Dr. Judith Curry writes about the UCAR meeting she attended:
Some insight into the dynamics that resulted in a substantial change in emphasis in climate research is provided by a meeting that I attended earlier this week in Boulder: the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) Annual Members Meeting. An overview of UCAR is provided at Wikipedia
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The nutshell of Crow’s presentation is this:
A + B = C
- A: scientific and disciplinary knowledge
- B: impacts of A, communication of A and impacts, and translation A for policy makers
- C: policy
Crow argued that the emphasis needs to be on B, which requires an entirely new structure for universities.
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Whereas I had suffered silently through all this, after the panel discussion, I had to make a statement. Here is my general recollection of what I said:
A plus B most emphatically does NOT equal C. A+B=C represents the linear, “truth to power” model of decision making that has been known for decades NOT to work for complex environmental problems.
Decision making associated with the issues of climate and global change can be characterized as decision making under deep uncertainty. The deep uncertainty is associated with our reliance on projections from climate models, which are loaded with uncertainties and do not adequately treat natural climate variability. Further substantial areas of ignorance remain in our basic understanding of some of the relevant phyiscal, chemical and dynamical processes.
If we as scientists are not humble about the uncertainties and areas of ignorance, we have an enormous capacity to mislead decision makers and point them in the direction of poor policies. Uncertainty is essential information for decision makers.
Climate scientists have this very naive understanding of the policy process, which is aptly described by the A+B=C model in the context of the precautionary principle. This naive understanding is reflected in the palpable frustration of many climate scientists at the failure of the “truth” as they “know” it to influence global and national energy and climate policy. This frustration has degenerated into using to word “denier” to refer to anyone who disagrees with them on either the science or the policy solution.
The path that we seem to be on, whereby the science is settled and all we need is better communication and translation of the science to policy makers, not only has the potential to seriously mislead decision makers, but also to destroy atmospheric and climate science in the process.
There was applause. Not a standing ovation, but applause from a substantial segment of the 200+ audience.
There were several other interesting comments in the discussion. One person brought up the point that the U.S. land grant universities had a long tradition of working with decision makers in the context of agricultural extension, etc. Another person put up a new equation, something like this:
C = A + B + X(AB)**n + f(C)
which, to the extent an equation like this is useful, much better reflects the actual decision making process than A+B=C.
At the break, close to 20 people came up to me to thank me for what I said, “somebody had to say it,” and few others who liked what I said but seemed to be hearing this kind of an idea for the first time (I of course steered them to judithcurry.com)
More here h/t to Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.
I’m so naive that several years ago when the UCAR contract came up for Federal renewal, I thought there would be a new contractor.
In dreams.
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Mr Watts
USGCRP ? Or UCAR?
REPLY: Yes
“Uncertainty is essential information for decision makers.”
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It is the only essential such information. Everything else is just noise.
Anyone who thinks linearly about climate is deluding themselves.
Good for you! (good for all of us)
Assumption of a status quo weather wise is a very dangerous thing, I wonder why so many think that way?
Kudos !!
Glad you said it !!
It also needs to be mentioned at every turn that the policy side is just as uncertain as the science side. We’ve seen habitat destruction of endangered species for biofuels, the slaughter of innocent people for carbon credits, the raising of food prices worldwide for ethanol, etc ad nauseum.
The Law of Unintended Effect reigns supreme.
Here’s the comment I left on the thread at judithcurry.com:
Dr. Curry, I’ve excerpted some of your commentary at WUWT. I’ll try to keep in with your comment policy.
Being in the news business for years, I find the constant focus on “B” in the vein of “if we just keep pushing the message, maybe in a different way” to be an indicator of the myopic viewpoint held by many in the climate science and climate activism community.
The public is burned out on the message, because the message being pushed today offers no hope nor workable solutions,
I think George Monbiot summed up the communications failure pretty well back in May: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/04/monbiot-smacks-head-first-into-reality/
Throughout human history, positive change has come to pass by improving the human situation, not by stifling it. IMHO until we have a better solution for our broad 24/7 energy needs (not just when the wind blows and the sun shines, Thorium power comes to mind), the best we can do is improve efficiency, make what we do now cleaner, and adapt (as we always have) as the climate changes from the wide non-linear variety of effects and feedbacks.
Hit ’em with that “ankle of integrity”, Dr. Curry!
I note on JC’s site there are those who say with the uncertainty, the probability of underestimating CAGW and impacts equals the probability of overestimating. This is just not so. When the CAGW institutions and individual power drivers of CAGW essentially run the show, you can be 100% certain (or almost) that they have exaggerated the worst possible scenarios as far as can be done in good conscience with the limited knowledge available (especially when conscience has been anesthetized somewhat). An example: a pro olympics group might estimate that the cost of putting on the show is 600million whereas a fanatical hater of such things would estimate perhaps 2 billion. The bill comes in at somewhere around 1billion (BC Olympics). The probabilities in CAGW have been heavily stacked – cooking data, hiding data, hiding the decline, cheering at the death of a critic, fantasizing about punching out a critic with a good argument, erasing the MWP, Little Ice Age and all the other extremes that occurred without the help of CO2, having journals blackballed, editors fired……. These things allow you to use up a lot of probability on the high side for CAGW. Hey there is even a remaining significant probability that we could go the other way and freeze to death.
Rattling jawbones
Beat the drums.
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Not too many months ago you might have been “grumbled down ” a la English Parliament, no?
I take this as hope that this thing hasn’t gone to far to be reversed.
Heh, sceptics are the 99%.
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Thank you, Dr Judith, for having the courage to speak up for good science.
Dr. Curry,
In my opinion, UCAR/NCAR is more the “Belly of the Beast” than NOAA. Thank you for standing up and saying what you believe, knowing that hostility was probable. You are my hero of the day! If there is some way I can provide help/support, please let your needs be known.
I invited Richard Betts (Hadley Centre, IPCC Lead author) to join in via twittter, and he made an excellent comment.. that I think is worth repeating here.
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http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/08/usgcrp-draft-strategic-plan/#comment-119695
Judith
I agree with your comments that A+B does not equal C and that there are great dangers in focussing more on B than A.
My team at the Met Office Hadley Centre in the UK have started to provide consultancy services on climate risks (NB this includes natural variability not just AGW) and when we first started, the surprising thing was that most clients were convinced we had climate forecasts sitting on the shelf (eg: the IPCC AR4 projections) which merely had to be interpreted to their particular industry questions. So the first stage is re-educating the client so they realise that no, we don’t have the answer, but we can give them some advice on a range of possibilities which they can then use to inform their decision making – and, most importantly, while this advice will be based on the best current understanding, this understanding is evolving all the time so they need to be prepared for the fact that if they come back in 2 years’ time they may get different answers! Hence their decision-making must be resilient to large uncertainty and to changes in the science. So the reason we have started to do this consultancy stuff (your B) is *not* to replace A but to make sure that A is correctly communicated (because if we leave B to others then they will do it wrong because they don’t understand A!)
Similarly, your B includes “impacts” and I would argue that much of the impacts stuff is actually part of the physical science in A. eg: hydrological impacts. There is a worrying tendency for meteorological outputs of GCMs to be used to drive hydrological models in a handle-turning way, often using techniques to adjust for biases in the GCMs etc, without really investigating the processes involved in a scientific way. Many hydrological impacts projections, for example, violate conservation of water by using a separate hydrological model which gives a completely different representation of evaporation to that used within the original GCM. Hence the final hydrological impact projection *must* be wrong because either (a) the GCM is right and the hydrological model is wrong, or (b) the hydrological model is right and the GCM is wrong, in which case the inputs to the hydrological model are wrong.
There are similar difficulties with many agricultural impacts studies too. So a lot of the impacts work needs to become more scientific, rather than product-based.
The thing that concerns me is that the simplistic messaging which has become prevalent in order to inform mitigation (with the sub-text that the details don’t matter as long as people are convinced that emissions cuts are needed) leads to the risk of mis-informing adaptation. If the risk of rapid sea level rise or drought is overblown, major decision-makers like governments or development banks etc could invest billions in new infrastructure well before it is actually needed (or indeed the wrong infrastructure altogether). There are too many people out there who think they can just re-package the AR4 projections into something that is useful for informing adaptation – they are wrong!
In any case, many decision-makers focussing on adaptation/resilience/vulnerability actually need information on timescales of the next few years not several decades. They have become aware of their potential exposure to climate risks because of the high-profile of AGW, but in actual fact it is more natural variability that they need to know about. Much more science is needed there if this is to be forecast usefully, especially at regional scales.
So I agree with you that A should not be eroded by increased focus on B, but I would also add that those doing A should make sure B is done correctly. (I think this may be the other person meant by C = A + B + X(AB)**n + f(C) , where f(C) includes an examination of how the decision-makers have misunderstood A through miscommunication in B?)
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Professor Judith Curry, said she had been called a ‘climate Heretic’ for voicing the similar opinions.. I think some commentators forget, that not all ‘climate science’ is the Hansen, Mann, version. that the media and politicians lap up..but that there are very many just getting on with the job.
Is a little commonsense to much to ask for? No it’s not! good job!
Might the CAGW beast now turn their attention to Dr. Curry? Will the demonization and war of words escalate to the point she will be drummed out of the Georgia Institute of Technology
for being a denier?
The destruction of the Universities continues…
Both views are equally naive.
Correct and complete equation: C = dP(s)/dT
where C is policy and P(s) is Profit by Speculators.
I fully support Dr Curry’s intervention in this debate. The nuance is entirely correct – that those who claim that future course of climate is fully known and the only problem is public communication are seriously deluded.
Any word on Lubchenko being hell bent to roll NCAR into a “National Climate Service?”
A + B = C
Let A = 0
Then B = C
Hence policy can be determined entirely by ‘experts’ opinion without the need for any scientific knowledge at all.
Would I be cynical if I thought that this was the ultimate aim?
Why let facts get in the way of making the ‘right’ decision?
Curry for President….