Realise Climate

PhD research into regional and local government implementation of climate change policy
About Me

Hello, I'm Warren Pearce and this is the academic blog for my PhD research: "Climate Change Policy Implementation in the East Midlands".

The research is taking place at the University of Nottingham, and is funded by the ESRC through their CASE programme, alongside East Midlands Councils.

All theory, methods and policy stuff will go on here if it's bigger than a tweet (that's 140 characters). If you're just interested in climate change policy and want to skip the academic stuff, then head to http://realiseclimate.wordpress.com/

If you've got some spare time, you could also check http://warrenpearce.posterous.com/

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Atoms are not people: comparing the natural and social sciences

Following a debate on the utility of social sciences cf. natural sciences as a basis for public policy (see here for some of the comments), I thought it might be time to sketch out some background on the differences between these two (very) broad areas of knowledge.

IS SOCIAL SCIENCE A 'SCIENCE'?
In 1853, Auguste Comte posited that all branches of human knowledge passed through three stages of development: theological, metaphysical and positive. Positive philosophy was the ultimate state for any area of knowledge, where observation and reasoning led to the discovery of laws. Comte regarded the natural sciences as having reached this state, whereas the social sciences were lagging behind - a position restated by Richard Feynman in the Horizon clip above.

Of course, "social science" is a term still in common usage today, which inevitably invites comparison with the natural sciences. Indeed many, if not all, branches of the social sciences have attempted to replicate scientific methods in order to achieve results that measure up to laboratory criteria such as validity, objectivity and generalisability. My argument is that in many cases these criteria are inappropriate for the social sciences, not because the latter is natural science's "poor relation" but because they are fundamentally *different* in character. How so?

LABORATORIES vs REAL WORLD
In the natural sciences artificial, closed environments are created in laboratories. This can not (usually)  be done in social sciences, the 'outside world' is an open system with multifarious potential variables to be measured.  These open systems preclude the discovery of generalised 'laws' which can predict human behaviour across range of circumstances.

WHY WE NEED SOCIAL *AND* NATURAL SCIENCES.
While natural sciences can help us understand the world, we need the social sciences to explain it. The pace of scientific discovery impacts ever more heavily on society, throwing up new questions for politics, religion etc. We need knowledge of the day-to-day language which people use and the personal, prior experiences with which they interpret their world, in order to show us how people come to diverse opinions on such discoveries (e.g. climate change, stem cell research, artificial intelligence). This is an argument made by a diverse range of thinkers such as Wittgenstein, Dilthey, Apel, and Oakeshott.  People do not necessarily come to such opinions by means of a 'rational', scientific process. 

SCIENTIFIC LAWS CAN BE DISPROVED
The world of science is not as 'fixed' as it sometimes appears. Kuhn's groundbreaking Structure of Scientific Revolutions uncovered the social processes inherent in practice of science. The Climategate emails provided a window into some of the less seemly language used by some scientists when discussing their field. Also, scientific results are always, by definition, provisional and waiting to be falsified. Significant assumptions which appear to have strong foundations can be disproved.

STATS IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
The world of social science's pursuing of scientific credibility has the potential to lead to the use of statistics to provide spurious certainty. How have the figures been calculated? Why have the researchers chosen to measure those variables rather than any others? This is not to repudiate the use of quantitative measures in social sciences; they have an important part to play. But they need to be treated with caution.

CRAVING CERTAINTY IN A CERTAIN WORLD
What I think this comes down to is (wo)man's aversion to uncertainty. The scientific method is seductive in holding out the promise of provable facts upon which we can base our decisions. A treatise in the nature of facts is beyond this post, but I would modestly propose that when the scientist takes off their white coat and leaves the lAb, they walk into a world dominated by uncertainty and unknown unknowns. Atoms are not the same as people, and any attempt to think we can come to know the two worlds in the same way are not doomed because social science is in some way deficient, it's because they are irrevocably different.

Posted by Warren Pearce 
 

Scientific evidence, political argument - some thoughts from the @Policy_Exchange event

There was a lot to be said for Tuesday's Policy Exchange event, "Communicating Climate Change on the Right", not least that it got a very wide variety of people in one room: green NGOs, sociologists, policy wonks, MPs, journalists, psychologists, climate scientists, investors and a delegation from climate sceptics/deniers (delete according to preference) GWPF. One of the speakers they listened to was Peter Lilley, who described himself as the "grit in the oyster" of the discussion. Lilley was one of only five MPs to vote against the Climate Change Act in 2008 so I will focus on his contribution here, particularly as I presume he is the kind of person the event organisers had in mind.

Lilley used some familiar rhetorical flourishes to express his position. He began by emphasising his scientific background and that he accepted the existence of the greenhouse effect, thus framing his subsequent speech as quite moderate and 'rational'. However, Lilley later went on to, at best, misinterpret recent global temperature data, stating that there has been no increase in the last 15 years. Lilley attempted to establish his scientific credibility through some general views on the greenhouse effect before employing a somewhat dubious reading of the data in order to resist the case for cutting emissions.

Unsurprisingly, many of the people in the room cried foul at this. Fair enough - one could imagine a scientist providing a convincing rebuttal of Lilley's presentation. Indeed, Chris Rapley from the Met Office did just that in the Q&A session (after objecting to the appropriation of the word 'sceptic' by Lilley et al as he felt they were not being sceptical in the scientific sense). What I take from this is that *scientific* evidence is not sufficient to win a *political* argument. While Lilley did say at one point that "Conservatives are rational", couching his objection to the Climate Change Act in terms of cost-benefit analysis, perhaps a more telling line was that "climate change isn't a problem of communication, it is one of conviction and belief".

Speaking before Lilley, psychologist Adam Corner posited that "the climate narrative was infused with the language of the left". Debates often focus on increasing regulation and/or taxation, international agreements and, at the extremes, conspiracy theories of world government. If one has an innate opposition to such policy options then it becomes less likely that evidence, scientific or otherwise, will make much impression on such core beliefs. Of course "scientific evidence" is often used by different groups of people at different times - so while a green NGO may stress the importance of scientific evidence within climate policy, it may be rather more sceptical of evidence from similar sources in the GM crop debate.

One could conclude from this that there are various tribes of people whose different core values are going to determine the weight they give to different 'evidence' that comes their way. Rather than as a counsel of despair, I think this opens up a question that the event sought to pose, but didn't quite get round to addressing on the night: could a more localist 'bottom up' approach be compatible with climate change policy? As Corner highlighted, many on the Right see climate change as an issue of the Left. I would actually go further than this and say that even many who accept the general arguments about the need for action, it is an issue too far removed from their core priorities.

So the key to communicating climate change may be not to talk about climate change at all. Fuel security, cutting fuel poverty, fuel efficiency, households using microgeneration to escape the grip of the Big Six. These are all ideas which may speak to the Right's concerns more than 'climate change'. They should not be seen as a direct substitute - pursuing these aims is very likely to lead to a cut in carbon emissions, but does not amount to the same thing as prioritising the latter. However, as the Hartwell Paper argued in the aftermath of Copenhagen, a more circuitous route to cutting emissions may actually prove more fruitful than one which seems direct, but is in danger of running into the sand.

FURTHER READING FROM THE EVENT

Good perspectives from Damian Carrington (one of the speakers) and Carbon Brief's Ros Donald

LSE's Bob Ward linked to this overview of recent temperature trends, rebutting Lilley's assertion that warming has stopped

Posted by Warren Pearce 
 

We need *less*

No cuts and a tamborine

Lucky to be attending an event called "Education for the Crisis" at De Montfort University later this month, which seeks to find a way forward for education in light of the crises and disruptions of the early 21st century. Thinking about these ideas, I've written down an idea that's been rattling around my head for a while, essentially how those opposing capitalism and the cuts are overlooking the environmental and resource crises which are intertwined with the degradation of capitalism, and how it's hard to argue against cuts when we all need to survive with *less* in the future.

This is a rough draft. If the words within it mean anything to you at all, please leave a comment below:

When we think about education and the crisis, we might think about what the former might say about capitalism. When capitalism becomes the subject of discussion, thoughts may turn to the swirl of street protests over the last two years. While some of this action has been unfocused (sometimes, deliberately so), a common thread through much of these actions has been resistance to cuts in services and funding by the Coalition Government. These ideas come together for many on the left, who argue both against the cuts and against capitalism. But this position fails to take into account the environmental and resource aspects of the crisis.

In common with other Western countries, the UK derived its wealth from its position at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution combined with the advantages of colonial power. This wealth came through the use of a disproportionate share of the world's natural resources, with environmental consequences across space and time. Consequently, the West can afford (once comfortably, now less so) annual welfare budgets which cost more than the total GDP of most countries.

If all the world's countries consumed resources at the same rates as the West, we would need well in excess of the one planet's resources we have at our disposal. This implies an urgent need to reduce our own consumption. This in turn implies a reduction in (material) wealth and the tax base, and with them the ability to support the existing scale of the welfare state. We can argue that cuts are uneven and unfair (in particular those aimed at the disabled) or that we could reduce spending in other areas of government (e.g. defence, international development), but if the pie gets smaller then so do the slices within it. To deny this is in fact an acceptance of the West continuing to consume a disproportionate share of natural resources in order to prop up GDP, and with it the welfare state papering over the ever-widening cracks.

As a result the environmental and economic crises throw notions of social justice into sharper focus. Squeezing the total national wealth threatens escalating poverty without more radical redistributive measures. But it also highlights the folly of 'business-as-usual' and defending the status quo, no matter what side of the political argument we come from.

What does this mean for education? Well, I think we need to find out. Not because I want to zero in on the welfare state, it is just an example of how the crisis cuts across the old left-right spectrum and needs to challenge our thinking on the institutions cherished within our political traditions. We need to fight for the goals of the present, not to protect the symbols of past struggles...

 

Posted by Warren Pearce 
 

Sorry MLA... this is how you *really* cite a tweet in an academic paper.

Today is #Twitter shirt Tuesday!

Seen lots of linking to this Atlantic piece on the Modern Language Association's new guidance for citing a tweet, and felt moved to respond as I think the advice could be much better. I use Harvard APA rather than MLA, but whatever referencing system you use, the object of the exercise must be to enable your reader to cross-reference your source material for themsleves. MLA's proposal falls short on this score:

Last Name, First Name. (User name). "The tweet in its entirety". Date, Time. Tweet.

In his Atlantic piece, Alexis Madrigal describes the decision to omit the unique URL of the tweet as "curious", relying instead on a timestamp based on the timezone of the reader, not the author of the tweet. I'd say it's more than curious, it's just plain *wrong*.

Trying to guess the timezone of the paper's author and cross-reference it to an old tweet, especially, if the tweeter is prolific, would be a thankless task. While I'm sure Twitter addicts (myself included) would love to have their social media of choice further validated by a bespoke referencing method, it really is surplus to requirements.

Let's go back to basics and use the Harvard APA method for citing a web page:

Name of author (Year of publication). Title of website based article. Retrieved date accessed, from web address.

Here we gain two vital pieces of information. Firstly, the unique URL for the tweet which offers a one-click check of the source material for the reader, rather than having trawling through old Twitter timelines until getting back to the date of the tweet. Secondly, we know the date it was retrieved by the paper's author. This could be important if a tweet was deleted subsequent to its retrieval (a good academic author should keep an archive of retrieved web material as content often moves/changes/vanishes).

Also, note the information we gain by using the title of the page (i.e. the title displayed at the very top of the browser window and in the tab). This always takes the format: 'Twitter / username: first few words of tweet...'. So for this tweet:

The reference appears as follows:

Pearce, W. (2012, March 1). Twitter / @WarrenPearce: Telegraph readers will be ... . Retrieved March 6, 2012 from https://twitter.com/#!/WarrenPearce/status/175346628666994688

The reader can still identify the material as a tweet, as well as the user name, and we add in a straight-to-the source URL. This provides greater clarity than the MLA's proposal while maintaining the format already in use for web material.

Although of course you may feel differently. If there are any improvements to be made, do let me know...

 

 

Posted by Warren Pearce 
 

Stick to your timetable, not your plan.

Yesterday's supervision

The end of January saw a supervision session for the second of three (planned) data chapters, which went pretty well. Even though I wrote 3-4,000w less than intended for both chapters, I've submitted both on time. It was very tempting to try and postpone the deadline and subsequent supervision by a week, but I am coming to believe that time is a more important variable in the writing-up process than word count. Three reasons for this:

  1. It's important to get timely advice on draft chapters - no point postponing to write more words only to find that your supervisors think you've gone off track. It's much easier (both practically and psychologically) to add a few thousand words to an academically sound draft than rewriting the bulk of a longer draft that has run into the sand.
  2. Sticking to deadlines lends you the air of competence - professionalism, even! Slipping deadlines are all too common in doctoral studies - why not surprise your supervisors by sticking to yours? Apart from avoiding the time-suck of rearranging supervision meetings,  your supervisors will be providing you with a reference (or maybe even interviewing you) for a job somewhere down the line. Proving to them you can carry off a big project on time can only be good news.
  3. You are not only proving yourself to others, you are proving to you that you can stick to your timetable. The days leading up to the deadline are hard hard hard. For me, it doesn't seem to matter when I start writing, I always have '000s of words to get done in the last week. The temptation to postpone is immense. But my strong advice is to hand in on time, even if your submission is not quite what you were planning, for imposing some mastery over time during the writing up will give you some much needed self-confidence on the rock road to your doctorate.

Time is a pretty malleable concept within the PhD. Traditionally, students seem to take well over the idealised three year duration. The PhD is certainly a project that requires more work than any other in a student's academic career. Naturally, you want to get it right, but I strongly believe it needs to get done on time. Practically speaking, I know too many people who have gone into their fourth year and suddenly hit 'the wall' just when they thought they were on the home straight. Often, they've needed to take new jobs after the PhD funding has run out. Sometimes, the sheer length of time working on one topic has taken its toll, intellectual fatigue setting in.

But the big one for me is: how long do I really want to spend doing one thing? There's a lot of stuff in this world that needs fixing. Maybe my PhD will help with a very small part of that, maybe it won't. Whichever it is, I'm unconvinced that spending an extra 6 months, 12 months, 18 months writing and re-writing will improve it enough to make the extra time worthwhile. Even if you could *guarantee* that such an extension would improve your thesis, you may well gain in the long run by instilling some temporal self-discipline.

Filed under  //  Time   time management   writing  
Posted by Warren Pearce 
 

An introduction to Interpretive Policy Analysis - lecture synopsis

Falling Apple

I've written and delivered a two-hour session on Interpretive Policy Analysis (IPA) to both undergrad and postgrad students at University of Nottingham this semester. The first hour introduces the topic, looking at three aspects:

  1. What difference does IPA make?
  2. Why do we do IPA?
  3. What are the problems of using IPA?

The lecture is based around the work of Yanow (1996; 2000) and Bevir and Rhodes (2006). The synopsis should be treated as lecture notes; they are not suitable for citation in essays.

While being highly recommended, if the books by Yanow and Bevir and Rhodes prove difficult to obtain, there are plenty of other excellent journal articles and conference papers, available online, in the bibliography below. Yanow (1992) is particularly good on the importance of metaphors in policy analysis.

Below the fold you can find the lecture synopsis, workshop materials and the bibliography.

Read the rest of this post »

Filed under  //  mark bevir   Nottingham   Tram   Workplace parking levy   decentred networks   dvora yanow   interpretive   lecturing   rod rhodes  
Posted by Warren Pearce 
 

Zero to hero: struggling to get the word count moving.

750_words_pic

Well, last Friday marked a milestone in this PhD, I submitted the first proper draft chapter, weighing in at a touch under 10,000 words. The chapter was about the idea of 'embedding' policy, but I'm not reflecting on that in this post, rather the fairly painful writing process that got me there.

1. Getting started.
It's unsurprising that, even after dividing it up into 'bitesize' chunks, the point at which you're beginning writing up feels like the foothills of Everest. I'd read plenty of advice about how to get started on writing. The reality turned out to be rather like one of those marathon runners who starts so far back that it takes them an hour just to cross the start line.

'Free writing' of the type proposed by 750 Words and others has helped me in the past. But under significant time pressure the 'just write anything and sort it out later' advice didn't really work for me this time. Instead, on one occasion I found myself recreating the experience of watching Dr. Who 30 years ago, peering through my fingers at the screen hoping it would all go away.

2. Out of practice.
Perhaps the problem is that the 750 Words approach isn't a 'break glass in emergency' option. You need to put the hard yards in by getting in the daily writing habit. That way, you've already won half the battle. I had deluded myself that I'd be doing a lot of writing in my second year, but I really hadn't. I wrote a ~2000w Project Memo for my monthly supervision meetings, which mostly contained some vignettes from my fieldwork with the odd update on policy developments. While these were important to reflect on fieldwork, and were supported by my supervisors, they were in no way the same kind of writing that I did in my first year, when I wrote two literature reviews and a research methods paper. Of course, it's difficult to fit in bigger pieces of writing in between the knowns and unknowns of organising and carrying out fieldwork. However, I'm not sure it's the length of the writing that was the problem. What was missing was...

3. Making an argument.
Structuring the arc of an argument, bringing in relevant fieldwork and relating it to theory is not an easy business, and paralysed me at the start. In particular, I was unsure whether I had done sufficient data analysis to get going. I had to take a practical decision on that one, and commit to continuing the analysis as I continue over the next few months. I certainly knew enough to write the kernel of the first chapter and work outwards. But even this, which had been rattling round my brain for a few months proved remarkably difficult to get down on paper in even a structure, let alone a fully fledged piece.

STUNNING PIECES OF ADVICE
...are in short supply here. But here's a couple of tips you might want to consider when getting going on analysis:

1. Get in the writing habit EARLY.
Umpteen bloggers would have said this before me, but it bears repeating. If you can do a 750 Words every day, you're giving yourself some rather sturdier crampons when it comes to climbing Everest than writing a couple of thousand every month as I did.

2. Start with the data.
For qualitative research, this is kind of like free writing but for analysis. Don't be afraid to put in chunks of quotes from interviews etc in the body of your text. You'll probably find yourself with a 'brick wall' piece of writing in the early stages, where large bricks of quotes are separated by thin strips of analysis and linking text. As you review, you'll find yourself being able to put more of the quotes into your own words, and expand on the analysis as you make the links with the theory. But starting with the data - that's what your chapter is about after all - is a good way to jump start your writing, as well as the not inconsiderable benefit of shifting that pesky word count of zero.

LINKS
750 Words http://750words.com/
(picture comes from stats on one day's "free writing")

Filed under  //  750words   writing  
Posted by Warren Pearce 
 

Excellent writing tips by James Hayton, incorporating a bit of #dataviz #Pomodoro and #GTD

Top 10 tips for a trouble-free thesis

  1. Never just sit down and try to type. It's common to hear advice in the vein of "just get words down", but it doesn't work that way. Get your brain and content in order first.
  2. Use pen and paper before pixels. Get the disordered ideas out of your brain and onto physical paper first, then try to put them in order before you start typing. It'll save you huge amounts of time.
  3. Don't turn on the computer until you know what you're going to work on, otherwise you'll end up stuck in a default loop of e-mail and Internet until guilt catches up with you.
  4. Get your mind into the right state to work before you sit down at the desk. I decide what to work on, then do a five minute physical warm-up to get the blood flowing before I type. A walk around the block can work too.
  5. Give yourself time away from the computer to think. Archimedes had his bathtub, Newton had his apple tree and Feynman had his wobbling plate. Your brain can do great things when you relax.
  6. Not all content is of equal value. Spend more time and effort on the best results and references. Making the thesis longer with sub-standard work only reduces the overall quality. Less is more!
  7. See your progress: I use a 4 × 10 grid on a sheet of A4 above my desk. Each block in the grid equals 500 words, which I filled in as I went. Small habit, huge difference in morale and productivity.
  8. Work in 25 minute bursts of high energy and focus, with five minute breaks in-between. Use a timer, work on one thing and stop when the timer goes off. Take a longer break after four rounds.
  9. Get into the habit of finishing sections, rather than leaving them for later. This means setting small tasks that you can complete quickly.
  10. You won't follow all of the advice all of the time. That's fine, but if it's not going right, take a step back, look at your habits and start again.
via blog.nopkoguo.net

Click on the link above, the whole article is well worth a read (thx to @jennifermjones for the tip).

Filed under  //  dataviz   writing  
Posted by Warren Pearce 
 

How can I discuss research themes on a blog?

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image credit: Spiff_27

As I've mentioned before, ths blog has been in something of an hiatus while I've been doing fieldwork, as the project has mushroomed in size.

Fieldwork began with a focus group in June 2010, since when I've been conducting interviews and observing meetings with people from around the East Midlands (and beyond). The last piece of fieldwork will take place at the end of August, leaving 13 months to analyse and write before thesis submission.

During that time, I'm planning to reboot this blog and explore (in short form) some potential themes from the research.

What are the potential risks of doing this? Some have warned me about the possibility of academic material being...err...nicked before it's put into a paper or thesis.

If any readers have any experience, advice or articles they can provide me with, it would be much appreciated. Particuarly as I can expect my supervisors to be rather sceptical...

 

UPDATE - some Twitter feedback on the question to go with the comments here on the blog.

 

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Filed under  //  fieldwork   methods   research methods  
Posted by Warren Pearce