Related papers: Climate determinism reborn
Public debates driven by incomplete scientific data where nobody can claim absolute certainty, due to current state of scientific knowledge, are studied. The cases of evolution theory, global warming and H1N1 pandemic influenza are…
The unexpected discoveries at the beginning of the century, particularly thanks to Heisenberg, Bohr, and Godel, has driven the science to drastic changes, opening new, extraordinary, and infinite research fields. After this, many scientists…
Although Darwinian models are rampant in the social sciences, social scientists do not face the problem that motivated Darwin's theory of natural selection: the problem of explaining how lineages evolve despite that any traits they acquire…
Global warming arises from 'temperature forcing', a net imbalance between energy fluxes entering and leaving the climate system and arising within it. Humanity introduces temperature forcing through greenhouse gas emissions, agriculture,…
Abstract: The rising global temperatures caused by climate change significantly impact energy consumption and electricity generation. Fluctuating temperatures and frequent extreme weather events disrupt energy production and consumption…
Instructive influence of environment on heredity has been a debated topic for centuries. Darwin's identification of natural selection coupled to chance variation as the driving force for evolution, against a formal interpretation proposed…
The climate crisis requires responses that integrate scientific, ethical, social, and technological perspectives. Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful tool in climate modelling, environmental monitoring, and energy…
Global climate change is one of main concern of modern society. To estimate this change usually one estimates the global mean temperature. Measuring and calculating the Earth's average temperature are multi-steps complex processes which…
With a folk understanding that political polarization refers to socio-political divisions within a society, many have proclaimed that we are more divided than ever. In this account, polarization has been blamed for populism, the erosion of…
The present earth warming up is often explained by the atmosphere gas greenhouse effect. This explanation is in contradiction with the thermodynamics second law. The warming up by greenhouse effect is quite improbable. It is cloud…
The Anthropocene is a proposed time subdivision of the earth's history correlated to the strong human perturbation of the ecosystem. Much debate is ongoing about what date should be considered as the start of the Anthropocene, but much less…
Water-rich planets such as Earth are expected to become eventually uninhabitable, because liquid water does not remain stable at the surface as surface temperatures increase with the solar luminosity over time. Whether a large increase of…
Ecologists have long argued about the strength of density dependence and population regulation, respectively defined as the short-term and long-term rates of return to equilibrium. Here, I give three arguments for the intractability of…
Atmospheric models used for weather and climate prediction are traditionally formulated in a deterministic manner. In other words, given a particular state of the resolved scale variables, the most likely forcing from the sub-grid scale…
Mass extinction is a phenomenon in the history of life on Earth when a considerable number of species go extinct over a relatively short period of time. The magnitude of extinction varies between the events, the most well known are the…
Choice overload - in which larger choice sets are detrimental to a chooser's well-being - is potentially of great importance in the design of economic policy. Yet the current evidence on its prevalence is inconclusive. We argue that…
Ecosystems are complex systems, currently experiencing several threats associated with global warming, intensive exploitation, and human-driven habitat degradation. Such threats are pushing ecosystems to the brink of collapse. Because of a…
Although classical economic theory is based on the concept of stable equilibrium, real economic systems appear to be always out of equilibrium. Indeed, they share many of the dynamical features of other complex systems, e.g., ecological…
There are many published estimates of the social cost of carbon. Some are clear outliers, the result of poorly constrained models. Percentile winsorizing is an option, but I here propose conceptual winsorizing: The social cost of carbon is…
How should my own decisions affect my beliefs about the outcomes I expect to achieve? If taking a certain action makes me view myself as a certain type of person, it might affect how I think others view me, and how I view others who are…