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October 20, 2007
The difference between science and policy
by Sylvia S Tognetti
The challenge of communicating policy relevant science is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than this statement made by John H. Marburger III, as reported in the Washington Post, seemingly to justify White House rejection of the goal of limiting the global rise in temperature to 2 C, although, according to Stephen Schneider, it is entirely possible Marburger's remarks were taken out of context:
The president's top science adviser said yesterday there is no solid scientific evidence that the widely cited goal of limiting future global temperature rises to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is necessary to avert dangerous climate change, an assertion that runs counter to that of many scientists as well as the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
John H. Marburger III, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said at a news conference that the target of preventing Earth from warming more than two degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, "is going to be a very difficult one to achieve and is not actually linked to regional events that affect people's lives." ...
..."you could have emerging disasters long before you get to two degrees. . . . There is no scientific criterion for establishing numbers like that."
Regardless of what Marburger intended to say, it is reported as if there is a debate with legitimate opposing views as to whether there are or could be scientific criteria for establishing what is essentially a policy decision. Then, since he acknowledges the possibility of disasters at a rise of under 2C, it isn't clear what he means when he said this target is "not actually linked to regional events that affect peoples lives." Fortunately, Alden Meyer from UCS had a good answer: "The question for [Marburger] is, if not two degrees, what?"
Marburger should know better than to make such statements, and if that is what he actually said, journalists should know better. I was going to say they get away with this kind of shoddy journalism because of a lack of public appreciation of the the scientific process, but I think most people know that life is uncertain and that science is not a crystal ball. So the best explanation I can come up with at the moment is that they get away with it because it is more convenient than debating acceptability of risks for which there is no data on probabilities, and because too often, such statements go unchallenged.
Scientists, and others who do know better and seek to use science for policy, often sigh knowingly at such statements - as happened when the article was held up in opening statements of the Science for Nature symposium I attended yesterday at WWF regarding forests and climate. So during the next break, I took the opportunity to discuss it with Stephen Schneider who was also at the symposium - and who is seen in the picture above along with Chris Field, both standing next to Al Gore when he made a statement about receiving the Nobel Prize. Schneider was among those whose work led to the establishment of the IPCC and who have been part of it from the beginning. The person who actually took the most leadership to bring about the establishment of the IPCC and who also belongs in that picture is Bert Bolin.
Noting that he has had enough experience with journalists to know how often things are taken out of context and misrepresented - Schneider said the statement might not have been as bad as it was made to sound, and that it could have been a great statement if Marburger had only clarified that the selection of a target is a policy decision. However, it would be necessary to see the full text of his remarks to determine what he actually meant. After all, Marburger did acknowledge that there could be dangers even with a temperature rise under two degrees. According to Schneider, the IPCC selected the 2C target because there is a realistic shot at being able to achieve it.
In a presentation Schneider gave on Thursday morning in the opening session of the symposium, he talked about the issue of whether the "jury is still out" which depends on the standard of evidence. Science and policy have different standards and ways of looking at the world, and there is no probability data for the future. That is why scientists build models, and why Cost Benefit Analysis is meaningless outside the OMB - the trade-offs are political. Asked whether they thought the science was settled or unsettled, I was relieved that most in the audience waited to raise their hands until asked whether they thought that was a dumb question - which it is. So, when it comes to policy, we have to rely on informed judgments, and on trust. Schneider's judgment is that it is not too late to prevent the big stuff, such as the melting of Greenland, but that it will be necessary to address the problem as fast and as fair as possible. For Greenland, there is not a long enough time series and there is a lot of noise, but the degree of melting sure looks like a trend.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at October 20, 2007 8:59 PM
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