Gavin Schmidt presenting the Stephen Schneider lecture at the recent AGU meeting is now available on youtube, so I thought would post it here. Gavin has posted it himself at RealClimate and the comments there are worth a read. Andy Revkin has an article about it at the New York Times. Bart Verheggen and Judith Curry have also discussed Gavin’s lecture.
Given how much has been written about this topic, I won’t say much more. I’ve listened to most of Gavin’s lecture and I think it is very good and that he makes a number of very good points. Maybe the most interesting thing I discovered, though, is that Gavin Schmidt appears to be British 🙂
...and Then There's Physics 
Yes, Gavin is British. Curry is American. Two Scientists separated by a common language.
Yes, I was surprised by his accent. We should be proud of him — except of course for the German surname!
That is exactly what I thought when I saw the video. I was not expecting an English accent at all!
I thought his talk was really good and as someone who believes in dialog and openness I think being clear about what you may or may not be advocating is sound advice.
Ha! I knew he was British 😉
And well I’ll be. The Capn’s here! Small world.
Since I’ve heard recordings of a few of his talks in the past, I already knew he was British. Funny how he keeps that strange accent after living in NY all these years…
Now look here, Ratty old chap, it’s you fellows that have the strange accent.
😉
I notice Gavin in comments pointing to the problems with democracy arising from an ill-informed electorate:
Enter the GWPF, Heartland, et al.
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Reblogged this on …and Then There's Physics and commented:
Given that Gavin’s paper on what climate scientists should advocate for?, I thought I would be lazy and simply reblog the short post I wrote when the video of his talk, at the AGU meeting in 2013, came out. I note that this paper has also been discussed at Bishop Hill, producing one of the more sane comment threads I’ve seen there for a very long time.
johnrussell40 –
Yes, he needs to change it to something like ‘Windsor’
I find the information problem interesting.
Imagine that you were living in a multi-generation spaceship – a hollowed out asteroid with a contained ecosystem type thing. And you knew that you were going to a new planet over a period of decades, and had to keep the ecosystem ticking over until such time.
Aboard such a ship, what would the penalty be for knowing lying about the ecosystem – perhaps saying that you could eat twice as many animals as you thought, or simply ignoring the ‘Urgent maintenance required’ light on the water recycling system. I think it would have to be pretty drastic – after all, destroy your ecosystem and you all die. So, should there be a penalty on Earth for the deliberate spreading of misinformation (In the face of correction and where the misinformation will lead to damage to everyone).
@Andrew
The ‘Spaceship Earth’ concept is very apt and has a long history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceship_Earth
I find it a very convincing and useful analogy. Anyone who thinks the Earth is too big for the analogy to hang together clearly can’t see the wood for the trees!
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