By Jon Pipitone, Jorge Aranda and Valeria Cortés, University of Toronto, Canada
Abstract: Climate change poses great challenges to the viability of our civilization, and if we are to overcome these challenges we need to bring the best of our abilities to the table. In this paper we propose a set of guidelines for software researchers concerned about doing the right thing for the planet.
Software Research and Climate Change 
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April 18, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Justyna Zander
Fantastic mindset. I like the way of thinking a lot.
It is along the same lines as Computation of Things.
April 19, 2010 at 1:43 pm
Val
Hi Justyna, can you be more specific about why is that you liked it? Thanks!
April 19, 2010 at 9:25 pm
Justyna Zander
I like that the authors dare to think big and work on that.
Clearly, there are responsibilities that should be addressed, as Ruzanna is pointing out.
Though, in my view, people should focus their attention on what they are really passionate about, instead of on what is the standard manner of doing.
I believe that if the research team is set according to the individual drivers, people can complement ech other enough to overcome the role assignemnt problems.
April 19, 2010 at 3:42 pm
Ruzanna Chitchyan
I do agree with the “think big and into the future” is essential for any good research, including climate issues.
I completely disagree that a researcher has no other responsibility but thinking up potenatilly good solutions. We all have many other roles to play in this world (education, member of local and global community – which runs on basis of political involvment – else Bush comes to power)…. Abstracting from all else: research without dissemination (which includes all forms of public engament to me, not just papers in specialist conferences) is under threat of being ignored/forgotten.
April 22, 2010 at 12:17 pm
Ian Sommerville
More of a call to arms than a research contribution. Where the authors are absolutely right is in the importance of thinking big and the need for radical change – all too many people interpret ‘software and climate change’ as being about the energy consumption of computers. While this is not negligible, the real problems are in reducing energy required for manufacturing, space heating (and cooling) and transportation.
I don’t agree about the need for researchers to be distant from stakeholders. Action research is a well-established method in the soft systems area where the researcher works explicitly with system stakeholders.
Nor do I agree about a researcher’s role being idea generation. I consider myself firstly as a member of a family, secondly as a member of society and thirdly as a researcher. The first two require me to engage in a broader political debate and this debate can only be more informed if researchers participate in it. This inevitably will involve uncomfortable accommodations – those who abolished slavery had the same moral dilemmas.
April 23, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Jorge
We thank all the reviewers so far for their comments on our paper. We are glad because these comments are, generally, the kind of reaction we wished to have.
Perhaps it’ll come as a surprise to our readers, but we in fact hold nearly the opposite views of those we presented in the paper. We feel frustrated by proposals that are quite ambitious and theoretically interesting but intractable in practice, and by researchers that would rather remain in their ivory towers than come out and try to make their ideas work in the real world. We believe that this behaviour makes it all too easy to delude ourselves into thinking we are having an impact, when the urgency of the matter demands real, nitty-gritty efforts with activists, policy makers, and climate scientists.
This is the message we wanted to put forward. Perhaps erroneously, we thought we would be ignored. So we decided to try something different: to state the opposite of what we mean, in fairly absurd and naive ways (including some hopelessly misguided proposals), in the hope that our readers would react against this message and embrace the alternative.
Unfortunately, we found that for all its absurdities the end result might still be taken at face value. To avoid being misunderstood, we added a disclaimer at the end of the paper, where we try to clarify that we believe the opposite of what the paper says. Judging by our feedback so far, it seems that our disclaimer should be clearer and more prominent.
We are heartened that some reviewers disagree with the main text of the paper strongly –we do too. We wish that this workshop becomes an opportunity to discuss how can we truly link our research to the practical and urgent needs of the people at the forefront of the fight against climate change.
—Jorge, Jon, and Val
April 26, 2010 at 7:47 pm
Robert Jack
Hi friends,
I found this via Jon’s blog. I skimmed the paper and I have to say that many of the statements it makes are very similar to what other papers in the field say. I think that’s why people can’t see a parody in it.
What would be really helpful now, I think, if you could show some examples of how much generality is good, how much is bad. How far should one go to work with stakeholders while still playing in a general research field and not doing the stakeholder’s work for them (or any other work that would not be the best application of your skills).
And remember: your best skills are not necessary computation, modelling, and logical abstraction, but simply analytical thinking, scientific method, empathy, and the ability to get to the root of problems.
April 27, 2010 at 12:55 pm
Justyna Zander
Interesting puns given in the paper.
This last comment is clearer indeed, but makes me a little confused overall.
Still, not sure whether we should exclude other ways of thinking and call them an absurd. Impact can still be born, even from a crazy idea and even if this practice is ‘only’ an exception.
As an example, I would like to give the commercial space flight attempts initiated by a good friend of mine, Peter Diamandis with the Ansari X Prize.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-diamandis/commercial-spaceflight-fo_b_381988.html
Anyway, lots of work for all of us, it seems. Fascinating!
April 30, 2010 at 11:01 pm
(Do not) aim for the eagle « Catenary
[…] to find this kind of paper in what is supposed to be a straightforward workshop. Another reason, pointed out by Robert “Jack” Will, is that many of the statements the paper makes “are very similar to what other papers in the […]
May 2, 2010 at 7:33 pm
Sebastian Gonzalez
Phew! I am relieved after reading the clarification from Jorge about the true intention of the paper. It touches upon very important (and sometimes sensitive) points that come into play when discussing climate change, such as political engagement. I would gladly discuss such issues during the workshop.
I don’t know if it was meant also as an “inverse idea”, but when starting my read I liked the invitation to think of systems in general —a good part of the computer science field is about understanding systems and modelling processes. But that’s off-topic for the workshop.
May 13, 2010 at 5:19 am
Bryan
I came hear via Jon’s blog …
Well, I found the paper amusing, and I liked it, and I so totally got the message, but sadly, my experience is that irony and parody make bad carrier-pigeons for cross-disciplinary message passing – particularly when some of the participants may not have English as a first (or even second) language. I have this problem all the time when I give talks because my natural instinct is to do exactly what you’re doing here – albeit without carrying it through quite so consummately.
I expect you can get the reaction you want with the paper provided it is set (as here) in a context where it can be discussed, with those given to literal interpretations quickly disabused of their thinking. It’ll go well in a workshop setting I expect too. I suspect it might cause trouble if it sits alone “out there” in publication land (but hope I’m wrong).
June 7, 2011 at 11:23 am
Martin Mahaux
I read it, and got confused. And that’s why I LOVEd it when I understood the way it was written. I didn’t know it was a parody, then quite got it from the disclaimer, but was not sure.
It seems you did not intend it, but the very fact that the meaning is not clear makes it perfect for its function. This paper worked on me just as artwork that I like does: it’s disturbing, because it’s not all black or white, it triggers questions inside viewer’s head instead of giving answers, you can get lost in it, you don’t know what is serious or joke, everything is possible… Authors themselves are caught by it, as things they thougt absurd are not so so, and things they took for granted become unclear, by preaching the bad people see good things in it, and vice versa. Then the last disclaimer makes us read the paper again with a completely different eye, and the debate in our head is firing… GREAT !
Above fostering the important debate on how to select a research project to work on (again, without claiming to have a final answer that probably does not exist), it clearly triggers a more generic reflexion about our domain and the way we write and read scientific papers…
This is a most unexpected and lovely piece of “art meets science” work, so thanks for daring it !
October 1, 2013 at 4:23 am
research papers
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