On Wednesday, April 8, at 7:30pm, Rotman postdoc Dan Hicks will be giving a lecture for the Humanist Association of London and Area at the Cross Cultural Learning Centre, 505 Dundas Street in London. The lecture is open to the general public and a $2 donation is suggested. The title and abstract are below.The GMO [...]
Mysterious Models and Enigmatic EnsemblesReto Knutti (ETH Zurich, Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science)Abstract: As our understanding improves, more observations become avail - able, and computational capacity increases, climate models continue to in - crease in complexity to synthesize all that knowledge. The hope is that as more and more processes are considered at greater [...]
The Orgasm Wars Friday, March 6 3:30pm-5pm New Chu International Centre Abstract: There has been a fierce battle occurring among people who explain the evolution of human female orgasm, about its evolutionary origins and nature. The core issue is that the female orgasm presents an evolutionary puzzle. Unlike the male orgasm, female orgasm is not [...]
Elisabeth Lloyd, Indiana University, BloomingtonMarch 05, 2015 Location: Western University, Stevenson Hall, Room 11453:30 pm Abstract: Both climate scientists and philosophers have been working hard to understand how the huge multidimensional global climate models can be tested and confirmed. The convergence of multiple climate models on a single outcome or result has provided a key [...]
Nathaniel Bergman* , Noam Greenbaum and Uri Schwartz( * University of Western Ontario)Title: Extreme Floods and Short-Term Hydroclimatological Fluctuations in the Hyper-Arid Dead Sea Region, IsraelThe autumn Active Red Sea Trough (ARST) rainstorm in the southern Dead Sea region on 29 October 2004 was documented using calibrated radar images, some rainfall measurements, slope-area, and HEC-RAS [...]
Jon Lawhead (University of Southern California) Title:MultiScale Modeling and Pluralism in Climate Systems The global climate is a paradigmatic complex system, and so exhibits interesting behavioral regularities at many different spatiotemporal scales. Moreover, these patterns are mutually constraining: the presence of a stable behavioral regularity at one scale can influence the structure of stable behavioral [...]
Forrest DeGroff (City College of San Francisco )Title: A Proposed Alternative Measure for Climate ChangePotential Carbon dioxide equivalents is the benchmark standard for expressing climate change potential, expressed as CO2e. “The international standard practice is to express greenhouse gases in carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalents. Emissions of gases other than CO2 are translated into CO2 equivalents [...]
Two years ago, this blog featured a series of posts about how the history and philosophy of science (HPS) can contribute to science education:Broadening the goals of science education, by Reuven Brandt,Improving scientific literacy through improved critical thinking skills, by Melissa Jacquart, How to include HPS in science education standards?, by myself, andWhat must be done [...]
Published on Mar 5, 2015 One hundred years ago, in November 1915, Albert Einstein achieved his long-sought theory of gravitation: the General Theory of Relativity. In developing the General Theory, Einstein brought together ideas from philosophy, mathematics, and physics, to create a remarkable new conception of gravity, space, and time. His work is a model [...]
Ioan Muntean (University of Notre Dame)Title: Plurality of Models, Optimization and Mechanisms in Climate Studies. The Role of Feedback in the New IPCC Report In order to predict and ultimately explain Earth’s climate system, especially its sensitivity to natural and human influences in the immediate and long-term future, a considerable number of computer simulations are run [...]
