Geoscience and Public Policy
Geoscience and Public Policy
Life is uncertain... There will always be uncertainty and risks that we have to accept as part of our lives.
My primary motivation for teaching this course stems from how my personal experiences as a scientist have informed my understanding of the intersection of science and public policy. In particular, from my experience as a scientist, I became convinced that a major driving force behind how science and public policy issues unfold is that there is an interplay in the way that people relate to certainty and uncertainty in science. As science progressed, it offered hope of providing at least some level of certainty in an uncertain world. I think that hope is deeply ingrained in society, and my reflections on how people relate to that hope is the starting point for my storyline for this course. Exploration of this theme is interwoven throughout the course.
Underlying the storyline of this course is my sense that it is common for people, being generally uncomfortable with uncertainty, to have grown to expect science and technology to reduce, if not eliminate, uncertainty from their lives. Furthermore, I find that people are often disappointed - and even at times angry - when science fails to do that. Science has, of course, significantly reduced uncertainty from many areas of our lives, and that is generally a very good thing. But it can become problematic when people habitually expect science to reduce uncertainty, and become disillusioned when it doesn't. A related issue is that because people are uncomfortable with uncertainty, they often prefer simple answers over complex answers to science-related public policy issues.
With that as a map of the framework, what can we expect to cover in this course? We will:
Learn about the underlying science relevant to at least some science and policy issues.
Explore how that science needs to be considered as part of the process of making public policy decisions.
Hear about how one scientist (me) has experienced and reflected upon issues of science and public policy.
Reflect upon how peoples’ experiences of certainty vs. uncertainty affect how they view science-related public policy decisions.
Another issue to consider is funding for science research. Scientists must compete, with both other societal needs and with each other, for funding for their research (and career advancement). We will consider the impact on our society when, in an effort to gain support for their research, scientists encourage the public to believe that if we allocate enough funds for scientific research, science will eliminate even more of the uncertainty in our lives.
What is the best balance? Funding for scientific research often leads to great benefits for society; but funds are limited, and decisions have to be made about how much money for science is too much (when we also need money for other things). Should we, for example, explore outer space or feed the hungry? Does it have to be a choice, or can we do both? Can we "just fix the problem," or do we first need to do more research?
Other questions to consider: How do we decide which scientific projects should be funded and which should not? How can citizens make informed decisions, when we are not experts in the various fields of science that want us to support them?
In order to understand the relationship between science and public policy, it is necessary to understand the relevant scientific concepts. In this course, our approach will be to immerse ourselves in the following broad science and policy topic areas:
Galileo and the Church: Science, Religion, and Public Policy
Creation, Evolution, and the Age of the Earth
Global Warming, Climate Change, and the Environment
The COVID-19 Pandemic: Human Health and Earth Systems
Earthquakes, the Environment, and Living on an Active Planet
Teaching a course with such a broad scope as this inherently requires some compromise between breadth and depth. The organizing principle behind this course is to achieve that compromise by going into great depth in five major topic areas. Through in-depth exploration of these five particular topic areas we hope to, in the process, gain a general understanding of the broader realm of science and public policy.
These five topic areas provide a rich amount of material related to the fundamental questions that we will be addressing in this course. And these are topic areas also involve a wide range of core scientific concepts as well as excellent examples of how scientists and public policy makers interact when they need to make decisions about scientific issues. Thus, the course is based on using these major topic areas as a springboard for delving into more general issues of science and public policy.
Welcome to the journey.