, egalitarians who believe nature is fragile, would manage on the basis of the precautionary principle, have stronger group solidarity and a greater tendency to cooperate.

These biases can often be seen in the models and methods used by various experts to make their case. Most of what falls in the category of economics for example, rests on deterministic assumptions that there is an equilibrium that can be achieved if and when all the right conditions are met - and that these conditions can actually be met. Ecology, at least from the perspective of adaptive management, now tells us there is no such thing as a stable equilibrium. At the deterministic side of the spectrum, methods, such as cost-benefit analysis provide utilitarian justifications for decisions, and offer technical solutions that fit within the status quo. At the other end, adaptive approaches often raise questions about existing institutions, including scientific practice in relation to high stakes and fundamentally political decisions, and ideally, provide support for learning and conflict resolution rather than offering a supposedly optimum solution. For example, among those who have had a habit of raising troubling questions was Gregory Bateson, according to whom, one of the major fallacies of the scientific community is the premise that it is possible to have total control over an interactive system of which oneself is a part, a fallacy that he also viewed as a major sources of social and individual trouble. He saw false presumptions of an ability to 'control' and 'manage' ecosystems mechanically, through quantitative measurement of energy flows as a primary source of error in ecological science, and as inadequate for living systems because organization or relationships among the system elements are greater limiting factors than energy. He also thought it would only increase the likelihood of “runaway ecological degradation”, as the increased ability to predict and control the factors of interest would only make a pathological system more efficiently pathological, leading to more rapid self-destruction, as it does not address the false premises upon which the model is based. A similar observation is found in the work of Georgescu-Roegen who once stated: 'a technical evolution leads to an increase in the rate at which a society "wastes resources" . . . the economic process actually is more efficient than automatic shuffling in producing higher entropy, i.e. waste'. In other words, as summed up by Mario Giampietro, the more developed is a society the higher it is its rate of generation of garbage per capita. But, of course, it is the deterministic approaches that have dominated policy discourse.

Admittedly, this is somewhat of an oversimplification - particularly if you include in economics the use of multi-criteria methods, or at least recognize the limitations of standard approaches, and perhaps also define it to include such things as institutional economics, economic anthropology, economic geography, and political economy. Most economists actually know that the idea of perfect markets and simple market solutions is a myth, (for more on that see the columns by Robert Stavins, on the Environmental Economics blog) - but that doesn't stop policy makers from using such myths to justify wanting to roll back the New Deal and the enlightenment, or whatever else is in their way.... Or some ecologists from using bad arguments about the value of ecosystems to make their case for conservation sound more credible (now you know one of the reasons I switched from the study of ecological economics to geography). Challenging myths and worldviews is unsettling but, for scientists, it comes with the territory.

So call me an egalitarian if you will, but the reason I tend to believe the disaster scenarios, or that they should at least be consciously considered, is because there is no such thing as an "average condition" any more than there is an average person, or an average or even distribution of impacts. For example the Chesapeake Bay thrives during dry or drought conditions because most sediment and pollutants are transported during severe storms. The most significant changes throughout history have been in conjunction with wars and extreme events - perhaps even the development of human civilization itself. A paper worth reading, that nicely summarizes the flawed assumptions behind prevailing command and control paradigm in environmental management, is one by Brian Walker on a Resilience Approach to Integrated Assessment - in a nutshell, these are:

1. A focus on average conditions (rather than extreme events), fixed (and short) time frames and fixed spatial scales (rather than multiple nested scales)

2.A belief that problems form different sectors in these systems do not interact, when in fact interacting sectors are a key feature of their dynamics

3. An expectation that change will be incremental and linear, when it is frequently non-linear and often lurching

4.An assumption that getting the system into, then keeping it in, some particular state will maximize yield (broadly speaking) form the resource base, indefinitely. There is, however, no sustainable "optimal" state of an ecosystem, a social system, or the world. It is an unattainable goal.

For an example of non-linear and lurching behavior, see the latest post at RealClimate, which explain what an "ice quake" is:

A paper by Göran Ekström et al. shows that the increased speed of Greenland glaciers occurs in distinct lurches (observed as micro "ice-quakes") that are strongly seasonal, with the greatest number occurring in late summer. This provides evidence that meltwater plays an important role in the acceleration of Greenland's glaciers. Essentially, the idea is that surface melting that occurs in the summer can make its way quickly down to the glacier bed, lubricating the bed and allowing the glaciers to slide more rapidly. The "ice quakes" occur because the rough bedrock surface causes the glaciers to stick; they only accelerate when enough hydraulic pressure has built up to help float the glacier over the bumps. This is strong evidence that climate, not merely "internal ice sheet dynamics", has contributed to the recent increases in Greenland's glaciers. Indeed, a doubling of the rate of quakes has occurred over the past five years, just as the aerial extent of surface melting has increased.

Then, if you want to see a sceptic come unglued, try asking them about the economic consequences of a flip-flop - or just go back to the comment thread on Prometheus that I linked in the previous post, and scroll way down, to where, after Benny Peiser admits he actually made a mistake (explained also here), he flips to economic arguments - excerpted below. No wonder sceptics prefer to stick to unsubstantiated soundbites:

Dano: Say, Ben, what's the cost of an ecosystem flipping?

Benny Peiser:
1. define "ecosystem flipping"
2. calculate probability of "flipping" (100 yrs)
3. calculate probable cost of "flipping"
Now do the sums.

Dano:
Ben, 'flip' is a standard ecological term.
A consequence of such an occurrence might be, say, a fraction of the mid-latitude plains of central Europe could no longer support row crops. Or the North Atlantic fisheries collapse.
No wonder you don't want to calculate it!
Anyway, as I suspect you know, lack of data precludes probabilistic forecasts of ecosystem change. So, while it's easy to try to cram the concept into the narrow box of things you know, I suspect that you are not a manager, since it is easy for you to want to quantify materialistically these probabilities.
If you were to throw in a 'moral' or 'ethical' component in your reply, it might be easier to take your answer seriously; but your implicit marginalization of precaution (i.e. 'care for future generations') is, in a sense, an answer, although not the one I initially asked for.

Benny Peiser:
"lack of data precludes probabilistic forecasts of ecosystem change"
That, in a nutshell, answers your question about calculating the probable cost of hypothetical ecosystem "flipping."
I suggest to stick to the scientific literature on the economics of climate change. This, rather than speculative flip-flopping, will ultimately inform policy making on global warming.

Dano:
No, Ben, I asked what's the cost of an ecosystem flipping. Remember? Sure you do.
I didn't ask about calculating a cost. I added words like 'moral', 'ethical', 'care for future generations' to help you get around your difficulty (in this case, likely from lack of knowledge rather than malintent) in answering the question.
And what will inform policymaking on AGW is not only economics, but sociology, ecology, and all kinds of other stuff that gets wrapped into adaptive management.
Lastly, your having to modify 'flip' with 'hypothetical' is a great response and helps a lot. Thanks for that. Hope you don't mind if I refer to it if I need to.

A final reason for considering the worst case scenarios is that the actual outcome depends in large part on human actions. It sure would be nice if we could all actually learn something and prove the models wrong - for the right reasons.

References:

Giampietro, M., Energy Efficiency and Sustainability in Human Societies: What can we learn from energy efficiency studies in human societies in respect to regional and global sustainability?, 1997, Istituto Nazionale della Nutrizione, Rome, Italy,

Georgescu-Roegen, N., The entropy law and the economic process. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1971.

Harries-Jones, P., A Recursive Vision: Ecological understanding and Gregory Bateson. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1995.

Thompson, M. and Rayner, S. (1998). Cultural Discourses. Human Choice and Climate Change. Volume 1. The Societal Framework. S. Rayner and Malone, E.L. Columbus, OH, Battelle Press.

Tognetti, S.S. 1999. Science in a Double-Bind: Gregory Bateson and the Origins of Post-Normal Science. Futures 31:7

Walker, B. (2005) A Resilience Approach to Integrated Assessment. The Integrated Assessment Journal, 5:1, pp. 77-97.

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 1:33 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

March 21, 2006

Disorder - in the eye of the beholder

by Sylvia S Tognetti

Daniel Sarewitz's new blog has some interesting observations from the First World Forum on Science and Civilization, including a conversation he had with Jerry Ravetz (known to readers of this blog) and the anthropologist Mary Douglass, about whether science is guided by aesthetic sensibilities, and questions this raises about rationality.

Hmmm - as I recall, this issue is sort of addressed by the GCM (no, not General Circulation Models, the Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice) in which disorder is in the eye of the beholder. For your reading pleasure, here, from my grad school archives, is a summary description I once wrote of that (after the jump):

The “Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice”, was originally developed by Cohen et al (1972) and most recently revisited by Warglien and Masuch (1996). In contrast with the pure rationality model, it suggests an alternative model of decisionmaking that resembles a primordial soup in which "preferences are unclear and ambiguous, goals are badly specified and incomplete... people do not know exactly what they want, what they wanted is subject to reinterpretation, and what they will want has yet to be learned". As originally described by Cohen (1972) “participants arrive at an interpretation of what they are doing and what they have done while in the process of doing it. From this point of view, an organization is a collection of choices looking for problems, issues and feelings looking for decision situations in which they might be aired, solutions looking for issues to which they might be the answer, and decisionmakers looking for work.” Among the observations are that problems, solutions, participants, and choice opportunities do not necessarily follow a logical sequence -- disorder may well be in the eye of the beholder and in the conception of choice.

In what is referred to as "parallel, emergent behavior", complex patterns may result from simple interactions. “The logic is one of matching, of finding mutual correspondence and reciprocal support between the elements in the choice process”, which is accomplished through interaction in which a broader set of values and perspectives come to be considered. Decisionmaking under uncertainty is said to actually improve because solutions emerge as the problem is attacked from these multiple perspectives. For example, solutions and ideas may arise in the research process, which may be more effective when there is initial confusion -- excessive early integration in a sequential plan of development steps may kill the most interesting and unexpected outcomes. It is considered a “parametric adaptive” model in that it takes the behavior of others as a parameter in a process of reciprocal matching between participants, problems, and solutions (Warglien and Masuch 1996).

It is also recognized that, even if people know what they want, they do not always behave consistently with their objectives because of organizational procedures, weakness of will, or by retrospectively establishing goals that rationalize decisions already made. A purely rational organizational design that ignores this is not merely false but may be the cause of misadaptation and ineffectiveness in bureaucratic organizations. It is important to distinguish formal and informal organizational structures in that, disproportionate emphasis on formal procedures (e.g., charts, rules, and management techniques) does not eradicate but instead shifts uncertainty to new areas of unpredictability and negotiation (Warglien and Masuch 1996).

Cohen, M. D., J. G. March, et al. (1972). “A garbage can model of organizational choice.” Administrative Science Quarterly 17(1): 1-25.

Warglien, M. and M. Masuch, Eds. (1996). The Logic of Organizational Disorder. Berlin, New York, Walter de Gruyter.

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 9:12 AM | TrackBack

March 20, 2006

Politicizing science?

by Sylvia S Tognetti

No time for substantive blogging over the next few days but there is an interesting comment thread on a post of Roger Pielke's from last week, here, where Benny Peiser actually admits to a mistake! For background on Peiser, see this post from several months ago, and links therein to Tim Lambert's site. But there are also some substantive comments from several others including yours truly, on issues of uncertainty, the role of NAS committees, and on the legitimacy, or not, of including the perspective of so-called sceptics in scientific debate.

Another link from the past week that I never got around to blogging - and a must read for anyone who questions the need for environmental and any other scientists engaged in science intended to inform policy to role up their sleeves and actually get involved in politics is this post at Effect Measure - a public health blog -which states:

Public health has the word "public" in it. It is by its nature political and we are political as a consequence. We make no apologies for this. We interpret public health broadly to take in all those cooperative activities done for the health, well-being and fulfillment of our communities. While we are writing for our colleagues in public health, we include as colleagues many people in walks of life or with personal commitments not ordinarily considered public health workers. Hotel and restaurant workers, at all levels, for example, because they have expertise in caring for and feeding people who might otherwise have no shelter or prepared food. "Hotel" and "hospital" are words with a common root, places where shelter was provided for travelers, strangers and the sick. Likewise teachers, sanitation workers, water utility workers, and many others, are all engaged in tasks that can provide for the common good. In a crisis we will all need each other's help and each other's expertise.

As someone who once got sick from drinking water served at a conference on the role of watersheds in providing freshwater, I speak from experience when I say that environment is critical to public health - but unlike others, I could return home to a safe water supply. Over one billion people without access to safe drinking water sounds to me like a disaster worse than a few hurricanes. In addition to which, one third of the world's population is expected to face major water shortages within the next 20 years. Climate has something to do with that too... Speaking of which, there is also a World Water Forum taking place in Mexico City, for which you can find coverage here, courtesy of IISD.

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 12:50 PM

March 16, 2006

So what is a songbird worth, really?

by Sylvia S Tognetti

[updated to include a link to the paper which is now available online]

If you have ever wondered just what a songbird is worth, really, go read this bird-brained story which is just one of many included in the 19th Edition of the "I and the Bird" blog carnival. Then you might want to dig up one of the classic papers in ecological economics by Silvio Funtowicz and Jerry Ravetz, "The worth of a songbird: ecological economics as a post-normal science" published in the Journal of Ecological Economics (1994 10:3).

A short synopsis:

This paper critiques Nordhaus predictions of the economic impacts of the greenhouse effect. The bottomline is that Nordhaus uses arbitrary guestimates with VERY high uncertainty -- with appropriate qualifications, but then implies a high degree of certainty in his policy recommendations -- that the burden of proof for quantifying economic costs of avoiding damages should be on those who would impose the costs. It is bad methodology to have more certainty in the recommendations than in the arguments on which they are based. Measurements are not independent of methodology and ethics. Monetary prices are only one aspect of value that reflect commercial market interests--any definition of value defines what is important and real from the perspective of the particular stakeholders. Reduction of goods to commodities reflects power structures, and is one perspective among several. So it is necessary to recognize the plurality of legitimate perspectives and of conflicting interests and power relationships in order to avoid cooptation by one side. The ethical component of science has concerned itself with the process of quality assurance and the product rather than with its use or abuse -- this allows scientists to claim credit for benefits and blame society for harm.... Conclusion - "If we care about songbirds as well as other symbols of environmental value, resources will need to be devoted to their protection and choices will need to be made; that is the contribution of the perspective of economics. But the issue is not simply one of allocation. The worth of a songbird definitely has its monetary aspect; but the endangered songbird is not thereby reduced to a commodity, any more than any other exemplification of love. And as the rise of ecological economics has shown, the songbird's worth also lies in its teaching us about ourselves and what we want to do with our lives while we are here..."

In other words, songbirds are worthless - unless, of course, we value them enough to do what it takes to insure their continued existence. Imagine that! Then go enjoy the blog carnival. Then we can talk about what it will take and how to pay for it....

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 8:54 AM | TrackBack

March 9, 2006

Hard science and difficult science

by Sylvia S Tognetti

There is a listserve discussion going on about the relationship between hard science and soft science - David Waltner-Toews gets right to the point:

I prefer the terminology used by geographer Barry Smit - Hard Science and Difficult Science. Actually, I prefer to use the term science to cover any systematic, open inquiry into the nature of reality; this includes modes of inquiry from novels & poetry to experiments & observational studies. I sometimes start my lectures on complex systems by playing Glenn Gould playing Bach - which reflects the perfectly ordered, understandable universe we dream of - and finish by playing jazz - which combines order with chaos. A friend of mine who is a conductor tells me I over-estimate the ordered predictability of Bach, but I think the point is made, at least to start discussion. The results of science are always conditional, since any person or group only has partial knowledge, but, because we need to make decisions every day, we come to a consensus & act on it. Every action is a test of that consensus. (In the policy realm every policy is a hypothesis & every implementation of policy is a test of that hypothesis). This excludes all corporate "science" (since it is not open & therefore not open to mutual challenge & correction), as well as religious pronouncements, which are also not open to mutual challenge & correction. The challenges are - how do we accommodate or integrate multiple epistemologies (which we need to do to make collective decisions)? how do we maintain quality control? (differentiating "flaky" from innovative, unusual or simply different)?

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 3:11 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 7, 2006

March on Washington, New Orleans style

by Sylvia S Tognetti

In a previous post, I said, "maybe we need a Mardi Gras parade through Congress or something." Well, here it comes... Next Tuesday, March 14th at 2 pm, there will be a New Orleans style second line march from the Capitol to the White House led by the Rebirth Brass Band. Rally in Lafayette Park from 3pm till midnight. Besides being the Ides of March, March 14th is the eve of when those displaced by Katrina are scheduled to be evicted from hotels without any place to go. The Gulf Coast Renewal Campaign is calling for a halt to the evictions until transitional and long-term affordable housing is available and is campaigning for passage of the "Hurricane Reclamation, Recovery, Reconstruction and Relief Act" to provide more comprehensive assistance. to Katrina survivors and enable them to rebuild their communities.

For more info click here.

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 5:44 PM | TrackBack

March 6, 2006

Ode to a swamp

by Sylvia S Tognetti

Recommended reading is an interview by Darksyde (at Daily Kos) with Michael Grunwald, regarding the Florida Everglades (hat tip Chris Mooney of course, who has additional comments on Grunwald's book here). But what I most enjoyed was Darksydes introduction, where he describes the Everglades as "the only place on earth where salt-water crocodiles live side by side with fresh-water alligators." I'm fascinated by swamps because they bring attention to those things we miss when we compartmentalize ecosystems or anything else into their individual components like land and water, or freshwater and marine systems, or even humans and nature, or ecology and economics.... What we miss are the relationships between them, and the diversity that arises just because of this - which is suppose to be the whole point of ecology, and why, for example, when writing material for a chapter of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, on responses to freshwater degradation, I had a hard time staying within the confines of my chapter and was told to "think inside the box," which nearly drove me to despair.

I also once wrote a series of descriptions of mangrove ecoregions for the World Wildlife Fund. The task probably came to me, as a consultant, because their staff was compartmentalized into those working on terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecoregions. Although marine, mangroves depend on the regular flows of freshwater and sediment, and although they don't rank very high for biodiversity, they have many visitors from diverse nearby areas who come there to feed, including turtles who dwell in nearby seagrass beds, migratory birds, and fish from nearby coral reefs. Without mangroves, some coral reefs would not even exist because they would be smothered by the sediment trapped by the mangroves. Closer to home, in the Chesapeake Bay, is the Terrapin turtle (better known as the mascot of my alma mater), which uses all of the different habitats of the Bay in different stages of its lifecycle - so to save the Terrapin, we have to save the whole Bay, beaches as well as underwater grasses, and the balance of fresh and saline waters. My next project may be to learn to construct rain gardens to catch stormwater runoff in places like "Muddy Spring." Consider also, that 70-80% of watershed areas are in these upstream hillslope areas that are dominated by extreme and randomly timed storm events. The last major modificaton to the shape of the stream behind my house was made a few years ago by hurricane Isabel, and I expect that the next hurricane that comes this way will mobilize a big pile of dirt up the street. Then consider that a case heard by the Supreme Court on February 21st will decide whether any of this will continue to come under the purview of the Clean Water Act. Ironic, since filtration through the landscape is how we get clean water without building expensive filtration plants - as New York City has recognized. For now, the city has been able to avoid the expense of a filtration plant by investing a much lower amount in financing upstream conservation activities.

It is no coincidence that living things are disrpoportionately concentrated along riverbanks and nearshore areas where they have access to the best of both worlds. I also once studied "ecological economics" and was always asked, "but are you an economist or an ecologist" to which I could only reply "yes." I'm much happier calling myself a geographer, but, when I switched programs, I also had to leave behind plans I had for doing research in the world's biggest swamp, i.e., the Pantanal - a seasonally flooded place that straddles the borders of 3 countries (Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay) and 4 major South American ecosystems that contribute to its vegetational composition - the Amazon tropical rainforest, the cerrado or scrub forests of central Brazil, the chaco - or semi-arid scrub forests, and the sub-tropical Atlantic humid forest. Within this, are 10 ecological subregions, depending on elevation and water levels. The difference between the first and the second picture below, taken at the beginning of the rainy season in 1995, is probably less than a foot in elevation, and less than a few kilometers of distance. At the bottom are pictures of the Tuiuiu - a bird that has come to symbolize the Pantanal and that is only the most well known of the 650 species of birds that can be found there, along with 90 species of mammals (including humans) and 50 species of reptiles, who feed on the 250 species of fish and other things that can also be found there - the fish make for easy pickings when the yearly floodwaters recede. The second picture is also what the area in the first might look like, if water levels dropped as a result of climate change, and/or of expanding the waterway for navigation - which would bring industralization along with it. Scientists in the region often point to the restoration of the Florida Everglades , and its cost, as a lesson to be learned from, and to make a case why they really shouldn't be chaneling and straightening the upper Paraguay river for a waterway.

Asked "Why is the Everglades so important?" Grunwald says:

The Everglades is the ultimate test of sustainable development, of man's ability to live in harmony with nature. It's always been at the cutting edge of conservation--first when a hunting ban prevented the extinction of Everglades wading birds, then when Everglades National Park was the first park established for biology rather than scenery, then when an Everglades pollution lawsuit led to the largest nutrient cleanup in history, and now with the largest restoration project in history. Everglades restoration is already a national blueprint for multi-billion-dollar efforts to revive ailing ecosystems like the Chesapeake Bay, the Great Lakes, and Louisiana's vanishing coastal marshes. It's becoming a model for the world; the Corps is helping Iraqis try to restore the "Garden of Eden" marshes destroyed by Saddam Hussein. But it's not clear whether the Corps knows what it's doing. After all, it's not a Corps of Biologists. And if man can't figure out a way to revive the Everglades--the world's most beloved and most studied wetland, in a region with plenty of rain and plenty of money--it's hard to imagine which ecosystem he's going to be able to revive.

I might add that it also challenges the way we think, which needs to change before we can act effectively to restore the Everglades or anyplace else. This is a topic I will probably be coming back to over the next few months, as I prepare for a panel I was invited to participate in in May, which will revisit the work of Gregory Bateson. One of Bateson's great frustrations was that there was "no conventional way of explaining or even describing the phenomena of biological organization and human interaction,” and that he was unable to convey concepts of evolution in light of cybernetics and information theory for lack of a base of common understanding. This is what led him to develop a set of principles for a new as yet unnamed science, which to him were obvious and self-evident, and “that every schoolboy should know”. These seemingly elementary ideas became epistemological principles regarding how we can know or learn anything, which merged with his ideas about evolution and “the wider knowing that holds together the starfishes and sea anemones and redwood forests and human communities.”

References after the jump

Bateson, G., Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. Bantam Books, New York, 1979.

Kawakami de Resende E., and Tognetti, S.S. (2002) Ecological and Economic Context of the Proposed Paraguay-Paraná Hidrovia and Implications for Decision-Making. Abaza, H. and Baranzini, A. eds. Implementing Sustainable Development: Integrated Assessment and Participatory Decision-Making Processes. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK. [prepublication version here]

For more information about current threats to the Pantanal, see Rios Vivos

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 5:11 PM | TrackBack

March 2, 2006

The big one

by Sylvia S Tognetti

I don't think this comes as any surprise to readers of this blog but, if you actually believed Bush when he said "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees," or just want to see another smoking gun, go visit CrooksandLiars to see the AP video of him being briefed on Sunday the 29th at noon, 19 hours in advance of the storm. Even Brownie knew it would be "the big one." Then, for a list of other things that the administration did not anticipate, see liberaloasis. Right. Then see Firedoglake for more lies and some context. The bottomline is, this administration is a threat to national security. Even if, for once, Bush actually told the truth, how could anyone in their right mind believe him? His lies are as anticipatable as was the damage of Katrina - to many of us, years in advance.

Lets also not forget that the Bush administration and a Republican dominated Congress had earlier blocked funds for restoration of the Gulf Coast, that has been ravaged by onshore facilities built to support offshore oil development, the revenue from which does not go into the coffers of Gulf states. The $30 billion that had been requested to fund a comprehensive restoration plan is probably less than the cost of a new weapons system.

Then, if you are wondering why the White House is still occupied by these people, visit ReconstructionWatch for information about a march in Washington planned for the eve of the day Katrina victims are scheduled to be evicted from hotels with no place to go, March 14th.

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 10:57 AM | TrackBack

March 1, 2006

An ode to the Lorax

by Sylvia S Tognetti

I previously posted the words of An African Forest Tale which is written in the form of an Ode to the Lorax by Jesse Ribot, who explained:

As I tried to write the story-with all its contradictions-it felt more to me like a Dr. Seuss tale than a scholarly history. So, I began writing in Seuss-esque verse. To my delight, the resulting text told the story better than anything I had written in a more-serious moment.

I had posted it together with one of the illustrations by Senegalese artist Mor Gueye, who painted a whole series of illustrations on reverse glass, that practically tell the story all by themselves. Now you can see all of the illustrations, and hear Jesse tell the tale in his own voice, in this video that I promised to post as soon as I figured out how to reduce it to a manageable size for the web - which I have now been able to do, thanks to a new computer.

For the higher quality version (17 MB) click here.

For a lower quality version (2.5 MB) click here.

There is an even higher quality version, that permits the images to be viewed in a larger size but it is about 250 MB - if you are really really really interested, and would willing to make a donation to support higher costs of bandwidth, send me an e-mail (sst at postnormaltimes dot net).

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 4:47 PM | TrackBack