Mitigating Apathy

Are we still talking about Social Capital?

2012-01-23T04:14:00.000-08:00

The issue I'll be addressing in the coming weeks relate to the question "are we still talking about social capital" and if so, why. I am motivated to ask these questions as I have noticed that another "range"of papers has been published on social capital in 2012, even though they seem collectively to be uncritical of the concept. The concept of social capital emerged as an influential research theme in a number of disciplines in the past twenty or so years, as measured by the exponential growth in social capital literature throughout the 1990s the 2000s, which continues even in 2012. While some of the assumptions of social capital theory have been challenged individually, its limitations as a unified concept have not been adequately tackled within the academic literature. In this blog I’m going to attempt to address this challenge, identifying key questions that the concept needs to tackle.

Social capital is more than the sum of the various kinds of relationships that we entertain, and a social capital lens, therefore, can reveal features of reality that otherwise remain invisible (Adler and Kwom 2002: 36)

The use of the concept of social capital as a tool of analysis for social scientists is relatively recent but already has a wide variety of meanings and uses across a range of disciplines (see Portes 1998; Woolcock 1998; Borgatti and Foster 2003). As might be expected with a concept treated so broadly as to be an explanation for a multiplicity of social changes and a panacea for pressing social problems, a number of weaknesses have been identified in different aspects of the concept and its use (Durlauf 1999; Schuller, Baron and Field 2000; Fine 2002) and yet notwithstanding these critiques, the concept has expanded into new areas of social science research, with the number of articles and citations continuing to grow (see Forsman 2005 Widén-Wulff 2007).

In order to address the perceived limitations of the notion of social capital systematically, this blog will over the next few weeks examine the way in which it has been conceptualised in an attempt to draw together the different lines of criticism directed towards the unity and meaning of the concept. This is done in order to identify the weaknesses of the concept of social capital as a concept, so that it can be clarified and reconceptualised in a less ideological way that is more focussed on the role it plays in explaining specific relationships. The intention of this collection of blog articles on social capital is therefore not to dismiss the concept, but rather to set a number of challenges to scholars wishing to invoke it as a solution to a specific problem. If the concept really is more than the sum of the various kinds of relationships, as the quote that begins this article states, explaining and illustrating this “added value” as clearly as possible, will be a useful contribution to research centred on exploring these relationships.

The first question this raises is that notwithstanding such bold claims, in the absence of a framework explaining the contribution of the term, why focus on the concept at all: it is a research term that already has a large literature without yet having generated much consensus. Indeed a number of critics suggest that despite its vast literature, or perhaps as a consequence, social capital fails to provide a unified or coherent concept at all. It is, they argue, a fundamentally elusive concept, explaining almost any social science phenomenon with a “capacity to draw uncritically on any handy analysis” (Fine 2002: 796). Michael Woolcock argues that there are a number of forms or dimensions that are confusingly unified as a single concept: “social capital’s revisionist grounding in different sociological traditions risks trying to explain too much with too little” (Woolcock 1998: 155) noting:

Ordinarily, a theory’s parsimony i.e., its capacity to explain the most with the least is a desirable property; in this instance, however, a single term is being adopted indiscriminately, adapted uncritically, and applied imprecisely(Woolcock 1998: 196)

Ben Fine goes further, claiming that while it is presented as a tool of consensus for overcoming ideological divisions between left and right, it is, in fact, highly political in both neutralising dissent and systematically disregarding key questions and issues concerning the social problems it is claimed to address:

Social capital is the degradation of scholarship, independent of its popularisation and potential self-help, win-win, reactionary overtones…Isolated occurrences aside, it can only be rejected, not appropriately transformed (Fine 2002: 799) While this may be true of some uses of social capital, particularly as a policy instrument or as a political objective in itself (see DeFilippis 2001: 800-801) many attempts have been made to clarify the concept in terms of its use in research (Lyons 2001; Sobel 2002); its definition, structure, and connection with other academic concepts (Burt 2000); and in terms of the unity of its component parts (e.g. Bjørnskov 2006). Although such scholarship attests to the perceived robustness of social capital as a potentially useful academic concept, there remain, however, a number of criticisms concerning its implications as a theory, and in terms of the type of explanations it affords. These criticisms are derived from a range of perspectives and assumptions rather than from a unified critique; nevertheless, their collective force is itself in some way parallel to the multiple perspectives invoking social capital in support of a wide range of phenomena.

In order to engage with this multiplicity of critical positions thuis blog will over the coming weeks address a small number of key criticisms of social capital and examine each criticism briefly and independently, with illustrations from the literature. The blog will then draw from these lines of critique in delineating a challenge to scholars likely to be drawn to the concept as a research device or explanatory tool. This challenge, therefore, is as follows: before the concept of social capital is introduced as an explanation or description of events to support their research, scholars must be clear that it is able to add the value to their findings by being able to accomplish the work they expect it to perform. In order to develop a structure to address such a challenge, the blog will present eight criticisms of existing social capital framework. To address the challenge of demonstrating the relevance of a social capital lens, it will be necessary to develop a structure robust enough to simultaneously address each of these criticisms. While these criticisms are numbered, are not given any priority, though the first three criticisms address the reflexive nomenclature of the concept – the social, capital and theory aspects of the concept. I’ll add these questions to the blog in the coming weeks, but if you have any questions, don’t forget to write a comment.

Assemblages - a framework for social networks

2011-12-02T10:34:00.001-08:00

As I described last month, we are collectively engaged in networks that encompass social systems and populations (macro level) as well as individual action and uniquely occurring interactions (micro level). The problem of scale is how to hold the macro and micro together without reducing the macro to a series of micro epiphenomena or erasing the micro by reducing it to the functions of social forces. As Mark Granovetter observed:

A fundamental weakness of current sociological theory is that it does not relate macro-level interactions to micro-level patterns in any convincing way" (Granovetter 1973: 1360).

Granovetter’s criticism still applies to much of contemporary social and organisational theory. Many of the “solutions” to this problem simply defer the reductionism from the macro to the meso level such as with Anthony Giddens’ theory of structuration (Giddens 1986), the concept of (transformative) praxis (Bhaskar 1997), the notion of the routine within the multi-level perspective (Nelson and Winter 1977) or by different forms of conflation based on act aggregation or agent orchestration (see Archer 1995: 93-134). Network theory might offer a promising alternativeand yet network theory itself possesses the same weakness. The problem of addressing the limitations of existing network theories can be coupled with this requirement to develop a theoretical solution to the problem of scale. It is for this reason that I have built on the concept of the assemblage as a theoretical framework for network theory. While many of the features of assemblages are found in existing network descriptions, unlike existing network theories, the concept of the assemblage was not developed from fragmented theories with different supporting ontological assumptions, but devised with a clear purpose and directed towards a specific problematic within a unified philosophical scheme, though one which is complex and requires a series of steps in order to be fully conceptualised (Deleuze and Guattari 1988: 323-337).

The term “assemblage” is derived from the Greek word sumbolon meaning the act of bringing together. Deleuze describes an assemblage (agencement) as a “multiplicity which is made up of many heterogeneous terms and which establish liaisons, relations between them” (Deleuze and Parnet 1987: 69) and uses the term as a way of conceptualising a wide range of patterns that hold heterogeneous elements together. These collectives are therefore devised in order to serve as the unit of analysis in explaining events on the micro, meso and macro scale. An assemblage structure, which will be described in detail shortly, expresses network relationships in which synthetic processes or emergent properties are not reducible to the properties of a network’s individual parts and thus a means of engaging macro-level and micro-level configurations without recourse to reductionism. Unlike other approaches that suggest ontological distinctions between levels (for example, the way we are taught in school the difference between physics, chemistry and biology), the assemblage concept is used to explain the way in which each entity exists on the same ontological level, but differs in the scale in which it resides: “The minimum real unit is not the work, the idea, the concept or the signifier, but the assemblage … which is always collective, which brings into play within us and outside us populations, multiplicities, territories, becomings, affects, events (Deleuze and Parnet 1987: 52)”.

The concept of an assemblage, as developed by Deleuze and Guattari (1988) and later refined by DeLanda (Delanda 2006a; 2006b), was designed to explain the synthetic processes that sustain and modify the structures of entities such as formal and informal networks, organisations, industries or regions etc. in non dialectical terms. Unlike dialectical and organic wholes, the concept provides a non-reductionist and non-essentialist description for the properties of the entities it is applied to, enabling different intermediate scales to be represented in terms of appropriate units of analysis rather than epiphenomena. This is because unlike an organic totality with mutually constituted parts fused into a seamless whole, the components of an assemblage have a degree of autonomy from the whole, which allows them to be disconnected and reassigned to other assemblages. To use an example, an extended family is an assemblage comprised of, but not limited to, different components of a biological, organic, technological, spatial and informational nature configured into, and modified by, a range of socio-cultural assemblages such as languages, medicine, community and consumption. These emergent assemblages are themselves components serving larger assemblages, from small networks and organisations to nation states and global events. The ontological status of these larger assemblages becomes, in turn, “that of a unique, singular, historically contingent individual” (DeLanda 2006a: 40). In this way, the study of a specific cluster of assemblages is not prior determined according to a particular unit of analysis or pressure (such as individual agents, labour, utility and profit maximisation) as is often the case with network theories, but determining the scale, components and assemblages to be included in the description forms a part of the investigation, which recognises the impact of using these, rather than other components, in framing the analysis (Callon 1998). The power of the assemblage approach in capturing this variety of organisational dynamics, then, is that it presents an alternative to explanations based on organic totalities or descriptions based upon the organism metaphor. This is because unlike organic parts, the components of assemblages can be switched between assemblages while preserving their identity, as occurs on a daily basis in every organisation. Consequently, the properties of the components do not explain the relations which constitute the whole, as the properties of the assemblage are not the result of the aggregation of components properties but the exercise of their capacities.

In terms of the Borgatti and Foster typology described last month, an individual assemblage as represented by these features comprises both the structure and the flow of resources not as abstract aggregates, but as actual features of the narrative of the emerging network, i.e. the structuralist dimension identifies the components to be included in the assemblage, while the connectionist dimension dictates the patterns that the assemblage imposes on the components. An assemblage, then, is not driven by stable preference functions and their related constraints, nor is it driven by competing essentialist forces, but is generated and modified by a multiplicity of heterogeneous interests which only emerge with the unfolding of the assemblage itself in much the same way as a part of a network can switch from being an active part to a more passive part of a process as the organisation it belongs to evolves; for example, when a group of politicians vote to change the leadership of their party. Although this sounds pretty complex and perhaps pedantic, I think that using such a framework is the only way to begin the process of bringing different social network concepts together.

For more details about the concept, to see my attempt to operationalise the concept and for a complete list of the references used, see Haynes(2011) Conceptualising Networks as Assemblages, Revista Internacional de Sociologia 69(2) 417-437.

Social Networks and their Limitations

2011-11-20T05:23:00.000-08:00

My research interests, as applied to assessing green innovation, technology, clusters, strategic alliances or policy development, etc. is based upon understanding the social networks that afford the relationships on which these new ideas or innovations emerge. This month I’ll introduce a few academic considerations about social networks, while next month I’ll try to explain how I’m trying to develop a corrective to the limitations that social network thinking needs to solve if it is to be an effective explanation of the interdependencies that it describes.

Attempts to describe and explain the social interactions that support organisations and other social phenomena make use of a variety of models and methods. There are, though, a limited number of paradigms that dominate the literature, and among these, emerging as the market leader, is that of the network. Stephen Borgatti and Pacey Foster illustrate the exponential growth of network-based research outputs with bibliometric data (Borgatti and Foster 2003: 992), arguing that the network paradigm forms part of a more general move “away from individualist, essentialist and atomistic explanations toward more relational, contextual and systemic understandings” (Borgatti and Foster 2003: 991). In this moth’s blog I will briefly examine some of the key features of network theory. The network paradigm does not represent a unified approach to research; network models are themselves diverse but share characteristics and assumptions. The use of such models in addressing the issue of innovation (the theme of this paper) seems a sensible choice as networks are able to capture a sense of the interdependencies of organisations and the channels of exchange that enable the relationships necessary for innovation to develop and be maintained (Freeman 1991). Equally, network descriptions can be applied to a variety of innovation-related phenomena. Examples include Powell, Koput and Smith-Doerr (1996), who use network patterns to describe the growth in corporate partnerships and external collaboration and the purpose such relationships serve, while Bengt-Åke Lundvall, with a very different approach to organisational adaptation, uses network descriptions to exemplify the process of knowledge transfer and learning between different firms (see Lundvall 1992).

Network models have been used extensively in research questions addressing both internal organisational change and inter-organisational dynamics. This paper will focus on network research of both types of dynamics, and network approaches specifically addressing the topic of innovation, partly because innovation and change are particularly dynamic organisational themes, and also because they present a challenge for researchers and theorists due to the difficulty of setting the boundaries of the network, i.e. distinguishing what is included from what is excluded from the network. In addition, with an established, though rapidly growing, literature to justify new research, bold claims are being made about how networks are a fundamental part of an organisation’s relationship to the innovation process: “It now appears that inherent successful innovation can be explained by the influence of the networks and social capital” (Lewrick, Raeside and Peisl 2007: 38).

The key feature of network analysis in this literature is that it emphasises the interdependence of individuals within organisations rather than conceptualising them as sovereign elements that act autonomously. As such, the relationship between individuals is perceived to be the unit of analysis of social structures, with such relationships conceptualised as conduits for the flow of resources, and in particular, information (Wasserman and Faust 1994: 4-5). Network theorists therefore attempt to identify the relationship patterns that form network structures and analyse the network relationships to identify the conditions that enable or obstruct specific activity. While there are common features in the types of methods and metrics used to identify such patterns, and shared assumptions concerning the importance of ties of interaction in investigating behaviour and activity, there are fewer commonalities in the theoretical basis of such analysis.

Theoretical positions developed in the early stages of network research – approximately 1970-1990 (Borgatti and Foster 2003: 992) – can be defined in terms of their opposition to structural-functionalism, in addition to an implied opposition to perspectives that emphasise purposive action and non-relation characteristics (Wellman and Berkoviz 1997). However, explicit theoretical or ontological frameworks with which to support the assumptions of a network analysis are typically absent. Mustafa Emirbayer and Jeff Goodwin (1994) claim that there are, in fact, three implicit models or frameworks in network analysis, although all three models – structuralist determinism; structuralist instrumentalism; and, structuralist constructionism – seem to have fundamental problems (see Emirbayer and Goodwin 1994: 1425-1436).

A broad analysis of more recent network models (Borgatti and Foster 2003) identifies a number of research streams and research dimensions with which to categorise the literature. While the themes are useful in demonstrating the degree to which concepts such as social capital, embeddedness and social cognition have gained resonance with network researchers, their initial observation is that much of the research, especially that influenced by Burt: “seems to add a rational actor assumption to social capital theory to the effect that actors deliberately choose their ties (i.e. manipulate the network structure) specifically in order to maximise gain” (Borgatti and Foster 2003: 1002).

While these typologies are useful, the dearth of ontological considerations in the network literature leads to, and is compounded by, a number of methodological weaknesses. For example, in research designed to address networks, genuine theories are generally overlooked in preference to descriptions. In addition to this, some of the stronger claims supporting these descriptions rely on data sets such as patent data and citations, which are weak indicators of sophisticated networks, while other research relies wholly on surveys and questionnaires, often leading to perceived ties being treated as actual ties (Marsden 1990). In this way, such research is unable to develop findings through which new concepts or theories are able to emerge, thus perpetuating the choice of concentrating on description, or worse, on implicitly retaining internally inconsistent theories and concepts based on fragmented and unexamined models.

The problem is that while the authors of these explanations often support their claims with empirical evidence, demonstrating that networks form a condition of the organisational dynamics able to facilitate innovation, there is little actual theory to explain, rather than merely describe, why the processes function, what deeper mechanisms are at work, or how the changing components of the networks impact on the processes produced by earlier interdependencies or the process of feedback and emergence on changes within collaborative groupings. As Gerald Salancik argues, “network analysis has been used mainly as a tool for analysing data about organizations rather than for understanding organizations per se” (Salancik 1995: 345). Thus while it is true that describing the effects of network phenomena may be useful, in addition, it would be much more powerful if it were coupled with explanations concerning why they exist in the form that they exist, particularly if the research is to be applicable to other cases and, more ambitiously, to address the nature of the ontologically primitive elements that constitute network theory’s basic concepts (Parkhe, Wasserman, and Ralston 2006: 561-563). To address these gaps, and identify the range of actors and ties responsible for organisational change within such networks, an alternative perspective must be developed that can encompass all of the features of the typologies developed by Emirbayer and Goodwin, and Borgatti and Foster, and, in addition, offer an account of the ontological features so as to improve our conceptualisation of networks in general. I’ll try to explain the type of framework I have been developing in next month’s blog.

For a more complete overview of these issues and a full list of references to this blog articles see Haynes, P. (2011) Conceptualising Networks as Assemblages, Revista Internacional de Sociologia 69(2) 417-437

Come off it, REF!

2011-10-24T06:21:00.000-07:00

The REF could have an influence on how academics engage with non academics

This post isn't about what is happening on various football fields but on different academic fields. The REF in question (Research Excellence Framework) is in many ways an improvement over the previous Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), with 20% of the assessment based upon the impact of research on non academics. There is, however, a catch: the research not only needs to have a justifiable impact but must also be published in academic journals with an impact factor. Departments noted for their excellent work with the general public, policy makers, business people, practitioners will not be credited by the REF unless the research they develop to help such stakeholders is published in journals used almost exclusively by (a small number of) academics. Why is this a problem? My view is that building a field or developing a discipline is not able to develop in an inclusive way if it follows the Kuhnian approach to research termed “normal science” based on past scientific achievements that the appropriate academic community acknowledges as a foundation for its practice. Kuhn describes these achievements, or “paradigms” as both sufficiently unprecedented to attract a group of adherents away from competing modes of academic research, but, at the same time, sufficiently open-ended to leave various problems for the community of research practitioners to address. Paradigms, in this way, thus help academic communities to demarcate their discipline. They do so, Kuhn argues, by creating avenues of inquiry, helping to formulate research questions, directing the selection of methods appropriate to these questions, defining areas of relevance, structuring the fact gathering process and identifying acceptable technologies appropriate for research. A paradigm also acts to draw in individuals to act as advocates. These advocates and followers are then transformed into a research community, a profession or a discipline as the paradigm becomes accepted and gains credibility. This occurs, Kuhn argues, through the formation of journals, societies or specialist groups, which develop the discipline through articles that are directed to their colleagues who accept the paradigm, rather than needing to justify the concepts, questions, and methods from first principles. This professionalism is supported by the community using its expertise to claim, both for themselves and their paradigm, a place in the academic establishment.

In this way, justification for claims over research territory and, by implication, claims to disciplinary status, are typically measured by their exponents, in journal articles, conferences, research council funding, processing graduate students quickly and departments or centres, as repeatedly mentioned. Such measures are easy to quantify as research outputs and/or demonstrate the strength of a research community and, through peer review, they preserve minimum standards. As indicators or measures, they give some indication of the investment in specific ideas, methods and topics, equated with the values of a group of academics and related bodies. Researchers and academics should certainly continue to strive to disseminate ideas in academic journals, teach specialist courses, bid for research funding, organise conferences, but not at the expense of reducing the scope and significance of the research. Indeed, as a basis for a strategy of field building, it is likely to be counterproductive, concentrating on the epiphenomena of good research, producing identikit answers to the most accommodating problems rather than on more worthy issues that might be too complex to yield publishable article-length outputs. In addition, a departmental emphasis upon publication in “high impact” academic journals as the measure of value is likely to reduce the amount of time academics spend engaging with practitioners and reduce the relevance of research outputs to a practitioner audience, with interaction tending to be more instrumental or strategic. The pressure of research assessment exercises, such as the new REF in the is likely to limit opportunities for practitioner-oriented, and inter disciplinary-oriented, researchers, the flouting equal opportunity policies, lack of long term strategic planning, the likelihood of creative researchers opting out of academia all together, among other criticisms (see Elton 2000: 280-281). The consequence is that with fewer intermediaries and with younger researchers guided away from such practitioner engagement, the gap between academics and practitioners is in many cases widened, when the benefits of narrowing the gap are obvious to those engaged with entrepreneurship. As Elton concludes: “academic traditionalism in research, often in the very areas where it ought to be lessened, have discouraged new developments and interdisciplinary research, and have isolated researchers from practitioners” (Elton 2000: 279).

A normal science strategy may help in producing solid agreement on how to get an abundance of answers, acquire support to do so, and avenues for disseminating them, but at a tremendous cost in exactly the areas that academic research should be contributing to knowledge, i.e. in identifying key problems and developing applications in practice, while developing and investigating new concepts and theories, which enable the complex landscape to be more effectively explained. As Daft and Lewin observed:

Research may be generated at a fast pace, but contributions will typically defend the extant point of view, and are less likely to lead to fundamental new insight. (Daft and Lewin 1990: 2)

Such a divorce from practitioners and overemphasis on normal science measures can have serious consequences in developing appropriate outputs for practitioners or developing useful, creative and stimulating debates, as Gareth Morgan argues:

The control systems developed by journals and university departments alike exert a confining if well-meaning hold on the jugular of scholarship, which threatens to strangle the development of new possibilities. (Morgan 1990: 29)

The alternative to this strong grip is not to internalise the stranglehold, but to learn how to build an academic movement capable of innovating through engagement with the experience and knowledge of practitioners, as seems to be a fundamental strategy in some of the key social entrepreneurship research networks, as outlined in recent collections of articles and case studies by researchers and practitioners (see Nicholls 2006; Steyaert and Hjorth 2006). There is no simple recipe or “how to” model, and extensive research (for example Whitley 1984; Becher and Trowler 2001) demonstrates that organisational factors such as academic culture and administrative structures are as important as the research agenda and discipline problematic, in determining the prospects of a new field. Nevertheless, what is absent is the type of mobilisation strategy able to draw together the expertise and credibility to provide the academic coherence to the agglomeration of specific cases. The competition with other claims over parts of the same research territory requires this, both as a measure of success, i.e. as an alternative to normal science measures, and as a way of enabling its standing, contacts, knowledge, resources, leadership etc to gain critical mass within the academy. This is, of course, a difficult challenge, and clarifies why a normal science approach seems the easy option to any young field, but it is an approach which pull in the opposite direction of building a strong and inclusive academic movement, one which can thrive on developing and implementing a pluralist, and no less rigorous, research agenda, strengthens its potential for collaboration in which both orientation types can benefit.

An academic movement approach, then, in contrast with the normal science approach, is a collective, inclusive and emergent process, unfolding an agenda that resonates with the group’s interests and concerns. Such research need have no fear of developing exciting, bold theories and imaginative testing methods, able to tolerate academic failure while rewarding vision, engagement and change-making tools through prominence in an active and vibrant movement. Understanding research topics in their myriad forms requires asking research questions which policy makers and practitioners benefit from asking and which academics benefit from answering, but without greater engagement are neither asked nor answered. In new fields, as in the field of play, an unfair REF could be very damaging to your ambitions.

The cultural branding of Climate Change campaigns?

2011-09-01T04:58:00.000-07:00

Brands are not just efficient communication tools

While the business application of new modes of branding have been explored in detail, the cultural and communication implications are perhaps even more significant and yet remain an under researched area. Branding is no longer the simple art of product differentiation using a pleasant logo or clever product name. Since the development of the mass media, branding has become a key driver in the process of the globalisation of product development and promotion strategy, but also the communication of ideas, cultural icons and social movements. With the integration of ICT, low cost multimedia and extensive knowledge networks, the way in which branding has traditionally been used to promote products has been revolutionised, but the strategies that have supported the added value that we as consumers attribute to the products/services can now be extended to a range of cultural activities and identities as though they were commodities. Likewise, the sophistication of consumers has meant that successful branding strategies depend upon the ability of a brand to resonate with complex, and shifting, cultural values. The merging of these two tendencies has meant that cultural branding, and the branding of culture, are now interdependent forces in the social mediascape in which contemporary life is represented and performed.
OK, very interesting, but what has this got to do with climate change, energy policy or econometric models assessing policy instruments designed to decarbonise the economy? Well, more than you might think. I am not suggesting that brands like the IPCC, or Cambridge University for that matter, are sufficient to leverage policy agreements or climate change action – the debates on policy are necessarily complex and require the inputs from many different organisations, experts and interest groups, some of which represent strong brands, but others are important irrespective of any image or value their reputation or brand value might have (if any).

So why is branding even an issue in climate change? The issue is more about the way in which climate change itself is an issue and how campaigns to address climate change or to oppose specific policies can learn from contemporary concepts in branding to communicate their message effectively and transparently.

The response to this suggestion has been mixed; there is the assumption that branding is a strategy used in the commodification and promotion of goods that emphasises trivial differences to charge a premium or outcompete equally valid, or perhaps functionally superior goods and services – branding is about presenting something as better than its rivals by any means necessary, irrespective of the truth of their claims, and more money means better promotion and more profits (within the limits of the law, of course, or not, according to Naomi Klein’s iconic book No Logo). But this is not an accurate assessment of either branding or promotion, although there is always some truth degree of ruthlessness that some businesses pursue their manipulation through promotion, rather than by producing improved goods and services.

Branding is not just concerned with owning a simple, focused position in the consumer’s mind nor indeed, just a relationship partner creating emotional ties to consumers, nor is contemporary branding limited to guerrilla marketing and creating viral videos. Contemporary branding is as much about how to resonate with the values of specific social groups and to present the narratives that inform their sense of value as accurately and coherently as possible.

My research with Doug Holt on cultural branding and social campaigns, such as Jubilee 2000 and Make Poverty History, used this type of framework to assess the success and failure of global cultural campaigns. The question is why do some global campaigns resonate with so many people and force issues onto the decision making agenda, whereas seemingly equally valid global problems or social campaigns fall flat on their face. One answer seems to be that relative success occurs because of the ability of the campaigners to promote a specific cultural brand that resonates with specific cohorts able to leverage influence. With the issue of climate change or emissions reduction or energy policy as (interrelated) global problems requiring specific types of action at the level of policy or behaviour change it will be crucial to analyse the complex ways in which the messages are communicated, the way that the reputations of organisations and individuals change and impact on promotion opportunities or damage a campaign message, the ways key narratives are evoked and invoked to enrol support, the way new media opportunities can provide momentum for a campaign or lose control of the agenda, and similar cultural branding issues are evaluated and implemented, will be crucial if the opportunities of new forms of cultural branding are to be used effectively to address the requirements of an effective global climate change campaign. Equally they will be important for those who disagree with the need to develop such policies or oppose any measures to cut fossil fuel use. Perhaps developing an effective understanding of how cultural branding works to communicate complex issues to multiple stakeholders will be the democratisation of campaigning, rather than manipulative lobbying and counter-lobbying, which has caused confusion, apathy and raised suspicion of all sides of the climate change debate.

What is E3MG?

2011-08-08T09:46:00.000-07:00

E3MG sounds complicate - it is!

One of the key areas of research that 4CMR is involved with is E3 modelling. Over the past few years one of the central models, E3MG (Energy-Environment-Economy (E3) Model for the Globe), has been improved as part of a concerted effort by the core research group. In the near future the improved model will be used to assess policy scenarios related to carbon emissions. Many of the people who follow this blog will have a vague idea of what such a model is, but this month I will be introducing the model in more detail. If you are interested in climate change debates but are turned off by the technical details of econometric modelling, then perhaps this month’s blog article is not for you.

OK, so what is E3MG? The model is one of a suite of E3 models maintained and improved by Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research (4CMR) and Cambridge Econometrics under the guidance of Terry Barker. Each of the models within this suite has a specific territorial focus; E3MG extends coverage across the globe.

The E3MG model adopts a number of assumptions informed by new interpretations of Keynsian economics and complexity economics. Economic activity undertaken by individuals, households, firms, government, trade unions and other groups has effects on all groups after a time lag, and the effects may persist into future generations, although many of the effects soon become so small as to be negligible. While the individual effects may be small, there are many of them, both beneficial and damaging, and they accumulate in economic and physical stocks. The effects are transmitted through the environment (with externalities such as greenhouse gas emissions leading to global warming), through the economy and through the price and money system (e.g. via the markets for labour and commodities), and through the global transport and information networks. The markets transmit policy effects in three main ways: through the level of activity creating demand for inputs of materials, fuels and labour; through wages and prices affecting incomes; and through incomes in turn leading to further demands for goods and services. These interdependencies suggest that an E3 model should be comprehensive, and include the relevant linkages between different parts of the economic and energy systems.

The economic and energy systems in E3MG have the following characteristics: economies and diseconomies of scale in both production and consumption; markets with different degrees of competition; the prevalence of institutional behaviour which may be maximisation, but may also be the satisfaction of more limited, satisfying objectives; and rapid and uneven changes in technology and consumer preferences, certainly within the time scale of greenhouse gas mitigation policy. Labour markets in particular may be characterised by long-term unemployment. The E3MG model is capable of representing these features by embodying a variety of behaviours, and by simulating a dynamic system. This approach can be contrasted with general equilibrium assumptions such as constant returns to scale; perfect competition in all markets; maximisation of social welfare measured by total discounted private consumption; no involuntary unemployment; and exogenous technical progress following a constant time trend.

E3MG, then, is a macro-econometric non-equilibrium hybrid simulation model of the global E3 system. The model has been developed by the Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research (4CMR) and Cambridge Econometrics, funded through a variety of research programmes, most recently with a generous grant from the Three Guineas Trust. E3MG is designed to address issues derived from the interdependencies between energy, the environment, and the economy, by providing a framework for evaluating different policies, particularly those aimed at achieving sustainable energy use over the long term, including climate change mitigation and the development of sustainable technologies. The methodology and software of the model is based on a long pedigree of Cambridge models.

The model is constructed, estimated and solved on a personal computer: the construction and solution use the software package IDIOM, while the stochastic parameters of the model are estimated using the econometrics software package, Ox. The estimation methods are for the most part instrumental variables, making use of error correction methodology where applicable. Communication between Ox and IDIOM is generally via databank stores.

E3MG is based on an approach distinct from traditional economic theory and key features of the model include:

• Keynesian disequilibrium macroeconomic economic structure; estimated in time series data using Engle-Granger cointegration.

• Input-Output structure for each region

• Incorporation of long term structural changes and diffusion of new technologies

The emphasis in the modelling is on two sets of estimated equations: the latest version of the model includes aggregate energy demand by 19 fuel users and 20 world regions and exports of goods and services by 41 industries and 20 regions.

E3MG has been used in a wide range of research projects and by organisations including the Tyndall Centre and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and has a number of distinctive features. It is a hybrid model that attempts to express the interdependencies between the economy energy supply and demand, and environmental emissions and is designed to address some issues of central importance for economic, energy and environmental policy, and to do so in one modelling framework. To achieve this objective, the model uses a system of dynamic equations estimated on annual data and calibrated to recent outcomes and short-term forecasts; these equations cover energy demands, fuel substitution, intra and extra-regional commodity imports and exports, investment, expenditure, labour and wages and prices. E3MG also reflects these interdependencies through the structure of the model – the economy module provides measures of economic activity and general price levels to the energy module; the energy module provides emissions of the main air pollutants to the environment module, which in turn indicates damages to health and buildings (this effect is not yet included in the formal model). The energy module provides detailed price levels for energy carriers distinguished in the economy module and the overall price of energy as well as energy use in the economy.

These distinctive characteristics and the detailed nature of the model allow the representation and analysis of complex scenarios, especially those that are differentiated according to sector and to country. Similarly, the impact of policy measures can be represented in a detailed way.

E3MG is capable of providing short term and medium term economic and industrial forecasts appropriate to the needs of national and international policy makers. The econometric grounding of the models enables it to represent and forecast performance and provide information that allows for dynamic responses to changes in policy and that is closer to the time horizon of many policy makers.

The data requirements of the model come in five forms:

1. Exogenous data such as levels of industrial production in world areas, or tax rates

2. Classification converters, such as the converter from consumers’ expenditure categories to commodities

3. Other converters, such as the matrix of indirect tax rates for industries

4. Parameter matrices, such as the parameters of the investment functions

5. Calibration values, lagged values and initialisation values (historical data)

• These data are stored in the following ways:

• In databanks (most of the requirements above)

• In special data files (e.g. assumption file)

• As the IDIOM instructions themselves

• As modifications to the solution held in modifications files

Previous versions of E3MG reported overall gains from low-level emissions stabilisation. In addition to the application of global carbon prices, a major driver of the mitigation strategy in E3MG is the recycling of revenues raised from the full auctioning of carbon permits to the energy sector and applying carbon taxes for non-energy activities. Key assumptions are that 40% of the revenues collected are recycled and used for R&D investments in renewables as well as for investments in energy savings and conversion of energy intensive sectors towards low-carbon production methods. Revenue is also recycled via lowering indirect taxes to achieve fiscal neutrality. Moreover, the early introduction of electric plug-in vehicles has a major impact on the emission path. In contrast to the other models, E3MG is a simulation model without perfect foresight and optimization, where resources are not fully employed or optimally utilized in the baseline. The increase in investment induced by climate policy can therefore achieve net GDP gains. In other words, these gains are attributed to climate policy that induces and accelerates technological change towards low carbon sources, although, that these gains can in principle be achieved by policies other than climate policy.

If you would like any additional information about the modelling work we do, please get in touch with us.

Emissions Reduction Strategies: How to Choose the Right Policy Mix

2011-07-06T05:13:00.000-07:00

Policy makers must ensure that the policy mix does not promote conflicting incentives

The types of policies used to reduce carbon emissions will differ over time as some issues emerge as more powerful problems to be addressed, requiring new solutions. Policies can be national or regional, or require international cooperation: bilateral, multinational or at the global scale. Climate change mitigation is clearly a global problem, but one which includes national consideration such as energy, transport, land use and manufacturing policy, and as such, domestic and international policies will be needed to provide incentives for mitigation.

There are many methods and procedures that form a part of policy but are not legally enforced. Awareness campaigns, education and information dissemination, social movements, awards, and climate action naming and shaming might each enrol people or organisations to take action to reduce emissions. Other potentially effective ways of reducing carbon emissions without recourse to legally binding policy include voluntary commitments, schemes or agreements, contracts, and, sanctions for failure to comply with agreed targets.

While these strategies might play a role in the policy mix, I’ll consider just three types of high impact policy, those aimed in particular at reducing emissions from energy use: Imposed standards, market instruments and financial instruments.

Agreements, standards, technical requirements and regulations enforced within a jurisdiction are the most direct types of policy instrument that a government has at its disposal. These types of instruments are often referred to as “command and control” instruments, but are not always inflexible, universal or dictatorial. For example, framework based instruments enable different types of requirements to be set that will rely upon a degree of interpretation, depending on, for example, local conditions, or local environmental considerations, rather than a single measure.

Market instruments are economic instruments that tackle climate change by ensuring that large carbon emitters monitor their activity effectively and are able to use incentives provided by specifically designed market mechanisms to reduce emissions for individual companies and for the sector as a whole. Individual instruments include charge schemes, such as a levy on fossil fuels (or a levy exemption for other energy generation) and various trading mechanism, for example the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), which offer incentives to reduce emissions by setting emissions targets to a fixed number of tradable credits or permits, and enabling companies that reduce their emissions to sell any remaining credits they no longer need, at the market price, as though it were a commodity.

Financial instruments are used to address carbon emissions by making financial resources available for investment in emission reduction strategies. These include subsidies or tax exemptions for decarbonisation schemes, grants or loans for renewable energy projects or the availability of funds to tackle emissions directly, for example in enabling the purchase of energy saving equipment. Such financial instruments are often applied at the domestic level, but this need not be the case, for example a trading block such as the EU might provide the funds from a central pool and oversee the implementation of such instruments.

So far, this is relatively straightforward, but now for the complicated part: the challenge for policy makers is to develop a policy mix in which an existing range of policies, including some standards, some taxation and some financial incentives apply to energy production or consumption, are supplemented or superseded by other policies, and such policies must provide signals and incentives that are collectively coherent and self reinforcing. This is not an easy challenge as specific policy instruments contradict other policy instruments either directly, or through their impact on a feature related to another policy. In addition, there will often be multiple objectives for policy makers to consider in addition to reducing emissions, such as combating energy poverty or providing funds to enrol developing countries into a global decarbonisation programme. There will also be policy trade-offs, tensions and unintended consequences, and some existing policies are so embedded in ways that could create resistance to new incentives.

Avoiding inappropriate policy portfolios is crucial and will require a policy maker to consider the interaction between different policies in great detail. One strategy for maintaining a coherent policy portfolio, though, will be to select an appropriate index, such as maintaining a stable carbon price. In this way, policymakers will be able to develop hybrid market/financial instruments, such as an auction reserve price trading scheme, or complementary cap-and-trade schemes with a carbon tax or feed-in tariff, in ways that limit fluctuations in the carbon price. In this way the effects of adding a carbon tax to an existing cap-and-trade system can be assessed in terms of its impact on market carbon prices.

Avoiding policy combinations that destabilise carbon prices will be crucial if trading schemes are to be successful, and features such as a carbon price floor or price safety valves can be shown to have an impact on the effectiveness of a policy using an economical rationale, but must be designed into a coherent policy framework to avoid potential incompatibilities emerging from elsewhere in the application of related policy.

The difficulty of developing an effective policy mix should not be a reason for inaction because not having effective incentives is the problem we face. Instead policy makers have an opportunity for improving the existing policy mix, but must do so by understanding which types of incentive work and why, and tailoring the policy mix in a coherent way to give clear signals to business and consumers.

(a more detailed analysis of the mix of policy instruments will be published in: Haynes, P and Huang, Y. (forthcoming 2011) Designing and Implementing Policy Instruments for Decarbonisation, in Barker, T. and Crawford-Brown, D. (eds.) Decarbonising the Global Economy Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)

Climate science models and the scientific method: experimentation verses deduction?

2011-06-03T06:54:00.000-07:00

Is this science and is it valid: What would Thomas Hobbes think?

In Hobbes view, Boyle’s experimental solution to the problem of order was not possible; it was not effective; and it was dangerous. (Shapin and Schaffer 1985: 80-81).

In discussing the methods of climate science, the use of models and the process of simulation are often mentioned as either a key strength or key weakness of the science. While climate models receive a great deal of attention (and funding), they are generally a very marginal part of the science – much more time is spent examining actual data, identifying relevant data sources, developing statistical methods and making sure that observations and calculations are contextualised in terms of other data sets. The fact that some statistical methods assessing correlations in actual data is also called modelling is confusion.

By modelling, I will refer here only to simulation using models, a type of experimentation. I will contrast modelling with the statistical analysis of actual data to determine specific correlations that does not depend on extrapolation or simulation. While examples of either approach can be contested, the issue I am concerned with here is the validity of simulation and experimentation using models in climate science. This issue is fundamental if we are to understand the criteria such modelling must meet if it is to follow the scientific method.

The scientific method seems to be one of the more straightforward issues in climate science - we all know what the scientific method is, right? We agree with the Oxford English Dictionary that it is “a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses” I assume. But let's go back to the 17th Century for a moment to understand the emergence of the concept. The status of experimentation was the source of an important dispute between Robert Boyle and Thomas Hobbes during the 1660s and 1670s. The disagreement between Boyle and Hobbes is analysed in great detail by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer in their book Leviathan and the Air-Pump (Shapin and Schaffer 1985). The book examines, among many its themes, the boundaries and methods of science in relation to questions of political philosophy. This is a good place to start because there were two competing approaches to “the” scientific method, best expressed in terms of the relationship between scientist Robert Boyle and the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, or rather the science and political thought of Boyle and the political thought and science of Hobbes. Hobbes and Boyle are key figures in the Enlightenment tradition, their approach to method being that of the mechanistic philosophy while their epistemology developed along similar lines within the rationalist tradition, but where they differ is in the status of experimentation itself.

Boyle’s approach to science is important because he argued for a new source of legitimation. Shapin and Schaffer take this to be as much a political act, as it is a scientific operation. This is because rather than appealing to a metaphysical condition, Boyle argued for an empirical condition by referring to specific experiments and emphasising the importance of witnesses in relation to the outcome of each experiment. Boyle argued for the authority of the opinion of the witness by referring to an English legal act (Clarendon’s 116 Treason Act) stating that, in a trial, two or more witnesses were necessary in order to convict a suspect (see Shapin and Schaffer 1985: 327). Boyle’s empirical method similarly relied upon the credibility of reliable witnesses, whose senses were corrected and disciplined by scientific instruments, analogous, perhaps to the discipline imposed on the senses by reason. Boyle was interested in that which was perceptible, and his air-pump was an effective tool in that it controlled conditions for drawing out the relationship between various perceptions. Hobbes opposed this method of observation and opinion, claiming instead that the only method able to gain universal consent was that of mathematical demonstration. Hobbes seems to suggest that Boyle’s method was dangerous because it separated knowledge from power.

For Hobbes power is knowledge and in this unity there is only one type authority i.e. the judgements of civil society as represented by the figures designated by the social contract. No class or individual, not the king not God and certainly not the masses, are above the law or constitute the basis of an alternative authority to challenge the judgements of law. This is because the social contract, which forms the basis of civil society, is entered into by common consent through the calculations of individuals aiming to protect themselves from the fate of a nasty, brutish and short existence within the state of nature. Hobbes argued that the method that he himself had developed was the only way of securing order. Such social order that would avert civil war was for Hobbes embedded in the order that could be calculated from the natural world through philosophical practice. According to Hobbes, then, The Royal Society, and Boyle in particular, broke the unification of knowledge and power, creating, instead a pool of opinion, opinion that was independent of the state. Such opinion could never be universal and mathematical, but must be formed on the basis of inconclusive experiments and the (demonstrably!) deceptive senses. With the implementation of Boyle’s methods, the basis of order had been undone. With it, the academics and scholars challenged not just the king’s authority but the traditional notion of authority itself in the name of nature or in the name of the matters of facts produced by such things as the air-pump.

The air-pump, then, was in Boyle’s view able to establish a matter of fact independently of the machinations of political order, to serve as the foundation of knowledge and secure assent insofar as it is not regarded as man-made. In this way, matters of fact can be stated as a given, mediated, of course, by a “neutral” technological device, but nevertheless with the authority of nature and not merely a matter of human opinion. For Hobbes, this would lead to disagreement over opinions and, ultimately, political uncertainty. For Boyle it would lead to scientific process, divorced from any such political considerations.

Shapin and Schaffer attempt to draw out an immanent critique of Boyle’s methodological assumptions arguing that scientists do not merely become individuals through which the objects and the “matters of fact” themselves speak. They indicate that Boyle develops conditions for the establishment of facts and that these depend upon various conditions of credible witnessing. Such witnessing was to be public and collective, but the conditions for being part of the reliable witness community or being an appropriate public site were developed in a way that is neither intuitive nor unproblematic. Hobbes himself took Boyle’s conditions to almost exemplify the practices of a secret society.

Testimony was to be obtained from men hoping merely to advance natural philosophy rather than their own reputation or interests. Theories, hypotheses and speculations were to be spoken about with caution. In disputes over matters of fact, experiments would decide the case, not rhetoric. Such evidence would enable those in error to renounce their former position.

But Hobbes’ method is entirely problematic. It is clear that his a priori rationalist philosophy is not a viable alternative to experimentalism, because it is based on an invalid argument. That is to say, it is not possible both to make up definitions and postulates in an arbitrary manner and claim that deductions from these definitions and postulates give certainty about the real world. The example of Hobbes’ hostility to the air-pump experiments doesn’t really clarify how Hobbes intended to otherwise deduce truths.

In terms of climate science simulation models, the analogy should have dawned on the reader some paragraphs ago, but I’ll make the point explicitly – for Boyle read climate science modeller, the air pump, a computational model, for experimentation read simulation. For Hobbes, the analogy is the statistician, sceptical of simulation and the “secret society” of modellers.

In my view, there is no method of science that has a logic and set of principles that can crank out truths like a machine, the way Boyle seems to describe his own method. However, it seems equally true that deducing truth about the world from firm foundations, Hobbes’ preferred method, is unfeasible. Very little could be done with a strict adherence to either type of methodological principle. I see simulation as a useful heuristic device, supportive of, or triangulating other methods, illustrating key issues and testing specific relationships, and as artificially (counterfactually) as the air pump. But methods are not everything – they must involve the craftsmanship of the experienced and capable researcher. As Bruno Latour concludes:

Shapin and Schaffer have access to thousands of archival pages on Boyle’s ideas and Hobbes’s, but nothing about the tacit practice of the air pump or the dexterity it required. (Latour 1993: 82)

Holocaust Denial and Climate Change Denial - part 1

2011-05-03T04:51:00.000-07:00

Climate Change? - Its all down to sunspots, right

One thing that should be made very clear: any attempt to try to link the views of those who oppose the conventional climate science to Nazism in any form is misguided and unfair. Goodwin's law of Nazi analogies (sometimes stated as follows: as an online discussion grows longer, the probability involving a comparison with the Nazis or Hitler approaches 1) implies that such comparisons are overused and by trying to create guilt by association with the word "denial" is in my view an example of Goodwin's law and its corollary that we should avoid glib association of a point of view with the Nazis. Holocaust denial is often part of a strategy to disassociate the extreme right with the systematic murder of millions of people in order to make an extreme right wing or anti-Semitic agenda more attractive. Holocaust denial historians ignore evidence or rely on fabricated evidence and they imply the existence of huge conspiracy theory on the part of eye witnesses and conventional historians. Those who voice opposition to the conventional views of climate science do so for many motives, as I discuss elsewhere, but however superficially similar the methods of some opponents of the conventional climate science could ever be to those of holocaust deniers, they could never have the same sneer at suffering that exemplifies the nasty agenda underlying their falsification of history. In short calling the opponents of the conventional view of climate science “deniers” as a smear strategy is wrong.

The reality, though, is that names matter, which is why name calling matters: coining the right name for your opponents, or the object of your opposition is crucial - in the UK the expression "Franken food" still resonates with the general public when considering genetically modified foods, and in the abortion debate, both sides control their image by stating they are pro something - and controlling your own name is an important part of controlling your image, which is why enhanced interrogation techniques are sanctioned, not torture, why politicians only ever misspeak, fudge or are economical with the truth, why the Climate Research Unit email controversy is framed as "Climategate" and why holocaust deniers prefer to be called revisionists. Pejorative names have been coined and applied to those who believe that anthropogenic climate change is a reality, including the climate scientists whose research illustrates a clear link: alarmists, warmists, true believers or team hockystick. The implication is clear: add a context to the opponents' view (alarm, warming rather than climate change, dogmatic, imply the hockystick graph is based on bad science) and extra ( negative) information is coupled to the label. Instead those who hold this view prefer the expressions "the consensus view" or express their beliefs in terms of the scientific consensus in general to indicate that the basic science is settled. The implication of this is also clear - the argument is over, the science says anthropogenic climate change is happening, reduce emissions or face the consequences.

This brings me to the theme of this article, if labels matter, shouldn't we protect labels that have an important value in science and in general. There is a real danger that the word "sceptic" will be appropriated by anyone who has an agenda for disinformation. If you don't think passive smoking is linked to cancer, that is OK, you are a cancer sceptic; don't believe the hype about HIV caused AIDS, that's fine you are an AIDS sceptic, don't believe that millions of people were murdered in concentration camps during the second world war, well that's OK, you don't need to claim you are revising history of the holocaust, you're just a healthy sceptic. The idea is a simple one: discredit the science or history, and conspiracy, propaganda and prejudice will be sucked in to fill the vacuum, and this process of discrediting is done first by claiming to hold no view yourself, but instead, being sceptical of empirical findings.

To protect the word "sceptic" from misappropriation, a correct label must be used for those who are not in any way sceptical - if the word "denier" is the appropriate word, it should be used but it should not be used lightly, nor used as a way of name calling to avoid engagement with those who oppose a particular viewpoint. It should certainly not be used as a way of falsely associating opinions on climate change with that of mass murder. In this way perhaps the words "sceptic" and "denial" can simultaneously be prevented from becoming too closely associated with one type of conspiracy or other. I prefer on first meeting someone to give them the benefit of the doubt, so I will assume at first that someone who says they are a sceptic (in a blog or who writes an article) are indeed sceptical, which will be confirmed or contradicted by their actions. I will, though, use the expression the Denial Industry for the smear campaign of climate science and scientists and those who, through their deeds, contribute to this smear campaign or disinformation. This is because smearing science, spreading disinformation, repeating arguments known to be based on falsehoods or debunked and spurious ideas, is a strategy of denying not engagement – and certainly not scepticism – and those who adopt a strategy are living in denial or worse, are knowingly fabricating evidence. I don’t wish to confirm Goodwin’s law, though: smearing climate scientists and repeating arguments known to be false to serve an ideological interest is a very long way from Joseph Goebbels and anyone who implies it isn’t are, in my view, not being 100% honest.

Engaging Stakeholders in Climate Change

2011-04-08T09:33:00.000-07:00

The relationship between universities and society has changed in recent years. In most developed economies the university has become a key strand in the triple helix, complementing the added value to the economy provided by business and government elements. Universities provide training and expertise as well as an infrastructure for high quality research, and thus such research is no longer to be thought of as pure, neutral and uncorrupted by the inconvenience and practicalities of life, if indeed it ever had such higher aspirations.

In the UK, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has introduced an impact element for evaluating university research in the next round of assessment in 2014, called the Research Excellence Framework (REF). Universities will need to show that their research is not just addressing the needs of academics (it needs to do that too!) nor just available to the general public or passively disseminated to “stakeholders” but that the research has informed and impacted business, policy makers and other key decision makers in a decisive way.

Climate change research has the potential to change the way different organisations conduct themselves, make policy and change behaviour from the individual to the largest corporation and government in the world. This raises a small number of important questions:

A) What are climate-change researchers/research groups doing to engage with (for lack of a better word) stakeholders?

B) What should climate change research groups be doing to engage with stakeholders?

C) What incentives can be used to make the answer to question A and B the same?

Let’s begin with question B. Those opposed to doing anything to mitigate possible effects of climate change will say that they should stay out of policy making or producing propaganda for activists. Those in favour of addressing the problems they perceive to be the key threat in our lifetime, generally favour climate researchers becoming, if not advocates for a programme and activists for its implementation, then working closely with such groups. The answer to this question is thus political, and will depend as much on ideology as on the responsibility such knowledge implies.

It is not a straightforward debate but I’ll use an analogy to at least illustrate my point. Imagine for a moment that smoking caused lung cancer – would it be incumbent upon a researcher with findings indicating a clear link between the activity and the disease to petition for a change in tobacco advertising and marketing, the taxation and regulation of tobacco and the dissemination of research findings on the links between tobacco and health in the most appropriate forms for different groups within society? Or, should they merely inform each other of their findings at conferences and leave it to the tobacco industry to address the concerns of academics and use their financial clout to develop new (and non addictive) products much less detrimental to the health of the average smoker as a matter of urgency. No disrespect to tobacco companies, but I’d choose A.

In this way, if climate change is a threat globally, with real impacts on populations, then my answer to question B is to do everything possible. Today a topic, theme or campaign must compete with thousands of other worthy campaigns from disease, poverty, discrimination, injustice or new opportunity to perhaps less worthy claims on our attention such as celebrity culture. Research centres receive a lot of money to undertake research and produce excellent ideas – these should not be the preserve of the academy, but should use these research resources to address the needs of all interested groups (including sceptics and opponents). For different types of research, the engagement process will be different (see last month's post), but a simple way of doing so in seven stages might be:

Identify key groups and individuals stakeholders and enrol them into the project
Identify the methods and channels most suitable to their requirements
Ensure that the research team is aware of the objectives, methods and channels, and contribute effectively and fittingly to them
Ensure that the research is never compromised but only enhanced by communication issues
Develop appropriate content to be disseminated through these channels as part of the research agenda
Ensure regular flows of information punctuated with targeted dissemination to maximise the impact of the research
Ensure adequate opportunity for feedback from stakeholders on both methods and content and introduce modifications as appropriate

In answer to question A, I am unable to speak for other research centres, but there are many ways, although generally ad hoc and opportunist ways, that climate change research groups are involving non academics in their research, but my centre has at the heart of its research agenda exactly the communications strategy outlined above, and a more detailed and strategic way of addressing the multiple and varied requirements of different stakeholder groups.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) say that incentives of improved scores for research groups (in 20% of the total assessment) who have published their research findings in good journals AND can show that these findings have had a real impact on non academic organisations in tangible ways (businesses choosing a new way of doing a job, new products coming to market, policy makers changing a law including an extra variable in their calculation. In my view this is a good start, although, of course, it might actually make a research group LESS likely to engage with “the public” as they need to spend more time working with a business or a policy maker to make their research “count” in the assessment (although there will be room elsewhere in the assessment to explain their influence on that landscape too). Academics need to know that they will get academic rewards (things used which typically determine promotion in the university system); however, 4CMR is committed to engagement irrespective of academic rewards, but simply because the extra time and costs of undertaking a fully stakeholder-engaged approach to research makes the research better and more relevant AND so the resources are spent wisely. Sounds like propaganda? I suggest you spend some time looking at our website and get in touch with us and we will try to convince you further.

Climate Change for Football (or Soccer) Fans

2011-03-17T08:41:00.000-07:00

Paul Haynes in conversation with James Atkins

Climate change policy is certainly an issue that receives attention – the search term generates more than half a million hits; however, a similar search for “Manchester United” generates nearly 100 million, and they are only 1 of the 92 professional football clubs in England. This statistic seems to support my prejudice that football supporters (like myself – Wolverhampton Wanderers in case you wondered) are involved with their club in ways that very few issues can match. If climate change apathy is the problem (and the blog title gives a clue about my view), the question is could we learn anything about the enthusiasm and engagement of football fans. It turns out that someone else (a Manchester United fan no less) has already thought about this and written a book about football fans, for football fans that also examines climate change policy issues. The novel, which I’m reading at the moment, is a well observed and comical story about individuals with a passion for football, and another with a passion for addressing climate change, and how they learn from each other. I caught up with the author, James Atkins, to ask him about the motives for writing his book:

Climate Change for Football Fans is an attempt to talk about climate change policy, a dull subject, in a more palatable way: a chocolate digestive in a world of Lincolns. In the last ten years working in emissions trading I have thought a lot about environmental problems and climate change and what governments and individuals can do about them. I have also written about this in articles and in my blog The Bustard. Then a friend suggested that I compile the blog entries into a book in order to expand the readership. Not wanting to repeat what had already been written I started reading around the topic.

I found that books and reports on climate change policy are an uphill struggle. Few books on climate change are readable or enjoyable, despite it being an extremely important topic. So I tried to find a way of making the book more entertaining. This was partly through putting dialogue and humour in it, and partly through introducing the loose parallel of another subject.

The book is a series of conversations between Joe, a Burnley lad who is football mad, and Professor Igor who's obsessed with climate change.
Joe thinks that worrying about climate change is a waste of time. Igor can't understand why 22 grown men would put on shorts and run around after a ball. Igor agrees to spend a season with Joe going to every Burnley game, and in return Joe and his family listen to the Professor rattle on about climate policy.

The target audience is broad. I started out writing for policy makers and academics. Then I thought they wouldn’t really read it anyway. So I expanded it for the general, sport-loving public. But it retains an underlying seriousness and there is some attention to technical issues, which, from time to time, might need patience.

There is a serious parallel between football and climate policy, and that is, oddly, about the nature of the demand curve for carbon intensive and low-carbon products and services. Passion for something can create unusually-shaped demand curves, which is why obsessive football fans will go to extremes to follow their team, irrespective of the economic rationale. Football transcends economics, and we need passion for survival to do so, too.

Talking about unusual shapes, a number of people have said to me “Wrong shape!” which in the code of public school chaps with wide shoulders, means that they like rugby and not football and wouldn’t be seen dead reading a book with the word football on the front cover. For those who do not like football, I think the metaphor works for all manner of sports. Possibly even curling. Come to think of it, definitely curling, threatened as it is by climate change.

James Atkins is Chairman of Vertis Environmental Finance, an emissions trading company in Hungary which he set up in 1998, is involved in various businesses related to climate change and edits the blog The Bustard.

Petroleum: A Crude Estimate of the Value of Oil

2011-03-04T04:18:00.000-08:00

Last Month I wrote about the need to act on energy consumption far beyond the recommendations of experts and advisors in order to mitigate against climate change effects considerably worse than those anticipated by the advisors that policy makers rely on. One issue that represents the difficulty, opportunity and necessity of changing the way we consume energy is our use of petroleum, or put another way, our dependence on crude oil.

What is left to say about petroleum that isn’t already obvious? It is a valuable resource that can be converted into many vital commodities very cheaply, not just pharmaceuticals, plastics, fertilisers, solvents and similar products, but thousands of different components of vital technologies and products. It provides most of the world’s fuel for transport and contributes considerably to the heating and power capacity of our energy supply. Burning it produces lots of energy, but also CO2 and other undesirable emissions. It is being used at a rapid rate – best guess is about 84 million barrels a day. It is a limited – and non renewable – resource, with total oil reserves amount to around 1.2 trillion barrels, with much of these reserves (around sixty percent) in the Middle East, and other reserves concentrated in the former Soviet Union, Venezuela and Africa, leaving only around 20% of oil reserves in countries that the US senate would consider unambiguously stable.

Another consideration is that while global demand is remains high, easily extractable reserves are declining, and declining rapidly. High demand, coupled with limited supply, uncertainty over production, a cartel controlling much of the available supply, uncertainty over the existence and viability of extraction, uncertainty over the costs, risks and efficiency of extraction, the growth of a number of emerging economies, institutionalised speculation and changes in the terms of trade between different consumer nations, coupled with greater mobility and more intense global trade has meant that prices are at present both high and volatile. In short, the price of a vital commodities on which trade and the economy depend, is very difficult to forecast.

In addition to price volatility and limited supply of oil, there are other issues we need to consider in assessing if our relationship with oil is a healthy one. For example, meeting our various climate change agreement targets will require using considerably less fossil fuel; ensuring that the limited landfill space isn’t crammed full of plastics will mean reducing our dependence on plastic packaging; reducing the use of chemicals in the atmosphere is also an opportunity to use fewer petroleum based products. True, our dependence on oil is deep, but motives for reducing this dependence are strong and multiple.

This brings me to the subject of climate change, or more specifically to the relationship between climate change and oil.

One obvious point is that as a fossil fuel, burning it contributes to carbon emissions, which, in turn, contributes to climate change. Another is that the world’s transportation system depends upon oil and switching to another type of power is neither easy nor low carbon. There is though, a more intriguing issue to consider: if easily extractable oil is running out anyway, what should we do to ensure that the economic and political consequences are not damaging. The question, then, is twofold: what are governments doing about the end of easy oil and what should they be doing.

The answer to the first part is easy – governments are doing lots and lots of little things to modify the way we consume, the way we generate and use energy, the way our transport system works and incentives are in place to use less oil/use alternatives to oil.

The second part of the question is a bit more difficult to answer. We are divided on the topic. Strangely, those who are most sceptical about climate change (who question the science and scientists or argue that the IPCC has ulterior motives) seem to be least sceptical about oil – they seem to argue that we have hundreds of years worth of the stuff, we can just dig a new well when we need it and as long as we have money countries will be happy to sell us as much as we need, when we want it at a price fair to all (there is no question that Saudi Arabia might have ulterior motives for inaccurately estimating the size of their reserves). So, do nothing, everything will sort itself out, peak oil is all about misdirection or a taxation conspiracy and long before oil runs out we will have moved on to new fuels and technologies: “the stone age didn’t end because of a lack of stones!” to mention to popular quote.

My view is an alternative to this – we must start thinking of oil as a substitute for sustainable and renewable products/resources and it must be valued – and thus priced – accordingly. A multi-government transition plan must be developed to end the age of cheap oil long before the succession of empty oil wells decide this for us. High prices to consumers means reduced world consumption, increased attractiveness of sustainable alternatives, oil price stabilisation, more effective planning in unstable oil producing countries, and government tax revenues able to address fuel poverty in a more fundamental and equitable way and more time for the global economy to become more oil independent.

The political leadership required to revalue petroleum products is immense as it is a message that voters do not want to hear and have never voted for but, to return to the quote above: no, the stone age didn’t end because of a lack of stone, but civilisations more advanced than those even emerging from the stone age have collapsed because of deforestation and other unsustainable uses of previously abundant resources. That is a more pertinent analogy.

Tipping Points and the top 1% OR “if you hope for 1° C don’t act for 4°C”

2011-02-07T08:56:00.000-08:00

A week or so ago Prof Kevin Anderson, from Tyndall Manchester gave a talk to 4CMR entitled: Climate Change: Going Beyond Dangerous. The talk assessed the numbers and the models used to determine policy on decarbonising the economy. The consensus view, he argued, is as follows - an increased global mean temperature of 2°C (on pre-industrial levels) is the point at which climate change was considered a major problem, and the lowest stabilisation point that we could manage though practical and expedient policies.

Assessing the latest research findings and analysing the data in great detail his conclusion was twofold:

2°C is likely to have dangerous (or extremely dangerous) consequences, and hence 1°C should be the upper limit if we are to avoid dangerous climate change (i.e. the consensus view is too optimistic: the target should be lower)

In practice, 2°C is becoming less likely, with 4°C a more likely stabilisation point if we implement even the more ambitious carbon emissions reduction strategies that are available to us AND assumes:

IPCC’s link between cumulative emissions and temperature is broadly correct
Non-Annex 1 nations peak emissions by 2025
There are rapid reductions in deforestation emissions
Food emissions halve from today’s values by 2050
No tipping points occur

His conclusion is that 2°C is nearly impossible and that 4°C is likely by 2070 and depending on the effects of various tipping points, there is a chance that stabilisation will be even higher (i.e. the consensus view is too optimistic: the target reduction is unobtainable).

The 2°C target is thus doubly pessimistic, but is there any room for optimism? Well, failure to reach a 1°C target assumes that policies and agreements are directed towards the global population, divided into countries and regions, which leads to the more profound question: If we are to meet a 1°C stabilisation point, how many people need to make the necessary changes to?

Using the Pareto Principal (suggesting that around 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes) it can be estimated that around 50% of emissions come from 1% of the population, which is where I would like to begin.

Assuming the analysis is roughly correct (and Kevin Anderson does make a thoroughly scholarly analysis of the data) and the Pareto Principal holds, then the key questions are:

Who comprises the 1% of the population responsible for 50% of emissions?

What do they have to do to reduce these emissions to avoid dangerous climate change?

The first question is rather easier than the second - if you are reading this on a fancy computer, then chances are you are probably in this 1%, especially if you:

Earn above $50000 (£30,000)
Travel by airplane

The irony, of course, is that most experts on climate change policy and the policy makers and their advisors fall comfortably within this 1%, among the most frequent of frequent flyers.

The second question is a little more tricky; those most responsible for high carbon emissions are those most sheltered from the effects, either by living in a country more able to adapt to climate change or by having access to more resources to avoid the most dangerous effects. Let me qualify this – the most sheltered for the moment; however, as a group they share other characteristics relevant for emission reductions: they have, in financial terms, the most to lose from the negative effects of climate change, they are among the most knowledgeable about the causes and consequences of climate change, and the most aware of the changes required for mitigation and with access to substitutions to high emission activity. They also have more opportunity to coordinate an influential response to climate change risk. Put together, it seems that this 1% can identify the problem, take ownership of the response and leverage the policies and behaviour changes necessary to sufficiently reduce carbon emissions for a low stabilisation point, but it would require some type of action tipping point.

Normally in climate change discourse, a tipping point is a feedback mechanism likely to amplify the emission problem, such as associated with Arctic sea ice; Greenland ice sheet; West Antarctic ice sheet; Gulf Stream; El Niño; Indian monsoon; West African monsoon; Amazon rainforest; Boreal forests; Permafrost thaw etc. The one tipping point that is most likely to be decisive is the one that forces this 1% to do everything in its power to rapidly decarbonise. Once on track, there would be the prospect of meeting the most optimistic reductions for 2050.

At present the prospect of this happening seems as improbable as global cooling, and the choices remain stark: if those with the most to offer in terms of emissions reduction pass the buck, don’t expect the other 99% to do anything except aspire to unsustainable lifestyles. Now if only the rest of this 1% could follow Prof Kevin Anderson’s lifestyle i.e. refusing to fly or drive and keeping his carbon footprint to an absolute minimum, he would have to rip up projections about needing to plan for 4°C.

Being Certain about Climate Change Uncertainty

2011-01-17T05:01:00.000-08:00

By Martin Sewell, Senior Research Associate, 4CMR

There are aspects of climate change about which we are almost certain (the physical chemistry), and areas in which uncertainty is rife (e.g. the effect of clouds, the ocean, the response of biological processes, climate change mitigation). My view is that we must explicitly engage with uncertainty, and the best way to do so is using a probability distribution, and the wider the distribution, the greater the uncertainty.

The 18th century philosopher (and economist) David Hume pointed out that ‘even after the observation of the frequent or constant conjunction of objects, we have no reason to draw any inference concerning any object beyond those of which we have had experience’. In other words, one can never generalize beyond one’s data without making subjective assumptions, so science always involves a degree of uncertainty.

What is the best way of communicating uncertainty? In March 1951, the CIA secretly warned US officials that a Soviet attack on Yugoslavia should be considered a ‘serious possibility’. When Sherman Kent, a CIA intelligence analyst, asked his colleagues what probability they attributed to the likelihood of an attack on Yugoslavia in 1951, he was shocked to hear such a wide range of responses that varied from 20% to 80%. In 1964 Kent wrote the seminal Words of Estimative Probability in which he attempted to quantify qualitative judgements and eliminate what he termed ‘weasel’ words. For example, he recommended that ‘probable’ meant 63–87%, and ‘almost certain’ 87–99%. Since then, the BBC and the IPCC have also given serious consideration to how to communicate uncertainty. My view is that we should use probability.

Probability is conceptualised differently from discipline to discipline, for example, starting with the physics and chemistry, there is no significant doubt that CO₂ is a greenhouse gas, and that levels of anthropogenic CO₂ in the atmosphere are increasing. The theory of anthropogenic global warming is built on peer reviewed science that has accumulated since Fourier in the 1820s. In 2004, Naomi Oreskes analysed 928 abstracts, selected using the keywords ‘global climate change’, published in refereed scientific journals and found that none of the papers disagreed with the theory of anthropogenic climate change. According to the IPCC, it is extremely likely (> 95% probability) that human activities have exerted a substantial net warming influence on climate since 1750, very likely (> 90% probability) that anthropogenic greenhouse gas increases caused most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century, and virtually certain (> 99% probability) that global warming shall continue in the future. The apparently counter-intuitive result that the past is less certain than the future implies that we’re pretty sure of the physics, less sure of historical measurements, and the forecast into the future of the global temperature must be steeper than the rise in the past.

Climate sensitivity is a measure of how responsive the temperature of the climate system is to a change in the radiative forcing. It is usually expressed as the temperature change associated with a doubling of the concentration of CO₂ in the earth’s atmosphere. Climate sensitivity has a positive skew. The compounding effect of essentially linear feedbacks dominates system sensitivity, and the uncertainty here does not diminishing with time, the estimates are not expected to improve. So in terms of climate sensitivity, we have a situation where we’re pretty certain of the uncertainty.

Moving to economics, it seems clear that economic models contain greater uncertainty than climate models. Economic forecasting is notoriously difficult, largely because we can’t predict human creativity in innovation. Energy-environment-economy (E3) models, the type that can capture the interdependencies we need to make fully informed decisions, contain greater uncertainty still.

Let me illustrate this with an example: two popular solutions to the problem of how to mitigate climate change are a carbon tax and emissions trading (cap and trade). They are theoretically equivalent except that they’re logically opposed regarding where the uncertainty lies: a carbon tax fixes the rate of taxation and allows emissions to vary, whilst emissions trading fixes emissions and allows the cost of compliance to vary. The physical science solution would be to fix emissions (implying a preference for emissions trading), whilst the economist’s solution would be to internalize an externality with a carbon tax; however, because we introduce greater uncertainty when considering variations in human behaviour, my preference lies with taxation. Of this, at least, I am certain!

Climate Change Blogs: Different Ways to Deny Anthropogenic Climate Change

2010-12-28T12:31:00.000-08:00

I often contribute to other blogs, in particular, those in The Guardian and on the BBC website, generally when they feature the topic of climate change, especially when related to policy and economic issues. It isn’t part of my job description, but I feel that it is part of my role as someone involved in academic research, particularly when I recognise the importance of engaging with people from outside academia on some of the latest research findings, as well as discussing and receiving feedback on a range of topics related to climate change theories and strategies, which most certainly make me a more effective researcher.

Both the Guardian and the BBC promote discussion by commissioning an article by an expert (including 4CMR’s Terry Barker) or personality of some kind (or both, in the case of George Monbiot’s Guardian blog). Having such an article as the basis of a discussion has often enabled me to have a focused dialogue with a range of interesting people, testing the logic and coherence of my argument, learning about other ideas and filling in some of the gaps in my knowledge.

There is, though, a darker side to climate change blogs; there are a group of people who call themselves sceptics but they are not sceptical at all. These are not people who are just not sure that the evidence is sufficient to reach a conclusion.
These are people who have made up their minds and don’t believe in anthropogenic climate change in the same way that other people don’t believe in the moon landings, or believe in angels and alien abduction or think that The Beatles didn’t write any good songs. In this regard it doesn’t matter which term is used to describe their collective views (deniers, anti-climate change propagandists, climate action saboteurs) as long as it doesn’t include the word “sceptic” or imply an uncertainty or open mindedness in their conceptions.

Why is this a dark side – isn’t it good to debate with people who hold views different from your own? Isn’t this the way we learn. For those of us who have read through enough comments on such blogs, there is obviously no intention to engage in evaluating the evidence nor in discussing the issues raised in the article that the comments purport to respond by a large proportion of such self proclaimed skeptics (or even, incongruously, “climate realists”) but they have ulterior motives for “contributing” to climate change blogs. In reality they are not a homogenous group and here is a typology I’m still working on – (they are not necessarily mutually exclusive):

• Conspiracy Theorists: those who conclude that climate change is a hoax by governments who want an excuse to tax us,
• Trolls: those who find it hilarious to elicit annoyed responses from other contributors by making outrageous comments,
• Website Experts: those who know enough from reading websites or newspapers to question the basic concepts, but don’t know enough to engage in the nuanced science debates, but stick to their opinions dogmatically.
• Self Educated Experts: people who have studied enough to apply a precision to question the orthodox science, that they would never apply to their own flimsy “evidence” base – a confirmation bias more akin to religion than science.
• Reward Motivated Experts: people who are articulate and a voice for hire, motivated by attention, status, hits to their website, funds from interested parties.
• Ideological Opponents: climate change isn’t part of their ideology, climate change concern being for the “yoghurt eating, public transport-using, bike riding, vegan, tree hugging fascist loony-leftie hippies”

In a more sinister way, there are those who seem to be coordinated, in a way that resembles a Karl Rove-type campaign:

• Talking Point Promoters: those who raise concerns about climate change action off topic, such as “the head of the IPCC has a conflict of interests/lied about X/ is incompetent”
• Talking Point Followers: those who stick to the topic raised by the Talking Point Promoters and apply the concepts to the author of the article on which they are commenting, attempting to shift the topic to the talking points (similar to “meat puppets”)
• Ad Hominem Critics: constantly questioning the author using ad hominem criticisms in order to undermine their credibility, or accusing the author of not responding to one point or another
• Blog Blockers: people who make lots of comments which adds little to the debate, but take time to dismiss – they may indeed change identity or have multiple identities (“sock puppets”)
• The Misinformation Lobby: people who, paid or not, represent the interests of specific organisations or sectors, for whom climate science pose a threat

I have learnt very little through my contact with members of any of these groups. There is one final group:

• Sceptics: people who have thought about the issue in detail and raise a new objection on the basis of knowledge or theory in order to assess if the weight of evidence suggests an alternative opinion than that held by the orthodox approaches. This is, of course a temporary state. It is also a very very exclusive group on climate change blogs.

In the end as George Monbiot reminds us from his blog in 2006, those who refuse to be engaged with are an inconvenience, but if the biosphere is ruined it will be done by people who know that emissions must be cut - but refuse to alter the way they live.

If I have missed any examples, you can always contribute to my blog, just don’t describe yourself as a “climate realist” without saying why.

Bottled Water – Bottled Gas?

2010-12-07T06:12:00.000-08:00

By Tom Berman: Tom currently works for IBM having previously been employed by the Centre for Sustainable Development, Cambridge University.

Years ago priests, shaman, magicians, blessed water, manipulated water and gave it power, today its corporations, government, celebrities, brands.

The idea behind this article came after watching the BBC documentary “The Foods that Make Billions” describing the birth of bottled water industry in the 1970’s and its development into a multi-billion pound industry, that everyday ships water from the French Alps around the world. The following morning I read about Longannet Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) scheme. Longannet, a coal fired power station in the Firth of Forth, provides electricity to 2 Million people with annual emissions of between 7-8 Million t CO2. The CCS scheme, due to begin operations in 2014, has been designed to capture over 1 million tonnes of CO2 from the energy generated at Longannet.

It struck me as an interesting symmetry; our efforts to sustain society, which bottles and transports water, a resource available (almost) everywhere to (almost) everyone, by “bottling” CO2, the potentially harmful side effects of the generation of energy needed to support such an undertaking.

As a modern Malthus, this article could go on to suggest that a technological solution will never be able to keep pace with the invented, insatiable wants of consumers; wants, created in part by companies needing to find continuous revenue streams, as mirrored by the continual growth needed by the economy. Indeed it seems that for many the only option on the table is to find efficiency through large technological systems. Prof Dave Mackay, Scientific Adviser to DECC, dismisses the mere possibility of making serious inroads into our energy demand in his book Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air, thus providing the intellectual justification for increasing the UK’s nuclear capacity - racing to keep up with demand while action is indefinitely deferred, until a new technology removes the problem.

If you accept for a moment that a technological panacea is not round the corner or that our biosphere’s survival depends on reducing our ecological impact, then at some point we (whoever this “we” is) will have to decide what constitutes an acceptable use of resources, at times overruling the (rational?) preferences of individuals or markets though unpopular means.

Perhaps education is the answer? Don’t, after all, better educated people make better decisions, their habits resonate with the need for sustainability, while the ignorance thoughtlessly consume. This is, of course, a fallacy: higher education correlates with higher income, more consumption, bigger houses, more energy use, more travel and more likely to buy designer water.

Having studied economics I am baffled why anyone, regardless of their level of education, would pay over 3000% times the price for the same basic product. Some comments from an article I found included quotes such as:

"I drink Dasani. It tastes good, it tastes crisp, like -- natural,"

"I think tap water kind of tastes like sewer,"

People also say they drink bottled water because they believe it is safer than tap water.

"As a parent I feel more comfortable giving her bottled water,"

When one is mixing a subjective preference (such as taste) with marketing and disinformation (there is no evidence that bottled water is any safer than tap in the U.K), does anyone have the authority to balance these wants with the reality of the resources these preferences require? Is the absurdity of a lorry containing bottles of French water destined for Scotland, passing a lorry of Scottish water destined for southern France not obvious enough? Is the question not about taxation, or marketing or globalisation, but rather than being spoiled for choice, we are spoilt by choice?

And as for the Longannet CCS scheme, will the need to use extra energy and the consequences in additional air pollution, and the potential problems of leakages, be worth the extra time we get to defer the real choices of changing our consumption habits?

Writing this article with my green hat on, it is easy to disparage what some may see as frivolous behaviour, but how are we to judge and at what level are we to set the bar? Do we have a society who can even ask these questions in a mature manner?

Perhaps in the end we should just produce carbonated water – billions and billions of bottles of carbonated water, but not actually open the bottles, but rather keep it in storage.

Other blogs are available

2010-12-06T10:36:00.000-08:00

For those interested in the events in Cancun, here is one recommended by Cambridge's Zero Carbon Society.
The two blogs I read regularly, each from a different perspective, are RealClimate and Judith Curry.

I recently saw an interesting blog article on cycling in Cambridge.

The Cancun Communiqué

2010-12-01T04:44:00.000-08:00

As business leaders, we are used to making decisions on the basis of projected risk and established scientific fact, at this point in time we cannot afford to ignore the undeniable impact of climate change on global populations, natural resources, the economy, and on our businesses.

This week Doug Crawford Brown signed up to the Cancun Communiqué in his capacity as executive director of 4CMR. The Cancun Communiqué is an initiative of the Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders’ Group on Climate Change, coordinated by the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership. The Communiqué is a statement agreed by business leaders to the effect that the adoption of an ambitious, robust and equitable global deal on climate change needs to be agreed in Cancun, a deal able to respond credibly to the scale and urgency of the crisis facing us today, and follows similar initiatives designed to coincide with previous United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP) events.

The Communiqué states the need for progress in a number of priority areas, such as binding targets, finance, technology transfer, agreement on reducing emissions from deforestation, forest degradation, and forest management (REDD); and, monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV). In addition, these priorities should be delivered within a framework alongside a parallel mitigation strategy focusing on GHG reduction opportunities in specific sectors, with agreements in five key areas of action:

1. Energy efficiency across all sectors: Robust financial and policy support for energy efficiency measures in buildings, transport and industry.

2. Low carbon energy systems: Strong policy support and fast‐track funding for low carbon energy sources, infrastructural development, and research, development and deployment in buildings (both non‐residential and residential), industry, and transport.

3. Emissions capture and storage: Greater financial and policy support for the scale up of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies.

4. Emissions from other greenhouse gases: Increased effort on tackling other GHG emissions such as methane, nitrous oxide, and F‐gases and the impact of black carbon.

5. Urban planning, land use management and land use change: Addressing the carbon emissions impact of land‐use both in terms of urban and rural environments.

The question remains about whether it requires a legally binding global treaty or if there are other types of agreements that will produce the desired aims of the Communiqué. The real advantage of binding treaties with fixed targets is the clarity of purpose to a common objective without feeling that any competitive advantage has been given up to any carbon free-rider countries. The real disadvantage is that getting agreement by blocks of countries with very different objectives is going to be really difficult. The alternative is to mobilise those that share the need to action as widely as possible – California rather than the USA, the EU rather than the globe, business leaders rather than political interests – others will catch up quickly enough when it becomes clearer it is in everyone’s interest.

The Cancun Communiqué has value not because it endorses one type of agreement, but because it acts as a clear statement of specific climate change action priorities, and the importance of agreement on the implementation of these strategies, particularly within the global context; however, it is not limited to a specific type of agreement or target but rather it suggests that COP 16 (the latest political arena) is one arena in which climate change is to be tackled, and it is in other arenas (business leadership, academic leadership, etc.) that the momentum for change continues to be pursued simultaneously. There needs to be action on all fronts (hence the need for agreement in Cancun) but if action stalls in one arena, there are plenty of other opportunities to provide leadership and momentum for action. This opportunity for momentum on climate action is just one of the reasons why 4CMR, and 250 of the most powerful corporate leaders in the UK and USA, have signed the Communiqué. To download the Cancun Communiqué, click here.

Perhaps we should try what works

2010-11-06T10:00:00.000-07:00

By Blake Alcott, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds

The jury is still out on the size of ‘economy-wide’, ‘macro’ or ‘total’ rebound. UKERC and 4CMR for instance hover in the range of 40-52%, albeit with caveats concerning trade effects, bunker fuels and other grave difficulties of definition and methodology. Some still say rebound is insignificant, but they usually mean only ‘direct’ rebound (car-driving, lighting, white goods) and underestimate indirect effects. Still others hold that from the environmental point of view efficiency ‘backfires’, i.e. total rebound is greater than 100%: Even more energy gets used up than in a less efficient economy – dubbed a ‘paradox’ by Jevons in 1865.

Others including myself ignore this paradox and assert that rebound is about 100%, meaning: Whatever energy resources lie fallow after we achieve efficiency increases get immediately consumed for expanding previous or related activities, by the same or marginal consumers.[1] This safely assumes a lot of latent demand given world poverty, population growth and conspicuous consumption. It also assumes a supply function showing profits in the primary energy sector. The first line of evidence for this view is the broad historical picture showing efficiency and consumption rising in lock-step. It seems only isolated individuals take efficiency dividends as more leisure, i.e., as less production in the first place.

A second line of evidence is an analogy: More efficient consumption of labour inputs, starting with the industrial revolution, unleashed a pan-European debate whether this means labour saving, i.e. mass unemployment. In fact labour-efficiency ‘backfired’ hugely, and nobody any longer claims more than some resulting temporary unemployment. Thirdly, many direct rebounds do seem to be greater than 100% – perhaps lighting, pig iron or fertiliser production, or air travel.

In my opinion all this places an initial burden of proof on the position that rebound is significantly lower than 100%. Instead of asking ‘Where’s the rebound?’ we can ask ‘Where are the savings?’

All rebound positions rely heavily on theory.

Consumption increase is not denied, for instance, but it is claimed that without efficiency increases (whether policy-induced or as business-as-usual cost-cutting), it would have increased even more. A bizarre corollary of this, however, is that we would be consuming vastly more energy than we are now had engine efficiency been frozen at the level of Watt’s time.

However, rebound theory and methodology are poorly developed.[2] What, for instance, do direct rebounds, measured to the nearest nano-joule, tell us? Averaging them over the whole world economy doesn’t help us follow indirect effects. There is even confusion over the difference between direct and total rebound, causing online polemical storms as in the case of the Economist’s recent report on lighting. What, moreover, is the value of country or OECD studies without reliable ways to adjust for trade, bunker fuels, developing-world demand curves, etc.?

Further, if we work with prices, income effects and elasticities of demand we must formally recognise that consumer gains in purchasing power mean equal losses in purchasing power for energy sellers – a methodological dead-end. If moreover our model treats GDP and population exogenously, we are begging the all-important question of efficiency’s influence on these two variables. Or, if we work with production functions we must acknowledge the relative rise in demand for a factor that has become more productive (efficient), and that all efficiencies together expand the production possibilities frontier.

These 30-year-old insights have fallen on deaf ears: Short of complete satiation some rebound, to be sure, is uncontested, but theory is too weak to get governments and their intellectual contractors to enter even a modest rebound co-efficient when judging the effectiveness of efficiency policies. An employee of the Swiss Energy Office told me with a straight face that until rebound can be exactly measured it is zero!

How then do we judge efficiency policies – or even state-paid research on efficiency and barriers thereto – in light of this uncertainty? First, is greater efficiency a necessary condition for reduction of depletion and pollution rates? Obviously not: Caps and high environmental taxes reach the goal by definition – efficiency would follow privately, as a matter of course, and be seen for what it is, namely squeezing maximum affluence out of any given amount of a natural resource.

Is greater efficiency a sufficient condition for lower impact? As asserted above, a combination of empirical data and theoretical considerations indicates this is highly unlikely. A multi-disciplinary view from history, psychology, anthropology and economics loudly hint that fallow resources get snapped up

For environmental policy, it seems to me, efficiency is barking up the wrong tree.

[1] google Polimeni et al., 2008, Jevons Paradox, Earthscan; Herring & Sorrell, 2009, Energy Efficiency, Palgrave Macmillan; Energy Policy journal, Len Brookes.

[2] Madlener, Reinhard, and Blake Alcott, 2009. Energy rebound and economic growth: A review of the main issues and research needs. Energy 34: 370-376.

German (energy) efficiency

2010-10-28T04:30:00.000-07:00

By Sören Lindner

Germans of today have always struck me more as pragmatic rather than visionary by nature. One needs to dig several centuries deep in the intellectual landscape until the shovel eventually hits the crusty remains of Goethe, Kloppstock or Kant; thinkers that were once led by the belief that our world will change to a better place if only our minds are enlightened, and not by striving obsessive compulsively for efficiency improvement. Yes, I did miss the courage for having visions in my country. That is, until I read about our new energy and climate roadmap to 2050, which gave reasons for hope again.

The new energy concept was made public in September by the Federal Government, lead by Chancellor Angela Merkel, and offers a compass for cutting emissions by 80% compared to 1990 base level by 2050. An eighty per cent emissions cut looks like a great vision.

Reading in more detail about the plan allows some interesting insight into the works of a German mind. So, how does Germany plan to achieve the 80% emissions cut? There are eight pillars holding the energy and climate construct: 1) renewables will make up 80% of Germany’s electricity generation by 2050, 2) energy efficiency will be drastically improved, 3) existing nuclear power stations will stay on the grid for up to 25 more years, 4) smart grids will be introduced to allow for more efficiency between demand and supply, 5) the housing sector will be restructured towards more efficiency, 6) electric vehicles will be substantially subsidised, 7) more funding will be allocated to research and development and 8) Germany will spend effort and money to harmonize the European electricity grid to allow a better transfer between countries. In summary, Merkel has managed to put German efficiency into a vision of decarbonising a country.

Of course the strategic paper contains information on how the eight pillars are planned to be implemented. For a complete understanding it is necessary to take a step back and look at how Germany’s energy and electricity production mix is structured right now.

As of 2009 renewables make up 15.6% of electricity production only. And I say only, because Germany aims at 80% in 40 years, which means adding almost six times the existing generation capacity, assuming constant energy consumption. Right now 45% of electricity production stems from coal, 23% from nuclear and 13% from natural gas. If we zoom further into the renewable wedge we see that it is made up of 40 % wind energy, 25% biomass, 20% hydro, roughly 10% photovoltaic and 5% renewable waste. In order to increase the amount of renewables, the government offers a loan worth 5 billion Euros to investment in offshore wind projects in the North Sea. Biomass is planned to be increased on the communal and regional level in particular as a fuel for co-generated heat and power plants.

The central point Germany will tackle is reduction of primary energy consumption. Compared to 2008 levels the country aims at 50% energy reduction and 25% electricity consumption reduction. The effort is primarily undertaken in the building and housing sector as well as the energy intensive heavy industries. The latter will be subject to mandatory CO₂ reduction obligations after 2012. German’s “Mittelstand”, medium- sized businesses with 30 – 150 employers, will receive special treatment by the government in the form of low interest loan access to a newly formed “energy efficiency fund” with the aim to finance more efficient technologies (engines etc.).

Responses to the plans have been mixed. Germans default position towards government decisions is the one of slight mistrust instead of open-arm acceptance. And I am sure historians are able to find some reasons for such behaviour. The decision to let the 17 nuclear power plants stay on the grid for up to 25 years caused several street protests over the summer that were on the verge of escalating into riots. Last year after the election the government “promised” to fade out nuclear power in Germany. After a long debate a compromise has been agreed, to leave nuclear power on the grid but to raise a nuclear fuel element tax. Half of the tax revenue will be directly recycled to investment in renewables, the other half to finance the household deficit.

And two weeks ago it was decided that the additional costs of renovating buildings and houses towards higher energy efficiency can be passed on to the tenant. How this affects the housing sector and mobility is beyond the scope of this blog, but it doesn’t need to be mentioned that this decision caused a mild uproar among German’s tax payers.

In conclusion I would like to remark that the concept of 80% CO2 reduction will in fact only work if some major assumptions hold true. I am saying this being German but without holding a track record of past insightful visions. Just mentioning two examples here, it is expected that the European grid is harmonized to the extent that Germany can in fact import electricity harnessed from solar systems in North Africa. Another assumption made is that by the year 2030 six million electric cars will drive on Germany’s road. Time will tell if these visions hold true.

Climate Change and the Big Society

2010-09-27T05:29:00.000-07:00

David Cameron recently argued that the state is “often too inhuman and clumsy” to tackle the UK’s social problems. Instead of big government, the coalition is developing policies within an agenda of “big society” - emphasising devolving powers locally to communities, encouraging greater community engagement and support for social enterprises & civil society organisations. Before cynically dismissing big society as and excuse for big cuts in services, it might be useful to consider one or two examples of opportunities that the big society agenda offers on the theme of climate change.

Michael Kelly, Doug Crawford-Brown and a number of students and local organisations in Cambridge have proposed a local solution to home insulation called the Cambridge Retrofit project. The project encourages Cambridge to take the initiative in addressing energy saving through a programme of retrofitting existing buildings to bring them into line with the insulation standards used in newly built housing.

These existing buildings are important as they will account for more than 80% of the carbon dioxide emissions from the entire building stock in Cambridge even in 2050 after new builds have been added to the city.

Coordinating the implementation of the proposal would require support from a number of local organisations because the project reflects the economies of scale that accompany large-scale programmes of retrofits, rather than relying on a building-by-building schedule. In this way, the plan requires retrofitting entire blocks of buildings, minimising the need for construction traffic and reducing costs associated with purchase of materials and labour. This same approach brings an added incentive to local businesses to supply labour and develop additional capacity to manufacture and deliver materials, since the project provides for a reliable procurement base crucial to investment in business development. The big society agenda would afford the type of stakeholder building necessary for the first stage of the plan to be developed and ready for implementation, finance permitting.

A second example comes from the area of distributed energy. In a recent briefing paper, Scott Kelly from 4CMR, argues the case for the localisation of energy services in reducing carbon emissions.

He concludes that “locally led solutions are set to be an increasingly important dimension for both the supply and demand for energy” and indeed locally led solutions might be increasingly seen as a crucial part of other climate change mitigation strategies. A more detailed account of the argument can be found here.

While big society is still a rather vague concept and may indeed in the end turn out to be as contested a social capital or new public management, the reality of the need to do more with less might make some local solutions a more viable option for addressing carbon emissions, even if the State is neither clumsy nor inhume.

Next month contribution will be written by Sören Lindner.

August 24 and already in ecological debt for the year

2010-08-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

This week, or 21 August to be more precise, the global population entered into ecological debt, according to the new economics foundation (nef) and Global Footprint Network. Putting to one side the way this budget was devised (it’s all to do with estimating the annual environmental resources generated minus the rate at which they are consumed) if the concept of ecological debt has any credibility, then there is something disturbing about its implications.

It is disturbing in the sense that the year’s provisions are used up before the summer is out, that the day this happens is creeping earlier each year, that the global haves are first in the queue for yet more resources, that the wastage is not generally for investment in future benefits, and with a growing population the increased expectations of consumption are demanded from all quarters irrespective of the pool of resources available to share.

Thinking of global consumption in terms of a budget has its advantages (and disadvantages) and it is not as if economists haven’t thought about debt in such terms before.

Those interested in sustainability issues have devised many measures and metrics to account for the use of resources relative to their availability, and accounting for time in resource depletion or externalities is a fairly mainstream notion. Notions such as discounting, hedonic pricing and contingent valuation are widely used, at least conceptually, in assessing the value of biodiversity or the relative costs of climate change mitigation. The problem is that of quantifying resource availability and consumption in a coherent way is unfeasible, although the new economics foundation and Global Footprint Network have had the courage to open the debate.

Returning to the concept of ecological debt and the calculation that the date in which the global population “spend” their annual ecological budget is occurring earlier, it is not clear how powerfully the concept resonates. While older generations might be horrified by this inability to balance the budget, the inability to live within our means, the need to pawn the family silver just to get by, younger generations are used to, indeed tolerant of, a heavy burden of debt, maxed out credit cards, easily obtained loans and, of course, trillion dollar government debts. Of course, though, it should be obvious that unsustainable debt can’t be consolidated, be they monetary or ecological, but an ecological bailout is more difficult to envisage than a bankruptcy agreement or a debt write off.

Sure it’s a contested measure and I don’t imagine a movement developing over balancing the eco-budget just yet, but imagine if such a concept were to be taken seriously and we saw it as a collective duty to live within our ecological means: we would then be free to celebrate 31 December with enough credit to see us into the New Year. We could then start thinking about the concept of an ecological legacy. For a start, though, next year let us try and make it to the end of August before going into debt.

Should new nuclear play a part in meeting our energy needs: a personal view

2010-07-27T09:18:00.000-07:00

I believe new nuclear will play a part in meeting our energy needs (Chris Huhne, first annual energy statement to parliament, 27 July 2010)

Today, the UK’s energy secretary, Chris Huhne, outlined how the government will address the issue of energy generation. The strategy will involve new nuclear energy generation capacity.

The context for this is relatively simple: the 2008 Climate Change Act commits the UK to an 80% reduction of carbon emission on 1990 levels by 2050. To meet these reductions, fossil fuel consumption must be reduced, so the question is very simple: what can replace fossil fuels, when, and at what cost.

If abandoning these commitments is not an option then substituting lower carbon intensive fuels for higher intensive fuels would help, but this is not a sustainable option. There are new technologies to sequestrate carbon from fossil fuels (CCS) but the technology is uncertain, the method is likely to be costly even if the risks can be reduced and storage proven to be feasible beyond small demonstration projects.

A more promising option is the use of renewable energy sources, which are becoming more cost effective each year, and will help to diversify the energy mix. The EU is committed to a target of 20% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, but the UK has lagged behind the EU average on renewable energy for some time and on the latest figures, will struggle to contribute to this target.

Renewable energy sources are certainly cleaner and provide very low carbon energy, but even with the substantial increases in investment in these energy sources, they cannot by themselves ensure the other desirable features of the UK’s energy mix i.e. secure supply at an affordable price.

There are likely to be more energy efficient technologies, and energy conservation in the work place, homes and other environments and transportation, which can reduce the demand for energy, but this goes against the observed trend for UK energy consumption. Other changes in manufacturing and agriculture could have an impact on emissions reduction, but these changes will take time.

This brings me to nuclear energy. It is, perhaps the most contentious alternative –it is a low carbon energy, based on existing technology, providing security of supply for the next century; however, the costs are contested both in terms of energy generation, decommissioning and other environmental costs. Existing nuclear energy provides around 20% of the UK’s electricity, and much of this capacity will be removed in the next few years as eleven nuclear plants are due for closure by 2015. This means that a nuclear-free energy mix will have to find a substantial generation capacity from a low carbon source from somewhere.

It would seem clear, then, that nuclear must form a part of the UK energy strategy for the foreseeable future, perhaps a substantial part, a point many environmentalists such as James Lovelock, George Monbiot and Mark Lynas concede.

This is not my view. The problem of energy security is a consequence of inappropriate attitudes towards energy consumption. Without being forced to pay the full costs of the energy we use there will be no incentive to act boldly. CCS and nuclear are just ways of deferring this decision. Let me be clear - the target must be 100% renewable energy by 2050 as this has the lowest environmental impact, which is a key factor in considering sustainability. This means energy efficiency, reduced consumption, higher prices, an emphasis on investment in renewable energy, changes in key areas such as land use, transportation, manufacturing and construction. We need to wean ourselves off cheap (i.e. unsustainable) energy and it is likely to be painful, at least at first.

Is nuclear energy a solution to the UK’s energy needs? In the short run, with a business as usual consumption rate, and with only incremental investment in renewable energy generation, nuclear power will be crucial in maintaining a secure supply. In the long term I view the solution as paying a fair price for the energy consumed, one that reflects pollution, climate change risk, resource depletion, hazardous waste and other externalities. This price means that renewable energy sources become economically attractive for large scale energy generation and thus provide incentives for greater investment in R& D, innovation and commercialisation.

If the UK is to achieve secure, clean and affordable energy by 2050, then it must act now, act radically and not defer the issue until it has no choice. Chris Huhne knows that a policy based on high energy prices and a painful transition is politically unacceptable, so nuclear energy is a convenient option to have for the moment. He has also announced more support for renewable energy and if many of the problems with renewable sources can be solved by 2020 as a consequence of extra investment and the EU’s 20/2020 commitment, perhaps nuclear energy will be less crucial for the energy mix towards 2050.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

2010-06-17T06:11:00.000-07:00

Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true! (H. J. Simpson)

At least three members of 4CMR will be lead authors for the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC. This is something to be proud of – the IPCC has managed to coordinate the key experts in order to present and evaluate the wide range of research findings on climate science, for which it is a Nobel Prize recipient. The quality of its reports make it a crucial resource for climate researchers, a point of reference for decision makers, and an independent organisation through which climate change has become an issue of global importance.

And yet, there seem to be suggestions that the IPCC model – by which I mean a panel comprising many of the world’s leading experts that review all relevant material with a view to consider the state of the field – has been discredited. Newspaper headlines about “serious errors in Himalayan glacier projections” based on poorly substantiated estimates or the “withholding and manipulation of data” said to be derived from hacked email content, have certainly had a negative impact on the profile of the IPCC.

Indeed, Robert Watson, chair of the IPCC between1997- 2002, was emphatic that IPCC tackle its blunders or lose all credibility, and other leading climate scientists, writing in Nature in February this year, have suggested the need to reform the way the IPCC functions, ranging from replacing the IPCC with three types of assessment and evaluation panels, increasing the number and speed of its publications, replacing the volunteer organisation with a permanently staffed agency or a Wikipedia-style open debate.

But do these criticisms and suggestions that there is a need for change really show that the IPCC model itself needs to be rethought? The complexity of coordinating and reviewing the state of knowledge of climate science is daunting and the balance between the different ways of framing such data is an immense challenge, but creating the reports – and the reporting process itself – have been crucial in enabling the interdependencies between different elements studied by the different climate sciences to be identified. The reports are useful as a resource, but also as a boundary object i.e. as a way of bringing together people from different fields by enabling a shared understanding to be formed around a specific text or artefact. But this is itself a tension within the IPCC model.

The problem is that there are many debates occurring simultaneously over the same territory, often with the same elements, but related to different epistemologies and irreconcilable assumptions. The IPCC reports are presented (in the media, at least) as a “last word” on climate change, but while a “last word” might be possible for the state of mainstream science of climate change, there is no comparable consensus or perspective that can enable a complete understanding of what climate change means for individuals or social groups. As Mike Hulme – IPCC coordinating lead author and East Anglia University email hackee – argues in his book Why we Disagree about Climate Change, climate science does not and cannot provide facts that speak for themselves, let alone tell us what the problem is and what the solution must be. Instead, climate change becomes appropriated by different groups to promote their own causes, and reflect their own assumptions and narratives – from how we govern and how we gain knowledge, to how we perceive and communicate an understanding of concepts such as nature, risk and fear.

Sophisticated debates about the meaning of climate change and the subtleties about methods and methodologies are also a part of the climate change story, and it is right they are debated, and that prominent members of the IPCC are engaged with these debates. There can be no “last word” on certainty on the meaning of climate change.

There are, though, organisations and individuals who claim to be certain – lobby organisations, conspiracy theorists and those who dogmatically restate a view irrespective of how many times it has been cogently debunked (“climate change is a myth – its all down to sunspots!”). It is perhaps ironic that those who claim such certainty criticise the IPCC for overstating the certainty of climate science – though on this point they are perhaps correct in the sense that the IPCC is not getting the following message across: climate science produces results of different degrees of certainty, typically providing evidence for one outcome “on balance of probabilities” and never certainty. The lack of certainty derived from climate science is not the problem, it is the challenge; hiding uncertainty or claiming to have a comprehensive explanation of climate change would be the problem.

There are, of course, those who perceive uncertainty as a weakness, or suggest that any errors in a report must imply that the process in which the report was developed is tainted by incompetence or fraud or both, but overstating the certainty or not taking responsibility for errors, is a losing strategy.

Those most vociferous in their criticism of the IPCC and its failure (and there are half a million websites that link the two search terms in Google) seem to be those most certain that climate change is not happening, those for whom “evidence” is unnecessary and debate is fine as long as it is about which of their views is just not being heard. Claiming to be certain and infallible and having a very simple message might convince some people, especially if it’s a “business as usual” message, and opponents ,who advocate tough lifestyle change, have some uncertainty and admit to having made mistakes. The role of the IPCC is not to counter the sceptics’ certainty with an opposing certainty, and the IPCC should not allow this impression to be given.

In March this year an open letter, signed by Scientists based in the USA, concluded that:

“the significance of IPCC errors has been greatly exaggerated by many sensationalist accounts, but that is no reason to avoid implementing procedures to make the assessment process even better”

This seems to be a fair assessment and the correct response to way the IPCC model be reconsidered. Expectations should be high; mistakes, failures, compromises and uncertainty should be explained and discussed, and debate encouraged. Being certain has its place, but not in understanding the complexities and meanings of the climate.

I think Bertrand Russell expressed the issue clearly and succinctly:

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts”

In this regard the IPCC is more sinned against than sinner.

Monthly Update

2010-06-10T04:29:00.000-07:00

There are only two or three blogs that I keep up with on a regular basis. The problem isn't that bloggers don't update their blogs regularly, but that they update them when they don't have much to say. To avoid this 4CMR will ask different members of the team to write the monthly update on a topic worth blogging about.

4CMR - Foreseeing Mitigation

2010-06-10T03:11:00.000-07:00

The Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation, or 4CMR, is an interdisciplinary research centre within the Department of Land Economy at the University of Cambridge. Our Objective is to foresee strategies, policies and processes that are effective in human-induced climate change.

Our focus is to undertake high quality research addressing issues related to the mitigation of climate change. We are a small group of researchers but have expertise in a wide range of research topics. We also work with a wide variety of groups and organisations on some cutting edge research. This blog will present some of this research in an informal way. We hope it will generate some discussion and provide feedback, which can only improve our research and its dissemination.