I'm Saving the Planet. What Are You Doing?

Umm... let's see. What am I doing?

Oh yeah, trying to avoid coming off as naive, preachy, arrogant, condescending, and self-important all at once. Thus my decision not to buy this re-usable shopping bag.

IPCC and the money trail

John Tierney, of the New York Times, finds himself "in the unfamiliar position of defending Al Gore and his fellow Nobel laureate, Rajendra K. Pachauri." He's calling out what he sees as a cheap way of scoring points in climate change arguments:

Conflict-of-interest accusations have become the simplest strategy for avoiding a substantive debate. The growing obsession with following the money too often leads to nothing but cheap ad hominem attacks.

Tierney is right that sometimes you need commercial involvement in working out how to deal with complex issues like climate change. The National Research Council in the US commonly involves industry people in the preparation of its reports. But this does not in any way resolve the quite valid questions about Pachauri's connections, which are related to grant money and corporate profits, but also to the control of ideas and the prestige that comes with it. He basically points this out in later in the column (my emphasis):

There are, of course, notorious cases of corporate money buying predetermined conclusions, like the reports once put out by the Tobacco Institute to rebut concerns about smoking and cancer. But there has also been dubious work promoted by government agencies and foundations eager to generate publicity and advance their own agendas.

Exactly. Corporate involvement or not; money trail or not; conflict of interest is a serious issue that should be addressed by anyone in a position to give science advice.

I agree with Tierney's points about the money trail obsession. But let's not forget that this controversy could have been avoided if the IPCC had a policy for recognizing and dealing with conflict of interest. This is a pretty shocking oversight.

IPCC and Accountability

It may seem like all the controversy surrounding the IPCC these days is just more of the same battle between the "two sides" of the climate debate: the evil skeptics and the good people who believe in climate change. But that is not the case.

This is about the structure, role, and accountability of an extremely important and high profile institution: the IPCC. This piece in Der Speigel summarizes the problem quite well:

there is no code of conduct governing conflicts of interest for IPCC participants and leaders.

The lack of accountability in an organization of this importance is just astounding. The authors go on to make some broad recommendations:

It may be advisable to pause for wholesale institutional reform. The IPCC needs guidelines for the behavior of its officials, and those guidelines must be enforced. With a policy on conflict of interest similar to those in place in leading scientific advisory institutions, it seems obvious that the IPCC would need a new chairperson. The IPCC needs to adhere to its own standards for appointing experts and reviewing material that it reports. It needs to make its procedures for appointments more transparent. The IPCC peer-review should be made more robust, with quality assurance overriding deadlines. A formal mechanism should be put in place to correct errors after publication. Such reform will be a large and difficult task. But the credibility of climate science depends upon it.

I hope that we continue to see this kind of coverage of the IPCC. They need to recognize that it's not enough to get the science right. They need to get the science advice right as well, and that means avoiding conflict of interest and demonstrating accountability and transparency.

Climate Aid at Whose Expense?

Bjorn Lomborg is not the only one concerned about "climate aid" to developing countries detracting from other important issues. Bill Gates has highlighted (PDF) international climate change policy as a possible factor in limiting aid for other problems associated with poverty and global health. As quoted on Pielke's blog:

Deficits are not the only reason that aid budgets might change. Governments will also be increasing the money they spend to help reduce global warming. The final communiqué of the Copenhagen Summit, held last December, talks about mobilizing $10 billion per year in the next three years and $100 billion per year by 2020 for developing countries, which is over three quarters of all foreign aid now given by the richest countries.

I am concerned that some of this money will come from reducing other categories of foreign aid, especially health. If just 1 percent of the $100 billion goal came from vaccine funding, then 700,000 more children could die from preventable diseases.

As Pielke notes, Gates is a relatively new voice in debates on climate change issues, but he has some very smart things to say (see this very good, short article on energy policy). Many organizations would have you believe that action to address climate change and action to address other sustainable development are (or should be) one and the same. It's nice to see that Gates operates under no such illusion.

Climate Solution: Eliminate the Fartiest Animals

In my mind climate change is one of the least important aspects of a much-needed discussion about food production. But just try telling that to the Australian papers this week and last, who gave a ridiculous number of paragraphs to the pressing issue of which animals fart the most.

I guess the idea is: if humans are going to be so stubborn about changing their carbon intensive ways, then why don't we just get rid of the fartiest animals? Actually, that general idea is not at all new, and a quick search reveals that the discussion has been going on here in Australia for quite some time as well. But for some reason it has resurfaced in the last week.

A story in the print version of The Australian recently presented a ranking of methane emissions per head per year of various animals, which had kangaroos near the bottom (the online version is here, but no ranking). Of course, cattle and other ruminants were near the top.

The obvious, if naive knee-jerk reaction (see here, and here for criticisms) to such data is to propose replacing our gassiest livestock with species that  might do a little better in polite company. And of course, there's no shortage of 'roos around here. George Wilson and Melanie Edwards, who originated the study that is fueling all this discussion, make this case in an article on ABC:

Kangaroos are animals that don't burp methane because they have different micro-organisms to help them digest food. If we were to replace some of the cattle and sheep in Australia with kangaroos we could reduce the number of animals producing methane and at the same time promote natural habitats instead of hoof-damaged pastures.

Wilson and Edwards' work has led others to call for the culling and/or eating of feral camels as a great way to save carbon emissions. The negative impact of these animals on the local environment is apparently not enough to inspire people, but the vision of millions of camel farts wafting into the air may be just what we need to inspire real action.

And here's another brilliant use of your tax dollars: genetically engineering a "burp-less sheep." The graphically named Dr. Goopy and colleagues are hard at work to defy the normal inner workings of this hapless animal. They recognize, though in ominously vague terms, that there could be obstacles involved:

Methane is the exhaust from livestock, and – just as you can't put your hand over the exhaust pipe of a car and expect it to keep running – we're treading carefully to reduce emissions without causing other problems.

All of these ideas--especially the one that involves a total remaking of the Australian meat industry, rather than just the internal organs of an entire species--present major economic, social, and political challenges. They could also confer various environmental benefits that have nothing to do with climate change (well, I'm not so sure about the gas-free sheep). But all this is a side show to the main discussion: climate change.

Here's the thing. If implemented, the overall impact of these ideas on climate change would be marginal to negligible. Basically unmeasurable. But the impact on so many other aspects of our daily lives might be huge. So why does climate change cloud the debate about:

• The ethics of the meat industry
• The overall ethics of the food industry
• The environmental impacts of various food systems
• The impact of feral animals on ecosystems
• The health consequences of our eating habits
• The socio-cultural underpinnings of our eating habits
• The list goes on...

Whale War!

This video shows the latest escalation in the whale war. A Japanese whaling boat rammed a super-fancy speed boat driven by animal rights activists. This escalation in the long-running conflict has drawn a lot of attention today--it's all over the Australian news (e.g. here). Revkin just posted two videos. The one above from the perspective of the Japanese.

This one shows pretty clearly that the collision was an intentional move by the Japanese:


Whale meat is apparently delicious enough not only to kill these animals, but to risk serious harm or worse to humans as well.

Or, according to the Japanese, whale meat is scientifically interesting enough to possibly kill a few humans. They claim they are killing the whales for scientific research, but nobody believes them.

My question is, why is it necessary and in any way redemptive to use science as a shield for this activity?

Other controversies involving the use of animals in science usually involve a trade-off between supposed benefits for humans (through medical discoveries or identification of health hazards), and cruelty toward other living beings. What possible trade-off could the Japanese be offering in this context?

Another question: why science, and not some appeal to cultural tradition, such as that used by indigenous groups in Alaska? Is science somehow more legitimate regardless of its purpose?

I can't imagine these tactics on the part of activists are really helping. This kind of aggression starts looking to me like an affront to Japanese sovereignty, which is not the kind of thing that gets any nation to back down.

Avatar: Pro-Science; Anti-Intellectual. Discuss?

Is anyone not on Facebook? Well, just in case, I thought I'd re-post a discussion I and some friends have been having about our impressions of the roles of science and technology in the movie Avatar. I feel a little silly adding to all the attention that this movie is getting. In many ways it is kind of a crappy movie. Yet at the same time it is causing a lot of interesting discussion (for another example, see this very interesting discussion of the Noble (Sparkly) Savage). And of course, it was spectacular to watch.

This discussion began with me raising the question in the title: Avatar: Pro-Science; Anti-Intellectual? Here are some of the responses. (Warning: there are some gratuitously nerdy references here. Some people just can't restrain themselves! Feel free to ignore.)

The Agenda of Science Magazine

Over at Klimazwiebel, Dennis Bray, has an interesting post about his experiences trying to get a letter published in Science Magazine. His frustrations are probably not atypical for authors that have been denied (and, as I know first hand, blogs are a great venue for venting, and getting the message out anyway). And upon denial, it's easy to examine assumed interests of the parties involved, and imagine hidden agendas and conspiracies.

Bray was trying to publish a letter in response to a very high-profile article by Naomi Oreskes, which claims to have demonstrated a scientific consensus on global warming. Bray's own survey work (discussed here, here, and here, among other places) has suggested a much more complicated state of affairs, and certainly calls into question the consensus idea. But Science didn't publish his letter in response to Oreskes. Why not?

Well, it's all speculation of course, but Bray's theory relates to the profit motive, and the need to please sponsors, many of whom run environmentally conscious ads in the magazine (many of which might be considered "greenwashing"). Bray concludes:

The question is, does Science’s quest for appropriate image come at a cost to content? Can the charges leveled against ‘industry’ funded research be applied to ‘we want to have a green image’ commercial (Science is a commercial enterprise) journal? Does advertising have a place in academic journals?

Whether or not these questions have any bearing on the publication of Bray's letter, I think it is interesting to examine the motives and the agenda of Science, and its parent organization, AAAS. However, I think Bray has misinterpreted the dynamics somewhat.

One Way to Deal with Uncertainty: Brute Force Engineering

One way to deal with uncertainty is brute force engineering. See, for example, the canal that brings 1.5 million acre feet (1850 gigalitres according to Google) of Colorado River water into Arizona each year (the Central Arizona Project or CAP).

Or, here in Victoria, there's the massive desalination plant under construction on the Bass Coast, which will deliver annually 200 gigalitres of water purified from the ocean.

This is apparently one third of Melbourne's annual consumption. The fancy-pants animation provided on the project website ends with the dramatic and reassuring words:

"Water now
and for the future.
For sure."

And this is precisely the point. The impact of climate change on annual rainfall is potentially quite bad, and at best, highly uncertain. The response? Find a source independent of rainfall. While fears of climate change no doubt played a significant role in bringing about this desalination project, this is one form of adaptation that doesn't rely on detailed climate predictions in order to be effective.

Chalk this up as one of the many examples that contradicts the conceptual model proposed by the Climate Science Framework:

climate science -->; adaptation research -->; adaptation

On another note...