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The Public Values Failures of Climate Science in the US

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Abstract

This paper examines the broad social purpose of US climate science, which has benefitted from a public investment of more than $30 billion over the last 20 years. A public values analysis identifies five core public values that underpin the interagency program. Drawing from interviews, meeting observations, and document analysis, I examine the decision processes and institutional structures that lead to the implementation of climate science policy, and identify a variety of public values failures accommodated by this system. In contrast to other cases which find market values frameworks (the “profit as progress” assumption) at the root of public values failures, this case shows how “science values” (“knowledge as progress”) may serve as an inadequate or inappropriate basis for achieving broader public values. For both institutions and individual decision makers, the logic linking science to societal benefit is generally incomplete, incoherent, and tends to conflate intrinsic and instrumental values. I argue that to be successful with respect to its motivating public values, the US climate science enterprise must avoid the assumption that any advance in knowledge is inherently good, and offer a clearer account of the kinds of research and knowledge advance likely to generate desirable social outcomes.

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Notes

  1. As is common in many policy documents related to federal climate research, I use “climate science” and “global change research” interchangeably.

  2. See Bozeman and Sarewitz (2011, this issue) for a more detailed account of Public Value Mapping in science policy.

  3. See Bozeman (2007) and Bozeman and Sarewitz (2011, this issue) for more on this.

  4. The questions of where the “prediction imperative” in climate science has come from, and why it is so dominant a force in shaping the research agenda, are important and interesting, but require more space than I have here. Maricle (2011, this issue) discusses these issues in a case study examining hazards research (earthquake and hurricane prediction).

  5. It is worth noting that many of these NRC reports were commissioned by the GCRP or CCSP for the specific purpose of providing guidance on these issues.

  6. The CCSP does not offer a clear definition of “high quality science,” though the examples in Table 1 do give some indication of what the term implies. This trope may function as a subtle, perhaps unconscious acknowledgement of the highly politicized nature of climate change debates, in which authority and expertise are routinely contested based on scientific credentials.

  7. To access these reports, visit http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/Library/default.htm#ocp.

  8. However, the allocation of research to particular goals was done by the agencies, so the process is “black-boxed” and most likely based on inconsistent decision criteria.

  9. The chapter on Observing and Monitoring the Climate System does not mention stakeholders but does mention decision support. It mentions users in reference to the science community.

  10. There are a few exceptions to this. NOAA and EPA both have small programs with decision support elements, and those program managers participate in the CCSP. Other departments with decision support capacity (such as Transportation, Interior, and Agriculture) do participate in the CCSP, but through their science programs, rather than their decision support programs.

  11. There is an important distinction to be made here: research on how to apply climate science effectively, though quite necessary, does not in and of itself generate sustained capacity in that regard.

  12. The Strategic Plan specifies that IWG participants should have budget authority within their own agencies. In practice this is not always the case. One IWG co-chair complained to me that he was the only person in the group with budget authority, making it quite difficult from them to implement new priorities, even if they wanted to.

  13. Richard Nelson’s (1959) account of basic science as a public good may describe an economic incentive for basic research investments in a general sense, but specific decisions to invest in, for example, biology, geology, or sociology may have a variety of drivers far removed from the logic of market failure.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks very much to Dan Sarewitz and Barry Bozeman for their guidance and insight throughout the research and writing process. I am grateful to the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes at Arizona State University and the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder, for support of my research on climate science policy, and to many colleagues there who have provided valuable input.

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  1. Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Ryan Meyer

  2. Melbourne School of Land and Environment, 30/3 Hanover St, Fitzroy, VIC, 3065, Australia

    Ryan Meyer

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Meyer, R. The Public Values Failures of Climate Science in the US. Minerva 49, 47–70 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-011-9164-4

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