Category Archives: Science & Politics

UN fails, once again – Bluefin slaughter to continue

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The UN has failed for a second time to pass legislation to protect Atlantic bluefin tuna from over-explotation and commercial extinction. The news came from a UN conference on endangered species, where the body also voted against ending the international trade in polar bear parts, shark parts and plans to vote to re-establish the trade in elephant parts and will consider bans on tiger and rhinoceroses “products” later this week. Wait, what is this conference about?  It sounds more like a trade show for animals pieces and parts. Maybe those progressive contrarians over at the Breakthrough Institute are right about the UN being the wrong place to develop international conservation regulations.  After all, a two-thirds majority vote is needed to pass anything meaningful. Is it any wonder this group is failing to simply pass legislation? And people fear a UN-run one world government?!

Atlantic bluefin tuna are listed by the IUCN as ‘critically endangered’.

From wikipedia (here): The Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus), also known as the northern bluefin tuna, giant bluefin tuna(for larger individuals exceeding 150 kilograms or around 300 pounds) and formerly as the tunny, is a species of tuna native to both the western and eastern Atlantic Ocean, as well as the Mediterranean Sea. Atlantic bluefin have been recorded in the Black Sea in the past, but are now believed to be extinct there. The Atlantic bluefin tuna is a close relative of the other two bluefin tuna species – the Pacific bluefin tuna and the southern bluefin tuna.

Today, the Atlantic bluefin tuna is the foundation of one of the world’s most lucrative commercial fisheries. Medium-sized and large individuals are heavily targeted for the Japanese raw fish market, where all species of bluefin are highly prized for sashimi. This commercial importance has led to severe overfishing. TheInternational Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) affirmed in October 2009 that Atlantic bluefin tuna stocks are declining dramatically, by 72% in the Eastern Atlantic, and by 82% in the Western Atlantic.[1] On October 16, 2009 Monaco formally recommended Endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna for an Appendix I CITES listing and international trade ban.

See our recent post on the bluefin travesty and the ICCAT here, where Jez says:

I’ve often wondered whether people who eat tuna from a can have any idea what a tuna fish actually looks like? How does a can of tuna still cost less than a dollar? Mainly because the average tin of tuna comes from smaller and less tasty species (usually albacore or skipjack at roughly $25 per pound), which are still plentiful* in the oceans as they require less resources to survive and reproduce. In contrast, the closely related southern bluefin tuna commands upwards of $350 per pound, yet is IUCN listed as ‘critically endangered’. With commercial extinction looming on the horizon, who will be the last person to eat a southern bluefin?

March 18, 2010, from the NYT, read it here

U.N. Rejects Export Ban on Atlantic Bluefin Tuna

By DAVID JOLLY

PARIS — Efforts to ban international trade in bluefin tuna and polar bears were rejected Thursday by a United Nations conference on endangered species, as delegates in Doha, Qatar refused to back the U.S.-backed measures.

A proposal by Monaco to extend the highest level of U.N. protection to the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin, a fish prized by sushi lovers for its fatty belly flesh, failed by a lopsided vote of 20-68, with 30 abstentions, Juan Carlos Vasquez, a spokesman for the U.N. organization, said.

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The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora counts 175 member governments, though far fewer were represented for the votes in Doha. European Union nations, whose fleets are most responsible for the overfishing of the bluefin, abstained from voting after the bloc’s own watered-down proposal failed earlier in the day.

The rejection was a defeat for environmentalists and a clear victory for the Japanese government, which had vowed to go all out to stop the measure. Japan, which consumes more than three-quarters of the Mediterranean bluefin catch, argued that the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, or Iccat, an intergovernmental organization, should be responsible for regulating the stock, not the United Nations.

While there is near-universal agreement that bluefin stocks are in danger, Japan’s argument resonated with other fishing nations, which were uneasy about what would have marked the first intrusion by the convention into a major commercial fishery.

But an independent review commissioned by Iccat shows that its own record on managing the fish“ is widely regarded as an international disgrace.” The agency has presided over more than two-thirds decline in the stock since 1970 — with much of that drop coming in just the last decade with the onset of huge industrial fishing operations and tuna “ranching.” And while the organization, which has no effective enforcement mechanism, has the authority to set quotas, year after year it has set the catch above the level that its own scientists say is safe to ensure the health of the species.

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This is the second time Japan has defeated a proposal at the conference to protect the bluefin. A similar proposal by Sweden failed at 1992 UN convention in Kyoto. While the bluefin vote was held by secret ballot, Japanese officials said this week that China and South Korea also opposed the measure, and Canada openly opposed it.

In a joint statement, Janez Potocnik, the European environment commissioner and Maria Damanaki, the commissioner for maritime affairs and fisheries, said they were “disappointed” with the outcome, and called for Iccat to “take its responsibility to ensure that stocks are managed in a sustainable way.” If no action is taken, they warned, “there is a very serious danger that the bluefin tuna will no longer exist.”

The proposal to ban trade in polar bear parts and skins failed on the first vote, by a margin of 48-62, with 11 abstentions.

read the full article here

Monbiot on the unpersuadables and the revenge of the humanities students

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George Monbiot has a nice article on “the unpersuadables” here.  I have been thinking about this a lot. Is there any point in public outreach, in blogging, etc?  Has everybody already made up their mind regardless of what the rationale science says?  Randy Olson thinks not. Neither does Juan cole. I change my mind on this daily. Ove says he once changed someones mind using the raw power of facts, something I have never experienced, at least outside of university teaching.

By George Monbiot

from here

There is one question that no one who denies manmade climate change wants to answer: what would it take to persuade you? In most cases the answer seems to be nothing. No level of evidence can shake the growing belief that climate science is a giant conspiracy codded up by boffins and governments to tax and control us. The new study by the Met Office, which paints an even grimmer picture than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(1), will do nothing to change this view.

The attack on climate scientists is now widening to an all-out war on science. Writing recently for the Telegraph, the columnist Gerald Warner dismissed scientists as “white-coated prima donnas and narcissists … pointy-heads in lab coats [who] have reassumed the role of mad cranks … The public is no longer in awe of scientists. Like squabbling evangelical churches in the 19th century, they can form as many schismatic sects as they like, nobody is listening to them any more.”(2)

Views like this can be explained partly as the revenge of the humanities students. There is scarcely an editor or executive in any major media company – and precious few journalists – with a science degree, yet everyone knows that the anoraks are taking over the world. But the problem is compounded by complexity. Arthur C Clarke remarked that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”(3).

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Popular mythology – from Faust through Frankenstein to Dr No – casts scientists as sinister schemers, harnessing the dark arts to further their diabolical powers. Sometimes this isn’t far from the truth.

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There’s a possible explanation in an article published by Nature in January(7). It shows that people tend to “take their cue about what they should feel, and hence believe, from the cheers and boos of the home crowd.” Those who see themselves as individualists and those who respect authority, for example, “tend to dismiss evidence of environmental risks, because the widespread acceptance of such evidence would lead to restrictions on commerce and industry, activities they admire.” Those with more egalitarian values are “more inclined to believe that such activities pose unacceptable risks and should be restricted.”

These divisions, researchers have found, are better at explaining different responses to information than any other factor: race, gender, class, income, education or personality type. Our ideological filters encourage us to interpret new evidence in ways that reinforce our beliefs. “As a result, groups with opposing values often become more polarized, not less, when exposed to scientifically sound information.”(8)

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Perhaps we have to accept that there is no simple solution to public disbelief in science. The battle over climate change suggests that the more clearly you spell the problem out, the more you turn people away. If they don’t want to know, nothing and no one will reach them. There goes my life’s work.

Climate change in Australia’s tropical waters and the threat to the Reef

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Ove is presenting at the Universities Australia National Policy Forum tomorrow at Parliment House, Canberra, along with Dr Blair Trewin, Professor Roger Jones, Professor John Quiggin and quite a few other leading authorities on climate change. The forum is being webcast to journalists, so hopefully we will be able to put a feed up here (or at least a synopsis of the days happenings).

What is the reality of climate change in Australia? What does the science show? What changes are already happening? How are farmers, land managers and the environment responding?

Leading researchers will report on:

§ The evidence of climate change in Australia today: in the climate record; in agriculture; in the environment

§ Predictions on the future of climate change and its impact on Australia – exploring the certainties and uncertainties

§ The challenges of communicating the science and of bridging scientific knowledge and public policy

§ The social and economic impact of climate change and the opportunities for Australia to respond, creating jobs and a sustainable future.

The Forum seeks to reach out to MPs, their advisers and the media; we are also inviting a range of stakeholders from agriculture, NGOs and others.

The best argument against global warming

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Dr Peter Gleick writes in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Here is the best argument against global warming:

. . . .

Oh, right. There isn’t one.

There is no good argument against global warming. In all the brouhaha about tiny errors recently found in the massive IPCC report, the posturing by global climate deniers, including some elected officials, leaked emails, and media reports, here is one fact that seems to have been overlooked:

Those who deny that humans are causing unprecedented climate change have never, ever produced an alternative scientific argument that comes close to explaining the evidence we see around the world that the climate is changing. [read more]

Hat-tip to Joe Romm at ClimateProgress.

State of the climate (Part 2): CSIRO and BOM accuse climate change sceptics of ‘smokescreen of denial’

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Daily Telegraph, 15th March 2010

AUSTRALIA’S leading scientists have hit back at climate change sceptics, accusing them of creating a “smokescreen of denial”.

The CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology will today release a State of the Climate document, a snapshot of Australia’s climate data and trend predictions.

The apolitical science organisations have weighed into the debate as they believe Australians are not being told the correct information about temperatures, rainfall, ocean levels and changes to atmospheric conditions.

The State of the Climate report offers Australians an easy-to-understand snapshot of data.

“Modelling results show that it is extremely unlikely that the observed warming is due to natural causes alone,” it states.

“Evidence of human influence has been detected in ocean warming, sea-level rise, continental-average temperatures, temperature extremes and wind patterns.”

CSIRO chief executive Dr Megan Clark said both organisations felt it was time “to give Australians the facts and information they are looking for and to do so in a way that is very transparent and available”.

“We are seeing a real thirst for knowledge from many Australians and we are responding to that huge public demand. There is a lot of noise out there and a lot of reference to other countries and people want to know what’s happening in this country.”

Dr Clark said the CSIRO had been observing the impacts of human-induced climate change for many years and had moved on from debate about it happening to planning for the changes to come.

The swiftboating of climate science

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Juan Cole, a professor of history at the University of Michigan, Middle East expert and high profile blogger has a piece on his site about whether and how scientists should engage environmental skeptics, in particular AGW deniers. His perspective is that we should and that it can be effective if done right but that there can be personal costs, e.g., hate mail and death threats. Also see the discussion at DotEarth about how scientists should respond and communicate. There are well argued points on both sides, or all sides, of the debate, but I am somewhat swayed by Randy Olsen’s arguments. Probably in part because he is a former coral reef ecologist and because I love his short films.

Okay. We’re wading into the core of what my book, “ Don’t Be Such a Scientist,” is about, so I’m going to give you a full reply. What you’ve written here is great, it’s accurate, it’s admirably dispassionate, but it’s also written with the assumption that the general public is a bunch of heartless robots. There comes a point where the public DOES want to see the science community stand up for themselves. My book is about the fact that there is more than just brains inside average folks — they also have hearts, guts and even sex organs. Did you see the “60 Minutes” segment a month ago with magician Ricky Jay who, when asked who would be his ideal audience for sleight of hand tricks, said it would be “scientists and Nobel Prize winners,” because they are the most easily fooled. This is increasingly the public image of the climate science community — a bunch of clumsy eggheads who can’t defend themselves. – Randy Olsen

Advice to Climate Scientists on how to Avoid being Swift-boated and how to become Public Intellectuals

By Juan Cole, see original post here

Let me just give my scientific colleagues some advice, since as a Middle East expert I’ve seen all sorts of falsehoods about the region successfully purveyed by the US mass media and print press, in such a way as to shape public opinion and to affect policy-making in Washington: 1. Every single serious climate scientist should be running a blog. There is enormous thirst among the public for this information, and publishing only in technical refereed journals is guaranteed to quarantine the information away from the general public. A blog allows scientists to summarize new findings in clear language for a wide audience. It makes the scientist and the scientific research ‘legible’ to the wider society. Educated lay persons will run with interesting new findings and cause them to go viral. You will also find that you give courage to other colleagues who are specialists to speak out in public. You cannot depend on journalists to do this work. You have to do it yourselves. 2. It is not your fault. The falsehoods in the media are not there because you haven’t spoken out forcefully or are not good on t.v. They are there for the following reasons: a. Very, very wealthy and powerful interests are lobbying the big media companies behind the scenes to push climate change skepticism, or in some cases (as with Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp/ Fox Cable News) the powerful and wealthy interests actually own the media. b. Powerful politicians linked to those wealthy interests are shilling for them, and elected politicians clearly backed by economic elites are given respect in the US corporate media. Big Oil executives e.g. have an excellent rollodex for CEOs, producers, the bookers for the talk shows, etc. in the corporate media. They also behind the scenes fund “think tanks” such as the American Enterprise Institute to produce phony science. Since the AEI generates talking points that aim at helping Republicans get elected and pass right wing legislation, it is paid attention to by the corporate media. c. Media thrives on controversy, which produces ratings and advertising revenue. As a result, it is structured into an ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ binary argument. Any broadcast that pits a climate change skeptic against a serious climate scientist is automatically a win for the skeptic, since a false position is being given equal time and legitimacy. It was the same in the old days when the cigarette manufacturers would pay a ‘scientist’ to go deny that smoking causes lung cancer. And of course we saw all the instant Middle East experts who knew no Arabic and had never lived in the Arab world or sometimes even been there who were paraded as knowledgeable sources of what would happen if the United States invaded Iraq and occupied it. d. Journalists for the most part have to do as they are told. Their editors and the owners of the corporate media decide which stories get air time and how they are pitched. Most journalists privately admit that they hate their often venal and ignorant bosses. But what alternative do most of them have? e. Journalists for the most part do not know how to find academic experts. An enterprising one might call a university and be directed to a particular faculty member, which is way too random a way to proceed. If I were looking for an academic expert, I’d check a citation index of refereed articles, but most people don’t even know how to find the relevant database. Moreover, it is not all the journalists’ fault. journalism works on short deadlines and academics are often teaching or in committee and away from email. Many academics refuse (shame on them) to make time for media interviews. f. Many journalists are generalists and do not themselves have the specialized training or background for deciding what the truth is in technical controversies. Some of them are therefore fairly easily fooled on issues that require technical or specialist knowledge. Even a veteran journalist like Judy Miller fell for an allegation that Iraq’s importation of thin aluminum tubes in 2002 was for nuclear enrichment centrifuges, even though the tubes were not substantial enough for that purpose. Many journalists (and even Colin Powell) reported with a straight face the Neocon lie that Iraq had ‘mobile biological weapons labs,’ as though they were something you could put in a winnebago and bounce around on Iraq’s pitted roads. No biological weapons lab could possibly be set up without a clean room, which can hardly be mobile. Back in the Iran-Iraq War, I can remember an American wire service story that took seriously Iraq’s claim that large numbers of Iranian troops were killed trying to cross a large body of water by fallen electrical wires; that could happen in a puddle but not in a river. They were killed by Iraqi poison gas, of course. The good journalists are aware of their limitations and develop proxies for figuring out who is credible. But the social climbers and time servers are happy just to host a shouting match that maybe produces ‘compelling’ television, which is how they get ahead in life. 3. If you just keep plugging away at it, with blogging and print, radio and television interviews, you can have an impact on public discourse over time. I could not quantify it, but I am sure that I have. It is a lifetime commitment and a lot of work and it interferes with academic life to some extent. Going public also makes it likely that you will be personally smeared and horrible lies purveyed about you in public (they don’t play fair– they make up quotes and falsely attribute them to you; it isn’t a debate, it is a hatchet job). I certainly have been calumniated, e.g. by poweful voices such as John Fund at the Wall Street Journal or Michael Rubin at the American Enterprise Institute. But if an issue is important to you and the fate of your children and grandchildren, surely having an impact is well worth any price you pay.

Ecologists and environmentalism

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Ecologists and environmentalism

Donald R Strong (2008) Ecologists and environmentalism. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment: Vol. 6, No. 7, pp. 347-347.

Environmentalism needs serious discussion by ecologists. I was primed on this topic by recent statements made by colleagues to the effect that, “I’m no environmentalist, but… (insert an eminently reasonable environmentalist proposition of your choice here)”, as well as by a plaintive comment in a recent student evaluation, “The instructor is an environmentalist”. Denied the opportunity to reply to the student, I do so here. “This is an ecology course; by necessity, its subject matter deals with the environment. We use science to study the environment, and science provides the rationale and avenue for its preservation.”

The last place that I would have expected to hear negative branding of environmentalism is at an ESA function, so imagine the jolt when, at the Society’s Annual Meeting in Milwaukee this past August, we were told by a prominent ecologist that we are scientists and therefore should eschew environmentalism. There was, of course, ample refutation of the notion of any wall between ecological science and environmentalism throughout the rest of the meeting. Thomas Lovejoy’s opening plenary address demonstrated artful interweaving of science with environmentalism and how the study of biodiverse nature is an essential part of advocacy for its preservation. He finished with a story about Ben Bradlee, the former Executive Editor of the Washington Post, who steered his newspaper toward progressive reporting on the environment despite only a modest appreciation of science, and how his publisher, Katherine Graham, had complained that environmentalists are self-righteous. This was a warning to us not to be shrill, and reinforced the wisdom of doing our science with an eye on the political and social milieu.

Whereas ecology is science and environmentalism sometimes is and sometimes isn’t, the latter is necessary for the former. We ecologists have the same relationship to the subject of our studies as do art historians and archeologists to theirs. There is no opprobrium upon artists and archeologists advocating for the preservation of art and antiquities. Protection of the environment – environmentalism – is advocacy of what we study. Why should we not advocate for protection of the environment in our professional capacity?

The negative branding of environmentalism comes from groups that are part and parcel of the notorious war on science. They are dedicated to denying the environmental degradation that ecologists are documenting every day. Some of the most prominent of these groups are discussed by Jaques et al. in a review entitled, The organization of denial: conservative think tanks and environmental skepticism (Environ Pol 2008; 17: 349–85). The authors document the concerted anti-environmentalism and complete disregard of these groups for anything connected with the environment. Jaques et al. describe the substantial financial backing, broad reach, and scores of authors that have been encouraged to spread disinformation regarding scientific findings – particularly about global warming – by conservative think tanks. The authors argue that these powerful entities seek to interfere with the scientific communication that is the basis of society’s understanding of environmental issues.

Graduate students with whom I raised these issues at the ESA Annual Meeting had little trouble in recognizing the essential, functional connection between basic ecological science and environmentalism for understanding and preserving the objects of study to which they are dedicating their lives. Several pointed out that a substantial number of sessions at the meeting represented scientific environmentalism, including such topics as conservation, biodiversity, environmental justice, and sustainability.

Any accounting of our scientific values should include objectivity and rationality, which ecologists have used to yield facts about the environment. A few of many such facts produced by ecological science are that humans are responsible for global warming, the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, and profound ecosystem and food-web changes in the Great Lakes through the introduction of invasive species. These are the sorts of facts that anti-environmental forces seek to deny. Defending these facts as the products of science makes you an environmentalist. To separate ecological science from environmentalism to avoid potential negative connotations of the latter affords anti-environmentalists the power of demagoguery; with rhetoric and false claims, they will have achieved prejudice against the subject of our studies.

In short, it is precious and self-damaging to claim a separation between our science and environmentalism. It should be a tenet of our ethics as ecologists to reject and counter the defamation of environmentalism.

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“Environmentalist” label not in our best interests

Indy Burke, Bill Lauenroth (2009) “Environmentalist” label not in our best interests. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment: Vol. 7, No. 5, pp. 240-240

We are responding to Donald Strong’s editorial about ecologists and environmentalism (Front Ecol Environ 2008; 6[7]: 347). We think advocating for the role of ecologists and ecological science in environmental decision making is different from what is commonly meant by the terms “environmentalist” and “environmentalism”. We agree that Earth is undergoing major environmental changes, and that the information ecological science can provide is a necessary component that policy makers will require if they are to make informed decisions.

We are concerned that Strong’s usage of “environmentalist” and “environmentalism” is naïve and risks misleading some members of the ecological science community. Environmentalist and environmentalism have lost the meanings he ascribes to them. They have become politically charged terms with the power to polarize conversations. We agree that there has been a “…negative branding of environmentalism…”, but we disagree that this is the sole result of “…the war on science”. We think it equally likely that it is the result of individuals and groups allowing their values to creep into their analyses of environmental problems. Regardless of the accurate identification of the source of the negative connotations associated with the terms “environmentalist” and “environmentalism”, we think that it is important for all of us to be aware and sensitive to this negativism. Equating ecologists and ecology with environmentalists and environmentalism will prove catastrophic to our science. If we are perceived as mixing our politics and our values into our science, we will lose our credibility, and risk our ability to have our science considered in policy setting deliberations of environmental change.

I (IB) am confident that I would not have been invited to recent meetings and interacted with individuals who are in a position to have a major influence on energy policy, if they thought I was mixing my personal opinions into my representations of science as related to the environment and natural resources.

Our strengths – as contributors to current and future environmental deliberations – derive directly from perceptions of the quality of our science. While it is likely that there are few ESA members who are not environmentalists at heart, we urge all members to resist being labeled as environmentalists or to allow what we do as scientists to be labeled as environmentalism.

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Labels and values: a reply to Burke and Lauenroth

Donald R Strong (2009) Labels and values: a reply to Burke and Lauenroth. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment: Vol. 7, No. 5, pp. 240-240.

Professors Burke and Lauenroth and I agree on a great deal. First, their assertion that “few ESA members…are not environmentalists at heart” is exactly the point of my original essay. The three of us also agree that one should not shout “environmentalist” in a theater crowded with suits from the energy industry. Even more, the “result of individuals and groups allowing their values to creep into their analyses of environmental problems” is a perfect description of the anti-environmental movement; indeed, such phony analyses “polarize conversations” about the environment.

The authors and I begin to part ways regarding their strictly negative connotation and narrow definition of “values”. The values of basic science are objectivity, rationality, and rigorous empiricism. In the sub-discipline of ecology, values are multifarious. Frontiers melds values of basic science with other values from social sciences. Social science involves more subjectivity than basic science and, in doing so, addresses values that differ among groups. Pertinent to ecology and the environment, values that go beyond those of basic science include utilitarian values (for example, ecosystem services and what the environment can do for humans: where The National Mining Association sees coal profits, others see ecosystem services eroded by global warming), intrinsic values (patriotic, religious, and deep aesthetic feelings about nature: many Americans, and the ESA, see “purple mountain majesty”, whereas an American president is reputed to have once said, “A tree is a tree. How many more do you have to look at?”), and opportunity values(if we don’t burn it now, what would all this fossil fuel – and the land, sea, and atmosphere destroyed by its exploitation – be worth in the future?). In environmental science, we endeavor to understand different kinds of values, not camouflage them.

Finally, there is one point about which I just plain disagree with Burke and Lauenroth. Although they claim that my arguments risk “misleading some members of the ecological science community”, I believe that such members are pretty savvy and will not be swayed by the word police any more than by partisan, ideological claptrap from conservative groups. Will these members dedicate their lives to a science that dare not speak one of its names?

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Speaking out: weighing advocacy and objectivity as a junior scientist

Thomas A Morrison, Matthew P Ayres (2010) Speaking out: weighing advocacy and objectivity as a junior scientist. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 50-5

Thomas A Morrison (graduate student)

Ecologists wear many hats, and some fit better than others. One hat sure to provoke controversy, especially when worn by students, is that of an advocate. Ecologists become advocates when they go beyond objective research and actively champion particular viewpoints. The role of advocacy in science has stimulated considerable discussion over the past several years, particularly among conservation biologists (eg Shrader-Frechette 1996; Strong 2008). I argue here that students have a unique role in this discussion. Our position as junior scientists affords special challenges, risks, and rewards when engaging in advocacy. I highlight these tradeoffs and offer suggestions for how to identify and avoid some of the pitfalls, drawing from my own brief experience as an ecologist-in-training.

What is advocacy, and why is it controversial? Advocacy occurs when, during the process of communicating research results, ecologists use scientific facts to shape an argument relevant to a particular policy goal. Often, this argument reflects some value that the scientist holds: for example, that we should conserve biological diversity. Because ecological research often has a direct bearing on conservation, human health, or land-use decisions that will influence people’s lives, including our own, some scientists believe that we have a right, or even an obligation, to advocate for particular views and courses of action (Strong 2008). However, although these views may be well informed and may even represent the personal opinion of most members of the scientific community, many scientists feel that it is inappropriate to mix advocacy and science (Shrader-Frechette 1996). They argue that this can too easily lead to dogmatism, hidden agendas, and biased interpretations. These “evils”, whether perceived or real, can diminish the credibility of scientists in the eyes of policy makers and the general public. Not surprisingly, most graduate programs in ecology and evolution teach a narrow doctrine of scientific objectivity.

The hazards of practicing advocacy as a student are numerous. Students often have little experience engaging policy makers or communicating science to the public. We also generally lack experience in weighing the strength of scientific evidence for or against particular courses of action (Ludwig et al. 1993). This deficiency in experience amplifies the potential to misjudge a situation or mangle an effort to influence political decision making. It may also reduce our ability to engage in future decision making, so that the original act of advocacy ends up being counterproductive. Without an established track record, advocating a view on our own may quickly call into question the reliability of our data and analyses. As junior scientists, we need to be especially sensitive to this particular risk, as a lack of credibility has the potential to limit our future job prospects and funding opportunities.

With so many potential pitfalls, should students avoid all forms of advocacy? Regardless of where we are in our careers, the principal risk of not engaging in advocacy is that our scientific findings may never reach the proper hands or might be wrongly interpreted. Because methodologies and analyses can be technical and because information sharing can be difficult in some countries, the potential for misinterpretation or lack of interpretation can be great. Indeed, graduate students may actually be in the best position to advocate, because we spend relatively long periods of time in the field and may be especially well informed about the details of a particular policy tradeoff. On a more practical level, practicing advocacy during graduate school may provide real-world experience and help employment prospects by raising the profile of our work. Several young biologists have emerged as influential figures in conservation biology, on account of their willingness to risk advocating controversial solutions to real-world problems (eg Donlan et al. 2005).

I wrestle with these ideas in my own work. I study a declining wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus) population in Tanzania. Several general management options are available for counteracting this decline: increasing land protection in the calving grounds, establishing movement corridors between dispersal areas, or increasing the frequency of anti-poaching patrols. As I near completion of my thesis, I feel that I have more and more to say about which option I believe will lead to the recovery of the wildebeest population. While there is political will to conserve the migratory populations in this area, the lack of formal channels for information-sharing reduces the probability that science will play a role in the decision-making process. To counteract this, I feel that I must be vocal about my view of the situation. My decision to advocate is influenced by the urgency of the population decline and the high value that I place on biodiversity conservation, as well as on other ecological, economic, and aesthetic grounds. However, this decision is tempered by uncertainty regarding my research results and my lack of knowledge about the human or economic implications of the different management strategies.

Students who choose to engage in advocacy can use a variety of strategies. One sensible option is to enlist the help of senior scientists and policy makers, who will provide expertise and add credibility to the cause. Their experience can be a fitting complement to our energy and ideals. Additionally, many of the problems that arise from advocacy are simply the result of poorly communicated messages, or messages that are unsuited to the audience. Graduate school offers countless venues for honing these communication skills: departmental lectures, teaching assistantships, graduate workshops, oratory clubs, newsletters, and so forth. Each provides a different context and a new opportunity to practice the art of sharing information and honing your message. Finally, student advocates need to be particularly rigorous in understanding the sources and meaning of uncertainty in their analyses. Although general courses in frequentist statistics lay the foundation for this understanding, several modeling frameworks – namely, adaptive management and structured decision making – now provide model-based approaches for dealing with uncertainty in the context of natural resource management. Few graduate programs offer full courses in these emerging fields, but many workshops and short courses can be found throughout the year, varying in their degree of specialization.

In short, graduate students in ecology must think strategically before engaging in advocacy. Despite the hazards, they have an opportunity to take a leading role in using ecology to inform and shape policy decisions and influence public opinion. As ecological research, and the sources that fund it, become increasingly channeled toward understanding the growing environmental and climate crises of this century, these opportunities will only grow more numerous.

Matthew P Ayres (faculty response)In my view, ecology has become broadly relevant to society, but we remain unsophisticated in bringing our science to practice. I avoid the word “advocacy” because it can imply chaining oneself to a tree, which I cannot recommend as a career move. However, I strongly encourage interested young scientists to be aggressive by bringing powerfully relevant science to environmental decision making.

Powerful science begins with a powerful question. If you seek applied relevance, choose research questions that inform important, malleable decisions, are soluble through scientific inquiry, and address theoretical principles broader than your system. Study the business of those who implement resource management decisions, and the perspectives of those who influence decisions and are influenced by them. Go to their meetings. Read their literature. Cultivate collaboration. Try out your research questions on them and favor those that most interest them. Ensure that your research plans could produce different possible results that would support different decisions. Avoid research plans that can only support one model for management. Be able to justify your proposed research in terms of new basic knowledge and help debunk the misconception of a tradeoff between basic and applied research.

Powerful science is interpreted with clear and strong arguments. Avoid being too cautious in pursuing relevance, in which case the science could be misunderstood and underused by society, but also avoid being too aggressive in pressing tenuous conclusions, which compromises the credibility of the science. Without being either too timid or too forceful, one can express with more or less certainty scientific inferences that are more or less consequential if true. Explore different formulations of statements to maximize the objective leverage of your work for decision making. Embrace decision theory, which considers (1) the benefits of a decision if the premise is correct versus the costs if the premise is incorrect, and (2) the parallel benefits and costs of an alternative decision favored by an alternative premise. Avoid conflating scientific inference with contextual values. Make use of the construction, “If one’s management goal is (contextual value) X, then our results favor decision A over decision B”. Avoid unconscious bias that leads to the omission of inconvenient interpretations; if one result would have had applied value, the alternative must have value.

Disseminating powerful science is founded on publishing engaging papers in top journals. Conveniently, this is also how to succeed professionally and expand your beneficial impacts. Beyond publishing, seek to bring your science to the managers, decision makers, and stakeholders who cannot possibly stay on top of all the potentially relevant technical literature. Send them your papers. Go to their meetings. Have coffee with them. Consider publishing accessible, non-technical summaries and be alert to calls for public input during the development of environmental policy. Finally, I encourage readers to follow Tom’s lead in promoting continuing serious discussion about how ecology and ecologists can meet the challenge of accelerating social relevance.

No Andrew, the Arctic is still melting.

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Professor David Karoly (one of Australia’s esteemed ARC Federation Fellows) wrote to several of us recently in frustration over the recent misinformation in the Courier Mail and on Andrew Bolt’s blog. As usual, Andrew and the News Ltd papers have cherry-picked their way through the truth. Here is what David wrote:

“I don’t like responding to all, and saturating others’ email inboxes, but the misinformation in John’s emails and the Andrew Bolt’s blog is as bad as ever.

Yes, there is more ice in winter than in summer (no surprise).
The long term trend of decreasing Artic sea ice amounts in winter and in summer, as described in the Wilkinson documentary, is continuing (see image below from NSIDC).”

Enough said. The data speak for themselves.

We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change: an op-ed by Al Gore

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Former US Vice President Al Gore has a great op-ed in todays NYT here.  The  temperature anomaly map below perfectly illustrates this point he, us, and many, many other scientists have been trying to make about temperatures this January in Washington and globally:

Because these and other effects of global warming are distributed globally, they are difficult to identify and interpret in any particular location. For example, January was seen as unusually cold in much of the United States. Yet from a global perspective, it was the second-hottest January since surface temperatures were first measured 130 years ago.

If there is a god, she clearly has a cruel sense of humor:

Of all the places on earth to cool down this winter, did it have to Washington DC!  And this winter!  While the rest of the world is roasting?!  See the map source here. Thanks to Mark B’s comment on ClimateProgress. Also see this recent post on a new NOAA preliminary report (State of the Climate Global Analysis January 2010) indicates January 2010 was one of the warmest on record.

By AL GORE (see the full essay here in the NYT)

It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.

Of course, we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas in return for that oil. And we would still trail China in the race to develop smart grids, fast trains, solar power, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy — the most important sources of new jobs in the 21st century.

But what a burden would be lifted! We would no longer have to worry that our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation that had selfishly and blithely ignored clear warnings that their fate was in our hands. We could instead celebrate the naysayers who had doggedly persisted in proving that every major National Academy of Sciences report on climate change had simply made a huge mistake.

Second, we should have no illusions about the difficulty and the time needed to convince the rest of the world to adopt a completely new approach. The lags in the global climate system, including the buildup of heat in the oceans from which it is slowly reintroduced into the atmosphere, means that we can create conditions that make large and destructive consequences inevitable long before their awful manifestations become apparent: the displacement of hundreds of millions of climate refugees, civil unrest, chaos and the collapse of governance in many developing countries, large-scale crop failures and the spread of deadly diseases.

But there are two big problems with this critique: First, there is no readily apparent alternative that would be any easier politically. It is difficult to imagine a globally harmonized carbon tax or a coordinated multilateral regulatory effort. The flexibility of a global market-based policy — supplemented by regulation and revenue-neutral tax policies — is the option that has by far the best chance of success. The fact that it is extremely difficult does not mean that we should simply give up.

Some analysts attribute the failure to an inherent flaw in the design of the chosen solution — arguing that a cap-and-trade approach is too unwieldy and difficult to put in place. Moreover, these critics add, the financial crisis that began in 2008 shook the world’s confidence in the use of any market-based solution.

This comes with painful costs. China, now the world’s largest and fastest-growing source of global-warming pollution, had privately signaled early last year that if the United States passed meaningful legislation, it would join in serious efforts to produce an effective treaty. When the Senate failed to follow the lead of the House of Representatives, forcing the president to go to Copenhagen without a new law in hand, the Chinese balked. With the two largest polluters refusing to act, the world community was paralyzed.

The political paralysis that is now so painfully evident in Washington has thus far prevented action by the Senate — not only on climate and energy legislation, but also on health care reform, financial regulatory reform and a host of other pressing issues.

I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer.

Because the world still relies on leadership from the United States, the failure by the Senate to pass legislation intended to cap American emissions before the Copenhagen meeting guaranteed that the outcome would fall far short of even the minimum needed to build momentum toward a meaningful solution.

And in spite of President Obama’s efforts at the Copenhagen climate summit meeting in December, global leaders failed to muster anything more than a decision to “take note” of an intention to act.

It is true that the climate panel published a flawed overestimate of the melting rate of debris-covered glaciers in the Himalayas, and used information about the Netherlands provided to it by the government, which was later found to be partly inaccurate. In addition, e-mail messages stolen from the University of East Anglia in Britain showed that scientists besieged by an onslaught of hostile, make-work demands from climate skepticsmay not have adequately followed the requirements of the British freedom of information law.

But the scientific enterprise will never be completely free of mistakes. What is important is that the overwhelming consensus on global warming remains unchanged. It is also worth noting that the panel’s scientists — acting in good faith on the best information then available to them — probably underestimated the range of sea-level rise in this century, the speed with which the Arctic ice cap is disappearing and the speed with which some of the large glacial flows in Antarctica and Greenland are melting and racing to the sea.

Because these and other effects of global warming are distributed globally, they are difficult to identify and interpret in any particular location. For example, January was seen as unusually cold in much of the United States. Yet from a global perspective, it was the second-hottest January since surface temperatures were first measured 130 years ago.

Similarly, even though climate deniers have speciously argued for several years that there has been no warming in the last decade, scientists confirmed last month that the last 10 years were the hottest decade since modern records have been kept.

The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth, yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans, putting significantly more moisture into the atmosphere — thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow in particular regions, including the Northeastern United States. Just as it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees, neither should we miss the climate for the snowstorm.

Here is what scientists have found is happening to our climate: man-made global-warming pollution traps heat from the sun and increases atmospheric temperatures. These pollutants — especially carbon dioxide — have been increasing rapidly with the growth in the burning of coal, oil, natural gas and forests, and temperatures have increased over the same period. Almost all of the ice-covered regions of the Earth are melting — and seas are rising. Hurricanes are predicted to grow stronger and more destructive, though their number is expected to decrease. Droughts are getting longer and deeper in many mid-continent regions, even as the severity of flooding increases. The seasonal predictability of rainfall and temperatures is being disrupted, posing serious threats to agriculture. The rate of species extinction is accelerating to dangerous levels.

Though there have been impressive efforts by many business leaders, hundreds of millions of individuals and families throughout the world and many national, regional and local governments, our civilization is still failing miserably to slow the rate at which these emissions are increasing — much less reduce them.

Denialist Agenda (Part 5): Who’s defending science?

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Here is Part 5 of Clive Hamilton’s excellent series of articles on ABC unleashed:

The sustained assault on climate science, detailed in this series, spread from the loonier corners of the internet first into certain media outlets with an ideological axe to grind, and now into neutral news outlets too lazy or lacking in confidence to carry out some basic checking before reporting the same distortions.

There is no excuse for this as there are a number of websites with easy-to-read and up-to-date deconstructions of the lies and misrepresentations peddled by sceptics, including Deltoid in Australia and RealClimate in the United States.

But if in echoing denialist misrepresentations some journalists are naïve or too busy to check, others are willing accomplices. For several years The Australian newspaper has been the leading organ of climate denial in Australia.

The list of beat-ups is so long that blogger Tim Lambert keeps a catalogue of The Australian‘s war on science. It’s a kind of archive of journalistic misbehavior that could be used in courses on media ethics. Let’s consider a couple of them.

Franklingate
Earlier this month, The Australian decided it wanted to challenge Climate Change Minister Penny Wong’s “alarming predictions” about the effect of sea-level rise on Australia’s coasts. So to which authority did journalists Matthew Franklin and Lanai Vasek turn to repudiate decades of scientific research?

There he was, featured in a huge photograph on the front page under the headline “Wong wipeout doesn’t wash with locals”, a 53-year-old bronzed man named Lee who said he’d been swimming at Bondi for 30 years and “was adamant he had seen ‘no change’ to the coastline”. To augment his careful observations, Lee engaged in some projections too, declaring that there’s nothing suggesting sea-levels at Bondi will change in the future.

Brilliant; give him a job at Australia’s leading sea-level research outfit, the Antarctic Climate CRC in Hobart. There he could go head-to-head with Dr John Church, the world’s leading authority on sea-level rise. He chairs the World Climate Research Programme’s scientific committee on sea-level rise, was awarded the 2006 CSIRO’s Medal for Research Achievement, and in 2007 won the Eureka Prize for his work on the measurement of sea-level rise. Mere trifles compared to Lee’s common sense.

Franklin and Vasek did not ask Church or any other authority on sea-level rise what their research shows; instead, for “authority”, they quoted Bob Carter, one of Australia’s leading climate skeptics — a favourite of the Heartland Institute and a founding member of the Australian Environment Foundation, a front group set up by the Institute of Public Affairs and whose board has included Leon Ashby, now president of the Climate Sceptics Party.

The Australian‘s decision to pitch the opinion of a bloke with a tan against years of scientific research is a deliberate strategy of pandering to ignorance, of fuelling wishful thinking at the expense of science. As politics it’s clever; as journalism it’s risible.

Walkergate
Jamie Walker writes beat-ups aimed at discrediting scientific claims that the Great Barrier Reef is seriously threatened by global warming. In a story earlier this month (front page again) Walker accurately reported research by the Australian Institute of Marine Science to the effect that some reefs did not experience the expected bleaching last summer due to the influence of storms.

This became the headline “Report undercuts PM’s reef wipeout” because Walker made the ludicrous leap from the absence of bleaching for two years to a rosy future for the Reef into the indefinite future. One data point became that basis for rejecting a catalogue of research linking warming seas to coral damage.

Walker has form for bagging marine scientists. Last year a story by him headed “Scientists ‘crying wolf’ over coral” was based on the opinion of Peter Ridd, a physicist who is listed as the Science Coordinator for the Australian Environment Foundation front group.

Weissergate
For years, the opinion pages of The Australian have been turned over to every denialist who pops up anywhere around the world, with even the loopiest given free rein — Christopher Monckton, Andrey Illarionov, Ian Plimer, Bob Carter, David Evans, Jon Jenkins, Christopher Booker, David Bellamy, Brendan O’Neill, Frank Furedi and many more.

The last two, incidentally, are members of an anti-environmental Trotskyist splinter group called the Revolutionary Communist Party, showing that, for opinion editor Rebecca Weisser, it doesn’t matter whether you are left or right as long as you loathe environmentalism.

Mitchellgate
The man who oversees this travesty of reporting is editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell. Last year he was chuffed to receive the annual JN Pierce Award for Media Excellence for coverage of climate change policy from … wait for it … the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association, the foremost lobby group for the oil and gas industries. APPEA lauded Mitchell because his paper’s

“in-depth coverage of a range of public policy issues affecting Australia’s upstream oil and gas industry has been of a consistently high standard. The reporting has been thoughtful, balanced, analytical, well researched and a big effort was made to ensure that all facets of the issue were presented.”

Astonishment robs me of words.

The Fox of print
Rupert Murdoch had a much-publicised change of heart in 2007 — thought to be stimulated by his son James — when he told his news editors that the planet should be given the benefit of the doubt and News Ltd would go carbon-neutral. There are now rumours that Murdoch has recanted and has rejoined the denialist camp.

Certainly that would be consistent with the virulent anti-science now being run by his media outlets — including the triumvirate of broadsheets based in London, New York and Sydney — led of course by Fox News. Murdoch’s son-in-law, Matthew Freud said he spoke for other family members when he last month launched a breath-taking attack on Fox News. He said he is “ashamed and sickened by [Fox boss] Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained disregard [for] journalistic standards”.

Despite its high-brow pretentions, is not The Australian — with the same commitment to an ideological agenda, the same disregard for the separation of news and comment, and the same stable of bumptious right-wing columnists — just the Fox News of print? No wonder the paper’s last reporter with any credibility on climate change, Lenore Taylor, has finally jumped ship.

Right now on campuses across Australia, The Australian is engaged in an aggressive marketing campaign to sign up university students, offering a year’s subscription for $20. It would be comforting to believe that university students are capable of seeing through the distortions and manipulation of news that defines the national broadsheet. But that is wishful thinking and to the extent that The Australian‘s discount sale succeeds we risk seeing a generation of graduates whose understanding of climate science is grossly distorted by the newspaper’s unrelenting war on science.

For years, scientific organisations have attempted to correct The Australian‘s misrepresentation of the science. So unresponsive is the newspaper that some, including the Bureau of Meteorology, have just given up.

Science’s defenders
The trashing of the reputation of climate science spills over into the other sciences, so how has the profession been fighting back? After all, once the fury dies down it is likely to be many years before public trust in science can be rebuilt to previous levels. It would be a grave mistake for scientific organisations to imagine that this will all blow over and the world will return to normal.

One would expect that the employers and professional organisations of the scientists who are daily attacked as frauds, cheats and political zealots would be in the public domain defending them against these charges. But for the most part, they have been missing in action or engaged in skirmishes far from the main action.

The CSIRO is nowhere to be seen. Instead it has put the lid on its climate scientists, barring them from presenting their work, preferring actively to promote the commercial interests of the coal industry. The CSIRO’s new Chief Executive, Dr Megan Clark (who transferred across from a senior executive position with BHP Billiton) should be out in public defending vigorously the quality of the organisation’s climate research.

The Bureau of Meteorology, whose work has often been traduced, has tried to respond but seems to have capitulated in the face of hopeless odds.

The Australian Academy of Science includes fellows whose work has been called fraudulent and dishonest and who are the target of abuse and threats. Their treatment should be a matter of the first concern, not least because the esteem in which all science is held is under attack.

At bottom, scientists are not good at public relations, and most scientists would much rather bury themselves in their labs than face a microphone. Once this did not matter, but in the face of a sustained assault on their credibility by people who have an intimate knowledge of how to use the media to manipulate the truth, their unworldliness is causing lasting damage.

As expected, the response to this series of articles on the state of climate change denial has been strong. The dogmatic and vitriolic nature of many of the comments on this blog and others confirms that denial is only nominally about the science and really about ideology and cultural identity.

There are two or three charges against me that keep doing the rounds and for the record I want to make brief replies.

1. Using the term “denier” does not equate climate denial with Holocaust denial. The term is used in other contexts, such as HIV denial, as a descriptor for those whose minds are closed to evidence that contradicts their opinion, yet who maintain their opposition to empirical reality is based on evidence. It is not the same as scepticism.

2. I have not equated climate and Holocaust denialism. The passage quoted to “show” that I have is my description of an argument others might use to equate the two (known as consequentialism), but which I explicitly reject.

3. I have not argued that we need to “suspend democracy” to tackle climate change. I have said some people believe this, but I don’t. I have said we must reinvigorate democracy.

4. Most bizarrely, some have said I should not be listened to because I have proposed shooting koalas for sport. This furphy came inevitably from Andrew Bolt. In an article titled “Cashing In On Koalas”, I argued the opposite by ridiculing the free-market approach to conservation using the well-known rhetorical technique of pushing an argument to its extreme, in this case charging American tourists to hunt koalas on Kangaroo Island. For those slow on the uptake I went as far as to propose some koalas be put in cages to be shot at short range by those with poor aim, and, for the really slow-witted, I concluded by saying Wilson Tuckey had given the scheme his blessing. Andrew, it’s called satire, you dope.

5. If a vote were held for the most vituperative blogger in Australia, Andrew Bolt would win hands down. Yet he has reacted to my criticisms of him with wounded outrage and by running around whingeing to everyone who will listen. We all met his type in the schoolyard, the bully who cries as soon as someone gives him one back. It’s truly pathetic.