IPCC and the Media: Don’t be misled (again)

By Wayne Myrvold I wish that I had suggested “Don’t be fooled” for the title of Gordon McBean’s blog post earlier this week, instead of “Don’t be misled,”  so that I could call this one “Don’t be fooled again.” Several of the blog posts in the past week have pointed to difficulties in communicating climate [...]

2013-10-05T08:26:02-04:00September 28th, 2013|Climate Change|

The Climate Debate: Ignorance, and/or Complexity?

by Dan Hicks Why is the climate change debate so interminable? From the perspective of many scientists, we’ve had compelling data since the 1970s and more than enough reason to reduce greenhouse gas emissions since the 1980s. Today the IPCC will release the first part of their fifth Assessment Report. But no one really expects [...]

2014-03-18T15:47:10-04:00September 27th, 2013|Climate Change|

What do you bring to a street fight?

By Wayne Myrvold Two weeks ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a press release stating that “the IPCC is not holding any crisis meeting.” In other news, the IPCC has not enlisted a herd of flying unicorns to carry thermometers  into the stratosphere.  The IPCC statement came as a result of claims in [...]

2013-10-05T08:24:13-04:00September 25th, 2013|Climate Change|

What are the foundational issues in cosmology? A report from the Rutgers-UCSC Summer Institute for the Philosophy of Cosmology

by Yann Benétreau-Dupin and Chris Smeenk   Contemporary cosmology raises a number of philosophical questions, such as the limits of scientific explanations of the origin of the universe and the status of “dark energy” or the “multiverse.” Philosophers have recently turned to these topics, due to their intrinsic interest and the influx of new ideas [...]

The IPCC and the Media: Don’t be misled

By Gordon McBean 24 September 2013 On Friday, 27 September 2013, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will release the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) for its Working Group I – The Physical Climate Basis.  The full Working Group I report will be placed on the IPCC website (www.ipcc.ch) on 30 September.  Due to the [...]

2013-09-26T21:55:10-04:00September 24th, 2013|Climate Change|

Two Dimensions of Knowledge

By Wayne Myrvold  Monday, September 23.  Today, in Stockholm, members of Working Group I of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are meeting to work out, and approve, the group’s contribution to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report.  Working Group I (one of three such groups) is the group tasked with reporting on the physical [...]

2013-10-05T08:27:01-04:00September 23rd, 2013|Philosophy of Science|

Merchants of Doubt; Science and Reality Conference

“In a modern world where we can travel the globe in hours, connect with one another from wherever we are, achieve remarkable advances in healthcare and physically explore our universe, it is easy to take science for granted,” said Carl Hoefer, the new Director of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy. “But it is essential that [...]

2014-03-18T15:50:13-04:00September 21st, 2013|Climate Change, Events, Philosophy of Science, Science and Society|

Video: Reversibility and the Past Hypothesis – David Albert

Here's the sixth lecture from the Rotman Summer Institute on Foundations of Statistical Mechanics from July 14-20, 2013. Lots more to come. In this lecture Albert discusses the problems arising from the fact that classical statistical mechanics assumes the time-reversal symmetric Newtonian dynamics. Albert begins with a discussion of how the evolutions of microscopic states [...]

2014-03-18T15:52:18-04:00September 19th, 2013|Events, Statistical Mechanics|

Video: Einstein’s Miraculous Argument of 1905 – John Norton

Here's the fifth lecture from the Rotman Summer Institute on Foundations of Statistical Mechanics from July 14-20, 2013. Lots more to come. In this lecture, John Norton presents an analysis of how Einstein came to the argument for light behaving in some contexts as quanta, which Einstein himself calls a "very revolutionary" argument among his [...]

2014-03-18T15:52:53-04:00September 18th, 2013|Events, Statistical Mechanics|
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