More Climate Change and National Security

When I first blogged about this about a month ago, it was just an article in Le Monde and a small AP story about the U.N. But now Congress is considering the national security issues of climate change and there's been a bunch of stories about it.

Boston Globe: Article by Bryan Bender gives an overview of a Senate bill requiring the National Intelligence director to create an NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) on global warming.

The effort would include pinpointing the regions at highest risk of humanitarian suffering and assessing the likelihood of wars erupting over diminishing water and other resources.

The measure also would order the Pentagon to undertake a series of war games to determine how global climate change could affect US security, including "direct physical threats to the United States posed by extreme weather events such as hurricanes."

I have no idea what war gaming against extreme weather looks like but the first part of that quote seems like a reasonable thing to do. The article finishes with:

"What makes this interesting is the clear effort to make the politics of global warming broader," said Hamre, who is now president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "There are legitimate security issues associated with this question."

This AP story covers a recent report written by retired generals and admirals which warns about how destabilizing climate change can be:

The report says that in the next 30 to 40 years there will be wars over water, increased hunger instability from worsening disease and rising sea levels and global warming-induced refugees. "The chaos that results can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide and the growth of terrorism," the 35-page report predicts.

More coverage of this report from The Financial Times.
Download the report here.

The spin on these seems to be mostly "wow! Even generals are worried about climate change." I think that's appropriate and underscores just how out-of-touch is the climate-denier crowd.

According to the Washington Post, the Director of National Intelligence agrees its a good thing to do.

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell believes it is "appropriate" for global climate change to be considered in a future National Intelligence Estimate, according to a letter he sent Wednesday to Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Joe Brewer at the Rockridge Institute (the guys who know something about framing) has a long essay on security as a progressive issue and how great a match this is with fighting global warming. Funny how this "frame" seems to have come from general's first.

Thinking about Framing Science? Don't.

A little late, but I thought I'd comment on the Nisbet and Mooney article called "Framing Science" which appeared in the April 6th edition of Science magazine. In case you missed it, this set off a minor storm in the science blogosphere. A long summary is here (see updates at the bottom)

After reading the article and some of the follow up discussion, I'd say I agree with the take at Mixing Memory and in particular the post by Greg Laden that this was a botched job.

I notice that there's been little crossover from the science blogs to the lefty blogs where frames were first discussed about three years ago. My first introduction was this post on DailyKos.

First, Nisbet and Mooney misunderstand the word "frame" which, in Lakoff's work, is more of a noun then a verb. Frames are something people have hard-wired in their brain and the politicians job is to invoke one or the other. Its a not a processor you run your presentation through.

Nisbet and Mooney seem inspired by a Pew center poll which showed lack of interest/understanding on global warming. However this poll was taken in January of 2007, before the 3 month long IPCC press barrage. As more recent polls discussed below show, the AR4 reports have had a major effect on the public understanding and acceptance of global warming, without any "framing".

The article is mostly about examples, some accurate, some not, of framing. They actually don't say much about how to do a better job of "framing science" or what that even means. Here's what comes closest to a proposal in their text:

Without misrepresenting scientific information on highly contested issues, scientists must learn to actively “frame” information to make it relevant to different audiences.

I disagree. The key phrase in the above is "frame information". Scientists deal in facts. Verifiable facts. And we should describe them using the words we know when asked. A Princeton professor had a recent book out called "On Bullshit" which talked about how pervasive it is on our culture. I think people are exhausted by this and would like a break. If a scientist finds him or herself in front of an audience, its probably because the audience wants to hear about some science, some facts. To "Frame information" sound like "turn facts into bullshit" "wrap facts in a layer of bullshit" to me. Scientists are one of the few groups who can be counted on to not bullshit, at least when asked about actual science. We give that up at our peril and the peril of the scientific enterprise itself.

There are two problems here: communicating science and communicating policy. Communicating science should follow the simple rules laid out by Mixing Memory: be nice, know your audience and realize that words have power (the take-home message from the theory of frames.) I would add never refuse to answer a science question. If it requires more detail, go in to the detail. Hide nothing. Let the audience tell you when to stop.

Now if you're a political leader trying to persuade the public to some action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and/or energy use, then you have to worry about the words you use and what frames they evoke.

But for scientists communicating the science of our climate system, just stick to the facts. Thats what people want from you. Reversing the global warming trend will require a level of world-wide cooperation unprecedented in human history. Its only fitting that people have an unprecedented understanding of the science behind it. There's no room for "framing" in that undertaking.

Update (5/2/07): I think this last paragraph is where I've been misunderstood. Although I said "just stick to the facts", note that its "when communicating science." And I didn't mean you had to do it in a monotone or that you should use the figures right out of your papers. If you have other things to communicate, like how to solve the problem, why its a problem worth solving, then you can and should use all the persuasive skills you can muster. And facts.