M.Phil thesis – Page 7 – a sibilant intake of breath

Experts: scientists and economists

According to BBC business correspondent Hugh Pym, the report will carry weight because Sir Nicholas, a former World Bank economist, is seen as a neutral figure.

Unlike earlier reports, his conclusions are likely to be seen as objective and based on cold, hard economic fact, our correspondent said.

The idea that economists are more objective than scientists is a very difficult one for me to swallow. While scientific theories are pretty much all testable on the basis of observations, economic theories are much more abstract. Indeed, when people have actually gone and empirically examined economic theories, they have often been found to be lacking.

Part of the problem may be the insistence of media sources in finding the 0.5% of scientists who hold the opposite view from the other 99.5%. While balance is certainly important in reporting, ignoring relative weights of opinion is misleading. In a study published in Science, Naomi Oreskes from the University of California, San Diego examined 10% of all peer-reviewed scientific articles on climate change from the previous ten years (n=928).¹ In that set, three quarters discussed the causes of climate change. Among those, all of them agreed that human-induced CO2 emissions are the prime culprit. 53% of 636 articles in the mainstream press, from the same period, expressed doubts about the antropogenic nature of climate change.

I suppose this says something about the relative levels of trust assigned to different expert groups. Economists study money, so they naturally must know what they are talking about.

[Update: 25 February 2007] I recently saw Nicholas Stern speak about his report. My entry about it contains a link to detailed notes on the wiki.

[1] Oreskes, Naomi. “Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change.” Science 3 December 2004: Vol. 306. no. 5702, p. 1686. (Oxford full text / Google Scholar)

PostScript on choosing a thesis font

Following hard upon questions of content and structure is another essential decision related to the thesis: what font to print it in. The obvious choice, based on past form, would be Garamond (the font used in the banner atop this page). It is definitely a more elegant font than the ubiquitous Times New Roman, but it is rather too common itself. Bembo is an older and rarer variant, which I believe was used to print the hardcover edition of The Line of Beauty. Cheltenham Book is an option I am considering.

For ease in reading, as well as general aesthetics, I strongly prefer a serif typeface. Indeed, if there were any apart from Times likely to be on any computer someone would use the blog from, I would use a serif typeface here. As it stands, it will use one of the following sans serif typefaces, in decreasing order of preference: Lucida Grande, Verdana, Arial (a bad ripoff of Helvetica, but very common), and whatever the system standard Sans-Serif is. Because of the font collections included in each OS, Mac users are likely to see Lucida Grande, while Windows users are likely to see Verdana.

Are there any other people out there who check the front pages for a blurb on the font before starting a book? If so, do you have any suggestions?

One final matter typographical: North American Mac users in Oxford, and there are a good many, will appreciate learning that you can make the Pound symbol (£) by hitting Option-3.

Contemplating thesis structure

I have been thinking about thesis structure lately. The one with the most appeal right now is as follows. This is, naturally, a draft and subject to extensive revision.

Expertise and Legitimacy: the Role of Science in Global Environmental Policy-Making

Introduction
Stockholm and Kyoto: Case Studies
Practical consequences of science based policy-making
Theoretical and moral consequences
Conclusions

Introduction

The introduction would lay out why the question is important, as well as establishing the methodological and theoretical foundations of the work. The issue will be described as a triple dialogue with one portion internal to the scientific community, one existing as a dynamic between politicians and scientists, and one as the perspective on such fused institutions held by those under their influence. All three will be identified as interesting, but the scope of the thesis will be limited to the discussion of the first two – with the third bracketed for later analysis. The purpose of highlighting the connections between technical decision-making and choices with moral and political consequences will be highlighted.

Chapter One

In laying out the two case studies, I will initially provide some general background on each. I will then establish why the contrast between the two is methodologically useful. In essence, I see Stockholm as a fairly clear reflection of the idealized path from scientific knowledge to policy; Kyoto, on the other hand, highlights all the complexities of politics, morality, and distributive justice. The chapter will then discuss specific lessons that can be extracted from each case, insofar as the role of science in global environmental policy-making is concerned.

The Terry Fenge book is the best source on Stockholm, though others will obviously need to be cited. There is no lack of information on Kyoto. It is important to filter it well, and not get lost in the details.

Chapter Two

The second chapter will generalize from the two case studies to an examination of trends towards greater authority being granted to experts. It will take in discussion of the secondary literature, focusing on quantifiable trends such as the increased numbers of scientists and related technical experts working for international organizations, as well as within the foreign affairs branches of governments.

The practical implications of science in policy making have much to do with mechanisms for reaching consensus (or not) and then acting on it (or not). Practical differences in the reasoning styles and forms of truth seeking used by scientists and politicians will be discussed here.

Analysis of some relevant theses, both from Oxford (esp. Zukowska) and from British Columbia (esp. Johnson), will be split between this and the next chapter.

Chapter Three

Probably the most interesting chapter, the third is meant to address issues including the nature of science, its theoretical position vis a vis politics, and the dynamics of classifying decisions as technical (see this post). This chapter will include discussion of the Robinson Cruesoe analogy that Tristan raised in an earlier comment, as well as Allen Schmid’s article. Dobson’s book is also likely to prove useful here.

Conclusions

I haven’t decided on what these are to be yet. Hopefully, some measure of inspiration will strike me during the course of reading and thinking in upcoming months. Ideally, I would like to come up with a few useful conceptual tools for understanding the relationships central to this thesis. Even better, but unlikely, would be a more comprehensive framework of understanding, to arise on the basis of original thought and the extension of the ideas of others.

In laying all of this out, my aim is twofold. I want to decide what to include, and I want to sort out the order in which that can be done most logically and usefully. Comments on both, or on any other aspect of the project, are most welcome.

Atmospheric CO2 and oceanic acidity

While the impact of increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is widely discussed, I have seen rather less attention paid to important chemical changes it causes in the oceans. In particular, that includes how increased atmospheric concentrations of CO2 cause the ocean to become more acidic. (BBC article) Some predictions hold that oceanic pH will fall by 0.4 in the next ninety years or so. Remember that pH is a logarithmic scale: a solution with a pH of 6 is ten times more acidic than one with a pH of 7.

One important consequence of this lowering of pH is that it decreases the amount of calcium carbonate (chalk) that is in solution in the seawater. Calcium carbonate is the primary material from which the hard structures of many marine organisms are made: from shells to coral reefs.

Increased oceanic acidity begins at the poles and progresses towards the equator, where most of the world’s coral reefs – and marine biomass in general – are located. Intuitively, the difficulty of grasping the knock-on effects of such a chemical transition is obvious. Oceanic acidity is likely to affect other biological systems, including the overall distribution of species within and between ecosystems. It is a further reminder of the unpredictable consequences that will result from increasing CO2 concentrations: concentrations that will be double their pre-industrial levels within 45 years, at present rates of growth.

Roles of scientists

Partly motivated, perhaps, by frequent exposure to Hurrellean lists, I have been thinking about elements of the thesis in categorical terms. My head, therefore, is swimming with Venn Diagrams. Today’s ponderings have been about the roles played by scientists. I have come up with three headings:

Investigative
Deliberative
Regulatory

The first is their traditionally conceived role, with the latter two serving as necessary modulating adjuncts.

Investigative

This is your standard ‘scientist peering down a microscope / examining RADAR images / performing Fourier Transforms‘ role. Within it, there are components related to discovery and components related to refining existing hypotheses. This is true both when science is behaving as evolutionary gradualists would predict (slowly making LEDs brighter and more power efficient) and during periods of punctuated equilibrium (think of the development of quantum theory, explaining those LEDs, and of Kuhn).

When it comes to the environment, important scientific behaviours mostly have to do with studying interactions. How does the combination of GHG emissions and particular emissions affect mean global temperature? How does the evaporation rate of Lake Nasser affect the marine ecosystems of the Mediterranean?

Deliberative

The difference between deliberative and regulatory is partly akin to the difference between safety and security. Safety has to do with protecting against non-malicious risks. A lightning rod is a safety device – unless you believe in a vengeful deity. Security has to do with addressing threats from active attackers. The same distinction exists when it comes to scientific integrity. Someone might make an undetected experimental error and come up with data that is incorrect; some early satellite measurements of global temperature were like this. Someone else might be in the pocket of a group with a vested interest in denying climate change, and might thus be working with an experimental agenda of muddying the waters.

The deliberative role of scientists, in an ideal community, is a mechanism for dealing with non-malicious disagreement. Experiments that are outlying can be examined and replicated, the reasons for the unexpected results identified. Theories can be developed and debated in the face of evidence.

Unlike the investigative role, which can be performed perfectly well by lone scientists in igloos on Baffin Island, counting the amount of lichen per square metre outside, this role is fundamentally social. It strikes at the important distinction between science as a set of procedures and ideals, scientists as actors who try to apply them, and the scientific community as an epistemic grouping.

On a side note: it does seem possible for a scientist to be generally strong on the investigative side, but very weak on the deliberative side. Richard Dawkins comes immediately to mind. What is wrong with his positions is much less the empirical basis of most of his claims, and much more the structures of argumentation that he tries to use to assert them. For deliberation to be a useful exercise, it cannot be entirely self-confident and closed to alternative perspectives. It is also important for it to be aggressive in terms of analysis, not in terms of attacking people – an ugly trait that Professor Dawkins has revealed more and more as his anger overwhelms his judgement.

Regulatory

I see the regulatory role as being two-fold. The first part is akin to security, as discussed above. It is the process of trying to separate the quacks from those who have genuine reasons and data behind their position. This is naturally an imperfect process, but it is something that the scientific community must engage with if it is to remain a ‘community’ in any meaningful way. A meaningless community, by contrast, would be one with ties only on the basis of common obscure knowledge or some kind of internal system of controls not based on seeking correspondence between scientific explanation and physical reality.

The other side of the regulatory role has to do with generating institutional structures. Issues like funding, the prioritization of research, and the like fall into this category. This is important, partly because it relates closely to the mechanisms by which quackery is identified. Whether or not the common historical perspective on Galileo as a correct person immersed in a structure of incorrect people is correct, it demonstrates the possibility that the mechanisms of scientific deliberation and regulation could be enforcing incorrect ideas. Avoiding this requires avoiding excess rigidity – a topic that arises frequently in the Lomborg debate, and with wide-ranging implications.

I would be especially keen to hear what any scientists reading this think of the above (real, labcoat-wearing scientists, not IR scholars with extensive statistical faith). If you don’t care to comment, perhaps you could just indicate in some unobtrusive way that there are actually a few people with scientific training who have been reading my mutterings from time to time. I know for sure about one. Naturally, non-scientists are encouraged to comment, as well.

PS. If you want an example of how ad hominem attacks are more likely to make you look stupid than correct, have a look at the latest disingenuous malarky from the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Never mind that carbon offsets have been used to offset the emissions related to An Inconvenient Truth, just look at the non-sensical progression of numbers on their little counters.

Jokes about thesis stress have a basis in fact

I am increasingly feeling trepidation about my thesis. There are essentially two reasons for this.

1. Uncertain focus

‘Science in global environmental policymaking’ is the work of many lifetimes. ‘The role of science in Kyoto and Stockholm, specifically’ isn’t an enormously interesting topic. It is the theoretical extensions that arise from the examples that are of interest.

My hope has been that the thesis area would be like an archeological site. I would stand there, amidst squared off sections, and spot something brilliant and surprising and unexamined. Right now, it feels more like being inside a tram car that is passing through a huge terrarium, full of interesting looking animals. The only problem is, I only have until the tram reaches the other side (April) to look at anything, and the tram itself is full of interesting things aside from the view out the windows. To call them ‘distractions’ is to insult the broader Oxford experience, but they do threaten my ability to say something cogent and important about the terrarium to the stern individuals with clipboards waiting in the room beyond it.

2. Ignorance of related disciplines

At least once a day, I speak to someone who agrees that my topic is a good one, and has something that I simply must read about it. In all probability, this is an indication that the topic is too broad (it obviously is, right now). It is also an indication that it touches upon an unusual number of disciplines: from psychology to sociology, politics, political theory, ecology, philosophy, ethics, economics, and history.

I am afraid that, even if I do grapple properly with a few of the big chunks of work on this that exist out there, there will be other big chunks that are entirely excluded from my consideration and understanding.

The solution

As is so often the case, the solution is trepidation-powered reading. I need to be somewhat ruthless in pushing myself to read enough that I will be able to say something new, while not embarrassing myself.

The possibility that this will be my only major piece of academic research is not one to be entirely discounted. A doctorate is no certainty. Of course, the thought that this may be the only attempt, as well as an important attempt, adds considerably to my anxiety.

The second political delegation

After a whole summer without Claire’s sterling conversation, I was glad to see her for a few hours. While energetically complaining about the grading of my research design essay, I had a thesis relevant idea. Perhaps, it could even be a way to introduce the topic. The idea is that science based policy making is a kind of second political delegation.

The founding myth of democracy tells of a participant democracy where citizens (with lots of wisdom and plenty of time on their hands), sit around and decide how the state should operate. Since citizens aren’t all slaveholders anymore, and have other things to do with their time, the myth goes that we delegated political authority to elected representatives. Now, the myth may be faulty and lacking in historical truth, but it is the essence of the argument for the legitimacy of democratic governments – at least, for those who believe in a hypothetical notion of consent, rather than using utilitarian justification.

All kinds of governments delegate areas of responsibility to experts, but the process is most interesting from a democratic perspective. Ancient examples are warfare and diplomacy. Each is critically concerned with information: both about tactics and about the world. Each is not particularly subject to outside scrutiny, both for reasons of secrecy and because expertise in the discipline is required to even understand it. More recently, there has been expert delegation in the economic realm; most notably, central banks have been made independent. Again, information control is important. Again, scrutiny comes from within structures developed and operated by the experts themselves.

When we come to science based environmental policy making, however, things get even more complex. Scientists are often envisioned as being like bridge designing engineers. Policy makers say: we want a bridge here, figure out how to build it and what it will cost. What happens in environmental policy, however, is a far broader delegation: a charge to identify which problems are important, how they work, what their severity will be, how they could be stopped or managed, and how they will interact with each other. Mixed into those calculations are all manner of issues that are not fundamentally technical, but rather ethical, political, or economic.

If the first delegation is defended on the one hand hand in terms of expediency and on the other hand in terms of electoral oversight, what is the equivalent for science based policy? Policy makers of all stripes have two claims to their power: a legitimacy derived from popular consent, and an expertise in governing. Without the first, and without a real ability to scrutinize the second (look at disagreements among economists about whether monetary policy under Alan Greenspan was well managed or not), what is left of the democratic basis of government?

Environment and representation

Revising the fish paper, and reading Bromley and Paavola on environmental economics, the question of the nature of ethical resource relations between the rich and poor world keeps arising. In particular, the issue of paternalism is persistent. The question must be asked of whether there are individuals or groups who ‘know better’ when it comes to environmental choices and, if so, how the superiority of their understanding can be verified and legitimated.

Whether it is Angolan diamonds or West African fish, there is often a case to be made that rich world access to commodities in the poor world has harmful effects. It may fuel conflicts (as with diamonds), it may reduce the future possibilities for resource use within the poor countries (as with fish), and it may enrich corrupt or non-representative elites while not benefitting the population at large. People have generally been critical of the Chinese government for striking resource deals with states that the west shuns because of their poor human rights records and lack of democratic credentials.

The big question, it seems, is how to treat the interests of people in non-representative political systems. Do people in democratic systems (or rich countries) have an obligation to effectively act as their agents, anticipate their preferences, and try to guide outcomes towards satisfying them?

Much recent policy seeks to do exactly this. When China decides that the electricity and prestige generated by the Three Gorges Dam is worth more than the flooded territory and other costs of construction, on what basis can or should we say that they are wrong? We can accuse them of short-term thinking (though our right to do so in anything beyond an advisory manner is dubious) or of violating the rights of individuals (which almost always happens when people are forced to do things in systems that lack political and legal accountability). All that said, the idea that rich states or international organizations can take up the cause of representing the general population of China strikes me as a problematic one.

Naturally, there are also accusations of hypocrisy. How many environmental choices within the rich world have been made on the basis of short-term thinking? How many have harmed a great many individuals for dubious value? Do not the states which are undergoing the process of development today have the right to make the same mistakes as states that have already developed did in the past? To the last of those, it can be responded that our level of understanding about the world has improved substantially since the industrial revolution. When developed states first used DDT, they were not aware of important consequences the introduction of that chemical into the environment would have. Arguably, the same can be said of all the coal that was burned to generate steam power and electricity. The trickier question is whether improved knowledge creates an obligation on the part of developing states to make choices that avoid incurring the kind of harms already suffered in the developed world.

There are also international efforts to encourage better environmental policy that might reasonably be seen as empowering, rather than paternalistic. The Publish What You Pay Initiative and Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative are trying to encourage (or require) resource extracting firms to publish the details of their contracts with governments. This allows scrutiny by the domestic regulators of the firms, by different branches of the governments involved in the contracts, by people living under the authority of those governments, and by international bodies. Presumably, having access to such information could allow for the mobilization of political energy, on the part of any or all of those organizations. At first glance, this model is more appealing than the paternalistic one.

In the end, this is reflective of a larger overall tension within environmental debates. There are certain groups that are often willing to promote optimum outcomes (scientists and economists in particular) that are based on analyses that are rigorous according to standards established within their own disciplines. Then, there is a political process that arrives at decisions on the basis of ongoing political realities – many of which have nothing to do directly with the nature and importance of the environmental issues in question. Finally, there are those who assert the fundamental rightness of views or policies on the basis of some combination of these considerations and others. Such a view suggests that there is an ideal policy (or at least a better policy) out there, but that its nature is not fully captured in technocratic assessment and does not arise spontaneously from the political process. I believe this intuitively, but have a great deal of trouble sketching out the details.

On what basis, however, can the desirability of this kind of policy be asserted? One mechanism is democratic endorsement. Many theorists assert the value of open discussion as a mechanism through which policy might be chosen. Of course, translating discussion into action brings it up against all the barriers produced by existing distributions of power. Likewise, people are not equally capable of engaging in discussion – especially when expert knowledge is a required currency in order for arguments to be taken seriously.

These are not questions to which I see straightforward answers. There is no group that can be trusted to evaluate the situation from a neutral perspective. There is likewise no solid way to assert which values are important, and how important each is with respect to others. The easiest solution, from the perspective of those trying to act in the world, is to identify those areas where present practice deviates most substantially from ideal practice as best understood, and where the gap between the two can be closed or reduced through available and acceptable means. I call this the strategy of picking low-hanging fruit. Of course, the assumption behind this strategy is that the big questions above will eventually be resolved to the satisfaction of most, allowing for further progress. There is plenty of reason to be skeptical about that.

Thesis development

Talking with Dr. Hurrell about the thesis this evening was rather illuminating. By grappling with the longer set of comments made on my research design essay, we were able to isolate a number of interwoven questions, within the territory staked out for the project. All relate to science and global environmental policy-making, but they approach the topic from different directions and would involve different specific approaches and styles and standards of proof.

Thesis idea chart

The first set deal with the role of ‘science’ as a collection of practices and ideals. If you imagine society as a big oval, science is a little circle embedded inside it. Society as a whole has a certain understanding of science (A). That might include aspects like objectivity, or engaging in certain kinds of behaviour. These understandings establish some of what science and scientists are able to do. Within the discipline itself, there is discussion about the nature of science (B), what makes particular scientific work good or bad, etc. This establishes the bounds of science, as seen from the inside, and establishes standards of practice and rules of inclusion and exclusion. Then, there is the understanding of society by scientists (C). That understanding exists at the same time as awareness about the nature of the material world, but also includes an understanding of politics, economics, and power in general. The outward-looking scientific perspective involves questions like if and how scientists should engage in advocacy, what kind of information they choose to present to society,

The next set of relationships exist between scientists and policy-makers. From the perspective of policy-makers, scientists can:

Raise new issues
Provide information on little-known issues
Develop comprehensive understandings about things in the world
Evaluate the impact policies will have
Provide support for particular decisions
Act in a way that challenges decisions

For a policy-maker, a scientist can be empowering in a number of ways. They can provide paths into and through tricky stretches of expert knowledge. They can offer predictions with various degrees of certainty, ranging from (say) “if you put this block of sodium in your pool, you will get a dramatic explosion” to “if we cut down X hectares of rainforest, Y amount of carbon dioxide will be introduced into the atmosphere.”

The big question, then, is which of these dynamics to study. Again and again, I find the matter of how scientists understand their legitimate policy role to be among the most interesting. This becomes especially true in areas of high uncertainty. The link from “I know what will happen if that buffoon jumps into the pool strapped to that block of sodium” to trying to stop the action is more clear than the one between understanding the atmospheric effects of deforestation and lobbying to curb the latter. Using Stockholm as a ‘strong case’ and Kyoto as a ‘weak case’ of science leading to policy, the general idea would be to examine how scientists engaged with both policy processes, how they saw their role, and what standards of legitimacy they held it to. This approach focuses very much on the scientists, but nonetheless has political saliency. Whether it could be a valid research project is a slightly different matter.

The first big question, then, is whether to go policy-maker centric or scientist centric. I suspect my work would be more distinctive if I took the latter route. I suspect part of the reason why the examiners didn’t like my RDE was because they expected it to take the former route, then were confronted with a bunch of seemingly irrelevant information pertaining to the latter.

I will have a better idea about all of this once I have read another half-dozen books: particularly Haas on epistemic communities. Above all, I can sense from the energy of my discussions with Dr. Hurrell that there are important questions lurking in this terrain, and that it will be possible to tackle a few of them in an interesting and original way.

Research design essay blasted

I just got the feedback on my research design essay, and it is enormously less positive than I had hoped. The grade is a low pass and there are two written statements included: one that is fairly short and reasonably positive, the other longer and far more scathing. It opens with “[t]his research design is not well thought out.” Both comments discuss the Stockholm Convention and Kyoto Protocol as though they are the real focus of the thesis; by contrast, they were meant to be illustrative cases through which broader questions about science and policy could be approached.

The shorter comment (both are anonymous) says that “the general idea behind the research is an interesting one” while the longer comment calls the cases “well-selected… [with] fruitful looking similarities and differences.” The big criticisms made in the longer comment are:

The nuclear disarmament and Lomborg cases are unnecessary and irrelevant.
I haven’t selected which key bits of the Kyoto negotiations to look at.
My philosophy of science bibliography is not yet developed.
Not enough sources on Kyoto or Stockholm are listed. Too many are scientific reports.

It blasts me for not yet having a sufficiently comprehensive bibliography, and for the irrelevance the commenter sees in the nuclear weapons and Lomborg examples. The whole point of those is to address the question of what roles scientists can legitimately take, and how the policy and scientific communities see the role of science within global environmental policy making. The point is definitely not, as the comment seems to assume, to compare those cases with Stockholm and Kyoto. Taken all in all, this is hands-down the most critical response to anything important I have written for quite a number of years.

To me, it seems like the major criticism is that the thesis has not been written yet. I mention being interested in the philosophy of science, insofar as it applies, but have not yet surveyed the literature to the extent that seems expected. The same goes for having not yet selected the three “instances or junctures” in the Kyoto negotiations that I am to focus on.

As is often the case when I see something I was quite confident about properly blasted, I am feeling rather anxious about the whole affair – to the point, even, of feeling physically ill. I always knew there was a lot more work to be done – a big part of why I have decided to stay in Oxford over the summer – but I expected that the general concepts behind the thesis plan were clear enough. The long comment definitely indicates that not to be the case. I can take some solace in what Dr. Hurrell has said. He has more experience with environmental issues than probably anyone else in the department and has also had the most exposure to the plotting out of my particular project. Of it, he has said: “[the] Research Design Essay represent[s] an excellent start in developing the project and narrowing down a viable set of questions to be addressed.” Still, I would be much happier if the examiners had said likewise.

The major lesson from all this is to buckle down, do the research, and prove them wrong for doubting the potential and coherence of this project. The issue is an important one, even if it is more theoretical and amorphous than many of the theses they will receive. A simple comparison of Kyoto and Stockholm would be enormously less interesting.