July 18, 2008

Priceless

by Sylvia S Tognetti

It seems lazy to just post clips from the Colbert Report but Stephen nailed the abuses of cost-benefit analysis on Monday night, in the Word segment, "Priceless", and I'm in France... [note: the video clip doesn't seem to be working - hopefully Comedy Central will fix it soon]. The short version: "A human life is 6.9 million dollars. Gaming the system to protect industry from safety regulations: priceless."

A billboard at CDG airport says getting lost in Paris is also priceless - which is true, but this time I got lost in Brittany and found a megalithic tomb. I'm not sure if it was facing the Atlantic or "La Manche" - the French name for what I have, until now, known as the English Channel. Back in Paris, on Bastille Day, a soldier riding a tank in a military convoy on its way back from the parade, saw my companion's Obama button, smiled, and flashed a "V" sign, which says a lot about what has happened to America's image. I did a few other things but on the blog, I try to stick to environmental science and policy stuff. Speaking of which, right now, I'm hiding in a farmhouse in another region, and working on a presentation I was invited to give next week at a seminar in Germany, on water and biodiversity - more on that later. Since I will be stopping in Berlin on the way, and will finally get to see what is left of the iron curtain, I may have to also revisit the idea of a Post-Cold War Reconstruction (will unfortunately miss the Obama rally in Berlin). I may also get around to posting some comments of my own on cost-benefit analysis.

[corrected and revised, 4:48 pm]

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April 24, 2008

Science says

by Sylvia S Tognetti

The use of science as a masquerade for what is really a political debate really should be old news - when I worked at the NAS in the late '80s, I recall hearing that an agency request for a study that would say what the standards, or acceptable levels should be for toxic substances, probably under the Clean Air Act, was turned down because it was not considered a scientific question. To their credit, the EPA Scientific Advisory Panel is also clear on this in advice regarding the secondary standard for allowable concentrations of ground level ozone, necessary to control smog. But the tape continues to be replayed in assertions on blogs and elsewhere about "what science tells us we need." Yet another prominent example of this is commented on in this Nature article (sub req'd) by David Goldston, in response to criticism of the intervention by Bush to weaken regulations to control smog, and a statement by Carol Browner regarding the Clean Air Act, which she says "creates a moral and ethical commitment that we are going to let the science tell us what to do." Since the article is behind a pay wall, I'm just going to paste some snips here:

But does it? The conceit that science alone should and can dictate clean-air standards is propagated by political figures of all stripes and often by scientists themselves. Politicians always want to argue that any regulatory measure they are supporting is the only one justified by science because doing so makes their position sound objective and above the political fray. That’s especially true in today’s polarized environment, when claiming to have science on your side may be the only line of argument that can reach someone who doesn’t share your ideological persuasion.

In reality, though, regulatory decisions involve policy judgements as well as scientific determinations, and the science is often uncertain. The Clean Air Act explicitly leaves decisions to the “judgment of the administrator” of the EPA (a presidential appointee), who is advised by, among others, a scientific panel. Contending that standards are based solely on science conflates policy and science questions, muddying the debate and putting scientists needlessly in the line of fire....

Concluding:

...The debate over the new ozone standards is just beginning, but the detrimental impact of confusing science with policy can be seen by looking back at what happened in 1997, when the EPA last changed the ozone rules. The fight then was over the primary ozone standard, the one designed to protect public health. The EPA proposed tightening the standard, and Browner (then EPA’s chief) repeatedly argued that the decision was dictated by the science.

As a congressional staffer, I fought for the EPA proposal and I still support it. But what the science actually demonstrated was that for a given level of ozone, there are a predictable number of excess hospital admissions from aggravated respiratory conditions. At the time, there was little indication that ozone caused chronic health problems or deaths. Therefore the policy issue was: “How many hospital admissions are acceptable?” Needless to say, no politician was interested in engaging in that debate. The members of the EPA’s science advisory panel at the time were split over what standard to suggest, but agreed that the number was a “policy call”, not a scientific question. The science in no way told Browner exactly what to do.

All this quickly got lost in what became a prolonged and highly acrimonious debate between supporters and opponents of the new rule, in which each side accused the other of using poor science. This was bad for policy because the question of how to decide on an acceptable level of protection never got raised, never mind discussed. And it was bad for science because accusations of poor science conducted in the service of political goals can only raise distrust and confusion about the scientific enterprise.

The 1997 ozone fight, even more clearly than the 2008 rerun, was a case of a policy debate masquerading as a science debate. In such instances, scientists ought to be busy ripping off the policymakers’ masks, not donning them.

This frame works because of the perception that science provides certainty and therefore, can be called on as the ultimate authority. So it should be no mystery why the uncertainty argument works as a way to avoid policy decisions. But the idea that "we" are the ultimate authority, via the messy process of politics, remains a scary one.

[Hat tip: Inscights.]

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April 23, 2008

If only it were rocket science

by Sylvia S Tognetti

Krugman recalls some of the pitfalls of crossing disciplinary boundaries in the Limits to Growth debates that took place in the 1970s, when its author, Jay Forrester, decided to try his hand at economics. The result earned a scathing review from William Nordhaus, for whom Krugman worked as an assistant at the time. He gives an important rule of thumb:

The general rule to remember is that if some discipline seems less developed than your own, it’s probably not because the researchers aren’t as smart as you are, it’s because the subject is harder.)

Kudos to Krugman, and also to Environmental Economics for recognizing that this can go both ways, and that "economists do the same thing to sociologists and political scientists" or "x-ologists." In fact, Nordhaus himself is among the better known culprits, as discussed in the classic paper by Funtowicz and Ravetz, The worth of a songbird (pdf), revisited by Paul Baer here on PNT in The worth of an ice sheet , with further comments from Jerry here. (Nordhaus' role in climate science also surfaces in this paper by Naomi Oreskes et al about which I have another post in progress, but in the meantime, see what the Rabett  has to say.]  Long time readers of this blog who have been following the discourse on post-normal science can skip the rest but, a few highlights worth reiterating for everyone else:

F&R made the case that predictions made by Nordhaus in 1991 regarding the costs and benefits of climate change are based on arbitrary guestimates with extremely high uncertainty, e.g., his estimated impact of climate change on farms ranges from -10.6 to +9.7, billion $. This is acknowledged with caveats in the paper, e.g., "we now move from the terra infirma of climate change to the terra incognita of the social and economic impacts of climate change." However, it is not reflected in his conclusion that "climate change is likely to produce a combination of gains and losses with no strong presumption of substantial net economic damage." You would think that since the 1990s, knowledge might have progressed. But as Paul Baer points out, even the degree of risk implied by the "flaming arrows" diagram in the Stern report, which suggest that there is little to worry about until the average temperature rises by around 3 degrees C, can be traced back to a survey of Expert Opinion on Climate Change done by Nordhaus in 1994 in which "unsurprisingly, the estimated damage consequences of various temperature scenarios were significantly skewed between economists and natural scientists, as discussed in the original and in Roughgarden, T. and S. H. Schneider (1999)." As Paul also explained:

the specific risks implied by the "flaming arrows" are nowhere quantified directly. Instead, there is a single number calculated for "catastrophic impacts," based on a probability distribution for the temperature threshold at which the risk begins, and for the “value” (in terms of lost GNP) if the catastrophe occurs. The parameters of this "damage function" are in turn based on an expert survey done by William Nordhaus in 1994. According to Stern (p. 153), "When global mean temperature rises to high levels (an average of 5°C above pre-industrial levels), the chance of large losses in regional GDP in the range of 5 - 20% begins to appear. This chance increases by an average of 10% per ºC rise in global mean temperature beyond 5°C."

Among his main concluding points:

"catastrophic damage function" doesn't adequately capture all the reasonable interpretations of the likelihood and value of melting the Greenland ice sheet, to say nothing of other potential "catastrophes." Thus, it follows that the upper bound on damages for any different stabilization level has not been established. This alone should be enough to conclude that the economic justification for the lower-bound of 450 ppm CO₂-e stabilization can't be robust.

Lest anyone dismiss this as a rant against economics - it is not. I have no problem with economists who recognize the limits of their methodologies, and are clear about this in their conclusions. There are some. To be fair, I'll end this with a quote from Gregory Bateson, who sees the same pitfall in the entire relationship between science and society:

“I have been playing recently with the idea that the position of the scientific community vis-à-vis nature is comparable to the position of one complex culture in contact with another. In such a culture contact there are various tendencies towards oversimplification. The themes of the other culture which are actually complex patterns tend to be reified, and, especially the modes of interaction tend to become quantitative (money, trade, etc.)”

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January 3, 2008

Bert Bolin

by Sylvia S Tognetti

When the Nobel Peace Prize was announced, I wondered why Bert Bolin wasn't standing next to Al Gore. As it turns out, he would have been, had he not been too ill to travel - at least he lived long enough to enjoy the honor (hat tip Climate Science Watch).

Which brings me back to a post I started awhile back, but never got around to finishing, about the important role of synthesis in science, which is rarely mentioned - not at all for example in this article by scientific historian Naomi Oreskes on the history of the consensus of climate change. To be fair, there are only so many things one can say in an op-ed, but in between the work of those she mentions was a report from a workshop led by Bert Bolin in 1977, under the auspices of the ICSU Scientific Committee on Problems in the Environment (SCOPE), at which 66 scientists from 22 countries tried to nail down the "missing carbon." An excerpt from the preface of SCOPE report number 13:

One major problem, which constantly cropped up in the discussions, concerned the carbon dioxide build-up in the atmosphere. This issue is very significant because the potential increase of CO₂ in air remains substantially unpredictable as a factor in climatic variations. For us, the CO₂ question is only one of many important issues concerning carbon. It also appears that an answer to the build-up of CO₂ in the earth's atmosphere can only be found by placing the CO₂ problem in its proper environmental context, that is, the global cycle of carbon. Consequently we have tried, in a series of articles, to treat the carbon cycle by dividing it into various segments, i.e. hydrosphere, biosphere, atmosphere and lithosphere. Rather than concentrating on the accumulation and compilation of the data alone, we were guided by the intention to reveal the mechanisms of the carbon cycle in terms of sinks and sources and the kinetics of transfer and exchange.

Subsequently, in 1981, he led another interdisciplinary team that examined interactions among all of the major biogeochemical cycles: carbon, nitrogen, sulphur, phosphorus that resulted in SCOPE 21. And then, another review in preparation for a 1985 UNEP/WMO/ICSU International Conference on The Assessment of the Role of Carbon Dioxide and of Other Greenhouse Gases in Climate Variations and Associated Impacts, held in Villach Austria, that produced the following recommendation:

Recommended actions: Major uncertainties remain in predictions of changes in global and regional precipitation and temperature patterns. Ecosystem responses are also imperfectly known. Nevertheless, the understanding of the greenhouse question is sufficiently developed that scientists and policy-makers should begin an active collaboration to explore the effectiveness of alternative policies and adjustments. Efforts should be made to design methods necessary for such collaboration. UNEP, WMO and ICSU should establish a small task force on green- house gases, or take other measures, to: Help ensure that appropriate agencies and bodies follow up the recommendations of Villach 1985. Ensure periodic assessments are undertaken of the state of scientific understanding and its practical implications. Provide advice on further mechanisms and actions required at the national or international levels. Encourage research in developing countries to improve energy efficiency and conservation. Initiate; if deemed necessary, consideration of a global convention.

which appears in SCOPE 29, The Greenhouse Effect, Climatic Change and Ecosystems. Following which, the IPCC was formed.

I started to learn about all of this around 1991, when, as an employee of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council, I was assigned as staff to the US Committee for SCOPE - an international body that was established to provide this kind of synthesis on emerging global environmental problems - which is how they get on the radar screen. Much of the credit for the establishment of SCOPE goes to Gilbert White, who very much influenced my decision to become a geographer, after many years of frustration doing interdisciplinary work in institutions that at best, seem intentionally designed to make it difficult. At worst, such endeavors get dismissed as "academic moonlighting." So I appreciate what a feat it must have been, both to create SCOPE and the IPCC - and remain in awe. They have both served not only to advance knowledge, but to build the capacity for international collaboration in science, which can be a starting point for collaboration in addressing global problems. A few quotes from Gilbert White:

"What is important is where we stand in relation to the tasks of society . . . What shall it profit [the profession of geography] if it fabricates a nifty discipline about the world while that world and the human spirit are degraded?"

"I feel strongly that I should not go into research unless it promises results that would advance the aims of the people affected and unless I am prepared to take all practicable steps to help translate the results into action."

Added note: One of the reasons the SCOPE reports were obscured to those outside the scientific community involved in producing them, was because they were once outrageously expensive, and the internet did not yet exist. But volumes 1-59 are now available for download in their entirety. Newer volumes are now published by Island Press at much more reasonable rates.

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October 26, 2007

Rotten Pumpkins

by Sylvia S Tognetti

Its getting harder to laugh given what is in the news - e.g., droughts, wildfires, higher carbon emission rates... but it is Friday, and at least where I am, we are finally getting some rain. The Colbert Report is in re-runs this week but this clip remains timely, and would have been even more appropriate this evening anyway.

Update: Joe Romm has more on Global Warming's Halloween Horror - with links to frightening news about impacts of drought and in other cases, extremely high rainfall, on this year's pumpkin crop.

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October 5, 2007

One of the most important developments in the history of science?

by Sylvia S Tognetti

So says Andy Albrecht, as reported in the New Scientist. In a post that must have disappeared into one of those parallel universes, but that shows up in my rss feeds, David Appell asks what they could possibly be talking about. Stephen Colbert explains:

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July 1, 2007

Reality has become a black swan

by Sylvia S Tognetti

An article by Denise Caruso in today's NYT discusses the policy implications of new scientific perspectives on how genes function, reported in findings of ENCODE - a human genetics research consortium that is part of NIH. From this perspective, "genes appear to operate in a complex network, and interact and overlap with one another and with other components in ways not yet fully understood" rather than as a “tidy collection of independent genes.” The policy problem is that intellectual property laws, and products of recombinant DNA, e.g., GloFish, and the entire $73.5 billion biotechnology industry, are all based on the "one gene, One protein" principle.

Among other things, according to Caruso, this "evidence of a networked genome shatters the scientific basis for virtually every official risk assessment of today’s commercial biotech products, from genetically engineered crops to pharmaceuticals." But an assessment of risks that arise from network effects would require access to proprietary gene profile data for which there are no reporting requirements, so it is no surprise that challenges to the safety of these products are dismissed as "unscientific."

As Caruso acknowledges, this network view is not entirely a new idea. What this case illustrates is a contrast between two different scientific frames that I refer to as deterministic and adaptive. The deterministic view has long been outdated but that has taken of a life of its own because it is reinforced by the economic interests invested in it, and by a way of life that seems increasingly delusional. The only way reality will ever fit into a world that values GloFish will be through social learning, as part of an adaptive approach... I wrote more about the contrast between these frames in a 1999 journal article, on Science in a Double-Bind, in which I revisited the work of Gregory Bateson. I have also raised similar issues regarding the development of "markets for ecosystem services," as a way to make environmental costs part of the cost of doing business, and to create economic incentives for conservation management practices (last year in this post). Since ecosystem services are not yet a $73.5 billion industry, the rules of the game are still a work in progress - so there may be an opportunity to design a new business model that is consistent with a more complex reality, and supports human well-being.

Update: Denise Caruso adds a bit more detail and a correction on her blog, hybridvigor.net

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June 27, 2007

How do we know?

by Sylvia S Tognetti

Although most of my regular work is on land and water, I tend to gravitate towards climate issues on the blog because they make it easy to illustrate archetypal problems in science and policy, and it is all related anyway. However I will be gravitating more towards land and water, which become more relevant in any discussion of adaptation and responses and to climate change. In the meantime, for anyone who still needs convincing that humans have become geological agents, a new paper by Naomi Oreskes not only explains how we know the scientific consensus on climate change is not wrong. It also takes the reader step by step through the various ways that knowledge is validated, whether the subject is climate change, the germ theory, the movement of tectonic plates or even evolution,  Science is ultimately about validating knowledge and, as she points out, there is no single sacrosanct "scientific method"-  but she reviews the way that different kinds of reasoning and evidence all point in the same direction. With respect to climate, she makes a convincing case that I dare any trial lawyer to poke a hole in, that while scientific consensus could be mistaken, no one has come up with a reason to think that it is. It is worth a read even if you don't need convincing. She also makes up for whatever climate scientists are lacking in communication skills.

Because of other obligations, I missed her presentation hosted by the American Meteorological Society last week - it was on my calendar, but hat tip to Andrew Dessler for the reminder and the link to the paper and to her presentation.

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June 19, 2007

Science and journalism

by Sylvia S Tognetti

Given that the blogosphere has formed largely in response to the inadequacy of the media, it was only a matter of time before scientists started grumbling about science journalism. Chris Mooney seems a bit miffed, particularly at a comment on Tara's blog that suggests journalists are entirely unecessary - and that scientists just need good editors. This could easily be read and dismissed as a fight about who gets the byline  but there is of course much more to it. I have put off weighing in on these and related framing issues because there is way too much I want to say and, since I am not a journalist by training, it still takes too long to write briefly - but here goes some of it...

Science journalists aren't all useless but it does seem awkward and pretentious to have journalists - even when they have scientific background - calling the shots about who is "reasonable" and where the "middle ground" is in technical scientific debates. The entire scientific enterprise is set up to examine reasonableness of scientific claims via peer review of individual papers and more broadly, via assessments that evaluate science relevant to policy decisions. I speak from experience, not as a journalist but as someone who once upon a time served as staff for committees at the National Academy of Sciences, and even identified participants for some of those committees, at a time when I had only a BA in environmental studies. It was a humbling experience in that I was well aware of this paradox so I spent a lot of time doing homework and on the phone to scientists in search of overlapping recommendations and finding out what perspective different experts might contribute to a particular study. Then I disappeared to graduate school - and, being hopelessly interdisciplinary,  thought more about what happens when scientists from one particular discipline decide what is relevant. That is another can of worms but it is also where the need for broader participation comes in, and why scientists should be challenged from outside their profession. So the public should be more engaged in the assessment process and can and should raise questions about relevance of the science to a particular problem and context, inconsistencies with other sources of knowledge, as well as contribute contextual knowledge and to problem framing. This is where journalists can play an important role.

But science at its best is also about constructing new frames of reference when old ones are inadequate. (One major fallacy is to treat "science" as a monolithic entity. At its worst, science is guilty of the same kind of sin - of assuming it can provide a universally applicable silver bullet.)  Much of the tension with journalism comes not from misquoting scientists but from from trying to fit even accurate quotes, and new ways of thinking, into old and inadequate frames. What if, instead, journalists saw their role as finding ways to connect new to existing frames, or to compare and contrast them. Journalists aren't all alike either and some of them do at least strive to do that. (in other words, this is not a comment on Chris, who has learned a few things along the way).  Challenging existing world views is hard work and is not highly valued but is badly needed and will take all of the skills we can collectively muster. More to come on different frames within science....

 

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April 18, 2007

Science Skeptics?

by Sylvia S Tognetti

I have not yet had time to wade through all of the heated discussion sparked by Chris Mooney's and Matthew Nisbet's articles on Framing Science (article links are in the side-bar, for a round-up of discussion links see Coturnix), much less weigh in on it. I probably will. Not like I haven't written about the subject before. For now, I just want to call attention to perhaps a new way to frame the so-called climate skeptics. It may have been inadvertent or subconscious but, in this PBS Frontline interview with the infamous Frank Luntz, the interviewer refers to skeptics - not of climate, but of science. That sounds about right! If one rejects a consensus shared by all major scientific bodies, one is rejecting not the science of climate change, but the process of science as a way of knowing anything.  In other words, the "science"  frame is used deceptively, as a fig leaf for value conflicts.

[unfortunately, the video was removed from YouTube but the Frontline show, Hot Politics, airs next Sunday the 24th at 9 pm]

I found this via a link on the DeSmogBlog in a post by Kevin Grandia, who only calls attention to Luntz' admission of having changed his beliefs since writing the infamous memo. In that memo, Luntz essentially advocated a deceptive use of the uncertainty frame.   As for that, here is a relevant excerpt from my earlier post about framing:

What concerns me even more is the use of familiar frames and nice-sounding concepts, like sound science, data quality, CO2 is life or intelligent design to manipulate and deceive. (For more commentary on the CO2 is life ads put out by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, see posts by the usual suspects: RealClimate, Tim Lambert, Chris Mooney.)

This can make it difficult or impossible to talk about some important ideas that fit almost too well into a grossly distorted and misleading narrative. For example, any talk about uncertainties in climate science inevitably gets distorted by the likes of Benny Peiser who doesn't pretends not to know the difference between uncertainty of the magnitude and significance of climate change, and uncertainty regarding policies to address climate change, and whose debunked study nevertheless continues to be cited by denialists of human-induced global warming. And then we wind up with confused scientists blaming social theory altogether, rather than the misuse of it by those who seek to discredit the science that provides justification for environmental and other policies that protect public safety and health, and that have broad public support. Odd that they don't blame Einstein for the atomic bomb, or Darwin for policies of Social Darwinism. Nor was Machiavelli a Machiavellian. More constructive than attacking social theory would be to provide some transparency to its misuse for purposes of social manipulation. So I'll wrap this up with a quote from Erving Goffman's book on Frame Analysis (1974) where he refers to the work of Gregory Bateson, who began to talk about framing in a paper first presented in 1954:

The very useful paper by Gregory Bateson, "A Theory of Play and Phantasy," in which he directly raised the question of unseriousness and seriousness, allowing us to see what a startling thing experience is, such that a bit of serious activity can be used as a model for putting together unserious versions of the same activity, and that, on occasion, we may not know whether it is play or the real thing that is occurring. (Bateson introduced... also the argument that individuals can intentionally produce framing confusion in those with whom they are dealing...

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April 11, 2007

How to embrace a monster

by Sylvia S Tognetti

 

In case you were wondering, you can now watch a lecture together with a ppt presentation on Post-Normal Science: Working Deliberatively within Imperfections, given by Jeroen P. van der Sluijs  as part of a series on Science, Policy and Complex Phenomena, held at Wageningen University on March 21st. The ppt can also be downloaded here. In addition to being a member of the PNT Advisory Board, Jeroen is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Science Technology and Society (STS) at the Copernicus Institute for Sustainable Development and Innovation at Utrecht University, where he coordinates a research cluster on Environmental Risk Management.

Also available is a lecture given the following week by Arthur Petersen, on Climate Change as a Post-Normal Science. Arthur Petersen is the Director of the Methodology and Modelling Programme at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

 

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March 21, 2007

Not Normal Times

by Sylvia S Tognetti

I have a question for Kevin Vranes, who maintains that Gore is "representing scientists in a more prominent way than any scientist": How could anyone represent "scientists"? Has he ever heard the phrase "herding cats"? (It was my informal job description when I worked at the NAS.) When you need a herded group of cats to then agree on a report, there is a lot that is going to be left out, which can be much more interesting than what stays in. Writing those reports is an art.

There is a good reason for this. Scientists have an incentive to be conservative and skeptical. Professional reputations are at stake and are at greater risk from accepting a false correlation than from rejecting a true one - as was explained in greater detail by Jerry Ravetz in this earlier post, but he credits Kristen Shrader-Frechette for first bringing this to public attention. In basic scientific research, chances are, nobody will ever hear about what was missed. Not so in the use of science to inform policy.

Assuming the objective of policy is to avoid harm, the greater risk is that of rejecting a true correlation. In a policy context, use of the more stringent standard used in laboratory research makes it more likely that danger will be overlooked. Those who have to actually respond to a crisis will therefore have a greater incentive to consider a worst case scenario as the basis for decision-making, at least in theory. In practice, sometimes it takes the actual occurrence of a worst case event to start planning for one. For example, according to Pat Mulroy from the Southern Nevada Water Authority, who was among the speakers at the symposium I recently attended regarding the Colorado River Compact, water planning for SNV had been based on models that demonstrated a zero probability of a drought of the magnitude of the current drought in the western US. Now they plan based on worst case scenarios, and will never believe probabilities again. The drought also provided an opportunity to put in place permanent water conservation measures for which western water law notoriously creates a disincentive. (The water used to maintain a virtual reality in Vegas is considered an investment).

The notion that Gore exaggerates is consistent with the stories told about him by The New York Times in their continuing War on Gore, and by Sen. Inhofe who defines anyone who believes the debate is settled that humans are causing global warming, as an alarmist. But Gore did not say the sighting of one manatee far up the Atlantic coast is a sign of warming, any more than I proclaimed 73 degree weather in January in Muddy Spring (in the DC area), and the flowers in my yard to be a clear indicator of it. (I'm not the only one who noticed.) Nor is every statement that comes from the mouth of a scientist a scientific one. We read about such abnormalities now on an almost daily basis. When Gore referred to out of place manatees, more fires in the west that have accompanied the warmer temperatures and drier soils, and to other unusual things, he was making general observations, and was probably just voicing a common perception that these are not normal times, rather than making a scientific statement. Actually, these are Post-Normal Times, and if we had to have a full study for every statement, policy would be irrelevant - we would probably all be dead first. This was among the points made most forcefully by the Native Alaskan speakers at the Climate Crisis Action Day rally yesterday - if you want to find out what is going on, just ask their hunters! Even scientists come to them to find out what is going on. So, while valuing good science, lets give some credit to the local and experiential knowledge that we all have, which can also serve to validate science.

My thoughts on the hearings overall - I was glad to hear greater emphasis on bold response options. I hope it doesn't take a worst case scenario to make them feasible to implement. I was disappointed not to hear more emphasis given to improving public transportation infrastructure, which he did not address until the very end, when asked about it by our new Maryland Senator, Ben Cardin. Thank you Ben. And thank you Al. I don't see anyone else up to the challenge of making it all happen...

If you are still with me, go to DraftAlGore.com and sign the petition...

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March 16, 2007

Excerpts from The No-Nonsense Guide to Science

by Jerry Ravetz

[Editor's note: In follow-up to the last post, and others commenting on Post-Normal Science, we are posting some excerpts from Jerry's new book, The No-Nonsense Guide to Science. But, of course, you should really read the whole thing. It provides a concise history, and lots of examples. To top it off, it concludes with a set of questions rather than recommendations.]

The decline of the illusion of objectivity

Over the last half-century, science has experienced great transformations in its scale, size, power, destructiveness, and corporate control and social responsibility. There is lively debate over many policy issues concerning health and the environment, and over proposed innovations such as those in the GRAINN set. But until we get over the illusion of objectivity of science, as embodied in its supposed certainty and value-freedom, those debates will be hindered and distorted. So long as each side in a debate believes that it has all the simple and conclusive facts, it will demonise the other, and dialogue will not be achieved. We need not fall into some nihilistic philosophy of total subjectivity or power-games. That is not the only alternative to the lost illusion of perfect objectivity of science. To find a viable alternative we will need to examine why scientific objectivity is no longer common sense.

The process is already well underway. Towards the end of the last century, just too many things began to go wrong for science. First we discovered how mankind has been polluting the environment. And sometimes the pollution was worse when the science was the strongest. The first big pollution scare came in 1963 with Silent Spring, where the death of the songbirds was explained by their being poisoned with agricultural pesticides. Then we had the accidents in civil nuclear power. Of all industries this was the one most completely based on science. We might have expected that an industry created and run by scientists would not be vulnerable to sloppy workmanship and elementary blunders; but we were wrong. In both those cases, as in many others, the pattern was that even where science had defined the situation, something would unexpectedly go wrong, leading to an accident or disaster. Then science would be brought it for the attempt to understand the accident and to prevent its happening again. It was as if science was chasing after itself in the cleanup jobs, retrospectively correcting its own mistakes.

The public's experience of values, priorities, choices and exclusions has come through debates on science in fields relating to health and the environment. For a very long time, supporters of 'alternative energy' have pointed to the vast disparity between the meagre funds doled out to them for research and development, and the huge sums still lavished on the moribund nuclear power industry. In medical research, patients' groups have observed how the lion's share of the resources, even those collected and allocated by charities, goes on that 'basic' research which someone hopes and claims will solve the problems of cause and cure of the disease. At the same time, research on the quality of treatments and of care is left on the margins. The reasons are plain: everyone hopes for a 'magic bullet' which will kill the pathogen that makes us sick. Also, that sort of research is also useful in building a career in the relevant research science. By contrast, treatment and care are the 'soft' sciences, in which there are no Nobel prizes. It doesn't take much imagination to see how particular sets of values are built into the ruling criteria of quality in science.

Why science is now post-normal

In all these ways, the public are becoming aware that values influence both the shape of what we know, and the selection of what we might know. And this can happen because science can no longer promise to deliver certainty when we need it. The old illusion of objectivity is passing into history. We should not reject it completely, for there is a good core of truth there. Instead, we should explain why it works where it does, and then present a modified, enriched version of objectivity for those other cases. The need for understanding is urgent. In an ever increasing number of policy issues we find science where the uncertainties are gross and the value-commitments are dominant. Looking at issues like global climate change, gender-bending pollutants, the disposal of nuclear wastes, and species extinction, to say nothing of the GRAINN technologies like reproductive engineering, we have the shape of the new policy predicaments. In such issues, we can say that in total contrast the to objectivity we once thought we had, the facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high, and decisions urgent. Indeed, whereas for generations we contrasted hard objective scientific knowledge with soft subjective values, now we have policy decisions that are hard in every way, for which our scientific knowledge is irremediably soft. Where do we go from here?

…. (Description of Post-Normal Science)

Post-Normal Science isn't a theory; we do better to see it as an insight. The image of that rainbow-quadrant tells us something about our current predicament. There are hosts of urgent policy problems involving science, for which routine expertise is totally inadequate, and for which even the best professional knowledge and judgement are insufficient. This is when, as in the outer strip, either or both of systems uncertainties and decision stakes are large. But if all the trained people can't tell us what to do, how are we ever to make good, correct decisions on these difficult and urgent issues?

There is no easy answer. It's most likely that we will make many mistakes, perhaps some of them disastrous. But with the insights of Post-Normal Science we can avoid even worse ones, by refraining from putting our trust in methods that are irrelevant or misleading. In both of the traditional cases, there is an assumption that The Expert Knows Best. It might be the researcher or the professional, or even the technician. He has the training, and he can spout scientific technicalities that leave the layperson totally bemused. In the ideal model of the process, the expert person starts with the science, and then deduces what should be done in practice. This model assumes that the world of practice is sufficiently like the world of science, so that the deduction is accurate. For 'applied science', it works routinely; for 'professional consultancy', it needs some skill and judgement in interpretation. In those traditional cases, those without expert training would seem to have little to contribute to the process of inquiry or decision.

When we come to the situations where Post-Normal Science is appropriate, where uncertainties and value-loadings cannot be denied, that old model of scientific deduction is inappropriate. Instead we need dialogue. In this, everyone has something to learn from everyone else. Of course the experts will have a special command of technical issues. But others can know better how well, or how badly, the scientific categories fit in with the reality that they experience. Many policy debates hinge on 'safe limits'. It doesn't need a Ph.D. to be able to ask intelligent questions about safety tests, and whether they are truly realistic in relation to practice. Thus, we need to know whether the sample populations included (for example) children and pregnant women, or animals that breathe air close to the soil. We need to know whether the specifications for safe use are likely to be respected in real industrial or agricultural situations (in Third World locations, it is prudent to assume they are not). Epidemiological data can be subject to errors and omissions in their collection, and distortion and bias in the definition of their categories. Local people can spot such flaws more effectively than experts from a faraway centre. All such issues can be put by people who have independence and common-sense. They can also query whether lab tests, even if performed quite properly by 'applied science' turn out to be irrelevant or misleading if applied uncritically in a Post-Normal situation.

Instead of an 'objectivity' that requires a denial of uncertainty and of value-commitments, we should cultivate 'integrity'. For our dialogue on policy issues, we just need participants to engage in a 'negotiation in good faith', each advancing their case on the basis of their own perspectives and commitments, but respecting the integrity of those with whom they disagree. Those with a less expert but broader perspective can ask the sorts of questions that never occur to those who are scientifically trained. For the experts work and think inside a paradigm of scientific problems that can be tidily solved, Policy issues are inherently messy, complex and unpredictable are outside their training. The question, "What about ...?" can inject something totally new into the dialogue. It amounts to reminding us all of Murphy's Law, something that is totally absent from scientific training, but totally necessary for survival in the real world.

Appreciating the vital role of those others in the dialogue, we call them the Extended Peer Community. For they are full participants in the process, learning and also teaching. And they bring with them what we might call 'Extended Facts'. For scientists will necessarily and justifiably focus on the information that is certified by their quality-assurance programmes. This is usually publication in refereed journals; but it can also include data produced in-house by respected research agencies. All this is produced under the standardised, idealised conditions that are necessary for successful research. But the Extended Peer Community has other sources. In policy issues, investigative journalism is a key resource, as are documents that were not originally intended for public view. In addition, there is local knowledge, including the place, its inhabitants of all sorts and species, and its history, traditions and special values. All these 'extended facts' are vital to the policy processes. They are excluded from the perspective of the 'normal' experts and professionals; it is the post-normal extended peer community that introduces them as valid contributions to the debate.

As we consider the essential role of the extended peer community, our vision of post-normal science reminds us of a great variety of endeavours to adapt science to the needs of a modern democratic society. People have spoken of 'critical science', 'citizens' science', 'civic science', 'community research', 'action research' and 'open science', as well as 'environmental', 'ecological' and 'sustainability' science. Each title has its own flavour, and its own authentic perspective on the whole problem. We offer 'post-normal' as one in that family. For us, it expresses two key insights. First, that these times are far from 'normal'. Second, that 'normal', puzzle-solving science is now totally inadequate as a method and a perspective, for the great policy issues of our time. Uncertainty now rules political as well as environmental affairs. And the value-commitments of people, reflected in their lifestyle choices, will determine whether the human race makes it through to sustainability, or not.

Finally, by focusing on the science itself rather than on the political processes, our insight brings reassurance and legitimacy to two important sorts of participants. The scientists themselves can be liberated from the confusion and self-doubt resulting from their discovery that some scientific problems cannot be solved by 'normal' methods. The failure to produce conclusive information about pollution or climate change is not the fault of the science or the scientists themselves. It is because we live in a new age where science is necessary but not sufficient. And for the extended peer community, they are no longer relegated to second-class status, and their special knowledge is no longer dismissed as inferior or bogus. They are full partners in the dialogue, who have much to teach as well as to learn. Both sides benefit from the dispelling of the illusion of scientific objectivity. That is the way forward, as expressed in the title 'post-normal'.

Extended Peer Communities have a vital role in exposing issues that the official establishments do not, or choose not to, notice. A famous case in point is the addictive properties of the diazapam tranquillisers. On their introduction in 1963, they were hailed as the new 'magic bullets', of the sort that our superstitious pharmacological culture seems to crave. There were plenty of voices of caution and concern about addiction and long-term effects, but they were ignored by prescribers and by regulators alike. Then in 1979 a popular British consumers' TV programme, Esther Rantzen's That's Life, told the story of mass addiction, long-term and incurable, to the drugs. She did not need to understand the biochemistry of the drug. It was enough for her to pay attention to, and then verify, the reports that she was receiving from desperate victims. The scandal broke, sales declined immediately, and some nine years later the official U.K. Committee on Safety of Medicines issued guidelines for safe use of the drug.

Posted by Jerry Ravetz at 7:03 PM | TrackBack

February 19, 2007

Great expectations

by Sylvia S Tognetti

In this previous post, with some conditions, I offered AEI a deal - to write a review regarding the utility or not of numerical mega-models for purposes of informing policy, for just $5,000 - which is half of what they offered to more preeminent scientists. So far they haven't asked but I'm taking it back. I just found an NYT book review of Useless Arithmetic: Why Scientists Can't Predict the Future, by Orrin H. Pilkey and Linda Pilkey-Jarvis, which seems to say it all - and which they can read for just $29.50). An excerpt from the actual book can be found here. The problem is not so much with the models as with lack of transparency, how they are used, a failure to understand their limitations - evident in expectations of quantitative predictions accurate enough to be used for engineering purposes. An expectation which was implicit in the letters AEI sent out to solicit critiques of climate models. As the Pilkey and Pilkey-Jarvis explain in the book excerpt:

The problem is not the math itself, but the blind acceptance and even idolatry we have applied to the quantitative models. These predictive models leave citizens befuddled and unable to defend or criticize model-based decisions. We argue that we should accept the fact that we live in a qualitative world when it comes to natural processes. We must rely on qualitative models that predict only direction, trends, or magnitudes of natural phenomena, and accept the possibility of being imprecise or wrong to some degree. We should demand that when models are used, the assumptions and model simplifications are clearly stated. A better method in many cases will be adaptive management, where a flexible approach is used, where we admit there are uncertainties down the road and we watch and adapt as nature rolls on.

Addendum: When I put this up, I thought about also digging up links to some of Roger Pielke's pronouncements on the subject but he has done one better - he also posts excerpts from the above mentioned book and adds mention of another book that he co-edited with Daniel Sarewitz and Redford Byerly Jr: Prediction: Science, Decision Making and the Future of Nature, - This one costs $40 but is still a bargain compared to what AEI was prepared to pay, and has a collection of papers from a number of eminent scholars, all of which appear to provide the kind of guidance AEI is in need of.

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 11:03 PM | TrackBack

January 29, 2007

Food vs nutrients

by Sylvia S Tognetti

Sometime in the 1980s, upon arrival in Italy after an absence of probably over 10 years, I was greeted at the airport with the question of what brought me back and "why now?" I mumbled something about being hungry and about not being able to find any food in the United States. I was half joking of course. But now, Michael Pollan explains it in this lengthy New York Times article:

It was in the 1980s that food began disappearing from the American supermarket, gradually to be replaced by “nutrients,” which are not the same thing.

Although mostly about food and flaws in nutrition science, the arguments made in the article are extended to the environment, connecting the health of humans to that of ecosystems, and could also be made about environmental science or about the limits to any kind of compartmentalized, reductionist and/or decontextualized approach to science. It is also a good illustration of why we will never have and cannot wait for complete information or definitive answers when dealing with any kind of a complex problem. A few more excerpts but, read the whole thing:

The first thing to understand about nutritionism — I first encountered the term in the work of an Australian sociologist of science named Gyorgy Scrinis — is that it is not quite the same as nutrition. As the “ism” suggests, it is not a scientific subject but an ideology. Ideologies are ways of organizing large swaths of life and experience under a set of shared but unexamined assumptions. This quality makes an ideology particularly hard to see, at least while it’s exerting its hold on your culture. A reigning ideology is a little like the weather, all pervasive and virtually inescapable. Still, we can try.

In the case of nutritionism, the widely shared but unexamined assumption is that the key to understanding food is indeed the nutrient. From this basic premise flow several others. Since nutrients, as compared with foods, are invisible and therefore slightly mysterious, it falls to the scientists (and to the journalists through whom the scientists speak) to explain the hidden reality of foods to us. To enter a world in which you dine on unseen
nutrients, you need lots of expert help...

...But if nutritionism leads to a kind of false consciousness in the mind of the eater, the ideology can just as easily mislead the scientist.

Most nutritional science involves studying one nutrient at a time, an approach that even nutritionists who do it will tell you is deeply flawed. “The problem with nutrient-by-nutrient nutrition science,” points out Marion Nestle, the New York University nutritionist,
“is that it takes the nutrient out of the context of food, the food out of the context of diet and the diet out of the context of lifestyle.”

If nutritional scientists know this, why do they do it anyway? Because a nutrient bias is built into the way science is done: scientists need individual variables they can isolate. Yet even the simplest food is a hopelessly complex thing to study, a virtual wilderness of chemical compounds, many of which exist in complex and dynamic relation to one another, and all of which together are in the process of changing from one state to another. So if you’re a nutritional scientist, you do the only thing you can do, given the tools at your disposal: break the thing down into its component parts and study those one by one, even if that means ignoring complex interactions and contexts, as well as the fact that the whole may be more than, or just different from, the sum of its parts. This is what we mean by reductionist science.

Scientific reductionism is an undeniably powerful tool, but it can mislead us too, especially when applied to something as complex as, on the one side, a food, and on the other, a human eater. It encourages us to take a mechanistic view of that transaction: put in this nutrient; get out that physiological result. Yet people differ in important ways... There is nothing
very machinelike about the human eater, and so to think of food as simply fuel is wrong...

No one likes to admit that his or her best efforts at understanding and solving a problem have actually made the problem worse, but that’s exactly what has happened in the case of nutritionism. Scientists operating with the best of intentions, using the best tools at their disposal, have taught us to look at food in a way that has diminished our pleasure in eating it while doing little or nothing to improve our health. Perhaps what we need now is a broader, less reductive view of what food is, one that is at once more ecological and cultural. What would happen, for example, if we were to start thinking about food as less of a thing and more of a relationship?

In nature, that is of course precisely what eating has always been: relationships among species in what we call food chains, or webs, that reach all the way down to the soil. Species co-evolve with the other species they eat, and very often a relationship of interdependence develops: I’ll feed you if you spread around my genes. A gradual process of mutual adaptation transforms something like an apple or a squash into a nutritious and tasty food for a hungry animal. Over time and through trial and error, the plant becomes tastier (and often more conspicuous) in order to gratify the animal’s needs and desires, while the animal gradually acquires whatever digestive tools (enzymes, etc.) are needed to make optimal use of the plant. Similarly, cow’s milk did not start out as a nutritious food for humans; in fact, it made them sick until humans who lived around cows evolved the ability to digest lactose as adults. This development proved much to the advantage of both the milk drinkers and the cows...

The last important change wrought by the Western diet is not, strictly speaking, ecological. But the industrialization of our food that we call the Western diet is systematically destroying traditional food cultures. Before the modern food era — and before nutritionism — people relied for guidance about what to eat on their national or ethnic or regional cultures. We think
of culture as a set of beliefs and practices to help mediate our relationship to other people, but of course culture (at least before the rise of science) has also played a critical role in helping mediate people’s relationship to nature. Eating being a big part of that relationship, cultures have had a great deal to say about what and how and why and when and how much we should eat. ...

...The sheer novelty and glamour of the Western diet, with its 17,000 new food products introduced every year, and the marketing muscle used to sell these products, has overwhelmed the force of tradition and left us where we now find ourselves: relying on science and journalism and marketing to help us decide questions about what to eat. Nutritionism, which arose to help us better deal with the problems of the Western diet, has largely been co-opted
by it, used by the industry to sell more food and to undermine the authority of traditional ways of eating.

...It might be argued that, at this point in history, we should simply accept that fast food is our food culture. Over time, people will get used to eating this way and our health will improve. But for natural selection to help populations adapt to the Western diet, we’d have to be prepared to let those whom it sickens die. That’s not what we’re doing. Rather, we’re turning to the health-care industry to help us “adapt.” Medicine is learning how to keep alive the people whom the Western diet is making sick. It’s gotten good at extending the lives of people with heart disease, and now it’s working on obesity and diabetes. Capitalism is itself marvelously adaptive, able to turn the problems it creates into lucrative business opportunities: diet pills, heart-bypass operations, insulin pumps, bariatric surgery. But while fast food may be good business for the health-care industry, surely the cost to society — estimated at more than $200 billion a year in diet-related health-care costs — is unsustainable.

Among the concluding recommendations:

Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food, and

Eat like an omnivore. Try to add new species, not just new foods, to your diet. The greater the diversity of species you eat, the more likely you are to cover all your nutritional bases. That of course is an argument from nutritionism, but there is a better one, one that takes a broader view of “health.” Biodiversity in the diet means less monoculture in the fields. What does that have to do with your health? Everything. The vast monocultures that now feed us require tremendous amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to keep from collapsing. Diversifying those fields will mean fewer chemicals, healthier soils, healthier plants and animals and, in turn, healthier people. It’s all connected, which is another way of saying that your health isn’t bordered by your body and that what’s good for the soil is probably good for you, too.

In other words, it can be rational to be against GMOs no matter what Scimon or Science Says. As I discussed in an earlier post, if looking only at nutritional characteristics of food, it is possible that soylent green could be engineered to be functionally equivalent to it and keep a person alive. But it would be missing many other important functions without which life might similarly be reduced - to a chore. Among those is what I call The Puccini Factor, which refers to unique qualities of a place that would be lost forever, and of things that come from such a place, that you will never find in Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), and that science will probably never be able to quantify. The term was inspired by a vegetable vendor at farmers market in Pisa. As he held up a head of lettuce, he said it came from Torre del Lago and insisted that, if you eat this lettuce you will hear Puccini.

As Mario Giampietro explained, You can't make gnocchi without the yellow sticky potatoes that come only from Avezzano in the Abruzzo. If you try to make gnocchi with Idaho potatoes it will be a disaster! If you want to find out what kind of peaches are best for soaking in wine you will have to learn Italian and go ask a Roman - some things are better left not only in their own language but also in their cultural context. But according to Mario, these peaches only grow at Castel Gandolfo, the summer residence of the pope. There is no functional equivalent.

In science for policy, this tendency to reduce complex problems to a scientific framework that leaves out much of what people care about is the source of many of the negative public reactions towards science and experts. This is not to in any way diminish the value of science - only to make a plea for an approach that puts it into context, and for a recognition of the value judgments inherent in the framing of technical arguments. I'm not even necessarily opposed to all GMOs. I just regard it as a problem of governance rather than of science.

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 11:00 PM | TrackBack

November 23, 2006

The answer is forty-two but what was the question?

by Sylvia S Tognetti

Benny Peiser isn't the only person who continues to believe his conclusions even after the "research" supporting them has been thoroughly discredited, and after finally conceding that there were indeed errors in how he reached those conclusions. Now I'll concede that, prior to the election, with climate denialists in control of key congressional committees and being given airtime disproportionate to the merits of their arguments, I gave higher priority to commenting on bad arguments for bad causes than to bad arguments for good causes. Roger Pielke has commented extensively on the latter and this paper by Steve Rayner that he links to is absolutely worth reading. I don't have anything more to add to what I have already said on climate change and hurricanes.

Now I want to draw attention to some of the nonsense that has been circulating about the value of ecosystem services, and a paper that just won't die, no matter how thoroughly discredited. I really hate to give it yet another citation but that paper would be the infamous one by Costanza et al (1997) on The value of the world's ecosystem services and natural capital, that was a cover story in Nature, and that tallied up the value of ecosystem services to an average of $33 trillion. If you don't know why this is impossible as well as meaningless for purposes of decision-making, see the Environmental Economics and the Ecological Economics blogs, which both agree on this point (here, here, and here). And the full paper by Nancy Bockstael et al, which can be found here (in prepublication form). The main argument being that this is in excess of ability to pay, since total GNP that year was estimated at $18 trillion. As they point out:

While no doubt well intentioned, this estimate is, on one level, absurd; it suggests that the peoples of the world would be willing to sacrifice more than global gross national product (GNP) for these services. If interpreted literally, it suggests that a family earning $30,000 annually would pay $40,000 each year for ecosystem protection.

I could add more arguments to this but the point is that it still gets cited by those who don't know any better, or who think it is useful to waive big numbers around just to bring attention to how important ecosystem services are. And the lead author, who generally claims it is just a starting point, continues to get funding to build on this baseless approach to valuation. What those
who cite it fail to understand is that values reflect trade-offs people are willing to make among choices that they actually have. Or as Al Gore illustrated in An Inconvenient Truth, without the earth, you can't choose the gold ingots.

And yes, it is very unfortunate that, as Dave Iverson points out, those in the field of ecological economics are often dismissed as guilty by association when there are many different perspectives and approaches within that field. Full disclosure: I started graduate school in that field, and the lead author of that infamous paper was my first advisor but I switched programs after a number of irreconcileable differences that had nothing to do with that paper, that I also had nothing to do with. I give Costanza credit for creating that big tent, which allowed for some collaboration across fields that might not have otherwise occurred. But I'm much happier calling myself a geographer and note that, Gilbert White began to question deterministic approaches to economics and cost benefit analysis in 1945, in his work on human adjustment to floods, which was regarded as a major break from the deterministic school of thought often found in economics. It also addresses a major lacuna in science as well as in economics, i.e., context.

Addendum: and sometimes it takes a flood, or some other form of "learning opportunity" for people to consider or reconsider what their values are - i.e., what trade-offs they are willing to make, particularly for those things not normally traded in markets, like, say, maintaining a cherished way of life, or say, having to choose between soylent blue and Soylent Green. In the movie Soylent Green, even that was no longer a choice... For now, we have more choices than that but, 2022 isn't that far away.

(edited 9-25-06)

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 2:37 PM | TrackBack

October 26, 2006

The value of communication in science

by Sylvia S Tognetti

Last Thursday on The Colbert Report, Peter Agre - winner of a Nobel in Chemistry in 2003 - offered to trade his Nobel medal - for two weeks, in exchange for two weeks of the show, so as to further the mission of Scientists and Engineers for America (SEA) - which is essentially to provide a platform for scientists to communicate with the public about the value of science, and thereby support the election of "public officials who respect evidence and understand the importance of using scientific and engineering advice in making public policy" (video link pt 1 and pt 2). To no avail. Stephen said "Forget it." He had originally offered to trade a Peabody award, an Emmy, a Times Most Influential People of the Year award, and a few other awards I have never heard of - that were of no interest to Agre.

Although it is significant and refreshing to see scientists begin to come to terms with the need to communicate with the rest of the public, it made me wonder what scientists would say if they did have the Colbert Report for two weeks, and whether it would make any difference. Though Peter Agre was articulate, frankly, I think Stephen is much better than most scientists at conveying the value of science for the common good. If you have any doubt about this, watch this video clip of The Word from a couple of weeks ago, when SEA was first launched. (And Stephen, should he happen to read this, has an open invitation to membership on the Post-Normal Times Advisory Board.)

The launch of SEA, was also covered by The New York Times, and sparked commentary in the Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal, and in several of the science blogs about whether it could in fact be non-partisan, as it claims to absolutely be. Kevin Vranes correctly notes the paradox and suggests that demonstrating this non-partisanship will be their greatest challenge. However, supporting both Republican and Democratic candidates, as he suggests in a follow-up comment, would not solve anything.

This is an issue that goes to the core of the problem of using science to justify and support policy decisions, which are typically, uh, partisan. Non-partisanship might be possible when there are generally shared values that the purpose of science and any other form of knowledge is to further a particular vision of human well-being, and about what the problem is that science is specifically being asked to address. Disagreements would then be limited to technical matters regarding the most efficient way to do so - and a normal approach to science would suffice. But problems are rarely simple and straightforward enough to do that. At 3 Quarks Daily, Alon Levy posted a good discussion of Thomas Kuhn, who, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions defined normal science as as working within a particular paradigm or theoretical framework which then guides the selection of relevant facts while obscuring others - which makes it impossible to make decisions based only on evidence.

When science enters the policy arena, it is to justify particular policies or to clarify choices and trade-offs in relation to various goals and images of the good life that are often in conflict with one another and that have uncertain consequences. In an ideal world, where everybody plays by the same rules, these value conflicts would be clarified if not already obvious. But it is easier to create doubt about science with sciencey arguments about obscure technicalities than to argue that public safety and health is not a government responsibility - and also get elected. And in these Post-Normal Times, it has become partisan to believe that government should even have a role in supporting the common good, or to defend the constitution, or to believe that there should even be a government at all - and that all votes should be counted. (psst - in case you haven't noticed, in the US, a bill was just signed into law that eliminates the writ of Habeas Corpus - obscure legal text that once provided safeguards against arbitrary imprisonment and insured a right to a trial by jury - without which all other rights established in the United States Constitution are hypothetical, as is the need for public policies to be justified with any kind of evidence or rational argument. Lest I digress, for more on that subject see videos of commentary by Keith Olbermann - The beginning of the end of America and The death of Habeas Corpus). Overlooked in claims of non-partisanship is that science can be, and is being and has historically been used as both an instrument of destruction as well as of salvation - a point discussed at length in a new book by Jerry Ravetz, The No-Nonsense Guide to Science (more on that later).

The claim of non-partisanship is also a nice ploy for "the scientific community [to put] themselves above the common man" - as Stephen Colbert put it - and to stay above the fray of politics which has become a dirty word that no one wants to be associated with. Least of all politicians, who often get elected by "running against Washington" or by making a campaign issue out of not being professional politicians. Just this evening, in a debate among candidates for the US Senate, Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele accused Representative Ben Cardin of being "good at policy," as if that were a bad thing for a legislator. Then, to stay above it all, controversial decisions have often been justified by appealing to the authority of either religion or science, but these days, more to religion as scientific findings are increasingly at odds with indefensible policies of the current leadership. Conversely, conflicts of all sorts, including scientific, are sometimes dismissed as "mere politics" thus sidestepping the need to actually respond to well-founded criticism. But this just reinforces the fantasy that scientists and decision-makers are somehow outside the system that they tinker with - using policy, economic and technological instruments, rather than part of it, with the same basic needs as everyone else.

The stated vision of SEA is of "a future where wise science and technology policy can help every American live in a safe and clean environment, enjoy quality health and education, and benefit from a strong system of national defense." So they get kudos for clarifying the values they support. However, achieving this noble objective is not just about framing the message of science but has implications for the practice of science itself, and the framing of relevant research questions. This is more obvious in the field of public health, whose practitioners might be looked to as role models by environmental and other scientists who have come out of a more elitist scientific culture that has been less comfortable in the policy arena. In fact, the key example that Agre used to make a case for the value of science was Jonas Salk, who developed the polio vaccine. Doctors and others in the field of public health have a code of ethics that requires them to engage in advocating policies necessary to promote public health and the best interests of their patients - and also inspired me early in my own career.

The formation of SEA and other initiatives like the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), for which the objective was to demonstrate links between ecosystems and human well-being, suggests this elitist tradition in science might just be changing. But what became apparent in the massive undertaking that was the MA was that these benefits are difficult to quantify with existing data - this is because much of existing research was not driven by these kinds of questions, and is difficult to put into the context of real places other than those actually studied. So to date, the MA has had more influence on research directions and priorities than on actual policy. In the policy arena, and in a post-normal approach to science, criteria for "good science" include relevance to context, rather than just technical soundness. Scientific knowledge that is irrelevant or that cannot be communicated to those who have a need for it could be defined as an autistic approach to science that underlies common madness. (More on autistic v post-normal science here.)

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 12:58 AM | TrackBack

October 12, 2006

Colbert explains how he makes a decision

by Sylvia S Tognetti

Last night, when Stephen Colbert explained to George Lucas (video link) why his entry in the Green Screen Challenge (video link) came in second after that of Bonnie R. - the winner - he illustrated one of the major blind spots in the use of science to support policy decisions. He carefully explained that there were 58 different decision criteria, which included: how heroic the video made him look, originality, and poise. But even after giving Lucas an extra point for showing up in person, and in spite of how he "really really nailed the look of those [star wars] movies," Lucas came in second. I would have given Stephen a few kudos for making at least some of those criteria explicit but then he blew it when he told George "I would have given it to you but those were the scores - it's out of my hands." In other words, he refused to take any responsibility for the decision that he made.

Updated 10-17-06 to correct typos.

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 7:30 PM | TrackBack

June 18, 2006

Katoomba!

by Sylvia S Tognetti

Last week, while most of the blogosphere seems to have convened in Vegas, at the Yearly Kos conference, I was riding street cars in the beautiful city of Portland Oregon, which was gearing up for the annual Rose Festival - I'm not sure what "Jake the crab" has to do with it (pictured above) but he caught my eye. The streetcars took me back and forth between my hotel and the location of a conference of the Katoomba group, which I also helped to cover for the conference newsletter provided by the Ecosystem Marketplace. Now I'm going to take advantage of my blog to editorialize, and elaborate on a comment I made in one of the sessions.

First a bit of background. The Katoomba group is a gathering of people from different organizations (government, non-government, private, and inter-organizational (i.e., consultants like myself) who share an ambitious goal, of "making the priceless valuable" or, in other words, transforming the economy to one that recognizes the value of ecosystem services by actually covering their costs - for which markets are an important tool. The idea being that if farmers implement management practices that have a higher cost but result not only in food but also in clean water, biodiversity, higher carbon storage, and aesthetic values, they should be compensated also for the "service" of providing these other equally important even is less immediate necessities of life - or stewardship of the ecosystems that provide them. perhaps it would be more constructive to find a term that conveys the idea that what is being bought and sold is not the ecosystem or the water itself, but the management practices of landowners who might otherwise find it more profitable to allow land to become degraded and invest the short-term proceeds elsewhere. After all, the payments are not made to trees but to people, in exchange for adhering to an agreement. Then there is the question of who pays and what they get for it.

The concept of markets for ecosystem services is a powerful one, but carries a lot of baggage because markets, at least as we know them, often place the poor and less well off at a disadvantage. They also fail to provide any advance warning when ecosystems are degraded. In other words, contrary to the tenets of market fundamentalism, markets and private property rights do not automatically resolve tragedies of the commons but can instead create other problems, sometimes dubbed the "tragedy of enclosures." So, along with initiatives to develop such markets, a hot topic of research and debate is whether and how the playing field can be leveled and be structured to benefit the poor and those more dependent on natural resources, as well as create economic incentives for conservation and stewardship. Then there is the question of whether it is really a market when the funds used to pay farmers come from the public purse at prices established by the government - as is the case in many though not all of these kinds of payment initiatives. In a time of shrinking public budgets, the ideal is also to bring in other than public sources of funds to support an approach to conservation that goes beyond isolated parks and protected areas. There are all kinds of obstacles to putting this idea into practice and markets may be just as expensive as regulation if one could actually tally up all of the transaction costs associated with them that range from having a system of formally recognized property rights to getting the scientific information needed to demonstrate links between causes and effects of ecosystem degradation, and between ecosystem conditions and human well-being. Since the price of a loaf of bread does not include the cost of law enforcement, without which the bread probably would not be produced for sale, perhaps this is a double standard. However, in spite of the baggage, the language of markets also has a broad appeal, and seems to have value as at least as a metaphor, as we develop and agree on the rules of a new game that will be necessary to maintain systems of life support that can no longer be taken for granted.

I suspect that the problem is not so much with markets as it is with an economic system that is based on principles reminiscent of an outdated concept of Social Darwinism that fails to recognize that natural selection acts on populations rather than on individuals. This has little to do with how scientists currently understand evolution, but seems to have retained a hold on popular beliefs and ways of thinking. Not having had a course in biology or genetics since undergraduate days (a long time ago) I would particularly welcome comments from any biologist who would can take the time to put the following into the context of current understanding of evolution but, with that caveat - a bit more background.

Gregory Bateson - an anthropologist by training, who certainly believed in the theory of evolution (his father was the founder of genetics), saw this particular way of thinking about evolution as an error of logic that has contributed to the present environmental predicament and to disastrous social dogmas because of the profound influence it has had on how the modern world is organized. The error of logic was to regard the "survival of the fittest" as a struggle among individuals instead of as a process of selection that acts on populations, in which diversity among individuals is necessary for populations to adapt to changing conditions. An important difference between individuals and classes or groups is that classes are defined by convergent characteristics for which there is some degree of statistical probability. Individuals instead have divergent characteristics and cannot be expected to behave according to aggregate characteristics, as is assumed in any kind of deterministic approach to analysis of human behavior. So Bateson also saw a similar but opposite error in the ideas of Marx, in which events were seen as unfolding in a predictable sequence as a result of class structures, regardless of which individual is credited with starting the trend. Consistent with this idea, he also held that evolutionary theory might be very different today had Wallace rather than Darwin been the primary influence, because Wallace saw evolution in cybernetic terms, as a self-correcting system. Instead, in the prevailing image, evolution is characterized as a linear process, a force of progress, and a cause of material change, that fails to account for ecosystem organization or to recognize interdependent relationships between organisms and their environment, and that has supported delusional aspirations of overcoming the limitations of nature. Bateson had a cybernetic view of evolution, as the outcome of a process of learning that reflects "the wider knowing that holds together the starfishes and sea anemones and redwood forests and human communities" in a great "pattern that connects" that also underlies aesthetic sensibilities.

What this digression has to do with ecosystem services is, that protection of ecosystems is a problem of collective action in that good management practices are not effective unless they are carried out on a large enough scale to have a significant impact on the downstream outcome. In other words, provision of clean water requires collaboration among those in an upper watershed area, or what might, from the perspective of a market fundamentalist, be regarded as collusion. In the case of New York City, the alternative would have been an expensive treatment plant. New York City was able to avoid this expense by funding better management practices upstream. but this did not happen automatically. After several lengthy meetings that enabled all of the interested parties to better understand each other's predicaments, Al Appleton, as the former commissioner for the NYC department of the environment, negotiated an agreement with the farmers in which they were given the choice of being regulated or of meeting water quality goals on their own, but with financial support. They chose the latter and more than achieved water quality objectives. But to do it, they had to get the collaboration of all or most farmers - which they also did. Similarly, you can't protect a bird migration route unless all of the sites along the route are protected. And similarly, unless there is a cap on total consumption of, say, gasoline, any amount by which one personally reduces their consumption will just go into the hummer parked across the street.

As in any other market, whether or not anyone is willing to foot the bill, will depend on confidence, not only of receiving benefits, but that everyone is playing by rules that have been agreed upon and accepted as fair.
Given the lag time between implementing new upstream land management practices and seeing their downstream results, which can be highly variable and difficult to measure, agreement on the rules will probably be more important than actual outcomes - at least initially, for getting everybody to actually play the game. It is by playing the game that people can also learn about and reconsider the value they place on services that have been taken for granted, and what trade-offs they are willing to make to keep them coming. Practices themselves can always be modified if it is learned that they don't work. In other words, willingness-to-play comes before willingness-to pay. Or, as Al Appleton put it, in another meeting I also attended, "pay your money take your chances." He also described the bulletin I write as "iconoclastic.... but factual, and without being obnoxious." But what I have written here doesn't even fit into the bulletin....

I'm getting ready for another longer and more distant trip so stay tuned for reports from my alter ego, Sylvia Poggioli which isn't my name but I have been called that too... Like Sylvia Poggioli, I can say my last name without an American accent, just as I can speak English without an Italian one. For those of you from outside the United States, Sylvia Poggioli is a Rome based foreign correspondent for National Public Radio. Another 2nd generation Italian American who, like me, according to her bio, went to school in Italy but, unlike me, she then stayed there. Now that the American dream has become a Tuscan villa, she has some kind of cult status. I still like the rants of Oriana Fallaci profiled in the New Yorker - even if she has become senile, semi-coherent and politically incorrect - and believes that smoking "disinfects" her (hat tip to James Wolcott who has a few more comments on her). That doesn't mean I agree with her.

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 11:35 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 22, 2006

Windows

by Sylvia S Tognetti

In rocket science, at least there is a right answer. You either reach the target or you don't. Apparently, the Bush administration can't even get that right. In science for policy, disagreements about science are often a disguise for disagreements about what the target should be in the first place, which brings us back to the subject of framing. (For some basics about the concept, Revere at Effect Measure wrote an excellent series of posts that summarize and comment on the ideas of George Lakoff - or you can directly visit the website of the Rockridge Institute that he founded.)

A post by Josh Trevino at Swords Crossed, that has sparked discussion in the blogosphere, and that was brought to my attention by Coturnix, describes the Overton Window, and how it is very systematically and deliberately used by right-wing think tanks to introduce unthinkable and radical ideas into the public discourse, which makes them begin to sound acceptable and sensible, while moving those already so normalized to becoming popular and finally, actual policy. The shift can occur by accident or by design - to which I would add, that strategies can also be designed to take advantage of accidents or crises, like using 9/11 for example, as a pretext for invading Iraq. This isn't really a new idea - just a formal presentation of the rules of a game that has been played by both sides. Whatever you think of Greenpeace, they have always played an important role in making the more mainstream environmentalists sound reasonable, and they probably deserve much more credit for muckraking than they normally get, given a tendency by the news media and others to only cite authoritative sources.

Another point I would add is that this process also works the other way, to make currently mainstream ideas sound radical and unacceptable, e.g., equating Democrats with socialism or adopting what John Conyers calls "the strawman strategy of identifying a parade of horrors to come if Democrats gain the majority," in which the Republicans project, for example, what it would be like if he actually became chairman of the Judiciary Committee. In this op-ed, Conyers speaks for himself about what he would do. Lets hear it for oversight hearings - which should be cause enough for all reasonable people of either party to band together.

A few weeks ago I heard some pundits from a right-wing think tank on CSPAN radio who conceded that the Bush administration has been a failure but then, without missing a beat, went on to bemoan that the Democratic party could not be trusted with power and with national security, because they had been taken over by the radical elements of it, i.e., Howard Dean. That anyone could believe that, after knowing how Bush reacted when informed about the 9/11 attacks - by continuing to read My Pet Goat, and how he responded to Katrina - by playing guitar, suggests something is seriously lacking in our educational system. But make no mistake - the failure is not just of the Bush administration. The prospect of "peak oil" would not have us facing as dire of an energy crisis had Reagan not slashed budgets for research on alternative energy sources that were initiated by the Carter administration after the energy crisis of the 1970s, and which forced many smart people to change careers. Most Republicans are probably not science-bashing fundamentalists, but the alliance serves them well. And some even care about the environment, but so far, not enough to take a stand and risk a hold on power made possible by shady alliances.

The Trevino post has sparked discussion in the blogosphere about the fallacy of the democratic strategy of playing to the middle for fear that they will alienate the middle if they play to their base... as Republicans, meanwhile, play to their base and shift the definition of the middle - thereby moving it to the right. In other words, according to thereisnospoon, "You win policy debates by crafting arguments for extreme positions--and then shifting the entire window of debate. You do not win by trying to figure out which position is most popular among Americans right now."

However, an important point made by Trevino in a follow-up comment posted on Daily Kos is that this is a role played by the right-wing think-tanks rather than by the Republican party itself. What I think is often forgotten when blaming the Democratic Party for playing to the middle is the difference between the roles played by advocates and politicians. I'm not convinced that candidates for office can both frame the debate and get elected, although once elected, they can make good use of the bully pulpit. Which is what Gore is doing, now that he is not planning to run for office, and is not obligated to somebody else's agenda, which might just make him the best candidate ever. Even if he isn't ultimately persuaded to run, he could continue to play a critical role in shaping public discourse, and make it safe for those who are candidates to take a stand on controversial issues. Though I still think he would make the best president ever, and, given that we are at a turning point, is exactly who we really need in office - more on that later. Apart from Gore, shaping public discourse and framing debate is an important role played by advocates and real journalists, and now the blogosphere, where we can find the voices of individuals who, like Gore, are unencumbered by the positions of the organizations they work for.

What concerns me even more is the use of familiar frames and nice-sounding concepts, like sound science, data quality, CO2 is life or intelligent design to manipulate and deceive. (For more commentary on the CO2 is life ads put out by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, see posts by the usual suspects: RealClimate, Tim Lambert, Chris Mooney.)

This can make it difficult or impossible to talk about some important ideas that fit almost too well into a grossly distorted and misleading narrative. For example, any talk about uncertainties in climate science inevitably gets distorted by the likes of Benny Peiser who doesn't pretends not to know the difference between uncertainty of the magnitude and significance of climate change, and uncertainty regarding policies to address climate change, and whose debunked study nevertheless continues to be cited by denialists of human-induced global warming. And then we wind up with confused scientists blaming social theory altogether, rather than the misuse of it by those who seek to discredit the science that provides justification for environmental and other policies that protect public safety and health, and that have broad public support. Odd that they don't blame Einstein for the atomic bomb, or Darwin for policies of Social Darwinism. Nor was Machiavelli a Machiavellian. More constructive than attacking social theory would be to provide some transparency to its misuse for purposes of social manipulation. So I'll wrap this up with a quote from Erving Goffman's book on Frame Analysis (1974) where he refers to the work of Gregory Bateson, who began to talk about framing in a paper first presented in 1954:

The very useful paper by Gregory Bateson, "A Theory of Play and Phantasy," in which he directly raised the question of unseriousness and seriousness, allowing us to see what a startling thing experience is, such that a bit of serious activity can be used as a model for putting together unserious versions of the same activity, and that, on occasion, we may not know whether it is play or the real thing that is occurring. (Bateson introduced... also the argument that individuals can intentionally produce framing confusion in those with whom they are dealing...

More to come on the subject of Bateson - last week I had the opportunity to have some long conversations about him with Stephen Nachmanovich, who was once his student, and with several others, at a symposium held in honor of the Bateson Centennial (which was officially in 2004) at Concordia University in Montreal.

Then there is Roberto Benigni who, in the film Down by Law, draws a window on the jailhouse wall, and then, by looking at his predicament in a different way, finds a way to climb out. Then he has to find his way out of a swamp, but that is a different problem.

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 1:37 AM | Comments (4) | 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.

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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....

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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)?

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February 9, 2006

It's the decision-model...

by Sylvia S Tognetti

ok, so George Deutsch is now history, and will from now on be known as "a Brownie" - the difference being that Mike Brown, aka, Fashion God, was more worried about making himself (rather than the president) look good - if Brownie (the 1st) was a woman, his preoccupation with fashion - over response to Katrina, would still be news. Both of these characters are relevant, even if only to focus attention on more important questions - so moving on to those... Kevin Vranes raises another good one - about why it is scientific information doesn't change any minds - or policies. Or in his words:

The real issue here is not that the American public is misinformed or uninformed. The real issue is that the American public is well informed and still doesn't care.

He also throws in some academickese from a paper by Myanna Lahsen (blogged and posted in its entirety here by Pielke Jr.) that is sitting half read on top of my reading pile. I used to write papers like that in graduate school - (the citations are all too familiar) but, outside of academia, that style of writing isn't conducive to employment. Since Kevin was once one of those Congressional Science Fellows that the AAAS sends to Washington every year to get policy experience, he knows exactly what I'm talking about. One of his predecessors once started a bulletin called "I used to be a scientist" - (blogs didn't exist yet). The last I heard he was painting pictures. Others I know are in some science-related agency playing bureaucratic games with the Brownies at OMB... A few, like Kevin, made it back into academia. It would be an interesting survey to find out where the rest of them went.

Inside academia, that kind of writing can also be trouble - my one quibble with Chris Mooney's book The Republican War on Science (which I otherwise like because it coherently brings together in one place information about attacks on science from many different fronts) is the opening quote in the very front, that says that a graduate student can criticize a tenured professor. yeah well, right... ok, ideally yes - we can all criticize Bush too. If my first graduate advisor's desk were made of wood, it would have cracked under my fist, and if there were a law against arbitrary and capricious behavior and abuse of tenure, I would have surely made use of it. Instead, I moved on to another program and exited as a freelance geographer. Truth tends to come out eventually, but... I digress. (If you really want to hear that one you will have to corner me over a beer) The point is, lets not put science on a pedestal and act like those true believers who are trying to do away with it altogether. Scientists, according to Socrates, "are those who know about their ignorance." And power plays a role in science agendas too, particularly when it comes to policy - recommended reading is the Story of Vajont which illustrates the role that negligent experts played in a dam disaster that occurred in Italy in 1963. This post is dedicated to someone who was also a student in that first graduate program with me, who dismissed anthropology, and what people believe, as irrelevant to science. And to another one who didn't think public opinion mattered because the "budget for scientific research comes from the National Science Foundation."

To get back to Kevin's question - here is an excerpt from one of my old papers about information needed for decision-making about land use in the context of uncertainty and global change (which I have not put online because it contains way too much information - the purpose was to fulfill graduation requirements):

...just providing information about risks themselves, is often counterproductive and reduces public participation to a public relations exercise, to convey a decision that has already been made. The implication conveyed, that there is an optimum or correct response to environmental conditions, leaves no space for meaningful participation and debate, and also suppresses social conflicts, which create the need for decisions to be made. According to a study produced by the Public Agenda Foundation with the American Geophysical Union, the public is not skeptical about the existence of problems but about whether we have the ability to solve them. The study also found that it may simply “increase the sense of hopelessness rather than lead to productive debate and dialogue.” Options instead facilitate public debate and dialogue (Immerwahr 1999).

But that does not diminish the importance of good and proper communication of what science can tell us - which should include the reasons for coming to certain conclusions, and the known ranges of uncertainty. Models should really be called plausible scenarios. Some day I'll pull out some of my academickese about substantive vs procedural rationality that explains why "It's the decision model...."

[updated a few times to correct typos]

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January 8, 2006

Management of the Great Lakes, explained

by Sylvia S Tognetti

Something else happened in 2005. Henry A. Regier was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award for important and continued contributions to Great Lakes Research at a conference of the International Association for Great Lakes research. Here is how he explained conflict over management of the Great Lakes:

Two strategies have been used within our Great Lakes Basin's governance institutions in recent decades to cope with adverse interrelationships between humans and the rest of nature. Important features of each strategy can be traced back to different emphases within Darwinism a century ago. T. H. Huxley emphasized the role of agonistic or combative interactions within natural selection while P. Kropotkin emphasized mutualistic or cooperative interactions. Capitalists invoked Huxley's Mutual Harm version for legitimation of their practices while communitarians invoked Kropotkin's Mutual Aid version. Implicitly the more legalistic regulatory strategies that now dominate within governance in our Basin presuppose Mutual Harm dynamics and seek to temper such harm through pre-cast technocratic capabilities. Participatory democratic programs, now sub-dominant, seek to foster Mutual Aid dynamics less formally. Old Rational Management tries to Temper Mutual Harm Technocratically, TMHT. Drama-of-the-Commons Governance tries to Foster Mutual Aid Democratically, FMAD. Currently, the higher the level of governance in which action on some environmental issue is centred, the more likely that TMHT will dominate, and vice versa. This asymmetry creates problems in hybrid cross-level Adaptive Co-Management and vertical inter-agency partnerships.

Scenarios for 2006 anyone? Any idea what category those of an "Intelligent Design" persuasion might fall into?

Comments are welcome here and may also be sent directly to Henry at "hregier at rogers dot com."

Update 1/11/06: the above was posted at the Resilience blog with some links added to more about Henry, the award and about adaptive co-management of ecosystems. To which I want to add: kudos and congratulations! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

More housekeeping: One of these days, I will learn how to add a feed for comments to this blog - as suggested by James Annan, in a comment on the last post. Apparently, some news readers, unlike mine, refresh updated posts.

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 1:11 PM

December 1, 2005

Post-normal hurricane season

by Sylvia S Tognetti

Update 12/2/05, 9 pm: Jeff Masters/Wunderblog has now posted a list of all the hurricane records broken in 2005 hurricane season, which has defied "normal rules" and isn't over yet... Epsilon was upgraded to hurricane status and favorable conditions for tropical storm formation may last into mid-December. So there could be a Zeta.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Since at least 1851, according to Jeff Masters Wunderblog, no tropical storm has come within 500 miles of the Canary Islands, until last Monday, when Delta knocked "God's Finger" into the ocean - a historical landmark and major tourist attraction. And although hurricane season officially ended at midnight (Nov. 30th), Epsilon, which marks the first time on record that 3 tropical storms have formed in November, is expected to linger until tomorrow, December 2nd.

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.

[Addendum: or maybe it is the policy process itself that has a Low Ambiguity Tolerance - see also this post by Kevin Vranes.]

It is, or should by now be, common knowledge that one can't link individual hurricane events to global warming, and that asking whether global warming caused Katrina is the wrong question. But that doesn't mean it isn't a contributing factor, or that there isn't an link between global warming and an increase in the intensity of hurricanes. The record isn't long enough to say anything conclusive about hurricane frequency. There have been plenty of articles and posts on this, but here is one more, by James Risbey, Karl Braganza and Thomas Homer-Dixon that provides a good summary of scientific evidence, from theory, models, and observations, all of which point to a link, and presents the context and nuance that are missing from most news accounts, but that are critical for understanding complex problems and their implications. In case you haven't followed this one, more on this in RealClimate, in this Washington Post article, in this interview with Judith Curry, and in presentations made by Kevin Trenberth, Judith Curry, and Kerry Emanuel at the Environmental Seminar Series of the American Meteorological Association, which I attended but did not blog about at the time because Chris Mooney put up a good summary of it here. But will add that, in informal remarks afterwards, Judith Curry also raised the issue discussed here, that the media always makes scientists look more divided than they are, because they present issues as a polarized debate when the reality is, that climate researchers and hurricane forecasters just have different perspectives and are learning from each other - and could and should do more of that.

Still, it seems like every time a hurricane comes ashore, as we are all reminded of this likely connection, Roger Pielke Jr. is there to remind everyone that there is no evidence that additional hurricane intensity has contributed to the increase in damages, which depend on what lies in the hurricane's path, and that reducing greenhouse gas emissions won't prevent this. Fair enough. But it does not seem like a constructive way to frame the problem. As to whether current scientific understanding of global warming and hurricanes justifies policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it depends... on values. It should also be common knowledge that life is uncertain, that science is no crystal ball, and that waiting for more data also has a cost. What we do know tells us that humans have increased the uncertainty of the climate itself even if we are uncertain by how much or what the impacts will be.

However, it would help if there were more clarity about what the benefits of reducing emissions are, and are not. And to also bring an equal amount of attention to the need for policies aimed at reducing vulnerability, and adapting to more rapid changes and greater variability in climate that are now unavoidable. I have not heard any claims that reducing emissions would significantly reduce the frequency and intensity of hurricanes over the forseeable future. The reason to reduce emissions is to stablilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses at or below a level needed to prevent average global temperatures from rising to a level that would cause more catastrophic impacts, as opposed to just devastating ones. But long-term benefits are never quite as compelling as a hurricane headed for New Orleans, or even the reduction of snowfall, upon which water supplies depend in the western US, and which can be a matter of life an death to reindeer herds in the arctic, which is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and those who depend on them, who are literally on the front lines.

Those who do not have children, or nieces and nephews, or some unreconstructed economist, might say something like "what has posterity done for me?" I'm not really in a philosophical mood this morning, but see this essay by Dmitri Podborits, where he talks about "deferring the recognition of the universe's challenge until the crisis that is currently visible on the horizon becomes detectible through market and monetary mechanisms, signals from which in this particular peculiar civilization apparently take precedence over the other six senses" - the sixth being rational reasoning. I have nothing against economists who recognize the limits of their discipline but find economic anthropology to be more interesting and perhaps even useful for thinking about the long-term. Adopting an impersonal and delayed view of reciprocity, often found in traditional subsistence economies, we might think of leaving something for posterity as a way repay a debt to our ancestors, who developed the wits to survive an ice age. In Post-Normal Times, we will need those wits. When dealing with uncertainty, this broader concept of reciprocity and of value is even rational... I'll elaborate on that when I'm in the mood for a diatribe. In the meantime, policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as reducing sprawl development patterns, and improving public transportation, can have many other environmental and social benefits - even if they don't reduce the frequency and intensity of hurricanes. In New Orleans, improved public transportation would have reduced vulnerability to Katrina.

[edited 12-2 and 12-4]

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 1:36 PM

October 23, 2005

normal and post-normal science

by Sylvia S Tognetti

I had no idea Thomas Kuhn still pushed so many buttons. Whether scientists agree with Kuhn's theory or not, entire careers have been built on challenging paradigms, whether they are outdated or not. When there are value conflicts, as there always are in science for policy, this is even normal. However, for the sake of distinction, we call it post-normal science, a term coined by Silvio Funtowicz and Jerry Ravetz, described in this earlier post by Jerry. Here at the Post-Normal Times, we have nothing against Kuhn or what he referred to as normal science. Sometimes, it even provides information that is sufficient to understand the trade-offs and make an informed decision - assuming there is some sort of consensus about the goal and what the problem is. Kudos to rocket science for the capacity to search for water on Mars. But that won't help to understand variations in the flow and distribution of water here on earth, or to insure that everyone has an adequate supply. If only that were rocket science...

To be continued...

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October 11, 2005

The war on science

by Sylvia S Tognetti

There is an interesting discussion going on at the TPMCafe bookclub about Chris Mooney's book, The Republican War on Science. Noting that attacks on science are coming from two fronts with different interests and motivations, i.e., industries opposed to environmental and public health regulations, and the religious right - who seem to want legislation that restricts anything they disagree with - Matt Yglesias asks whether there are some deeper connections between these two camps. I will have more comments on the book as soon as I finish reading it. But in the meantime, I'm cross-posting my response:

It is important to remember that the official separation of church and state is recent or, in some places non-existent, and that the church has historically been a source of legitimacy and authority for the state. At one time, science was used as a wedge to divide church and state, and then itself was looked to by the state to justify controversial high stakes decisions and suppress conflicts over trade-offs associated with such things as dam building and resource extraction, at the beginning of the industrial revolution. Public officials could then justify their decisions by pointing to expert committees or scientific models, or narrowly defined cost-benefit analysis, or social Darwinist interpretations of evolution - to say "that is just how things are."

What is different with the science of environmental and public health issues is that many scientists have gone off in a different direction and have recognized a responsibility to use science to promote human well-being and to be more responsive to social concerns. So I guess that leaves the state and anyone else looking for certainty looking back to the church. But we also need to ask ourselves where much of the broader hostility towards experts has come from, that probably predisposes many people to believe the so called skeptics.

(This is a subject I have been planning to write a longer post on, so stay tuned.)

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October 8, 2005

Foundations of lunacy

by Sylvia S Tognetti

Lindsay Beyerstein, aka, Majikthise, has an interesting post that provides an introduction to the foundationalism/coherentism debate for non-epistemologists, which I bring up because of relevance to science and policy issues. I am not an epistemologist but, once upon a time, in graduate school, I did take a few theoretical excursions… Somebody correct me if I slide into nonsense.

The foundationalist notion that all of our inferential beliefs are ultimately justified in relation to some foundational beliefs sounds suspiciously consistent and reinforcing of a traditional and popular image of science - that given complete information and powerful enough computers, science can provide certainty and make it possible to control natural systems. Given that this belief has made possible great technological feats, it probably seemed more convincing to more people prior to the emergence of new kinds of complex and intractable problems that have resulted from actions based on just such beliefs. E.g., Katrina, global warming, etc

She also explains:

The biggest challenge for foundationalism is not so much in identifying a few items of certain knowledge, but rather in showing how our everyday knowledge can be derived from these truths. So far, no one has been able to pull it off.

Ok. But what has been pulled off is the appearance of having pulled it off. This is going to sound sort of like Macchiavelli, but, given that people act based on beliefs, does the difference make any difference? A good example is the abuse of science to avoid responsibility for controversial policy decisions, by making it seem like they are simply technical issues that have something to do with some ultimate truth.... (more)

As I once said, in an excerpt from one of those theoretical excursions:

This worldview was also reinforced by the needs of the state, which, now divorced from the church, looked to science to justify and legitimize controversial and inherently political decisions and centralization of authority in the face of the high social and economic conflicts over the large tradeoffs associated with industrialization (e.g., large dam construction and massive resource extraction). This gave rise to a scientific management approach, associated (in the United States) with what environmental historian Samuel Hays refers to as the “gospel of efficiency” of the Progressive era conservation movement which viewed conservation in terms of planned and efficient progress [12]. By defining issues surrounding resource use in narrow technical and utilitarian terms of maximum sustainable yield, it placed decisions in the hands of experts and scientific committees who could provide “correct answers”. It was used as a strategy for suppressing the severe conflicts over resource use in a time of great uncertainty and economic struggle as a result of rapid industrial growth. Hays characterizes this as a denial by Theodore Roosevelt of the reality of social conflict and an attempt to develop “concepts and techniques which would, in effect, legislate that conflict out of existence” so as to return to an idyllic agrarian past that never really existed. This in turn minimized the political influence of “institutions which reflected the organized sentiment of local communities”, whose interests were considered only in order “to facilitate administration and to prevent... decisions from arousing too much resentment” -- resulting in widespread social alienation. Conveniently avoided were the messier problems of judgment under uncertainty as well as issues of equity in the distribution of costs, benefits, risks and uncertainties that were merely shifted rather than reduced.

And Gregory Bateson once said, “All science is an attempt to cover with explanatory devices-and thereby to obscure-the vast darkness of the subject.” Still, it is useful as long as one is aware of this context of vast ignorance, and is willing to learn, i.e., to allow their worldview to be challenged when faced with incoherence.

If you find this discussion interesting, you can find further elaboration in a paper I wrote, that revisited Bateson’s ideas to explore the influence they have had on Post-Normal Science and adaptive management (here), and a brief bio I wrote about Bateson for the Encyclopedia of Global Environmental Change (here).

References:

Bateson, G. 1958. Naven. (Epilogue to the Second Edition) Stanford University Press. Stanford.

Hays, S.P., Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency. The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920. Harvard Historical Monographs. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1959.

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June 6, 2005

A bias inherent in "sound science"

by Sylvia S Tognetti

In a previous post, I indicated that Silvio Funtowicz and/or Jerry Ravetz might be able to say more about standards by which it is concluded that a scientific finding is of statistical significance. Jerry just came through with the following comments:

The conduct of science is influenced right at its core by the choices that are made on methods. The most basic are those used in statistical tests. These convert a collection of data-points into information about correlations between variables. If you look at the results of a standard significance test, you will see something about 'confidence level'. Although this is a technical term, it means what it says: the sort of confidence that can be placed on the result, that it is free of error. Every test is vulnerable to two sorts of error. We can call them excess sensitivity and excess selectivity. In the former case, there is a greater risk of false results being accepted as true; in the latter, there is greater risk of true results being rejected as false. There must always be a choice between the possible errors that might be produced by the test.

This choice is similar to the 'burden of proof' in legal cases: which side is required to prove its case, and to what degree of rigour? In criminal cases within the English tradition, the testing procedure is highly selective, because we wish to avoid the error of convicting the innocent. The burden of proof is on the prosecution to establish the case 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. In civil cases, the burden of proof is still with the complainant, but the required 'confidence limit' is not so great, being 'the balance of probabilities'. In some exceptional situations, the burden of proof is on an accused person to establish their innocence. This occurs (with the aid of science!) when athletes who have tested positive for banned drugs are presumed guilty unless they can prove their innocence. It had always been believed that science itself is immune to the influence of judgements of this sort; but an understanding of statistical practice shows that the difference is not so great after all.

In research, it is common to guard mainly against accepting false correlations; and so the error of rejecting true correlations is less important. Hence tests will be more selective, and therefore less sensitive. The model of the lab is used for what is called 'sound science'. It might seem that this is totally objective and value-free. But in fact that choice embodies its own values and a balance among possible errors. By contrast, in environmental monitoring, it can be more important to be alert to possible sources of harm, and so it can be appropriate to have tests that are more sensitive than for lab research. Tests designed for the lab (and hence more readily accepted for publication) might lead to the exclusion of such warning data, so that we remain in ignorance of possible dangers. To demand a single standard for all sorts of science, is itself a choice. It produces its own possibilities of errors, and its own influence on our knowledge and our ignorance. It also has its own implications for the politics of safety, health and the environment.

To the best of my knowledge, it was Kristen Shrader-Frechette who first brought this feature of scientific methodology to the attention of the public. Other philosophers had dissected the myth of objectivity in science, but she was the first to show how value-commitments strongly influence what we can know, and of what we are forced to remain in ignorance.

[The above is excerpted from Jerry's forthcoming book, The No-Nonsense Guide to Science which can be pre-ordered at amazon.com.]

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May 10, 2005

Post-Normal Science - Beyond simplistic belief systems

by Sylvia S Tognetti

By Jerry Ravetz

Once upon a time we were all sure that Science would provide the true facts that would entail the correct policy decisions. Perhaps it was never really that simple. But whatever actually happened in the past, the present is drastically different. Even if the times were never completely 'normal', they are certainly post-normal now. Where will the energy come from? What about nuclear waste? What about climate change and species extinctions? Such issues have a scientific core, but there's no textbook with the answers at the back.

The message of Post-Normal Science is that policy-relevant science is affected by uncertainties and value-commitments. As we say, 'facts are uncertain, values are in dispute, stakes are high and decisions are urgent'. This is explained in terms of 'complexity theory'. That is not the same as 'complicated', which refers to lots of messy variables. A complex system is one where there is no single privileged perspective. For resolving complex policy issues, scientific demonstration must be complemented by a broad societal dialogue.

Appreciating complexity is necessary if we are go go beyond the 'simplistic belief systems' that have governed so much of our thinking, including science, in the past. These are typical of what the philosopher T.S. Kuhn called 'normal science'. This consisted of puzzle-solving within an unquestioned and unquestionable 'paradigm', a framework of facts and values. When the puzzles couldn't any longer be solved, and when the scientists couldn't 'suppress or evade' the anomalies, the situation was ripe for a 'scientific revolution'. After that, a new dogmatism would take hold. Kuhn didn't necessarily like this picture, but he believed that such a regime is necessary for the progress of science.

The clearest example of this unflattering image of science is found in textbooks. It's hard to deny that textbooks convey an impression of infallibility and dogmatism. There is no space for doubts and criticisms. For every problem, there is one and only one correct answer. Problems with many answers or none are inconceivable. Small wonder that those who have survived ten years of such an intellectual diet tend to have a simplistic view of reality! Kuhn actually compared science teaching with orthodox theology; and it is an uncomfortable parallel.

In all such 'simplistic belief systems', scientific or otherwise, there is a style of thinking that inhibits management of uncertainty and change. We can compare 'normal' and 'post-normal' styles by pairs of attributes:

'Normal'	Post-Normal
Rigid certainty	Reasoned doubt
Enforced consensus	Free debate
Brittle response to challenge	Resilience under stress
Myopia and denial of problems	Acceptance of error
Fragmentation and collapse	Learning through inner struggle.

Of course, the practice of high-quality science at the research front is largely post-normal in this sense. But somehow the teachers and popularisers have been constrained to present an implausible picture of indubitable facts and unalloyed progress. Problematic scientific issues are relabelled as 'environment' or 'health', so that 'science' retains its pristine purity. The great lesson of the atomic bomb, that science too can taste evil, seems to have been forgotten.

But there are signs that the public is waking up. If energy policy is not a scientific issue, what is? And we know that we will never again have gasoline that is cheaper than spring water. Every other energy source has large problems of 'waste', some of which (as the nuclear) defy solution. We now realise that we cannot predict, and perhaps cannot even control, the societal consequences of the new integrative technologies now being created. Bill Joy, of Sun Microsystems, called them GRAIN: genomics, robotics, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology. And what happens when they converge? Can we be sure of the wisdom and integrity of those who will be directing this new mega-science?

The times are now definitely post-normal. Will science be able to change with them? Can it move from simplistic beliefs to complex understandings? The task of post-normal science is to assist in this evolution, at the next stage of history.

Jerry Ravetz

Jerry Ravetz is a Visiting Fellow at the James Martin Institute for Science & Civilisation at the Saïd Business School, Oxford

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Rules of the science & policy game

by Sylvia S Tognetti

A few weeks ago, Prometheus (aka, Roger Pielke) raised some good questions that beg for more discussion. In a nutshell, and in my own words, given that there is a vast peer-reviewed literature of Science & Technology Studies (STS) that points out what should be obvious - that it is impossible to clearly separate science from politics, why are we even still talking about this? And why is it that this myth continues to persist in science and policy debates? For those immersed in STS or related fields of study, for whom this is no longer even interesting as a research question, the question isn't so much why it is ignored as it is one of whether and how this body of knowledge has or can have any practical implications for science policy, and actually contribute to the democratization of science.

This reminds me of a workshop I had the privilege to attend in the spring of 1996, regarding the implications of complexity for decision-making, which included most of the member of the PNT Advisory Board, for which this picture of Silvio Funtowicz - explaining complexity, is worth a thousand words. A short answer is that sometimes, even a thousand words are not sufficient. Soundbites, which are the stuff of science and policy discourse, only work because they are icons for what is already common knowledge. In other words, they provide a substitute for thought, as in "oh yeah, been there, done that, lets not go there again." Anybody who says "yes but.." or "it depends" winds up in the peanut gallery. But perhaps current events can make it possible to shed some light on this subject without descending into gobbledygook.

Lets start with the nonsense about whether or not there is a scientific consensus that humans are significantly changing the climate.

A review of the literature by Naomi Oreskes, also reported on here found no peer-reviewed literature that does not, at least implicitly, accept there there is indeed, a consensus among bonafide climate scientists. Granted the review was limited to papers that appeared in a search on the terms "global climate change." Although a bigger pool of literature might conceivably present exceptions - it is unlikely to alter the conclusion that there is a general consensus, even if there is disagreement on more specific questions of magnitude and consequences. This view is routinely challenged by climate skeptics, most recently by one Benny Peiser, who, to "prove" a lack of consensus, came up with an additional 34 papers that, he claims, do not accept that there is a consensus, and disagrees with the interpretation of most of the 928 papers reviewed by Oreskes. Abstracts to the additional 34 papers have been posted by Tim Lambert here), and demonstrate only that Peiser is ignorant of the difference between consensus and uncertainty, and of differences between studies of the climate itself, and studies of climate change policies [Pinging Dale Rothman!]. Only one of the additional papers he lists, by a committee of the Association of Petroleum Geologists, actually rejects the consensus view, and does not appear to have been peer reviewed outside that Association.

A few basics: Consensus is a collective judgement that is made to support a policy decision, based on what evidence is available at the time. This is necessary precisely because of unavoidable uncertainty, without which there would be no need to even make a decision. As Oreskes herself points out, a consensus can be wrong. Science doesn't actually prove anything. But, if done with integrity, a consensus pools the best scientific knowledge that we have, and, in this case, reflects a value judgment that it is preferable to avoid catastrophic climate change, and is based on the assumption that this should be the goal of policy. To challenge such a consensus, or the quality of the data upon which it is based, one has to follow the rules of the science game, as was suggested by Oreskes in reply to an inquiry from Chris Mooney. In other words, present actual evidence that disproves it, using the same technical definition of the problem in question, and subject it to peer review. Or else limit debate values and priorities, preferably under the rule of law and agreement about what those rules are - but I digress.

If Peiser's objective was just to generate a soundbite that creates doubt, he was successful and none of this matters - to those who share his perspective. His "review," which was rejected by the journal Science where the Oreskes review was reported, was instead reported in the Telegraph in an article that makes the charge that " leading scientific journals are censoring debate on global warming." In other words, he is playing a different game altogether, using a technical scientific debate as a stooge for a difference in values and priorities that doesn't sell very well in the marketplace of public opinion. For the rest of us, it is simply a case of fraud.

Funny that the 34 additional abstracts should include papers by Simon Shackley and Brian Wynne et al, many of which I have actually read, though not in awhile. This brings us back to the subject of STS. This group does indeed criticize what have been the dominant approaches to climate modeling because they obscure all of the inherent uncertainties. However, this is simply to support an argument that dialogue and social learning can be enhanced by making uncertainties and value judgments more explicit. Obscuring uncertainty also reinforces a technocratic approach to climate policy because it creates expectations that science has the capacity to predict and control complex systems - which makes science vulnerable to the kinds of baseless charges made by Benny Peiser - but see also this article by George Monbiot, who actually tried to track down the sources of some data cited by an otherwise reputable botanist to support a claim that 89% of glaciers are advancing rather than retreating.

However, even using good data without any typographical errors, with a careful framing of a problem in narrow technical terms, it is not hard to order up a scientific study, or even perhaps a committee report, that backs up a particular policy agenda. Or cherry pick a study to support a careful framing of the problem. Mutual reinforcement and consistency between ideas from different fields of inquiry plays an important role in validating knowledge - and have historically played a key role in providing legitimacy for controversial policy decisions. Conversely, science policy only becomes controversial when they fail to provide each other with this kind of mutual reinforcement. The best known example is the use of Darwin's theory of evolution to reinforce concepts of neo-classical economics and social Darwinism. But Darwin's views on the relationships between population pressure on resources, competition and the division of labor were also influenced by the dismal social conditions of his era, at the beginning of the industrial revolution, and by his reading of Malthus. Subsequently, as described by Philip Mirowski, when new theories of sociobiology were cited as evidence that people do sometimes reverse their preferences, thereby disconfirming deterministic assumptions about human behavior found in neoclassical economics, economists turned to behavioral experiments on rats using Skinner boxes, to determine "demand curves for animal consumers." This was after these kinds of experiments had been discredited in their own field, of behavioral psychology. In a further departure, the field of ecology moved away from the notion that it is possible to achieve a stable equilibrium, which once reinforced the notion that it is possible to return to an idyllic past that never really existed, or, as is explained by Jerry Ravetz in the next post, that if science just provides the true facts, we would get the right policy decisions.

In another paper, Shackley et al (1996) suggest that science and society are becoming unglued because of the breakdown in this previous mutual construction. Hmmm. Perhaps this is the reason Pat Robertson suggests that there is currently a gradual erosion of the consensus that's held our country together over the past 400 years? Robertson blames this on "an out-of-control liberal judiciary" that he regards as "worse than Nazi Germany, Japan and the Civil War." It is always unsettling to have one's world view challenged. But as we can see, this kind of mutual reinforcement can also sustain lies, by making them seem like the truth. As is explained by "Senator Roark" - a character in the film Sin City, maintaining a lie therefore requires that one tell more lies to achieve such consistency, and get others to go along with the story that is fabricated, who then develop a vested interest in perpetuating it, lest their own lies become exposed:

Senator Roark: Well, let me tell you a thing or two about power! Power doesn't come from a badge or a gun. Power comes outta lying and lying big and getting the whole damn world to play along with you. Once you got everybody agreeing with what they know in their hearts ain't true, you got' em trapped. You're the boss. You can turn reality on it' s head and they' ll cheer you on. You can make a saint out of a gibbering nut case like my high and mighty brother. You can beat your wife to death with a baseball bat like I did and leave your fingerprints all the hell over it and a dozen witnesses will swear on a stack of bibles you were a thousand miles away.

There's what, maybe five hundred people in this hospital? Five hundred people and every blessed one of them would hear it if I was to pump you full of bullets. I could be standing here laughing and holding a smoking gun and I wouldn't even be arrested. I wouldn't even be arrested. I wouldn't have to say a word. They' d cover it up for me, without me even asking them to! Lies. They'd all lie for me. Every one of them who counts. They'd have to. Otherwise all their own lies - everything that runs Sin City - it all comes tumbling down like a pack of cards.

Source: Frank Miller - That Yellow Bastard (Sin City, Book 4)

So, to wrap this up, for now, science is a set of rules. To have a meaningful debate over technical quality of science it is first necessary to agree on the definition of the problem and on what the objective is. Since it doesn't predict the future, and absent a laboratory that recreates every last detail, can only be confirmed in retrospect, use of science in policy needs to rely on value judgments. Finding acceptable policies to protect the environment or to achieve any other goal is ultimately about resolving conflict. Unacceptable policies can always rely on the power of lies.

Unlinked reference:
Shackley, S., B. Wynne, and C. Waterton, 1996. Imagine Complexity - The past, present and future potential of complex thinking. Futures 28(3) pp. 201-225.

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