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Lukewarmers
May 14, 2015
On 3 May (2015) Tamsin Edwards wrote an article for The Observer entitled “The lukewarmers don’t deny climate change. But they say the outlook’s fine” (see here for a discussion; I should point out that Tamsin didn’t choose the title for this article). This prompted Steven Mosher to write the following comment: “Lukewarmers have come …
Climate scepticism in Australia
May 8, 2015
Much has been written about those who doubt various tenets of mainstream climate science. Much of this literature has focused on the United States. Far less attention has been paid to Australia, despite the fact that climate change has emerged as a central issue for Australian politics and science. When studying the use of various …
Citizen science
January 9, 2015
I recently wrote a post about ‘scientific citizenship’. Today I want to home in on a related concept: ‘citizen science’. First I’ll show you how the Oxford English Dictionary has defined the phrase; then I’ll examine how the concept was used in the news and who employed the concept first; and finally I’ll briefly reflect …
You say regulatory science, I say mandated science; let’s call the whole thing off?
July 2, 2014
One issue of contention after the Circling the Square conference was the apparent confounding of science with regulatory science. I finally took a bit of time to dig into the history and use of the concept of ‘regulatory science’ and a related concept, ‘mandated science’. I should stress that there are whole courses on ‘regulatory …
Making Energy Research More Responsive: Public Dialogue as Experiment
March 31, 2014
The UK Civil Service Reform Plan includes a commitment to embedding systems that are open to a broad range of inputs, including those of the public. Public responsiveness is therefore recognized as a key characteristic of good governance including in the field of science and technology policy-making. Since the influential 2000 ‘Science and Society’ report …
What does climate sensitivity mean? Peace for our time…or the wrong battle?
March 7, 2014
A very quick post on this week’s big news in the climate blogosphere: a new report on climate sensitivity, Oversensitive, written by Nicholas Lewis and Marcel Crok published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). The GWPF’s role is discussed in a new Klimazwiebel post by my colleague, Reiner Grundmann, while Ed Hawkins’s Climate Lab Book …
Mike Hulme: Public Life of Climate Change, The First 25 Years
February 7, 2014
Mike Hulme, one of Making Science Public’s Honorary Associates, joined us in Nottingham today for a workshop about the role of scientific expertise and consensus in public life. Mike also gave a public lecture at lunchtime, which attracted a multidisciplinary audience from within the university, as well as members of the public from beyond the …
Blogs, publics and controversies: climate change lectures in February
January 14, 2014
Time to unveil three four FIVE! exciting climate change lectures hosted by Making Science Public in February. Superb speakers examining different perspectives on one of the defining issues of modern public life. All are welcome to these lectures, all held on University Park campus. Thursday, February 6th: 1-2pm, Law & Social Sciences (West Wing), A100 Amelia Sharman …