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Climate History Network

New Study: Multiproxy Reconstruction Offers Independent Confirmation of Global Warming

(cross-post from Climate History Network)

The article D.M. Anderson et al., “Global Warming in an Independent Record of the Past 130 Years,” published in Geophysical Research Letters, uses an index of 173 temperature-sensitive proxies to reconstruct global temperatures going back to 1880, and a smaller index of 67 proxies to extend the record back to 1730.  The results strongly mirror those of the instrumental record, with clear indications of accelerating warming in the 20th century.  The study notes that “The upward trend appears to begin in the early 19th century but the year-to-year variability is large and the 1730-1929 trend is small.”

Of course, for climate historians the study also serves as a nice confirmation of the validity of proxies in historical climate reconstruction.  The broad Paleo Index used in the study actually shows much stronger correlation with the instrumental record than single, local proxies tend to do.

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Conference

ICHM at the 24th International Congress of History of Science, Technology and Medicine

At the iCHSTM conference this summer, 22-28 July, ICHM will have a day of sessions around “Gaining it / losing it/ regaining it(?) Knowledge production in climate science, status anxiety, and authority across disciplines”. For more information, please see the program guide online. According to the provisional programme, it is currently planned to take place Friday, July 26. For more information about iCHSTM, please visit the conference website at http://ichstm2013.com/.

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Climate History Network

Conference Report: Climate and Weather – Science as Public Culture

(Cross-post from the Climate History Network)

From the 7th – 9th January, 2013 a diverse group of scholars met in Oxford for a conference on aspects of the communication of weather and climate from the 18th to the 21st centuries. Organised and hosted by the Maison Française D’Oxford in partnership with the Museum of the History of Science Oxford, the conference began with a reception at the Museum of the History of Science where attendees were treated to a private viewing of the exhibition, “Atmospheres: Investigating the Weather from Aristotle to Ozone.”

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Opportunities

World Learning, International Honors Program – Traveling Faculty

Climate Change: Politics of Food, Energy and Water

Job Announcement: Traveling Faculty 2013 and 2014

 

The International Honors Program (IHP), a program of World Learning/School for International Training, offers international, comparative study abroad programs for university students. We are currently seeking six traveling faculty members to join an interdisciplinary team of faculty, fellows, and host country coordinators for IHPs Climate Change: Politics of Food, Water, and Energy program.

We seek three traveling faculty to travel fulltime and teach during the Fall semester of 2013 and three to do the same in the Spring semester of 2014. (Faculty can work both semesters if they wish, or hire on for just one semester per year, but the work and the travel that goes with it is very demanding; thus back to back semesters is not advised.)

Each four-month program will take approximately 30 to 35 students from top-tier U.S. colleges and universities to three countries to do inter-disciplinary research from a comparative perspective.

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Opportunities

The History of Climate Change and the Future of Global Governance

Department of History, Columbia University
May-August 2013

 

The Hertog Global Strategy Initiative (HGSI) seeks talented undergraduate and graduate students for its 2013 seminar on the History of Climate Change and the Future of Global Governance.

 

HGSI is a research program that explores how the world community has responded to planetary threats to derive lessons that will help us take on the challenges of the present and the future. Each summer, a select group of students from across the nation comes to Columbia University for three months to work with leading scholars and policymakers. This year’s initiative hopes to train a new generation of researchers and leaders who understand both the development of climate science and the changing nature of world politics.

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Conference

American Geophysical Union Chapman Conference

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: American Geophysical Union Chapman Conference
Communicating Climate Science: A Historic Look to the Future
June 8-13, 2013, Snow Mountain Ranch, Granby, CO, USA

 

The AGU Chapman Conference (AGUCC) will focus on communication about climate science to all sectors of society.  The Climate Change Community must move forward on multiple pathways to convey climate change research, mitigation and adaptation plans and policies and technologies to policy makers, planners, and society at all levels.  As climate science has developed over time, there has been a significant shift in relations between the science and political aspects thereof; where previously the development of the science was exclusively prioritized, now the focus lies in communicating the science to society. It is imperative that we determine an appropriate balance between these two elements, ensuring that neither is too shallow or deep.

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About

Joining ICHM

To join ICHM please email the secretary Giny Cheong on giny.cheong at masonlive.gmu.edu and the treasurer Anna Carlsson-Hyslop at anna.carlsson-hyslop at gmx.co.uk, stating your name, email address and affiliation.

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Conference

Symposium S103: Gaining it/losing it/regaining it(?) – Knowledge production in climate science, status anxiety, and authority across disciplines

Climate change discourse is not, and perhaps never was, “owned” by the climatological science community. Given the recent and heated “climate wars,” it is fruitful to examine the status anxiety in this field from historical and science studies perspectives.

The symposium addresses “knowledge at work” through case studies of knowledge-making, loss and regaining of knowledge-use, and dissent and authority in climate science and, by comparison, in other discourse communities.

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Conference

DISCCRS VIII Interdisciplinary Climate Change Research Symposium

October 12-19, 2013
La Foret Conference and Retreat Center (Colorado)
http://disccrs.org/disccrsposter.pdf

 

Application Deadline: February 28, 2013
Participation limited to 30 early-career Ph.D. scholars
Airfare and on-site expenses are supported through grants from NSF and NASA

 

The DISsertations initiative for the advancement of Climate Change ReSearch (DISCCRS, pronounced discourse) hosts symposia for early-career climate change researchers. Our goal is to catalyze international, interdisciplinary collegial networks and foster collaborative interdisciplinary research and dynamic interactions between science and society to enable us to better understand and respond to the myriad challenges posed by climate change.

Categories
Conference

2nd Call for Participation: Workshop on Critical Climate Change Scholarship

University of Minnesota, April 5-7 2013

Critical climate change scholarship has demonstrated how the prospect of non-linear, catastrophic change in the conditions of human life demands new modes of critical engagement, and new forms of alignment between social and cultural theory, the earth and life sciences, and political practice (Cohen and Colebrook 2012; Szerszynski and Urry 2010)[1]. This work includes analyses of the political economy of the carbon trade (Bumpus and Liverman 2008; Thorne and Randalls 2007)[2]; the political implications of uncertainty and catastrophe in imagining climate futures (Clark 2010; Gabrys and Yusoff 2011; Hulme and Dessai 2008; Swyngedouw 2010; Zizek 2010); and the intersection of economic and ecological crisis in contemporary forms of power (Cooper 2010; Dibley and Neilson 2010; Massumi 2009). This workshop aims to contribute to these efforts and provoke new inquiries by posing the question: what is critical about critical climate change scholarship? Employing the dual implications of this phrase, we ask both how climate change demands a rethinking of the nature of critique, and how critical scholarship is more necessary than ever for efforts toward just and sustainable ecological futures.