STATEMENT OF DR. ROGER A.
PIELKE, JR.
TO THE
COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND
PUBLIC WORKS
OF THE
UNITED STATES SENATE
Roger A. Pielke, Jr.
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO
pielke@colorado.edu
13 March 2002
I thank the Chairman and the Committee for the opportunity
to offer testimony this morning on the economic and environmental risks
associated with increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
My name is Roger Pielke, Jr. and I am an Associate
Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado where I also
direct the CIRES Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. My research focuses on the connections of
science and decision making. A short
biography can be found at the end of my written testimony.
In
my oral testimony I’d like to highlight six “take home points,” which are
developed in greater detail in my written testimony and in the various
peer-reviewed scientific papers cited therein.
Take Home Points
- Weather and climate
have growing impacts on economies and people around the world.[1]
- The primary cause for
the growth in impacts is the increasing vulnerability of human and
environmental systems to climate variability and change, not changes in climate per se.[2]
- To address increasing
vulnerability, and the growing impacts that result, requires a broader
conception of “climate policy” than now dominates debate.[3]
- We must begin to
consider adaptation to climate to be as important as matters of energy
policy in discussion of response options.
Present discussion all but completely neglects adaptation.[4]
- Increased attention to
adaptation would not mean that we should ignore energy policies, but
instead is a recognition that changes in energy policy are insufficient to
address the primary reasons underlying trends in the societal impacts of
weather and climate.[5]
- The nation’s
investments in research could be more efficiently focused on producing
usable information for decision makers seeking to reduce vulnerabilities
to climate. Specifically, the
present research agenda is improperly focused on prediction of the distant
climate future.[6]
The remainder of this document develops these points
through a case study focused on tropical cyclones. Considerably more detail can be found in the set of peer-reviewed
articles cited in support of the arguments presented here.
Policy debate and advocacy on the issue of climate
change frequently focus on the potential future impacts of climate on society,
usually expressed as economic damage or other human outcomes. Today I would like to emphasize that societal
impacts of climate are a joint result of climate phenomena (e.g., hurricanes,
floods, and other extremes) and
societal vulnerability to those phenomena.
The paper concludes that policies focused on
reducing societal vulnerability to the impacts of climate have important and
under-appreciated dimensions that are independent of energy policy.
In the climate change debate, people
often point to possible increases in extreme weather events (e.g., hurricanes,
floods, and winter storms) as a potentially serious consequence of climate
change for humans around the world. For
instance, the January 22, 1998 issue of Newsweek
carried the following headline: “THE HOT ZONE: Blizzards, Floods, and
Hurricanes, Blame Global Warming.” In
this testimony I use the case of hurricanes to illustrate the interrelated
climate-society dimensions of climate impacts.
Research indicates that societal vulnerability
is the single most important
factor in the growing damage related to extreme events. An implication of this research for policy
is that decision making at local levels (such as related to land use,
insurance, building codes, warning and evacuation, etc.) can have a profound
effect on the magnitude and significance of future damage.[7]
Figure 1 shows economic damage (adjusted for inflation)
related to hurricane landfalls in the United States, 1900-1998.[8] Because damage is growing in both frequency
and intensity, one possible interpretation of this figure is that hurricanes
have become more frequent and possibly stronger in recent decades. However, while hurricane frequencies have
varied a great deal over the past 100+ years, they have not increased in recent
decades (Figure 2, provided courtesy of C. Landsea, NOAA).[9] To the contrary, although damage increased
during the 1970s and 1980s, hurricane activity was considerably lower than in
previous decades.
To explain the increase in damage it
is necessary to consider factors other than climate. In particular, society has changed enormously during the period
covered by Figure 2. Figures 3a and b
show this dramatically. Figure 4a shows
a stretch of Miami Beach in 1926.
Figure 3b shows another perspective of Miami Beach from recent
years. The reason for increasing
damages is apparent from the changes easily observable in these figures: today there is more potential for economic
damage than in the past due to population growth and increased wealth (e.g.,
personal property).
Figure 3b Source:
NOAA Figure 3a Source: Wendler Collection, Florida State Archives Miami Beach circa 2000 Miami Beach 1926
Figure 4b shows the increase in population along the
Gulf and Atlantic coasts for 168 coastal counties from Texas through Maine
(Figure 4a). In 1990, the population of
Miami and Ft. Lauderdale (2 counties) exceeded the combined population of 107
counties from Texas to Virginia.[10] Clearly, societal changes such as coastal population
growth have had a profound effect on the frequency and magnitude of impacts
from weather events such as hurricanes.[11]
Figure 4a
One way to present a more accurate
perspective on trends in hurricane-related impacts is to consider how past
storms would affect present society. A
1998 paper presented a methodology for “normalizing” past hurricane damage to
present day values (using wealth, population and inflation). Figure 5 shows the historical losses of
Figure 1 normalized to 2000 values.[12]
The normalized record shows that the impacts of
Hurricane Andrew, at close to $40 billion (2000 values), would have been far
surpassed by the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926, which would cause an estimated
$90 billion damage had it occurred in 2000.
We can have confidence that the normalized loss record accounts for
societal changes because the adjusted data contains climatological information,
such as the signal of El Niño and La Niña.[13]
The normalization methodology provides an opportunity to
perform a sensitivity analysis of the relative contributions of climate changes
and societal changes, as projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC), to future topical cyclone damages. Figure 6 shows the results of this analysis.[14] The three blue bars show three different
calculations (named for their respective authors) used by IPCC in its Second
Assessment Report for the increase in tropical cyclone-related damage in 2050
(relative to 2000) resulting from changes in the climate, independent of any changes
in society. The four green bars show
the sensitivity of tropical cyclone-related damage in 2050 (relative to 2000)
resulting from changes in society based on four different IPCC population and
wealth scenarios used in its Third Assessment Report. These changes are independent of any changes in climate.
Figure 6 illustrates dramatically
the profound sensitivity of future climate impacts to societal change, even in
the context of climate changes projected by the IPCC. The relative sensitivity of societal change to climate change
ranges from 22 to 1 (i.e., smallest societal sensitivity and largest climate
sensitivity) to 60 to 1 (i.e., largest societal sensitivity and smallest
climate sensitivity). This indicates
that insofar as tropical cyclones are concerned, steps taken to modulate the
future climate (e.g., via greenhouse gas emissions or other energy policies)
would only address a very small portion of the increasing damages caused by
tropical cyclones. Similar results have
been found for tropical cyclone impacts in developing countries,[15]
flooding,[16] other
extremes,[17] and water
resources.[18]
The perspective offered in this discussion paper
raises the possibility that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
(FCCC) has a critical, but largely unrecognized flaw with profound implications
for policy. Under the FCCC the term
“climate change” is defined as “a change of climate which is attributed
directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the
global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability over
comparable time periods.” This
definition stands in stark contrast to the broader definition used by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which states that climate
change is “any change in climate over time whether due to natural variability
or as a result of human activity.”
As a consequence of the FCCC definition,
“adaptation” refers to actions in response to climate changes attributable
solely to greenhouse gas emissions. It
does not refer to efforts to improve societal responses to “natural” climate
variability. Consequently, adaptation
has only “costs” because adaptive responses would by definition be unnecessary
if climate change could be prevented.
Hence, it is logical for many conclude that preventative action is a
better policy alternative and recommend adaptive responses only to the extent
that proposed mitigation strategies will be unable to prevent changes in
climate in the near future. But this
overlooks the fact that even if energy policy could be used intentionally to
modulate future climate, other
factors will play a much larger role in creating future impacts and are arguably more amenable to policy change.
Based on these results implicit in the work of the
IPCC and shown in Figure 6, an increased focus on “adaptation” makes sense
under any climate scenario. But the
Framework Convention is structured to deal only with the growth in impacts
related to the greenhouse gas impacts on the climate (the blue bars) and not
the profound societal vulnerability (green bars) that will dominate future
climate impacts under any climate change scenario.
Consider that the International Red Cross estimates
that in the 1990s around the world, weather and climate events were directly
related to more than 300,000 deaths and more than US$700 billion in damages. [19] Many of these human losses are preventable
and economic losses are manageable with today’s knowledge and technologies.[20] Simple steps taken to reduce societal
vulnerability to weather and climate could also make society more resilient to
future variability and change. Seen
from this perspective, costs of adaptation could easily be exceeded by the
benefits of better dealing with the impacts of climate, irrespective of future
changes in climate and their causes.
The Framework Convention’s definitional gerrymandering of “climate
change” according to attribution prejudices policy and advocacy against such
common sense activities.
An implication of this work is that policy related to societal impacts of climate has important
and under-appreciated dimensions that are independent of energy policy. It would be a misinterpretation of this work
to imply that it supports either business-as-usual energy policies, or is
contrary to climate mitigation. It does
suggest that if a policy goal is to reduce the future impacts of climate on
society, then energy policies are insufficient, and perhaps largely irrelevant,
to achieving that goal. Of course, this
does not preclude other sensible reasons for energy policy action related to
climate (such as ecological impacts) and energy policy action independent of
climate change (such as national security, air pollution reduction and energy
efficiency).[21] It does suggest that reduction of human
impacts related to weather and climate are not among those reasons, and
arguments and advocacy to the contrary are not in concert with research in this
area.
FROM TO
An Alternative Perspective
Conventional View
The arguments presented in this
testimony highlight a need to distinguish “climate policy” from “energy policy”
(Figure 7). “Climate policy” refers to
the actions that organizations and individuals take to reduce their
vulnerability to (or enhance opportunities afforded by) climate variability and
change.[22] From this perspective governments and
businesses are already heavily invested in climate policy. In the context of hurricanes and floods,
climate policies might focus on land use, insurance, engineering, warnings and
forecasts, risk assessments, and so on.
These are the policies that will make the most difference in reducing
the future impacts of climate on society.
The conventional view is that climate
policy is energy policy. However, much of the debate and discussion
on climate change revolves around energy policy and ignores the fact that such
policies, irrespective of their merit, can do little to address growing
societal vulnerabilities to climate around the world. In
all contexts, improving policies targeted on the societal impacts of climate
depends on a wide range of factors other than energy policy. Consequently, in light of the analyses
presented here, a common interest objective of climate policy would be to
improve societal and environmental resilience to climate variability and
change, and to reduce the level of vulnerability. Climate policy should be viewed as a complement, not an
alternative, to energy policies.
Biographical
Information – March 2002
Roger A. Pielke, Jr.
Email: pielke@cires.colorado.edu
Roger A. Pielke, Jr. joined the faculty of the University of Colorado in July 2001. Roger is an Associate Professor in the Environmental Studies Program and a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences (CIRES). At CIRES Roger oversees the development of a new Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. From 1993-2001 Roger was a Scientist at the Environmental and Societal Impacts Group at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado where he studied societal responses to extreme weather events, policy responses to climate change, and U.S. science policy. With a B.A. in mathematics and a Ph.D. in political science, both from the University of Colorado, he focuses his research on the relation of scientific information and public and private sector decision making. His current areas of interest include technology policy in the atmospheric and related sciences, use and value of prediction in decision making, and policy education for scientists. In 2000, he received the Sigma Xi Distinguished Lectureship Award. He chaired the American Meteorological Society’s Committee on Societal Impacts 1999-2002, and has served on the Science Steering Committee of the World Meteorological Organization's World Weather Research Programme and the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of the National Research Council, among other advisory committees. In 2001, Roger received the Outstanding Graduate Advisor Award by students in the University of Colorado’s Department of Political Science. Roger sits on the editorial boards of Policy Sciences, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, and Natural Hazards Review. He is a co-author or co-editor of three books, most recently (with D. Sarewitz and R. Byerly) Prediction: Science, decision making and the future of nature (2000, Island Press).
Figure Captions
Figure 1. U.S. hurricane damage
1900-1998, adjusted for inflation to 1998 values.
Figure
2. U.S. hurricane landfalls, 1851-1998,
figure courtesy of C. Landsea.
Figure
3a. Miami Beach, 1926. Photo from the Wendler Collection, Florida
State Archives.
Figure
3b. Miami Beach, recent decades. Undated photo from the NOAA Arcive.
Figure
4a. Map of 168 coastal counties from
Texas through Maine.
Figure
4b. Population of the 168 coastal
counties from Texas through Maine for 1930 and 1990 based on U.S. Census data.
Figure
5. Historical losses from hurricanes
adjusted to 2000 values based on inflation, population, and wealth. The graph suggests the damage that would
have occurred had storms of past years made landfall with the societal
conditions of 2000.
Figure
6. A sensitivity analysis of the
impacts of tropical cyclones in 2050 based on the assumptions of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The green bars show sensitivity of future impacts to societal changes
and the blue bars show sensitivity to climate changes. Societal changes are the overwhelmingly
dominant factor.
Figure
7. How our perspective on “global
warming” might change. Rather than
defining climate policy as energy
policy, we might instead more clearly distinguish the two with implications for
research and policy.
Endnotes