Glaciergate and the IPCC

GLACIERGATE, EAST ANGLIAGATE, HOLLANDGATE AND CULTURAL THEORY

Many years ago, Mary Douglas explained that cultural theory is a
theory of "selective attention", and it is selective attention (and
not conspiracy or fraud, or rather not just conspiracy and fraud) that
is at the heart of these trust-sapping surprises that have overtaken
the IPCC. So, if there is a theory of selective attention, we should
use it, especially since it has already been used over about 20 years
now to explain similar upsets (including some in the Himalayan
region that are extraordinarily similar to those we find
in Glaciergate). Such upsets, this theory argues, stem from just one
"voice" having become "hegemonic": able, that is, to exclude and, if
need be, to silence other, dissenting or challenging voices. The theory
further argues that there are just four voices: the hierarchical (the
IPCC's voice), the individualist (the Institute of Economic Affairs'
voice, for instance, but also that of many of the outfits that the
IPCC has demonised as "denialist" or purveyors of "voodoo science"),
the egalitarian (the voice of unco-opted environmentalist movements
such as Earth First!, who see the problem as far more serious and
pressing than does the IPCC) and the fatalist (James lovelock, for
instance, who, pointing to serious omissions in the IPCC's models,
argues that all the talk of limiting climate change to between 2 and 4
degrees is pointless, since the climate is set to increase by at least
4 no matter what we do).

The IPCC should have been designed and now needs to be re-designed so that it is what is called a "clumsy institution": a set-up in which each of these 4 voices is (a) able to make itself heard and (b) is then responsive to the others. If social scientists can show self-proclaimed "hard" scientists how to do science properly when they venture into areas characterised by high levels of uncertainty and the potential for intense politicisation then those "hard" scientists, as
scientists, should listen.

In a major new introduction, By Michael Thompson and Dipak Gyawali, to the re-published Uncertainty On A Himalayan Scale (1986, Lalitpur,Nepal: Himal Press) a major upset is revisited - it was over totally mistaken claims about the rate of deforestation in the region - that is uncannily similar to the current upset over the rate at which the Himalayan glaciers are disappearing. Again and again and again it was asserted, often to one or even two decimal points, that the rate at which the burgeoning population in the hills of Nepal were removing the trees that held those steep and unstable slopes together was such that they would soon all be gone. "Ten years to baldness" was the claim, with the World Bank, slightly more cautiously, asserting that "By the turn of the century {at that time, 15 years away} there would be no accessible forests left in Nepal". All these claims, it turned out, could be traced back to just one draft report (for the US Library of Congress). All ignored the 20 or so research projects that had tried to measure the two key rates: per capita fuelwood consumption and the sustainable yield from forest production. These studies, once collated, showed that the estimates of the first variable varied by a factor of 67, and of the second variable by a factor of 150. Take the two most pessimistic estimates and the Himalaya would indeed be as bald as a coot almost overnight. But take the two most optimistic estimates and those same mountains would shortly sink beneath the greatest accumulation of biomass the world had ever seen. Hence our title "Uncertainty On A Himalayan Scale". Yet all the key institutions - bilateral aid agencies, the United Nations various agencies, the World Bank and so on - ignored that uncertainty, choosing instead to zero in on the one certainty that suited the solution they were anxious to deliver: "10 years to baldness".

We dubbed this "validation by repetition", and it is of course, the
antithesis of the scientific method. Those who selected this certainty
were then able to go unchallenged because, in the development context that existed in Nepal at that time, they were able to exclude any voices that might have challenged that assertion. Eventually, of course, some other voices were able to force their way in and thedebilitating hegemony collapsed.

Fast forward now to 2009/2010 and we find almost exactly the same thing happening with the IPCC and its certainty over the retreat of the Himalayan glaciers as a result of man-made climate change: "all the glaciers will have disappeared by the year 2035" (2030, in the case of the rather more impatient NASA). And just as with deforestation 30 or so years earlier, we find that all these assertions can be traced backto just one far-from-reliable source: validation by repetition!

In the new introduction to the Uncertainty Book a whole gaggle of similarly hyped and unsubstantiated assertions over the three or so decades since its first publication are brought into focus. And again we find that, in every case, it is because just one of the four voices identified by cultural theory has managed to achieve hegemony.

Michael Thompson

Ecological Thinking, Systems Thinking and Complexity

Learning to talk about organisations as sociosystems - or, more accurately, as micro-sociosystems, to use the Gallic precision of Alain de Vulpian - we become more aware of context, of multiple causes and multiple effects, of systems within systems, of physical/social/organisational/economic/psychological environment and, ultimately therefore, of ecology.

A lot of what Triarchy publishes relates to the ecology of organisations. This is nothing to do with changing lightbulbs; it's more about the nexus/plexus in which the organisation nestles. (Maybe we can even imagine an organisational equivalent of Miller's Rosy Crucifixion Trilogy. We started with the Organistional Shadow Side Audit but perhaps need to ask the JIC to sex it up a bit.)

I was reminded of all this whilst reading Sarah Sculman and Chris Vanstone's fab blog at InWithFor about measuring social impact. Referring to John Seddon's work on targets (or, more precisely, off targets), they ask: "how can we start to measure more meaningful things?"

Their ensuing definition of a good measure includes the requirement that it should be:

(4)    Ecological

Good measures are multi-layered. They don’t just give us insight into what’s going on at an individual level, but at a relational and structural level too. Good measures, in other words, capture context as well as behavior. Here, we draw on the work of Urie Bronfenbrenner who is pretty famous (in geeky academic circles) for his model of ecological development. That model says that our behaviors are not only shaped by our immediate environments (e.g. our homes, our schools, & our workplaces) but by the interactions between our environments, as well as by the broader social, cultural, and economic context. That means if we want to solve something that is going on at home, we may need to look outside of the home, to the workplace, and to the relationship between the workplace and the small business regulations government recently put into place. Yup, it’s complicated. And while we can’t always measure everything (nor would it be cost effective to do so), we can at least widen the viewfinder.

A lot of it comes down to metaphors. Bronfenbrenner uses the Russian Doll metaphor to describe an approach to ecological development and ecological thinking. I think Gregory Bateson did too, though his preferred metaphor is of the woodman cutting down a tree: the tree has an impact on the woodman and his axe as surely as the axe does on the tree.

Others, like Carl Sagan, talk about the little blue dot - looking from the Milky Way back down onto the Earth with the overview afforded by cameras in space. Still others, like Suprapto Suryodarmo, remind us that ecology means 'home talking' and invite us to consider the world from lying on the ground looking up and out - from underview. Others remind us that ecoology relates to niche, to a feeling sense of place and, in terms of performance, to the site specific.

Psychogeography highlighted the interrelationship of individual and urban environment. Mythogeography takes a broader, more layered approach. For some, all this 'Systems Thinking' is outdated. Russ Ackoff later preferred the term 'Design Thinking' but meant more or less the same thing. Others prefer the term 'Complexity', while others remind us that the plic and plex in Complicate, Plexus and Complexity refer to folding, meshing, braiding - folding over and over like the brain or the universe to permit extraordinary leaps and connections.

Now a bibliography longer than the blogette:

Towards the Third Modernity: How Ordinary People are Transforming the World ~ Alain de Vulpian
The Rosy Crucifixion Trilogy ~ Henry Miller
The Organisation Shadow-Side Audit ~ Bill Tate
InWithFor ~  Sarah Sculman and Chris Vanstone
Systems Thinking in the Public Sector: the failure of the reform regime... and a manifesto for a better way ~ John Seddon
The Ecology of Human Development ~ Urie Bronfenbrenner
Steps to an Ecology of Mind ~ Gregory Bateson
The Pale Blue Dot - Carl Sagan
Suprapto Suyodarmo
The Ecological Body: Niche ~ Sandra Reeve
Mythogeography: A Guide to Walking Sideways - Phil Smith
Adventures in Complexity: For Organisations Near the Edge of Chaos ~ Lesley Kuhn
Systems Thinking for Curious Managers: With 40 new Management f-LAWS ~ Russell L. Ackoff