The Post-Normal Times

Over the next few days this site getting a software upgrade and, finally, a comments feed. So there may be some disruption – but not for long. Hopefully this will solve the problem also of having to do a “site rebuild” to get comments to actually show up.
update: the blog software has been upgraded and the comments should work better now. There is a comments feed but I haven’t yet added it to the template because when I start trying to do things like that, days can disappear… but soon enough, there will be a comments feed.

Apparently, the Bush administration can’t even get that right. In science for policy, disagreements about science are often a disguise for disagreements about what the target should be in the first place, which brings us back to the subject of framing. (For some basics about the concept, Revere at Effect Measure wrote an excellent series of posts that summarize and comment on the ideas of George Lakoff – or you can directly visit the website of the Rockridge Institute that he founded.)

A post by Josh Trevino at Swords Crossed, that has sparked discussion in the blogosphere, and that was brought to my attention by Coturnix, describes the Overton Window, and how it is very systematically and deliberately used by right-wing think tanks to introduce unthinkable and radical ideas into the public discourse, which makes them begin to sound acceptable and sensible, while moving those already so normalized to becoming popular and finally, actual policy. The shift can occur by accident or by design – to which I would add, that strategies can also be designed to take advantage of accidents or crises, like using 9/11 for example, as a pretext for invading Iraq. This isn’t really a new idea – just a formal presentation of the rules of a game that has been played by both sides. Whatever you think of Greenpeace, they have always played an important role in making the more mainstream environmentalists sound reasonable, and they probably deserve much more credit for muckraking than they normally get, given a tendency by the news media and others to only cite authoritative sources.

Another point I would add is that this process also works the other way, to make currently mainstream ideas sound radical and unacceptable, e.g., equating Democrats with socialism or adopting what John Conyers calls “the strawman strategy of identifying a parade of horrors to come if Democrats gain the majority,” in which the Republicans project, for example, what it would be like if he actually became chairman of the Judiciary Committee. In this op-ed, Conyers speaks for himself about what he would do. Lets hear it for oversight hearings – which should be cause enough for all reasonable people of either party to band together.

A few weeks ago I heard some pundits from a right-wing think tank on CSPAN radio who conceded that the Bush administration has been a failure but then, without missing a beat, went on to bemoan that the Democratic party could not be trusted with power and with national security, because they had been taken over by the radical elements of it, i.e., Howard Dean. That anyone could believe that, after knowing how Bush reacted when informed about the 9/11 attacks – by continuing to read My Pet Goat, and how he responded to Katrina – by playing guitar, suggests something is seriously lacking in our educational system. But make no mistake – the failure is not just of the Bush administration. The prospect of “peak oil” would not have us facing as dire of an energy crisis had Reagan not slashed budgets for research on alternative energy sources that were initiated by the Carter administration after the energy crisis of the 1970s, and which forced many smart people to change careers. Most Republicans are probably not science-bashing fundamentalists, but the alliance serves them well. And some even care about the environment, but so far, not enough to take a stand and risk a hold on power made possible by shady alliances.

The Trevino post has sparked discussion in the blogosphere about the fallacy of the democratic strategy of playing to the middle for fear that they will alienate the middle if they play to their base… as Republicans, meanwhile, play to their base and shift the definition of the middle – thereby moving it to the right. In other words, according to thereisnospoon, “You win policy debates by crafting arguments for extreme positions–and then shifting the entire window of debate. You do not win by trying to figure out which position is most popular among Americans right now.”

However, an important point made by Trevino in a follow-up comment posted on Daily Kos is that this is a role played by the right-wing think-tanks rather than by the Republican party itself. What I think is often forgotten when blaming the Democratic Party for playing to the middle is the difference between the roles played by advocates and politicians. I’m not convinced that candidates for office can both frame the debate and get elected, although once elected, they can make good use of the bully pulpit. Which is what Gore is doing, now that he is not planning to run for office, and is not obligated to somebody else’s agenda, which might just make him the best candidate ever. Even if he isn’t ultimately persuaded to run, he could continue to play a critical role in shaping public discourse, and make it safe for those who are candidates to take a stand on controversial issues. Though I still think he would make the best president ever, and, given that we are at a turning point, is exactly who we really need in office – more on that later. Apart from Gore, shaping public discourse and framing debate is an important role played by advocates and real journalists, and now the blogosphere, where we can find the voices of individuals who, like Gore, are unencumbered by the positions of the organizations they work for.

What concerns me even more is the use of familiar frames and nice-sounding concepts, like sound science, data quality, CO2 is life or intelligent design to manipulate and deceive. (For more commentary on the CO2 is life ads put out by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, see posts by the usual suspects: RealClimate, Tim Lambert, Chris Mooney.)

This can make it difficult or impossible to talk about some important ideas that fit almost too well into a grossly distorted and misleading narrative. For example, any talk about uncertainties in climate science inevitably gets distorted by the likes of Benny Peiser who doesn’t pretends not to know the difference between uncertainty of the magnitude and significance of climate change, and uncertainty regarding policies to address climate change, and whose debunked study nevertheless continues to be cited by denialists of human-induced global warming. And then we wind up with confused scientists blaming social theory altogether, rather than the misuse of it by those who seek to discredit the science that provides justification for environmental and other policies that protect public safety and health, and that have broad public support. Odd that they don’t blame Einstein for the atomic bomb, or Darwin for policies of Social Darwinism. Nor was Machiavelli a Machiavellian. More constructive than attacking social theory would be to provide some transparency to its misuse for purposes of social manipulation. So I’ll wrap this up with a quote from Erving Goffman’s book on Frame Analysis (1974) where he refers to the work of Gregory Bateson, who began to talk about framing in a paper first presented in 1954:

The very useful paper by Gregory Bateson, “A Theory of Play and Phantasy,” in which he directly raised the question of unseriousness and seriousness, allowing us to see what a startling thing experience is, such that a bit of serious activity can be used as a model for putting together unserious versions of the same activity, and that, on occasion, we may not know whether it is play or the real thing that is occurring. (Bateson introduced… also the argument that individuals can intentionally produce framing confusion in those with whom they are dealing…

More to come on the subject of Bateson – last week I had the opportunity to have some long conversations about him with Stephen Nachmanovich, who was once his student, and with several others, at a symposium held in honor of the Bateson Centennial (which was officially in 2004) at Concordia University in Montreal.

Then there is Roberto Benigni who, in the film Down by Law, draws a window on the jailhouse wall, and then, by looking at his predicament in a different way, finds a way to climb out. Then he has to find his way out of a swamp, but that is a different problem.

“There are so many causes, and there is no simple solution to it – I just do not feel that they should bear the burden of that” – this time, referring not to cigarette smoking or climate change, but…. to the destruction of the Louisiana Wetlands – they being, “the oil and gas companies that is.” This is the same line of argument that was made in the film “Thank you for smoking” but the quote is from Jim Porter, head of the main lobbying group of the Louisiana oil and gas industry, speaking to Daniel Zwerdling, who produced an NPR radio story on this that aired Saturday morning. Porter maintains that the damage caused by oil and gas operations to the wetlands is less than 10%. Gene Turner, a scientist from Louisiana State University who has been investigating the loss of the Louisiana wetlands – since the 1970s – says that oil and gas operations are responsible for 30-60% of the damage. State officials are unwilling to “play the blame game,” arguing that, when those canals were dug through the wetlands in the 1960s and 70s, it was legal, and nobody knew of their importance – not only for seafood, but for protecting the oil and gas pipelines that are buried in them. Instead, they have joined with industry and environmental groups to launch a campaign to convince taxpayers to foot the bill for wetland restoration – without which New Orleans might as well be abandoned.
But Zwerdling finds that history is also more complex than this story line would have it. First of all, dredging of those more than 8,000 miles of canals through the wetlands, and piling dirt along the banks was legal in the 1970s only because every time a regulation was proposed that would have required a modification of industry practices, the industry, from which the state was getting 40% of its budget, threatened to go elsewhere, threatening loss of revenue and jobs. The piling up of dirt along the banks creates a wall that prevents water from flowing in and out of the marshes. The vegetation then dies, and the soil disintegrates and is replaced by open water. Now they argue that regulation will hurt oil supplies, and that they are already doing their fair share by financing the ad campaign. Zwerdling quotes from an Army Corps of Engineers Environmental Impact Statement dated 1973 which warns that oil and gas activities threatened seafood and wildlife, and also said that damage could be reduced through a change in practices, which the industry refused to do.
I heard a presentation by Gene Turner in 1989 or so, when he had just completed some of the first studies that actually quantified some of these impacts, and from several other researchers who investigated the socioeconomic impacts of offshore oil and gas operations. At the time I was a research assistant for a National Academy of Sciences Committee that was evaluating the Outer Continental Shelf Environmental Studies Program, supposedly done to support decisions of the Minerals Management Service with respect to oil and gas leases. The whole Committee met in the region and was taken on a tour of the coast, in the van of the “Ragin’ Cajuns” football team. As I recall, this was one of the few studies sponsored by that program that said anything conclusive. According to Don Boesch, who at the time was head of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and who had helped to arrange the committee visit to the region, just getting those studies to be done at all took considerable pressure from the scientific community. When I paid a visit to the MMS offices in New Orleans to get documents and maps, I also vividly recall an informal remark from the person in charge of producing Environmental Impact Statements – that if we had another oil crisis, it would no longer be necessary to write those things because people would “just want the oil.” I don’t know if he expected anything like Katrina.
But there is another reason this story made me choke. In my current day job, I write about land and water issues, and about some of the complexities associated with attempts to implement the concept of “payments for watershed services” and the “myth of simple solutions.” And so I have made similar remarks about the difficulty of linking multiple causes and effects of watershed degradation which are separated across large scales of space and time. This is necessary to link management practices of particular land users, to their outcomes and to those who benefit from them – or not. There is, of course, a big difference between my arguments and the standard industry line, but you wouldn’t know it from the soundbites. First of all, I say such things not to excuse anyone from responsibility, but to argue for a learning approach, in which adjustments are made along the way in light of new information – as it becomes available. If the oil and gas industry had their way, no studies would have even been done. Furthermore, in the case of the Louisiana wetlands, we aren’t talking about distant offsite impacts but about dredging operations that have occurred on-site. But even when impacts have distant causes, there is much that science can tell us. If you don’t do the science, or don’t ask questions in a useful way, you will never find out. And sometimes judgments and decisions have to be made with incomplete information.
I could go on and on about this subject and about differences, but for now, if you are interested, you can find more in the Flows bulletin I write, which is archived at www.flowsonline.net, and in several papers that can be found on my personal website.
[5-15-06 - edited to correct typos. Apologies for the delay - I wrote this one in a hurry as I was preparing for a trip I will probably blog about next.]

A few links, via Coturnix that address topics often commented on here at PNT. First, he brought my attention to another science and policy blog that I have just added to the blogroll (Bee Policy, by Jessica Henig). A few posts ago, I made a comment about the Green GOP, and then also wondered if it was just the caffeine – and about the wisdom of using this particular blog to overtly discuss party politics. But these are post-normal times – and, as far as I’m concerned, you either have a grip on reality or you are soaring – and rearranging deck chairs on the Hindenburg – as Steven Colbert so eloquently put it. Anyway, Jessica makes a similar observation about non-fundamentalist conservatives, in Caffeine or righteous indignance:

I am glad — thrilled — that there are non-fundamentalist conservatives, because hopefully they’ll eventually notice and get disgusted with the fact that “their” government is run by a cadre of zealots engaging in a holy war on all fronts. (The numbers would suggest that this realization has already happened, but see the link.) But for non-fundamentalist conservatives to support this administration and to vote for Republicans now really does negate any rationality or love of science they profess. It’s becoming increasingly clear that you must make a choice: Bush or science. If you accept one, you throw the other away.

Then, see this article in BBC news about The battle over certainty, in which historian, Lisa Jardine discusses “how odd it is that non-scientists think of science as being about certainties and absolute truth.” To illustrate this, she presents a historical example she came across in which, Holmes, the captain of a ship who had agreed to test a clock that was developed to enable mariners to find their longitude at sea, “thought that by tampering with his evidence he would please the scientists at the Royal Society. Instead, the too-precise nature of the match between his data and the results they wanted alerted them to the fact that his testimony was unreliable.”

She goes on to conclude: “We cannot afford ourselves the luxury of waiting for evidence which clinches the theory. We are going to have to learn how to participate in debates which are not about certainties.” Which is why, as I stated in the one of the first posts on this blog, if the climate and reality denialists want to talk about uncertainty, bring it on…. They haven’t taken me up on it yet. What I still want them to tell me is, whether all obtainable scientific information would actually make any difference in policy decisions and actual practices of this administration. This is a major area of uncertainty, and, as we move beyond known ranges of climate variability, business-as-usual is certain to create more of it.

Lastly, another update to the blogroll is the InSCights lab, the site of the Science and Society Virtual Network now converted to a blog format, frequently updated with annotated links to important papers on Interfaces between Science and Society. Like this blog, it also came about after discussions that took place at a symposium on Interfaces between Science and Society that took place in Milan in December 2003, which gathered together all of the usual suspects.