Meteorologists know a lot about climate, or at least they should. But are they the best group to be promoting policy responses to say ‘climate change’? Once upon a time scientists mostly just provided quality information, and then those with, for example, expertise in economics, looked for best potential policy solutions?
Anyway, I have just received** this information from the American Meteorological Society explaining that they more-or-less have the science of climate change sorted, and now want to mediate a very open and very public discussion on potential policy responses:
“The American Meteorological Society, the nation’s leading professional society for those in the atmospheric and related sciences, recently launched a new weblog (blog) to address the challenging policy issues related to climate change. The goal is to help decision makers at all levels make sound policy based on the
best available information.”
“From a policy standpoint, the important scientific questions about human caused climate change are largely settled. Society faces serious risks and complex choices about how to handle them. We need to confront the most contentious policy issues as openly and straightforwardly as possible. That way we may be able to overcome
the stumbling blocks that keep preventing us from dealing with climate change. AMS wants to help by making sure that it is knowledge and understanding that drive our policy choices.
“ClimatePolicy.org will encourage exchanges among experts, policy-makers, journalists, and the broader society. The blog will build on the knowledge of some of the world’s leading climate experts who come from the United States’ most renowned institutions. The core contributors include Joe Aldy (Resources for the Future), Scott Barrett (Johns Hopkins University), Dan Kammen (University of California, Berkeley), Mike MacCracken (Climate Institute), Mike Mastrandrea (Stanford University), and Michael Oppenheimer (Princeton University). With this broad range of expertise, ClimatePolicy.org will explore and analyze society’s options for reducing climate risks while also increasing economic opportunities and incorporating ethical values. These expert contributors, along with reader input from around the world, will help encourage a full assessment of potential responses to the threats posed by climate change.” [End of quote]
As I see it there are two options: mitigation and/or adaptation.
In order to mitigate, countries like Australia are looking at reducing emissions through the introduction of carbon trading or alternatively a carbon tax. There is always the option to do nothing, what a friend described to me the other day as “the third way”.
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** Information received via David, thanks.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Jen – wouldn’t you need some economists and meteorologists together to sort out climate change.
And some biologists, agriculturalists, engineers, chemists, big business, politicians (!?), and the rest of us too facing whatever happens with mitigation and adaptation.
On your third way comment – maybe the best Australia can do is influence the rest of the world – getting clean coal technology into China a highlight?
The moment anyone says they want a “very open and very public discussion” on a topic, check your wallet. If it happens to still be there, good. It may shortly become thinner.
Luke,
What do you mean by “together”? I reckon meteorologist and economist are best working independently.
Part of the current problem is perhaps that many journalists have become activists, some failed politician like Al Gore are now lecturing on ‘morality’, some meteorologist are spending much time promoting particular economic solutions, and some once highly regarded economists are being called ‘climate change skeptics’ because they don’t trust/believe the meteorologists.
I realized I had to better understand ‘climate change’ when Tim Flannery, a paleontologist, suggested to Kerry O’Brien a couple of years ago on the ABC TV ‘7.30 Report’ that it might never rain again in Perth.
Jennifer aren’t you an entomologist?
Travis,
Yes, my training is as an entomologist. And for many years I thought I would always be an entomologist. I workd for the same research station, essentially as an entomologist for 12 years. But with some of the many ‘reforms’ introduced by the Queensland Goss government (in which Kevin Rudd was a key advisor) including the appointment of science managers with no understanding of the research they were managing, I got out.
I still work in the science area, but as a writer, an area in which I have absolutely no training.
Fair enough Jen – so obviously you’re not keen on interdisciplinary here. You think the economists will know enough climate? Frankly I thought given the Ian Castle’s experience – the interaction was what was required. But just musing.
Don’t climate impacts permeate into all sectors of the economy, society and the environment.
PS That should read, I have been trained as a scientist, but I have no formal training as a journalist or writer or public commentator.
Luke, there is certainly a place for the interdisciplinary, but I think it has perhaps gone too far?
Asking meteorologists to talk about climate is like asking ecologists to talk about paleontology.
But all disciplines have their idiots and their camera-chasers.
Doomed to failure, unless they are also willing to admit that the universe has a place in climate change with man and man’s impact.
This seems to be the problem in the debate on one side. Anthromorphise everything back to humanity.
This is as old has science, but in the absence of religion it is now man that determines the universe. Very Fuzzy thinking.
Science should never be man centric.
Jen with your admission of lack of writing credentials, you have addmitted to a mortal sin.
You are a blogger.
John,
You just posted to a blog. And with your statement, “This is as old has science,” [sic] your writing credentials have suffered a mortal blow.
Your critical thinking skills seem lacking as well. If there is a problem with those who “[a]nthromorphise everything back to humanity,” one must pause and wonder if things might be anthropomorphised to (ahem) something *not* human. Which of course would be a contradiction of terms and a reductio ad absurdum.
It makes as much sense as having science be not “man centric.” As it happens, all our scientists are humans.
Are you one of those “deep ecology” people?
(I nearly wonder if earthworms have gained access to the internet.)
I came across the site some time back – judging by the responses to comments in the first and a couple of subsequent threads, my initial feel is that it will become a site like RealClimate (which unabashedly pushes the IPCC line) except that it will unabashedly push the Stern line.
I’m keeping an eye on it – hopefully the above won’t eventuate and it will become a great reference site in the future.
cheers
Arnost
Luke, Jen,
I am a believer in the need for inter-disciplinary approaches to issues where the optimal path for addressing that issue requires understanding multiple disciplines.
In this case, climate change certainly requires an inter-diciplinary approach.
The problem is that disciplines have such great depth, it would be extremely rare that one individual could access the full depth of a discipline on their own. I think ideally you would have a ‘management’ team which understand say 2-3 key disciplines at medium depth (I know, this is incredibly arbitrary) and which can discuss/resolve issues at high level. Each of those managers then have teams of specialists under them which can drill deeper into a specific discipline as required.
We can’t expect that specialists in palaeontology will talk to specialist in economics who will talk to x y z and somewhere a decision which weighs all disciplines will be made. You need people who can aggregate understanding and talk across disciplines.
Jennifer
is this the transcript you were thinking of?
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2004/s1138926.htm
He didn’t say it would never rain again, he is saying the reduction in rainfall would make the cities untenable.
So far, the reduction in rainfall prediction has been pretty spot on. Now that the El Nino appears to be breaking, it will be very interesting to see to what extent we get the ‘flooding rains’ we need to fill the dams.
No engineers? Bet nothing happens for ages.
Jennifer,
Tim Flannery is a trained palaeontologist and mammalogist. He is now regarded as an environmental scientist by some. His book The Weather Makers pulled together information from other’s work.
You have admitted you are a trained entomologist but have no training as a journalist or writer or public commentator. You have put pieces together for publication on subjects such as polar bears, climate change and coral reefs and appeared on Australian TV debating the water issue with politicians and others. I sense a whiff of hypocrisy in your comments on interdisciplinary approaches. I am not singling you out, but rather asking where the line is drawn.
BTW Snowy Hydro is out of water and power
Actually Schiller, thanks for Ad Hom,nice to know there are other grubs (could have said sad little maggots but I didn’t, Jen) on the internet.
You are an idiot, scientific process is about observation and minimisation of human effect from the experiment and human error from the measurement. Trying to recognise all causes or variables not only human variables, oh great brain and wonder pen.
The AGW argument from AGW proponents appears to have skewed completely to man made effects without due consideration for all effects.
I don’t think the earth perhaps Gaia for you is a human or has sentience, but I do wonder if people who attack ad hom are chimpanzees that can type.
Etgay a rainbay itgay. Stick to English.
Love your thinking, it’s like watching grass grow very relaxing.
Anybody who uses the term Gaia is a romantic and not a scientist.
Gaia can be used in a scientific sense. Flannery used it to describe the stability of the earth’s climate since the last ice age. There is no ‘gaia’, but the feedback mechanisms in the climate and ecology of the planet had reached a very stable state. It’s not magic, it’s just a state that had been arrived at.
Travis,
Its perhaps gone too far when the American Meteorology Society starts a blog on issues that essentially relate to economics. I reckon it would be better if they started a blog on climate science.
BTW scientists with a training and/or specific interest in entomology have always made the best biologists (eg. Andrewartha and Birch), natural historians and conservationists (eg. E.O.Wilson and this theories of island biogeography), ecologist (eg. T.R.E Southwood… he could teach those ‘polar bear experts’ how to properly sample populations) and evolutionary biologists (Alfred Russel Wallace collected about 20,000 beetle and butterfly specimens during his visit to the Malay Archipelago).
Interestingly, Paul R. Ehrlich, who wrote ‘The Population bomb’, also started life as an entomologist, but he is perhaps an exception to my general thesis.
😉
I guess the Meteorologists are wondering why so many economists don’t seem to want to come to the party.
SJT, I don’t believe that the Gaia concept is useful. It has been my observation that “change is the only constant” in the natural world… nothing stays the same and there is no equilibrium.
Jennifer: Scientists who can’t see some value in the Gaia Hypothesis have no imagination.
As Luke describes there is a natural (seasonal) oscillation even in background CO2. This variation returns to the center despite all the forces and feedbacks. The complex physics here is net result of “life” in the system.
From another point of view I offer a familiar form of intelligence for your consideration such as we had with CDMA and still have with TDMA and a mere watt or two of radio energy. Tell me with your science exactly what’s going between us on a call. Better still; tell us if it’s the same between any two of your brain cells whilst they are in action.
Romantic True: Electro chem. Physics at cell level had me fascinated as I watched our med research.
the use of a metaphor to provide a shortcut isn’t uncommon and by itself doesn’t undermine the science behind it. Scientists pooing pooing the term are overly fashion conscious and failing to focus on the point
Anybody who uses the term Gaia is a romantic and not a scientist.
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I thought Gaia is a scientific hypothesis, using a Greek mythological term (perhaps that is where you get your notion of romance) as a metaphor to communicate the general concept that all life on earth is interrelated.
Jennifer is probably correct if she is saying; there are no political strategies coming from within climate science. RC however appears through correspondence on this blog as close as we can get to peer reviewed climate science and is therefore respected by many outside that exchange.
My contribution here is often aimed at another problem, the sheer lack of first hand experience from another discipline and that’s engineering. Engineers must consider worst case conditions as a matter of fact in all design. Engineers would know how much waste heat or CO2 they generated and where.
From experience the economist argument is often the most dangerous one.
Jennifer Marohasy; the blog offers something RC can’t; our worst case political point of view on the net with a strong QLD flavour on the environment downunder. That’s why I’m here. Believe me; it’s much less fun asking these Q’s do you believe in climate change, man made warming then how do you know etc while walking down the street.
Let’s go again hey
I thought that risk and uncertainty was the field in which only actuarians are the experts? Engineers make mistakes and only use factors of known criteria to avoid failure.
“News and features
Lloyd’s reports £3.7bn profit for 2006
29 March 2007
Lloyd’s has recorded a gross profit of £3.7bn for 2006
Lloyd’s has reported a record profit of £3.7bn for 2006 following a benign year for catastrophe claims.
Lord Levene, Lloyd’s Chairman, said 2006 had been “an excellent year” for the world’s leading specialist insurance market, but warned that it would be unrealistic to expect such a good claims experience this year.
Lloyd’s financial results, published today, also reveal that the market has beaten its competitors in terms of profitability. Its 2006 combined ratio of 83.1% compares favourably with the estimated average of 93% for US property and casualty insurers, 95% for US reinsurers, 94% for European insurers and reinsurers, and 86% for Bermudian insurers and reinsurers.
Lloyd’s central assets have also increased by 14.8% to £1.45bn.
Lord Levene said: “During the year, we benefited from strong underlying conditions and an exceptionally low level of catastrophes. However, it would be unrealistic to expect such a favourable claims experience this year. With a trend for more frequent and severe natural catastrophes we must continue our focus on underwriting for profit. The market is well prepared to meet these challenges.”
Richard Ward, commenting on his first annual Lloyd’s results since becoming chief executive last April, added: “Lloyd’s is in a strong competitive position and our performance compares well with our global peers. Retaining our competitive edge requires an unrelenting focus on all our customers. We have a clear vision to be the platform of choice for specialist insurance and a clear strategy in place to achieve this.””
http://www.lloyds.com/News_Centre/Features_from_Lloyds/Lloyds_reports_37bn_profit_for_2006.htm