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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 55651 to 55700:

  1. Pielke Jr and McIntyre Assist Christy's Extreme Weather Obfuscation
    There are two major problems with your comments, Roger. Number 1, as we showed in the above post, the points on which you "critiqued Field's testimony" are largely misrepresentations of his actual arguments, which are both accurate and consistent with the findings in the SREX. Number 2, regardless of its consistency with the SREX, the far more important point is that Field's testimony was an accurate representation of the full body of scientific evidence, as MacCracken noted in his comments. So basically you're criticizing Field for giving scientifically accurate testimony by shifting the goalposts associated with one relevant report, while remaining silent regarding the scientifically inaccurate testimony in the same hearing from John Christy. Coincidentally, I've invited MacCracken here to give his own opinions on the issue, rather than having third parties (mis)interpret his comments. I hope he accepts.
  2. Pielke Jr and McIntyre Assist Christy's Extreme Weather Obfuscation
    I forgot the link to my site in the above, it is here, Thanks! http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2012/08/ipcc-lead-author-misleads-us-congress.html?showComment=1345047334032#c1263983918677994022
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] Link activated.
  3. Hansen's New Climate Dice - Hot, Loaded, and Misunderstood
    Wyoming (just north of me?), I appreciate your post, and your efforts; however, as this blog, among many other as scientifically robust, prove is that mere "facts" and "data" don't matter to WUWTers (I like that term!). If all it took was facts and data, we'd be well along a path of CO2 limitation. As it is, we're not. Kudos to all here who post (fight) the good fight. I simply cannot imagine being where the temperature of the rain approaches that of pain: here in Colorado, on the HOTTEST of days, if--IF--it rains, you'll freeze!
  4. Pielke Jr and McIntyre Assist Christy's Extreme Weather Obfuscation
    dana1981- To set the record straight, MacCracken said: "it appears to me they [Congressional Democrats] invited two leading scientists (McCarthy and Field) to testify about what science is now finding, and that is what Chris did. That it goes beyond IPCC, well the science has gone beyond IPCC." Obviously, there is no doubt that Field's testimony "goes beyond" what the IPCC SREX reported. Now, whether that "going beyond" is appropriate is worth discussing. In what ways did Field "go beyond" IPCC SREX? As I explained to Mike in that thread: "I critiqued Field's testimony on 5 points: 1. Linking human-caused climate change to economic disasters via extremes 2. Neglecting to mention that the US has seen a decline in drought 3. Citing the NOAA billion-dollar disasters 4. Asserting that the role of climate change in hurricane disasters ($$) is "mixed" 5. Implying that the role in climate change in flooding disasters ($$) is increasing Each of these 5 are at variance with the conclusions of the IPCC SREX." I offered to Mike the chance to back up the appropriateness of each of these 5 deviations from IPCC SREX with specific post-SREX scientific references. Contrary to what you report, MacCracken declined the opportunity to discuss the science: "I made my comment on this blog as I really only wanted to discuss the context for the discussion, not the science, as was going on on your blog. I have been working mainly in other areas of research and am just not going to get into a detailed discussion with you on all of this." As far as SkS, it has been eye-opening to see what you do, from your gratuitous insult of my father and me via a Tweet to the above characterization of my interaction with MaCracken, what I have seen is a lot of innuendo/insults and little actual science. I really did expect better. [snip] Anyone wanting to discuss issues 1-5 above is welcome at my site. Thanks!
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] Comments regarding moderation policy are by definition off-topic, so please do not include them in a substantive post. I have snipped this time, next time I will delete. Note also that a private communication does not necessarily represent SkS, any more than I would regard a tweet from a contributor to your blog as being representative of your blog as a whole. Lastly, we would welcome a discussion of the science here, but that is difficult if you do not post comments on the science. Please do discuss any scientific point relevant to the article, it is exactly the purpose of the site.
  5. Hansen's New Climate Dice - Hot, Loaded, and Misunderstood
    For the doubting WUWT'ers here is hard data proof of the Hansen paper. Yesterday in Needles, CA when it was 118 deg F It RAINED. The rain was measured at 115 deg F - a world record The humidity was 11% - also a world record Previous world record was set on June 5, 2012 in Mecca, Saudi Arabia at a temp of 109 F Previous world record to that was Marrakech, Morocco on July 10, 2010 also at 109 F. Considering how far back such records go, just what do you think the odds of that was. A 9 deg F jump in a historical record only 2 months apart. Teh 3 hottest rains in history only 2 years apart. How many standard deviations out was that? The case appears to be closed. http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2186
  6. Pielke Jr and McIntyre Assist Christy's Extreme Weather Obfuscation
    I managed to get access to the Linkedin Climate Policy group, and found the discussion Pielke Jr. references. Not surprisingly, he has not accurately characterized MacCracken's comments. It's a long discussion and MacCracken has a lot to say on the subject. The general gist is that Field was speaking as an extreme weather expert and not limiting himself to the information in the SREX. As such, MacCracken feels that Field's testimony was accurate and appropriate, saying for example
    "it seems to me that scientists in the field should be speaking out with the full results coming from leading research groups that seem very likely to be the leading papers and research cited in future IPCC assessments. And that seems to me to be just what Chris did, and was expected to do as a leading scientist in the field."
    Pielke Jr. then kept pushing him to say that Field's testimony was not consistent with the SREX, which MacCracken did not do, for example responding
    "No. On (a) he was giving his professional views as an EXPERT SCIENTIST relying on work published in the literature per the many citations, key ones being quite new (so post-SREX)"
    Long story short, MacCracken feels that Field's testimony was consistent with the body of scientific literature (which we showed is true in the above post) and that he was not just referring to the SREX in his testimony (which is probably also true). He does nto specifically say whether Field's testimony was inconsistent with the SREX, and in any case, we showed in the above post that it is not. Most importantly, MacCracken agrees that Field's testimony was scientifically accurate, and all Pielke Jr. takes and relays from the discussion is that MacCracken agreed that it was inconsistent with the SREX. I suspect MacCracken would be very dissatisfied with this description of his comments.
  7. Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
    I can't cite the provenance, but I have read elsewhere (and possibly on comment threads here) that "humans are feeling animals that think, rather than thinking animals that feel". In my (admittedly nonexpert) opinion, communicating science effectively to people not trained or practiced in emphasizing rational-type thinking means appeals to both the knowledge and to emotion. It means including the data and illustrative anecdotes. By contrast, we see how promoters of pseudoscience and (with regards to climate science & policy debate) pseudoskepticism tend to resort to appeals to emotion only, or appeals to ignorance, or rely on anecdotes as a substitute for data. Effective communication, perhaps, but without the backup of good science that makes it effective science communication.
  8. Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
    The repetition thing works in other ways. People tend to forget that there is always a someone new in the audience who have never heard it before. Always. I learned that by teaching Gr 8 Maths. We tend to get bored with repeating our own ideas. But if its a good one, and it works, remember that there is someone who hasn't heard it, even if it is a Gr 8 Maths student. You see, I just repeated myself. Subtle aren't I? Also I am reminded of a recent (6-12 months) controversy here in Australia about a minor paper on sea level. From memory the paper reported on the decrease in acceleration of sea level rise in the south-west Pacific. By the time a certain newspaper chain was through with it all anyone ever remembered was the word "decrease".
  9. Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
    Good conversation. Andy - I agree that some people may be turned off or feel manipulated by something like this picture, but I also think that's a small subset of people. Those of us looking at SkS (or Planet 3.0) are "high information", at least on these topics. So we're probably more likely to recognize the rhetoric and not be swayed by it, or even be angered by it. We're not representative of the population at large though. Knowing how much people like pictures, and knowing that most people only read headlines, I think the overall impact will be beneficial. While some might consider it intellectually lazy to resort to pictures and vivid headlines that appeal to emotion rather than reason, the pictures and headlines are (generally) supported by data. We all know that no one ever let facts get in the way of a good argument, so facts can't be the lede. Emotions rule, so effective communication must play to them.
  10. Hansen's New Climate Dice - Hot, Loaded, and Misunderstood
    Chris G: I've been working on this, and there are multiple confounding factors. But roughly speaking, if you correct for the change in local climatology over time, you still see broadening of the curve, but the broadening is reduced from ~30% to ~15%. Did Hansen get it wrong? The original paper was rather vague about what he was trying to measure, and he is measuring something meaningful, just not what Tamino or you or I expected. What he is measuring is precisely in line with his update however. That glosses over a lot of messy details. Dana and Tom want me to do a blog about it: They are probably right, but it's going to be dull and heavy. Against that I've got work pressures, and a much more important and exciting climate project which is just producing results.
  11. Sequestering carbon nature's way: in coal beds
    @Sarah BTW, it should be 22.8 MJ/kg, not J/kg, if converting from the Btu number. This comes (roughly) from 393 kJ/mol / 12 g/mol * coal carbon content
  12. Sequestering carbon nature's way: in coal beds
    @All, I have communicated much with Jeffrey Michel (engineer who lives in Germany), who has researched (power-plant based) CCS for many many years. I will forward his research to SkS, potentially for a follow-up post. He has not yet attempted to publish it I think (its too long for a journal article), but extracts can be found in various of his writings and testimony in German parliaments. The conclusions are sober, some of which have been hinted to above, such as, e.g., the required excess energy: To extract CO2 from the flue gas stream, you need 20-30% more energy (CC only!), which means you have to burn MORE coal per plant and therefore also use more cooling water (a problem often overlooked), which is already limited in some locations. And, BTW, the effectiveness of CC is around 90% (target value used by the industry), not 100%. Economically, CC makes currently sense only for enhanced oil recovery (EOR), which actually leads to increased carbon emissions (at current recovery rates) as a result of that oil being burned. The question then about why CCS gets pursued lies in the simple fact that the industry is trying to protect its assets, the FFs in the ground. Most of us indirectly benefit from that as our pension funds invest in FF and related industries ... On the other hand, I think the industry knows well that the carbon problem cannot be solved by CCS. Even if you equipped all FF power and cement plants around the world with CC, you'd only have "covered" the large stationary sources, maybe 20% of all anthropogenic emissions ... Andy Revkin once had a post Smil on Hummers in which Vaclav Smil sums up this sysiphos task in a few sentences. Some realistic statements can be found through this site (if you bypass the advertisement video). Also: The Carbon Capture Journal makes for interesting reading and updates. My simple conclusion: It may be a dumb idea scientifically and economically, but there is so much capital in it already that it is going to go ahead. Eventually, it may become useful to remove most CO2 out of waste streams that are not FF related, such as cement production or biomass fuel plants, assuming a product is developed to store the CO2 (some Texas company developed a carbonate I think).
  13. New research from last week 32/2012
    Thank you for comments. Lazarus, that study seems to present a special case, so I doubt that it can be generalized to the whole divergence problem. Hard to say for sure, though.
  14. Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
    Andy S @20, I have difficulty buying that the person you quote is both intelligent and uncommitted. It never escapes my attention that the various "sins" of communication supposedly violated by those trying to communicates mainstream climate science, and which supposedly have turned people of, have been committed in spades by opponents of mainstream climate science without turning anybody of. That means the supposed sin did not turn anybody of, but was merely seized upon as a pretext to allow the person to stick with the belief they found comfortable. It also means that no matter how well crafted the communication of mainstream science, because the failures are typically due to pretexts rather than reasons, some pretext will be found. This does not mean the communication of climate science cannot be improved. There have been some genuine howlers by people advocating for action on climate change. But the primary need is not some fundamental change in the way we report climate science - but a fundamental recognition of by mainstream media of the institutional barriers to accurate reporting on climate science, with an effort made to eliminate those barriers.
  15. The New Climate Dice: Public Perception of Climate Change
    This article is about the public perceptions of climate change. I think we need to be very careful about the language used. I am not a mathemetician, luckily I did do first year stats at uni and although I can't remember the specifics, I do understand what a standard deviation is. However, I think most of the non-specialist audience is lost once terms like standard deviation are used. I know this is very difficult but the language really has to avoid technical terms, even simple technical terms. The dice analogy is good but deniers just come back with statements disparaging analogies! I know this is a difficult issue to explain at times and there are a lot of people out there who are willfully ignorant and wish to remain that way, but we do need to find language that works. Anyway, great site, it's going to take a lot of thought to work out how to convince people the science is correct but if we all put our minds to it we can find ways to communicate complex issues to non-specialist audiences without dumbing it down.
  16. Hansen's New Climate Dice - Hot, Loaded, and Misunderstood
    Bernard @1 - yes it will be a combination of effects, which is why I worded it 'whether the increase is due more to...'.
    Fair point dana. Mea culpa - I should paid greater attention to the adjectives!
  17. Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
    Tom@18 The kind of person who I quoted in my comment @3 (intelligent and apparently uncommitted) ought to be our target. If they take the trouble to tell us why our message is not getting through, perhaps we should listen. We shouldn't blame them for not reacting in the way that we think people logically should react. It's not, after all, as if we are actually winning the communication war. I sometimes feel that our opponents are better at messaging than we are, not because they are more skilled in rhetoric but because they understand how to appeal to people on an emotional level, at the level of instinctive values. This area has been explored recently by the psychologist Jonathan Haidt. This book review sums up his argument quite well.
  18. Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
    CBC takes creative license with the '150 year' quote in their recent article about the rate of Arctic sea ice decline:
    NASA stressed that the massive melt occurs roughly once every 150 years, and that records showed the last time it happened was in 1889.
    Ouch.
  19. Hansen's New Climate Dice - Hot, Loaded, and Misunderstood
    Esop, Yes, we have covered the Francis work here briefly at SkS. It is certainly worrying, but still on the cutting edge. What is worrying mostly is that even without the sea ice/jet stream connection we would still expect to see a shift in the distribution. It's more or less an 'Oh crap' thing. Since we have had blocking events and jet stream anomalies in the past, the shift in distribution will only make the weather within those events more extreme. If, and that's a big if at this point, those blocking events themselves are more extreme because of sea ice loss and Arctic amplification (and change the temperature gradient between temperate zones) then that is very alarming. And I'll leave it at that.
  20. Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
    Tom Curtis @18-I agree,and your comment made me reflect back on Barry Bickmore's idea (paraphrased),that when AGW "skeptics" pick on minor points and employ logical fallacies to "win" and argument,that they are "trying too hard".
  21. BEST Results Consistent with Human-Caused Global Warming
    I just finished listening to the Diane Rehm show for Aug 14th on NPR titled New Consensus On Climate Change. It was very frustrating to listen to Dr. Muller undermining the importance of climate change,and the proposed solutions.I suspect that he will be back in another 10 years telling everyone why we need emergency and drastic action to reduce greenhouse gasses and why he was justified in downplaying the importance of that message in the record breaking summer of 2012. It seems as though Muller has not really learned his lesson yet.
  22. Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
    Andy S @16, we cannot judge an attempted communication by the fact that it has a negative effect on a given person unless that person was the particular target audience. Some people, quite simply, are primed to find fault with certain messages, or messages from certain people. Such people will then seize on anything as a reason to not like the message, or to reject it. That they should do so is no indication of the effectiveness of the communication. Indeed, that one such person should seize on the picture of a forest fire in a discussion of extreme heat events to reject the message is probably an indication that the communication was effective rather than the opposite. What did that person expect? That discussions of extreme heat should be entirely isolated from any mention (or illustration) of the potential consequences of extreme heat?
  23. Hansen's New Climate Dice - Hot, Loaded, and Misunderstood
    Just what is wrong with Cliff Mass's method of attribution can be seen by comparing it with a similar but statistically justified method as used in Otto et al, 2012. They calculate a mean increase in Moscow temperatures 1.9 times the GISTEMP 1200 km smoothed increase, or about 0.9 C for July. Using Cliff Mass's method of attribution, we would therefore attribute just 0.9 C of the 5 C anomaly in the Moscow 2010 heatwave to global warming. In fact, however, Otto 2012 shows an approximately 1.5 C increase relative to events of equivalent return interval in the 1960s as the Moscow heat wave had in the 2000s (as determined by models). That is, Mass's guesstimate would have been out by 40% for Moscow 2010. That does not mean it will be out by similar amounts for other heat waves. It may be out by smaller or larger amounts. Because of the crude nature of his method, we have know way of knowing in advance of a decent analysis just how much.
  24. Hansen's New Climate Dice - Hot, Loaded, and Misunderstood
    I think Tamino has it. I think you can get the results that Hansen has if the cooler areas warm more than the warmer areas. Not that Hansen's results are inaccurate; I think you just have to understand them within the correct context. From a global context, the distribution has gotten hotter and flatter, which is what Hansen shows, but that does not imply that the change has to be spatially uniform. IDK, have to read his paper again, but it may be that is what he meant the whole time. Esop, I'm thinking 'yes', but there is more to it than that. The jetstream(s) pattern is determined by where the major convective patterns, Hadley, intertropical, and polar, meet at a downwelling. The latitude of the downwelling is affected by how long it takes to radiate off the energy gained at low altitude, and that is a function of GHG content, as well as how much energy is gained low altitude, which is affected by surface albedo. Someone please tell me if there is something wrong with my understanding. In any case, I can't see why anyone would doubt that an increase in energy content would manifest itself in the form of hotter temperatures, and you can't get hotter temperatures without shifting the distribution.
  25. Hansen's New Climate Dice - Hot, Loaded, and Misunderstood
    dana1981, Lionel A & DB, The URL worked out and I saw the animation. Very impressive. Thanks.
  26. Hansen's New Climate Dice - Hot, Loaded, and Misunderstood
    Isn't it correct that the Russian heat wave of 2010, the US heatwaves of 2011 and 2012 as well as the miserable 2011 and 2012 summers for Northern Europe seem to have been mainly caused by the rather major changes in the jetstream, which is linked to the rapidly diminishing Arctic sea ice, whose disappearing act is very, very likely mainly due to AGW. Thus, I would think that the causal link between AGW and said heatwaves should be fairly solid?
  27. Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
    re: "photographs" to accompany message Lady Gaga can sing and flaunt and make music videos. She can fill a small stadium. Madonna in concert mentioned the trials of the Pussy Riot hoolicanistas.. and in a few seconds greatly influence their fate. When the world, when all media voices decides to face up to global warming, we will. For now we are on the edges, the mainstream media is in a plundering carbon mode -- practicing various forms of denial - and I suspect fully aware of the bubble.
  28. Hansen's New Climate Dice - Hot, Loaded, and Misunderstood
    Tony #3, Not very scientific, but in the sense that any short curve can be approximated by a line, and projecting BAU, the eye-chronometer tells me that we will hit 20% land surface area covered by 3-sigma events (or greater) in about 25 years. Not much time all things considered.
  29. Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
    BWTrainer@14 I fully agree that using photographs or other images can be very effective in communication, even the "decorative" ones used in the study you referred to. The point about the forest fire photo was that it apparently (er) backfired on the writer of the comment that I quoted. I saw the same photo and it had no conscious effect on me (it was included, coincidentally, in the previous SkS post to this one), but it obviously caused a negative response in at least one person. Incidentally, this discussion led me to check the wildfire statistics for the USA and it appears that this year-to-date is bad but not exceptional, despite the record heat and drought. Thus, this photograph not only raises hackles but also provides a segue for an otherwise irrelevant "skeptic" talking point. My concern is simply that rhetoric, because it appeals to the emotions, can have unpredictable effects on those who do not share your worldview. We have to be careful to measure our success not just on how we rouse the people who already get it on climate change but on the unintended reactions of the those who don't.
  30. Hansen's New Climate Dice - Hot, Loaded, and Misunderstood
    shoyemore On FF 14.0.1 here Figure 1 when right-clicked on indicates a Quicktime plug-in is required.
  31. The New Climate Dice: Public Perception of Climate Change
    Sorry Try this
  32. Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
    Ah... how great this moment is.... we fully accept the science of global warming. Now, we arrive at a point of studying human reactions and the psychology of communicating needs to change. We are fully confident that the physics of climate change will unfold as they must - and that humans will meet and respond as we can. The science is now shifted from climate science to studying our species.
  33. Hansen's New Climate Dice - Hot, Loaded, and Misunderstood
    tony - I think you would probably have to answer the question regarding how much of the distribution is due to shifting means and how much due to increasing variance etc. in order to accurately extrapolate to the future (as well as knowing how much warming to expect). shoyemore - you may need some sort of plug-in to see the video, but it's essentially just an animation of the four bell curves below in Figure 1.
  34. New research from last week 32/2012
    Does the study about air pollution masking climate signals in tree rings infer anything about the divergence problem found in some tree rings?
  35. Hansen's New Climate Dice - Hot, Loaded, and Misunderstood
    Figure 1 is totally a blank to me ... though I can see four bell-curves at the bottom. The main rectangle is apparently empty.
    Moderator Response: [DB] As Dana says below, possibly a plugin/browser issue (looks fine in FF 14). The URL for the animation is http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003900/a003975/bell_final_comp.m4v.
  36. Patrick Michaels: Serial Deleter of Inconvenient Data
    Albatross@4: As is my norm, I'm drilling into each and every post here, at SkS, reading all the referenced links and data sources and in the spirit of open mindedness, I went and read up at WCR: Pray tell, is there any eye bleach you'd recommend, or where would I find an "unsee" button? And I thought WUWT was painful. Onwards and upwards!
  37. Hansen's New Climate Dice - Hot, Loaded, and Misunderstood
    Looking at Figure 1 I was wondering if it is feasible and statistically valid to extrapolate from these data a projection of the further shifting of summer temperature anomalies into the future ?
  38. Hansen's New Climate Dice - Hot, Loaded, and Misunderstood
    Bernard @1 - yes it will be a combination of effects, which is why I worded it 'whether the increase is due more to...'. We (specifically Kevin C) will be addressing that question in an upcoming post.
  39. Hansen's New Climate Dice - Hot, Loaded, and Misunderstood
    However, it does not impact the main result of Hansen et al., that global warming has caused extreme heat events to occur more frequently and to be more intense on average. The question is more of a technical issue - whether the increase in extreme heat events is due more to an increased temperature variability, to the warmer shift in average temperatures, or to increased skewness in the temperature distribution.
    Or to a combination of some or all of the aforementioned... In any case, human-caused global warming is responsible.
  40. Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
    Andy S: Quite the contrary, according to recent research Researchers looking at Stephen Colbert's 'truthiness' demonstrated that "People are more likely to believe something is true if a photograph appears alongside the story".
  41. Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
    I read an essay by George Orwell, and remember a few things, but the one that stuck was to invent new metaphors. Never use tired old metaphors, or cliches.
  42. Chris Crawford at 00:13 AM on 15 August 2012
    A game designer's contribution to the climate solution
    Dale, I have contacted more than 150 different organizations, ranging from green to "peak oil", climate change, environmental, energy, education, conservation... it's amazing how, by following blog rolls, you can find an ever-larger circle of possibilities. I balked at government organizations because they're too slow to respond to the short time window of a Kickstarter project. I didn't try the Koch brothers, but I did consider blackmailing them: "Gimme a million bucks or I'll publish this thing!"
  43. Miriam O'Brien (Sou) at 00:08 AM on 15 August 2012
    Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
    Look forward to reading the book. It's not easy to step outside your comfort zone and speak to an unfamiliar audience, especially a 'mass' audience. It's easy to talk to colleagues and peers - everyone speaks the same language. Move beyond that to a specific audience and it's not that hard for most of us, provided we have a reasonable idea of how much they know about the subject. Go beyond that to a mixed audience comprised of people who have some understanding through to people who have no understanding and are openly fearful of the subject, even to the extent of being hostile - and it is a whole other challenge. Politicians and community leaders have to face this when speaking in public. They don't always succeed in communicating complex issues. Most scientists don't ever have to speak about their work to anyone but other scientists. Some have to communicate with policy makers, investors or other lay persons. Climate scientists are increasingly being asked to speak to all sorts - from the eminently uninformed to decision-makers (not that they are mutually exclusive). Talking about science shouldn't be left up to researchers and it's not. Thankfully there are people like John Cook and his crew and Joe Romm et al who are trained in science but work as science communicators.
  44. A game designer's contribution to the climate solution
    I don't think war is going to go away just because everyone becomes green. Civ reflects what we know about ourselves and of course people like playing competitive games that involve winning a fight. There is no reason at all why Civ can not include the use of green developments and seeing how they do against fossil fuels. Really it requires the setting of a different goal for winning. That will then determine how a game is played and what technology is used.
  45. The New Climate Dice: Public Perception of Climate Change
    Ahh, what a lovely post. Thank you for providing such a good summary.
  46. The New Climate Dice: Public Perception of Climate Change
    SEAN O, I get nothing when I click on your link.
  47. Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
    Might I also suggest another book which is highly relevant, even 50+ years after its first publishing: "Language In Thought And Action," by S.I. Hayakawa. Highly recommended! Language In Thought And Action http://www.amazon.com/Language-Thought-Action-Fifth-Edition/dp/0156482401
  48. Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
    Andy@5: --Not only are there local ordinances that proscribe me EVER 'donning a bikini' in public, there is also... --NO WAY any person, perhaps especially male persons, can resist clicking your link. I had never seen Gaga in the aforementioned carne-suit, but...*now* I have. Time to go eat lunch....! Back to the regularly-scheduled science discussion....;)
  49. Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
    I will also read the book and then comment further. In the meantime, as regards the use of metaphors to convey complex scientific concepts, I think one critical key is to have mastery of the subject at hand, and being able to relate it to layfolk in terms of a common everyday occurance/object/action/thing with which they are familiar. Before becoming a geologist in the late 90s, I spent close to 30 years as a professional auto mechanic. I "retired" from that field in the early 90s to pursue my long-postponed secondary education. Fast forward to 1997: I applied to Columbia University Biosphere II's NASA-funed internship and when writing up my resume, I chose to leave out all my car-related experience, thinking it utterly irrelevant to doing work in the earth sciences. My then-girlfriend, who was and is much more astute than I about such matters, cautioned me against that, stating those experiences and expertise might be of interest to someone reading my app. So, in went the references to my experience repairing Jaguars and Rolls-Royces....>-/ I was doubbtful anyone in an earth science field would care.... Lo and behold, when I was accepted to the program, the head of the BSII project at the time, Bill Harris (also head of NSF, at the time) contacted me and did a final interview with me, on the phone. From memory, this is essentially what Harris told me, as to why he chose me. "I have a Corvette, and I wonder, when you get down here (Oracle, AZ) would you be willing to help with some issues on the car?" The short of it is: Over the years, my 'mastery,' such as it is, of things automotive has been *invaluable* in being able to convey complex scientific issues to those not so trained. It is true, as someone mentioned, that metaphor can only go so far, but if by using that technique, you can get a person's brain to 'click into' the key concept you're trying to convey, then it usually is easier to trend towards more esoteric and scholastic means to discuss the issues at hand. I look forward to reading Romm's insights.
  50. Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
    Good review. The scientific community has great difficulty in communicating with the general public, via a media that relies far too much on false equivalency and a "he said, she said" mode of exposition. Contrairians assert that "it's all a hoax," and the response is what one might expect from a journal abstract: full of qualifications and caveats. The advice to keep it simple and repeat needs to be taken more to heart. Use simple, declarative sentences, without qualification, as much as that may pain most scientists. For example: "The best science shows that the human species is in peril." James Hansen, at least, has figured this out. But too many scientists think even speaking to the public directly somehow sullies their reputation.

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