First of all, considering the crazy amount of money already allocated to alternative energy and efficiency initiatives, anyone equating the Obama administration’s opening of offshore drilling to Sarah Palin’s bloviating in the Presidential campaign is trying too hard to sound outraged.

Without digging into it (maybe in a couple months), a few initial questions:

(1) How clean and safe are these new drilling platforms?

(2) How important is it to get Sen. Lindsay Graham, who said that he won’t get behind a climate bill that “doesn’t have offshore drilling in a meaningful way”?

(3) Isn’t offshore drilling largely cost-prohibitive in the states, anyway?

(4) Won’t environmental groups sue the hell out of the federal government over this decision, delaying any new drilling?

(5) Isn’t Obama the most tactful politician we have seen in a long time?

Because I shouldn’t be the only one to have the song stuck in my head…

All the big ones in one place.  How convenient.

Here’s the latest example of why communicating climate science is so important. From a petition filed by Texas asking the EPA to reconsider its Endangerment Finding that “the current and projected concentrations of the six key well-mixed greenhouse gases–carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)–in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” Note the central roles played by CRU “Climategate” and recent errors identified in IPCC 2007:

“Despite the Endangerment Finding’s remarkably broad impact, EPA’s Administrator relied on a fundamentally flawed and legally unsupported methodology to reach her decision. And although the Administrator is legally required to undertake a scientific assessment before reaching a decision that is supposed to be based on scientific conclusions, the Administrator outsourced the actual scientific study, as well as her required review of the scientific literature necessary to make that assessment. In doing so, EPA relied primarily on the conclusions of outside organizations, particularly the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”).

EPA’s reliance on the IPCC’s assessment to make a decision of this magnitude is not legally supported. Since the Endangerment Finding’s public comment period ended in June, 2009, troubling revelations about the conduct, objectivity, reliability, and propriety of the IPCC’s processes, assessments, and contributors have become public. Previously private email exchanges among top IPCC climatologists reveal an entrenched group of activists focused less on reaching an objective scientific conclusion than on achieving their desired outcome. These scientists worked to prevent contravening studies from being published, colluded to hide research flaws, and collaborated to obstruct the public’s legal right to public information under open records laws.

In addition to the improper collusion and cover-ups revealed by the release of these emails, since the public comment period ended, some of the IPCC’s methodologies and conclusions have been discredited. Not surprisingly, respected scientists and climatologists from around the globe have roundly criticized and correctly questioned the IPCC’s process, while calling for programmatic reforms.

Indeed, there has been worldwide fallout from scandals enveloping the IPCC. In Britain, four separate investigations have been launched, and the British Broadcasting Corporation has convened an inquiry into the journalistic appropriateness of its IPCC coverage. India has announced that it will create its own climate change institute rather than rely exclusively on the IPCC. And the United States Department of Commerce has created a new Climate Science Institute—though it has remained noticeably silent on the scandals plaguing the IPCC.”

Make it happen!

A good discussion between Lawrence Lessig of Harvard Law School and Ezra Klein of The Washington Post on why Congress drags its feet on getting rid of the fundraising slog that appears, at least from the outside, to be the worst part of the job.

Here’s a link to the Ken Silverstein article in Harper’s that Professor Lessig refers to.

Fred Pearce dissects the ClimateGate hubbub in The Guardian.  His analysis reveals hysteria and gamesmanship rather than wrongdoings on the part of climate scientists – but, still, the blogs are abuzz about a “crumbling” foundation of climate science.  The legacy of ClimateGate lives on through a general mistrust of science across a very unscientific public.

Almost all the media and political discussion about the hacked climate emails has been based on brief soundbites publicised by professional sceptics and their blogs. In many cases, these have been taken out of context and twisted to mean something they were never intended to.

In progress…

I had the privilege of being a graduate student instructor for five different courses at my university, ranging from biology with freshman to natural resource economics with second-year Masters and business school students.  While this diversity required that I tailor my teaching approach to each specific setting, I have learned and believe strongly in several principles of teaching that are transferrable across different teaching environments.

For much of my experience as a GSI, I have acted as a guide to approaching complex problems such as entrenched poverty and environmental degradation – the solutions of which require systematic integration of several disciplinary perspectives.  The art of guiding groups through such problems is fast-paced and requires an understanding and appreciation of relevant perspectives, as well as a great deal of patience and humility.  When definitions, let alone optimal solutions, of complex problems aren’t agreed upon, then a teacher works to cultivate solid theoretical foundations and analytical tools to gracefully, and respectfully, move groups towards a place where objective inquiry is a first reaction.  In other words, I try to enable students to learn how to learn.  Politics is pervasive in the university setting, all the way down to freshmen.  Modern information technology provides students with the ability to locate a plethora of resources to support any preconceived ideological positions, and teachers need to take every opportunity possible to encourage objective and logical thinking.  I believe that teachers that adhere to this principle provide students with the tools to acquire and retain intellectual freedom.

Being prepared is essential to teaching.  A well-prepared teacher can navigate course materially tactfully and craft participatory, fluid discussions that give way to self-discovery.  Preparation, also, makes teaching much more enjoyable—and the positive energy generated by this enjoyment projects itself directly back into the classroom.  Preparation, however, should not crowd out a healthy degree of acknowledged uncertainty about subject matter.  True experts do not exist, and setting yourself up as one can serve to establish false expectations in the classroom and stifle your message of the importance of lifelong learning, especially among younger students.  Instead, teachers should be candid in situations of uncertainty, and be explicit about how such uncertainties will be resolved.

Quality discussions are the product of assimilating various teaching strategies.  Grading on participation is one method, but I prefer to focus my energy on conveying the relevance of the subject matter in all of our lives and careers, thereby generating participation autonomously from the group.  I enjoy structuring in-class case studies for conceptual material, and exercises for technical material, that require group work and subsequent sharing.  These activities are opportunities for students to practice working in groups—which, for most, will prove to be valuable beyond graduation—and allow them to dig into relevant cases and acquire a sense of attachment and enthusiasm for their work.  When relevant, these activities should make use of modern information technology as analytical tools and/or for the purpose of captivating attention.

Every term, I must establish my role appropriately in the classroom so that interactive discussions and exercises are anchored and therefore focused and efficient.  This is challenging in graduate courses, where many students are also the peers of a GSI, and in undergraduate courses, where a teacher’s assertiveness must be carefully measured to inspire confidence in students and reorient common sentiments of entitlement.  Properly managed, a teacher’s confidence is vital to classroom productivity.

I believe that a teacher needs to be open to constructive criticism from students and outside observers, and be self-aware of his evolving performance in the classroom – and humble enough to alter his approach when it is deemed beneficial.  I strive to set realistic objectives and monitor my classes along the course of the term.  One-on-one interactions with students outside of class—something that I am drawn to, naturally—are opportunities to acquire feedback about the learning environment and course objectives; and they develop trust, which contributes to more relaxed, creative, and dynamic classroom experiences for all.

From the Columbia Journalism Review, an article on climate change, “greatest scam in history.” Via DeSmogBlog.

Global warming “is not something you ‘believe in,’” he wrote in his essay. “It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise.”

Except that it wasn’t. Coleman had spent half a century in the trenches of TV weathercasting; he had once been an accredited meteorologist, and remained a virtuoso forecaster. But his work was more a highly technical art than a science. His degree, received fifty years earlier at the University of Illinois, was in journalism. And then there was the fact that the research that Coleman was rejecting wasn’t “the science of meteorology” at all—it was the science of climatology, a field in which Coleman had spent no time whatsoever.



Anything posted here between now and April that is not directly related to my dissertation is evidence of procrastination, and I’ll appreciate your admonishments.

- Nick