Related papers: Scientific reticence and sea level rise
We stand at the foot of a significant inflection in the trajectory of scientific discovery. As society continues on its fast-paced digital transformation, so does humankind's collective scientific knowledge and discourse. We now read and…
Some have claimed that the future development of powerful AI systems would enable the United States to shift the international balance of power dramatically in its favor. Such a feat may not be technically possible; even so, if American AI…
The emergence of "big data" offers unprecedented opportunities for not only accelerating scientific advances but also enabling new modes of discovery. Scientific progress in many disciplines is increasingly enabled by our ability to examine…
We consider social learning in a changing world. Society can remain responsive to state changes only if agents regularly act upon fresh information, which limits the value of social learning. When the state is close to persistent, a…
Sea-levels are rising in many areas around the world, posing risks to coastal communities and infrastructures. Strategies for managing these flood risks present decision challenges that require a combination of geophysical, economic, and…
Over the past century, atmospheric methane levels have nearly doubled, posing a significant threat to ecosystems. Despite this, studies on its direct impact on species interactions are lacking. Although bioaccumulation theory explains the…
Freshwater forcing from a retreating Antarctic Ice Sheet could have a wide range of impacts on future global climate. Here, we report on multi-century (present-2250) climate simulations performed using a fully coupled numerical model…
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…
The intrinsic difficulties in building realistic climate models and in providing complete, reliable and meaningful observational datasets, and the conceptual impossibility of testing theories against data imply that the usual Galilean…
The complexity of emergent wicked problems, such as climate change, culminates in a reformulation of how we think about society and mobilize scientists from various disciplines to seek solutions and perspectives on the problem. From an…
Understanding the heterogeneity of mechanisms that form public attitudes towards science and technology policymaking is essential to the establishment of an effective public engagement platform. Using the 2011 public opinion survey data…
Scientific publications form the cornerstone of innovation and have maintained a stable growth trend over the years. However, in recent years, there has been a significant surge in retractions, driven largely by the proliferation of…
The constantly growing body of scholarly knowledge of science, technology, and humanities is an asset of the mankind. While new discoveries expand the existing knowledge, they may simultaneously render some of it obsolete. It is crucial for…
The time needed to exchange information in the physical world induces a delay term when the respective system is modeled by differential equations. Time delays are hence ubiquitous, being furthermore likely to induce instabilities and with…
There is an increasingly urgent need to develop knowledge and practices to manage climate risks. For example, flood-risk information can inform household decisions such as purchasing a home or flood insurance. However, flood-risk estimates…
Social behaviour models are increasingly integrated into climate change studies, and the significance of climate tipping points for `runaway' climate change is well recognised. However, there has been insufficient focus on tipping points in…
The Improbability Scale (IS) is proposed as a way of communicating to the general public the improbability (and by implication, the probability) of events predicted as the result of scientific research. Through the use of the Improbability…
There is a wide-ranging debate about the merits and demerits of searching for, and sending messages to, extraterrestrial intelligences (SETI and METI). There is however reasonable (but not universal) consensus that replying to a message…
Scientists as diplomats (historical examples). Scientists as advisors to governments and the public. Nongovernmental organisations and international conferences on security questions, initiated by scientists and based on their professional…
One way to warn of forthcoming critical transitions in Earth system components is using observations to detect declining system stability. It has also been suggested to extrapolate such stability changes into the future and predict tipping…