Wednesday
Apr072010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Royal Society podcasts
Apr 7, 2010 Climate: Statistics Royal Society Podcasts of the Royal Society meeting on Uncertainty in Science are now available for download. Comments on the contents are particularly welcome.
Reader Comments (6)
I listened to the first five minutes of slingo.mp3. The most striking thing is that she began her talk with apologising for not being an expert in this?!!? She wasn't even specific about what she was not an expert in.
A very python-esque moment, perhaps she was fooling us all and giving a meta-talk. Who knows?
I'm still uncertain.
SDCS
they were filming the whole show all of the time, you would wonder why that is not put on the web. the slides and text was promised to go into their philosophical transactions publication.
As all climatologists preach, the "basic physics" is irrefutable "proof" of AGW. And as anyone who actually understands some real physics knows, The Uncertainty Principle rules...
Sir Digby - I left some contributory references for you regarding your noble white paper idea in unthreaded.
I listened to the final panel session to get a sense of whether it would be worth my time listening to individual presentations. I am afraid that I was not impressed. My fundamental reaction is that many discussants had personal political agendas at work that they were not ready to own (or even recognize) prior to their pronouncements on the separate aspects of the issues around role of experts, uncertainty and policy-making.
One thing that was telling is that there was only one speaker with a non-governmental, non-academic focus. Compared to the academic speakers she was much more grounded and realistic in her assessments of what could actually be done.
One of the last speakers said it was the most exciting conference he has attended -- I would be interested if other listeners here support that assessment.
Drew,
Thanks for the references. I'm still mulling what to put in and leave out to make the argument work on all levels and as Bish. pointed out the necessary discourse is often difficult to condense into 2 sides of A4.
I'll give it some thought over the weekend.
SDCS
For those who could not face listening to all the talks on Handling uncertainty in science here is a one of the best. It is a talk by Peter Webster, climatologist and colleague of Judith Curry at Georgia Tech, worth listening to.
Another great talk - maybe the best of the two days - was Mervyn King's talk
on Uncertainty in macroeconomic policy making. This was a Masterclass in how to handle the media - quite brilliant.