Attacks on scientists and their research are very common in the public debate surrounding global warming. The attacks don’t need to make any sense nor is there a need for merit to the raised criticisms. For climate science deniers it’s more about maintaining their ideological mental armour so they can keep their world view in tact.
During the AGU Fall Meeting I had the honor of working with Peter Sinclair of Climate Denial Crock of the Week and John Cook of Skeptical Science, interviewing an amazing line-up of scientists and science communicators. I’m floored by who we interviewed and could have a chat with. Everyone brought their A game which gave us some incredible footage (you can find all the videos in the AGU 2014 video archive, they’ll be added as they’re released).
A lot of this footage you’ll also see in the upcoming Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) from The University of Queensland. The Denial101x MOOC will launch in April 2015 on the EdX platform. Registration has opened so you can register for free.
John, Peter, and I managed to get some amazing scientists for this MOOC and our own productions:
Continue reading A Historic Series Of Interviews At The AGU 2014 Fall Meeting
The last day of the AGU Fall Meeting which is considered one of the less interesting days. Why some would say this is beyond me though as I attended one hell of a session.
The session I went to today was Understanding Why People Reject Sound Scientific Information and How Scientists Can Respond which was held at Moscone South from 10:20 AM – 12:20 PM. The session started with an introduction by Ann Reid, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education.
The interview insanity continued today with another long round of interviews with some great people. So again I wasn’t able to attend any sessions for this day.
Though I do know that John Cook was present for the talk Scientists Are from Mars, Laypeople Are from Venus: An Evidence-Based Approach to Consensus Messaging. It was a great talk summarizing the science behind consensus messaging and how effective it is.
Today was the first day I finally had a chance to attend some sessions in the morning. But that was after I missed a couple of presentations as I had to run to Radio Shack to get a new external harddrive. We’ve recorded so much interview footage that the drive I had with me just didn’t have enough space.
At AGU I dropped walked in the session Climate Literacy: Culture of Science AND Broader Impacts Done Well (ED31H) just before the start of the presentation Integrating Explicit Learning about the Culture of Science into the Pre-Service Teacher Curriculum through Readings and Reflections presented by Anne Egger.
Unfortunately it was another long day for me working in the interview room. I didn’t even have any lunch today so packed full was my schedule with interviews and getting footage for videos.
Though I did again meet a lot of great scientists and had a lot of fun. I did have a short chat with Lauren Kurtz the executive director of the Climate Science Defense Fund. I highly recommend you visit them at room 264 in Moscone South if you’re in need of legal advice. Something that is sadly often too needed in the current climate debate with all the attacks from climate science deniers.
For the first day I don’t have a lot to report about the happenings at AGU 2014. Unfortunately I spent the entire morning in an interview room and during the afternoon I was at Berkeley for another interview. Though I did catch a few tidbits in the hallways about interesting talks that happened at AGU.
The first one I heard about was Frontier’s Of Geophysics Lecture, Presented by Jeffrey Sachs. I’ll be watching it myself via the virtual options AGU offers when I’m back home.
Another interesting presentation that I missed was Richard Alley talking about abrupt climate change tipping points. I heard that there wasn’t anything new in the talk but that Richard Alley made it a great talk.
The coming days I’ll be at the AGU Fall Meeting. For those that aren’t familiar with it there’s a good introduction on the AGU’s website: With nearly 24,000 attendees, the AGU Fall Meeting is the largest Earth and space science meeting in the world. Now in its 47th year, the AGU Fall Meeting is the best place to present your…
A little over a year ago I wrote about Zwarte Piet and the controversy that had flared up surrounding him. Though the aim of that article was to give some context to foreigners about the history of Zwarte Piet and why the responses are so emotional when Zwarte Piet is critiqued.
Completely understandable that the first reaction is based in emotion as we adults have fond memories of Sinterklaas’ helper. We are after all talking about the person who throws candy at you and is the one who hands you your presents.
Continue reading Zwarte Piet And The Dutch Culture Wars
Very few Americans are aware of the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming (Maibach 2013). There’s a huge gap between the agreement the public thinks there is between scientists and the actual agreement among scientists. It’s because of this lack of awareness that several studies investigated what the agreement is among scientists.
When researchers surveyed climate scientists on the cause of global warming 97% of the actively publishing climatologists said that “human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures” (Doran 2009) Researchers found the same patterns when they analysed public statements of climate experts (Anderegg 2010). When researchers looked into how the scientific consensus on global warming evolved from 1996 to 2009 they found a steady increase in the agreement among scientists (Bray 2010). The latest survey on the scientific literature found that 97% “endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming” (Cook 2013).
Continue reading Bart Verheggen Interview: Scientists’ Views About Attribution Of Global Warming
Today was the first day I finally had a chance to attend some sessions in the morning. But that was after I missed a couple of presentations as I had to run to Radio Shack to get a new external harddrive. We’ve recorded so much interview footage that the drive I had with me just didn’t have enough space.
Very few Americans are aware of the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming (