Transcript Communicating the science, warts and all

Communicating the Science, warts
and all
Prof Bob Hodge, University of Western Sydney
A Climate for Change
Federal Parliamentary briefing, 21 March 2011
Science communication: the
dominant model
•
Linear, top-down, one-way flow of knowledge, with
feed-back processes only to enhance the precision of
insertion
• Inequality and difference between ‘expert’ (active,
rational, disinterested) and citizen, (passive,
irrational, uninterested). Communication action not
relationship
• Requiring, expressing, constructing power through
monopoly of knowledge. BUT
• In conditions of high complexity and uncertainty,
simple, linear messages can be dangerous and
counter-productive
Navigating chaos
• Zadeh: Principle of incompatibility:
• Stated informally, the essence of this principle
is that as the complexity of a system
increases, our ability to make precise and yet
significant statements about its behaviour
diminishes until a threshold is reached
beyond which precision and significance (or
relevance) become almost mutually exclusive
characteristics,
Contradiction as strategy
• Dr Greg Ayers told a Senate estimates hearing last month that
the Archbishop of Sydney’s argument against human-induced
climate change was heavily based on a book by Ian Plimer..
which had been discredited by scientists.
• ‘The contents of the book are simply not scientific. I am
concerned that the cardinal has been misled [by its contents]’,
the director said.
• But Cardinal Pell told the Herald the statements by Dr Ayers, an
atmospheric scientist, were themselves unscientific.
• ‘Ayers when he spoke to the House was obviously a hot-air
specialist. I’ve rarely heard such an unscientific contribution.’…
• I regret when a discussion of these things is not based on
scientific facts,. Cardinal Pell said. ‘I spend a lot of time studying
this stuff.’ SMH 14 March 2011.
Science and Uncertainty
• Foreword to ‘Science of Climate Change Q & A. Prof
Kurt Lambech, President of Australian Academy of
Science. August 2010.
• It is at the intersection of the disciplines where
uncertainty can and will arise, both because of the as
yet poorly understood feedbacks between the
different components of the climate system, and
because of the difficulty of bringing these
components together in a single descriptive and
predictive model.
• (page 2)