It appears self-evident that democracy functions best if its citizens share a common reality. There is common agreement that society stands to benefit from diversity of opinions, but most people also appear to agree that a society would suffer when segments of the population operate within a fictional social world that is disconnected from reality.

Contemporary Australia is partly characterized by several such disconnects between (some) people’s perceptions and social reality: Here I focus on one particular problem known as “pluralistic ignorance” (e.g., Shamir & Shamir, 1997).

Pluralistic ignorance refers to the divergence between the prevalence of actual beliefs in a society and what people in that society think others are believing. For example, in 1976, more than 75% of white Americans actually thought that a mother should allow her daughter to play with an African-American child at home; but only 33% believed that that was the majority opinion—the remaining 67% thought that it was only a minority of people who would endorse cross-racial friendships. In other words, the vast actual majority of people felt that they were in the minority, whereas the bigoted minority felt that they were dominant in society.

This is no isolated case.

People who hold extremist minority opinions often vastly overestimate the support for their own opinions in the population at large. In Australia, people with particularly negative attitudes towards Aboriginals or asylum-seekers have been found to over-estimate support for their attitudes by a striking 67% and 80%, respectively (Pedersen, Griffiths, & Watt, 2008). To illustrate, although only 1.8% of people in the sample were found to hold strongly negative attitudes towards Aboriginal Australians, those few people thought that 69% of all Australians (and 79% of their friends) shared their fringe beliefs.

There is evidence that greater prejudice is associated with increasing belief that one’s own opinion is widely shared, when in fact greater prejudice maps into an increasing gap between own-belief and the actual prevalence of that opinion (Watt & Larkin, 2010). There are actually few highly prejudiced people but they think everybody else is like them. This gap is often thought to reflect a self-justification process which permits people to buttress their own normatively unacceptable attitudes by imagining that they are widely shared (Watt & Larkin, 2010). In other words; “it’s ok that I am bigoted because everyone else is too.”

There are, however, other factors at work as well. One obvious important determinant of public perceptions involves the media, and there is evidence that pluralistic ignorance arises from biased media coverage. For example, in the lead-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, voices that advocated unilateral military action were given prominence in the American media, thus causing the large majority of people who actually wanted the U.S. to engage multilaterally, in concert with other nations, to feel that they were in the minority (Todorov & Mandisodza, 2004).

Let us return to contemporary Australia and the issue of climate change.

CSIRO just released a major report on Australian public attitudes towards climate change (Leviston & Walker, 2011), based on a representative sample of some 5,000 respondents. The results are quite intriguing: The vast majority of respondents (around 90%) agree that climate change is happening, but that vast majority is roughly equally split between those who accept that humans are the major cause (a little over 45%) and those who think it is “all natural” (a little below 45%).

To put this pattern of opinions into context, about 97% of all publishing climate scientists agree that human emissions are the primary cause of our changing climate (Anderegg et al., 2010; Doran & Zimmerman, 2009).

This divergence between scientific and public opinion by itself must be cause for concern.

What is even more interesting in the present context, however, is the extreme pluralistic ignorance revealed by the latest CSIRO survey: Leviston and Walker (2011) also asked their respondents to estimate the presumed prevalence of various opinions in the population. Their overall results are shown in the figure below.

Remarkably, these data show that even though only a tiny fringe is actually denying the existence of climate change, people overall assume that nearly a quarter of the population holds that view. Conversely, people underestimate the proportion of people who accept the fact that the climate is changing (and that humans are causing that change). This is a classic case of pluralistic ignorance.

An even more intriguing breakdown of the data is shown in the next figure which breaks the data down by the opinions of the respondents. That is, the presumed distribution of opinions is shown for each subgroup of opinions separately; for example, the group of bars on the left represents the belief about the distribution of opinions in the public at large by those who deny that climate change exists; whereas the group on the right shows the same beliefs by the people who accept the scientific consensus that humans cause the climate change that we are currently experiencing, and so on.

This result is quite striking: It means that the very few Australians (around 7 out of 100) who completely deny the reality of climate change falsely believe that their opinion is shared by half the population. Those same few folks also think that only 15% of their compatriots accept the prevailing scientific opinion; namely that humans cause climate change.

In other words, some 7% of Australians live in a fictional world in which their belief that the world is flat is shared by half of their compatriots, whereas only 15% of their compatriots are thought to believe that the Earth is actually a sphere.

What are the implications of this striking lack of calibration between own-belief and actual prevalence of this minority opinion?

One likely implication is that people who hold the minority viewpoint feel falsely emboldened by a presumed (but non-existent) level of support for their views. It takes little imagination to see this process at work in the seemingly inexhaustible self-righteousness of “shock jocks” and their talkback audiences when they direct their venom at climate scientists.

A second implication follows from the first one: People who hold the majority view that the climate is changing and that humans are causing the change underestimate the support for their view (although the under-estimate is far smaller in magnitude than the over-estimate by deniers).

What might have caused this striking pluralistic ignorance? We already considered one possibility earlier; namely, the self-justification process that is common among people who hold extremist views. “Everybody else is a denier, therefore it’s ok that I deny an entire body of science.”

A second likely factor is the consistently poor—and sometimes mendacious—coverage of climate science by the Australian media. Much has already been said about the appalling state of the media coverage in Australia, and the pluralistic ignorance observed with respect to climate change is yet another possible consequence of a distortion in coverage that a “knowledge economy” of the 21^st century can ill afford.

References

Anderegg, W. R. L.; Prall, J. W.; Harold, J. & Schneider, S. H. (2010). Expert credibility in climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 107, 12107-12109.

Doran, P. T., & Zimmerman, M. K. (2009). Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change. Eos, 90, 21-22.

Leviston, Z., & Walker, I. (2011, September). Second Annual Survey of Australian Attitudes to Climate Change: INTERIM REPORT. CSIRO (Behavioural Sciences Research Group).

Pedersen, A., Griffiths, B., & Watt, S. E. (2008). Attitudes toward out-groups and the perception of consensus: All feet do not wear one shoe. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 18, 543-557.

Shamir, J. & Shamir, M. (1997) Pluralistic ignorance across issues and over time: Information cues and biases. Public Opinion Quarterly, 61, 227-260.

Todorov, A. & Mandisodza, A. N. (2004). Public opinion on foreign policy: The multilateral public that perceives itself as unilateral. Public Opinion Quarterly, 68, 323-348.

Watt, S. E., & Larkin, C. (2010). Prejudiced people perceive more community support for their views: The role of own, media, and peer attitudes in perceived consensus. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 40, 710-731.

Australia’s CO2 emissions are among the highest in the world, when expressed on a per capita basis. When our historical responsibilities are taken into account, we are 14^th—out of about 200 countries in the world. Nonetheless, political figures and the media like to point fingers at other countries whose per capita emissions are even higher than ours. For example, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) spew out nearly 30 tonnes of CO2 per capita, compared to our 19 tonnes (but don’t rejoice—the Swiss get by with about 5 tonnes, or nearly 75% less than us!).

It turns out that the UAE deserve a more careful look, because their enormous emissions tell only part of the story. The other part of the story is a place called Masdar.

Actually, Masdar is more than a place—it’s a project, it’s a city, and it’s a vision for the future. A carbon-free vision. Masdar seeks to become the world’s first carbon free, sustainable city, powered entirely by renewables.

At the moment, there are few buildings that have been finished, and completion of the project is scheduled to occur between 2020 and 2025 at an estimated cost of around US$20 billion. At first glance, that is a very hefty price tag for a city expected to house between 45,000 and 50,000 people and 1,500 businesses. However, break it down per person and it comes to $400,000, which is significantly less than the current median house price in Perth.

So, for less than the price of a house in Perth, a city is being built that is entirely carbon free, that recycles most of its water, and that attempts to reduce waste to zero. That doesn’t sound too bad.

Have you heard of Masdar before? I rather doubt it, I only found out about it through a talk here at UWA. Indeed, it would be easy to miss out on Masdar if you read Australian newspapers: According to a Factiva search, they mentioned the keywords “Masdar” and “carbon” a grand total of 6 times during the last year. By contrast, the words “China” and “carbon” were mentioned in 2,091 articles during that time.

It’s beginning to add up. After some period of uncertainty, the picture that emerges is beginning to fit into the neo-McCarthyite pattern of attack on scientists that has become all too common in the United States.

It’s been nearly two months since a scientist working for the “U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Enforcement and Regulation” (BOEMRE), Dr Charles Monnett, was placed on administrative leave after an ongoing investigation.

An investigation of what? Well, no one quite knows, least of all Dr Monnett, who was kept in the dark about the nature and source of the allegations against him.

What we now know for sure is this:

Dr Monnett published a paper in 2006 that reported the discovery of several floating bodies of polar bears, presumed drowned while trying to swim across long ice-free distances in the Arctic Ocean. This article was only one of hundreds that have attested to the perilous decline of Arctic eco-systems resulting from global warming, but it attracted a lot of attention at the time and helped put the fate of polar bears onto the political agenda.

Earlier this year, the investigating officer, full of bravado but devoid of 5^th-grade arithmetic, repeatedly quizzed Dr Monnett about this particular paper, trying to find fault where peer review had found none. Following the earlier release of written transcripts, a video recording of this investigation has now also been made available.

When this affair became known to the public, BOEMRE issued a statement that Dr Monnett was being investigated for administrative matters, involving “collateral duties involving contracts.” The investigation, it was said, had “nothing to do with scientific integrity, [or] his 2006 journal article.”

Notwithstanding this public statement, a subsequent interview of Dr Monnett again focused on the 2006 journal article.

In the meantime, representatives of Dr Monnett lodged a complaint with the U.S. Department of the Interior about this Kafkaesque investigation. The Department’s Scientific Integrity Officer has therefore now in turn launched an inquiry of BOEMRE Director Michael Bromwich and others.

And now, Dr Monnett has returned to work after 6 weeks on administrative leave without any charges being leveled against him. Oh, and a stop-work order issued by BOEMRE against a Canadian university they had been funding to conduct research on … guess … polar bears has also been rescinded.

So the “case” against Dr Monnett is imploding and the folks who pushed this “case” are now being asked to explain themselves. Sadly, those explanations may be delayed or compromised by the purported fact that a hard drive of a key BOEMRE manager was found to have been wiped clean after the investigator sought his files.

Definitely time to settle in and get some more popcorn.

What are the important lessons to draw from this?

Irrespective of the final outcome of this affair, it is abundantly clear that a U.S. government scientist was interrogated repeatedly and thoroughly over a purely scientific matter, notwithstanding the agency’s public rhetoric invoking contract management. The transcripts of the interviews simply permit no other conclusion.

It is also abundantly clear that when Dr Monnett’s administrative leave was first announced, it was pounced upon with glee and delight by those who deny the fact that the Earth is warming due to human greenhouse gas emissions.

Neither of those facts is new.

It is all beginning to add up and it fits into a pattern that has now, sadly, become routine:

Somehow someone manages to launch an “investigation” of a scientist or group of scientists with great public fanfare about “scientific misconduct.” There are numerous ways in which this can be achieved, for example by stealing people’s emails or by just sending a sufficiently large number of abusive emails to a university, or by issuing legal threats, or by filing frivolous FOI requests.

The denialist echo chamber on the internet recycles and amplifies the story until it is reported by the “mainstream” media. Pliable politicians and vested interests keep the story alive with dark mutterings that are dutifully reported by the media. Eventually, however, public interest subsides and the next “investigation” must be manufactured. So the cycle resumes with step 1 above.

In the meantime, the investigation finds no impropriety among the scientists. So another investigation is requested and launched, until that also completely exonerates the scientists involved. Needless to say, those serial exonerations usually fail to be widely reported because for our gullible media it is so much more interesting to froth over the next manufactured “scandal” involving an inconvenient scientist, rather than to face up to the fact that there is a pattern here.

The pattern is a systematic McCarthyite assault on climate science and climate scientists.

Anyone who continues to ignore this pattern will have to explain themselves.

To their grandchildren.

Because for them the laws of physics will not be something that can be denied but will be the challenge dominating their lives.

Discussion of the proposed carbon tax is practically inescapable for most Australians at the moment, but the proliferation of information doesn’t mean that things become more understandable.

This is particularly true for homeowners and those who are about to build a home.

Some housing and construction industry lobby groups claim that the carbon tax will increase the cost of an average new home by over $6,000. So that would be from around $313,000 to $319,000.

However, there are reasons to be skeptical of those claims, and the cost is likely to be much less than that. According to our analyses, the average 3 x 2 brick veneer home in Australia creates around 80 metric tons of carbon due to its materials, construction, and maintenance over its entire design life. If the proposed carbon price is to be $23.00 per ton of carbon, this equates to only around $1840.00 in additional cost for the average new home due to the carbon tax.

Because many trade-exposed industries, such as cement, steel, aluminium and glass-making qualify for up to 94.5 percent shielding from the tax, the resulting end cost will not be anywhere near as high as that. In fact, the end-cost to someone building a new home may only be around $100 for the average Australian home.

So your new home will cost $100 extra.

That’s $313,100 instead of $313,000.

In addition, if you are building a home you can request a number of easy, cost-effective ways to reduce the amount of embodied carbon and energy contained within a new home. This will also reduce the financial impact. 

For example, you could specify fly-ash as a substitute for cement in concrete, which would significantly reduce the embodied carbon of a new home, without affecting its structural integrity. There are also a number of cost-effective, low-carbon building materials available on the market. By making smart choices, the proposed carbon tax could have a negligible cost impact on the construction of new homes—in fact, the whole point of the tax is to empower consumers to make low-carbon choices.

It is only through the tax that carbon becomes “visible” during your purchasing decisions: By making wise choices, you can reduce not only your costs but also our emissions.

However, selecting low-carbon materials is just the first step in preparing for a low-carbon economy: We should also be designing our homes so they require less energy for heating and cooling, be selecting energy-efficient lighting and appliances, and considering renewable energy alternatives. All of these steps help to reduce our energy consumption and carbon emissions, without compromising our lifestyle.

Simple steps such as these are easy to integrate in the early design stages of a project, and will create homes that are more enjoyable to live in. As the focus on sustainability increases, these elements of design will grow in value as homebuyers increasingly recognize these as desirable design features.

The transition to a low-carbon economy is inevitable. Prospective homebuyers can do their part in the transition for $100.

In two recent posts (here and here), colleague David Hodgkinson eloquently presented the case for nuclear power as one strategy to deal with climate change. Rather than revisiting all arguments in favour of nuclear power or against it, he focused on three core issues: (a) expense, (b) nuclear waste, and (c) militarization. In addition, Hodgkinson suggests that unless we put in place an infrastructure now, an ostensibly “cheap” nuclear power option will be precluded when the world gets serious about emission cuts within the next 10 years or so.

In this counterpoint, I note several points of agreement with Hodgkinson while also raising several other issues that, in my view, speak against reliance on nuclear power as an alternative source of energy.

(a) Expenses

There is no question that coal-generated power today is comparatively cheap only because the full externalities—namely, the short-term environmental and long-term climatological costs of emissions from fossil fuels—are not included in the cost of power generation. But does this necessarily mean that nuclear power would be the preferred alternative if the externalities of fossil fuels were considered?

Two points speak against that: First, throughout the history of nuclear power realistic insurance coverage has proved impossible to obtain on the free market. This suggests that the costing of the nuclear option has been ignoring large externalities—namely the true risk of its operation—in much the same way as coal.

The true cost of nuclear power is hidden because around the world governments have been condoning the operation of reactors without insisting on insurance coverage that is commensurate to the actual risks. (The situation varies from country to country, but this statement is an accurate summary).

It is extremely doubtful that a privately-insured nuclear industry would be viable at all. The world’s taxpayers are thus ultimately underwriting an industry that private insurers won’t cover in full.

Does this sound like the energy of the future?

(b) Waste

The issue of nuclear waste is sufficiently complex to escape summary in a few blog posts. What is certain, however, is that nuclear power generation to date has created a large amount of “legacy waste” that is as nasty as it is long-lasting. Nastier, by far, than the original nuclear fuel which seems vegetarian by comparison to the waste product.

How long-lasting? Thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years.

So, in a less-than-benign sense, nuclear power already is the power of the future—and it will remain a future consideration for thousands or more years even after the last reactor is switched off. (There may be a technological solution to this problem but at the moment it appears inadvisable to take it for granted.)

Philosopher John Nolt from the University of Tennessee has recently argued (e.g., Nolt, 2011) that our inaction with respect to climate change is tantamount to the “domination” of future generations—and hence deeply unethical because those future generations have had no say in the fate that we bequeath upon them. The same argument can be made about leaving behind nuclear waste for generations to come: None of those generations had a choice in the matter, and yet we are forcing them to deal with the potentially devastating consequences that arise from our (arguably) poor policy decisions.

In a nutshell, a strong argument can be made that passing on a large and inescapable risk to future generations is unethical.

And surely, our future energy should not be unethical.

(c) Militarization

Hodgkinson argues that militarization of nuclear power is without precedent and the risk overstated. I agree. But recent events surrounding Iran, which by the accounts of the IAEA only has a peaceful nuclear program (no military activities have been convincingly uncovered to date), shed another light on this matter.

And that is the risk to peace and democracy not by direct militarization but by possibly even more pernicious indirect routes that inevitably arise from civilian generation of nuclear power. Simply put, nuclear power, even if pursued entirely for peaceful purposes, poses a security risk. Unlike a wind turbine, which may at worst rob a bank, nuclear reactors are an acknowledged attractive target for terrorists.

And because they are a target for terrorism, and because the consequences of a terror attack on nuclear installations are particularly devastating, responsible governments are forced to ramp up the security apparatus surrounding nuclear power. The resulting likely erosion of democracy was analysed by Robert Jungk in the 1970s in his book the Nuclear State. (Google link here.)

A full analysis of Jungk’s thesis is beyond the present scope: Suffice it to say that at the very least, awareness of the implications of nuclear power for democracy must be firmly on the radar for anyone who is considering the future of energy generation in Australia.

(d) Future options

Hodgkinson argues that once the world gets serious about emission cuts, Australia needs to be ready by preparing a nuclear infrastructure now, lest we get caught out by having to rely entirely on renewable energy sources.

But would that be all that bad?  

In this context it is crucial to consider the actions of Germany, which has just decided to exit nuclear power at a rapid pace. At the same time, Germany is pursuing aggressive emission cuts—40% by 2020 compared to 1990 and 80-95% by 2050.

How?

By pursuing a three-pronged strategic plan.

Lest one think that Australia does not have the intellectual or material resources to pursue a similar energy future, a blueprint for our future can be found here.

At the moment, however, the future is taking place elsewhere. While some Australian cities are blessed with 3000 or more hours of sunshine per year (e.g., Perth, with 3200 hours), German cities must make do with just over half that (1700 hours is considered luxurious by German standards).

Yet, Germany has 17,000 MW of installed solar power-generating capacity, compared to Australia’s 300 MW.  Adjusted for hours of sunshine, that’s 100 times more than Australia. Which is one reason why we are one of the dirtiest power generators on this planet.

References

Nolt, J. (2011). Greenhouse gas emission and the domination of posterity. In Arnold, D. G. (Ed.),  The ethics of global climate change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 60-76

Some time ago we introduced the Earthworker Cooperative, a cooperative dedicated to providing finance, assistance with marketing strategy, R&D and networking of the various, loose strands of the social sector of the Australian economy. Their goal is to create a powerful force for the collective good, on behalf of its member cooperatives, unions, shire councils, faith-based communities and individuals.

Earthworker Cooperative is a social enterprise with a mission to create realistic solutions for transitioning Australia’s workforce into a low carbon economy. It aims to create jobs, build social capital and protect the environment in local communities by building workers cooperatives engaged in the manufacture of renewable energy infrastructure.

Their first project is to establish a workers’ cooperative in Morwell, Victoria. Eureka’s Future Workers Cooperative will manufacture and then sell solar hot water systems collectively through union-employer Enterprise Bargaining Agreements, or other bulk purchasing arrangements.

Earthworker is now entering a new phase because, in their words: “The only problem in achieving our goal has arisen from an over-reliance on governments to do the job for us. What government bureaucracies have been telling us, what everyone has been telling us, is that we should come see them when we have something to show them. “

Earthworker is therefore calling upon everyone across the Australian community, to do their part to ensure that manufacturing jobs in factories owned directly by communities produce the renewable products our country needs.

Getting involved is easy: visit www.earthworkercooperative.com, have a look at the single set of aims and objectives – and second, contribute a $20 membership fee. Earthworker Cooperative’s immediate objective is to enlist 100,000 Australians to contribute $20 per member to create clean-energy jobs in Australia.

Something does not add up.

About two weeks ago, a scientist working for the “US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Enforcement and Regulation” (BOEMRE), Dr Charles Monnett, was placed on administrative leave.

In effect, he was banned from his place of work and was formally placed under investigation.

For what?

This is where things get murky, especially because Dr Monnett apparently has not been informed of the charges against him.

What is known, however, is that Dr Monnett published a paper in 2006 that reported the discovery of several floating bodies of polar bears, presumed drowned while trying to swim across long ice-free distances in the Arctic ocean. This article attracted a lot of attention at the time and helped put the fate of Arctic animals, and the effects of climate change onto the Arctic, onto the political agenda.

It is not entirely surprising, therefore, that Dr Monnett’s suspension was greeted with glee and delight by those who deny the fact that the Earth is warming due to human greenhouse gas emissions. Their conclusion, as obvious to them as it was unwarranted by the available information, was that Dr Monnett’s scientific work was under investigation and hence should not be trusted. The polar bear, the Arctic, and the planet are just fine now, and CO2 emissions nothing to worry about, because one biologist has been placed on administrative leave.

BOEMRE later issued a statement that Dr Monnett’s suspension had nothing to do with his scientific work in general or the polar-bear study in particular. BOEMRE said that Dr Monnett was being investigated for administrative matters, involving “collateral duties involving contracts.” The investigation, it was said, had “nothing to do with scientific integrity, [or] his 2006 journal article.”

But why, then, did the same internal investigator who is about to interview Dr Monnett again on 9 August about those contractual matters, quiz Dr Monnett about his polar bear work at great length in February 2011?

And why did this same investigator, a certain Eric May who very evidently has no scientific training or knowledge, interview another scientist on the same issue of polar bear research in January of 2011?

(The two transcripts linked in the preceding paragraphs are worthy of study, especially if you are a fan of Franz Kafka.)

By the way, BOEMRE’s website clarifies that it “is the federal agency responsible for overseeing the safe and environmentally responsible development of energy and mineral resources on the outer continental shelf.” Accordingly, “BOEMRE is leading the most aggressive and comprehensive reforms to offshore oil and gas regulation and oversight in U.S. history.”

Last month, President Obama issued an order to speed up Arctic drilling permits.

Something does not add up.

Or does it?

Fresh on the heels of our “in the news” items, we introduce another type of post, called “Point and Counterpoint”, identified by this icon:

This icon identifies posts that are followed by a related post on the same topic with a different, usually opposing opinion.

Once a counterpoint has been published, clicking on this icon next to each of the posts involved will take the reader straight to the opposing viewpoint.

The first post appears below, by David Hodgkinson, and argues for nuclear power as one way in which climate change can be mitigated. There will be two posts in this series, and they will be followed by at least one counterpoint post that will raise difficulties with nuclear power as a solution.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science reports today:

House Bars Funds for International Climate Adaptation Efforts. The House Committee on Foreign Affairs voted to prohibit the use of funds to assist developing countries adapt to climate change or transition to sources of clean energy. The Committee passed H.R. 2583, the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, with an amendment from Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL) to prohibit the use of funds for the Global Climate Change Initiative, which is part of the United Nations’ effort to help provide assistance to developing countries. The House Agriculture and Homeland Security spending bills also contain similar provisions.

Right.

So, the country that bears greater historical responsibliity for carbon emissions than any other is barring funding for adaptation by countries who now do the suffering.

The medical journal Lancet (Costello et al., 2009) had an informative graph on this issue recently:

The top panel shows carbon emissions, the bottom panel the expected fatalities from climate change.

Coincidentally or otherwise, this period in human history coincides with a severe cutback of funding to the Humanities and Social Sciences at most universities; areas of scholarship which in the past have tackled issues of ethics and morality.

References

Costello, A.; Abbas, M.; Allen, A.; Ball, S.; Bell, S.; Bellamy, R.; Friel, S.; Groce, N.; Johnson, A.; Kett, M.; Lee, M.; Levy, C.; Maslin, M.; McCoy, D.; McGuire, B.; Montgomery, H.; Napier, D.; Pagel, C.; Patel, J.; de Oliveira, J. A.; Redclift, N.; Rees, H.; Rogger, D.; Scott, J.; Stephenson, J.; Twigg, J.; Wolff, J. & Patterson, C. Managing the health effects of climate change: Lancet and University College London Institute for Global Health Commission. Lancet, 2009, 373, 1693–-1733????

A reader recently emailed us and posed the following very good question: “The jump from academic and worthy discussion to our daily discourse is so vast a leap. How do we go about infusing our daily conversations with real information and thoughtful opinion.”

This is a crucial question and one we continually struggle to get right. We welcome input from readers to help us in this endeavour, and we are happy to respond to specific queries and comments on posts.

After all, the whole point of Shaping Tomorrows World is to engage in informed and civil debate, and we recognize that this is definitely a two-way street.

In addition, we have introduced a new type of post, called “in the news”, which is identified by this icon:

Those “in the news” posts aim to raise interesting issues that our authors have picked up in the news and that may stimulate a thought or even a conversation in the local coffee shop.

We will be posting those “in the news” items on an irregular basis, and we welcome your input on them as much as we value input on our regular posts—which will of course continue as per usual.

Our first “in the news” post follows right after this one, by my colleague Steven Smith from UWA.