Posts tagged science

Writers in The Australian continues to misinterpret scientific statements on climate change. A recent press release from the World Meteorological Organization reported on the temperature in 2011, noting that it continues the trend of years much warmer than the long-term average:

At present, 2011’s nominal value ranks as the equal 10th highest on record, and the 13 warmest years have all occurred in the 15 years between 1997 and 2011.

The WMO also noted that 2011 was the warmest La Niña year on record (La Niña years tend to have cooler global temperatures, in contrast to El Niño years).

Imre Salusinszky in The Australian managed to twist all this into something with the complete opposite meaning:

Last year was the sixth coldest since 1997, which shows the catastrophic scenarios of recent times are no longer looming over us.

You only have to look at the WMO graph to see that we’re hardly out of the woods.

It’s almost as if Salusinszky’s not actually interested in reporting on the science. Surely not?

(Source: scienceblogs.com)

This was originally written for The Sydney Globalist, an undergraduate international affairs magazine. It was named best article in the issue, which had the theme “Borders”.

On a steamy day in 1974, from a facility nestled in the mountainous Puerto Rico jungle, humankind made its first concerted attempt to cross our most imposing border: the void separating our solar system from the rest of the universe. The Arecibo radio telescope beamed a message to the stars, encoding a variety of mathematical and scientific concepts, from our system of counting to the structure of DNA, that would inform alien recipients about humanity. Since that date, this method of bridging such an inevitably vast communication gap by appealing to science and mathematics – what Astronomer Royal Martin Rees called “the surest common culture” – has gained traction. The obvious caveat, that contact with extraterrestrials is wildly unlikely, does not make the idea useless. Closer to home, we must take advantage of the border-crossing universality of science to forge the transnational connections needed to address the looming challenges of the 21st century.

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Last year I took a (sadly carbon-intensive) trip to Perth to visit the Greenhouse 2009 conference. It was a great chance to see firsthand the scientific process of investigating changes to the climate, and be reassured that sensible debate is not at all suppressed.  While there I took part in a workshop run by Australian Science Communicators, which discussed how to best communicate the complex science of climate change with the diverse range of target audiences that scientists must engage with. That event was followed up with two  more in other cities, which I didn’t go to, and a report has just been compiled. The main tips for communication – which apply equally to most other areas of science, especially ones with a significant public policy dimension  - are reproduced below.

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This was written for a competition at Sydney University asking why we should study either arts or science. It won, and was later printed in The Australian newspaper.

Artists are oddly insecure about science. John Keats lamented its ability to “unweave the rainbow”, and Walt Whitman urged us to ignore “the learn’d astronomer” and instead just look at the stars. Implicit in these lines is the idea that science is dry and dusty, the province of charts and equations that strip the beauty from nature, to be dissected and locked away in glass cases. Given the steady decline in science enrolments around the world, this view seems to have caught on. But nothing could be further from the truth. Science offers a rare blend of intellectual elegance, civic contribution, and economic benefit. Far more than just dreary repetition, science “needs the free play of the mind in as great a degree as any other creative art”, in the words of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born. It is one of humanity’s greatest academic achievements, and students should take the opportunity to be a part of it.

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Written for the Winter 2010 issue of Perspective. For the article as published, including references, see this PDF.

Forecasting is big business these days, and predictions on the future of international relations are highly sought after. As companies and governments seek to manage and exploit the transition to a Pacific-centred world, the simmering battle for primacy between the United States and China, in particular, has captured much attention. The contrast in their situations is replete with dramatic tension: a superpower in decline, heaving under the weight of corporate greed and unpopular foreign adventures, and a challenger rapidly gaining the confidence to stare down its richer, older rivals. Accurate projections of how the world will be reshaped are especially important to Australia, held in the cultural orbit of the United States, but geographically planted in Asia and with strong links to our region through immigration and trade. However, if we are to obtain reasonably useful estimates of the decades ahead, it is vital that we don’t rely on outdated frameworks while ignoring the importance of disruptive forces, especially technology. This essay argues that several advances that promise to revolutionise commerce and manufacturing will also force a change to the present strategic balance anchored in American military power. This is not to say that China will overtake the United States, but that we must look more deeply into our collective crystal ball to ensure our vision of the future is an accurate one.

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