by Judith Curry
Don’t think you need to teach the public a lot of science facts. Instead, show what science is, what it means, why we need it. Find a way to have a presence. Choose what to comment on, how to be involved, and what actions and issues to engage in. Be a source of wisdom. – Carl Safina
Posted in Communication
by Judith Curry
Until recently, there was little recognition within Japan’s science policy circle of the need to discuss the role of science in government policy-making. A rather innocent notion that the established knowledge and wisdom of scientists would ensure proper decision-making was prevalent. – Arimoto and Sato
Posted in Ethics, Policy, Sociology of science
by Judith Curry
Later this week, the Royal Society is hosting a Workshop on Handling Uncertainty in Weather and Climate Prediction, With Application to Health, Agronomy, Hydrology, Energy and Economics.
Posted in Prediction, Uncertainty
by Judith Curry
In pondering the challenges of climate change (both science and policy), it seems that academics have different perspectives from many other people, with a discriminator being professional decision making experience.
Posted in Sociology of science
by Judith Curry
We are starting to see blog discourse making it into academic papers, being the subject of presentations and conference sessions, and the development of blogs specifically to analyze the dynamics of other blogs. So, lets address the question raised in the recent presentation by Franziska Hollender:
What are blogs good for anyways?
Posted in Communication, Open knowledge, Sociology of science
by Judith Curry
Two new workshop reports provide insights into what we know and don’t know about the effects of solar variability on climate.
Posted in Solar
by Judith Curry
From an article in the New Scientist by Fred Pearce, written in Sept 2009:
One of the world’s top climate modellers said Thursday we could be about to enter one or even two decades during which temperatures cool.
“I am not one of the sceptics,” insisted Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University, Germany. “However, we have to ask the nasty questions ourselves or other people will do it.”
Posted in Prediction, Skeptics
by Judith Curry
A segment on climate change last Monday evening produced a storm of protest from critics who felt the program mislead viewers — by a faulty application of journalistic balance — about the very real threat of global warming and man’s contribution to it, as well as a sprinkling of support from those who think that threat is overstated and that balance was just the right touch for the NewsHour. – Michael Getler, PBS
Posted in Skeptics
by Judith Curry
Better models are needed before exceptional events can be reliably linked to global warming. – Nature
Posted in Attribution
by Judith Curry
Health risks arise from the interaction of uncertain future climatic changes with complex ecological, physical, and socio-economic systems, which are simultaneously affected by numerous other changes, e.g. globalisation, demographic changes, and changes in land use, nutrition, health care quality. Policymaking on adaptation to health risks of climate change thus faces substantial uncertainty. – Wardekker et al.
Posted in Climate change impacts, Uncertainty
by Judith Curry
By popular request, here is new thread on one of the original ‘hot topics’ at Climate Etc.
Posted in Skeptics
Judith Curry
Pursuant to Part I, i ask the following questions:
Posted in Polar regions
by Judith Curry
Most likely, their bullshit detectors just went on high alert. – Greg Breining
Posted in Skeptics
by Judith Curry
Overall, climate modeling has made enormous progress in the past several decades, but meeting the information needs of users will require further advances in the coming decades. – NRC
Posted in climate models
by Michael Cunningham (“Faustino”)
There are many issues of debate about global warming. Has there been warming this century? Will there be further warming? If so, will the cause be anthropogenic or other? What will be the impacts, both positive and negative? Should we take action to reduce emissions? How might we proceed, and what are the costs and benefits of various approaches?
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
The notion that a scientist is either an advocate or does nothing at all to shape policy is a false dichotomy that has muddied the debate about science and advocacy. – Scott and Rachlow
by Judith Curry
By advocating social policy positions, scientists may be forfeiting their credibility, instead becoming just ordinary folks with opinions. – Greg Breining
by Judith Curry
Why are weather forecasters succeeding when other predictors fail? It’s because long ago they came to accept the imperfections in their knowledge. – Nate Silver
Posted in Prediction
by Judith Curry
So . . . what do the U.S. presidential candidates have to say about climate change?
Posted in Politics
by Judith Curry
As you do not fight fire with fire, you do not fight complexity with complexity. Because complexity generates uncertainty, not risk, it requires a regulatory response grounded in simplicity, not complexity.
To ask today’s regulators to save us from tomorrow’s crisis using yesterday’s toolbox is to ask a border collie to catch a frisbee by first applying Newton’s Law of Gravity. – Haldane and Madouros
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
The extent to which a consensus is “hard won” can be understood to depend on the personal qualities of the participating experts.” Brent Ranalli
Posted in Communication, Consensus, Skeptics
by Judith Curry
September 2 marks the 2nd anniversary of Climate Etc. Time for some reflection, on where we’ve been and where we might be going.
Posted in Welcome
by Judith Curry
The warning signals from the planet are clear. Now is the moment for our commu- nity to adopt the rallying cry of sea kayakers confronted with conditions too challenging to handle alone: “Time to raft up!”. – Chris Rapley
Posted in Communication
