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Climate Change and Post-Normal Science
In what we call ‘post-normal science’, facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent. In such a case, the term ‘problem’, with its connotations of an exercise where a defined methodology is likely to lead to a clear solution, is less appropriate.
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Ten Suggestions to Enhance Policy Impact of Sustainability Knowledge | SEI
Here are the findings from the Stockholm Environment Institute report, "Getting to Policy Impact: Lessons from 20 Years of Bridging Science and Policy with Sustainability Knowledge."
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Morisette and Richardson: Phenology and Climate Change
We're working on leveraging the vast number of webcams out there to get a very spatially dense array of ground-based observations with which we can evaluate and improve satellite remote sensing estimates of phenology.
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What do philosophers bring to the climate discussion?
Dale Jamieson: The science of climate change is very different from what we were taught science is supposed to be.
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What do philosophers bring to the climate discussion?
Dale Jamieson: The science of climate change is very different from what we were taught science is supposed to be.
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The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery | Microsoft
Knowledge developed primarily for the purpose of scientific understanding is being complemented by knowledge created to target practical decisions and action. This new knowledge endeavor can be referred to as the science of environmental applications. Climate change provides the most prominent example of the importance of this shift. Until now, the climate science community has focused on critical questions involving basic knowledge, from measuring the amount of change to determining the causes. With the basic understanding now well established, the demand for climate applications knowledge is emerging. How do we quantify and monitor total forest biomass so that carbon markets can characterize supply?
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Mike Hulme: A Call for Open Science
The I.P.C.C. itself, through its structural tendency to politicize climate change science, has perhaps helped to foster a more authoritarian and exclusive form of knowledge production - just at a time when a globalizing and wired cosmopolitan culture is demanding of science something much more open and inclusive.
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Murray Gell-Mann: A Crude Look at the Whole
The most important caveat for any simple model of a complex system is not to take it too seriously.
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Daniel Sarewitz: Climate Predictions | Nature
Strange as it may seem, the right lessons for the future of climate science come not from the success in predicting thunderstorms, floods and hurricanes, but from the failure to predict earthquakes.
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Brian Sidlauskas: New Meaning in Old Data | Evolution
Synthetic science promises an unparalleled ability to find new meaning in old data, extant results, or previously unconnected methods and concepts.
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Russell Ackoff: From Data to Wisdom
Intelligence is the ability to increase efficiency; wisdom is the ability to increase effectiveness.
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John Christy: Wiki-IPCC | Nature
Groups of four to eight lead authors, chosen by learned societies, would serve in rotating, overlapping three-year terms to manage (wiki) sections organized by science and policy questions.
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Collins and Evans: Expertise in the Age of Amateurs
The problem of extension means setting boundaries around the legitimate contribution of the general public to the technical part of technical debates.
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Lord May: Science as Organised Scepticism
Especially in the early stages (of scientific research), questioning and dissident opinion are hugely useful. It is most important that the consensus is not reached to early, too glibly, because it can inhibit fruitful lines of investigation. Yet, despite its importance in the early geo-morphology of the scientific landscape, such questioning becomes unhelpful if it stubbornly persists in the teeth of clear and contrary evidence.
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Sheila Jasanoff: Public Faith in Climate Science
The IPCC has demonstrated that it can learn and change. That ingenuity should be directed toward building relationships of trust and respect with global citizens.
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Brian Wynne: Climate Scientism and Public Policy
Scientism is the ingrained assumption that scientific evidence is the only authority that can justify policy action.
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Paul Stern and Harvey Fineberg: The Analytic-Deliberative Process
Risk characterization should be a decision-driven activity, directed toward informing choices and solving problems. The view of risk characterization as a translation or summary is seriously deficient.
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Naomi Oreskes: On Scientific Knowledge
History shows us clearly that science does not provide certainty. It does not provide truth. What it provides us with is the consensus of experts.
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Harvey Brooks: Science and Society
One does not have to be a cynic about democracy to believe that broad public participation is not necessarily the best way to resolve technically complex issues.
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Transdisciplinary Inquiry
Transdisciplinarity requires a focus that is inquiry-driven rather than discipline driven. This does not involve a rejection of disciplinary knowledge, but the development of pertinent knowledge for the purposes of action in the world.
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volume 01 issue 03
