climate change policy, science, and activism; photography; cartography and mapmaking
Posts relating to my thesis for the Oxford Master of Philosophy in International Relations
With luck, the first full day on this thesis writing retreat is proving useful for the conversion of heaps of notes and myriad random thoughts into well-sequenced textual arguments. I hope my fellow program members are finding equal success and that those lucky enough not to have theses to write are enjoying their liberty.
Until April 7th, I will be in Branscombe, Devon working on my thesis. Rather than spending hours coming up with eight posts, you will just get a photo each day for the duration.
Wish me luck in finishing a good first complete draft: 30,000 words in five chapters.
Tonight, I am brainstorming connections between scientists and remedy design. Addressing environmental problem basically seems to revolve around changing the intensity with which an activity is being carried out (ie. fish or cut down trees at the rate of regeneration) or finding substitutes (using solar power instead of natural gas power). Both kinds of solutions involve some critical imputs from scientists. Not surprisingly, my focus here is on types of actions that pertain specifically to my case studies.
I have come up with the following. Does anything else spring to mind?
Technological development
Development of:
Predictions
Anticipating the consequences of:
Providing information about uncertainty:
Predictions about technological development:
Big ideas about the world
Establish and describe the limits of nature:
How should we treat uncertainty?:
Naturally, those last few items extend into territory that is not obviously scientific. One big question about the social role of scientists is the extent to which they do or should contribute to such hybrid debates, with both empirical and ethical dimensions. Also, there is the question of whether they do or should do so ‘with their scientist hats on’ or whether they are no different from any other actor, once they have strayed from their area of core competence.
Sorry to be so uninteresting of late. While waiting for me to hammer my thesis together, why not read some fine web comics:
These have all been mentioned here before, but may prove novel to those who haven’t been paying very close attention. Feel free to suggest more to one another.
For random thesis mutterings, follow this link:
My supervision today highlighted how much work remains to be done on the thesis. Also highlighted were some of the things I have learned over the course of the project about the issue area, and about the nature of such investigations. When you are studying something that thousands of people have studied, and you don’t have any new empirical data to contribute, it can be hard to believe that you are making a substantial contribution to the discourse. It is hard to be both well-researched and original in your thinking.
If I ever undertake another academic research project of this magnitude, I will be sure to include at least some empirical investigation. That way, even if you are treading in familiar territory, you are at least placing some newfound objects within that territory. As such, it is always possible to point to a discrete addition you’ve made to the landscape: a series of interviews, an archive examined, some methodologically rigorous meta-study concluded.
I have until Friday to bludgeon my three substantive chapters (problems, consensus, remedies) into some semblence of order.
Starting with an index card full of items to include, I tried to make a map of basic feedbacks relating to climate change. I got this far, then decided that it probably cannot be done in two dimensions, except perhaps on a really massive sheet of paper:
Note: a chemical formula in [square brackets] indicates the concentration of that substance.
Consider, for instance, a single pathway of effects. Agriculture uses fossil fuels, which produce CO2. The CO2 raises global temperature, affecting global cloud cover in an uncertain way. The cloud cover affects temperature, by reflecting more or less solar radiation back into space. It also affects the rate of forest and plankton growth (as does the original increase in CO2).
All told, you need to account for phenomena in the following domains: atmosphere (gas concentrations, cloud effects), hydrosphere (ocean density, temperature, currents), cryosphere (ice and glacier levels, permafrost), and biosphere (plant growth, forest fires). Add to that feedbacks within human behaviours (agriculture and forest burning, for instance) and feedbacks between anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic sources of climate change, such as volcanic eruptions (lithosphere) and changes in orbits and solar output. Doubtless, I have overlooked and forgotten many relevant effects, also.
My hat goes off to the producers of general climate models (GCMs) that have started to incorporate the most important of the linkages shown above. These complex dynamic systems are tricky things, not easily dealt with through the general tendency in science to break questiond down and understand them bit-by-bit.
With my departure for the reading week in Dorset a mere nine days away, the pressure is on to submit as complete a thesis draft as possible, so there will be at least some opportunity for discussion before then. As such, my aim is to complete my consensus chapter by Sunday evening, at which point I mean to have it physically delivered.
The prospect of moving beyond the thesis is quite an alluring one. For months, the project has been dominating my attention – though often more on account of the anxiety it induces than in terms of workable ideas being generated and put on paper. The efficiency with which a project is completed basically seems to be inversely proportional to the total size. Dealing with a single email, one can use almost 100% of the time devoted to action actually working. For a research paper, it seems unlikely to be much above 50%. For a thesis, I would be surprised if 30% efficiency was being achieved.
Sorry to be writing more about the thesis. I spent a good fifteen minutes trying to think up something else to write about, as well as flipping through the websites most likely to provide inspiration.
The trickiest thing I am doing at the moment is trying to come up with an over-arching argument for each of my three substantive thesis chapters. Each one has a lot of content – many sources, issues identified as important, and specific points about those issues – but none really has a single massive point to prove. Personally, I am fairly happy to present things as a series of related vignettes on consistent topics and themes. It seems, however, that something more directed and integrated is required. That creates the danger of setting up straw men to knock down. Coming up with an important, novel point that takes 7000 words and a couple of dozen sources of diverse kinds to prove is not an easy thing.
PS. As part of my thesis-completion drive, I am boycotting Adium (a program that combines MSN, AIM, ICQ, Google Talk, and other message programs). People who want to speak with me should try Skype: more meaningful and less likely to carry on for many hours. My apologies to all the friends I have been neglecting, while trying to get through this.
Working on chapter three, I have been talking a lot about different kinds of equilibria, and what implications they have for environmental policy. Uncertainty about which sort we are dealing with – as well as the critical points of transition between them – make it exceptionally difficult to consider global environmental problems in cost-benefit terms.
Stable equilibria
One common view of the characteristics of natural equilibria is that they are both stable and singular. An example is a marble at the bottom of a bowl. If you push it a bit in one direction or another, it will return to where it was. Many biological systems seem to be like this, at least within limits. Think about the acid-base conjugate systems that help control the pH of blood, or about an ecosystem where a modest proportion of one species gets eliminated. Provided you like the way things are at the moment, more or less, such stable equilibria are a desirable environmental characteristic. They allow you to effect moderate changes in what is going on, without needing to worry too much about profoundly unbalancing your surroundings.
Unstable equilibria
Of course, such systems can be pushed beyond their bounds. Here, think about a vending machine being tipped. Up to a certain critical point, it will totter back to its original position when you release it. Beyond that point, it will continue to fall over, even if the original force being exerted upon it is discontinued. Both the vertical and horizontal positions of the vending machine are stable equilibria, though we would probably prefer the former to the latter. For a biological example, you might think of a forested hillside. Take a few trees, wait a few years, and the situation will probably be much like when you began. If you cut down enough trees to lose all the topsoil to erosion, however, you might come back in many decades and still find an ecosystem radically different from the one you started off with.
Multiple equilibria
The last important consideration are the number of systems where there are a very great many equilibrium options. One patch of ocean could contain a complex ecosystem, with many different trophic levels and a complex combination of energy pathways. Alternatively, it could feature a relative small number of species. The idea that we can turn the first into the second, through over-fishing, and then expect things to return to how they were at the outset demonstrates some of the fallacious thinking about equilibria in environmental planning.
The trouble with the climate is that it isn’t like a vending machine, in that you can feel the effect your pushing is having on it and pretty clearly anticipate what is going to happen next. Firstly, that is because there are internal balances that make things trickier. It is as though there are all sorts of pendulums and gyroscopes inside the machine, making its movements in response to any particular push unpredictable. Secondly, we are not the only thing pushing on the machine. There are other exogenous properties like solar and orbital variations that may be acting in addition to our exertions, in opposition to them, or simply in parallel. Those forces are likely to change in magnitude both over the course or regular cycles and progressively over the course of time.
How, then, do we decide how much pushing the machine can take? This is the same question posed, in more economic terms, when we speculate about damage curves.
When thinking about the social roles of scientists, it is helpful when they come out and speak on the subject directly. As such, an article in the BBC headlines feed for today is interesting. Basically, it is about some scientists who feel that it is both misleading and a tactical error to play up the catastrophic possibilities of climate change. One, Professor Paul Hardaker from the Royal Meteorological Society, argues:
“I think we do have to be careful as scientists not to overstate the case because it does damage the credibility of the many other things that we have greater certainty about,” he said.
“We have to stick to what the science is telling us; and I don’t think making that sound more sensational, or more sexy, because it gets us more newspaper columns, is the right thing for us to be doing.
“We have to let the science argument win out.”
The first thing to note about this is the implicit position that it is up to scientists to actively tune what they say to the audience they are addressing. This is done for the explicit reason of retaining “credibility” and thus influence. What is suggested, furthermore, is that scientists basically know what is to be done (even if that is more research, for the moment) and that they should be saying the right things in public to keep things on the right track.
Of course, science cannot tell us how much risk we want to bear. While runaway climate change – driven by methane release, for example – may not be a probable outcome, the very fact that it is possible may be sufficient to justify expensive preventative measures. Science can likewise tell us what areas and groups are most likely to be affected, but hardly requires one or another course of action in response. Bjorn Lomborg has famously argued that general increases in foreign aid are the best thing the developed world can do for the developing world, so that the latter will be richer by the time the major effects of climate change manifest themselves.
The position of scientists is a somewhat paradoxical one. In the first place, their influence is founded upon their supposedly superior ability to access and understand the world. Their credibility relies upon being relatively neutral reporters of fact. When they begin dealing with data at the kind of second-order level embodied in the above quotation, they are seeking to increase their influence in a way that can only diminish the original source of their legitimacy. In an area like the environment this is inevitable, but it does render invalid the idea that science, in and of itself, can guide us.