Centre for Knowledge Integration

Energy intensity, or the ratio of energy consumed per unit of economic activity, is often used as a proxy for energy efficiency. Many historical studies show that energy intensity decreases over time; however, energy intensity is often so aggregated that it is difficult to tease apart why energy intensity decreases. This paper considers the case of delivered electric energy intensity in the U.S. among sectors with the largest electricity demand -- industry, residential buildings, and commercial buildings -- and documents trends from1985-2004 using the logarithmic mean Divisia index method. It also investigates trends assumed by the Energy Information Administration in its reference case projections for delivered electricity demand to the industrial sector in the 2008 Annual Energy Outlook (AEO). Overall findings are that activity (GDP growth, population growth, increased commercial floor space) is the largest contributor to energy use in all demand sectors. Efficiency gains in each sector vary substantially, and structural effects completely offset efficiency gains in the residential and commercial sectors from 1985-2004. Over this same period, structural influences on aggregate industrial delivered electricity intensity were about equal to efficiency gains. In the AEO 2008 reference case, it was found that 20-year trends for structural change and efficiency improvements in the industrial sector were assumed to be similar to those observed from 1985-2004. However much more modest assumptions for industrial activity are what enable a low projection for industrial electricity demand in the AEO 2008 of no greater than 8% above 2006 levels. These findings underscore two things: (1) The need for structural policy interventions in addition to technological development, and (2) the applicability of index decomposition methods to long-term forecasts.

In this presentation, we summarize a “walk through” for deciding assumptions in basic versions of new socioeconomic scenarios for climate change research. Aside from applying techniques that could identify sets of assumptions that are internally consistent, we also found that many decisions would have to be made simply to operationalize the logic of the scenario axes for mitigation and adaptation challenges. Our experience with these fundamental questions may be not only thought-provoking but also provide a model for how to develop new socioeconomic storylines.

Scenarios are key tools in analyses of global environmental change. Often they consist of quantitative and qualitative components, where the qualitative aspects are expressed in narrative, or storyline, form. Fundamental challenges in scenario development and use include identifying a small set of compelling storylines that span a broad range of policy-relevant futures, documenting that the assumptions embodied in the storylines are internally consistent, and ensuring that the selected storylines are sufficiently comprehensive, that is, that descriptions of important kinds of future developments are not left out. The dominant approach to scenario design for environmental change research has been criticized for lacking sufficient means of ensuring that storylines are internally consistent. A consequence of this shortcoming could be an artificial constraint on the range of plausible futures considered. We demonstrate the application of a more systematic technique for the development of storylines called the cross-impact balance (CIB) method. We perform a case study on the scenarios published in the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES), which are widely used. CIB analysis scores scenarios in terms of internal consistency. It can also construct a very large number of scenarios consisting of combinations of assumptions about individual scenario elements and rank these combinations in terms of internal consistency. Using this method, we find that the four principal storylines employed in the SRES scenarios vary widely in internal consistency. One type of storyline involving highly carbon-intensive development is underrepresented in the SRES scenario set. We conclude that systematic techniques like CIB analysis hold promise for improving scenario development in global change research.

The framework for the new scenarios being developed for climate research calls for the development of a set of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), which are meant to differ in terms of their challenges to mitigation and challenges to adaptation. In order for the scenario process to fulfill its goals, the research and policy communities need to develop a shared understanding of these concepts. This paper focuses on challenges to adaptation. We begin by situating this new concept in the context of the rich literatures related to inter alia adaptation, vulnerability, and resilience. We argue that a proper characterization of challenges to adaptation requires a rich, exploration of the concept, which goes beyond mere description. This has a number of implications for the operationalization of the concept in the basic and extended versions of the SSPs. First, the elements comprising challenges to adaptation must include a wide range of socioeconomic and even some (non-climatic) biophysical factors. Second, careful consideration must be given to differences in these factors across scales, as well as cross-scale interactions. Third, any representation of the concept will require both quantitative and qualitative elements. The scenario framework offers the opportunity for the SSPs and full scenarios to be of greater value than has been the case in past exercises to both Integrated Assessment Modeling (IAM) and Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (IAV) researchers, but this will require a renegotiation of the traditional, primarily unidirectional relationship between the two communities.

Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) describe alternative outcomes for socioeconomic development. Papers describing the conceptual framework for SSPs refer to challenges to mitigation and to adaptation as fundamental concepts. Identifying which socioeconomic factors are the most important determinants of these challenges, and how to combine them in an internally consistent manner, is critical to scenario design. Here we demonstrate a systematic and traceable approach for identifying and prioritizing scenario elements. In this study, we identify 13 determinants of mitigation and adaptation challenges at a globally aggregated scale based on a survey of 25 experts. In addition, we use 19 expert elicitations and a cross-impact balance analysis to create approximately 1.5 million combinations of trends for these determinants and rank them in terms of internal consistency. Using the 1,000 most consistent combinations, we construct composite metrics for challenges to mitigation and adaptation to uncover distinguishable characteristics for five types of SSPs: those with Low, Medium, and High challenges to both mitigation and adaptation (consistent with SSPs 1–3), and those in which adaptation challenges or mitigation challenges dominate (consistent with SSPs 4–5). We find a distinguishing characteristic for mixed typology SSP4 (low mitigation challenges, high adaptation challenges): High trends for innovation capacity could lower challenges to mitigation but not necessarily challenges to adaptation. We also find that a low trend for quality of governance consistently corresponds to higher challenges to adaptation. These findings are suggestive for future research on the SSPs in particular, while our analytical approach is instructive for scenario development in general.

Through this talk, I provide an overview of how the climate change research community aims to be a sentinel, or a party that keeps watch, over the economic and environmental health of people and other species. They do this through a variety of epistemological tools, such as observations and computer models. The use of models is especially important, as they provide the ability to explore uncertainties in systematic ways. Through this overview, you will get a sense of how my research interests, which are around socio-economic and technological choices and alternative futures, are related to the work of physical climate scientists. Additionally, you will see how the relationships between these communities of scholars have evolved and are entering a new phase with the parallel scenario process, which combines alternative socio-economic futures (Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, or SSPs) with alternative climate futures (Representative Concentration Pathways, or RCPs).

New scenarios for climate change research connect climate model results based on Representative Concentration Pathways to nested interpretations of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. Socioeconomic drivers of emissions and determinants of impacts are now decoupled from climate model outputs. To retain scenario credibility, more internally consistent linking across scales must be achieved. This paper addresses this need, demonstrating a modification to cross impact balances (CIB), a method for systematically deriving qualitative socioeconomic scenarios. Traditionally CIB is performed with one cross-impact matrix. This poses limitations, as more than a few dozen scenario elements with sufficiently varied outcomes can become computationally infeasible to comprehensively explore. Through this paper, we introduce the concept of 'linked CIB', which takes the structure of judgements for how scenario elements interact to partition a single cross-impact matrix into multiple smaller matrices. Potentially, this enables analysis of large CIB matrices and ensures internally consistent linking of scenario elements across scales.

Many important socioeconomic determinants of vulnerability across scales – such as styles of governance, power differentials, or indicators of social cohesion – may be better represented qualitatively. However, qualitative factors can pose challenges for traditional approaches to aggregation (e.g. downscaling, upscaling). Nevertheless, approaches for aggregating findings from localized case studies are needed to arrive at a comprehensive view of the individual and societal consequences of climate change. Where the ability to aggregate difficult-to-quantify factors is desired, nested scenarios containing both qualitative and quantitative information may fill the gap. In this paper, recent scholarship is summarized that demonstrates (1) there may be inherent limitations to current approaches for aggregation and cross-scale bridging for some important socioeconomic determinants of vulnerability that are difficult to quantify, (2) through new scenario methods that are more objective, so...

Miranda Fricker's book "Epistemic Injustice" introduces the titular concept and details two versions of it, the primary form of which is testimonial injustice. After summarizing Fricker's discussion of testimonial injustice and the corresponding virtue of testimonial justice, I argue that by focusing on the harms caused by credibility deficit, Fricker ignores a collection of harms resulting from credibility excess. I examine credibility excess, first noting a few harms that can occur to the speaker, before showing how a number of harms to the hearer, and to those over whom the hearer has power, result from such faulty credibility judgements. In light of these harms, I offer an Aristotelian reworking of the virtue of testimonial justice as a mean between the extremes that emphasizes the importance of correcting for both credibility deficits and excesses.

In Volume 177, Issue 3 of Synthese (eds. Plaisance & Fehr 2010), a group of authors call for a more socially relevant philosophy of science: for philosophers of science to become more engaged with scientists and the communities that scientific research stands to impact in order to contribute both to better scientific research and to the public good. While several authors make suggestions as to how philosophers of science might go about this, because of the emergent and highly pluralistic nature of the project, most suggestions are lacking in details. In medical institutions, issues arising from similar interactions between expert and lay communities have been increasingly addressed by consultations between the affected parties and clinical ethics committees. These committees are made up of medical professionals, administrators, ethicists, clerics, and community members. Using the structure of clinical ethics committees as a guide, I propose a model for similar committees made up of philosophers, scientists, and stakeholders, to use in beginning more socially relevant work. Drawing on the literature on clinical ethics consultation, I highlight challenges faced by clinical ethics committees that are expected to be faced by philosophy of science committees as well.

Michel Foucault characterizes the objective of his work as the creation of “a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects” (Foucault 2003c, p. 126). Some readings of Foucault argue that his analysis nullifies individual agency, making human action merely the product of discursive and power relations for which no one can be held responsible. In this paper, I take up a different reading: Foucault is not bringing about or celebrating the “death of the subject”, rather, he is looking for ways to make new kinds of subjectivity possible. The paper is divided into three parts. In the first part, I sketch Foucault’s account of subjectivity and power relations. In the second part, I clarify the reading of Foucault I believe to be correct, and discuss Foucault’s notion of the “care of the self” as the deliberate shaping of one’s subjectivity into new forms. However, I argue that self-knowledge must still have some role to play in this process. In the third part, I compare the account developed thus far to John Dewey’s concept of education as a way of life defined by constant growth. Together, I think the two accounts can form the groundwork of an educational theory that promotes the care and improvement of the self.

The accounts of experience presented by John Dewey and John McDowell converge in some interesting respects. First, they both represent experience as a cooperation between faculties of active thought and passive openness to the world. Second, both of their accounts are directed against a scientistic conception of experience that tries to explain away reasons and values in our picture of how things are. I will go over both of these parallels in turn, noting where there are potential problems of compatibility, which I think can be dismissed on careful interpretation. The result points towards a conception of experience that avoids falling into traditional pitfalls about the possibility of our experiences being genuinely about the world, and can serve as the basis for a critical approach to our ways of understanding.

The tension between thought and practice is an ancient one in Western societies. Universities, as institutions of learning, have been at the centre of this tension since their inception. In the first chapter I trace the history of the university, noting shifts in their tendency to dedicate their activities to thought or to practice, describing the present situation as another shift toward practice. In the second chapter, I examine three conceptions of a university--liberal, scientific, and economic--which are current in the present debate over the university's purpose. In the third chapter, I describe the philosophical division of theory and practice, and how a tendency to divorce the two relates to the three conceptions of a university. Using the philosophy of John Dewey, I argue that a divorce of the two is unsupportable, and propose a Deweyan idea of the university that addresses the contemporary problems described earlier.