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Why is climate change so difficult to understand?

Series
Wolfson College Podcasts
Audio Embed
The second lecture of a series entitled 'Climate Connections' was presented by Carl Wunsch, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physical Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In this talk, Prof Wunsch considers the perhaps unique problems faced by scientists and the public in understanding climate change. The problems include the very long times over which climate can and does change--far longer than human working lifetimes; the intuitive belief that the world is deterministic with randomness unimportant; the corresponding tendency to see patterns where none exist; the insistence by governments that scientists must tell them what will happen in the future; the liking of many scientists for the media limelight; the widespread confusion between weather and climate; the rise of 'sophisticated' computer models; Etc.

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Wolfson College Podcasts

"Oh, you liar, you storyteller": On Fibbing, Fact and Fabulation

The first Weinrebe lecture in life-writing was given by Michèle Roberts, Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. The lecture is introduced by Professor Hermione Lee.
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Wolfson College Podcasts

The public and private ethics of climate change

This first lecture of a series entitled 'Climate Connections' is presented by John Broome, White's Professor of Moral Philosophy and Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
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Licence
Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Episode Information

Series
Wolfson College Podcasts
People
Carl Wunsch
Keywords
climate change
global warming
weather prediction
Department: Wolfson College
Date Added: 04/05/2012
Duration: 00:58:47

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