Reposted from the Fabius Maximus website
Larry Kummer, Editor Climate change, Science & Nature 27 August 2019
Summary: The latest issue of Science has a powerful paper about our coming desperate attempts to prepare for climate change. Let’s look under the hood to see how scientists produce advice for policy-makers. It reveals that the peer-review process is broken, greatly weakening our ability to see and prepare for climate change.
ID 33491903 © Rolffimages | Dreamstime.
Flipping through my new issue of Science, one of America’s top two science journals, this caught my attention: “The case for strategic and managed climate retreat” by Anne R. Siders et al. in Science, 23 August 2019. It is a powerful paper by three rising stars from Harvard and Stanford. It is getting a lot of attention (e.g., in Naked Capitalism’s daily links). From the abstract; red emphasis added on buzzwords …
“Faced with global warming, rising sea levels, and the climate-related extremes they intensify, the question is no longer whether some communities will retreat – moving people and assets out of harm’s way – but why, where, when, and how they will retreat. …We argue for strategy {sic} that incorporates socioeconomic development and for management that is innovative, evidence-based, and context-specific. …
“In some cases, retreat may need to include reparations or payments for loss and damage to address historic practices that placed communities at risk or to enable communities to retreat in a way that does not exacerbate past wrongs (for example, forcibly relocated indigenous, minority, or impoverished populations, or greenhouse gas emissions from major economies that contribute to rising seas, imperiling island nations). …
“The opportunities presented by succeeding in this work are immense, and the climate risks are urgent and growing.”
That sounds ominous! But before adopting their recommendations, I read on to learn the basis for this forecast. Here it is.
Retreat in response to natural hazards already occurs. It can be driven by major disasters, when people abandon their homes and relocate permanently. Economic pressures such as decreasing agricultural yields or rising insurance prices sometimes push people away from hazardous areas. Government programs have relocated populations out of at-risk areas, moved roads and other infrastructure, imposed setback requirements, banned return to disaster-prone areas, or condemned and demolished buildings considered too risky (2–8). Even in areas experiencing overall growth, some people are retreating (such as in Manila, Nairobi, and New York City) (2–4, 7–10).
“Whether driven by disasters, market forces, or government intervention, people will continue to move from hazardous places as climate risks escalate.”
Let’s see those references about people who are moving “from hazardous places as climate risks escalate.”
- “Managed Retreat – A Strategy for the Mitigation of Disaster Risks with International and Comparative Perspectives” by Stefen Greiving et al. in Extreme Events, March 2018. This discusses responses to a wide range of natural disasters. It gives no examples of retreat due to climate change, let alone anthropogenic climate change.
- “Managed retreat as a response to natural hazard risk” by Miyuki Hino et al. in Nature Climate Change, May 2017. Gated; open copy here. They examined 27 cases of managed retreat, but linked none of them to climate change.
- “Managed Coastal Retreat: A Legal Handbook on Shifting Development Away From Vulnerable Areas” by Anne R. Siders (then a graduate student at Stanford), a Columbia Public Law research paper, November 2013). 158 pages. It describes responses to natural disasters. I found no links to climate change.
- “A climate of control: flooding, displacement and planned resettlement in the Lower Zambezi River valley, Mozambique” by Alex Arnall in The Geographic Journal, June 2014. I do not have access to this.
- “Planned Relocations, Disasters, and Climate Change: Consolidating Good Practices and Preparing for the Future” by Sanjula Weerasinghe for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 2014. The Google Scholar link provided does not go the paper. No examples of retreat due to climate change. They mention Alaska and Fiji, but give neither details or supporting citations.
- “Agency-driven post-disaster recovery: A comparative study of three Typhoon Washi resettlement communities in the Philippines” by J. Sedfrey S. Santiago et al., in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, March 2018. Gated; open copy here. Again the Google Scholar link provided does not go to the paper. Typhoon Washi hit in December 2011. It was a tropical storm, fifth-strongest category on the Tropical Cyclone Intensity Scale and sixth on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale (i.e., the category below hurricane). Not an unusual event (details here). The paper does not mention climate change.
- “Climate change, migration and conflict: receiving communities under pressure?” by Andrea Warnecke et al. for the German Marshall Fund of the United States, 2010. It gives no examples of retreat from climate change.
None of those references support the claim. I see this happening more often lately (e.g., Michael Mann did it in his testimony to Congress; details here).
Here are the references the authors give to support their belief that “the climate risks are urgent and growing.”
- _.
- _.
- _.
That is bizarre, for that claim is the foundation for the paper and the basis for its significance. What does “urgent” mean? What do they mean by “growing?”
More specific to the paper’s conclusions, what numbers of people will be forced to retreat under each of the scenarios used in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0, and RCP8.5)? Most simulations show relatively small effects from RCP2.6. Most show that RCP8.5 would be a nightmare. AR5 gives no probabilities for each RCP. If the authors found no studies about retreats for each RCP, that would be worth mentioning.
Summary
The authors give no evidence that climate change is forcing “retreats.” How many people will climate change force to retreat in the near future, or in the 21st century? The authors do not say. Readers do not know what the authors mean by “the climate risks are urgent and growing.” Severe inconvenience or extinction? More broadly, the paper gives no evidence supporting “the case for strategic and managed climate retreat.”
This paper is alarmism, without the details and evidence characteristic of good science. It does provide an example showing that peer-review has collapsed in fields related to climate science. If the conclusions are politically pleasing, the paper gets waved through. This does not build confidence in the need for massive police action.
About the authors
The authors are fast-tracd academics. Anne Siders has a JD from Harvard and PhD from Stanford. She is an Environmental Fellow at Harvard’s Center for the Environment. Miyuki Hino is a Ph.D. candidate in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources at Stanford. Katharine Mach is an Associate Professor at the University of Miami School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, and a lead author for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and the US Fourth National Climate Assessment.
Other posts in this series
- The replication crisis in science has just begun. It will be big. – Climate science is just one of the affected fields.
- A crisis of overconfidence in climate science.
- About the corruption of climate science.
- The noble corruption of climate science.
For More Information
Ideas! See my recommended books and films at Amazon.
For a briefing on the current knowledge about rising sea levels, see these by climate scientists Judith Curry.
- A Special Report on Sea Level Rise.
- Sea level rise: what’s the worst case?
- Sea level rise whiplash – about new research.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. For more information see all posts about doomsters, about peak oil, about The keys to understanding climate change and especially these…
- Let’s prepare for past climate instead of bickering about predictions of climate change – Doing something is better than nothing.
- Manufacturing climate nightmares: misusing science to create horrific predictions.
- Focusing on worst-case climate futures doesn’t work. It shouldn’t work.
- “Climate’s Uncertainty Principle“ by Garth Paltridge.
- Listening to climate doomsters makes our situation worse.
- Enlisting peer-reviewed science in the climate crusade.
- How fast is the world warming? Is it burning?
- See how climate science becomes alarmist propaganda.
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Back in the 1990s, one of my job functions required me to read published research, understand the significance of it, and tell my employer if it might impact the business (a dream job, as far as I was concerned). I read far more than just the intro and conclusions.
I saw some…interesting…writing. Sometimes things were described in a manner as complex as possible (“we immersed the sample in a 20C degree liquid solution of oxidized hydrogen in the ratio of two of hydrogen atoms to one oxygen atom”). Other times, they sought to mischaracterize (“Recently there has been an increased interest in the study of ‘y’ (1,2,3,4).” Those who actually looked at the references linked to 1, 2, 3, and 4, found that they were all written by the same author, who was also the author of the paper in question).
ALL research (at that time, anyway) was a ‘novel’ approach to something; every paper used the word. And, of course, they all ended with essentially the same words, “further research and funding are required to obtain vital answers to remaining questions in this area.”
IMO, peer-reviewed, published research is highly over-rated. The truly good papers were few and far between. Be sure to have a shaker of salt nearby.
And what’s more, it happens faster than the climate changes or is likely to change. The ‘internal’ rate of change of human behavior is accelerating, making climate-change considerations increasingly irrelevant. So fast that we no longer have to retreat from natural hazards. We can confront them head on and, usually, over time, win.
Here’s the conclusion to the paper by Alex Arnall, you said you didn’t have access to:
Conclusion
Previous research has attempted to account for the failures of environment and development interventions in Mozambique. For example, Patt and Schröter (2008) attributed abandonment of resettlement areas to differences in climate risk perception between farmers and policymakers, whereas Bunce et al. (2010, 485) highlighted failures by river basin managers to take into account ‘cross-scale dynamics of change’. This paper argues that a more political perspective is required to understand the causes and consequences of flooding, displacement and planned resettlement in the Lower Zambezi River valley. It does this by taking a political-ecological approach to identify two competing ‘stories’ of environmental change: a dominant ‘erratic weather’ narrative in which the permanent resettlement of communities out of floodplains meets both ‘adaptive’ and ‘developmental’ objectives; and a counter-narrative from which resettlement emerges as a poor policy response due to the complex socioeconomic and cultural risks involved, and the failure of resettlers to be compensated by wider economic gains in the region.
To date, the first ‘erratic weather’ narrative has dominated policy debates in Mozambique in spite of the socially unjust outcomes that it produces. This is due, in large part, to the way in which it supports elite economic and political interests in and around the Zambezi River Basin concerning economic development of floodplains and securing control over rural populations. The narrative provides support to these interests in two ways: first, by drawing attention away from underlying drivers of vulnerability and poverty in the Lower Zambezi region; and second by obscuring the interests that lie behind both the displacement and relocation of people. The effect of these processes is that involuntary resettlement becomes the only viable ‘adaptation’ response in a region where future climate change threatens an increasingly ‘uncontrollable’ and ‘dangerous’ future for small-scale farmers. In reality, however, resettlement from the Lower Zambezi valley appears to be more of an ‘adaptation’ to economic rather than environmental change, in which the interests of some of the poorest and most marginalised people in society are largely overlooked. The case study therefore provides an illustration of the way in which a ‘dominating construction of climate change as an overly physical phenomenon readily allows climate change to be appropriated uncritically in support of an expanding range of ideologies’ (Hulme 2007, 9), in this instance Mozambique’s dominant neoliberal development agenda (Hanlon and Mosse 2010).
Growing awareness of the true impacts of resettlement in Mozambique has helped galvanise an early counter-‘living with floods’ discourse among stakeholders who oppose resettlement as a solution to climate extremes and change. Previously marginalised national-level environmental NGOs, which have spearheaded efforts to expose the impacts of the Cahora Bassa dam, are beginning to have their voices heard within national discussion forums. There are also signals that the ‘hidden’ disquiet that resettlement creates among many relocated populations is beginning to filter through to government ministers, with the INGC stating privately that it is unlikely to attempt any future resettlement. These are promising signs. Overall, however, this paper emphasises the need for greater scrutiny of adaptation activities, and more attention to their discursive and political dimensions. As this case study demonstrates, climate change discourse can become entangled with the everyday political realities of people who occupy disadvantaged or marginalised spaces within society. For this reason, efforts to better understand how the idea of climate change is moving beyond its roots in natural sciences – taking on new meanings and serving new purposes as it does so – will be an important component of any future action by the international community to address the long-term problem of climate change.
Mark,
That is useful. Thank you for posting it!
Mark,
I’ve added a link in the post (at the FM website) to your comment, and a brief note about it.
Again, thank you for posting this.
They’ve been crying “WOLF!!!!” for how many decades now? And the WOLF!!! still hasn’t appeared.
Moving on….!
From the Alex Arnall paper. He says climate change is used in Mozambique as an excuse for rich elites to resettle people elsewhere; where they often don’t want to go. Consequently Growing awareness of the true impacts of resettlement in Mozambique has helped galvanise an early counter-‘living with floods’ discourse among stakeholders who oppose resettlement
Basically – when people are being kicked off their land by elites, one can hardly call it “driven by climate change”.
Mark,
These days reading the references is a revolutionary act!
+1!
And if my reading is correct, the author(s) suggest that climate change can be used as the whip to convince people to move for its convenience. Of course elites would do that! Perhaps this is what justifies reparations.
How many years before there’s an Arctic blue ocean event? 15? 10? 4?
This blog is funded by The Heartland Institute, which is founded by Charles and David Koch.
If there was a carbon tax, and a move away from fossil fuels, Koch Industries would lose potentially a trillion dollars in profits…..
[Not true, but presented for discussion by others .mod]
smurf,
Lies and smears are alarmists’ favorite tool. And they wonder why so few believe them. It’s an amazing example of self-defeating tactics.
“There are none so blind as those who will not see.”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17565529.2018.1442799
Village relocations, or attempted relocatiuons, in Mozambique were much more to do with economics and politics than any effects of “climate change”. Certainly a lot of people live in areas susceptible to flooding and it might be a good idea to live somewhere else but if your fields are in a river valley where else are you going to live?
And climate change ? There were severe floods in 2019 which were severely discomforting for many people.
Not completely surprising in river valleys.
However in recent times there were floods in Mozambique in 1975, 1977, 1978, 1981, 1985, 1988, 1996, 1997, 1998,1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2017.
Climate change? Climate normal.
Spinnen am Morgen, Kummer und Sorgen.
When are the rich middle class ‘believers’ sending a Task Force to Bangladesh?
All climate-change activists should immediately retreat to the higher ground of Canada…
(Sorry Canada, I do love you guys but…)