Part 5 in a series of 5 for NextGen Journal Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 Scientists can never say that something is 100% certain, but they can come pretty close. After a while, a theory becomes so strong that the academic community accepts it and moves on to more interesting [...]
Archive for the ‘How Science Works’ Category
Uncertainty
Posted in How Science Works, tagged cancer, climate change, climate sensitivity, drought, environment, flood, glaciers, global warming, ice sheets, medicine, precipitation, science, sea level rise, smoking, tobacco, uncertainty on November 9, 2011 | 8 Comments »
My Dishpan Climate Model
Posted in How Science Works, tagged bbc, climate change, climate models, experiment, global warming, iain stewart, science, spencer weart on November 2, 2011 | 10 Comments »
About two years ago, I discovered the concept of “dishpan climate models”, through Iain Stewart’s Climate Wars documentary. The experiment is pretty simple: a large bowl filled with water (representing one hemisphere of the Earth) with a block of ice in the middle (a polar region) rotates on a turntable with a Bunsen Burner (the [...]
Is There Consensus?
Posted in How Science Works, tagged AAAS, ACS, AGU, APS, climate change, consensus, environment, global warming, IPCC, royal society, science, statements on July 20, 2011 | 10 Comments »
Part 2 of a series of 5 for NextGen Journal We hear the phrase “climate change consensus” tossed around all the time. But what does that even mean? And does it actually exist? In Part 1 we discussed the concept of a scientific consensus: overwhelming agreement (but rarely unanimity) among experts. Of course, such a [...]
Why Trust Science?
Posted in How Science Works, tagged agreement, chemistry, climate change, consensus, credibility, debate, global warming, journalism, physics, politics, risk management, science on July 7, 2011 | 47 Comments »
Part 1 of a series of 5 for NextGen Journal. What’s wrong with these statements? I believe in global warming. I don’t believe in global warming. We should hear all sides of the climate change debate and decide for ourselves. Don’t see it? How about these? I believe in photosynthesis. I don’t believe in Newton’s [...]
What Can One Person Do?
Posted in How Science Works, Media and the Public, Mitigation and Policy, Science Lessons, tagged agreement, canada, carbon dioxide, climate change, climategate, communication, CRU, denial, education, environment, global warming, greenhouse effect, greenhouse gases, hansen, ice age, IPCC, journalism, media, politics, republican, risk management, science, skeptic, sustainability, united states, youth on May 5, 2011 | 23 Comments »
Next week, I will be giving a speech on climate change to the green committee of a local United Church. They are particularly interested in science and solutions, so I wrote the following script, drawing heavily from my previous presentations. I would really appreciate feedback and suggestions for this presentation. Citations will be on the [...]
In Other News…
Posted in How Science Works, tagged arctic, climate change, global warming, hansen, nasa, winter on March 29, 2011 | 7 Comments »
The Arctic is getting so warm in winter that James Hansen had to add a new colour to the standard legend - pink, which is even warmer than dark red: The official NASA maps – the ones you can generate yourself – didn’t add this new colour, though. They simply extended the range of dark red [...]
The Nature of Scientific Consensus
Posted in How Science Works, tagged agreement, cancun, carbon dioxide, climate change, copenhagen, credibility, environment, global warming, greenhouse effect, greenhouse gases, media, politics, risk management, science on December 1, 2010 | 24 Comments »
Cross-posted from NextGen Journal It is common for one to fail to grasp the difference between “consensus” and “unanimity”. A consensus does not require agreement from absolutely every member involved. Rather, it is a more general measure of extremely high agreement, high enough to accept and base decisions on. It’s stronger than a majority-rules style [...]
Be Critical of Critics
Posted in How Science Works, Media and the Public, tagged american physical society, climate change, climategate, conspiracy, credibility, CRU, environment, fraud, global warming, lewis, media, scam, science, statements, united states on October 12, 2010 | 37 Comments »
Cross-posted from NextGen Journal Of all the inane arguments made against the phenomenon of anthropogenic global climate change, the strangest – in my opinion – are the conspiracy theories. Yes, scientific fraud does happen, but on the scale of one author, not an entire multi-disciplinary field stretching back for over a century. Imagine the scale [...]
Global Surface Temperature Change
Posted in How Science Works, Media and the Public, News and Reports, tagged arctic, climate change, climategate, communication, credibility, CRU, education, environment, global temperature, global warming, greenhouse effect, hansen, hockey stick, journalism, nasa, risk management, science, swifthack, united states, urban heat island effect on August 9, 2010 | 14 Comments »
I really enjoyed reading “Global Surface Temperature Change“, by James Hansen and his team at GISS. Keep in mind that it’s still in the draft stages – they haven’t submitted to a journal yet, but they certainly plan to, and it’s a very credible team of scientists that will almost definitely get it published. The [...]
Deniers?
Posted in How Science Works, Media and the Public, tagged 9/11, climate change, communication, conservative, credibility, debate, denial, education, evolution, global warming, H1N1, liberal, media, politics, science, swine flu, vaccines, youth on June 8, 2010 | 4 Comments »
I really enjoyed New Scientist’s Special Report: Living in Denial. What a fascinating phenomenon, and a fascinating batch of articles exploring it. The denial of science is a growing problem. It’s not restricted to a particular ideology – while denying the harmful effects of smoking or the existence of climate change is typically a position [...]
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