Bridging the Communication Gap
between Climate Change
(Science), Government Policy
and the Needs of Society
Andy Kerr
Introduction
Introduction
Stern Review (2006)
“There is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate
change, if we take strong action now.”
“Using the results from formal economic models, the Review
estimates that if we don’t act, the overall costs and risks of
climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global
GDP each year, now and forever. If a wider range of risks and
impacts is taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to
20% of GDP or more.
In contrast, the costs of action – reducing greenhouse gas
emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change – can be
limited to around 1% of global GDP each year. The investment
that takes place in the next 10-20 years will have a profound effect
on the climate in the second half of this century and in the next…”
δ – 0.1% per year
η–1
In other words, the conclusions were largely
driven by their prescribed ethical framework…
Sir Partha Dasgupta: The moral is this: we should be very
circumspect before accepting numerical values for parameters for
which we have little a-priori feel. One can't get an intuitive feel for
them from huge computer runs because it is usually not possible to
track what's influencing what in a sharp way.
Adaptation
Societal needs…
Optimal decision making requires:
– Adequate knowledge
– Capacity to plan for the future
– Available capital to implement a decision
“Adaptation” cannot be imposed solely by
government on society, since it involves
inherent trade-offs between options, costs
and risks by private and public decision
makers in different locations and over
different timescales
Pictures from John Briggs (Glasgow)
Diagram from Richard Essery (CESD)
Time/space scale issues
HadAM3 has:
2.5 latitude  3.75 longitude grid (72  96)
19 levels in the atmosphere
30 minute timestep
 2.3  109 space-time points per year!
Diagrams from Richard Essery (CESD)
Uncertainty issues
From IPCC. Future climate possibilities
are broad and overlap one another
Ensemble of “perturbed physics”
models showing large uncertainty
range of future warming. Which are
right?
Diagrams from Prof. Simon Tett (CESD)
UKCIP98 –
Annual temp
“At the UK level generally the
warming is greater in winter
than in summer.
The rate of warming ranges
from 0.1°C/decade for the Low
scenario to 0.3°C/decade for
the High scenario.”
UKCIP98 –
Summer precip
“Annual and winter precipitation
increases for all periods and
scenarios but they are very
modest for the Low and MediumLow scenarios. Winter
precipitation increases by 20% for
the 2080 High scenario, which is
larger than would be expected
from natural variability Summer
precipitation is lowest in the south
of the UK. However the decline
only exceeds the range of natural
variability in summer in the
Southeast for 2080 in MediumHigh and High scenarios. Autumn
precipitation changes are similar to
those in winter and spring changes
are very small.”
UKCIP02
“Based on their experience of using
UKCIP98, users asked for greater regional
and temporal detail, estimates of changes
to extremes and better guidance on how to
handle uncertainties…”
UKCIP089
A probabilistic climate projection aims to allow users to make more robust
decisions
• IS NOT an objective probability, where a situation is well understood,
where all outcomes can be accounted for;
• IS rather a subjective probability (similar to horse-racing odds);
• encapsulates some, but not all, uncertainty
• is dependent on the method used, including assumptions and choices
made, meaning that a different method would produce different results;
• is based on the current evidence (i.e. models and observations), and
new evidence in the future may lead to the results being modified;
• does not reduce uncertainty, just makes it more transparent.
How can we use this information?
Future
Now
How can we communicate this to decision makers?
How will they choose appropriate risk metrics?
Diagram from UK Hadley Centre
Organisational decision making
Risk management strategies
Why don’t organisations use
UKCIP02?
Bridging the Communications Gap
1.
Scientists are clearly
communicating the
strengths/limitations of their
studies…
2.
Policy/decision makers don’t
always know what they want
or need…
3.
But model outputs are rarely
framed in a way amenable to
practical decision making.
Mitigation
Mitigation
Societal needs…?
Min[ ∫Abatement Costs dt + ∫Environmental Damage dt]
From DEFRA, 2008
UK/Scottish Energy System
(From UKERC)
UK/Scottish Climate Change Bill…
70000.0
60000.0
50000.0
40000.0
30000.0
20000.0
10000.0
0.0
1980
1990
2000
2010
2020
2030
2040
2050
2060
Costs of reducing emissions
Net benefit
Behaviour matters…
•
•
•
•
Other people’s behaviour matters
Habits are important
People are motivated to do the right thing
People’s self-expectation influence how they
behave
• People are loss-adverse
• People are bad at computation
• People need to feel involved and effective to
make a change
nef, 2005
People are bad at computation…
“…when making decisions: they put undue
weight on recent events and too little on
far-off ones; they cannot calculate
probabilities well and worry too much
about unlikely events; and they are
strongly influenced by how the
problem/information is presented to them.”
So what are we doing?
Probability
distribution
functions…
Net present
values…
Bridging the Communications Gap
• The gap is not caused by
lack of scientific skill
• The gap is not from lack of
endeavour from scientists
trying to better explain their
work…
• Bridging the gap requires…
The End