Movin' On...

Adapt Already is moving here.

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Welcome to Canberra

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

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

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

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

 

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

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.