This document discusses the challenges scientists face in communicating their research findings to decision-makers and the public. It describes how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) addresses these challenges through rigorous assessment processes. However, adapting to climate change at local levels will require different approaches than those used by the IPCC. Knowledge action networks that include social scientists can help connect research to community-level adaptation by building trust between experts and local leaders.
Invaders, Security, Climate Change: Can we get movement on wicked problems?Dawn Bazely
I gave this talk today, 26 January 2016 at the Understanding Sovereignty & Security in the Arctic Workshop, organized by Whitney Lackenbauer & Will Greaves
While science is a natural home for project-based learning techniques, blending in the global competencies and other subjects can sometimes be more challenging. This session will focus on approaches to incorporating global competencies in science in both elementary and secondary settings. We will look at some concrete examples and have opportunities to collaborate with colleagues throughout the network. Please bring a computer to this session as we will be accessing online resources.
Suraje Dessai - Uncertainty from above and encounters in the middleSTEPS Centre
Workshop on climate change and uncertainty from below and above, Delhi. http://steps-centre.org/2016/blog/climate-change-and-uncertainty-from-above-and-below/
Invaders, Security, Climate Change: Can we get movement on wicked problems?Dawn Bazely
I gave this talk today, 26 January 2016 at the Understanding Sovereignty & Security in the Arctic Workshop, organized by Whitney Lackenbauer & Will Greaves
While science is a natural home for project-based learning techniques, blending in the global competencies and other subjects can sometimes be more challenging. This session will focus on approaches to incorporating global competencies in science in both elementary and secondary settings. We will look at some concrete examples and have opportunities to collaborate with colleagues throughout the network. Please bring a computer to this session as we will be accessing online resources.
Suraje Dessai - Uncertainty from above and encounters in the middleSTEPS Centre
Workshop on climate change and uncertainty from below and above, Delhi. http://steps-centre.org/2016/blog/climate-change-and-uncertainty-from-above-and-below/
How to grapple with science advice in ideological conflictsSciAdvice14
Heather Douglas of the Institute for Science, Society and Policy at the University of Ottawa on grappling with science advice in ideological conflicts.
5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014 Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice 24-28 August 2014 in Davos, Switzerland
Risk analysis practices are pragmatic and they are used widely but they comprise different methods and are just a method of assessing risk without giving a complete picture of the problem.
At least, it is increasing relaised that it is not irrelevant ti talk of of acts of God but risks are created by mans activities and helped by natural variability and inherent uncertainty.
The philosophy of risk is infested by contentions/conflicts and different philosophies on risk are excluding one another instead of building on one another. Evolutionary ideas can explain risk throughout human history.
This presentation was held by Heide Hackmann, during a live streamed session discussing who has the right to climate adaptation. View the live streamed session here: http://ccafs.cgiar.org/videostream
Kicking off the INCENTIVE project with an intro to the CS Principles and Char...Margaret Gold
-The Citizen Science Lab at Leiden University
- The core concept of the INCENTIVE project
- The ECSA 10 Principles of Citizen Science
- The ECSA Characteristics of Citizen Science
Ian Scoones - Enabling plural pathways - uncertainty and responses to climate...STEPS Centre
Workshop on climate change and uncertainty from below and above, Delhi. http://steps-centre.org/2016/blog/climate-change-and-uncertainty-from-above-and-below/
Towards a learning for disaster resilience approachNeil Dufty
This paper is a first attempt to scope the possible content and learning processes that could be used in a holistic Learning for Disaster Resilience (LfDR) approach as a possible improvement to current disaster education, communications and engagement practices. The research found that LfDR should not only cover public safety aspects, but also learning about the community itself, including how to reduce its vulnerabilities and strengthen resilience. In relation to learning process, a review of learning theory found four broad learning theory groups - behavioural, cognitive, affective, social – that have relevance to LfDR. The research identified a range of potential learning activities across these groups. The use of social media in disaster management is strongly supported by the research as it has relevance to three of the four groups.
Planet Under Pressure 2012: State of the Planet Declarationuncsd2012
Scientists issue first “State of the Planet” declaration at the world’s largest gathering of experts on global environmental and social issues in advance of the major UN Summit Rio+20 in June.
"LIMITS TO GROWTH REVISITED"; White Paper of the 2012 Winter School by the Pa...VolkswagenStiftung
A Winter School on "Limits to Growth Revisited", which was addressed to 60 young researchers of all relevant fields, took place in the week running up to the symposium. Following the event, the participants developed a "White Paper" report which shows their perspectives on the various subjects discussed within the Winter School.
Alex De Pinto
Global Landscapes Forum
IFPRI Session: Informing the policymaking landscape: From research to action in the fight against climate change and hunger
Marrakech, Morocco
November 16, 2016
Informing the policymaking landscape: From research to action in the fight ag...CIFOR-ICRAF
Presentation given by Alex De Pinto, of the Environment and Production Technology Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), at the Global Landscapes Forum on 16 November 2016 in Marrakesh, Morocco.
http://www.landscapes.org/
Covid-19 has changed the course of
history. What started off as a flu-like
illness in one person in one corner
of the world, has changed the lives,
livelihoods and futures of billions.
Australia saw its first case on January
25 and now has over 6,600 cases,
the country is in partial lockdown,
schools and universities have left their
campuses, hundreds of thousands of
jobs have been lost. Fortunately, the
tide appears to be turning and we can
start thinking of Recovery.
To chart a Roadmap to Recovery we
convened a group of over a hundred of
the country’s leading epidemiologists,
infectious disease consultants,
public health specialists, healthcare
professionals, mental health and
well-being practitioners, indigenous
scholars, communications and
behaviour change experts, ethicists,
philosophers, political scientists,
economists and business scholars
from the Group of Eight (Go8)
universities. The group developed
this Roadmap in less than three
weeks, through remote meetings
and a special collaborative reasoning
platform, in the context of a rapidly
changing pandemic,
How to grapple with science advice in ideological conflictsSciAdvice14
Heather Douglas of the Institute for Science, Society and Policy at the University of Ottawa on grappling with science advice in ideological conflicts.
5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014 Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice 24-28 August 2014 in Davos, Switzerland
Risk analysis practices are pragmatic and they are used widely but they comprise different methods and are just a method of assessing risk without giving a complete picture of the problem.
At least, it is increasing relaised that it is not irrelevant ti talk of of acts of God but risks are created by mans activities and helped by natural variability and inherent uncertainty.
The philosophy of risk is infested by contentions/conflicts and different philosophies on risk are excluding one another instead of building on one another. Evolutionary ideas can explain risk throughout human history.
This presentation was held by Heide Hackmann, during a live streamed session discussing who has the right to climate adaptation. View the live streamed session here: http://ccafs.cgiar.org/videostream
Kicking off the INCENTIVE project with an intro to the CS Principles and Char...Margaret Gold
-The Citizen Science Lab at Leiden University
- The core concept of the INCENTIVE project
- The ECSA 10 Principles of Citizen Science
- The ECSA Characteristics of Citizen Science
Ian Scoones - Enabling plural pathways - uncertainty and responses to climate...STEPS Centre
Workshop on climate change and uncertainty from below and above, Delhi. http://steps-centre.org/2016/blog/climate-change-and-uncertainty-from-above-and-below/
Towards a learning for disaster resilience approachNeil Dufty
This paper is a first attempt to scope the possible content and learning processes that could be used in a holistic Learning for Disaster Resilience (LfDR) approach as a possible improvement to current disaster education, communications and engagement practices. The research found that LfDR should not only cover public safety aspects, but also learning about the community itself, including how to reduce its vulnerabilities and strengthen resilience. In relation to learning process, a review of learning theory found four broad learning theory groups - behavioural, cognitive, affective, social – that have relevance to LfDR. The research identified a range of potential learning activities across these groups. The use of social media in disaster management is strongly supported by the research as it has relevance to three of the four groups.
Planet Under Pressure 2012: State of the Planet Declarationuncsd2012
Scientists issue first “State of the Planet” declaration at the world’s largest gathering of experts on global environmental and social issues in advance of the major UN Summit Rio+20 in June.
"LIMITS TO GROWTH REVISITED"; White Paper of the 2012 Winter School by the Pa...VolkswagenStiftung
A Winter School on "Limits to Growth Revisited", which was addressed to 60 young researchers of all relevant fields, took place in the week running up to the symposium. Following the event, the participants developed a "White Paper" report which shows their perspectives on the various subjects discussed within the Winter School.
Alex De Pinto
Global Landscapes Forum
IFPRI Session: Informing the policymaking landscape: From research to action in the fight against climate change and hunger
Marrakech, Morocco
November 16, 2016
Informing the policymaking landscape: From research to action in the fight ag...CIFOR-ICRAF
Presentation given by Alex De Pinto, of the Environment and Production Technology Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), at the Global Landscapes Forum on 16 November 2016 in Marrakesh, Morocco.
http://www.landscapes.org/
Covid-19 has changed the course of
history. What started off as a flu-like
illness in one person in one corner
of the world, has changed the lives,
livelihoods and futures of billions.
Australia saw its first case on January
25 and now has over 6,600 cases,
the country is in partial lockdown,
schools and universities have left their
campuses, hundreds of thousands of
jobs have been lost. Fortunately, the
tide appears to be turning and we can
start thinking of Recovery.
To chart a Roadmap to Recovery we
convened a group of over a hundred of
the country’s leading epidemiologists,
infectious disease consultants,
public health specialists, healthcare
professionals, mental health and
well-being practitioners, indigenous
scholars, communications and
behaviour change experts, ethicists,
philosophers, political scientists,
economists and business scholars
from the Group of Eight (Go8)
universities. The group developed
this Roadmap in less than three
weeks, through remote meetings
and a special collaborative reasoning
platform, in the context of a rapidly
changing pandemic,
BUILDING ON THE KYOTO PROTOCOL: OPTIONS FOR PROTECTING THE CLIMATEDr Lendy Spires
An Architecture for Climate Protection Kevin A. Baumert and Nancy Kete Walls, windows, floors, and doors are some of the elements used in designing a house. Not just any mix of architectural elements will create a functional home.
Although there are many possible designs, making a home functional means assembling walls, windows, and other elements into a compatible whole that meets the needs of its inhabitants. So too, a climate protection treaty has its own set of “architectural elements” that must meet the needs of its stakeholders.
Elements of a climate protection treaty include provisions for controlling greenhouse gas emissions, man-aging economic costs, and promoting accountability, among other things. While the options for designing a home may seem limitless, the diversity of potentially effective climate agreements is not nearly as constrained as current international negotiations might lead us to believe.
As with homes, innovation and creativity are needed in treaty design. Since 1997, the debate over global climate change has focused narrowly on the Kyoto Protocol—an international treaty to control greenhouse gas emissions that are trapping heat in the Earth’s atmosphere.
The Protocol calls on industrialized countries to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases by about 5 percent below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. Over the past 5 years, government officials, observers, and experts have been absorbed in the arcane details of the Protocol, arguing at great length about the treaty’s merits and demerits.
As the Kyoto Protocol comes to life, this debate will shift to include new ideas for future commitments to protect the global climate system. This volume explores a set of options for designing an international framework for climate protection “beyond Kyoto,” that is, beyond the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period.1 We pay special attention to achieving international cooperation across the so-called North-South divide.
Abdelrahim, s. (2017). using citizen based observations to plan..Melissa Maxter
As a global challenge with profound implications at the local level, climate change provides new opportunities for individual engagement. Communities around the world have their own unique experiences with the effects of climate change, as well as drastically different climate adaptation needs. This gives individuals an unprecedented role to play in sharing information and guiding policymaking through citizen-based observation. In “Using Citizen-Based Observations to Plan for Climate Change,” Sarah Abdelrahim looks at the work of a variety of citizen-based observation networks, also known as citizens’ observatories. She recommends greater cooperation and support from government agencies and decision-makers for these networks as a key aspect of any and all climate change adaptation strategies.
This text was originally published by the Atlantic Council.
Tool : Opinion Space
Typical Actions : Opinion mapping software collect and visualise users opinions on important issues and polocies
(rate five proposition on the chosen topic and type initial response to a discussion question)
Show in a graphical "Map" where user's opinions of other participants.
Display patterns, trends, and insights employ the wisdom of crowds to identify the most insightful ideas.
Examples : Used by US state Depart to engage global online audiences on a variety of foreign policy issues.
Section 1: Tool Background
Who designed or developed the tool?
What is the purpose of the tool?
When was the tool designed or developed?
Where was the tool designed or developed?
Why was the tool designed or developed?
Section 2: Tool Specifications
Functional capabilities of the tool. (Key features of the tool)
Technical requirements for the tool.
How is/was the tool implemented?
Section 3: Tool Visualizations:
Find an illustration or work flow of the tool.
Describe the illustration or work flow of the tool.
Section 4: Tool Achievements/Limitations
Discuss the advantages of the tool.
Discuss the disadvantages of the tool.
Section 5: Based on research, does the tool achieve the original purpose of the creator/designer?
Discuss your findings
Your research paper should be at least 9 pages (2400 words), double-spaced, have at least 8 APA references, and typed in an easy-to-read font in MS Word (other word processors are fine to use but save it in a MS Word format). Your cover page should contain the following: Title, Team's name, University's name, Course name, Course number, Professor's name, and Date.
Tambouris, E., Liotas, N., & Tarabanis, K. (2007). A Framework for Assessing eParticipation Projects and Tools. 2007 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'07), Waikoloa, HI, 2007, pp. 90-90. doi: 10.1109/HICSS.2007.13
SURNAME 3
Climate Change
Student’s Name
Instructor’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
14th. September 2019
Academic Sources on Climate Change
Farrell, Justin. "Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate change." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113.1 (2016): 92-97.
Nerem, R. S., Beckley, B. D., Fasullo, J. T., Hamlington, B. D., Masters, D., & Mitchum, G. T. (2018). Climate-change–driven accelerated sea-level rise detected in the altimeter era. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(9), 2022-2025.
Fuzzi, S., Baltensperger, U., Carslaw, K., Decesari, S., Denier van der Gon, H., Facchini, M. C., ... & Nemitz, E. (2015). Particulate matter, air quality and climate: lessons learned and future needs. Atmospheric chemistry and physics, 15(14), 8217-8299.
Urry, John. “Climate change and society”. In Why the social sciences matter (pp. 45-59). Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2015 45-59.
Holland, G., & Bruyère, C. L. (2014). Recent intense hurricane response to global climate change. Climate Dynamics ...
2. Charles F. Kennel
154 • Cambridge Anthropology
What is Scientific‘Truth’?
At what point does research become established knowledge? Scientists believe that
the patient application of rigorous methods establishes truth, but how do they decide
that enough is enough, that they know something? What does it really mean when a
research community believes it has reached consensus?
Aside from consolidating their results in review articles and monographs, scientists
by and large have relied on the change of generations for controversies to settle out
and knowledge to be considered established. Unforced intellectual evolution under
peer review has thus been the de facto arbiter of truth. Not until the climate change
clock started ticking did there emerge an urgent need to accelerate the coalescence of
research into knowledge, and to invent a social process to decide how ready research
was for practical use. Codifying ‘textbook-ready’ knowledge was no longer enough.
The knowledge had to be prepared for use, and one had to judge when knowledge was
‘decision-ready’.
Once the knowledge is ready, it has to be communicated. Again, there are numerous
questions. How should specialized knowledge be conveyed to non-experts? How well
can scientific results be characterized in ordinary language? Even if seemingly clear
descriptions are formulated, do scientists and policy-makers perceive them the same
way? Do they only seem to speak the same language? Do the same ‘facts’ evoke different
associations in their different cultural and professional reference frames?
Which scientists coming in the door should harried politicians listen to? Why
should decision-makers trust scientists any more than anyone else? Don’t all groups,
including scientists, have a political agenda? Is science really any different? What should
the politician think when two scientists disagree? Can a non-expert judge whether one
view represents the preponderance of the research community and another, an outlier?
How can scientists promote trust in what they are saying? Does the perception of their
individual (or collective) self-interest undermine confidence in their conclusions? Don’t
scientists tailor their presentations according to what they think decision-makers want
to hear, like everyone else? Do their attempts at transparency and full disclosure really
convey an impression of honest process? Does reliance on peer review communicate
integrity or bind scientists into self-referential interest groups? Do independent reviews
by expert panels promote trust or communicate elitist in-group collusion?
Who Should Speak Scientific Truth to Power?
Assessment is the method scientists have invented to speak with one voice to power.1
A good assessment is designed to deal with the issues of integrity and process outlined
above. While there are many variations, assessments usually comprise four basic
tasks. The first is a new form of quality assurance that distinguishes between peer-
reviewed research and decision-ready knowledge. In peer review, disciplinary experts
judge whether a new research result merits examination by the wider disciplinary
community. In the case of decision-readiness, a judgment is rendered, based upon
breadth of acceptance by researchers and users, whether knowledge developed in
research merits use by non-experts. The second task is knowledge assembly, in which
the particular strands of knowledge needed to support specific decisions are gathered
3. Afterword. Speaking Scientific Truth to Power
Cambridge Anthropology • 155
in one place and integrated. The third task is translation of this knowledge into terms
the non-specialist can understand. The final task is to incorporate the knowledge into
an action plan.
While assessment is now used in many areas of environmental decision-making, it
has reached its highest point of development in climate science, to which we now turn.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Since 1988, the world community of climate scientists has carried out four of the most
rigorous assessments of a state of scientific knowledge ever attempted.2
In 1988, the
United Nations Environmental Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation
established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) :
...to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific,
technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis
of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation
and mitigation. IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy, although they may
need to deal objectively with scientific, technical and socio-economic factors relevant to
the application of particular policies.3
The IPCC devised transparent processes intended to promote trust. Its reviews were
restricted to information found in the peer-reviewed literature. Review panels were
chosen with attention to balance among countries, points of view, and economic and
institutional interests. Successive panels recruited a majority of new participants to
avoid an institutionalized IPCC point of view. The return of different panels to the
same issues proved persuasive. The IPCC’s influence grew as succeeding reports
communicated a consistently evolving understanding of climate change.
The IPCC created rigorous ways to express its conclusions in forms policy-makers
could use. It structured a mode of communication between scientists and decision-
makers that aims to preserve the independence and rigour of science while accelerating
the delivery of useful knowledge into the decision-making arena. Its most important
innovation was to separate assessment of science from discussion of policy. After the
scientific assessment is complete, the IPCC engages in a separate process to develop
summaries for policy makers. Together, scientists and policy-makers compose, line
by line, the statements pertinent to policy, with explicit attention to the uniform
characterization of uncertainty.
IPCC assessments transformed the global public debate about climate. Not a day
passes without media discussion of climate change. This is the most important outcome,
since public awareness of the risks of climate change encourages governments to pay
attention and motivates public and private initiatives, especially in energy technologies.
IPCC assessments have also motivated large international agreements – the 1997 Kyoto
Protocol, the 2001 Bonn Agreement, and the 2007 Bali Action Plan. Nearly every
government in the world now pays attention to IPCC assessments and thinks about
climate decisions in IPCC terms.
The IPCC has also transformed climate science. The research community is now
spending a significant fraction of all its energies on preparing the next report, and its
4. Charles F. Kennel
156 • Cambridge Anthropology
research agenda is shaped by the previous report. It is stretched thin by the demands
placed upon it.
Why Has the IPCC Not Been More Successful?
The IPCC prepared the way for the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC), and has been tied to it ever since. The parties to the
convention have met annually since 1995 to seek consensus agreements on limiting
climate change. While the IPCC clearly has accelerated the delivery of climate
knowledge to the public, its success in accelerating climate action is less apparent.
Increased public and governmental awareness and several formal agreements have not
translated into successful global treaties to mitigate climate change, and accumulation
of greenhouse gases has accelerated since the IPCC came into existence.
We should not expect the UN climate negotiations to make rapid progress. There
are too many participants and the issues are too complex for consensus to come easily
to parties with extraordinarily divergent interests. It will be difficult to accelerate their
decision-making. The IPCC is working with just about the most difficult configuration
of decision-makers conceivable.
Public hyper-awareness of climate change has provoked a strong reaction in some
countries. In retrospect, this is not surprising because the causes of climate change lie
at the very heart of modern industrial society. These countries can expect an extended
period of public controversy in which the ‘denialist’ reaction continues to strike at the
credibility of climate science.4
This reaction has had some success. Though more than
95 per cent of publishing climate scientists accept that human actions are changing the
climate, the U.S. media portray this as controversial within the scientific community.
The IPCC’s scientifically impeccable efforts to promote trust have too often been
undone.5
Promoting Community-Level Adaptation to Climate Change
Every region, nation, community, ecosystem, industry and population that is affected
by weather and its prevailing patterns will be impacted in some way by climate change.
Climate is an issue for everyone, but it is not the same issue for everyone. Communities
are not interested in everything that can happen, only what could happen to them.
They will only pay attention to assessments that focus on their concerns, and many key
adaptation decisions can only be made at the local level.
Decision-makers at the global, regional or national, and local levels have different
interests. Carbon dioxide mitigation is the province of central decision-makers
concerned with energy policies and their implementation. These include national
and international leaders of policy, finance and industry. At the regional or national
domestic levels, the decision-makers have a different mix of concerns. And each region
is different. Each is subject to distinctive social and environmental stresses that reinforce
one another in locally specific ways. Each has its own ways of making decisions. An
assessment based on natural science alone will not seem pertinent or compelling.
5. Afterword. Speaking Scientific Truth to Power
Cambridge Anthropology • 157
Knowledge Action Social Networks
An assessment has to win the attention of local leaders even before it earns their
trust. For perfectly good reasons, they focus on the most concrete local trends, and
assessments made by the international community must compete for salience with local
social, economic, political, legal and cultural concerns. Climate change operates in the
background. It is assessment’s burden to explain how climate change affects the things
their communities care about. Motivating constructive action is even more delicate
(van Aalst et al. 2008). This is surely a province for social anthropology.
Slow decision-making adds to climate risk. An assessment should make local leaders
want to take action. It should transmit the motivation to act as well as knowledge. But
before motivation there has to be human trust. And the degree of trust required to
acknowledge the truth of scientific facts is far smaller than that which persuades a
decision-maker to risk resources and reputation on a potentially controversial initiative.
In many parts of the world, and for many people, motivational trust is conveyed
primarily through face-to-face interaction. At the regional and local levels, we should
not separate experts and decision-makers as climate science does at the global level.
We have suggested elsewhere that we need to construct ‘knowledge action
networks’. By this term of art, we mean managed social networks that link the
international community with regional thought-leaders and local decision-makers.
Social networking can be especially useful to developing countries. It is a tactful way
to support capacity-building while it is creating situational awareness and motivating
action. It can become a peer group for knowledge-leaders and decision-makers who do
not participate frequently in international peer networks.
There are many informal research networks working in developing regions today
(Lidskog and Elander 2010). Some of the more instructive are those from natural and
social science disciplines who work with indigenous peoples in the Tibetan Plateau and
Canadian and American Arctic (Pearce et al. 2009). These regions are expected to feel
the impacts of warming ahead of others, so these research networks promise to teach us
about how to work with similar communities elsewhere. A research network can easily
be converted to a knowledge action network by including local leaders. Such efforts
have already led to adaptation action plans at the village level in the Canadian Arctic
(Pearce et al. 2010). This also makes clear the value of including social anthropologists
and other social scientists in knowledge action networks in other parts of the world.6
The essential point is that social anthropologists know better than most scientists how
to connect knowledge with action.
Concluding Remarks
One day, there will be a global mosaic of regional, local and topical assessments
underway at any given time. We should think of a complex network of loosely
connected initiatives rather than one centrally managed top-down project. There will
be assessments of the impacts of climate change on coastal, riverfront and mountain
communities; on savannah, rangeland and dry-land settlements; on mega-cities; on
agriculture, forests and ecosystems; on pollution and public health; on migration and
trade, and many other issues.
6. Charles F. Kennel
158 • Cambridge Anthropology
Notes
1. Assessment has taken its place alongside experiment, theory and modelling as a basic scientific activity
wherever science and public concerns overlap. It is the most important social technology devoted to
science invented in the twentieth century.
2. The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report appeared in four large volumes in 2007. Its first volume is
devoted to the physical science basis of climate change; the second, to impacts, vulnerabilities, and
adaptation options; the third, to the opportunities and costs of mitigation; and the last, to a synthesis
of the overall findings. The scale of the enterprise required simply to assess the peer-reviewed literature
about climate change is impressive. The 2007 report of ‘Working Group I’ was started in 2004 and
completed in 2007; it involved 152 authors, 400 contributors, 600 expert reviewers, and responded to
more than 30,000 comments. ‘Working Group II’, on the physical and biological impacts of climate
change, reviewed 577 peer-reviewed studies.
3. Cited from Principles Governing IPCC Work. [Approved at the Fourteenth Session (Vienna, 1-3
October 1998) on 1 October 1998, amended at the Twenty-First Session (Vienna, 3 and 6-7 November
2003), the Twenty-Fifth Session (Mauritius, 26-28 April 2006) and the Thirty-Fifth Session (Geneva,
6-9 June 2012)]. Available at http//ipcc.org/organization/history (Accessed 30 December 2012).
4. See Oreskes and Conway (2010) on the causes of denialist reaction in the United States.
5. From my vantage points – first as head of earth sciences at NASA and later director of the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography – and as a participant in numerous U.S. National Academy studies, I
have seen the human cost of speaking scientific truth to power. I have seen my colleagues struggle
to comply with full and open disclosure of data. I have seen them become hyper-aware of possible
denialist criticism. I have seem some turn reticent, afraid of unwanted exposure in the media. I know
colleagues who contributed to the IPCC receive death threats, and have heard that young researchers
receive harassing emails. I have seen nearly all struggle with the ethical complexities. Not a few turn
their efforts to improving communication with the public. One day, someone will make a serious study
of the climate science community in the first half-century of human-induced climate change.
References
Kennel, C.F. forthcoming. Rethinking the Way We Think about Climate Change.Submitted to
Proc. American Philosophical Society, Feb. 2013.
Lidskog, R., and I. Elander. 2010. Addressing Climate Change Democratically: Multi-
Level Governance, Transnational Networks and Governmental Structures. Sustainable
Development 18, no. 1: 32–41.
Oreskes, N., and E.M. Conway. 2010. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured
the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. New York: Bloomsbury.
Pearce, T.D., J.D. Ford, A. Caron, J. Prno and T. Smith. 2010. Climate Change Adaptation Action
Plan: Community of Paulatuk, Northwest Territories. Paulatuk, NWT: Community of
Paulatuk.
Pearce, T.D., J.D. Ford, G.J. Laidler, B. Smit, F. Duerden, M. Allarut, M. Andrachuk, S. Baryluk,
A. Dialla, P. Elee, A. Goose, T. Ikummaq, E. Joamie, F. Kataoyak, E. Loring, S. Meakin, S.
Nickels, K. Shappa, J. Shirley and J. Wandel. 2009. Community Collaboration and Climate
Change Research in the Canadian Arctic. Polar Research 28, no. 1: 10–27
Van Aalst, M.K., T. Cannon and I. Burton. 2008. Community Level Adaptation to Climate
Change: The Potential Role of Participatory Community Risk Assessment. Global
Environmental Change 18, no. 1: 165–179.
Charles F. Kennel is former Director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and
from 1994 to 1996 was Director of NASA’s Mission to Planet Earth.