Blue Skies and Other Shades

Abstract

Lewis explores the importance of curiosity as a key aspect of scientific practice. By exploring a case study of palaeoclimate research and examples of the dark outcomes of scientific research, Lewis demonstrates the limitations of a utilitarian framing of research. Such a problem-solution approach to scientific inquiry denies the essence of science as an experimental, uncertain and curious mode of producing knowledge. Lewis argues that scientists should also view science as a fundamental creative process that requires curiosity. Hence, curiosity and transparency are presented as counterpoints in scientific practice. By employing both as key elements of scientific practice, scientists can both attend to the critical relationship between science and society, and develop a deeper and richer connection to the world.

Glossary

Attribution

 This is the scientific process of establishing the most likely cause for a detected climate change with some defined level of confidence.

Blue-sky research

 This is research conducted without a clear goal and is primarily curiosity driven.

Curiosity

 This term is used broadly to mean a commitment to perceiving the world in new ways and an openness to new connections.

Detection

 This is the scientific process of demonstrating that climate has changed in some defined statistical sense, without providing a reason for that change.

Equilibrium climate sensitivity

 The long-term change in the global average surface air temperature following a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Heinrich events

 A natural phenomenon occurring during the ice ages when large icebergs break of Northern Hemisphere glaciers and traverse the North Atlantic. The melt water from icebergs acts to disrupt oceanic and atmospheric circulation and causes large-scale climatic change.

Problems

 Here I do not refer to problems in an ordinary sense. Rather, I refer to problems in terms of their capacity for usefulness as part of a creative process in research that allows us a deeper and richer connection to science.

Radiative forcing

 Following the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2013), this is a measure of the influence a factor has in altering the balance of incoming and outgoing energy in the Earth-atmosphere system and is an index of the importance of the factor as a potential climate change mechanism.

Transparency

 An openness in communication and accountability of scientific practice such that non-scientists can view how scientific knowledge is generated.

Uncertainty

 I refer to uncertainty broadly, meaning both not knowing and also how well something is known.

Useful

 Flexner’s (1939) problematises the categorisation of only knowledge that produces practical outcomes as useful. This is a narrower definition of utility than employed in Chapter 3 for assessing knowledge claims.

Useless knowledge

 This is Flexner’s (1939) description of knowledge that does not aim to address practical and immediate concerns.

Water isotopes

 Isotopes are two or more forms of the same element that contain equal numbers of protons but different numbers of neutrons in their nuclei. Water isotopes are water molecules comprised of differing forms of oxygen and hydrogen and hence differ in mass and behaviour in the climate system.