M.Phil thesis – Page 4 – a sibilant intake of breath

Linear model, a worthwhile aspiration?

If there is one thing my thesis has ended up being about, it is how the linear model of science-based policy-making is wrong. We do not move chronologically through a scientific process – isolated from politics – into a political process based on neutral scientific fact. Additionally, the policies that are adopted always have moral assumptions embedded in them, as well as normative consequences.

One issue that remains is whether our descriptive criticism of the linear model logically extends to it not being something to which we should aspire. Acknowledging that politics affects science doesn’t necessarily mean that we shouldn’t combat that, to such an extent we can. Administrations that have twisted science too far have often ended up looking silly for it (See Litfin). Likewise, while it is clear that various actors use scientific facts and arguments to advance their own agendas, it doesn’t necessarily follow that we should abandon aspirations towards the relatively neutral and balanced presentation of information. By way of comparison, think about adherence to the scientific method. While actual scientific practice doesn’t always follow the ideals of neutrality and objectivity as it should, that doesn’t mean that we should abandon those ideals.

The question, then, is whether the actual processes of science and politics are so far from this ideal that it isn’t even a useful guide for aspirational purposes, or whether we should persist in trying to apply such rationalist approaches.

Task sequencing altered

Today’s meeting with my supervisor was very useful – the flaws in my draft second chapter were discussed, and a route forward proposed. As soon as possible, I am to submit a revised chapter two introduction, as well as draft versions for the opening sections of chapters three and four. These are to lay out the central purpose of each chapter, the three or four main arguments that will be made, and the structure that will be used:

Chapter two, main argument: the linear model of scientific investigation is wrong, in the context of environmental politics generally and Stockholm and Kyoto specifically
Chapter three: scientific and political consensus are not independent, the first does not chronologically precede the second
Chapter four: technical remedies to environmental problems are not value neutral (be sure to focus on remedies and scientific rationality, not economic rationality ie. Coase)

Once that is done, I am to revise chapter two into a more logical form, then write the draft of chapter three that was originally due tomorrow. The objective of all this is to have the structure of all three chapters finalized by the end of the month, as well as their introductions and conclusions. Then, when Dr. Hurrell leaves for Brazil and I go to Dorset, it will be a matter of tidying things up, adding some footnotes, and generally polishing the finished work prior to submission.

Of course, that leaves me with eighteen days to write two more chapters, as well as discuss and edit them. Amazing how the period in which the bulk of the work on a project actually seems to get done always lumps up at the end. Hopefully, all the background reading I have been doing since last year will percolate into my analysis.

Chapter two, second version

I have been thinking about how to incorporate the general ideas from this post into the revised and clarified version of my second chapter, upon which I am now working. It seems that there are three axes across which environmental problems can be assessed: predictability, intentionality, and desirability. Of these, the third is most likely to have different values for different actors.

The mine tailings example is certainly intentional, for it is an inescapable and obvious product of mining activity. The predictability score depends on the status of knowledge about the health and ecological consequences of particular tailings at the time when they were released into the environment. Here, there is also a discussion to be had about the extent to which an actor engaged in something that could well have ecological or health consequences is morally obligated to investigate what those may be. There are also questions about whether private actors are merely obliged to follow the law, or whether they need to act upon moral considerations with which the law has not explicitly saddled them.

On the matter of desirability, the range includes possibilities of utility gain, indifference, and loss. The mining company probably has an indifferent or unfavourable view of tailings: if they could be avoided for moderate cost, they would be. This is certainly true now that the consequences of certain tailings are known and legal and moral obligations on the part of such companies are fairly well entrenched. A more interesting possibility is environmental change that increases the utility of some, while diminishing that of others. This could happen both with intentional acts (say, building a dam) or unintentional ones (the unintended introduction of a species into a new area).

In any event, the new plan is to boil the introductory portion of the chapter down until it is only about 1000 words long. Then, I will write 2500 words each on the case studies, and 1000 words in concluding comments. Most of the existing commentary will be migrated into the case study sections. The best way to do all of this is probably to re-write from scratch, then import and vital elements and citations from the old version. A similar chapter model can be adopted for the third and fourth chapters and, since most of the research being done covers all three, they should prove reasonably easy to write once it is done.

[Update: 3 March 2007] I now feel confident that the version of the chapter to be submitted tomorrow, four days late, will be enormously superior to what could have been submitted on time. This owes much to the new books I got at the Geography and Environment Library. Those with restricted wiki access can have a look at the emerging draft.

My last-minute assembly skills have failed me

According to my thesis schedule, I am meant to have my second chapter submitted now. Instead, I have 5200 words, only 1200 of which are about my case studies. Even within the analytical stuff, there is a lot of ambiguous sequencing, and a great many emphatic [ADD MORE HERE] editorial notes. It seems unlikely that this chapter can be completed tonight, regardless of caffeine consumption levels.

I need to:

Complete the necessary reading, especially on pre-IPCC climate change science
Trawl through the notes I have already made about sources, ideas, and themes
Expand the case study portion of the chapter to about 5000 words, shifting the bits that are now independent into the case study narrative

I suppose I should get cracking on the first of those. The whole thing – three substantive chapters, a conclusion, and a revised introduction – needs to be submitted in 53 days. Time for another pot of coffee.

Some strategy

Perhaps it would be wise to interrupt regular blogging, while my thesis is coming together. Upon reflection, however, I find that the issue is more that I am not using time efficiently, and less that important tasks are absorbing too much of it. As ‘a’ (and probably ‘the’) major conduit between myself and most of those who are important to me, internet based communication does not seem unimportant. The task, then, is to pare away activities that do not contribute to the completion of this task (itself unlikely to be relevant in five or ten years) and focus upon those that advance towards the goal.

Filling the gaps in chapter two

The conclusion from working on my second chapter is that I have read too much general background material and not enough on my case studies. I am fairly well covered on POPs, since I have done research on them before. Naturally, adding a few more sources would be nice, though there are not really a great many out there. I am also quite well covered on current events relating to climate change, because there has been such a raft of coverage and discussion. While my intention has never been to write a blow-by-blow account of either (how could I possibly do so in 30,000 words?), it is certainly necessary to have a comprehensive understanding of the history, before any important and valid analysis can be done.

As such, I need to fill in my knowledge on recent developments pertaining to POPs, which should not be hugely difficult. Then, I need to shore up my section on the early history of the climate change debate. Aside from the mandatory OUSSG dinner and talk tonight, I suspect this will fill the next 32 hours. Naturally, I am interpreting my promise to Dr. Hurrell of having a second chapter dropped off at Nuffield by Wednesday as having that chapter dropped off, by my own hand, in time for him to read it on Thursday morning.

Policy{hyphen, space, nothing}making

One minor hiccough regarding the thesis has been cropping up continuously of late. One of my key terms has a trio of possible forms, each of which has a certain appeal and a certain problem:

Policy making
Policy-making
Policymaking

I think all three are acceptable English, and my preference vacillates between the three based on the context in which the word is used. When it is being used as the subject of a sentence, the two word version seems more natural: “Consideration of framing issues is important for those involved in policy making.” When it is modifying a noun, either the conglomerated or hyphenated version seems better: “The policymaking process is fraught with uncertainties.”

I should, however, choose a single form to use in the entire thesis, and do so before I need to wade through too many tens of thousands of words and footnotes to set the standard. Preferences, anyone?

I am working on developing presentation standards for the whole thesis. I am told Oxford has some rules of its own, but I am not sure where to find them.

Framing, selection, and presentation issues

One of the major issues that arises when examining the connections between science and policy are the ways information is framed. You can say that the rate of skin cancer caused by a particular phenomenon has increased from one in ten million cases to one in a million cases. You can say that the rate has increased tenfold, or that it has gone up by 1000%. Finally, you could say that an individual’s chances of getting skin cancer from this source have gone up from one tiny figure to a larger, but still tiny seeming, figure. People seem to perceive the risks involved in each presentation differently, and people pushing for one policy or another can manipulate that. This can be especially true when the situations being described are of not comparably rare: having your chances of being killed through domestic violence reduced 1% is a much greater absolute reduction than having your chances of dying in a terrorist attack reduced by 90%.

Graphing

When talking about presentation of information, graphs are an important case. Normally, they are a great boon to understanding. A row of figures means very little to most people, but a graph provides a wealth of comprehensible information. You can see if there is a trend, what direction it is in, and approximately how strong it is. The right sort of graph, properly presented, can immediately illuminate the meaning of a dataset. Likewise, it can provide a compelling argument: at least, between those who disagree more about what is going on than how it would be appropriate to respond to different situations.

People see patterns intuitively, though sometimes they see order in chaos (the man on the moon, images of the Virgin Mary in cheese sandwiches). Even better, they have an automatic grasp of calculus. People who couldn’t tell you a thing about concavity and the second derivative can immediately see when a slope is upwards and growing ever steeper: likewise, one where something is increasing or decreasing, but at a decreasing rate. They can see what trends will level off, and which ones will explode off the scale. My post on global warming damage curves illustrates this.

Naturally, it is possible to use graphs in a manipulative way. You can tweak the scale, use a broken scale, or use a logarithmic scale without making clear what that means. You can position pie charts so that one part or another is emphasized, as well as abuse colour and three dimensional effects. That said, the advantages of graphs clearly outweigh the risks.

It is interesting to note how central a role one graph seems to have played in the debate about CFCs and ozone: the one of the concentration of chlorine in the stratosphere. Since that is what CFCs break down to produce, and that is what causes the breakdown of ozone, the concentration is clearly important. The graph clearly showing that concentrations would continue to rise, even under the original Montreal Protocol, seems to have had a big impact on the two rounds of further tightening. Perhaps the graph used so prominently in Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth (the trends on display literally dwarfing him) will eventually have a similar effect.

Stats in recent personal experience

My six-month old Etymotic ER6i headphones are being returned to manufacturer tomorrow, because of the problems with the connector I reported earlier. Really not something you expect for such a premium product, but I suppose there are always going to be some defects that arise in a manufacturing process. Of course, being without good noise isolating headphones for the time it will take them to be shipped to the US, repaired or replaced, and returned means that reading in coffee shops is not a possibility. Their advantage over libraries only exists when you are capable of excluding the great majority of outside noise and of drowning the rest in suitable music.

Speaking of trends, I do wonder why so many of my electronics seem to run into problems. I think this is due to a host of selection effects. I (a) have more electronics than most people (b) use them a great deal (c) know how they are meant to work (d) know what sort of warranties they have and for how long (e) treat them so carefully that manufacturers can never claim they were abused (f) maintain a willingness to return defective products, as many times as is necessary and possible under the warranty. Given all that, it is not surprising that my own experience with electronics failing and being replaced under warranty is a lot greater than what you might estimate the background rate of such activity to be.

Two other considerations are also relevant. It is cheaper for manufacturers to rely upon consumers to test whether a particular item is defective, especially since some consumers will lose the item, abuse it, or simply not bother to return it even if defective. Secondly, it is almost always cheaper to simply replace consumer electronics to fix them, because of the economies of scale involved in either activity. From one perspective, it seems wasteful. From another, it seems the more frugal option. A bit of a paradox, really.

[14 March 2007] My replacement Etymotic headphones arrived today. Reading in coffee shops is possible again, and none too soon.

The identification of environmental problems

The identification of an environmental ‘problem’ is not a single crystalline moment of transition, from ignorance to understanding. Rather, it is ambiguous, contingent, and dependent upon the roles and modes of thinking of the actors involved, and values that inform judgments. Rather like Thomas Kuhn’s example about the discovery of oxygen (with different people accessing different aspects of the element’s nature, and understanding it in different contexts), the emergence of what is perceived as a new environmental problem occurs at the confluence of facts, roles, and existing understandings. While one or more causal connections ultimately form the core of how an environmental problem is understood, they are given comprehensibility and salience as the result of factors that are not strictly rational. From the perspective of global environmental politics and international relations, environmental problems are best understood as complexes of facts and judgments: human understandings that are subjective and dynamic, despite how elements of their composition are firmly grounded in the empirical realities of the world.

POPs and climate change

Consider first the case of persistent organic pollutants (POPs). The toxicity of chemicals like dioxins was known well before any of the key events that led to the Stockholm Convention. At the time, the problem of POPs was largely understood as one of local contamination by direct application or short distance dispersal. It took the combination of the observation of these chemicals in an unexpected place, the development of an explanation for how this had transpired, and a set of moral judgments about acceptable and unacceptable human conduct to form the present characterization of the problem. That understanding in turn forms the basis for political action, the generation of international law, and the investigation of techniques and technologies for mitigating the problem as now understood. Even now, the specific chemicals chosen and the particular individuals whose interests are best represented are partly the product of political and bureaucratic factors.

If we accept former American Vice President Al Gore’s history of climate change, the form of problem identification is even more remarkable. He asserts that the discovery of rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations by Roger Revelle in the 1960s, rather than of specific changes to the global climatic system directly, were what prompted the initial concern of some scientists and policy makers. This is akin to how the 1974 paper by Mario Molina and F.S. Rowland established the chemical basis for stratospheric ozone depletion by CFCs which, in turn, actually led to considerable action before their supposition was empirically confirmed. Gore’s characterization of the initial discovery of the climate change problem also offers glimpses into some of the heuristic mechanisms people use to evaluate key information, deciding which arguments, individuals, and organizations are trustworthy and then prioritizing ideas and actions.

Definition and initial implications

For the present moment, environmental ‘problems’ will be defined as being the consequences of unintentional (though not necessarily unanticipated) side effects of human activity in the world. While mining may release heavy metals into the natural environment, this didn’t crystallize in the minds of people as a problem until the harm they caused to human beings and other biological systems proved evident. While the empirical reality of heavy metal buildup may have preceded any human understanding of the issue, it could not really be understood as an environmental problem at that time. It only became so through the confluence of data about the world, a causal understanding between actions and outcomes, and moral judgments about what is right or desirable. Likewise, while lightning storms cause harm both to humans and other biological systems, their apparent status as an integral component of nature, rather than the product of human activities, makes them something other than an environmental problem as here described. Of course, if it were shown, for example, that climate change was increasing the frequency and severity of thunderstorms (a human behaviour causing an unwanted outcome, though a comprehensible causal link) then that additional damage could be understood as an environmental problem in the sense of the term here used.

Worth noting is the possibility of a dilemma between two sets of preferences and understandings: the alleviation of one environmental problem, for instance by regulating the usage of DDT, may reduce the scope to which another problem can be addressed, such as the possibility of increased prevalence of malaria in a warmer world. It is likewise entirely possible that different groups of people could ascribe different value judgments to the same empirical phenomena. For instance, ranchers and conservationists disagree about whether or not it is desirable to have wild wolves in the western United States.

Problem identification, investigation, and the formulation of understandings about the connections between human activity and the natural world do not comprise a linear progression. This is partially the product of how human psychological processes develop and maintain understandings about the world and partly the consequence of the nature of scientific investigation and political and moral deliberation. Existing understandings can be subjected to shocks caused by either new data or new ideas. Changed understandings in one area of inquiry can prompt the identification of possible problems in another. Finally, the processes and characteristics of problem investigation are conditioned by heuristic, political, and bureaucratic factors that will be discussed at greater length below.

Problematizing the origin of environmental problems as human understandings does not simply add complexity to the debate. It generates possibilities for a more rigorous understanding of the relationship between human beings and nature (including perceptions about why the two are so often seen as distinct). It also offers the possibility of dealing with dilemmas like the example above in a more informed and effective manner.

Michaelmas 2006 supervision report

Today, I received Dr. Hurrell’s assessment of my performance in the first term of this year:

He is taking the IR of the Developing World paper this term and tells me that he is enjoying it and that it is going well. He also gave a presentation to the MPhil thesis seminar. He is making good progress with the MPhil thesis: the core question is getting narrowed down and he certainly has a range of incisive and very interesting ideas. He should have the two overview chapters of his two case studies by early in the New Year. The task in the new phase is to relate the general issues in the argument as far as possible to specific details of the cases – rather than back to more general issues. I would also note that he has continued to face quite severe financial problems resulting from the fact that he has received less in the way of student loans than he had expected.

A good assessment, all told. The last bit is probably meant to signal that he had said helpful things to the university and college bursary committees when they approached him. They will be making a decision with regards to whether they will help cover my student loan shortfall next week.

My first substantive chapter is to be finished by next Wednesday. There is really very little slack in the system now. The second substantive chapter will be due by the 15th of March, with the third due at the end of March. That will be the last opportunity to discuss anything with Dr. Hurrell. Then, I run off to Dorset for a week of frantic editing (possibly with no internet access – gasp!). Then, I will have the remainder of April prior to the 22nd to finish editing, have the thing printed and bound, and collapse in a heap, quite possibly driven to madness by the stress of the whole thing.

My tutorial reports for last year were blogged previously: Michaelmas, Hilary, and Trinity. Having put all this stuff online in the most searchable and comprehensible way possible, I hope it will help at least one person to (a) decide whether to pursue the M.Phil in International Relations here or not and/or (b) help people in the program later navigate through it.