Dear Mr. Prins,
thanks for your reply. As far as I understand, the kew sentences of your reply are the following: "you recommend ... to attempt to replace the carefully negotiated high level policy commitments with a new system which depended only on the intellectual rigour of the designers. Such an exercise would not be supported widely." Without going much into the details, I only would like to reac to their main points.
First, I think that rigour is not necessary because of designers, but rather, because of the laws of Nature. I also think that these laws cannot be developed from "high level policy commitments", whether they were negotiated by policy makers carefully or not, rather, they should be developed from the laws of Nature. Second, I am aware that we are talking about a policy process. But I am also aware that it already happened (e.g. in the climate change negotiations) several times that policy makers tried to formulate wishes, and then it were scientists that had to develop guidance, based on the laws of Nature, on how to comply with wishes in practice, and it were scientists in a number of cases that had to inform policy makers that what they want is simply not possible. I was just advertising my opinion about what you need to consider to implement a system that works. I fully understand if changing the system is not feasible at this point (although, as an additional minor point, I cannot fully understand how a system can be carefully negotiated if it is not a final one, i.e., when some indicators can be dropped, others suggested, and some remaining indicators changed.) Finally, you have not rebutted in your reply any of my arguments with counter-arguments, and as long as my arguments are not falsified I will continue to believe in them. This means that, if the "carefully negotiated" system cannot be changed this time, one option is that people in the process could at least start considering the principles and argumens I have outlined and, if found justified, the current system could be developed based on (at least some of) these considerations, together with the experience from its implementation.
With my best regards,
Zoltan Somogyi
Dr. Zoltan Somogyi