Adapt Already

Movin' On...

2010-02-14T15:40:00.000+11:00

Adapt Already is moving here.

Come visit!

Welcome to Canberra

2010-02-11T14:38:00.001+11:00

There are a lot of political angles on climate change. A great way to get a sense of the interests involved is to take a stroll around your nation's capitol. For example, from a recent trip to DC:

Here's what awaited us at the Canberra airport yesterday:

'Seen one capitol city, 'seen 'em all. Or at least, that's the impression you get from the climate billboards you see all over.

Dam Your Food Bowl

2010-02-09T12:30:00.000+11:00

Yesterday I wrote about the new report on the viability of a "Top-End Food Bowl" in Australia.
The idea is to convert large swaths of land in the north to farm land, thus replacing the output lost from the (permanently?) drought-stricken Murray-Darling basin. As you can imagine, this promising idea has major implications for economic development in the region, as well as the country's ability to deal with climate change. The new report seems to put the kibosh on the idea, but the debate is clearly not over.

This is turning into a useful example of the role of science in providing technical advice on a difficult policy issue. It is remarkable that, so far, we can see relatively clear distinctions being drawn between values and science as the debate proceeds. It is common to bury arguments over values underneath hard-fought battles over the validity of scientific studies.

Coverage in The Australian today reveals a number of concerns on the part of some participants. But these do not quarrel with the scientific conclusions regarding water availability in the North. They relate to the values framework within which the final conclusions were made. For example:

"The report is lightweight with a political focus towards green and indigenous issues," Senator Macdonald said.

This does not reflect an argument about the science behind the report's findings, but instead about agreed-upon values that structure the science-based response. For some, the failure to consider dams as an option is simply a reflection of environmental values that marginalize particular groups:

Nationals leader and Coalition regional development spokesman Warren Truss said the report drastically understated possible development, in part because "people with dreams were pushed aside" when the incoming Rudd government changed the make-up of the taskforce...

The accusation relates to the values of those who prepared the report, not the validity of the data that informed it. Perhaps this has something to do with the relative openness with which CSIRO seems to have approached their "science review" (which was commissioned to inform the final report). As they put it in the opening section:

This report reflects ... diversity. The 71 contributing authors and their sources have brought with them their particular expertise and, as people are wont to, their partialities and peccadilloes. The editors have not sought to conceal these; they are safer when exposed to light. Where interpretation exists, it is accompanied with information or data gathered from cited and accessible literature. Drawing from this, readers can make their own, perhaps divergent, interpretations. Needless to say, the views of the authors are their own, and not those of their respective employers.

Ruling Out Adaptation Options

2010-02-08T10:47:00.000+11:00

For many researchers, an important component of "adaptation research" is the identification of options, or "pathways to adaptation." But of course, it's just as important to know what is not on the table. The front page of The Australian today has one such example:

NORTHERN Australia will never become an important food bowl to replace the drought-stricken Murray-Darling, despite massive irrigation plans and a billion litres of rain a year, a Rudd government taskforce has concluded.

You can find more background on the taskforce and its report here.

This report seems to contradict far more optimistic coverage in recent months (e.g. here, and here). It will be interesting to see if this sparks a science-based debate over the viability of the region.

From the perspective of a researcher, identifying options probably has mostly to do with what is technically feasible. But for those who would actually implement options, it is necessarily a much trickier balancing act involving a variety of values, economics, and of course, politics. The tricky part may be discerning where the technical ends, and the values begin. For example, in the article quoted above, we see that there is quite a bit of water in the Northern region of the country (my emphasis):

the north receives about a billion litres of rain a year, equivalent to eight-and-a-half times the annual runoff in the Murray-Darling Basin or 2000 times the capacity of Sydney Harbour.

... The CSIRO water study, presented to the taskforce last year, found there was not enough water to irrigate large swaths of land in the north without doing major damage to the rivers and the surrounding environment.

This concern will undoubtedly remain a central focus in debates over the development of the region. But a variety of other issues will compete with it, including Australia's food security, and the economic potential for Aboriginal groups and others.

If you pay attention to our mistakes, the world will end

2010-02-03T23:30:00.001+11:00

There has been quite a bit of negative coverage of the IPCC these days. Add to that a fairly high-profile "tour" of Australia by the Grand-Daddy of all Skeptics, Lord Monckton, and you can see how climate scientists might begin to feel a little demoralized. But I worry that their reaction to these circumstances will only make things worse, as they demonstrate time and time again the same "us vs. them" crusader attitude that made certain individuals look quite silly in the wake of the CRU email scandal.

Here is a fascinating example of a scientist accusing people of playing politics, ignoring or downplaying evidence, and misrepresenting reality. In the process of making these claims, he proceeds to play politics, ignore or downplay evidence, and misrepresent reality.

This article on ABC News quotes Professor Andy Pitman, IPCC author and co-director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales at length. The speech provides insight into how climate scientists view themselves, and how they view their "opponents."

"Climate scientists are losing the fight with the sceptics," he said.

if scientists lose the climate change debate, it would be "potentially catastrophic".

Fortunately, Pitman is absolutely wrong when he implies that the fate of the world depends on the triumph of scientists over skeptics in this endless war of words. To take Australia as an example:

Both major political parties see climate legislation as crucial to their success. The argument is simply about how to do it.
Desalination plants are opening all over the country with "offsets" for the added energy consumption.
Extensive federal, state, and local efforts to develop adaptation plans are under way.
The government is making investments in clean coal and other energy technology development.

These and other Australian policies may or may not turn out to be effective in dealing with climate change. But the problem is not the loud voices of skeptics, nor the outcome of scientist-skeptic battles.

Our speaker also warns us that focusing on mistakes in IPCC reports is just giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

Professor Pitman says sceptics have used the IPCC's error to skew the climate change debate.

..."After two years, people have been going over that report with considerable care and have found a couple of errors of fact in a 1600-page document.

"I mean, we ought to be talking about the other 1599 pages that no one has found any problems with."

Let's think more carefully about what is being recommended here. He wants us to ignore troubling lapses in the IPCC's peer review process which led to misleading or even false statements in the final report (e.g. glaciers, disaster losses, amazon rainfall, and mountain ice). These are statements meant to inform government policies worldwide, which turned out to be questionable and/or misleading. That injects a certain degree of irony into the following statement:

"They are doing a superb job at misinforming and miscommunicating the general public, state and federal governments."

Wait, Professor Pitman, you're still talking about the skeptics, right?

In all seriousness, I still think there is a lot of good information in the IPCC report. But the best response to such criticisms would be to own up to them and show a genuine commitment to doing better in the future. Minimizing them may seem like a good political tactic on the short term, but in the end, how can it do anything but diminish the credibility of the IPCC? This "never give an inch; never admit your mistakes" attitude feels a lot more like politics than science.

Pitman's description of the two groups in this debate show disdain and intolerance:

"The sceptics are so well funded, so well organised. "They have nothing else to do. They don't have day jobs so they can put all their efforts into misinforming and miscommunicating climate science to the general public, whereas the climate scientists have day jobs and [managing publicity] actually isn't one of them.

"All of the efforts you do in an IPCC report is done out of hours, voluntarily, for no funding and no pay, whereas the sceptics are being funded to put out full-scale misinformation campaigns and are doing a damn good job, I think.

These are some wild generalizations and misrepresentations of both "sides." It's one thing to demonize and stereotype people who spread misinformation. But lately some of people have raised absolutely legitimate observations regarding flaws in the IPCC process as to peer review, conflict of interest, transparency, and accountability.

As long as climate scientists continue to insist that IPCC gaffes are unimportant they are going to keep getting into this kind of trouble. It doesn't matter that the overall trend of warming remains unchallenged; that is absolutely not the point. To present the IPCC as infallible reflects a political stance directly at odds with the its image as a neutral organization whose credibility stems from open, honest debate about a complex scientific issue.

Bush Fire Prediction

2010-02-01T23:31:00.001+11:00

ABC News reports on efforts to predict bush fire behavior. This goes into the "I'll believe it when I see it" box for now.

I tend to be pretty skeptical of the promise of prediction just around the bend. It's possible that this work will yield a useful tool for dealing with bush fires. But let's not get over-excited about the potential. Other cases of prediction efforts offer some valuable lessons.

First, predicting an event such as a bush fire is a lot more like predicting an earthquake than predicting the weather. These are rare, sudden events, and predictions of their occurrence can only be useful with high accuracy and precision.

Second, predicting the behavior of a bush fire once it has started is somewhat similar to forecasting the path of a hurricane. This may be very helpful in some cases, but the outcome of the event depends far more on preparedness and the capacity of emergency services than it does on predictions. For example, predictions of Katrina were highly accurate and precise, but it was still a tragic disaster. Predictions may inform a competent response, but they do not constitute one.

This leads to point number three, which is that one should be wary of overly trusting predictions, which will never fully eradicate uncertainty. Over confidence can lead to complacency.

Adaptation = Delicious

2010-02-01T14:58:00.000+11:00

Sydney just flipped the switch on its $1.9 billion desalination facility, taking a major step toward insulating itself from climate variability and change. They have locked in 15% of the city's needs, regardless of rainfall. According to ABC News:

Premier Kristina Keneally turned on the pump earlier this afternoon, and then tasted the water which she said was delicious.

Of course... it ain't free.

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

2010-01-31T14:48:00.001+11:00

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

2010-01-28T19:02:00.002+11:00

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

2010-01-27T15:24:00.000+11:00

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?

2010-01-27T11:55:00.000+11:00

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

2010-01-17T13:16:00.002+11:00

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!

2010-01-07T16:20:00.001+11:00

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?

2010-01-07T12:07:00.000+11:00

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.)

Zach: I like calling it "pro-science." Avatar doesn't care about nature because it's important in and of itself; it cares about nature because lifeforms on Pandora have established a complex neural network that can host entire lived identities, exudes a power that allows mountains to fly, and that has a tangible social function through the 'built-in USB connections that exist in every Na'Vi and every animal. This hippie lovefest is based on tangible scientific (in the story) phenomena.

i'm not sure i see the anti-intellectual point as clearly, although you could argue that based upon Sully's uneducated character. If you think that the defense of nature is predicated on proscience grounds, then arguably the outcome of the movie is a defense of the planet's metaconciousness, which might be more advanced than human conciousness. This would imply that the movie isnt anti-intellectual, it just defends a higher intellect than our own.

Taylor: I didn't pick-up an anti-intellectual vibe, or for that matter a pro-science one. Can you elaborate on that idea a bit?

However, perception -- specifically, how different knowledge systems materially and psychologically shape and construct people's perceptions -- seemed to be one of the loci of conflict between the humans and the Navii. Throughout the movie the Navi'i people kept telling Jake to open his eyes to the forest, and that his people were "blind." The female leader of the Navi'i said that scientists' "cups" are already filled (with ideas/theories), and they lack the ability to see things as they really are. It was acknowledged that Jake was perfect for his task because he wasn't indoctrinated into some rigid scientific paradigm, which ultimately gave him a kind of intellectual freedom no one expected at first. Grace kept telling Jake to "see the forest as they do." All of this refers to how the scientists' theories, techniques, and tools prevented them from understanding the forest in the same way as the Navii. The idea of "taking samples" became a joke of sorts, especially at the end when Grace said it as she was dying at the tree of souls (or whatever); it illustrated the obvious difference between how she perceives things and how the Navi'i do, and how she wasn't able to separate herself from her methods and theories.

Attestive visual culture is central to modern Western science, but modern science tends to distrust the reliability of the unmediated gaze. From Shapin and Schaffer: "Scientific instruments therefore imposed both a correction and a discipline upon the senses. In this respect, the discipline enforced by devices such as the microscope or the air-pump was analogous to the discipline imposed upon the senses by reason. The senses alone were inadequate to constitute proper knowledge, but the senses disciplined were far more fit to the task."

I think there's a strong Latourian sentiment in the film's treatment of reality: your perception of reality depends on both the material tools and the ideas you use to construct that representation of reality. The difference between the Navi'i and the humans was not just one of values (pro-environment vs. pro-science/industry), but that each culture had a strikingly different approach to understanding reality.

PS: after reading Zach's comment, I think I can understand the "anti-intellectual" bit insofar as the film is advocating for intellectual humility: the notion that knowledge systems necessarily produce an incomplete picture of the world, and that we need to be sensitive of important things that may lie in the gaps (the metaconsciousness of the forest). This is very James Scott-esque.

Me: My thinking was, inevitably, far more simplistic. I saw two themes that, if not strictly contradictory, are at least a bit counter intuitive.

The anti-intellectual bit stems from the fact that, like zach pointed out, the movie feeds a general disdain for eggheads who think they know all the answers. Instead it gives us a hero who feels his way through to victory. I felt like this element of the story would really appeal to Sarah Palin.

But at the same time, Avatar perpetuates the myth of the inherently virtuous scientist. And this is the part that Bruce Alberts would really like. Sure, the boss guy points out that he pays sigourney weaver's bills, and perhaps we are meant to reflect on the moral implications of that situation. But I felt more like we were supposed to accept that the means (corporate/military/whatever funding) justify the ends (virtuous science).

So, when Weaver's character is being carried, mostly dead, to the Tree of the USB Hub, she mumbles about needing to get some samples, and we chuckle inwardly. Those crazy scientist-nerds... they're so dedicated!

Emily: I think the egghead disdain was actually fear of and disdain for outsiders, particularly because the eggheads are a subset of the violent, resource-hungry invaders. More anti-Bush, anti-preemptive strike, anti-imperialism than anti-intellectual. Remember that Sigourney Weaver was at least tenuously accepted by the natives before Giovanni Ribisi started moving in.

Eliza: But is it making fun of her character or making fun of scientists in general or just weird when, at the end, she is dying but still mutters, "I should take some samples." ??

Maybe if there had been more jokes in the movie, it wouldn't have stuck out so much! I guess if it's going to cost 500million to make, it has to be a serious film.

Eliza: ALSO, it was very New American University in that the Humanities Grad Student (what was his name? Neil or something?) who has done tons of language study, cultural study, historical study and is totally "prepared" is not actually prepared at all....apparently, since he doesn't become the Mock Tow or whatever.

Another tick in the anti-intellectual (or maybe just anti conventional higher education!) column.

The Agenda of Science Magazine

2010-01-06T13:35:00.002+11:00

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.

I suppose that Bray is right about the need for sponsors, and the effect that could have on behavior of the journal. But how does one reconcile "greenwashing" (which is insidiously anti-environment) with the pro-environmentalist agenda? I can't imagine that companies like GE, Exxon, and BP would have a real problem with prominently displayed opinions that questions the consensus on global warming. If their advertising is indeed greenwash, then wouldn't this (secretly) be exactly the kind of content those companies would like to see? The choice of Science as an advertising venue by supposed greenwashers is no accident. The association with that magazine is part of the greenwashing, and advertisers probably don't care much about the content of letters to the editor as long as their ads get seen by lots of people sympathetic with an environmental message.

What's more, Science Magazine is not a for-profit organization. In fact, Science often proudly points out its non-profit status, which distinguishes them from one of their primary competitors: Nature. As they put it:

"Triple A-S" (AAAS), is an international non-profit organization dedicated to advancing science around the world by serving as an educator, leader, spokesperson and professional association.

The organization "spearheads programs that raise the bar of understanding for science worldwide."

Let me suggest a different explanation for the preferences of Science and its parent organization, AAAS. They are not primarily concerned with profit, nor with courting large corporations. They are concerned with science itself: its place and prominence in the world. They promote the agenda of AAAS members (scientists), which is to preserve and increase the intellectual authority of science, and to increase funding for science by governments and other entities.

AAAS does this through extensive lobbying of the US government, and and the insertion of scientists into government positions (for example, with their post-doctoral fellowships in Congress and federal agencies). And they go to great lengths to show that science is inherently good and virtuous. See for example, the incredibly silly and arrogant editorial by Bruce Alberts, Editor in Chief, which argues that the global financial crisis could have been avoided if only we all thought and behaved more like scientists (discussed further here).

All of this could explain the refusal of Bray's letter (and I should stress that this is complete and utter conjecture, for the sake of argument only), because questioning the global warming consensus is seen by many as inherently anti-science.

The main point is that profit itself is not necessarily a motive of Science Magazine. Other motives entirely consistent with science advocacy could be enough to affect the conduct of an organization like AAAS. Whether tracking government funds, supplying the government with employees, representing the interests of government funded scientists, or educating the public about the importance of science, the involvement of AAAS in science is heavily, heavily political.

One Way to Deal with Uncertainty: Brute Force Engineering

2010-01-04T16:27:00.003+11:00

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...
someone who knows more about it (and you know who you are!) really should do a comparative study focused on the politics of desalination in Australia and large water projects in the US (such as CAP). Or at least, they should chime in here with some more authoritative knowledge!

I had an interesting conversation last night with someone who works in the water engineering business here Melbourne. From her brief description, their seem to be quite a few similarities between the canal in Arizona (built in the 70s) and desalination here.

The $3.5 billion price tag of the desalination facility is to be repaid through water sales. It is expected that water prices will double over the next five years partly because desalination is so energy intensive, and thus expensive. But then again, if there is suddenly a huge increase in the supply of water to the state (especially if this drought ends), can we really expect prices to go up?

And another question: how should we expect this new-found water security to effect the public's attitude toward water conservation?

In Arizona, the main effect of the CAP was to keep water prices low and encourage people to use more water. This helps to explain why the extremely dry state has an above average per capita water use, and below average prices. In addition to facilitating vast suburban sprawl, this has also made it pretty difficult to pay off the bill for constructing the canal in the first place. (Most of the canal water gets "recharged" into the ground, rather than pumped into lawn sprinklers and bathtubs).

These musings come from a position of relative ignorance, especially with respect to water politics in Australia, but the parallels drawn here at least provide a starting point for some interesting discussion.

Vote for my friends!

2009-12-30T13:07:00.001+11:00

Hey, remember when I wrote that post about how decision making affects decision making? I was talking about how we can structure the environment in which we make decisions--our "choice architecture"--so that we make choices more consistent with how we want to be.

Well, a couple of friends of mine developing an online game around this idea. They're actually making it sound pretty fun! Here's there video:

For this online game to become a reality, you need to go vote for it here. Please help them out!

"You Won't Find Wisdom Up A Lamp-Post"

2009-12-23T15:46:00.002+11:00

Has anyone else noticed a surprisingly large amount of derisive commentary on the role of non-governmental groups at Copenhagen? Take, for example, this startlingly blunt editorial in the Australian a few days ago:

ever since [the 1992 Rio Meeting] self-accredited ambassadors for everything and everybody from polar bears to poor people have sought to bend sovereign states to their will at international meetings. The chaos at Copenhagen demonstrates what happens when they do, when international relations stop being about sovereign states and blocs of like-minded nations negotiating immensely complex issues and become an opportunity for slogan-chanting, empire-building activists, who adopt causes as careers in the way other people become teachers or accountants and assume that they alone can save the world.

It concludes:

On Wednesday, the activists were expelled from the Copenhagen conference - leaving the grown ups to get some work done.

I wasn't sure how to feel about this editorial.
On the one hand, the antics of groups like GreenPeace add to the surreality of the whole event when they do things like climb lamp posts:

As Andrew Bolt commented, "you don't find wisdom up a lamp-post." And Frank Furedi points out the true irony that wisdom is precisely what each group expects the other to find in its respective domain:

In this comic drama, climbing lampposts is presented as an initiative that is morally superior to the diplomatic negotiations. The organisers of this spectacle appear to agree, which is why lamppost climbers are treated as if they are the voice of the people, whose job it is to keep the proceedings real. Outwardly, world leaders defer to their moral authority.

It's hard to see how this kind of stuff helps. And it's easy to suspect that these groups are in it more for their own personal glory and gratification than anything else. After all, working quietly on the sidelines for meaningful, if incremental policy advance is far less glamorous than chaining yourself to a coal train:

It also requires nuanced understanding of the political process, and patience for the great variety of interests and values must be balanced. Oh, and compromise. Not very exciting.

But I'm not ready to dismiss the role of NGOs entirely (and let's remember there's a VERY wide spectrum). The elitist tone of the Australian's editorial implies two assumptions:

that sovereign governments are the only legitimate voices when it comes to international negotiations on global issues such as climate change, and
that the outcome of Copenhagen would have been any more meaningful absent the clowning, meddlesome civilians.

The latter is highly dubious, and the former presents a very interesting problem for global governance. High profile groups with huge budgets, such as OxFam, Conservation International, and the WWF, have a lot of clout. They clearly have a role, but what should that role be?

Circling the Drain: Copenhagen and Local Politics

2009-12-18T09:41:00.001+11:00

What is the relationship between the politics of Copenhagen and the politics back home? No doubt, it's different for every participating country. Roger Pielke recently highlighted a bizarre circularity in the case of the US:

Prospects for U.S. climate legislation hinge on a successful outcome at Copenhagen, says Senator John Kerry (D-MA).... Meantime, negotiators in Copenhagen await leadership from the United States as the basis for an international agreement.... There is a widespread reluctance among other countries to make significant concessions until the country which has caused most of the problem takes more of its fair share of the burden of solving it.... But the United States won't go further than its legislative process will allow...

As some might say, they're circling the drain.

Here in Australia, according to a nice summary by Dennis Shanahan in today's Australian, things are looking pretty bad for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, no matter where you stand:

Rudd has painted himself into a corner at Copenhagen and, once again, the perceptions he has created are jarring with the reality.
If Copenhagen at best comes up with some cobbled-together "two-track" system of agreements that lets various nations off the hook and Australia with a huge aid bill, Rudd will claim a political victory, but he is likely to be swamped with criticism from developing nations, environment groups and sceptics.
If there is no real agreement and it's all put off to Mexico next July, there will be no vindication for Rudd's pressure on passing the CPRS [Australian cap and trade proposal] before Copenhagen and [Opposition Leader/Republican-equivalent] Abbott will be able to say he's saved Australia from racing ahead of the rest of the world and committing to targets other nations have baulked at.
Rudd's rhetoric on this issue, the whole need for urgency, the need for moral leadership from Australia for the rest of the world and the need to have an ETS [Emissions Trading Scheme] as a bargaining chip will be seen as hollow self aggrandisement.

Not pretty. Shanahan also deftly summarizes the quite-astonishing political reversal that has taken place here in the last month and a half.

Experiences in both the US and Australia show the inevitability that Copenhagen will be used locally as a tool for political advancement (and that such tactics may backfire). Simultaneously, officials in Copenhagen cannot escape the impact of local politics on their own negotiations. Kinda makes the whole exercise seem like circling the drain!

Bjorn Lomborg makes sense

2009-12-17T18:25:00.003+11:00

Bjorn Lomborg, scourge of climate scientists and author of two controversial books on issues of climate change and environmentalism, has been making the rounds. And he's been making a lot of sense. He must be reading my blog!

Lomborg had an op-ed in the Australian the other day, and I just watched him debate Paul Krugman on CNN, where he touched on a couple of points I have made here recently.

The first relates to trade-offs, and the dominance of climate change relative to other pressing problems in the world. As Lomborg says:

Let's be smart on global warming, but let's not have it dominate everything else.

Krugman accuses Lomborg of posing false choices. In other words, if the US Congress fails to pass meaningful legislation, we can't expect them to turn around and spend the savings on poverty in Africa or global health issues. True.

But Krugman is, unsurprisingly, focused on emissions policy in the US. Lomborg points out that the billions that would go to the proposed fund for helping countries to adapt to climate change would probably come from existing aid budgets. Linking a huge portion of development aid to climate change could have devastating consequences.

It seems to me that requiring development projects to have some sort of benefit related to climate change is not all that different from the Bush Administration requirement that funding for AIDS go to "abstinence-only" programs. It does no favors to people suffering now, and the organizations trying to help them. (There is probably an argument to be had here about how much new money might go to aid as a result of climate change, but that's for another time.)

Lomborg's second point is about the misguided efforts in Copenhagen to prolong the failures of the Kyoto Protocol. He argues that carbon agreements are putting the policy cart before the technology horse, and that the real focus should be on developing the technologies that can bring the price of carbon free energy down to a reasonable level.

Krugman seems hell-bent on disagreeing with Lomborg's very reasonable position. I think this is partly because, like a good economist, he believes strongly in the potential of a cap and trade system. In theory, cap and trade works very efficiently to bring about the kinds of investment that Lomborg is arguing for (in energy technology). But Lomborg is a political realist who recognizes that politicians can't get elected by raising energy prices, no matter how supposedly catastrophic the consequences may be for the people of 2050.

The other part of Krugman's disagreement has to do with who Lomborg is, and how he got here. Notice the caption in the image above:

Krugman: Lomborg is being "insincere" when he recommends doing more research.

I'll write more about this "appeal to motive" soon.

Politics of Impure Science

2009-12-17T11:17:00.000+11:00

Today's LA Times is running an op-ed by my advisor, Dan Sarewitz, and Sam Therstrom of the American Enterprise Institute (a conservative think tank). This piece addresses the problem of making science the "arbiter of the political debate."

Many people believe that science dictates appropriate policy action. This article challenges that notion:

The real scandal illustrated by the e-mails is not that scientists tried to undermine peer review, fudge and conceal data, and torpedo competitors, but that scientists and advocates on both sides of the climate debate continue to claim political authority derived from a false ideal of pure science. This charade is a disservice to both science and democracy. To science, because the reality cannot live up to the myth; to democracy, because the difficult political choices created by the genuine but also uncertain threat of climate change are concealed by the scientific debate.

What is the solution? Let politics do its job; indeed, demand it.

There is already discussion of this piece elsewhere in the blogosphere (see here, and here), so I recommend reading the whole thing and chiming in.

Festive Headline Wall

2009-12-16T15:35:00.000+11:00

Merry Christmas from the Headline Wall! The inexorable advance of climate coverage across my living room (read: entire apartment) continues!

Some highlights of this most recent update include:

A story about mis-statements by Al Gore regarding the melting of the polar ice cap. This happens, but you rarely see it covered prominently (i.e. outside the blogosphere), and certainly not with quotations from scientists calling on him to not exaggerate so much!
Journalists reduced to musings on the topic of logistical and organizational incompetence as they spend days waiting in line to just get into the friggin' Copenhagen Conference.
And plenty of sparring between Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott over the topics of climate change, Copenhagen, and energy policy in Australia.

Of course, that's just a small sampling. Click on the image, and you should be able to see for yourself.

How AIDS might be like Climate Change

2009-12-16T13:46:00.002+11:00

You often hear people argue that climate change affects everything, everywhere. An arguable statement in both senses of the word. But the assertion often leads to a far more delusional mindset, in which climate change is everything. Many people seem to believe that to solve climate change (as if that were possible) is to solve most of the problems of the world.

As Philip Stevens of the London-based International Policy Network discusses in a short article recently printed in the Australian, this mentality is dangerous. Especially when it becomes embedded in a large, powerful organization such as the UN.

Stevens sees an eerie similarity between recent calls for the creation of a massive UN entity that would "coordinate advocacy and policy on climate change" and the creation of UNAIDS in 1996:

AIDS activists suddenly had a lavishly funded UN agency to support their political agenda, so governments would spend the billions they demanded. UNAIDS was also responsible for interpreting scientific data about the pandemic. Year after year, its supposedly scientific updates predicted devastating heterosexual pandemics all over the world, with alarmingly high existing HIV-AIDS infections.

Two problems emerged from this. First, the new massive organization had an incentive to keep AIDS in the public eye, and maintain the perception of a looming disaster. This led to reports that ignored peer reviewed science and concentrated on extreme scenarios. We see similar behavior in mainstream reports purporting to represent climate science consensus. Stevens writes that:

UNAIDS' scientific reputation has crumbled. Since 2001, it has been forced to slash its estimates of the numbers of people infected for dozens of countries -- in the cases of Kenya and India by more than half.

The second problem stems from the dominance of AIDS in the arena of public health in the developing world, where there are plenty of other serious problems:

AIDS now grabs a disproportionate amount of public money, consuming US23c of every aid dollar spent on global health, despite causing fewer than 6 per cent of deaths in developing countries. Obama has pledged 70 per cent for AIDS of all US global health spending next year: $US8.6bn ($9.5bn), totalling $US63bn over six years. Meanwhile, diseases that kill far more, such as diarrhoea, lack funding -- even though they cost only a few cents to treat.

This is a really important and instructive example, but it also risks being misinterpreted. It does not mean that climate change/AIDS is not a serious problem. And Stevens is not asserting that climate change risk will decrease along a similar trajectory the global AIDS pandemics predicted in the late 90s.

The lesson here is about the links among institutions, science, and activism. The problem with UNAIDS was not just ~~manipulation~~ misuse or misinterpretation of science. It did a huge disservice to other serious global health problems.

Climate change is not the only kind of global change, and it is not the only environmental problem we face. Successful climate policy will not solve problems such as deforestation, hurricane damage, chemical pollution, suburban sprawl, and many others. But when was the last time you picked up the Environment page of a newspaper and found a story that didn't mention climate change?

I recommend reading all of Stevens' short, but very informative article.

Everybody's a Nazi!

2009-12-16T12:13:00.000+11:00

Here's a headline that caught my eye today as I was updating the Headline Wall (more on that later):

Climate Deal Backers 'like Nazi appeasers.'

This genre of accusation is nothing new in the polarized world of climate politics, but it struck me that we may be witnessing a sort of Nazi accusation creep.

In August Roger Pielke highlighted a political speech in New South Wales in which climate skeptics were compared to Nazi appeasers. (Who then, asked Roger, are the Nazis?).

In late November, Lucia noticed footage of Hitler being played in the background during a discussion of "Climategate."

So now the deal supporters and the skeptics are appeasers, and the scientists are being compared with the Nazis themselves? By the time the smoke clears, will anyone have escaped the Nazi comparison?

Lucia would say that this is just more evidence in favor of Godwin's Law:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.

Though obviously these examples are not confined to the virtual world, and the comparisons are multiplying. Perhaps we need a corollary along these lines:

As the discussion continues to grow, the number of involved parties avoiding Nazi or Hitler comparisons approaches 0.

Copenhagen Off Target

2009-12-13T21:39:00.001+11:00

image credit

Copenhagen is boring and dumb.

There, I said it.

I don't mean the city (LOVE the city); I mean the climate talks.

The problem with Copenhagen is not just that these countries will not agree on anything; it's that even if they did, it wouldn't make any difference.

If you have been paying any attention to Copenhagen, you've heard about targets. For example, should we try to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by mid-century, or 2? Is the appropriate target for stabilized atmospheric concentrations of CO2 450 parts per million (ppm), or 350? Or some other number?

The obsession with these targets is damaging.
The Breakthrough Blog recently called them "insidious abstractions."

The haggling at Copenhagen is a bit like me arguing with my darts partner about which half of the bull's eye we should hit. Even if we agree, the chances of either one of us hitting the target are pretty small. And in this case just throwing a dart will take an act of Congress.

We do not know enough about how to control the world's energy system to have a discussion about the merits of 1.5 degrees vs 2 degrees. An earnest and unanimous agreement on a target for global average temperature, would not bring us any closer to implementing the necessary policies for achieving that.

Recent writing about Copenhagen on the Breakthrough Blog is spot on. The only way to make progress on climate change is to "transform the way the world makes and uses energy." Debate over targets rarely includes substantive dialog on this problem, and this is why it is such a distraction.

In a particularly cogent post last week, Breakthrough explores the irony of so many devoted people participating in such a meaningless exercise, essentially clinging to the distraction:

With all hopes of a treaty abandoned months ago, diplomats and greens are in a state of serious cognitive dissonance, attempting to resolve the seriousness of the problem with the total lack of a meaningful government response. They do so, not by asking hard questions about the viability of the Kyoto framework, but rather by creating a simulacrum of action to substitute for any meaningful action to reduce emissions or adapt to a warmer world.
In this, Copenhagen represents the first truly postmodern global event in human history. Other generations had Versailles, Yalta, Bretton-Woods -- agreements that re-organized nation states and shaped the modern world. We, by contrast, have Copenhagen, which has no power to do anything. In reality, Copenhagen is no more effectual than the made for media confabs like Davos. But the United Nations, multinational green groups, and sympathetic reporters have succeeded in creating the impression of action where there is, in fact, none at all.

Hard Heads, Soft Hearts, Young Minds, and... Talking Points

2009-12-10T17:14:00.002+11:00

I attended an event hosted by the Left-Right Think Tank last night, in which the newly appointed US Ambassador to Australia, Jeffrey Bleich, gave a short speech and answered questions. Left-Right ("HARD HEADS, SOFT HEARTS & YOUNG MINDS...") is a relatively young organization, as are its members. I like their general purpose, which is to promote the ideas of young people, their involvement in public policy, and a diversity of opinion and perspective.

Left-Right also touts itself as being non-partisan, and "without influence." There was an interesting moment in the introduction to the event, in which the speaker purported to address the obvious criticism that this may not be possible. I was disappointed that he did not actually describe how it could be possible, but instead made the case that it was simply necessary in "these times of increasing complexity." This is definitely something worth thinking about more deeply.

I don't want to be over-critical, though. As long as the organization maintains an openness to ideas from across the political spectrum I think they'll be on the right track. And while they didn't fill the room completely, there were plenty of thoughtful questions from a very engaged audience.

It's hard to know how to react to a speech by a diplomat. I didn't expect much more than a chummy delivery of talking points, and a reassurance that everything about the ties between our two nations is hunky dory. Well, we definitely got that. But to give the Ambassador credit, he made an effort to engage with his audience and answer questions in an honest and straightforward manner, while still keeping his job. He focused mostly on four big policy issues:

Afganistan
Trade
Climate Change
Nuclear Security

He also did a good job at handling left-field questions about urban planning, world government, and a few other off-the-wall issues that I can't remember.

Of course, my ears perked up during the comments on climate change, but it was pretty run-of-the mill. Bleich certainly didn't want to get into the weeds on climate policy stuff happening here in Australia. He only stated that Australia is doing what all nations must do: engage in a healthy debate over the issues of energy policy and climate change. Or something like that. He did not rise to the bait presented in the form of a question about the implosion of the liberal (political right) party and how that might or might not be a possibility in the US. Inwardly, though, I like to think that he emitted a hopeful chuckle.

Headline Wall: Update and Comments on (its) Sustainability

2009-12-08T14:57:00.003+11:00

For future updates I'll need to experiment a little with documentation methods, as this patchwork thing is not ideal. Click on each image to see a larger version, in which you should be able to read some of the larger entries on the Wall. There was no climate-related news on the front page of The Age today. I'm not completely sure, but I think this is a first since this little project began, and possibly a first since I arrived in Australia.

But fear not! There was an entire page devoted to the topic a few pages in. Obviously, Copenhagen is big news these days, so none of this is surprising. One of my particular favorites was the recent front page image of various world leaders playing poker in a smoke-filled room, which perhaps you can see by clicking on the top image and looking near the top-right corner (I just did a quick search for an online version of the image, but no luck).

Some have raised issues related to the sustainability of the Headline Wall. Like any complex policy issue, I think this can be looked at from a variety of perspectives. For example, can the Wall accommodate the current and projected rates of newspaper collation over the period of intended residency? After checking the latest forecasts of the world's most advanced General Circulation Models, coupled with a range of plausible scenarios of economic development, technological advance, and population growth, I am cautiously optimistic. However, uncertainties remain.

Alternatively, does the aesthetic cost of the Project outweigh the benefits? This would require further research into the question of benefits, and what those could possibly be. Other avenues of research include an investigation into the links between newspaper covered walls and sanity.

image credit

Finally, there is the question of the Wall's impact on domestic sustainability, and whether certain parties are unduly burdened by its presence, especially after having just moved across the Pacific Ocean so that certain other parties who actually have an office can do their nerdy climate policy research. I imagine that further conferences, roundtables, and workshops on this issue will be required.

Overwhelmed?

2009-12-08T14:34:00.000+11:00

I don't know who this guy is, but I feel his pain.

"We're going to get nothing"

2009-12-08T10:01:00.000+11:00

Under the amusing headline, "Politics Ruins Everything," Andrew Sullivan has posted two quotations that form an interesting dialog about the political viability of cap and trade policies vs. a carbon tax.

Yglesias makes a fair point:
Their basic point, that the kind of carbon tax proposal that policy wonks would dream up would be superior policy to the kind of cap-and-trade plan that would result from the compromises necessary to get 60 votes in the Senate, is very true. But by the same token, the kind of cap-and-trade proposal that policy wonks would dream up would be superior policy to the kind of carbon tax plan that would result from the compromises necessary to get 60 votes in the Senate.
Drum interjects:
In the near term, no serious carbon tax will ever pass the U.S. Senate. Period. If you believe otherwise, you're just not paying attention to things. A big part of the surge in interest in a carbon tax is purely cynical, coming from special interests who are afraid a carbon cap might actually pass and want to muddy the waters with pseudo-liberal arguments in order to build an anti-C&T alliance and keep anything at all from passing. There are plenty of carbon tax advocates who are perfectly sincere, but I gotta tell them: you're being played by people who are the farthest thing imaginable from sincere. If you win, we're not going to get a carbon tax. We're going to get nothing.

I imagine the same dynamics exist here in Australia (correct me if I'm wrong!). The Opposition is now hinting at all sorts of alternatives (e.g. nuclear, green tax credits, and "biosequestration") to Rudd's ETS, and it is hard to tell whether these proposals are sincere, or simply meant to (further) weaken the Labour policy (the ETS).

The dialog above is flawed in that it constrains our choices. The types of targets and carbon trading schemes recently proposed in the US, UK, and Australia are toothless, unrealistic, or both. If we're choosing between nothing and these policies, then our choice is really between "nothing" and a more complex and expensive "nothing."

Sullivan concludes that "when nothing is revealed as insufficient, maybe a better solution will emerge." But there are already other choices which involve adopting a different perspective. For example, the Breakthrough Institute argues that we need to do away with these complex attempts at reaching abstract targets, and focus on direct investment in the kinds of technology that will actually help with the problem:

Forget 80% by 2050 and 17% by 2020. Time to stop fixating on 450 ppm vs 350 ppm. As UN climate talks kick off today in Copenhagen, Denmark, there's only one number really worth the world's attention: $10.5 trillion.
That's the additional investment required between now and 2030 to put the world's energy system on a lower-carbon path, according to the world energy watchdog, the International Energy Agency.

Adaptation Research and Climate Science - What's the relationship?

2009-12-07T17:46:00.002+11:00

At least in terms of institutions and fancy websites, Australia really seems to be taking on the task of climate adaptation, and climate adaptation research (always important to remember that there's a big difference between those two things!). For example, the CSIRO has a high profile Adaptation Flagship. On the university side, there is the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF - just try pronouncing that acronym. Fun!). I'm still not sure what the annual funding of adaptation research is overall, but more on that later, perhaps.

Here's my question: what is the relationship between adaptation research and climate science?

Well, according to the 2009 National Framework for Climate Change Science, you can't have adaptation without lots and lots of climate science:

[Fundamental climate system science] is the essential system knowledge without which adaptation strategies and mitigation strategies cannot readily be built - we need to know to what climate future we are adapting, and how this will be influenced by international efforts to reduce levels of greenhouse gases.

This document is arguing for major increases in funding and other support for climate science, all of which is organized around the goal of predicting future climate behavior:

An effective national science effort, which delivers on these challenges, must be based on a scientific capability encompassing observations, process studies and model development, leading to quantitative prediction.

Ok, seems straightforward. How could you adapt to climate change in a proactive way, without knowing what the climate is going to do? Well, take a look at this list of examples, featured prominently on the website of the NCCARF:

Examples of adaptation measures include:
construction of sea walls;
building of new water reservoirs;
establishment of early warning systems;
revision and/or modification of building codes;
alteration of farming practices and crop use;
improvement of risk management; and
enhancement of water use efficiency.

Not one of those needs improved predictive capability in order to proceed. Some very simple scenarios describing potential changes would be sufficient. In fact, the third, fourth, and last items wouldn't need any information about the future at all to be successfully implemented. What's more, many of those activities would be a good idea, even if climate change were of little to no concern at all.

In my view, this is the beauty of adaptation research, and adaptation itself. We can do a lot now, with the knowledge we already have, in order to improve our resilience to environmental change on various scales. But to others this revelation is a liability. Recognizing that we can find ways to adapt without the use of expensive, complex computer models jeopardizes one of the key justifications driving the use of public funds for this kind of scientific work.

Stakeholders in the climate science community work very hard to maintain the axiomatic linear connection between their work and adaptation. I found this to be true in my research in the US, and my reading of the Australian Climate Science Framework suggests that similar dynamics are at play in this country as well.

Obviously this is just an initial impression, but I will have plenty more to write about these issues as my research progresses.

Jon Stewart on ClimateGate: Don't Cut Corners!

2009-12-07T15:45:00.000+11:00

As usual, Jon Stewart nails it.

The Title of this Blog

2009-12-04T15:00:00.001+11:00

The particularly astute reader will have noticed by now that the title of this blog is "Adapt Already." Leaving aside the question of whether or not this blog actually has any readers, I want to say a bit about what this means to me. So far I've counted three connotations of the phrase "Adapt Already:"

I am convinced that, whether we know it or not, we are already adapting to climate change. Some of it is deliberate, and some of it is not. But despite so much forward-looking talk about the fact that we need to start adapting to climate change, human society has always been adapting to change at many different scales. This is not to reject climate adaptation as an organizing concept, but to recognize that it cannot be treated in isolation from other forces in the world. Most of the things we might do in order to adapt to climate change (e.g. secure water resources, fortify coastal infrastructure, strengthen emergency response systems, improve health services...) would be a good idea even if we were clueless about climate change.
For a long time adaptation has played second fiddle to the much more flashy issue of "mitigation," which refers to the reduction of emissions in order to reduce or forestall changes in the climate. Two decades ago, support for adaptation was tantamount to an admission of defeat. It has been difficult to convince the world that even under the most optimistic scenarios of emissions reductions we will experience significant climate change that will require us to adapt.
And of course, the title is a reference to the research I am undertaking here in Australia. I am interested in how the government is approaching the problem of adapting to climate change, and the role of science in that agenda. How do they define adaptation? How do they develop priorities for adaptation activity, and for science that informs adaptation?

Future posts will explore all of these perspectives in more detail, especially the third one. If you have a perspective on adaptation, and how it adds meaning to the way we deal with climate change and other problems, I'd love to hear it either in the comments or by email.

More on Motive vs. Content

2009-12-04T14:21:00.000+11:00

This National Journal interview with Judy Curry, an accomplished and respected climate scientist, is very insightful, and touches on the issue of motive vs. content, which I wrote about the other day. Here's a snippet:

NJ: Is the outside scrutiny from the skeptics making the science stronger?
Curry: Scrutiny from scientific skeptics makes the science stronger, either by identifying problems that can be addressed or by increasing confidence when problems and errors are not found. Scrutiny from [politically motivated] contrarians and deniers and the noise generated by such people do distract scientists from their real work... The scientists involved in the CRU emails are dismissing certain people as skeptics, assuming that they all have political motivations. Well, the motivation of the skeptic isn't really the point. The point is whether or not they have a valid argument.
NJ: Is the science community served well by ad hominem criticisms of the skeptics?
Curry: Absolutely not. Scientists should criticize the argument, not the person making the argument. The other fallacious criticism is "appeal to motive," looking for some link of the skeptics to the oil industry or advocacy group.... You [should] have to declare this, but it does not in any way disqualify you from doing research or publishing your papers.
Mann was on "The Diane Rehm Show" yesterday [Nov. 30]. He was very eloquent, but he was defending [an e-mail in which he suggested boycotting a journal that published an article questioning climate change by saying] it was a bad paper and besides, those people were affiliated with the oil industry. He really believes that's right, but medical research would stop if anyone who got their funding from the pharmaceutical industry could not publish their paper.
We don't really know how to behave in this politicized environment.... I don't think any of those scientists involved are out to be bad people. They think they have the moral high ground. Scientists just don't know how to behave in this politicized environment... and we really need advice from the social psychologists, historians and philosophers on how we should be dealing with this situation.

Science Policy Explained

2009-12-03T20:55:00.005+11:00

In the column on the right I list "science policy" as one of my main interests. Outside of various wonkish and academic circles, I rarely encounter someone who knows what this term means. So I have at the ready, a short summary: science policy is the process of deciding what kinds of new knowledge to pursue--what kinds of science should we fund? Reactions to this explanation range from blank stares, to feigned interest, to polite but vague efforts to relate it to something recently read, thus demonstrating comprehension and enthusiasm. Anyway, it usually takes a lot more explanation.

But today, I'll let someone else do that work for me. NatureNews has just posted an article by Dan Sarewitz (subscription required; if you're at ASU, click here), which provides a straightforward and compelling example of what science policy is, and why it is important. As there is a subscription required to view the link, I'll quote liberally from the article in this post (my emphasis throughout), so you can get a sense of it. (Oh, and I should mention that Dan is my PhD adviser, so... please excuse the shameless adviser worship!)

Dan is writing about differing approaches to resolving the problem of harmful chemicals in the environment. The traditional approach is often fraught with difficult political battles:

Regulation of toxic chemicals is supposed to be based on science, mainly using epidemiological and animal-model approaches to assessing risk. ... The United States remains gridlocked in an adversarial system that pits those with an interest in using a particular chemical — industry and its allies, for the most part — against those who want to get rid of it — environmental groups and their allies, for the most part. ... The result is a morass of litigation, politics, science and uncertainty, in which debates over how to regulate some chemicals drag on for decades while the backlog of unevaluated substances grows unabated.

But a group in Massachusetts--the Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI)--has adopted a different approach to research that helps to avoid the adversarial nature of battles over chemicals:

The idea is this: because chemicals are valued for their functionality, the sensible procedure is not to ban or restrict toxic compounds, but to replace them with safer ones.

... For example, the US Environmental Protection Agency regulates the solvent trichloroethylene, but its health effects remain disputed and it is still widely used. The standard scientific approach would be to do more research on how trichloroethylene behaves in groundwater and in humans to reduce risk uncertainties before tightening the regulatory noose.

Instead, TURI found alternatives to the compound, such as non-chlorinated solvents with no known health risks, and water-based, ultrasonic cleaning processes. TURI researchers tested the substitutes for effectiveness and developed cost–benefit estimates. They worked with small firms to understand barriers to adoption, and cooperated with state agencies and professional organizations to demonstrate the replacements. The result: a 90% reduction in trichloroethylene use over two years.

This is a different approach to resolving conflict over regulatory issues.

TURI thus turns adversarial regulation on its head by making firms that use toxic chemicals into constituents for safer chemicals.

But crucially, it also involves a different approach to the scientific research that accompanies regulation:

It evades endless debates over uncertainty by focusing on finding solutions rather than diagnosing problems. This type of research does not generate many high-prestige publications or huge federal grants, but between 1990 and 2005 TURI helped Massachusetts firms to reduce toxic chemical use by 40%, and chemical waste by 71%.

The key point here is that the kind of knowledge available defines our approach to solving difficult social problems. In Dan's example, decisions about research structure the debate over regulatory policy. If we spend millions on understanding the role of a controversial chemical in our bodies or the environment, rather than doing research to find potential replacements for that chemical, we argue over uncertainties, rather than focusing on solutions.

Quite often, this simple point is lost on (or ignored by?) the many many different agencies that fund scientific research with your tax dollars. TURI seemed to face certain death earlier this year, and only barely scraped together enough funding to survive until next year.

Meanwhile, it was the best of times for big science, as the US government pumped more than $20 billion in stimulus funds into federal research agencies. In early August — at about the same time that lay-off notices went out to TURI employees — presidential science adviser John Holdren and Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag sent a memo to federal agency heads emphasizing the need to "develop outcome-oriented goals for their science and technology activities … and target investments toward high-performing programs".

Yet shoving billions into existing institutions will produce more of what society already has, regardless of whether that's what it actually needs. So, on 28 October, the National Institutes of Health announced a $30-million stimulus grant to study the health effects of bisphenol A, a chemical used in plastics production. No doubt many peer-reviewed publications will result — but substitutes for plastics containing bisphenol A are widely available, and children's products containing it are already being phased out.

There is a lot more to be said about this problem, and I will undoubtedly write more about it in future posts. For now, suffice it to say that this is not just a problem for the fields of chemistry and public health. This kind of narrow-mindedness is taking place in many different fields of research. Government agencies are throwing billions of dollars into research that, while certainly relevant, is not bringing us any closer to solutions to some of our most pressing problems. For these agencies, science policy is simply a battle--a fight for more money for the same thing. As Dan concludes:

US science policy is based on the idea that more money is the best route to more social benefit. TURI teaches us otherwise.

Motive and Source vs. Content

2009-12-02T09:06:00.002+11:00

In my recent post on the CRU email hack, I wrote the following about the Competitive Enterprise Institute:

Obviously the motives of CEI are, as always, to detract from the credibility of climate science writ large, but that should not detract from the legitimacy of their core question, which relates to the conduct of public employees who should be accountable to taxpayers.

I also wrote this about the Wall Street Journal:

Whatever you think about climate change, and whatever you think about the motives of the WSJ, I hope that you agree with that point [about further investigation of the conduct of climate scientists].

I've been reflecting about the caveats I made in these statements about the motives of a conservative think tank, like CEI, and the credibility of a source like WSJ, which has history of editorials criticizing mainstream views of climate change. Why does it feel necessary to direct attention to what is actually being said, and away from the inferred motives?
These kinds of statements are necessary because so much of the debate over climate change is focused on who you are, and where you come from, rather than the content of the words coming out of your mouth.

A couple of years ago I attended a lecture on Capitol Hill, given by a prominent academic. It goes without saying that this setting is very different from an academic conference. During Q&A nutcases from every end of the political spectrum were very much in evidence, airing conspiracy theories, tales of destruction, and a variety of other far-out "questions," ostensibly related to the topic of climate change.

In the midst of all this, a man from the right-wing Heritage Foundation came to the microphone, where he calmly and politely asked a question about the difference between information in the IPCC assessment reports, and statements made by Al Gore in his movie, An Inconvenient Truth. As far as I'm concerned, this is a legitimate question, deserving of an answer, no matter who is asking it. It was not accompanied by snide remarks, or innuendo. It was very much on topic.

Unfortunately, the fact that this person works for an organization with political views different from her own sent the speaker into an unproductive and, in my view, very unflattering diatribe. She questioned the motives of the audience member, and went on to vilify his employer, refusing to dignify the actual question with a response.

Now, she may have been right about the motives, but what did she accomplish by avoiding the question? Did she convince anyone of anything by so quickly going on the attack? In my view the main outcome of the exchange was to reinforce the perceived boundaries between two camps.

I think that people embroiled in the climate debate are exhausting themselves with the task of trying to keep everyone neatly in two boxes: wreckless evil skeptic deniers, and good responsible worried citizens. Before you talk to someone you have to do some kind of political arithmetic in your head to see which box the person falls into, and the result defines your engagement with that person.

Maybe on Capitol Hill this comes with the territory. But when such a mindset spills into the scientific world, you can expect to get exactly the kind of obstructive behavior demonstrated by the CRU emails.

Headline Wall: still growing

2009-12-01T10:58:00.002+11:00

Time for an update on the climate headline wall. It's grown a bit from last time. If I had not been in Sydney for the last week this would have grown quite a bit more. It's probably best that I missed all the craziness over the self destruction of the liberal party, because it would have worn out my scissors, and anyway this wall project is supposed to last longer than two weeks!

All of this coverage raises an interesting problem of drawing lines. In theory, any or all of the Age's breathless, and almost joyful coverage of the demise of the liberals as they tear themselves apart could arguably constitute climate change news. But the more you read it, the more you wonder if this is really about climate and the ETS, or if the actual policy at the heart of this controversy even matters any more. I have not yet encountered a story that explains the ETS legislation with any depth.

It may be dominant, but the ETS legislation is not the only issue on display here. There are some adaptation related stories, including some coverage by the AGE of the fishing industry on the Kiribati Islands, and an interesting story in the Australian about the recent Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), where climate change dominated the agenda, at the expense of human rights, and political issues like Zimbabwe.

Incriminating? Stupid? Both?

2009-12-01T10:22:00.000+11:00

Following up on the CRU email post from yesterday, the Sunday Times has a column called "Flushing Out the High Priests of Climate Change," in which he argues that the behavior of scientists involved in the controversy "is not necessarily incriminating, but it is stupid."

...You can hardly blame busy scientists who have spent their lives amassing a pile of data, which they have interpreted in their own way, for not wanting to release it to people who want to rubbish it. Still, release it they should, and it is up to the scientific establishment to set out better ground rules and insist on more openness. The problem is that establishment science has no means of engaging with outsiders in the blogging age. It needs to wake up.

No wonder the public is confused. No wonder journalists have a choice between waiting for the occasional tablet of stone from the keepers of the global warming flame, or joining the newer, hipper fraternity of bloggers who snigger about ManBearPig, the bogus global warming monster in South Park’s skit on Al Gore. This polarisation means that a considered view on global warming is much harder to achieve, so in the end people simply go for the belief that feels right for them.
Working scientists may be grumpy about the unfairness, but far higher standards are expected of them than of the rude blogger-sceptics who are crowing about the embarrassment.
Tough. They should get over it. If the high priests of global warming want to convince us that we could face a man-made rise of 4C in the global temperature this century, then they have to engage with their critics instead of hiding away in their ivory towers.

Who's the Boss of Science?

2009-11-30T15:10:00.005+11:00

[This is a cross-post from SoapBox over at Arizona State University's Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes (CSPO).]

Thanks to the theft and publication of years worth of email from the Climate Research Unit (CRU), a major scientific center devoted to climate science, we now have an interesting picture of the at-times-questionable conduct of a number of top researchers in the field.The media and blogosphere are abuzz with commentary, analysis, and introspection from all corners. Initiatially there were two major narratives:

What this means for the debate over climate change itself. If you are a hardcore skeptic or conspiracy theorist, this is a eureka moment, revealing once and for all the vast global plot to pull one over on humanity. If you are a true believer, you cast the emails as a not-so-flattering view of the messy business of science, with no impact whatsoever on the credibility or veracity of human induced climate change. Nothing to see here, people. Move along.
Cause for revisiting the values and professional norms of scientific research, particularly peer review, transparency, and openness. In this somewhat more nuanced discussion, we see that the scientists, regardless of the quality of their work, have violated cherished norms by which science proceeds. Climate Audit, seen as a haven for skeptics, has been fighting for better data access for years. Real Climate argues that the community has made an effort, deflecting from accusations of data dumping and cover-up. As for peer review, Roger Pielke has a good post on the role of peer review, and the way in which climate change politics has led some scientists to stray from this traditional model:

The sustainability of climate science depends upon our ability to distinguish the health of the scientific enterprise [meaning in part the integrity of peer review] from the politics of climate change. The need to respond to climate change (which I support) does not justify sacrificing standards of scientific integrity for political ends. In fact, as the events of the past week show, when standards of scientific integrity are compromised, the political consequences can be double edged.

Yes, a lapse in scientific integrity is bad for science, but it's worth thinking about why it's also bad for us, the broader public. We need to remember that this work is done almost entirely on our dime. In that sense, the public more or less owns science, much the same way we own a democracy. The public invests in science for a variety of reasons, and they have a right to expect, not just results and advances, but that science fulfill the values that underpin our investment.

I would like to think that scientists who receive my tax dollars are conforming to the norms of peer review, and pursuing transparency and openness. As Mike Hulme points out over at DotEarth (my emphasis):

The key lesson to be learned is that not only must scientific knowledge about climate change be publicly owned — the I.P.C.C. does a fairly good job of this according to its own terms — but the very practices of scientific enquiry must also be publicly owned, in the sense of being open and trusted.

But I also want to be sure that they're not fighting an ideological war from their cubicle at NASA (I suppose that sort of thing is reserved for the DOD and its contractors!). The Wall Street Journal discusses the efforts of scientists to delete emails about their research, along with other apparent attempts to withhold data:

these scientists feel the public doesn't have a right to know the basis for their climate-change predictions, even as their governments prepare staggeringly expensive legislation in response to them.

However, we do now have hundreds of emails that give every appearance of testifying to concerted and coordinated efforts by leading climatologists to fit the data to their conclusions while attempting to silence and discredit their critics. In the department of inconvenient truths, this one surely deserves a closer look by the media, the U.S. Congress and other investigative bodies.

Whatever you think about climate change, and whatever you think about the motives of the WSJ, I hope that you agree with that point.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute provides another example. In a decidedly (and characteristically) unconstructive move, they announced that are suing NASA for their failure to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests for documents related to the conduct of researchers who blog for Real Climate:

The information sought is directly relevant to the exploding “Climategate” scandal revealing document destruction, coordinated efforts in the U.S. and UK to avoid complying with both countries’ freedom of information laws, and apparent and widespread intent to defraud at the highest levels of international climate science bodies. ...[This is] inappropriate behavior for a taxpayer-funded employee, particularly on taxpayer time.

Whatever headaches might have been temporarily avoided by evasion of the data issue up until now will surely be multiplied as a result of legal actions such as this. Obviously the motives of CEI are, as always, to detract from the credibility of climate science writ large. But that should not detract from the legitimacy of their core question, which relates to the conduct of public employees who should be accountable to taxpayers.

The CRU emails highlight the fact that climate science needs to get its house in order with respect to its own internal dynamics, restoring mutual respect and professional integrity. But it also needs to focus intently on its relationship to the public--not just in terms of communicating effectively to the masses, but also ensuring accountability to the boss: us.

Emissions Policy Dogma

2009-11-30T15:08:00.005+11:00

Here is one reason that international agreements on climate change face such huge problems. A story in the Australian today makes the following observation:

Despite the willingness of the US and China to put figures for emissions cuts on the table over the past few days, most leaders have given up the idea of reaching a treaty-level agreement because of glaring differences in the plans proposed and widespread disagreement.
Both the US and Chinese plans are tailored to their own economic circumstances and fall short of tougher remedial action sought by the European Union.

And the fact that two countries would have differing policies that respond to local economic conditions... this is a problem?

Wouldn't it make more sense to recognize that a diversity in responses to climate change is inevitable? And given how difficult it is for any nation to deliberately manipulate its energy system in order to control emissions, should we not welcome a diversity of approaches and study which ones prove effective?

The above snippet is just a minor, tacit example of rampant climate policy polarization: the mentality that you either support the mainstream policy proposal, or you are by definition a skeptic denier who hates science.

This sort of assumption has become extreme in the US (see here, here, and here), but it's also well engrained here in Australia, as demonstrated by Rudd's chilling speech about climate skepticism. The problem is not that public figures speak out against the views of climate skeptics; it is that they label anyone who disagrees with their policy proposals a skeptic.

How Decision Making Influences Decision Making

2009-11-24T19:45:00.002+11:00

My wife and I recently were offered the use of a car while we are here in Australia. This is very tempting. We hope to get out of the city as often as we can to explore our surroundings, go on camping trips, and just see as much of this country as we can during our year-long stay. And our apartment comes with a parking spot, so all signs point to yes.

But at least for now, I think we'll pass. The reason? We want to establish a pattern of walking, biking and using public transportation while living in Melbourne. It's good for us, good for the environment, and is in keeping with the kind of community we want to live in. In theory, we could take the car, only use it when we're leaving the city, and stick to our original plan getting around locally without it. But having come from sprawling Phoenix, we know how easy it is to develop bad habits when there is an easier option.

So now we can still rent a car and get out, but it's not just sitting there waiting for us. Now we can't just hop in and drive to Victoria Market when we're feeling too lazy to take the tram. In making this first order decision, we have deliberately set up our circumstances to influence the likely outcome of our daily (second order) decisions about transportation.

In thinking this through, I realized that this kind of first order choice underlies all sorts of second order decisions that we make about our personal lives. We are constantly trying to live up to our own expectations of ourselves, and our surroundings are part of what determines our ability to do so. I know that eating less meat is a good way to reduce my overall environmental impact, but I have varying degrees of motivation and success in achieving that. A lot of it has to do with what happens to be in my fridge. My food-buying decisions influence my eating decisions.

Ok, put that way it seems kind of obvious, but I think there is an important point buried here:
our values are not necessarily a perfect reflection or prediction of our behavior. This helps to explain Al Gore's astronomical frequent flier mileage, and author Jared Diamond's Bel Air mansion (Diamond wrote Collapse, which explores how overconsumption led to the demise of various civilizations).

A friend of mine at Arizona State University is involved in an interesting research endeavor to find ways of helping people live up to their own expectations. In what they call Game As Life--Life As Game (GALLAG), a person would use interactions between an online game and his or her real life to provide incentives that help in achieving various goals. In engineering speak:

Ubiquitous computing and personally tailored game scenarios integrate activities across the virtual and physical domains, holistically throughout everyday life. Influences and activities in the game scenarios affect real life and vice versa; influences and activities in real life affect the game. Several methods of experience and behavioral assessment, and environmental, contextual, and physiological sensors, are being used in conjunction with participatory design approaches that include end-user- programming. This agenda empowers users to create their own synergies between their on-line activities and helps them achieve their personal real-world aspirations. Ultimately, GALLAG is leading to “Life Long Games” that provide persistent, supportive, and actualizing experiences.

If that seems a little out there, well, I know what you mean. But if we're going to be so plugged in all the time, the idea of using that to help us live the kinds of non-virtual lives we want to live seems pretty appealing.

Cancer Screening: Doubts and Difficulties

2009-11-23T11:50:00.004+11:00

It hasn't gotten too much coverage here that I've seen (aside from here and here), but cancer screening is big news in the US these days. I first encountered this very tricky issue in a presentation I attended at a conference on science and technology policy more than three years ago, in which a Dartmouth professor made the controversial assertion that we are over-screening for certain types of cancer, and that this is having detrimental effects on public health. Well, it's safe to say that the issue has grown. The New York Times reported in July:

An upshot of the decades-long war on cancer is the popular belief that healthy people should regularly examine their bodies or undergo screening because early detection saves lives. But in fact, except for a few types of cancer, routine screening has not been proven to reduce the death toll from cancer for people without specific symptoms or risk factors — like a breast lump or a family history of cancer — and could even lead to harm, many experts on health say.

There are a few reasons for this.
First, diagnosis involves a great deal of uncertainty. Is the cell abnormal? Is it malignant? How fast is it developing? These and other questions all impact an assessment of of a person's risk.

Second, cancer treatment is often dangerous, invasive, and life-altering, if not life-threatening.

The more you screen for cancer, the more likely you are to prescribe unnecessary and dangerous treatment. For example:

[Screening for prostate cancer] increases a man’s risk of being treated for a cancer that would never have harmed him in the first place. The European study found that for every man who was helped by P.S.A. screening, at least 48 received unnecessary treatment that increased risk for impotency and incontinence.

The last year has seen announcements by expert groups that recommend less frequent screening for prostate, breast, and cervical cancer. All of them sparked confusion, outrage, denial, and political wrangling. Kevin Sack at the New York Times provides insight into the breadth and importance of this debate:

This week, the science of medicine bumped up against the foundations of American medical consumerism: that more is better, that saving a life is worth any sacrifice, that health care is a birthright.
Two new recommendations, calling for delaying the start and reducing the frequency of screening for breast and cervical cancer, have been met with anger and confusion from some corners, not to mention a measure of political posturing.
The backers of science-driven medicine, with its dual focus on risks and benefits, have cheered the elevation of data in the setting of standards. But many patients — and organizations of doctors and disease specialists — find themselves unready to accept the counterintuitive notion that more testing can be bad for your health.

One of the biggest issues related to science policy in this context is that of formulating expert recommendations. How does one come up with official advice that will result in the largest possible public good? How do translate population statistics to the level of the individual? This is an extremely difficult task, because it involves a lot more than simply assessing the latest scientific/medical research. It also requires understandings of patient and doctor behavior, negotiating the politics of health and well-being, and adoption of a value system related to what constitutes good health and a fulfilling life.

Health advocacy groups can come up with their own answers to these questions, but the government needs to address them as well.

Density, Sustainability, and Urban Transport

2009-11-23T10:25:00.004+11:00

Continuing on the theme of yesterday's post about Melbourne/Australia's growth debate:

Paul Mees, of RMIT has an interesting column in today's paper, in which he calls into question some common assumptions about the relationship between density and public transport, and its implications for sustainability. Mees has applied a more informative density calculation to compare cities, taking into account only "urbanized" land, rather than total land. The result is that a city like Los Angeles turns out to have much higher density than many believe, while New York, which includes the normally forgotten outer Boroughs, has a much lower density than expected. Melbourne comes out somewhere near the middle.

I like Mees' conclusions, which point out that these discussions should maintain a clear focus on what we can actually do to change things in a metropolitan area:

Sustainable transport usage has more to do with transport policy than density, which is excellent news for anyone concerned about the environment. It would take many decades and vast expense to substantially change the density of a city of 4 million people, and we don't have that much time. Climate change and insecure oil supplies are urgent problems, and we need solutions now. Fortunately, transport policies can be changed more quickly and with less disruption than urban form, so we might be able to keep our leafy suburbs and still save the planet.

This echoes what I mentioned yesterday: we cannot necessarily control growth directly. What we can control (and thus, what we should be focusing on in discussions of growth) is the policy context in which growth occurs.

To Grow Or Not To Grow? That is the (wrong) question.

2009-11-22T15:16:00.005+11:00

Last week there was a lot of coverage of issues related to immigration, population growth, and urban growth after the state planning minister said that Melbourne's urban-growth boundary urban-growth boundary will not be moved again in his lifetime. This prompted a variety of soul searching coverage from various Australian news outlets, typically bringing up a lot of worries:
there's not enough water, there's already too much traffic, sprawl is becoming a problem, but there isn't enough space in the current urban area for all these people....

A conversation about how large cities “want” to grow is worth having (though we should not confuse having the conversation with the notion that anyone can directly control this phenomenon). As many will point out, this is fundamentally about quality of life, and the values of the people who already live here. A common worry is that adding so many people within the city’s boundaries will make the whole place simply unlivable. So, by this logic if we want to maintain the status quo of pleasant urban life (after all, Melbourne is apparently the third most livable city in the world), the thing to do is either limit population growth, or expand the city's geographic boundaries.

But this is oversimplifying the problem in a couple of ways. First, the number of people in a city is not necessarily the factor which determines the livability of a place. New York City is far denser than Phoenix, but this does not make it an inherently worse place to live. In fact, I think NYC's density is one of its best attributes. Far more important to me than the sheer number of people in a city is how those people are accommodated. If it is through sprawling development connected by large roads you get one outcome, which I happen to dislike. On the other hand, we can encourage density, effective public transportation, and plenty of green open spaces within urban areas, and get an entirely different outcome, which I happen to favor. These different pathways have consequences for all kinds of other interconnected problems beyond livability: sustainability, water use, energy intensity, carbon emissions, public health... the list goes on.

Secondly, presented as a problem of how the people here want this place to be, the debate is far too myopic. Large cities cannot take an isolationist approach, charting a plan that ignores and even shuts out the problems of the country and the world. The Sydney Morning Herald pointed this out:

As the experts tackle the future shape of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, they ought to keep half an eye on the bursting mega-cities and rural poor in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. It would show both conceit and naivete to advocate that this vast continent simply shut its doors and leave the rest of the world to its problems.

To put this in perspective, consider a story about a US-China partnership to develop zero emission cars, which was discussed in Andy Revkin’s New York Times blog “Dot Earth” recently. Revkin found valuable insight in the comments of Professor Lee Schipper (Stanford/Berkeley):

He’s quite worried that the program is looking at cars mainly from an energy-efficiency context, instead of how they will shape and affect China’s fast-expanding cities in a larger sense. “Creating a zero-carbon car for China tomorrow won’t solve the much bigger problems of urban congestion, traffic fatalities and the paving over of once-beautiful cities to make room for more cars,” Dr. Schipper said. “The discussions should back up. Energy is only a means to an end. What are the ends, urban access and mobility, or cars for a small minority?”

Similarly, population size is only one indicator of how a place is, and controlling it is only one means among many. This type of thinking is missing from what I’ve seen in the discussion here in Melbourne so far.

The Climate Headline Wall

2009-11-22T14:40:00.005+11:00

I've signed up for home delivery of The Age, in an effort to get myself better informed about the political landscape here. I just do better with a hard copy, sad to say.

I've noticed right off the bat that climate change--usually emissions policy--is on the front page quite frequently, so for fun I've decided to embark on a little installation project. Starting yesterday, I'm going to try to put every front page climate story, and every headline related to climate up on The Climate News Wall. Maybe this will provide an interesting way of looking at how coverage changes over the next year. Of course, this will be biased to coverage by The Age, but hopefully that won't mar the effort too much. Photo above is The Wall after two days. Not too much to go on so far, but we have one big front page piece on adaptation, surrounded by a ton of political coverage of the ETS scheme.

No doubt this ratio will continue...