A Thank You to Rep. Raul Grijalva, Narrative Killer

With this post I'd like to express a sincere Thanks to representative Raul Grijalva (D-AZ). As most readers here will know, Rep. Grijalva is "investigating" me based on his belief that I do research and public service as a consequence of shadow payments from fossil fuel companies. Ridiculous, I know.

I'm thanking Rep. Grijalva not for the media exposure (e.g., NPR, NYT) nor for the bump in sales of my books (e.g., THB, TCF, D&CC), and not even for the many bits of fan mail via email and Twitter from the fringes of the climate debate. Rather, I am thanking Rep. Grijalva for doing more than his part in helping to kill a narrative.

For more than a decade, leading elements of the science and media communities have advanced a narrative which said that conservatives were stupid and/or evil and were singularly responsible for pathologically politicizing science.  Reality, as the saying goes, has a liberal bias. It turns out that concerns over the "politicization of science" were themselves subject to politicization.

I wrote about this in 2003:

Politicization of science is a problem irrespective of the ideology of those doing the politicizing. Our scientific enterprise is too important to allow putative concerns about the politicization of science to become just another weapon in partisan battle.

And in 2005:

It is clear that there is an ample supply of people willing to use concern over the politicization of science as a political bludgeon to score points on the Bush Administration. It is also clear that there are plenty of others aligned with the Bush Administration willing to do exactly the opposite. The question I have is, where are the analysts (including reporters) who care about the politicization of science irrespective of possible advantages that are lent to today’s partisan political battles?

A decade ago the face of the "Republican War on Science" narrative was a journalist named Chris Mooney, then a fresh-faced 20-something who had capture the zeitgeist in a book by the same title. I offered a detailed critique of of the "War on Science" framing in 2005.  I think that critique stands up pretty well.

For his part, Mooney followed up his "War on Science" book with a bizarre book on eugenics, claiming that US conservatives were somehow genetically inferior.  Mooney turned his prominent role in Republican-bashing into a spot on the board of directors of the American Geophysical Union (I kid you not), as an "expert" in science communication hired by the National Science Foundation to tour the country, training young scientists (still not kidding), and ultimately as a reporter for The Washington Post. Not a bad resume for an English major who has dabbled in eugenics.

This critique is less about Mooney, who I met once and seemed a nice fellow, and more about the power of a narrative. One that has been so fully accepted and reinforced by significant parts of the science and media communities. Mooney captured that narrative and went along for the ride. One day, hopefully, we'll look back at this era and ask "What the hell were we thinking?"

Writing in The New Republic last week Erik Nisbet and Kelly Garrett offered a welcome tonic to the "war on science" meme and a good indication that perhaps, just perhaps, that narrative has reached its sell-by date:

[P]olitical journalism too often treats science like a political issue to be debated by non-experts in televised partisan theater. This type of media coverage about scientific issues often obscures the actual scientific evidence and consensus and unfortunately only deepens polarization by providing partisan cues for both conservatives and liberals.

Our study’s findings suggest that such intensive, polarizing media attention depresses the public‘s confidence in the scientific community for liberals and conservatives alike.

The second lesson is that that science communicators who target conservatives specifically as somehow uniquely deficient when it comes to understanding science turn the focus to a clash of ideologies and away from promoting communication that bridges ideological gaps about science issues—and yes we think such gaps can be bridged!

Demonizing a third of the population in science policy debates by claiming they have an insurmountable psychological deficit does nothing to promote a solution to the challenges of effective science communication—and unfortunately represents our human biases at work.

Nisbet and Garrett are reporting on research which provides a solid empirical basis for rejecting the politicization of the politicization of science as a way of doing business in science or in journalism. It is neither accurate nor effective. Other scholars doing excellent work in this area include Dominique Brossard, Brendan Nyhan, Dan Kahan. Dietram Scheufele, Matt Nisbet, among others. But despite all this good empirical, historical and political research, the "war on science" narrative still has deep roots and fervent adherents.

Which brings me all the way back to Rep. Grijalva. In his "investigation" of me -- someone who probably shares many of his policy preferences, including on climate -- Rep. Grijalva has admitted to not liking my peer reviewed research (and logically the assessments of the IPCC). It is hard to maintain a uniquely Republican "war on science" meme with this type of high profile nonsense going on. Of course, in his Washington Post column, Mooney hasn't acknowledged Rep. Grijalva's "witch hunt." Probably just something deficient in his partisan brain.

As I have often written, there is no "war on science" being conducted by Republicans or by Democrats. There is however plenty of politics. Politics can be conducted in ways that contribute to common interests, or in ways that are pathological. The science community has tried the latter for a decade. It is time to move beyond the toxic partisanship of the most recent science wars. Oddly enough, Rep. Grijalva's overreach helps us to move in that direction.

Kenneth Prewitt on Science and Congress

Kenneth Prewitt, of Columbia University and social scientist extraordinaire,  has an interesting paper out in the January, 2015 Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.  The paper is titled, "Who Is Listening? When Scholars Think They Are Talking to Congress." 

Here is a neat excerpt:

Scientists, social or otherwise, err in claiming that members of Congress are hostile to science or are anti-science when they vote contrary to scientific warnings about climate change or side with Biblical literalists and intelligent design proponents or express misgivings about genetic modification of crops. Members of Congress can decide that they or their constituents have sound economic reasons for digging and burning coal or have religious reasons for embracing intelligent design or place the precautionary principle line on genetic modification more conservatively than what is warranted by the preponderance of science. A member of Congress might take one of these positions, but not the other two; or take all three but at the same time vote for a defense budget that includes spending on missile defense research or vote to double the NIH budget.

To return to a point emphasized in Using Science as Evidence in Public Policy, a lot goes into the policy mix. When there is scientific evidence on the probable outcome of pushing the X button rather than the Y button, we can hope that it is taken into account. The bridge will be more likely to withstand the earthquake, the missile more likely to hit its target, and the school reform more likely to reduce dropout rates. Scientists can and should vigorously assert that scientific evidence makes for more efficacious policy. But scientists—speaking as scientists—cannot argue that economic interests, ideological preferences, or political considerations have no place in policy choices.

When you label someone as "anti-science" because they support different policy choices than you prefer, you are indeed arguing "that economic interests, ideological preferences, or political considerations have no place in policy choices."

It is probably past time for the rest of us to take science back from those who expect it to carry all the weight of politics on highly contentious societal issues.

Running Updates on the "Witch Hunt"

This post will serve as a running update on the so-called "investigation" of my research on disasters and climate change at the University of Colorado. I will update it as warranted, with newer stuff at the top. Pointers and tips welcome in the comments.

That's It

5 March - I'm moving on with my life, hope you are too! If there is anything really significant to add to the updates below, I'll do so, but meantime, I'm going back to writing my book.

Updates

• The lead editorial in Nature this week is about what they call a "fishing expedition" by Rep. Grijalva, saying that his actions send "a chilling message to all academics and to the wider public." Well said.
• Just yesterday, my 2013 Senate testimony that prompted Rep. Grijalva's attack was cited in a Senate hearing. Senator Jeff Sessions asked EPA administrator Gina McCarthy about trends in drought and hurricanes, citing my earlier testimony before that committee. On hurricanes McCarthy responded, "I cannot answer that question. It's a very complicated issue." The answer is of course "They have decreased in frequency and intensity by 20% since 1900." So long as Democrats find it impossible to hear what the data say on extreme events, the topic will remain deeply politicized. (The same is true for Republicans on other issues, hence the pathologically politicized climate issue.) I missed all the mainstream media coverage of McCarthy's struggles with the science.
• In the WSJ, Richard Lindzen of MIT, and another target of Rep. Grijalva, has a hard hitting op-ed in which he discusses the "witch hunt" and connects it to the overall political battle over climate policy and climate science.
• At Science Insider, a blog by Science magazine, I am interviewed by Eli Kintisch (@elikint) about COI, the "witch hunt" (my words) and my Ferrari, with plates that read "KochBros." 
• The American Geophysical Union has reversed course, after first offering support to Representative Grijalva's "investigation." The AGU now says "The rules of transparency affect us all equally, and therefore must be applied equally."  Better late than never, I suppose.
• I just did an interview with AM630 KHOW in Denver with Mandy Connell. We discussed science and politics, and it was another good conversation. You can listen to it below, starting at 72:40.
• The Boulder Daily Camera has a new article up, noting Rep. Grivalja has admitted to "overreach" but hasn't modified his request to my university. The University of Colorado states that it will be responsive to the request. I also am quoted in the article.
• I just did a lengthy, and I think pretty substantive, interview with Garret Lewis at KNST in Tuscon (in Rep. Grijalva's district). We discussed the "investigation," Al Gore, a carbon tax and other things. Lewis was well informed. You can listen to it below.
• Rep. Grivalja has walked back his requests, according to Ben Geman at the National Journal: Climate Letters Went Too Far. Since Rep. Grivalja already has complete access to all my financial COI disclosures, I guess we now know that the letter was an unnecessary stunt designed to smear. Nice.
• The Denver Post (March 3) has an editorial titled "CU rightly defends Roger Pielke Jr. against political bully" -- key quote: Rep. Grijalva's "gambit amounts to a bold, abusive assault on academic freedom."
• Mark Steyn asks why no reporters appear to be interested in the fact that an anonymous person had forewarning of Rep. Grivalja's "investigation" and used a fake email account from a Russian server to taunt those who would later receive letters from the Congressman. Bizarre to be sure, and if I hadn't seen the taunting email in advance I might not have believed it. But as I've said, nothing surprises me in the climate debate anymore.  
• To believe that Rep. Grijalva's "investigation" has merit, you have to believe either (a) in a shadowy conspiracy of fossil fuel interests funneling me (and others) money under the table to produce certain research results and testimony, which have somehow mysteriously passed peer review and been accepted by the IPCC, or (b) there is no such conspiracy, but I (and others) need to be falsely accused and smeared in order to remove us from the debate. Tin foil hat or unethical campaigner? Not a great choice. 
• Several reporters have asked me why I testify before Congress if I know that my results will be used by Republicans. Aside from the interesting framing of this question, I have written on my views of providing testimony here in PDF (following the testimony that I am now being investigated for) and please take careful note of the "To Avoid Any Confusion" bullets on p. 2 of my testimony here in PDF.  

Original bullet points

• This week I have been invited to do various interviews for print/online and radio. I'll update here when these are available and I have more details.
• 9 News in Denver had a excellent story, shown in the video above and online here.
• For those interested in my actual research on climate please head over to this summary in the final post at my climate blog, The Climate Fix.
• A group called the Energy & Environment Legal Group has filed state freedom of information act requests modeled on the Rep. Grijalva letter with 4 universities (Colorado, Arizona, Delaware, Georgia Tech) requesting funding information from 5 researchers. This is obviously a retaliatory act, legitimized by Rep. Grijalva's campaign. It is just as wrong-headed.
• Here in PDF is that strongly worded letter from the American Meteorological Society to Representative Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) warning that he is sending "a chilling message" to all researchers.
• Yesterday I had a nice chat with Representative Jared Polis (D-CO) who represents my district here in Boulder. What we said will stay between us, but it was very a positive conversation.
• Also yesterday @EricHolthaus - a widely read scientist and climate activist - taunted me with the following bizarre Tweet: "It’s getting harder and harder for @RogerPielkeJr to remain relevant." Upon later learning that I'm no longer doing climate change research Holthaus Tweeted that his earlier taunt was no longer relevant. Great evidence that a lot of this is about eliminating unwelcomed voices in the debate.
• At The Breakthrough Institute, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus take the high road and argue that political intimidation of academics in unacceptable, defending both me and Michael Mann.

Five Modes of Science Engagement

In my book, The Honest Broker, I describe four modes of engagement by scientists and other experts. They are ideal types and shown in the figure above. The different modes are a function of how we think about democracy and how we think about the proper role of science in society. The book gets into some more detail, of course, on the theoretical background. Here I respond to a few recent requests to provide a high level overview of the different roles, motivated by a workshop I attended last week at the National Academy of Sciences organized by their roundtable on Public Interfaces of the Life Sciences -- on Twitter #NASinterface. I also list some thoughts based on my experiences engaging experts on these roles over the past several years.

Update: Below is my short talk given at the recent NAS workshop.


The Pure Scientist

This role doesn't really exist in the real world. Well, maybe it does for a brief moment when a beginning graduate student finds someone willing to pay them to do research that s/he is curious about, But in the real world, grant applications and funding comes with expectations of impact and relevance. In any case, if the pure scientist really did exist, the role is defined by a desire not to engage. So for now, let's leave it aside (it'll come back shortly in the context of stealth issue advocacy).

The Science Arbiter

This role supports a decision maker by providing answers to questions that can be addressed empirically, that is to say, using the tools of science.  We are most familiar with science arbiters in the form of expert advisory committees, such as those of the NRC or FDA. Dan Sarewitz and I outlined a formal methodology for thinking about and evaluating this type of role (here in PDF). Science arbitration is common and there are many examples of it being done more or less well, and on issues people care about is never far from political influences.

The Issue Advocate

The defining characteristic of this role is a desire to reduce the scope of available choice, often to a single preferred outcome among many possible outcomes. Issue advocacy is fundamental to a healthy democracy and is a noble calling. Advocacy among scientists is often viewed pejoratively, but I don't think it necessarily has to be. Scientists are citizens and as experts have an important role to play in public debates. Advocating for candidates, policies or even directions of travel is worth doing. I am very precise in my use of this term.

The Honest Broker of Policy Alternatives

The defining characteristic of the honest broker is a desire to clarify, or sometimes to expand, the scope of options available for action. I often use the examples of travel websites like Expedia as examples of honest brokers in action. Sometimes people get caught up on the word "honest" here -- what is important is the commitment to clarify the scope of possible action so as to empower the decision maker. Sometimes honest brokers are unnecessary in a political setting, for instance, when advocacy groups collectively cover the scope of available choice. But sometimes policy making would benefit from greater clarity on choice, or even the invention of choices previously unseen.

You may have noticed that the title of this post promised five modes of engagement and I've only described four. There is a fifth, what I call the Stealth Issue Advocate. This role is characterized by the expert who seeks to hide his/her advocacy behind a facade of science, either pure scientist or science arbiter. This role seeks to swim in a sea of politics without getting wet. It is the fastest route to pathologically politicizing science. It is also what gives scientists as advocates a bad name.

Some points about the above based on my experiences engaging on this framework around the world over much of the past decade.

• In this framework, there are no hidden or alternative roles. This is it. Not long ago a report on science communication used this framework but claimed that I had forgotten a category, that of the "science communicator" who simply wants to elevate the quality of public debate. Nope. There is no such thing. That is a fast track to stealth advocacy.
• It is really hard, especially in highly political settings, for any one individual to play the role of science arbiter or honest broker. This is due to the fact that there are often many views on what "the science" says (including uncertainties and areas of ignorance) or what the possible scope of action looks like. In addition, each of us has biases and idiosyncrasies which can make it difficult to see an issue from multiple perspectives. Even further, it is a rare policy issue where anyone knows everything of relevance. 
• Science arbitration and honest brokering of policy alternatives are best done by committee, ideally, by legitimate, authoritative bodies which are well-connected to policy makers.  
• Where stealth advocacy is concerned, the expert's intent really doesn't matter. I had lunch last week with a couple of members of the National Academy of Sciences who told me that on the issue that they have expertise in, they just want to improve public understanding, and not weigh in on any "side" in the political debate. However, when an issue is already deeply politicized, science is typically already associated with the different "sides." In such a context, any statement by an expert about science absent political context will readily be appropriated in advocacy, regardless of the expert's intention. Stealth advocacy is the result.
• It is a responsibility of the expert to be informed about engagement before engaging. It does no good to explain how you wish the world worked or how it should work a s an excuse for not understanding real-world political context.
• A well-functioning system of decision making and expertise will find all four roles well populated. Context of course matters for what roles are more or less important. The proper role of an expert in the face of an approaching tornado will be very different than in the context of setting a national abortion policy.
• Context will determine the proper roles for any particular expert. Inevitably, most of us will find ourselves in advocacy roles. For instance, I am a strong advocate for certain climate policies (e.g., a carbon tax), but also for FIFA reform and (soon) for abolishing "sex testing" in the Olympic sports. Simultaneously, I have been playing a supporting role on a NRC committee tasked with science arbitration and honest brokering. When I do genealogy research for fun, that might be considered pure science. 
• Because advocacy is often a default role and it is so seductive, there is a need to support the institutionalization of mechanisms of science arbitration and honest brokering. In most highly political issues, there does not appear to be any shortage of advocates. In fact, at times our most authoritative science advisory bodies are seduced into playing the role of issue advocate, leading to a loss of their legitimacy in public debates.
• There are strong incentives for science to be politicized but also for politics to become scientized. Science has great standing among the public. This standing can be seductive and work against thinking about proper roles and responsibility.
• Ultimately, I tell my students that I really don't care what roles they decide to play (although I do recommend against stealth advocacy!) over their careers. What matters is having an open discussion about roles and contexts, and developing a sophisticated understanding of politics. 
• Ultimately, scientific integrity matters because we need expertise in decision making. But maintaining scientific integrity requires careful attention to roles and responsibilities, and sometimes choosing a path that facilitates decision making rather than trying to determine it.

I am happy to discuss this topic further in the comments or on Twitter. There is obviously a lot more in the book, and in various papers and case studies.

News Flash: European Commission CSA Reinstated, Maybe

From Scotland comes this surprising news:

The European Commission has agreed to retain the role of EU Chief Scientific Adviser but it is not expected to stop the Scots incumbent in the position from leaving, it is claimed.

Details of the u-turn were divulged to Scottish Tory MEP Dr Ian Duncan by First Vice-President of the European Commission Frans Timmermans.

There has been no official announcement from the European Commission. In the EC, nothing is final until it is official, and even then subject to a U-turn. Stay tuned.

Regardless what happens, an reinstatement of the Commission CSA should not preempt a much needed conversation about the future of science advice in Europe. It is not enough to have a symbolic office.

The Future of Science Advice in Europe

My latest Bridges column is out, and it discusses the future of science advice in Europe following the termination of the office of chief scientific advisor to the European Commission. Here is an excerpt:

In short, the CSA under President Barosso was largely powerless and disconnected. This state of affairs was not the fault of Glover, who took on the CSA role with energy and enthusiasm. The uncomfortable reality is that establishment of the CSA office was a symbolic gesture towards scientific advice, rather than representing any substantive commitment to improving science advice in Europe (see this paper for background).

From this perspective, President Juncker has actually done the scientific community a favor. For the past three years, most scientific organizations and their leaders seemed perfectly content with a symbolic, ineffectual CSA in the Commission. However, the termination of the office has forced a conversation that probably should have been occurring in far more prominent settings. Such a conversation is now underway (see, e.g., this special issue of the European Journal of Risk Regulation) and should continue.

President Juncker has yet to release details on how his administration is to structure advisory mechanisms, noting through a spokesperson: “President Juncker believes in independent scientific advice. He has not yet decided how to institutionalize this independent scientific advice.” However the Commission eventually structures its offices, a few issues will no doubt continue to be at the center of debates over science advice in Europe. Here I suggest several . . . 

Read it here.

Comments welcomed!

A Proposed Professional Masters in Science & Technology Policy at University of Colorado

As I've occasionally mentioned on Twitter, we here at the University of Colorado's Center for Science and Technology Policy Research are proposing to turn our graduate certificate program into a full-fledged professional master's program.

We'd welcome your input and comments.

Here are some details of the draft proposal:

• 30 hours of total coursework, 9-12 months
• 3 required courses (9 hours of coursework)
• Science and Technology Policy
• Science and Society
• Quantitative Methods of Policy Analysis
• 18 hours of electives chosen from 6 focal areas:
• general policy research
• space policy
• bioethics
• environmental policy
• international STP
• independent study (i.e., build your own with adviser)
• 3 hours in a Maymester course
• Held in DC in partnership with the CU in DC program.
• or with international partners

Details on pricing etc. are TBD.

We welcome any thoughts or feedback, especially comments on whether you'd be interested in such a program, and why or why not.

Thanks!

Gasoline Intensity of the US Economy at Recent Low (Take Two)

Thanks much to David Appell in the comments, who motivated me to take a second look at this analysis. I had been using a subset of total gasoline consumption in an earlier analysis, and he correctly points out that a more comprehensive measure is better. So this post has subsequently been revised.

Today the US EIA announced that projected household gasoline consumption in 2015 is expected to be the lowest in 11 years. That motivated me to update a graph I did a few years ago on the gasoline intensity of the US economy, defined as the total expenditures at the pump by US consumers as a proportion of overall GDP. (Note: I use annual values here and ignore higher frequency variations.)

That graph is shown above for the period 1976-2015, and shows gasoline as a percentage of overall GDP. The data comes from the US EIA (gasoline product supplied and prices) and the White House (GDP). Data for 2015 are obviously projections.

The data shows that as recently as 2011 (and really, much of the past decade) spending on gasoline, as a proportion of GDP, was similar to what it was in the mid-1980s. In 2015 that proportion is expected to be 40% of that in 1980 and more than a third less than what it was in 2010.

The bottom line here is that the gasoline intensity of the US economy is lower, by a long shot, than at any time in recent history. That is good news.

Blog Break

UPDATE 12/1: Going forward all my climate-related posts will appear at a new blog, The Climate Fix.

I'm taking a blogging break this fall to focus on a few writing projects. But you can find me over at The Least Thing and SportingIntelligence.

Science Advice Summit

UPDATED: The conference has released a briefing paper: Science Advice to Governments: Diverse systems, common challenges. The conference runs Thursday and Friday Auckland time, so if you'd like to follow along on Twitter etc. I'll post further updates here as warranted.

This week I'll be focusing on issues of science advice to governments, as I attend the "Science Advice to Governments" conference in Auckland, New Zealand. It is being characterized as a science advice "summit." I'll be participating on a panel focused on "Science advice in the context of opposing political / ideological positions" along with the chief scientific advisor to the Australian government, Ian Chubb, and the chief scientific advisor to Defra, Ian Boyd, among others.

The conference is being convened by ICSU and hosted by Sir Peter Gluckman, chief science advisor to the New Zealand government. Not long ago James Wilsdon previewed the conference:

The summit will take place in a year when we've seen important debates in scientific advisory systems worldwide. In the UK, Sir Mark Walport is about to mark his first year as Government Chief Scientific Adviser, during which he has had to tread a careful path through controversies over bees, badgers, fracking and flooding. In Brussels, Anne Glover, Chief Scientific Adviser to the President of the European Commission, has been working tirelessly to persuade more EU member states to appoint national scientific advisers, with a view to establishing an EU-wide network. In Japan, three years on from the Great East Japan earthquake and nuclear meltdown at Fukushima, arguments continue about how to reform structures for scientific advice and risk management. And at the United Nations, a new Scientific Advisory Board, hosted by UNESCO, held its inaugural meeting at the end of January 2014.

All of this suggests that the Auckland meeting couldn't be happening at a better time. Sir Mark Walport, Anne Glover, and their equivalents from India, Malaysia, Japan, Germany, Australia and the Philippines, will be among those attending. Scientific advisers, policymakers, academics – and anyone with an interest in these debates – is invited to register, or to follow developments online.

The conference will likely have a large online presence. I'll blog and tweet (@rogerpielkejr) as I can and the conference itself has a Twitter handle -- @globalsciadvice.

Normalized US Earthquake Damage

UPDATE: Early damage estimate in neighborhood of $1 billion (NYT).

With news of a 6.0 magnitude earthquake today in San Francisco, I thought I'd provide a perspective on historical damage, The data in the table below are estimates of normalized damage for the top 15 14 events in our dataset -- from Vranes and Pielke 2009 (PDF), which I have quickly updated to 2014 values. A normalization seeks to estimate how much damage would occur if a past event occurred with today's level of wealth and development.

There are a lot of uncertainties in earthquake normalization methods, and those interested in digging deeper should have a look at our paper for the gory details. The top event is the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which reminds us that while big earthquakes are rare, they can do lots of damage. For perspective, a repeat of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake could cause more than twice the damage caused by all US tornadoes since 1950.

Rank	Date	Normalized 2014 Damage	Deaths	Magnitude	Location
1	18-Apr-06	$345,207,435,386	2000	8.3	San Francisco
2	28-Mar-64	$38,910,888,527	131	8.4	Anchorage, Alaska
3	18-Oct-89	$37,521,623,532	62	7.1	California, Loma Prieta
4	17-Jan-94	$37,046,374,369	60	6.6	Los Angeles
5	11-Mar-33	$19,340,807,766	100	6.3	California, Long Beach
6	13-Apr-49	$11,078,046,116	8	7.0	Olympia, Washington
7	18-May-80	$9,495,474,795	31	5.2	Washington, Mt St. Helens
8	9-Feb-71	$9,197,179,695	65	6.5	California, San Fernando
9	28-Feb-01	$6,024,383,136	0	6.8	Washingotn, Olympia
10	11-Oct-18	$5,670,099,871	116	7.5	Puerto Rico
11	19-May-40	$5,036,397,660	9	6.5	Imperial Valley (California)
12	21-Jul-52	$4,116,494,364	13	7.7	Central Calfornia
13	19-Oct-35	$3,989,310,216	2	6.2	Montana
14	29-Jun-25	$3,729,835,249	13	6.3	Santa Barbara (California)

New UK Flood Normalization

There are lots of interesting new studies emerging on trends in disasters and extreme events, and their possible relation to changes in climate, human-caused or otherwise. A new paper in the Hydrological Sciences Journal (Stevens et al. here in PDF) finds no evidence for an increase in UK flooding, once the data is normalized for exposure. 

The authors conclude:

Consequences are the combined results of high river flows, pluvial flooding and coastal  flooding, the numbers of people and property exposed to flooding and the effects of flood defence construction and floodplain management policies. The increase in the total number of reported flood events in the 20th century in the UK appears to be a function of the gradual increase in exposure due to urban expansion and population growth. However there is also greater capacity to report flood events. The number of reported ‘Class 3’ flooding events has remained static or decreased slightly over the 20th Century. This is despite the UK population almost doubling and the number of dwelling houses tripling over the same time period.

There is no clear underlying trend in flood reports present in the UK flood data when it is normalised for exposure. Pielke Jr. and Landsea (1998) studied damage caused by hurricanes in the USA. They also found that normalising damage reports to take account of exposure removed the upward trend of losses over time and only left a large decade to decade variation in losses. The lack of a systematic trend in the normalised UK total flood count mirrors these findings. It is also in agreement with studies of trends in river flows (Robson 2002).

As frequent readers here will appreciate, the best way to evaluate the fidelity of any normalization approach is to compare trends in the normalization with trends in the geophysical events. That checks out in this study.

Add Stevens et al. 2014 to the large and growing academic literature indicating that increasing disaster losses cannot at present be attributed to human-caused climate change.

The Failure of the UK Climate Change Act

The Belgian think tank Bruegel points to data showing that the United Kingdom's GDP has returned to pre-economic crisis levels, as shown above. This allows us to do a quick and intuitive examination of how much the UK economy has decarbonized over that time period, and how that rate of decarbonization compares to that implied by the UK Climate Change Act.

As a refresher, decarbonization refers to the rate of decline in carbon dioxide emissions to GDP. In order for the UK to hit the targets prescribed in the UK Climate Change Act for 2022, it will need to achieve consistently an annual rate of decarbonization of  more than 3%, for any GDP growth rate greater than 1% per year. For more detail, and a full exploration of the quantitative implications of the UK Climate Change Act for decarbonization of the British economy, see my 2009 paper in ERL (open access).

With the UK GDP in 2014 at the same level as it was in 2008, it allows us to calculate a simple rate of decarbonization, as it will be exactly equal to the annual rate of emissions decline.

The 12 month (ending 2nd quarter 2008) carbon dioxide emissions for the UK for 2008 was 536.1 million metric tonnes (data here in XLS).  The trailing 12 month (ending first quarter 2014) carbon dioxide emissions for the UK for 2014 was 507.9 million metric tonnes (data here in XLS).

These data imply a rate of decarbonization of -0.9% per year. This is far less than would be needed to hit the targets of the UK Climate Change Act. Last year I calculated an update of the UK decarbonization rate through 2012, which arrived at a similar result. That calculation is shown below.

It is also possible to express the magnitude of the challenge of meeting the targets of the UK Climate Change Act in more intuitive terms. The graph below shows how much carbon-free energy (not electricity) would need to be deployed by 2020 assuming constant demand to 2022.

In my 2009 paper, which was written upon passage of the UK Climate Change Act in 2008, I concluded:

The approach to emissions reduction embodied by the Climate Change Act is exactly backwards. It begins with setting a target and then only later do policy makers ask how that target might be achieved, with no consideration for whether the target implies realistic or feasible rates of decarbonization. The uncomfortable reality is that no one knows how fast a major economy can decarbonize. Both the 2022 interim and 2050 targets require rates of decarbonization far in excess of what has been observed in large economies at anytime in the past. Simply making progress to the targets requires steps of a magnitude that seem practically impossible, e.g., such as the need for the UK to achieve a carbon efficiency of its economy equal to that of France in 2006 in a time period considerably less than a decade.

Further, the focus on emissions rather than on decarbonization means that it would be very easy for policy makers to confuse emissions reductions resulting from an economic downturn with some sort of policy success (cf, McGee 2009). However, as implicit in the Kaya identity, a lower GDP does very little to change the role of energy technology in the economy. So during a downturn emissions may level off or even decrease as policy makers of course seek to preserve (and even accelerate) economic growth. Consequently, a more directly useful metric for policy success for efforts to stabilize carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere is the decarbonization of the economy, represented in terms of carbon dioxide emissions per unit GDP.

A focus on decarbonization as the central goal of carbon policy rather than emissions reductions means that to achieve specific stabilization targets the rate of decarbonization of the UK economy must not only exceed the rate of economic growth, but it must exceed rates of decarbonization observed historically in the UK and in other developed countriesNote5. Because no one knows how fast a large economy can decarbonize, any policy (or policies) focused on decarbonization will have to proceed incrementally, with constant adjustment based on the proven ability to accelerate decarbonization (cf Anderson et al 2008). Setting targets and timetables for emissions reductions absent knowledge of the ability to decarbonize is thus just political fiction. . .

The failure of the UK Climate Change Act is yet to be broadly recognized, but when it is, it will provide an opportunity to recast carbon policies in a more effective manner.

Looking back from 2014, that analysis looks pretty good.

Normalized US Hurricane Losses 1900-2013

Here is the updated normalized US hurricane loss figure through 2013, the red line shows the linear trend (ever so slightly negative, but not significantly so). The source is:

Pielke, Jr., R.A., J. Gratz, C.W. Landsea, D. Collins, M. Saunders, and R. Musulin (2008), Normalized Hurricane Damages in the United States: 1900-2005. Natural Hazards Review 9:29-42. And is updated to 2014 values by ICAT.

How do we know if the normalization is any good? We compare it to trends in hurricane frequency and intensity, and when we do so we find no evidence for a residual bias in our methods. Specifically, US hurricanes have not become more frequent or intense, so there is simply no basis to expect an increase in normalized losses. Of course, this analysis has been replicated several times as well, using different methods and loss data.

Here is that data on trends in US hurricane landfall frequency and intensity:

Costing Climate: It is all Relative

The White House released a report today on "The Costs of Delaying Action to Stem Climate Change" (here in PDF). The report concludes (based on a summary by William Nordhaus in his book, The Climate Casino):

Based on a leading aggregate damage estimate in the climate economics literature, a delay that results in warming of 3° Celsius above preindustrial levels, instead of 2°, could increase economic damages by approximately 0.9 percent of global output.

The report seeks to place 0.9% of output into context by presenting it in terms of the US economy in 2014:

To put this percentage in perspective, 0.9 percent of estimated 2014 U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is approximately $150 billion.

The New York Times, mistakenly, assumes from this that the future impacts of climate change will be $150 billion:

Failing to adequately reduce the carbon pollution that contributes to climate change could cost the United States economy $150 billion a year, according to an analysis by the White House Council of Economic Advisers released on Tuesday.

To be fair, the $150 billion as cost of climate change was repeated by many media outlets. Does anyone read the report?

The actual impacts would be much larger, since the US (and global) economy will be larger in the future. But the White House, nor the media, mention this. Here is why.

Let's assume that the US economy grows at 2% per year to 2100 (both 2% and 2100 are round numbers, feel free to pick others if you like them better). That means that the US GDP will be $82.4 trillion in 2100. From that perspective, the cost of climate change will be an astounding $741 billion!

But that is not right either, as the cost reported by the White House was the marginal cost of going from a global temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius to 3 degrees. According to Nordhaus (Figure 22 in the Climate Casino), the total damage cost of a 3 degree C increase is more like 3.2% of GDP. That equates to a cost of climate change of $2,635 billion! Now we are talking.

So why isn't that huge number presented?

Well, informing people that US GDP in 2100 will increase from $15 trillion today to only $79.7 trillion in 2100, rather than $82.4 trillion, due to the effects of a 3 degree C climate change doesn't sound so scary. This is why William Nordhaus wrote of these estimates in The Climate Casino:

The first surprise is that, for the range of changes that have been calculated, the estimated impacts of climate change are relatively small.

Postscript: For any trouble makers looking to misrepresent my views, I presented a more in depth analysis along these lines before the House Science Committee in 2007 (here in PDF). In that testimony I concluded:

Mitigation provides benefits under all scenarios discussed here, and almost all scenarios presented by the IPCC. According to the IPCC these benefits increase as the time horizon extends further into the future... nothing in this testimony should be interpreted as being opposed to or contrary to the mitigation of greenhouse gases. To the contrary, under all scenarios discussed here the benefits of mitigation exceed its costs. Mitigation is good policy, and many decision makers are now coming to understand that it is good politics, as well. 

My Interview on Departing FiveThirtyEight

If you are curious about my views on no longer writing for FiveThirtyEight and my experiences in the climate debate, Keith Kloor interviews me here. If there is something that you wish Keith had asked but didn't, feel free to use the comments here.

Sack the Science Advisor

So you don't like the advice that your expert advisor is giving? So then how about sacking the advisor? Even better yet, how about getting rid of the entire advisory mechanism?

That is the advice that Greenpeace and other NGOs are giving to European Commission president-elect Jean-Claude Junker. If it sounds a bit like something out of the Richard Nixon playbook, well, it is.

I defend the EU science advisor and the broader structure over at the Guardian. Read it here.

For a deeper dive into science advice in government, see this volume by James Wilsdon and Rob Doubleday. My chapter in that volume on the role of the science advisor can also be found here in PDF.

A New Paper on Disaster Losses and Climate Change

A new paper appeared in Climatic Change this week by Visser et al. which looks at disasters and climate change (open access here).  Like other studies and the IPCC assessment, Visser et al. find no trends in normalized disaster loses, looking at several metrics of economic and human losses.

They conclude:

The absence of trends in normalized disaster burden indicators appears to be largely consistent with the absence of trends in extreme weather events. This conclusion is more qualitative for the number of people killed. As a consequence, vulnerability is also largely stable over the period of analysis.

The top line conclusion here is not surprising, though it is interesting because it uses independent methods on largely independent data. It is consistent with previous data and analyses (e.g., Bouwer 2011, Neumayer and Bartel 2011, Mohleji and Pielke 2014) as well as with the conclusions of the recent IPCC assessments (SREX and AR5).

What is perhaps most interesting about this new paper is their discussion of vulnerability. Some have argued that our methodological inability to fully account for possible changes in vulnerability to losses over time may mask a climate change signal in the data. (It's gotta be there somewhere!) This line of argument has always been suspect, because there are not relevant trends in phenomena such as floods and hurricanes which would lead to an expectation of increasing normalized losses.

Visser et al. take this issue on and offer several explanations as to why vulnerability does not mask any hidden signals:

Firstly, global disaster management initiatives have only recently been put in place. The Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) was adopted by 168 Member States of the United Nations in 2005 to take action to reduce vulnerabilities and risks to disasters (UNISDR, 2011). Although these highly important efforts will certainly pay off in the near future, it is unclear whether they are reflected in the sample period chosen for this study. Similar conclusions are drawn in IPCC (2014). . .

Secondly, it is unclear to what extent adaptation measures work in practice. Heffernan (2012) argues that many countries, and even the richest, are ill-prepared for weather extremes. As an example, he names Hurricane Sandy, which wreaked a loss of 50 billion USD along the northeast coast of the US in 2012. As for early warning systems, Heffernan states that not all systems are functioning well. For example, in 2000, Mozambique was hit by a flood worse than any in its history, and the event was not at all anticipated. Warnings of above-average rainfall came too late and failed to convey the magnitude of the coming flood.

Thirdly, a positive trend in vulnerability may be offset by the increasing number of people moving from rural to urban environments, often situated in at-risk areas (UN 2012). Since many large cities lie along coastlines, these movements will make people more vulnerable to land-falling hurricanes (Pielke et al. 2008), coastal flooding and heatwaves (due the urban heat island effect). With regard to economic losses, Hallegatte (2011) argues that these migration movements may have caused disaster losses to grow faster than wealth.

Fourthly, it is unclear how political tensions and violent conflicts have evolved over large regional scales since 1980. On the one hand, Theisen et al. (2013) show that the number of armed conflicts and the number of battle deaths have decreased slightly at the global scale since 1980. On the other hand, these methods are rather crude as far as covering all aspects of political tensions are concerned (Leaning and Guha-Sapir et al. 2013).

We conclude that quantitative information on time-varying vulnerability patterns is lacking. More qualitatively, we judge that a stable vulnerability V t, as derived in this study, is not in contrast with estimates in the literature.

In short, those who claim that a signal of human caused-climate change is somehow hidden in the disaster loss record are engaging in a bit of unjustified wishful thinking. The data and evidence says otherwise.

The bottom line? Once again, we see further reinforcement for the conclusion that there is no detectable evidence of a role for human-caused climate change in increasing disaster losses. In plain English: Disaster losses have been increasing, but it is not due to climate change.

New Gig

If you are interested in my writings on sports-related matters, you can now find me over at Sporting Intelligence, run by the brilliant Nick Harris.

I have recently completed an evaluation of World Cup predictions and just today have a piece up on doping in sport.

Comments and suggestions always welcomed.

Guest Post: Kerry Emanuel Clarifies a Recent Quote in the NYT

The comment below is by Kerry Emanuel, at MIT, who is clarifying a recent quote of his in the New York Times.

I would like first to thank Roger for allowing me to post this response to the article about John Christy by Michael Wines in Tuesday's New York Times. Although I was quoted accurately, the context in which the quotation was phrased distorted its intended meaning.

Several weeks ago, I had several phone conversations with Mr. Wines about the work of John Christy. In those conversations, I emphasized the value of skepticism in science and also said that I agreed with some elements of John's point of view, in particular, that projections are still highly uncertain, that climate models leave a great deal to be desired, and that some of the decisions that have to be made about how to deal with climate change are very tough indeed. Wines asked me to explain where I differ from John. I told him that we differ primarily in our assessment of the magnitude of climate tail risk. Wines asked me to explain what I meant by "tail risk", and I offered the metaphor of advising a small girl whether she should cross a busy street to catch her bus (a metaphor I have used before).

Unfortunately, the positioning of the quotation within the article makes it seem as though I am suggesting that John is the kind if person who would let the girl take the risk. I state here that I have absolutely no reason to question John's motives; indeed, he strikes me as the sort of person who would risk his own life to save a child who wandered into a busy street. My metaphor was intended only to illustrate the nature of tail risk.