Informing Decisions in a Changing Climate (2009) / Chapter Skim
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1 The Need for Climate-Related Decision Support
1 The Need for Climate-Related Decision Support
Pages 9-32
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From page 9... ...
However, decision makers do not know how much standard practices are likely to cost in a changing climate, which changes in those practices would make things better, and by how much. They need new kinds of information, as well as new ways of thinking, new decision processes, and sometimes new institutions, to function effectively in the context of ongoing climate change.
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From page 10... ...
THE CHANGING CLIMATE The climatic changes of the past 10,000 years have occurred in a context of remarkable stability in the average temperature of Earth, which experienced variations of less than 1° Celsius in this period. Since the advent of the industrial revolution (about the mid-nineteenth century)
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From page 11... ...
. The consequences of a warmer Earth, although not precisely predictable, are already evident (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 1-1 2007b; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2003; Arctic Climate Impact Bitmapped axis type replaced Assessment, 2005; National Research Council, 2008a)
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From page 12... ...
found that climate change is one of the principal threats to biodiversity on the planet. In sum, human activities are changing the climate globally, the predicted consequences of climate change are already observable around the world, the global average temperature will soon be higher than previously experienced in recorded history, and climatic changes and their consequences are likely to grow in magnitude.
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From page 13... ...
However, there is still no national, comprehensive program to modify the outdated standards of practice to incorporate climate and land-use change or to allow for periodic updating. Available scientific evidence supports three general observations about climate change that are especially worthy of note for decision making: • Temperature and other climatic parameters are already outside the bounds of past human experience (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007a)
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From page 14... ...
And because climate change and increases in extremes in weather are still accelerating, past observed rates of change in climatedriven events are likely to increase in the future, so that even broad averages of past or current observations will underestimate what lies ahead. These observations imply that, increasingly, practices and decision routines that assume the stability of historical patterns will be out of step with future climate, and so are likely to be suboptimal.
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From page 15... ...
SOURCE: Intergovernmental Panel Fig1-3.eps on Climate Change (2001:Figure 2.32, 155)
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From page 16... ...
Nuclear energy production, which does not emit greenhouse gases, presents a clear example of such consequences because of the longlived radioactive waste it produces. The nuclear energy industry has been plagued by the problem of designing institutions to manage waste disposal satisfactorily over the 10,000-year time frame often cited for safe disposal, and there has been some thinking about ways to handle the problem (e.g., National Research Council, 2000, 2001, 2003)
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From page 17... ...
Informing decisions for a changing climate will need site-specific and relevant baselines of environmental, social, and economic information against which past and current decisions can be monitored, assessed, and changed. Future decision-making success will be judged on how quickly and effectively numerous, ongoing decisions can be adjusted to changing circumstances and situational details.
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From page 18... ...
. Science has developed a general understanding of parts of the system -- such as the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on global average temperature -- but understanding other parts of the system is much less well developed, such as the effects of climate change on the spread of human, animal, and crop diseases.
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From page 19... ...
Climate Change in a Changing World As the climate is changing, human systems are changing and affecting their local environments. The results are that the human consequences of future climate change will be different from what those consequences would have been if they occurred in the current world.
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From page 20... ...
Decision makers need to take the information into account, with its attendant uncertainties, in assessing the potential future benefits of changing their policies, practices, and decision rules against the costs of change, which are immediate and much easier to specify. For example, the costs of policies to mitigate and adapt to climate change are obvious and may be considerable, but the costs of not making such changes in a changing climate, which could be much greater, are rarely estimated.
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From page 21... ...
. A risk management framework, applied to climate change, implies developing best estimates of the probabilities of the various consequences of climate change and related changes in relation to the options available for particular decisions and using techniques such as sensitivity analysis to suggest the best strategies given the likely imperfections in the probability estimates or the underlying models.
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From page 22... ...
Thus, even though the information on which decisions affected by a changing climate are based may become less certain, it is possible -- indeed, increasingly necessary -- to work toward decisions of higher quality, making good use of the information that is available. Conclusion 2: Decision support -- that is, organized efforts to produce, disseminate, and facilitate the use of data and information in order to improve the quality and efficacy of climate-related decisions -- is essen tial to effective decision-making responses to climate change.
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From page 23... ...
Legislators considered and requested information to compare the historic extent of Sierra Nevada snowpack loss to the present extent and projections under various global warming scenarios; project daily ozone formation in the Los Angeles and San Joaquin Valley areas under conditions of low and moderate global warming; project sea-level rise resulting from climate change, including maps of possible flooding at the San Francisco airport; project heat wave days and energy demand resulting from warming; and consider future forest fire risks and forest yields. Since enactment of the law, greenhouse gas reduction timetables have led state agencies to seek information on other activities and factors, such as energy consumers' responses to various conservation programs, off-road vehicle usage, green building technologies, and the chemical properties of pavements.
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From page 24... ...
Managers also expressed a desire to be more involved in research coordination. Lastly, a need was expressed for integration of socioeconomic dimensions of issues, including policy analyses for wetland restoration, shoreline protection and retreat strategies, and infrastructure siting; assessments of social, legal, and economic issues related to shoreline change management alternatives; and best practices, case studies, training, and workshops focused on local- and state-level vulnerabilities and implementation options for coastal management approaches (Coastal States Organization, 2008)
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From page 25... ...
For example, one federal court is considering a claim that environmental impact statements required by the National Environmental Policy Act or by state law must consider climate-related impacts of proposed projects or agency actions. Such a decision could require agencies to develop information and analytic methods to measure greenhouse gas emissions from any project,
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From page 26... ...
They arise from the need for decisions that can limit the rate of climate change, as well as for decisions, large and small, that can alter the consequences or take advantage of the opportunities that arise from a changing climate. These emerging demands, as well as needs that have not yet become demands, led EPA and NOAA to ask the National Academies to conduct this study.
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From page 27... ...
It would consider the range of relevant decisions, decision makers, decision contexts, and spatial and temporal frames. It would consider the strategies and activities now being used for organizing decision support efforts to meet such objectives, as well as other plausible strategies and applicable tools.
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From page 28... ...
Climate Change Science Program, with special attention to sectors and issues of concern to the sponsors." In response, the National Academies created this panel, operating under its standing Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change. Although this request is recent, the federal effort on climate change has long recognized the central importance of decision support for responding to climate change.
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From page 29... ...
The characteristics of climate change make information and communication critically important as policy instruments. For example, climate change is likely to generate events that will require quick and distributed decision making that is sensitive to local conditions and to changing climatic events and national policy concerns.
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From page 30... ...
Federal agencies may also provide decision support to climate-affected constituencies related to their mandates when the constituencies are unable to provide it for themselves. For example, major corporations and large public jurisdictions, such as the state of California and the city of New York, may be able to develop climate forecasts and mitigation and adaptation plans using their own technical and financial resources, but this is not true for smaller jurisdictions, small businesses, Native American tribal groups, and households, among others.
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From page 31... ...
It also develops methods and data for international efforts to monitor greenhouse gas emissions, climate-related events and their human consequences, and the effects of mitigation and adaptation activities. Public Goods Federal agencies can provide decision support services and products that serve a public good that would not otherwise be provided.
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From page 32... ...
The chapter also identifies and explains the key principles of effective decision support and identifies key barriers to achieving effective decision support and ways to overcome them. Chapter 3 elaborates on one of the principles of decision support -- that decision support systems should learn from experience, including from failures.
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