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National Climate Assessment Would Be Better With Recommendations

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A group of 13 U.S. agencies are in the process of preparing the Third National Climate Assessment. With the help of 240 notable scientists and other experts as authors, an extensive draft report has been prepared and released for comment.  Like many other national and international collaborative efforts, this assessment serves as an impressive status report on the scientific knowledge related to the impacts of climate change.  Yet, like previous assessments, this draft stops short of making recommendations, which are needed for progress towards meaningful solutions. 

Following is the complete text of my formal comment on the need for including recommendations by the technical experts who best know the science and data, as well as the causes and effects:

To expand the usefulness of the National Climate Assessment, add a list of recommendations for action to each chapter.

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Overall, the draft Third National Climate Assessment is an outstanding report, as far as it goes.  When completed, it promises to be the most authoritative and wide-ranging scientific analysis ever prepared about the impacts of climate change facing the United States.  This comprehensive assessment is valuable, but still falls short of the type of document that is urgently needed today.  The key messages presented in each chapter provide a compelling status summary, but to be truly useful, the report needs to go further to include recommended actions.

Climate change encompasses a collection of important issues in need of immediate attention.  The magnitude and complexity of these issues have made decision-making and implementation extremely difficult at all levels.  To a large degree, the reluctance of the world scientific community to offer anything beyond an assessment of the problems has empowered this inaction.   This report could significantly advance local, regional, national and international decision-making processes by including a list of recommended high-level response actions to the problems that have been identified.  By outlining more detailed response options and providing recommended solutions, this report would better support decision-making while encouraging a propensity for action.

Before completely dismissing this comment because making recommendations is not officially required by the Global Change Research Act of 1990, please consider that the advisory committee has already recognized (especially in Chapter 26) gaps exist in the process between data generation and decision making.  However, the gap is not created by a lack of ‘science translators’ as suggested in Chapter 26.  There are plenty of capable decision makers who understand science and plenty of knowledgeable scientists who comprehend policy making.

Previously, scientific assessments have not gone far enough, so policy makers have not been able to take the conclusions of the technical experts and convert them into meaningful actions for implementation.  Therefore, the ‘translation’ needed is for the climate scientists to go beyond their problem-identifying conclusions, using their technical expertise to delve into potential solutions.  One of the simplest and most effective ways to promote decision-making collaboration is to encourage more overlap among participants throughout the process.  A direct way to bridge this gap is to have the experts who draw the important conclusions (i.e., ‘key messages’) also offer a set of recommendations to address the identified problems.

Assuming decision makers agree that policies should be established based on facts and guided by science, then the technical experts who study and understand the issues should play a prominent role in establishing the strategies needed to respond to climate change.  They are the ones who have the most direct and substantive knowledge of the causes, effects, and potential solutions to the problems the world faces.

The few recommendations that are included in the report are related to research needs presented in Chapter 29.   It is appropriate to include this type of recommendation where uncertainties exist about the climate system and dynamics, as well as potential mitigation and adaptation measures.  However, equally important is to recommend actions for those issues/problems that are well established or for which there is little uncertainty.

There should be no concern that making recommendations might infringe on the territory of policy makers.  The type of recommendations suggested here are only those of a broad nature, based on well-established scientific data and principles.  If the recommendations effectively describe what actions should be taken and why, then policy makers will have the information needed to accept, reject or modify each recommendation during their decision-making processes.  Once policy makers make a decision and choose a general course of action, then they will still need to develop the many details defining how the policies will be implemented.

To prepare the Third National Climate Assessment, the advisory committee has convened an eminent group of scientists, experts and policy specialists as authors.  Collectively, these teams of authors could undoubtedly offer some sound advice in the form of recommendations for action going forward.  Building on the coordinated effort already established among USGCRP agencies and researchers for preparing this assessment, any promising solutions offered would be expected to be high-quality, peer-reviewed and well-grounded in current scientific knowledge.  With the addition of some basic recommendations, this report could be transformed into a strong leadership document designed to help drive solutions rather than just highlight the problems.

Do We Know Where We Going to Solve Climate Change?

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Yogi Berra may have said it best:

“If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.”

So, where is the world headed in trying to address global warming? There are vast amounts of ongoing scientific research and constant international policy discussions, but there seems to be no overall coordinated plan of action. Scientists have projected what will happen if green house gas emissions continue unchecked, but there is no overall action plan defining what must be done instead.

In 1979, the World Meteorological Organization, several United Nations entities and the World Health Organization sponsored the First World Climate Conference in Geneva. In many ways, this event marked the beginning of the international effort to understand and address climate change.

Since then, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been established to fill the lead worldwide role for assessing climate change. The panel evaluates scientific data and research, and it develops technical reports designed to assist policy development by decision makers. The information compiled and assessed by IPCC is highly relevant for helping create a global action plan, but it does not go so far as to define the steps to be taken.

On the policy side, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the underlying international treaty for countries to cooperate in limiting the concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases and to respond to human-induced global warming. Introduced in 1992 as part of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, this treaty is the foundation for all the more specific international climate agreements that have been negotiated since.

Building on UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol (adopted 1997) includes specific commitments by some industrialized countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, the protocol includes only modest reductions for many countries and does not cover or have commitments covering significant emissions (e.g., United States, developing countries, international aviation, shipping). In reality, many parts of the world have seen greenhouse gas emissions increase in relation to the protocol baseline date of 1990.

The Cancun Agreements in 2010 resulted in setting a goal of keeping the average global temperature rise below 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels. That level was selected using data and modeling, and is based on a level expected to avoid the worst effects of climate change. This is the primary quantifiable global goal that has come out of UNFCCC, and while tied to the recognition that deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions are required, this goal is not linked back to the targeted greenhouse gas emission reductions in place.

Much of the work that has developed out of the last several U.N. Climate Change Conferences (Bali, Copenhagen, Cancun, Durbin, Doha) has led to the realization that much more needs to be done, because global greenhouse gas emissions and concentrations continue to rise. These conferences have set in motion steps to create a universal climate change agreement that covers all countries and will be adopted in 2015. The hope is that national and international efforts will become better tied together and that emission reductions will collectively keep average global temperatures from rising too far.

It may be that implementation of climate change policies and tactics will be most effective if implemented on a smaller geographic basis. Many countries have developed some type of plan for addressing greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. In the United States, the majority of states have developed their own ‘action plans’ for dealing with climate and energy issues.

Nevertheless, without a guiding global action plan, the smaller plans will remain out of context and not aligned to accomplish the overall global goals. Climate change is a worldwide challenge and needs to be directed and coordinated at that level. Only then, can component pieces build into the overall solutions.