By Wayne Myrvold In the lead-up to the release of the contribution of Working Group I (the Physical Science Basis) to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment report (AR5), stories alleging that the state of climate science is in disarray are proliferating. If you read between the lines, there’s an air of desperation in these stories. If [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
“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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
By Martin Vezér Since 2001, the Institute Vienna Circle (IVC), the University of Vienna, and the Center for Interdisciplinary Research have held a summer university program focusing on topics in the philosophy of natural and social sciences. This past July, I attended the Vienna International Summer University (VISU)—a program that brought together an international group of professors [...]
Here's the fourth lecture from the Rotman Summer Institute on Foundations of Statistical Mechanics from July 14-20, 2013. Lots more to come. In this lecture, Jos Uffink continues his earlier discussion of some of the prehistory of the kinetic theory of gases and statistical mechanics. First, Uffink discusses precursors to the kinetic theory of gases, [...]
