Why 118 scientists oppose the Energy Permitting Reform Act

@Dana Nuccitelli
Watch out when scientists become advocates…

I think it's fine for scientists to put on ‘advocate hats,' @Robert Blackburn. I'm one of them. And climate and earth scientists can certainly make a strong case that we need to reduce climate pollution much faster than we are, based on their expertise about climate change impacts and risks.

But when it comes to how to best reduce emissions, that's a policy question. Or modeling the emissions reduction efficacy of policies like the Energy Permitting Reform Act, that's an energy systems modeling question. They're not climate or earth science questions. It's just important to make sure we're giving the most weight to the conclusions of the experts in the correct field, like Jesse Jenkins, RMI, RFF, and Third Way in this case, who actually did the careful modeling work that they're experts on.

@Dana Nuccitelli
Political science and science are different fields.

@Rob Johnson, this kind of snarky comment is not productive or useful. CCL is damn lucky to have a smart scientist like @Dana Nuccitelli on staff who writes prolifically for us in our forums, doing a great job explaining complex topics not only in science but political as well.

If we disagree with one another when writing in these forums, we should disagree on the merits of an argument, not cast shade at one another.

@Pete Marsh I did not view the @Rob Johnson comment as snarky at all. I thought he was agreeing with the point Dana was making – that climate science and policy analysis are different areas of expertise.

@Pete Marsh
Those who are opposing us are confusing science and political science. I with CCL all the way. I view your comment as snarky.

@Rob Johnson, then deep apologies for my misinterpreting your comment. Thanks for all you do for CCL. (Thanks also to @Wayne Willis for helping me see it the way you intended. Maybe I was still reverberating from social media trolls when I came back into CCL Community! 😮).

@Pete Marsh
Watch out for the trolls, don’t let them get you, Thanks for everything you do

Jane Flegal did a thorough job critiquing the letter on X/Twitter as well:

@Dana Nuccitelli
I apologize for using the wrong phrase – I ought to have said”

“Watch out when scientists become activists.”

I’m not a troll; I’m a moderate/conservative climate activist dedicated to promoting CF&D.

The issue of politically active scientific researchers is a long-standing topic of discussion, but it is more important than ever in today’s climate arena. There is no lack of scientists, both climate deniers and climate action activists, who have lost credibility by letting their advocacy lead them to biased research.

For CCL, which aspires to nonpartisanship, objectivity and impartiality in scientific matters are crucial.

We aren’t the Siera Club, Friends of the Earth, or Earthjustice. We are grassroots, not primarily funded by wealthy donors. We befriend and educate legislators – we don’t work through the threat of litigation.

If we are to be successful in building bipartisan support for CF&D, how can we be successful if conservatives perceive CCL as a partisan advocate for Net-Zero and JustStopOil?

The following excerpt is from a ScienceDirect publication illustrating the “activism vs. objectivity” continuum that a thoughtful researcher might consider. I believe this is a PhD dissertation. The author, Anand Bhopal, advocates more activism than I would like to see, but it is an informative piece.

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“Are you a researcher or an activist?” I was asked at a recent evaluation of my PhD progress… The examiner's question seemed to be prodding at whether I, as founder and leader of the project, had an agenda. Was this activism [1] behind a veneer of research?

…There are clearly tensions between scientific research and activism. Whereas scientific research involves systematic study of phenomena through observation, documentation and evidence, activism seeks to advance a specific cause.2

…There is a long-standing tradition within the philosophy of science of analyzing objectivity, including how researchers’ own values can impact scientific results and outputs. In his influential essay on objectivity in the social sciences, published over a century ago, sociologist Max Weber set out four stages in which this can occur:

• The choice of a scientific research problem
• The gathering of evidence and relationship to the problem
• The acceptance of a scientific hypothesis or theory as an adequate answer to the problem on the basis of the evidence
• The proliferation and application of scientific research results

…Weber's work has stimulated wide-ranging debate ever since on the ideal of ‘value-free science’ – the view that scientific findings informing democratic political decision making should not be influenced by scientists’ value judgements – as well as the extent to which this is achievable or even desirable.

…Support for the value-free ideal is characterized by Roger Pielke's ‘Honest Broker’. Pielke describes four idealized roles for scientists in the policy process:

• the ‘pure scientist’ consumed with their own research;
• ‘the science arbiter’ solely concerned with answering scientific, rather than normative, questions;
• the ‘issue advocate’ using science to advance specific policy alternatives, and
• the ‘honest broker’ (his favored position) who presents decision-makers with a broad range of alternatives which they can narrow according to their preferences and values (pg. 31).

A central concern for Pielke is ‘stealth issue advocacy’, in which scientists present their role as ‘pure scientist’ or ‘science arbiter’ while advancing a political agenda under the guise of scientific authority. This not only limits the policy alternatives open to decision-makers but undermines the legitimacy of scientific advice in the long run.

Critics, such as Nelson and Vucetich, argue that the purpose of science is not simply to generate facts but to interpret information and synthesize it into knowledge; scientists should be impartial (i.e., open to changing their position on the basis of sound analysis) but not neutral to the findings nor to their responsibility, as citizens and scientists, to advocate.

In their view, the forces driving climate change are so favored by the dominant institutions and policies that abstaining from advocacy is “a de facto support for these processes”; thus, far less time should be spent pondering whether to advocate and far more time spent on how to do so appropriately.

…While the fear of jeopardizing public trust is valid, inaction can also lead to a lack of trust. In this decisive decade for climate action, ‘staying in our lane’ is not a neutral act; it must be justified.

…Despite his clear stance against ‘stealth issue advocacy,’ Pielke [7] recognized the huge societal value of engagement between science and policy, stating:

“If scientists ever had the choice to remain above the fray, they no longer have this luxury.”

…This work started with a simple question: ‘Are you a researcher or an activist?”

It ends with another: must I choose?”

__________

Some more important voices speaking out in favor of permitting reform and/or for the Energy Permitting Reform Act and/or criticizing this scientists' letter:

• Zeke Hausfather (supporting the bill because of the modeled emissions cuts it will achieve)
• Noah Kaufman (critiquing the logic in the letter)
• Ramez Naam (all of the above)
• Robbie Orvis (critiquing the ‘bizarreness’ of the letter)
• Jane Flegal (detailing all the errors in the letter, as noted in a post above)
• Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk (on the need for permitting reform in general)

Scientists or not, I find it hard to believe that all 118 signers took a deep dive into this issue and thoroughly considered the analysis - as pointed out, most don't do policy analysis anyway. I'm always a little skeptical of “sign-on” letters about complex issues that arrive with a request to sign on within days of their arrival. And scientists are human (at least, I'm a scientist and like to think of myself as human) - they are busy with many things, and tend to trust people or organizations they know, especially when confirmation bias is at work. I'm betting that most of these 118 gave this a quick look and signed on, and got on with their day.

@Dana Nuccitelli

At least one of the “early signatories” on that letter is actually an expert in lifecycle emissions analysis for liquefied natural gas. Robert Howarth from Cornell wrote one of the highly influential “LNG is worse than coal" studies (link below).

I'm not saying I agree with the letter, but it does seem like it's worth digging into this a bit more.

I tried doing some of the math myself. It looks to me like Jesse Jenkins used an even more conservative estimate for upstream and midstream methane leakage rates than Howarth did (4% for Jenkins, vs. 2.8% for Howarth). So I think the worst-case aggregate analysis from the Third Way should still hold. But obviously I'm just an anxious layperson. I wish we could get a hold of Howarth to see whether he found some flaw in the analysis.

Hi @Nathan Hatch, we discussed some questionable assumptions in Howarth's research here at the Nerd Corner. And while he has some expertise in methane as a biochemist, he's not an energy systems expert like the modelers whose work this letter is criticizing.