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|  |  | | (This debate is closed and is a read-only archive) | | Who has the expertise on climate change?
[26-Nov-2001]
| Stanley Pignal raises the vexed question of who you trust in relation to climate change, and asks that scientists stick to their areas of expertise (Reader responses, 21 November). I guess that is okay - but it can be taken too far, as we are all citizens of the world with a voice on the big issues that face us.
| On the question of expertise and climate change, one ought really to distinguish meteorologists from climatologists. The former tend to have a background in physics or applied mathematics (the sciences needed to understand the transport of energy and materials in the atmosphere and oceans). Climatologists tend to come from a geography background, and thus bring a strong spatial appreciation to detect patterns in the outputs of meteorological processes such as weather circulation modes, rainfall and temperature data. In this context, the University of East Anglia is principally known for its climatology, not meteorology. The two do interact strongly, but the climatologists are mostly in the driving seat when representing the risk of climate change to the world.
| A similar distinction can be found in other relevant areas - biogeographers, economic geographers and geomorphologists again provide a strong spatial input to species distribution, global food production, grossed up information on national and regional economies, and soil/land use. As with weather, many of the key figures in climate change come from geography rather than the process-oriented core scientists. It is perhaps not surprising that this should be so. Because the geographical community deals with outputs rather than with arcane processes it comes nearer to providing the public with information it can digest. However, there is a danger in this: the geographer's traditional approach is basically a phenomenological one, by which I mean that it declares the facts of the phenomenon and leaves it at that.
| So if the weather records for the 1990s show them to be windier/wetter/warmer than the 1980s then so be it. A graph is drawn and the contrast can be seen. Drawing inferences from the facts, I maintain, is an art of a different kind. And it is in this area where I think many tend to fall down. I was recently present at a scientific meeting where a climatologist presented graph after graph of this type. Being a meeting about climate change, he did not leave it there but used his graphs to suggest a strong and continuing trend towards a 'floodier' future. I certainly felt he was going beyond his expertise: no tests were reported about the statistical significance of the difference between the two parts of the record - the sort of thing that Professor Lomborg is so hot on.
| I would argue that a very high level of significance is appropriate in a politically charged field such as climate change, where measures are called for that are expensive and in competition with other needs of society. (This is my take on the precautionary principle!) In case anybody is wondering what expertise I have to hold these views, I am an engineering hydrologist with a strongish background in practical statistics, a 30-year interest in climate variability, and a pre-retirement history of managing a £20million NERC programme of research into climate change.
| Max Beran, UK
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