Confusing metaphorical warfare with policy substance

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Matthew Nisbet, in Slate today, gives thoughtful voice to my growing frustration with the way my friends in the science community have been approaching the climate politics and policy discussion of late:

The problems begin when scientists overestimate the influence of climate skeptics and their corporate backers. When legislation and international treaties fail, and polls show a decrease in public concern about the environment, the “climate deniers” take the blame. Yet the efforts of James Inhofe, Glenn Beck, et al. represent just a few of several factors shaping public doubt and policy inaction. More important, perhaps, are the poor state of the economy, competition for political attention from the heath care debate, and confusion over colder weather. We’re also faced with a widespread distrust of government that makes explaining complex cap-and-trade proposals that much more difficult. And it doesn’t help that long-standing rules in Congress allow individual members to block substantive legislation.

Given these factors, it’s not surprising that communication researchers, including me, have their doubts about the relative impact of Climategate on public opinion.

My frustration is that some of the smartest and most talented people in this discussion seem obsessed with the warfare right now, with smacking down every thing said on the Internet that they view as wrong, as if a) they could somehow succeed in ending bunk, and b) if all bunk ended, then their preferred political/policy solutions would follow.

I think both “a” and “b” are wrong. Bunk is Darwinian, and will always be there as long as the potential solutions to a given problem conflict with the values and interests of some part of the body politic. And even if bunk was somehow banished, the underlying values that spawn its existence (see “the Darwinian nature of bunk“) would still play a central role in the pursuit of political/policy solutions.

Concerns About New Colorado River Study

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From today’s newspaper, my story (sub/ad req) about a Senate hearing earlier this week that touched on a study of water supply and demand now getting underway in the Colorado River Basin.

The story’s brief, but the hearing raised what I think is a very interesting question:

While individual states have looked at their own water supply and demand situation, the basin lacks a comprehensive study of the overall water picture, said John Entsminger of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the agency that provides Las Vegas with its water.

The study, which is just getting under way and is expected to take two years to complete, drew some criticism. Groups concerned about the need to leave water in rivers for ecosystem preservation have been largely left out of the discussions about the study, said Melinda Kassen of the environmental and sport fishing advocacy group Trout Unlimited.

Expect to hear more about the extent to which environmental flows get a seat at the table as the study is being done. (More on the details of the study via USBR.)

San Joaquin River Flowing

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It is a testament to the nature of rivers in the arid western United States that this is news:

The San Joaquin River is flowing from Friant Dam near Fresno to the Delta….

That’s Alex Breitler writing today in the Stockton Record. If you follow the link, he gives a pretty good accounting of why this is a big deal, but I found an even better one in a delightful exchange on Wikipedia’s San Joaquin River talk page. First, here’s how the Wiki article describes the geography:

The river flows west to the Central Valley, where it is joined by the Sierra’s other great rivers and then at Mendota Pool flows north to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and then San Francisco Bay.

Parried nicely on the the talk page:

That vague and confusing section gives a false impression. In fact, except in rare flood years, there is no hydraulic continuity or “flow” to the delta or ocean. This is due to water diversions. Long stretches of the river are dry. Due to court battles, and related, some may wish to paint a pretty ecological picture not there.

Per Breitler’s article, for a shining moment, the original Wiki article is sorta right. But the talk page is clearly on to something more fundamental.

(h/t On the Public Record, a great CA water blog)

Juncos: On the Importance of Absence

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courtesy Noel Zia Lee

courtesy Noel Zia Lee

In my second spring of actually writing down the birds I see, I’ve encountered a hole in my data. Dark-eyed juncos have been a steady and heavy presence all winter, first showing up in mid-October. But I was a slacker last March, so I don’t have data on when they leave. Through the winter, I typically have had at least five in the yard every morning. Yesterday, there were only two, today I’ve only spotted one.

Another sign of spring.

On the Darwinian Nature of Bunk

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The existence of bunk when science lumbers into the political sphere with what to some are uncomfortable observations seems to be a remarkably resilient feature of our landscape. I learned this more than a decade ago when I spent a good deal of time reading the work of quasi-scientific young-earth creationists.

The arguments raised by Dan Sarewitz in his recent Slate piece offer a hypothesis for why this might be. When mainstream science conflicts with values, people hunt for outlier science that doesn’t create so much cognitive dissonance. In any sufficiently interesting science, there will always be genuine research lying some distance from the mainstream to choose from, which will end up being of relevance to the policy debate as people with different values choose points on the scientific spectrum that tend to support their value position. That’s the point of Sarewitz’s Yucca Mountain example:

For example, varying estimates of the amount of ground water flowing through the rocks at the site were central both to claims that Yucca Mountain was safe and that it should be abandoned.

But genuine bunk also will emerge for Darwinian reasons. For people whose values are in genuine conflict with the implications of the science, it meets a need. If this observation is correct, then the enormous effort by a committed and energetic segment of the pro-science community to stamp out bunk is doomed to failure.

Drought, Dams and Border Tension

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As drought grips the Lancang-Mekong basin in Asia, tensions are growing over China’s dam, according to Richard Stone, writing in Friday’s Science (sub req):

courtesy Wikipedia

courtesy Wikipedia

The drought’s effects have spilled across China’s borders, stoking tensions with neighbors and prompting scientific debate. Rice yields in Thailand are expected to take a big hit, and the Mekong River—the name for the Lancang south of China—is in many stretches less than a meter deep, its lowest level in decades, making it impassable to tour boats and cargo ships. Researchers worry about how the low water level may affect fisheries and critically endangered species such as the Mekong giant catfish, which in the coming weeks would normally spawn in the upper Mekong.

Environmental groups in Thailand and elsewhere lay at least part of the blame on China’s doorstep. They claim that China’s management of a series of dams on the Lancang has aggravated the unfolding crisis. The Thai media has helped stir up emotions; one editorial in the Bangkok Post last month was headlined “China’s dams killing Mekong.”

This is not the only such case. Stone notes that China shares 110 rivers with 19 neighboring countries.

On Moving Water and Spreading Risk

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John F. Kennedy dedicating the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, 1962. Courtesy National Archives

John F. Kennedy dedicating the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, 1962. Courtesy National Archives

In theory, one of the benefits of interbasin water transfers is spreading risk. One basin may have drought while the other does not. But for folks on the Arkansas River in Colorado, that may not work out so well, based on new tree ring analysis by Jeff Lukas and colleagues. Chris Woodka of the Pueblo Chieftain explains:

“It has always been thought that if you are bringing in water from both sides of the Continental Divide, you have protection. That is not the case,” said Jeff Lukas, of Western Water. “While they vary from year to year, the dry years and wet years in both basins show a strong correlation.”

The Fryingpan-Arkansas Project delivers 63,000 acre feet per year from the Colorado River Basin through nearly 30 miles of tunnels to the Arkansas River Basin on the east slope of the Rockies. It’s one of the smaller water projects on the Colorado. To get a sense of scale, the Metropolitan Water District of southern California moves about 20 times as much water annual through its Colorado River Aqueduct, which is one of the largest interbasin transfers on the river.

In addition to supplying water for irrigation and municipal use, “Fry-Ark,” as they call it, also has one of the coolest names of any water project in the West.

At Least We’re Not Nevada

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My colleague Mike Murphy’s story last week about New Mexico’s historic unemployment rate (sub/ad might be req, I can never tell) got me thinking about how we measure our economic ills, and how we compare to others around us. A couple graphs. In both cases I’ve chosen Nevada (red) as our comparison state because I’m headed there next month to learn some more about their water situation, so I’m all about trying to understand Nevada better.

First, unemployment:

Nevada and New Mexico unemployment, courtesy St. Louis Fed

Nevada and New Mexico unemployment, courtesy St. Louis Fed

In other words, it could be a lot worse.

Second up, same two states, an indicator called “coincident economic activity,” which bundles up a bunch of separate economic measures into a single index to help track state-by-state comparisons. (More on what’s in the number here.)

Nevada, New Mexico coincident economic index, courtesy St. Louis Fed

Nevada, New Mexico coincident economic index, courtesy St. Louis Fed

I guess if you don’t go up so much, you don’t have as far to fall, or something.

Pivoting Into Spring

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Rio Grande, Albuquerque, March 13, 2010I noticed the lilacs starting to leaf out in our backyard this afternoon. We moved the weather station last week, so I’m not sure what 65F (18C) means, but that’s what the thermometer says. (Anthony Watts would no doubt disapprove of its current location in the corner by the back wall, but my old cotton region shelter is more garden art than science.) More meaningful than the number is the fact that I was sitting in the back yard wearing shorts.

Lissa and I spent the morning down by the river (see photo at right). The Rio Grande is beginning its spring rise. It’s up near 900 cubic feet per second right now through town. At the Rio Grande Nature Center, a great gathering place for water birds, we saw our first cinnamon teal of the year, a lovely duck that is a frequent spring visitor. We ran into one of my bird friends, who told us about a great horned owl out by the river – “Stand on the bridge over the minnow channel looking north, it’s in a cottonwood on the west bank, living in a cooper’s hawk’s nest.” I was a little worried about whether we’d be able to find it, but the clump of birders standing beneath the next looking up made it easy.

Another of my bird friends, Judy, was in the clump, and after we gawked at the gorgeous owl for a while, we wandered out to the river bank and listened to the water slipping quietly by. The Rio Grande is a modest affair, but Some wigeons and gadwalls picked in the shallows for their brunch, and it was about as lovely as an Albuquerque spring morning could be.

If Wishes Were Horses…

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Daniel Sarewitz had a piece in Slate today arguing that science is not going to settle the current political fight over greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Michael Tobis thinks Sarewitz is wrong.

I agree with Sarewitz. Here is why.

The core of Sarewitz’s argument is that the contest over the science serves to mask the values at stake, as each side seeks to gain the high ground in the scientific debate, believing that by winning the science argument their preferred political/policy approach will of necessity follow.

Sarewitz argues that this is a general characteristic of what he has called “scientized” debates. (See his 2004 paper “How science makes environmental controversies worse” – pdf – for a fuller explication of the argument.)

Solutions come, Sarewitz argues, not when science compels them, but when the solutions align with the perceived values and interests of the actors involved.

Tobis believes it is a failure of the particular actors and institutions involved rather than a general characteristic, that Sarewitz has “confuse(d) a problem with an insurmountable principle.”

“The problem,” Tobis writes, “is not that reason fails. The problem is that politics fails to be reasonable.”

When I entered the profession of journalism nearly three decades ago, it was with the idea that it gave me a chance to help civic processes by helping the body politic better understand hard or complex issues,  so political/policy decisions could be based on the best available information.

At every city council meeting, the training ground of many young reporters, technical experts deliver to decision makers their best available data on issues such as traffic engineering. Week after week, I saw political actors seek out their own alternatives to what I reasonably viewed as the best available data when that data conflicted with their values. In the years since, I have seen this happen across scales, from issues as local as whether to install stop signs or speed humps, to regional and state issues like the water supply in New Mexico, to national issues like the appropriate disposal path for various types of nuclear waste, to the current global discussion we’re all so engaged in regarding greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

I have seen liberals side with what I regarded as the best available data on some issues, conservatives on others. In some cases, environmentalists have had what seemed to me the best available data on their side, while in other cases industry has. At the local scale, I saw many issues that didn’t break down on any sort of liberal-conservative spectrum, but instead fell along geographic lines (rural/urban, this neighborhood v. that one, etc.).

My experience with the pattern is sufficiently consistent that I believe Sarewitz has correctly described not a specific problem found in specific situations, but a general principle.

Michael might wish it were not so, but my decades of experience in the midst of political fights large and small suggests otherwise.