Climate Change Science in an Age of Misinformation

So you might be asking yourself, “As a lazy professor who never writes anything, Loomis has tons of free time. What does he do with it?” Well, one thing I’ve been doing this year is organizing a conference on the problems of corporate funded climate change denialism with the office of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and a committee of my fellow professors through our AAUP union. For those of you who live in southern New England, this would be a great event for you to attend on Earth Day. It’s on Friday at the University of Rhode Island. Titled “Climate Change Science in an Age of Misinformation,” the keynote is from Senator Whitehouse. The morning roundtable includes Union of Concerned Scientists president Ken Kimmel, New York Times science writer Cornelia Dean, Boston University philosopher and ethicist on climate issues Lee McIntyre, and sociologist Timmons Roberts. There is a video introduction by Bill McKibben (turns out if you e-mail McKibben with something important, he just e-mails you back in 5 minutes. Or at least he did that with me). And then there are afternoon breakout sessions on coastline issues, communicating climate change, and environmental justice and activism. I am participating in the latter.

Anyway, here’s the flyer and here’s the agenda. If you are in southern New England, I hope to see you all on Friday. Shoot me a line if you have any questions.