cc: Mike Hulme <m.hulme@uea.ac.uk>
date: Sun, 22 Feb 2004 23:15:00 +0000
from: Suraje Dessai <s.dessai@uea.ac.uk>
subject: RE: Your article submitted to climate policy
to: michael.grubb@imperial.ac.uk,climatepolicy@imperial.ac.uk

   Dear Michael and Ray,
   I am very glad to hear that Climate Policy will resume publication shortly; I feel very
   strongly that this journal should continue since in its short life it has been extremely
   successful, in my opinion. We hope our revised review paper (which I attach) can come out
   asap, perhaps in the first issue of the journal with the new publishers. Thank you for the
   reviewers comments you sent me in December 2003. They were very constructive and I believe
   we managed to address all the issues they raised. I next explain the changes Ive made to
   the manuscript according to the comments of each reviewer:
   Reviewer 1 (Steve)
   P10  analogs discussion: Added the sentence Therefore, while analogues can be extremely
   useful to calibrate our understanding of how the system works, they are limited by the
   unique and transient nature of future climate change.
   We decided to delete the Pielke and Sarewitz polemical sentence and the accuracy statement
   altogether because of the reviewers comments; We chose not to unpack some of these issues
   here because it would increase the word length considerably and it would not flow well with
   the text (instead its brought up in a later section).
   P14: Added the sentence: For complex systems, like climate change, it is more likely than
   with simple well constrained systems that this type of uncertainty grows at first with more
   research.
   P15: Deleted the unfair sentence a point that was not explicitly mentioned by Grubler and
   Nakicenovic (2001) or Shneirder (2002) which we think is important and which completes the
   rest of the picture regarding unknowable knowledge. and added synonymous to reflexivity:
   which some scientists call human volition or feedback.
   P16: Added the sentence: Nonetheless, there are a range of efforts, such as integrated
   assessment or agent-based modelling, that try to do just this, even if integrated
   assessment has neglected adaptation almost entirely (Toth, 2000) and agent-based modelling
   is still immature in its application to climate change (see Ziervogel et al., 2004 for an
   application to seasonal climate forecasting).
   P18: Corrected this
   P24: We believe we already give our views in the text, which are very much in line with the
   reviewers comments. We show this in bold here: This is a real danger that only scientists
   involved in the research can prevent by proper communication of uncertainty. It is
   important to emphasise that these subjective probabilities are highly conditional upon the
   assumptions made; again the need to be as explicit and transparent as possible cannot be
   emphasised enough. Our view on conditional probabilities is that we should not wait for
   perfect information (e.g. a single pdf since this is not attainable because of
   unquantifiable uncertainties) before providing decision-makers with the best available
   scientific information for their questions. A combination of conditional probabilities and
   scenarios will be required.
   P25: this paragraph deals with planned adaptation in human systems so it is bound to be
   anthropocentric.
   P26: Weve changed the sentence to We believe human reflexive uncertainty is largely
   unquantifiable in probabilistic , but I think we fundamentally disagree with the reviewer
   in this point. We think he is taking a very narrow view of reflexivity, whereas we are
   taking a broad view, also including social and cultural levels. He also seems to focus more
   on mitigation, whereas the focus of this paper is exclusively on adaptation. In the context
   of adaptation to climate change, quantifying this type of uncertainty is logically
   impossible. For example, if we predict there is a 75% probability that we are heading
   towards a SRES A2 world (with its associated climate impacts) then people are going to
   react to this and change their behaviour accordingly. By doing this, the boundary
   conditions of the problem have changed and so the prediction is no longer valid. One could
   redo the prediction, but then the boundary conditions would change again (just because
   human being think) and so on. Hence our statement that it is unquantifiable.
   Reviewer 2
   We have separated section 5.2 (assessment and policy) into section 5.2 (assessment) and
   section 5.3 (policy).
   1. Added the sentence Probability assessment in the context of climate change is always
   subjective, conditional and provisional. to the abstract.
   2. Corrected this by changing the sentence to but reflexive human behaviour (i.e., actions
   explicitly influenced by information) instead of just mentioning human reflexive
   uncertainty.
   3. The paper does not intend to be comprehensive in terms of climate policy (mitigation and
   adaptation); it does intend to be comprehensive in terms of climate adaptation policy so we
   have changed the title accordingly. Or course adding a discussion on mitigation policy
   would be desirable, but it would also add considerably to the word length.
   4. We already make these recommendations in section 5.1. In: Lessons from previous
   assessments have shown that a regional approach with the inclusion and participation of
   stakeholders has the best potential to advance the assessment and implementation of
   adaptation options. Stakeholders are crucial ingredients of what is proposed because they
   are the people whose decisions must take account of climate change (and other environmental
   stresses), who hold the specialised practical knowledge needed to evaluate adaptation
   options, and who are the primary source of technological and managerial activities needed
   to implement them (Parson et al. 2003).
   We have noted that the article is rather long, but as the reviewers have warned, shortening
   it would result in losing its important function of review article and the excellent
   scholarship it reports on. Therefore, Id urge the editors to publish the paper as it.
   Figure 2 is currently in colour, but if colour printing is not available (at no cost) then
   I can easily convert it to black and white.
   Please acknowledge the receipt of this e-mail.
   Cheers,
   Suraje
   At 12:35 19/02/2004 +0100, you wrote:

     I am pleased to say that there is now good prospect that Climate Policy will resume
     publication under new publishers and I should be able to make an announcement during
     February.
     With thanks for your patience,
     Michael Grubb
     -----Original Message-----
     From: climatepolicy
     Sent: 17 December 2003 16:36
     To: s.dessai@gmx.net
     Cc: Grubb, Michael J
     Subject: Your article submitted to climate policy
     Dear Suraje
     We are really very sorry that there has been a considerable delay between
     you submitting your article to Climate Policy and us communicating a
     decision to you as to whether we wish to publish it or not.  In principle
     we consider the paper nearly ready for publication subject to taking into
     account the brief comments of referees (attached) and a significant
     shortening of the paper to confirm with word length policy.
     As we may have indicated in an earlier previous email there have been
     uncertainties surrounding the future of the journal after the initial
     contracts with the publishers expire at the end of this year. We had hoped
     to inform you by now as to whether the publishers Elsevier have reached a
     decision as to the future of the journal beyond 2003, but unfortunately
     despite our very best efforts they have not. As a direct result of this Ray
     and I have had no option but to resign from our positions at Climate Policy
     and we regret to inform you that we will cease working for Climate Policy
     at the end of this month when the contracts with the publishers expire
     (December 2003).
     We understand your frustration that no decision has been made on your
     submitted paper and we really do empathize. We have also being waiting for
     a decision from Elsevier for many months now. We do not know whether the
     journal will continue with other editors,  in another form, or will fold at
     this stage. We suggest that if you have any further queries regarding the
     future of the journal and your paper that you should contact Jacques
     Kiebert at Elseiver on the following email J.Kiebert@elsevier.nl - it would
     be useful if you could copy any email sent to him to the climate policy
     email as well so we can forward the current state of refereeing concerning
     your paper.
     Michael also may be in touch with you in the New Year concerning an
     alternative journal for publication that may be able to take your paper
     promptly.
     Thanks and good wishes
     Michael Grubb and Ray Purdy
     Climate Policy

   Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\Letter to editor.doc" Attachment Converted:
   "c:\eudora\attach\Climate_Policy_revised_final2.doc"
