Challenging Knowledge: How Climate Science Became a Victim of The
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2020-04-11 (April 11, 2020) Brought to You by SEPP ( the Science and Environmental Policy Project
The Week That Was: 2020-04-11 (April 11, 2020) Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org) The Science and Environmental Policy Project Quote of the Week: “In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.” – Galileo [International Space Hall of Fame] In Memory S. Fred Singer (Sept. 27, 1924 – April 6, 2020) A Quest for Knowledge: Show me your best data. (physical evidence) Fred Singer’s journey through physical science was marked by endless curiosity and the belief that physical evidence (data), not theory, were needed to resolve controversies in science. At the age of 16 he tackled the difficult Maxwell Equations that are the foundation of electromagnetism, of which visible light is a part. Singer’s Ph.D. thesis at Princeton was on then- poorly understood cosmic rays. His advisor was John Wheeler, who had worked with Niels Bohr in explaining nuclear fission with quantum physics. (All Wheeler’s students were a very exceptional cadre, including the Nobel laureate Richard Feynman.) Earlier, Bohr had a noted public dispute with Albert Einstein on quantum physics, after Einstein objected to the probabilistic view used, making precise prediction impossible. Bohr’s views are generally accepted and the great admiration he and Einstein had for each other remained. This is an outstanding example of scientists disagreeing publicly, without personal accusations, which are too common today. Singer was a pioneer in exploration of space, particularly the upper reaches of the atmosphere. He measured characteristics of cosmic radiation in the upper atmosphere, and discovered, or co- discovered, upper-atmospheric ozone, and the equatorial ‘electrojet current’ which intensifies the geomagnetic field. -
Title Search Realism
A New View of Science: Title Search Realism Naomi Oreskes Erik M. Conway Consensus and Dissent •Past several years: numerous talks on the scientific consensus on climate change •Focused on the epistemic basis for that consensus: evidence. • Crammed with “facts”… Carbon Dioxide as Greenhouse Gas • John Tyndall (1820-1893) • Established “greenhouse” properties of carbon dioxide, water in 1850s 1900s: Svante Arrhenius suggested that increased atmospheric CO2 from burning fossil fuels could warm Earth • Early calculations of effect of doubling CO2: – 1.5 -4.5 o C. • Swede.. Thought global warming would be a good thing… http://cwx.prenhall.com/petrucci/medialib/media_portfolio/text_images/FG14_19_05UN.JPG First empirical evidence of both increased CO2 and warming detected in 1930s by G.S. Callendar • Callendar argued that increase in CO2 was already occurring (in the 1930s). • Quarterly J. Royal Meteorological Society 64: 223 (1938) suggested that temperature might be increasing, too. • Wonderful new biography by J R CO2 inventory: Charles David Keeling Keeling curve began in 1958 as part of the IGY 1960s: Clear trend of increasing atmospheric CO2 “This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through…a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.” --Lyndon Johnson Special Message to Congress, 1965 By the 1970s, there was a consensus among scientific experts that, given the steady rise of CO2 that Keeling had demonstrated, that sooner or later global warming would occur: “A plethora of studies from diverse sources indicates a consensus that climate changes will result from man’s combustion of fossil fuels and changes in land use.” National Academy of Sciences Archives, An Evaluation of the Evidence for CO2-Induced Climate Change, Assembly of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Climate Research Board, Study Group on Carbon Dioxide, 1979, Film Label: CO2 and Climate Change: Ad Hoc: General Big question was when? Surprising answer: just a few years later…. -
Back to the the Future? 07> Probing the Kuiper Belt
SpaceFlight A British Interplanetary Society publication Volume 62 No.7 July 2020 £5.25 SPACE PLANES: back to the the future? 07> Probing the Kuiper Belt 634089 The man behind the ISS 770038 Remembering Dr Fred Singer 9 CONTENTS Features 16 Multiple stations pledge We look at a critical assessment of the way science is conducted at the International Space Station and finds it wanting. 18 The man behind the ISS 16 The Editor reflects on the life of recently Letter from the Editor deceased Jim Beggs, the NASA Administrator for whom the building of the ISS was his We are particularly pleased this supreme achievement. month to have two features which cover the spectrum of 22 Why don’t we just wing it? astronautical activities. Nick Spall Nick Spall FBIS examines the balance between gives us his critical assessment of winged lifting vehicles and semi-ballistic both winged and blunt-body re-entry vehicles for human space capsules, arguing that the former have been flight and Alan Stern reports on his grossly overlooked. research at the very edge of the 26 Parallels with Apollo 18 connected solar system – the Kuiper Belt. David Baker looks beyond the initial return to the We think of the internet and Moon by astronauts and examines the plan for a how it helps us communicate and sustained presence on the lunar surface. stay in touch, especially in these times of difficulty. But the fact that 28 Probing further in the Kuiper Belt in less than a lifetime we have Alan Stern provides another update on the gone from a tiny bleeping ball in pioneering work of New Horizons. -
Proof of God Scientific Proof That God Exists Week 1
Proof of God Scientific Proof That God Exists Week 1: Proof of Creation Our Mission: To take as many people to Heaven as we can before we die. Period. But the Lord made the earth by his power... Jeremiah 10:12 NLT As the Scriptures say, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and discard the intelligence of the intelligent.” So where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters? God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish. 21 Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe…God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. 1 Corinthians 1:19-23, 27 NLT Scientific fact: The universe has a beginning. Bible fact: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1 NLT The biggest evidence that there is a God is found in what the father of modern science Francis Bacon called, the Law of Causality. “True knowledge is knowledge by causes.” - Francis Bacon Cosmological Argument: 1. Everything that had a beginning had a cause. 2. The universe had a beginning. 3. Therefore the universe had a cause. 1. The universe is running out of energy. Second Law of Thermodynamics: The total entropy of an isolated system can never decrease over time. In all spontaneous processes, the total entropy increases and the process is irreversible. Law of Entropy: With time, things naturally fall apart. -
Climate Change: How Do We Know We're Not Wrong? Naomi Oreskes
Changing Planet: Past, Present, Future Lecture 4 – Climate Change: How Do We Know We’re Not Wrong? Naomi Oreskes, PhD 1. Start of Lecture Four (0:16) [ANNOUNCER:] From the Howard Hughes Medical Institute...The 2012 Holiday Lectures on Science. This year's lectures: "Changing Planet: Past, Present, Future," will be given by Dr. Andrew Knoll, Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University; Dr. Naomi Oreskes, Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego; and Dr. Daniel Schrag, Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. The fourth lecture is titled: Climate Change: How Do We Know We're Not Wrong? And now, a brief video to introduce our lecturer Dr. Naomi Oreskes. 2. Profile of Dr. Naomi Oreskes (1:14) [DR. ORESKES:] One thing that's really important for all people to understand is that the whole notion of certainty is mistaken, and it's something that climate skeptics and deniers and the opponents of evolution really exploit. Many of us think that scientific knowledge is certain, so therefore if someone comes along and points out the uncertainties in a certain scientific body of knowledge, we think that undermines the science, we think that means that there's a problem in the science, and so part of my message is to say that that view of science is incorrect, that the reality of science is that it's always uncertain because if we're actually doing research, it means that we're asking questions, and if we're asking questions, then by definition we're asking questions about things we don't already know about, so uncertainty is part of the lifeblood of science, it's something we need to embrace and realize it's a good thing, not a bad thing. -
Science and Public Policy: What's Proof Got to Do With
Environmental Science & Policy 7 (2004) 369–383 Science and public policy: what’s proof got to do with it? Naomi Oreskes Department of History and Science Studies Program, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0104, USA Abstract In recent years, it has become common for opponents of environmental action to argue that the scientific basis for purported harms is uncertain, unreliable, and fundamentally unproven. In response, many scientists believe that their job is to provide the “proof” that society needs. Both the complaint and the response are misguided. In all but the most trivial cases, science does not produce logically indisputable proofs about the natural world. At best it produces a robust consensus based on a process of inquiry that allows for continued scrutiny, re-examination, and revision. Within a scientific community, different individuals may weigh evidence differently and adhere to different standards of demonstration, and these differences are likely to be amplified when the results of inquiry have political, religious, or economic ramifications. In such cases, science can play a role by providing informed opinions about the possible consequences of our actions (or inactions), and by monitoring the effects of our choices. © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Environmental policy; Science policy; Scientific proof; Uncertainty; Values; Politics; Lomborg 1. Introduction centive for manipulation and misrepresentation of informa- tion. This is particularly true in the domain of environmental The heart of Bjørn Lomborg’s recent critique of envi- policy. ronmentalism is that many assertions of the environmen- Lomborg assures us that everyone is for the environment— tal movement are unproven and therefore provide no good just as everyone is for world peace and against hunger—but grounds for sensible public policy. -
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
U ILLINO S UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN PRODUCTION NOTE University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library Large-scale Digitization Project, 2007. University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois Press ... C 'I Finalist for the 1997 National Book Award TOR SEIDLER Mean Margaret PICTURES BY JON AGEE I ·- II : I SLJ Best Books '97 PW Best Books'97 SALA Booklist * School LibraryJournal SPublishers Weekly *Kirkus Reviews "A wildly funny story of a newly wed woodchuck couple who find a willful, wailing human toddler and take her into their home and into their hearts." -SLJ's Best Books '97 "Tor Seidler writes in the great tradition of Kenneth Grahame, Walter R. Brooks, and E. B. White, creating worlds where friendship matters, animals talk, and little girls who listen- even ones as mean as Margaret-can learn a life-changing lot about loving-kindness." -Booklist Ages 5 up $14.95 TR (0-06-205090-7) Michael di Capua Books * HarperCollins Publishers THE B UL LE T IN OF THE CENTER FOR CHILDREN'S BOOKS February 1998 Vol.51 No. 6 A LOOK INSIDE 189 THE BIG PICTURE Baba Yaga ðe Wise Doll ad. by Hiawyn Oram and illus. by Ruth Brown 190 NEW BOOKS FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE Reviewed titles include: 192 * Rules ofthe Road by Joan Bauer 199 * Gabriella'sSong by Candace Fleming; illus. by Giselle Potter 208 * The World of William Joyce Scrapbook written and illus. by William Joyce 212 * From Slave Ship to Freedom Road by Julius Lester; illus. by Rod Brown 215 * The Girl Who DreamedOnly Geese and Other Tales of the FarNorth ad. -
Keeling Curve: Result, Interpretation & Global Monitoring
International Journal for Empirical Education and Research Keeling Curve: Result, Interpretation & Global Monitoring Augustyn Ostrowski Faculty of Geography & Geology Jagiellonian University Email: [email protected] (Author of Correspondence) Poland Abstract The Keeling Curve is a graph of the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere based on continuous measurements taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory on the island of Hawaii from 1958 to the present day. The curve is named for the scientist Charles David Keeling, who started the monitoring program and supervised it until his death in 2005. Keywords: Mauna Loa Measurements; Results and Interpretation; Global Monitoring; Ralph Keeling. ISSN Online: 2616-4833 ISSN Print: 2616-4817 35 1. Introduction Keeling's measurements showed the first significant evidence of rapidly increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. According to Dr Naomi Oreskes, Professor of History of Science at Harvard University, the Keeling curve is one of the most important scientific works of the 20th century. Many scientists credit the Keeling curve with first bringing the world's attention to the current increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Prior to the 1950s, measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations had been taken on an ad hoc basis at a variety of locations. In 1938, engineer and amateur meteorologist Guy Stewart Callendar compared datasets of atmospheric carbon dioxide from Kew in 1898-1901, which averaged 274 parts per million by volume (ppm), and from the eastern United States in 1936-1938, which averaged 310 ppmv, and concluded that carbon dioxide concentrations were rising due to anthropogenic emissions. However, Callendar's findings were not widely accepted by the scientific community due to the patchy nature of the measurements. -
UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations
UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The new prophet : Harold C. Urey, scientist, atheist, and defender of religion Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3j80v92j Author Shindell, Matthew Benjamin Publication Date 2011 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO The New Prophet: Harold C. Urey, Scientist, Atheist, and Defender of Religion A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History (Science Studies) by Matthew Benjamin Shindell Committee in charge: Professor Naomi Oreskes, Chair Professor Robert Edelman Professor Martha Lampland Professor Charles Thorpe Professor Robert Westman 2011 Copyright Matthew Benjamin Shindell, 2011 All rights reserved. The Dissertation of Matthew Benjamin Shindell is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ Chair University of California, San Diego 2011 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page……………………………………………………………………...... iii Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………. iv Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………. -
DEFENCE STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS the Official Journal of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence
Volume 3 | Autumn 2017 DEFENCE STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS The official journal of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence Overwriting the City: Graffiti, Communication, and Urban Contestation in Athens Putting the Strategy Back into Strategic Communications Japanese Strategic Communication: Its Significance As a Political oolT ‘You Can Count On Us’: When Malian Diplomacy Stratcommed Uncle Sam Strategic Communications, Boko Haram, and Counter-Insurgency Fake News, Fake Wars, Fake Worlds Living Post-Truth Lives … But What Comes After? ‘We Have Met The Enemy And He Is Us’ Defence Strategic Communications | Volume 3 | Autumn 2017 1 ISSN 2500-9478 Defence Strategic Communications Editor-in-Chief Dr. Neville Bolt Managing Editor Linda Curika Editor Anna Reynolds Editorial Board Professor Mervyn Frost Professor Nicholas O’Shaughnessy Professor Žaneta Ozoliņa Professor J. Michael Waller Professor Natascha Zowislo-Grünewald Dr. Emma Louise Briant Dr. Nerijus Maliukevicius Dr. Agu Uudelepp Matt Armstrong Thomas Elkjer Nissen Defence Strategic Communications is an international peer-reviewed journal. The journal is a project of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (NATO StratCom COE). It is produced for scholars, policy makers and practitioners around the world. It does not represent the opinions or policies of NATO or the NATO StratCom COE. The views presented in the following articles are those of the authors alone. © All rights reserved by the NATO StratCom COE. These articles may not be copied, reproduced, distributed or publicly displayed without reference to the NATO StratCom COE and the academic journal Defence Strategic Communications. NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence Riga, Kalnciema iela 11b, Latvia LV1048 www.stratcomcoe.org Ph.: 0037167335463 [email protected] Living Post-Truth Lives … But What Comes After? 191 LIVING POST-TRUTH LIVES … BUT WHAT COMES AFTER? A review essay by Kevin Marsh Post-Truth: The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back Matthew D’Ancona. -
1 Naomi Oreskes
NAOMI ORESKES Department of History and Program in Science Studies University of California, San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla, CA 92093-0104 [email protected] 858-534-1996 (department) 858-534-4695 (direct) EDUCATION 1990 Ph.D. Graduate Special Program in Geological Research and History of Science Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA. 1981 B.Sc., First Class Honours: Mining Geology, The Royal School of Mines Imperial College, University of London, England. EMPLOYMENT 1998- Associate Professor, Department of History and Program in Science Studies University of California, San Diego Autumn, 2001 Visiting Associate Professor, Department of History of Science, Harvard University 1996-98 Associate Professor, History and Philosophy of Science Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University 1991-96 Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences and Adjunct Asst. Professor of History Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. 1990-91 Visiting Asst. Professor of Earth Sciences and Visiting Asst. Professor of History Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire 1984-89 Research Assistant, Geology Department, and Teaching Assistant, Depts. of Geology, Philosophy, and Applied Earth Sciences Stanford University. 1981-84 Geologist, Western Mining Corporation, Adelaide, Australia. MAJOR HONORS • American Philosophical Society Sabbatical Fellowship, 2001-2002. • National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, 1994-1999. • National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Teachers, 1993-94. • Society of Economic Geologists Lindgren Prize for outstanding work by a young scientist, 1993. • Ritter Memorial Fellowship in History of Marine Sciences, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, 1994. • Listed, Who’s Who in American Science and Engineering, Who’s Who in the West. 1 OTHER HONORS AND AWARDS • FACULTY: History of Science Society, Women in Science Best Paper Prize, 2000; Forum for the History of Science in America, Best Paper Prize, 1997; Geological Society of America 29th International Geological Congress Travel Grant, Kyoto, Japan, 1992. -
Teaching Ignorance: on the Importance of Developing Psychoanalytic Sensibilities in Education
TEACHING IGNORANCE: ON THE IMPORTANCE OF DEVELOPING PSYCHOANALYTIC SENSIBILITIES IN EDUCATION Jennifer Logue Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Lacan once remarked that there was “something quite ironic about Christ’s injunction to love thy neighbor as thyself because, actually, people hate themselves.”1 We might say, in observing the way people treat each other, perhaps they have always loved their neighbors as they’ve loved themselves: that is, “with a great deal of cruelty and disregard.”2 In his thorough engagement with Freud, Lacan theorizes that we are, at the core, ambivalent animals: wherever we love we hate, wherever we hate we love. Ambivalence does not, in the Freudian story (retold by Lacan, retold here by Adam Philips), mean mixed feelings, it means conflicting or contradictory feelings. Love and hate—too narrow concepts and so not quite accurate articulations—are the rudimentary sources, the most primary affects with which we try to make sense of our realities. They are mutually constituting in that you can’t have one without the other.3 Psychoanalytic inquiry encourages us to grapple with our often unrecognized yet structurally organizing ambivalences about anything and everything that matters to us, even as we carry on as if we are entirely rational, as if we are masters of our own house, so to speak. In other words, psychoanalytic insight informs us that we are often ignorant to our own affective (dis)investments. Can Lacan’s observation about our loving and hating our neighbors the way we love and hate ourselves