Climate uncertainties and the problems communicating them

The journal <em>Nature</em> has used a series of editorials to point out the areas of climatology that are the least understood, and considers why the public remains fixated on the basics instead.<BR><BR><a href='http://meincmagazine.com/science/news/2010/01/climate-uncertainties-and-the-problems-communicating-them.ars'>Read the whole story</a>

 

[IIci]

The problem in many scientific fields is that editors not scientists make a synopsis of the findings which ends up being the public discourse point. Because editors and not scientists do these, there is often the temptation to stress findings and connections not made by the scientific paper to drive interest to the research. Part of it is the funding incentive structure that distorts the science at the public interface point.

 

[IIci]

Its the politics that polarize everything. The reason why the right is keen to deny science is that it isn't popular or politically savvy to attach a cost threshold to the disruption of human livelihood before necessitating a remedy. The same inability to assign dollar values to acceptable disruptions of human lives is what motivates the left to veer towards the worst predictions so as to make it a moral imperative.<BR><BR>The same can be said about why there hasn't been a proper healthcare debate, no one wants to publicly assign a dollar value to life. So the right prefers not to publicly commit to anything by leaving it to the market which invariably will do a cost benefit on how much it can raise the premiums and profits before people opt out and play the russian roulette. The left will appeal to a moral right to life and will almost certainly allow people in their last 10 years of life or those with a history of poor health choices to dominate the expenditures of all.

 

[IIci]

I don't know of any other profession that is under the same level of scrutiny. These editorials seems rather apropos:<BR><BR>Corporate Backing for Research? Get Over It<BR>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01...nce/26tier.html?8dpc<BR><BR>From Inside and Out, Climate Panel Is Pushed to Change<BR>http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes....pushed-to-change/?hp<BR><BR><I>This comment was edited by IIci on January 26, 2010 15:38</I>