What actually caught my attention was Perry’s less commented on reference to “man-made global warming” as a “scientific theory that has not been proven” – which is actually correct, because science doesn’t actually prove anything to be true. It can only falsify or disconfirm a hypothesis, and provide “levels of confidence” in its findings. The statement could just be careless and sloppy, or could be a very convenient way to call for postponing action on climate change indefinitely no matter what the science says, without appearing to oppose science or action.

Either way, I’m giving it a fifth Pinocchio because it is either based on, or takes advantage of a general misconception of what science can deliver, not to mention deep anxieties about the future in what have become post-normal times. Therefore it is more deeply misleading than a mere misrepresentation of facts. If there were a more general understanding that uncertainty is part of life, and that science is not a crystal ball, I suspect fewer people would be taken in by the arguments of the “skeptics”, whose arguments tend to hype uncertainties to make the case against taking action in response to human-induced climate change. As well as downplay, ignore or misrepresent multiple lines of evidence that all point in the same direction. The focus of public discourse could then actually be on whether and how to address human-induced climate change rather than whether it is happening.

Acceptance of uncertainty of course leads to many more questions as to: the implications of various kinds of uncertainty for decision-making, stakeholder participation in science-based decisions, and evaluating the quality of scientific information when there are cranks at the table, who are more interested in disrupting the process than in reaching a decision that is in the public interest. And why the double standard for acting with uncertain information when it comes to climate and other environmental sciences? Uncertainty does not seem to stop most people from following medical advice or investing in the stock market. I will come back to all of this in my promised and long-overdue forthcoming post, in which I revisit the basics of post-normal science as context for commenting on the recent conference of the Heartland Institute, and on the puzzling turn taken by Jerry Ravetz. To those who asked me to comment on these – my apologies for the delay – it is a topic that really merits a full article that I have not had the time to write, but I have not dropped it.

After explaining what a normal climate is, Heidi Cullen asks whether there actually is a normal climate at all, given that each of the past three decades has been hotter than the previous one, with 2000-2009 being the hottest on record. But nevertheless, she goes on to refer to the “new normals”, defined as a region’s weather averaged over 30 years, which are updated at the end of each decade. These show that “on average, conditions were about 3.6 F warmer from 2001-2010 than from 1971-1980.” As it will likely take a long time before we actually reach a new normal, it seems like it is time for a new term to characterize this interim period.

Again, Welcome to Post-Normal Times! And note that I am no longer the only one using the term. Since Zia Sardar published his article in the journal Futures, characterizing it as a time of Chaos, Contradictions and Complexity, several others have written rejoinders that generally accept and elaborate on the premise, and on what might be necessary to achieve a new normal.

In a somewhat different context, even Joe Romm says that “these are Post Normal Times” and that we are now in a Post Normal Climate. His post was in response to Cuccinelli’s fishing expedition – i.e., a Civil Investigative Demand from the Attorney General of Virginia, which suggests that Michael Mann might have committed fraud for not disclosing the Post-Normal nature of climate science in a grant application, and conceding to operating in an environment of uncertainty. As if there ever were certainty in anything other than death and taxes, let alone science, and demonstrating that Cuccinelli has either unrealistic expectations of science and/or does not have a clue as to what he is talking about. Nevermind his attempt to criminalize the normal practice of science now pending in a circuit court.

Cuccinelli is not alone is spreading confusion around the concept of Post-Normal Science, at least as I understood the concept when I embraced it. However, I chose Post-Normal Times as the theme for this blog so as to shift the focus from a wonky discussion of science philosophy to the policy context.

This blog has been MIA as controversy has swirled around the concept of Post-Normal Science, beginning with Jerry’s posts last year at WUWT, which gave me a bad case of writer’s block, Judith Curry’s engagement of climate deniers as an extension of the peer review process, and continuing with the recent Lisbon Workshop on Reconciliation in the Climate Change Debate. The latter has the Policy Lass wondering if PNS is tailor-made for the denialist crowd, and has Deep Climate wondering if the PNS concept has been hijacked altogether. Full-time work over the past two years took the oxygen out of this blog, just as climate deniers are paralyzing the policy process and sucking the oxygen away from finding solutions. I’m still here but comments on PNS and Lisbon etc are going to have to be a separate post, coming next.

Stephen Colbert continues with the climate vs weather theme, in a “science catfight” between meteorologists – aka, TV weathermen, and climatologists. If it doesn’t make any sense thats ok. You can just pick whatever side confirms your beliefs. This is made for TV drama. But in the irony department, note that the American Meteorological Society sides with the 31% of meteorologists who believe that global warming is primarily human induced, as do 90% of climatologists.

It would be interesting to find out more about the differences in educational background and employment of the meteorologists who do and don’t attribute global warming to humans. Perhaps the latter were all students of Bill Gray who are more interested in flying into hurricanes, chasing storms, and reporting directly from their path – which keeps eyeballs glued to the television. It has been awhile since I read it but for more in depth perspective on differences between these two camps, see Chris Mooney’s book, Storm World. Stephen also observed that, the percentage of Americans who trust TV weathermen, about 56%, is roughly the same as the percentage who voted for Al Gore.

Although it never made it to the top of the priority list, I always thought it would be a good idea to provide the concept with more scholarly treatment. On the other hand, the main idea behind the blog was to get such ideas out from behind the paywall ($41.95 for this article if you don’t have access to a good library) (now available here) and see if it might be possible to better illustrate science and policy conundrums from a post-normal science perspective, in more practical terms, in the context of commentary on day to day events which science illuminates, or to which it is applied. The closest I came to providing a formal definition of the concept was probably in the second post, on Unknown knowns and known unknowables, as a time when changes in climate are outside the range of natural variability, which brings us into terra incognita, or Post-Normal Times, and that are leading to greater and greater uncertainty that is found in our lives as much as in science, The post goes on to discuss the social aspects of this uncertainty, raising the question of whether all obtainable scientific information would actually make any difference in policy decisions and in actual practices, and ultimately, with their consequences. An issue that goes well beyond the question of

…whether or not estimates fall inside or outside acceptable margins of error. Use of science to support policy decisions implies also the need to understand the often rapidly changing conditions to which those estimates presumably apply, and therefore, to make judgments not only about the technical quality of information, but also about whether it is even relevant to the questions being asked, and whether the right questions are being asked. Whether outcomes are achieved also raises issues of trust and cooperation, and whether promises are kept. These questions cannot even begin to be answered unless there is some semblance of accountability, as well as agreement about the scope of the problem itself, and visions of the future.

This in not inconsistent with Sardar’s more formal and inclusive characterization of the concept, which also builds on the concept of post-normal science. A few excerpts – but read the whole thing if you can get access to it:

…It’s a time when little out there can be trusted or gives us confidence. The espiritu del tiempo, the spirit of our age, is characterised by uncertainty, rapid change, realignment of power, upheaval and chaotic behaviour. We live in an in-between period where old orthodoxies are dying, new ones have yet to be born, and very few things seem to make sense. Ours is a transitional age, a time without the confidence that we can return to any past we have known and with no confidence in any path to a desirable, attainable or sustainable future. It is a time when all choices seem perilous, likely to lead to ruin, if not entirely over the edge of the abyss. In our time it is possible to dream all dreams of visionary futures but almost impossible to believe we have the capability or commitment to make any of them a reality. We live in a state of flux beset by indecision: what is for the best, which is worse? We are disempowered by the risks, cowed into timidity by fear of the choices we might be inclined or persuaded to contemplate.

In the normal scheme of things, we know where we stand. The winters are cold and the summers are hot, the seasons flow-spring forward, fall back like clockwork – in a natural cycle. The economy grows steadily, at rates varying from sluggishly to dramatic, but guaranteeing a reliable general increase in prosperity and security. Markets work, warts and all, they regulate prices and we have confidence and trust in our financial institutions. Politicians, never the most trustworthy of breeds, acknowledge, and by and large adhere to, accepted principles of behaviour as they legislate effectively to order the affairs of society. When we are faced with a new disease or danger, science and medicine come galloping to our rescue. A global balance of power, with all its imperfections, maintains a semblance of peacable law and order; tin pot dictators, fearing the consequences of their actions, know where to draw the line. We live in coherent and cohesive communities, safe in the knowledge that the futures of our children are secure.

In normal times, when things go wrong, as they so often have, we know what to do. We identify and isolate the problem and apply our physical and intellectual resources to come up with a viable answer. The solid foundations and proven theories of our disciplines, from economics and political science to biological and natural sciences, guide us towards a potential solution. The weight and sheer power of intellectual, academic and political orthodoxy ensures that we successfully ride the tiger of change.

Little of this now holds true. Much of what we have taken as normal, conventional and orthodox just does not work anymore. Indeed, normality itself is revealed to be the root of all our ills. Take the current economic crisis, for example. This provides ample evidence that the old business model on which we have relied for centuries is bust. Not only has free market capitalism become dangerously obsolete but the branch of economics, which provided theoretical justification for this edifice is also intellectually bankrupt [1]. Economic man, the intellectual construct underpinning the edifice, a species once vaunted for his rationality, is extinct [2]. Markets propelled only by the profit motive have become ungovernable, predicated only on personal greed and unconscionable accumulation of unimaginable private wealth concentrated in few hands, Competition and the free flow of capital around the liberalised, deregulated globe is a revolving tale of beggar my neighbor to produce ever cheaper consumer goods that leave more and more ‘rust belt’ communities as de-industrialized wastelands while the realignment of global trade imbalances increases volatility and mutual distrust within and between nations [3].

The world itself is now a far more uncertain place than it was during the second half of the twentieth century. It is not just that our own political system, based on self-regulation and comradely rules of gentleman’s clubs, is irreparably broken; the more politicians legislate, reform and amend the less significant and effective laws seem in achieving or delivering appreciable social benefit the more unintended and undesired consequences appear. The global geopolitical landscape is also changing rapidly. There is hardly a country where politicians, of whatever persuasion, are either trusted or respected. Even the regular cycles of our weather cannot be trusted anymore – thanks to global warming, with its attendant rises in temperatures and sea levels, changing ocean composition and transformed ecosystems.

‘The first decade of the 21st century has been a series of wake up calls’ says an advertisement for IBM. ‘These are system crises – from security, to climate, to food and water, to energy, to financial markets and more’ [4]. What is unique about these crises is that they have occurred simultaneously: ‘we have never seen any era when we have been hit by all these multiple crisis at the one time’, says UN General Secretary, Ban Ki-moon [5]. It is not just that things are going wrong; they are going wrong spectacularly, on a global scale, and in multiple and concurrent ways. We thus find ourselves in a situation that is far from normal; and have entered the domain of the postnormal.

The concept of ‘postnormal’ was first introduced by Ravetz, the celebrated British philosopher of science, and the Argentinean mathematician Funtowicz [6]. Working on the mathematics of risk, they noticed that the old image of science, where empirical data led to true conclusions and scientific reasoning led to correct policies, was no longer plausible [6]. There was a great deal of uncertainty in scientific work, which together with changes to funding, commercialisation, social concerns about developments in science and the complex issues of safety, all meant that science was no longer functioning in the ‘normal’ way. ‘ Whenever there is a policy issue involving science’, wrote Ravetz and Funtowicz, ‘we discover that facts are uncertain, complexity is the norm, values are in dispute, stakes are high, decisions are urgent and there is a real danger of man-made risks running out of control’ [7]. They described the emerging developments as ‘postnormal science’, which has now become an established field of inquiry.

Much of what Ravetz and Funtowicz said about science in the 1990s is now equally true about other disciplines – indeed, society as a whole. Everything from economics to international relations, markets to products in local shops, politics to dissent has become postnormal. There are very good reasons for this state of affairs. All of them are related to three c’s: complexity, chaos and contradictions – the forces that shape and propel postnormal times….

Another observation, that seems particularly poignant to anyone who has followed the dysfunctional or postnormal discourse on climate science, regards a major obstacle in negotiating our way towards new normal times:

the space, time and willingness to engage in coherent debate has become scarcer, the more complex, contradictory and chaotic things have become….  …there is no natural law that states that activism will should or ought to be, dedicated solely to the common good. Nor is there any rule that they should take a balanced view and think through the risks and benefits of their agenda. Indeed it is in the nature of many of the self-organizing networks that have emerged to confound the times by offering simplistic, single issue, one-dimensional prescriptions and thereby increase the toxicity, animosity and dissatisfaction of society as a whole.

It gives one the feeling we have entered into Dante’s inferno. Although Sardar does not quite suggest that we abandon all hope, the conclusion, that we will need to rely on imagination, creativity and an ethical compass to avoid the conventional patterns of thought and pathologies that got us into this mess, suggests that the way out might entail a similar kind of a journey.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update 2: Zia has kindly allowed me to post the full article. As it is still in press, the page numbers are not yet available but it will be Futures 42:5 June 2010. The permanent url, where you will eventually be able to find the correct citation is:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2009.11.028

He may also join the discussion in the near future. In the meantime, we welcome your comments. The question that particularly interests me, is: how science can play a more constructive role in finding our way to a new normal?

Update: The redirections now seem to be working. Figures appear to be missing from older posts – will fix those over the next few weeks.

In addition to being snowed in, I lost power for part of yesterday and most of last weekend, but I have another post on the way. Since I get paid for things other than writing this blog, it may not be until the weekend. In the meantime, an insightful report on weather and climate, from who else but Stephen Colbert.

Update: for more insight on the relationship between the snowstorm and climate see also: Capitol Climate, Jeff Masters/WunderBlog, and Jon Stewart. While no single event proves anything about the climate, the bottom line is, record breaking snowfall we just had in the northeast is what can be expected from record breaking moisture in the atmosphere, which is what can be expected from global warming, which increases evaporation from the oceans.

And welcome to visitors from wattsupwiththat, where Jerry Ravetz posted an essay I only partially agree with. As Jerry has provided much of the inspiration for this blog, and has been an occasional contributor, disagreements with him are not something I take lightly. His post merits discussion and careful comment. I will link to wattsupwiththat in the blogroll when I see arguments there that hold water and have not been refuted. Other than part of Jerry’s essay.

In this paper, they apply the approach to a case study of the decline of honeybees in France, which appeared to be associated with the use of the insecticide Gaucho as sunflower and maize seed dressing. But several other potential factors were widely cited in the public discourse, such as imported queens, unfavorable climate during flowering, insufficient pollen, diseases and viruses, inadequate or illegal use of pesticides, and changes in sunflower varieties. Using a set of criteria for causality, they developed a set of questions regarding the potential relationship between each of these potential factors and the signs of the problem, which included a 30-70% loss of honey, lethal and sub-lethal signs in the bees during flowering (e.g., mortality, paralysis, loss of orientation, apathy, shivering and other abnormal behaviors). For each question and for each potential causal factor, stakeholders were asked to provide scores of 1-10 regarding the convincingness of the evidence, based on standards used in US courts. They were also asked to provide justification for their scores. The stakeholders interviewed included 2 representatives each from the Bayer Institute of Crop Science, AFSSA (the French food safety authority), and the French Ministry of Agriculture. Also, 5 public scientists, and 20 beekeepers who had experienced the problem in their own apiaries.

Among the results: an association between 5 of the eight potential factors with the lethal and sub-lethal effects that had been observed could be ruled out because they were either not biologically plausible, not verified in the field, or were unknown. They note that, although the scientific details of these potential factors were never addressed, they were widely cited as “plausible” in the public discourse. They also note two distinct storylines. One, defended by the beekeepers and the public scientists, and based on both field observations and scientific studies of the impacts of imidacloprid (the active ingredient in Gaucho), was that Gaucho was the main contributor to the loss of honeybees in areas with seed dressed sunflower and maize crops. The second storyline, defended by Bayer and AFSSA, and based on research that did not reproduce the observed effects, was that other factors were to blame. They also referred to honeybee losses in general, rather than to the particular sunflower and maize areas where crops had been treated with Gaucho.

In other words, the results “showed that in public discourses, some expert actors can present as being plausible hypotheses which are not scientifically validated and thus downplay a correct understanding of the problem by their listeners. Not all experts are equally attentive to the robustness of the scientific support for the hypothesis that they evoke.”

To anyone who has followed the public discourse on climate change, this story will sound familiar. The approach presented provides a more formalized and systematic way of asking the kinds of questions often raised in this context, although in a more diffuse manner that can be hard to track for anyone who has other things to do. Although the results are unlikely to persuade those whose aim is to delay action by sowing confusion, it can provide some much needed transparency for those who are perplexed by contradictory messages about the science of climate change, and who are truly interested in good faith negotiation of policies that rest on science.

When, at the end of October, Jon Stewart asked one of the authors, Steven Levitt if, in taking on global warming, he might have just stepped on a secular religion, I had expected some sort of a punchline to follow, that might begin to peal back the multiple layers of irony in this. That is in part because it has always seemed to me that economists, or at least the ones who, like Levitt, are “cold blooded enough to sit around and calmly discuss the trade-offs involved in a global catastrophe”, have been the ones preaching a secular religion, one commonly known as “Market Fundamentalism”. Which is what you get when you leave aside all the angst and moralism, and all those pesky social relationships in which the economy is embedded and just let “the market” make decisions about fundamental policy issues – as if it were merely a choice between one or the other.

So if anything it was the response to Superfreakonomics that stepped on a secular religion. The notion of global warming as a religion is essentially the narrative of the chapter in the book on this subject. Freudian projection perhaps? Instead, Stewart wondered why people are so angry and dogmatic, and apologized that the authors of Superfreakonomics had taken so much s…[beep]. At the end he admitted that he did not know what he was talking about and said he was just playing around. After all, it is a comedy show. But comedy or not, the reason the Daily Show has stood head and shoulders above other comedy shows is precisely because it typically exposes the failure of mainstream media to do their job, as well as their hypocrisy, for example, in this priceless parody of Glenn Beck. So it is all the more misleading when he doesn’t maintain the standard to which he holds the real media.

Jon atoned somewhat for that softball interview a week later when he interviewed Al Gore and acknowledged that the science in Superfreakonomics was not good. He seemed genuinely perplexed – as are most Americans, not about whether or not global warming is happening, but about whether we actually have the capacity to do anything about it. Unless of course we can find some sort of technical fix, like, say, mimicking a volcano by running a garden hose up to the stratosphere to release sulfur dioxide – an idea suggested in the book as an alternative to reducing emissions. A delayed punchline came from Stephen Colbert the following week, when he asked Jon why his guest interview was like a faulty computer program and why he had not asked the tough questions – except that it was in reference to Stewart’s interview with Al Gore rather than Levitt. Not linked to nearly as much in the blogosphere was a subsequent clip in which Stephen did ask tough questions about climate change, as he teemed up with Al in an episode of Formidable Opponent.

As for Jon, he should have asked Levitt the questions he asked of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson last May. Although he says he believes the science of climate change, he asked her whether, in trying to regulate CO2, and by tinkering around with the elements, “aren’t we trying to engineer something we can’t control?” Which is precisely what is being advocated by Levitt and Dubner with their “garden hose to the sky” – an idea proposed by Nathan Myhrvold from Intellectual Ventures. In another interview on the Diane Rehm show, asked about acidification of the oceans which would continue unabated if CO2 emissions are not reduced, Levitt actually suggested that this problem could be solved by adding base to the ocean (ht CPR Blog). Perhaps he did not consider how much base would be required – according to a Royal Society report on ocean acidification associated with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide:

To counteract the changes in acidity caused by today’s ocean uptake of roughly 2 Gt C per year (IPCC 2001) would require roughly 20 Gt CaCO3 per year (Caldeira & Rau 2000), which, for a limestone layer 100 m thick, would require the removal of roughly 60 km2 each year. This limestone would need to be coastally located, or transportation costs would likely be prohibitive (Rau & Caldeira 1999). Thus, features such as the white cliffs of Dover could be rapidly consumed. Therefore the introduction of limestone to offset ocean acidification would raise a host of additional environmental problems. Furthermore, limestone does not dissolve in surface waters, so additional processing, and energy, would be needed (Kheshgi 1995; Rau & Caldeira 1999).

Levitt concluded by turning on the charm: “The idea that we don’t have to pay the price for polluting is a very hard idea for people to take,” which doesn’t sound like anything I would ever have expected to hear from an economist. This narrative continued when Nathan Myhrvold was interviewed by Fareed Zakaria on CNN a few Sundays ago. Zakaria asked if the reason for opposition to geoengineering – that might enable us to avoid making painful adjustments, might be rooted in a Calvinist feeling that we need to suffer. Like Jon Stewart, he is doubtful that emissions can actually be reduced.

Missing in all of these interviews was anyone on the other side, who actually argues against research into geo-engineering, at the very least for use as a last resort, e.g., to prevent loss of the ice sheets. I have not seen that argument made at all – and by the way, we are already in the midst of a great big geo-engineering experiment so we don’t have much choice in the matter. What I have seen are objections to the notion of using geo-engineering as an alternative to reducing emissions. Also missing in the interviews was any mention of the numerous actual criticisms that have been directed at the book, for example, about what could go wrong with a garden hose to the sky, and the fallacy in Myhrvold’s assertion that solar panels absorb and emit more heat than is converted to electricity because they are black, and therefore increase rather than reduce global warming.

Superfreakonomics also misrepresents the views of both Ken Caldeira and Al Gore. Gore is predictably reduced to a caricature who is counting only on people being “willing to put aside their self-interest and do the right thing” however much it costs. While Gore does tend to emphasize that climate change is a moral issue, he has also long advocated the use of market instruments as a way to actually achieve emissions reductions. On the Freakonomics blog, Levitt’s co-author, Stephen Dubner did concede to the misrepresentation of the views of Ken Caldeira and agreed to correct the next edition. But it hasn’t stopped the National Post and Mark Morano from continuing to hype the original claim, misattributed to Caldeira, that “carbon dioxide is not the right villain.”

In other words, Levitt and Myhrvold are conveniently defending themselves against a formidable strawman – a delusion which is reinforced by Dubner’s claim that their critics have issued a Fatwa. But whether on the Daily Show or on CNN or elsewhere, this is not being presented as comedy.

I have more thoughts on why this narrative works and why science is vulnerable to this kind of attack, which will have to wait for another post. I also empathize with Jon’s frustration with the elusiveness of real solutions and the longing for a simple one that doesn’t just lead to more unintended consequences. For too long, the public discourse on solutions to climate change has focused on those squirly lightbulbs while knowing full well that the problem is much bigger and the solution more complex. Although there are no quick fixes, I could not get out of bed in the morning if I did not believe that emissions can actually be reduced with the right economic incentives – but they won’t just happen without making some tough policy decisions. And conservation in land use practices, along with the use of biochar, could actually take a lot of carbon out of the atmosphere and put it in the soil where it can increase productivity and begin to restore degraded lands, which will be critical when there are 9 million mouths to feed. But it won’t be nearly enough to slow down climate change unless it goes hand in hand with the reduction of emissions.

Update: Left as an Exercise provides an exhaustive list of links to other critiques of the book.

I have watched much less of CNN ever since they followed that infamous white van. But I have been reading Peter’s excellent posts to the SciTech blog, and wonder who will be finding and reporting answers to all of the good questions he has raised, now more critical than ever in what is expected to be a post science-war reconstruction period. And, via dotearth, we are reminded of when Miles O’Brien managed to put Sen. Inhofe into context, rather than “balance” a broadly held scientific consensus with denialist rants:

CNN’s reason?

We want to integrate environmental, science and technology reporting into the general editorial structure rather than have a stand alone unit.  Now that the bulk of our environmental coverage is being offered through the Planet in Peril franchise . . . there is no need for a separate unit.

First, Anderson Cooper does a fine job of drawing attention to melting glaciers, or whatever he happens to be standing in front of. But that is not a substitute for quality in depth coverage that viewers will be looking for once they are hooked. Somehow, I can’t quite see Cooper providing the same depth of background reporting, in a way that draws more attention to the work of scientists and those affected by change, than to himself.

Second, “integration” at the expense of more specialized in depth reporting and diverse perspectives is an abuse of the concept, and is really just a way to control the narrative and eliminate news that doesn’t fit. Which is what you would be getting more of here at The Post-Normal Times, were I able to make a living at it. Exposing the sham arguments made by climate denialists always made good fodder for blogging, and was a relatively easy target. Making sense of various policy proposals for addressing rapid changes, not only in the climate, will be much more challenging, and will only increase the need for skilled science journalists. And also for scientists who can explain what we know and don’t know, and the trade-offs between different choices, in plain english.

For more coverage see: Curtis Brainard/Columbia Journalism Review, Janet Raloff/Science News, and, of course, commentary by PZ Myers.