Showing papers by "Mike Hulme published in 2011"

Reducing the future to climate: A story of climate determinism and reductionism

Abstract: This article traces how climate has moved from playing a deterministic to a reductionist role in discourses about environment, society, and the future. Climate determinism previously offered an explanation, and hence a justification, for the superiority of certain imperial races and cultures. The argument put forward here is that the new climate reductionism is driven by the hegemony exercised by the predictive natural sciences over contingent, imaginative, and humanistic accounts of social life and visions of the future. It is a hegemony that lends disproportionate power in political and social discourse to model-based descriptions of putative future climates. Some possible reasons for this climate reductionism, as well as some of the limitations and dangers of this position for human relationships with the future, are suggested.

Meet the humanities

Abstract: An introduction needs to be made between the rich cultural knowledge of social studies and the natural sciences.

Is Weather Event Attribution Necessary for Adaptation Funding

Abstract: International funds created largely for funding climate adaptation programs and projects in developing countries were first legally established through the seventh session of the Conference of the Parties (COP-7) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) held in 2001 at Marrakesh. In 2009, at COP-15 in Copenhagen, delegates “took note” of a pledge from developed countries to commit U.S. $30 billion for the period 2010–2012, ramping up to $100 billion per annum by 2020, to support a mixture of climate adaptation and mitigation activities in developing countries. International adaptation finance has therefore been, and continues to be, a significant political issue for the FCCC and for international institutions, such as the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility, and regional development banks ( 1 ). Yet governance arrangements and allocation principles for these climate adaptation funds remain both underdeveloped and politically contested ( 2 , 3 ). A Green Climate Fund for disbursing such funds was established at COP-16 in Cancun, and a Transitional Committee is currently developing operational documents for the fund to be adopted at COP-17 in Durban, South Africa, later this year.

Beyond the Tipping Point: Understanding Perceptions of Abrupt Climate Change and Their Implications

Abstract: This article explores the influence of personal values and ontological beliefs on people’s perceptions of possible abrupt changes in the Earth’s climate system and on their climate change mitigation preferences. The authors focus on four key areas of risk perception: concern about abrupt climate change as distinct to climate change in general, the likelihood of abrupt climate changes, fears of abrupt climate changes, and preferences in how to mitigate abrupt climate changes. Using cultural theory as an interpretative framework, a multimethodological approach was adopted in exploring these areas: 287 respondents at the University of East Anglia (UK) completed a three-part quantitative questionnaire, with 15 returning to participate in qualitative focus groups to discuss the issues raised in more depth. Supporting the predictions of cultural theory, egalitarians’ values and beliefs were consistently associated with heightened perceptions of the risks posed by abrupt climate change. Yet many believe...

Science-Policy Interface: Beyond Assessments

Abstract: In their Policy Forum “The biodiversity and ecosystem services science-policy interface” (4 March, p. [1139][1]), C. Perrings et al. frame the new Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) as a body responsible primarily for assessment. They consistently base their elaboration of the work of IPBES on the experiences of past assessments (such as the Millennium Assessment, the Global Biodiversity Outlook, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and interpret the Busan outcome [recommendations made by a 2010 intergovernmental conference ([ 1 ][2])] solely through the lens of how scientific knowledge is assessed. We believe that the blueprint suitability of previous assessments for the IPBES process is very limited. Strengthening the (mainly global-scale) scientific knowledge base behind assessments is important, but the goals of IPBES should be expanded. First, we should move beyond conventional scientific knowledge assessments that legitimize, almost exclusively, only peer-reviewed material. Knowledge established across all scales (especially the knowledge of local and indigenous peoples) and validated in multiple ways must be eligible for inclusion in IPBES processes. Changes in biodiversity are first experienced locally and thus many forms of local expertise have particular relevance for biodiversity issues ([ 2 ][3]). Second, we should link IPBES assessment results to decision-making at multiple spatial scales (including tackling biodiversity loss at the grassroots level). Both of these goals require all aspects of capacity-building, including empowerment of different kinds of actors, to be reflected in the structural design of IPBES. To achieve this much broader set of objectives as laid out in the Busan outcome, including the explicit incorporation of local and indigenous knowledge, the IPBES structure should knit together existing multiscale networks ([ 3 ][4]) of scientific, policy, and stakeholder communities. 1. [↵][5] United Nations Environment Programme, “Busan Outcome,” Busan, Korea, 7 to 11 June 2010 ([www.unep.org/pdf/SMT\_Agenda\_Item\_5-Busan\_Outcome.pdf][6]). 2. [↵][7] 1. W. Reid et al. , Eds., Bridging Scales and Knowledge Systems: Concepts and Applications in Ecosystems (Island Press, Washington, DC, 2006). 3. [↵][8] Leipzig Workshop Recommendations for a Knowledge-Policy Interface for Biodiversity Governance, 4 October 2006 ([www.ufz.de/data/leipzig\_recom\_final4614.pdf][9]). [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6021/1139.full [2]: #ref-1 [3]: #ref-2 [4]: #ref-3 [5]: #xref-ref-1-1 "View reference 1 in text" [6]: http://www.unep.org/pdf/SMT_Agenda_Item_5-Busan_Outcome.pdf [7]: #xref-ref-2-1 "View reference 2 in text" [8]: #xref-ref-3-1 "View reference 3 in text" [9]: http://www.ufz.de/data/leipzig_recom_final4614.pdf

Book review symposium: Hulme M (2009) Why We Disagree about Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction, and Opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 432 pp:

Abstract: Commentary 1 The reputation of climate science has endured quite a battering over the last few months. Along with the uproar over an inaccurate claim about the pace of glacial retreat in the Himalayas, which was included in the 1000-page technical report of Working Group II of IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, there has been the ongoing scandal over emails stolen and subsequently leaked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Quoted selectively, these emails suggested some skullduggery by several of the scientists involved in some of the iconic temperature reconstructions quoted by successive IPCC reports. The revelations were quickly dubbed ‘climategate’ and ‘the final nail in the coffin of ‘‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’’’ (Delingpole, 2009). Such fulminations would not attract much notice beyond the feverish world of the blogosphere, except that climate policy prescriptions are often framed as the only rational alternative to the findings of climate science. Thus British Prime Minister Gordon Brown responded to the email leaks by reinforcing the centrality of the science to the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009: ‘With only days to go before Copenhagen we mustn’t be distracted by the behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate skeptics. We know the science. We know what we must do.’ British climate change minister Ed Milliband took the same line, accusing conservative columnists of ‘playing politics with science in a dangerous and deceitful manner’ (Carrington and Goldenberg, 2009). Rather than resolving political differences, this instrumental use of science in political debate has led to their extension by leaving the opponents with only scientific grounds for contesting policies that they actually oppose for other reasons. In the 20 years since its creation in 1990, the US Global Change Research Program has spent more than $25 billion, making it one of largest American investments in scientific research ever, and yet the political controversy is, if anything, more bitter than ever. With Kyoto opponents attacking climate science and scientists rather than carbon taxes or cap-and-trade, we are no closer to developing any political consensus, either in the USA or internationally, about what, if anything, should be done about climate change. Mike Hulme’s new book explains why. Climate change, he shows, typically means different things to different people. Rather than regarding this as a problem of willful misrepresentation, public ignorance, or scientific uncertainty to be resolved through improved scientific knowledge and its proper communication, Hulme argues that a multiplicity of understandings of climate change is inevitable because ‘the idea of climate exists as much in the human mind and in the matrices of cultural practices as it exists as an independent objective physical category’ (p. 28). What is striking – and significant – about that claim is less its substance and the occasionally loose way in which concepts like ‘framing’ and ‘construction’ are theorized than its provenance. After Progress in Human Geography 35(1) 132–138 a The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav 10.1177/0309132510374272 phg.sagepub.com

Will foreign-aid pledges materialize?

Abstract: We find that for one-third of grant applications in 2009 to Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council, success is random owing to variability among peer reviewers. Increased competition for restricted research budgets means we must rectify this element of chance in selection. A quota limiting the number of proposals per applicant would thwart researchers who have a high success rate, while improving the odds for others. Barring unsuccessful applicants for one ‘cooling-off ’ round is another idea (Nature 464, 474–475; 2010). Simplifying the application process would reduce costs for both applicants and peer reviewers (for example, some funding agencies request superfluous information). It would help in recruiting good peer reviewers and cut the Innovation: venture capital is vital too