Science Advice to Policy

Throughout this semester we’ve looked into different lenses of people and climate change.  This week while looking at scientists and policy makers it seemed to me that it would be so easy to make the connection between the two, but in reality it’s not.  I went to the showing of “The Island President” this week and that also helped me see the difficulties in translating scientific knowledge into policy action.  In an ideal world we would be able to easily show the evidence and what needs to be done and then be able to implement that into policy throughout the world.  I was really amazed by the amount of work and time that goes into creating the reports.  There are so many people that look over every detail of these papers.  The errors exposed in Jessica O’Reilly’s chapter were interesting to analyze.  The first error seemed so unlikely to make knowing the extensive process that these documents go through before being finalized.  This can absolutely take a toll on the credibility of the IPCC.  On the other hand, the second error was intentional.  I didn’t think about how the documents may change due to who is overseeing them.  In class, we talked about a very conservative leader and how she wouldn’t allow for anything other than certainty.  I like her approach in getting her point across without having the lash back of uncertainty.  It’s interesting to see how different people go about how they will express their main points.  I would like to understand more about the political systems of nations to see how that affects their stance and plan on climate change.