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Join iSEE and the Departments of Atmospheric Sciences as former U of I graduate student Katharine Hayhoe delivers this year’s “zero-carbon” lecture. Hayhoe is   climate scientist, a Political Science Professor, Director of the Climate Center, and an associate in the Public Health program of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Texas Tech University. She is also a principal investigator for the Department of Interior’s South-Central Climate Adaptation Science Center. Her research currently focuses on establishing a scientific basis for assessing the regional to local-scale impacts of climate change on human systems and the natural environment.

Abstract: “Gravity doesn’t care what we believe; if we step off a cliff, we’re going down. And a thermometer doesn’t give us a different answer, depending on how we vote. Yet today, the best predictor of whether we agree that climate is changing and humans are responsible isn’t our level of education or our degree of scientific literacy: It’s simply where we fall on the political spectrum.How can good science inform sound decision-making in a world permeated by the false notion, as Isaac Asimov said, that ‘democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’? The answer lies not in the physical sciences, but in the social science of how we as humans interact with information. By understanding the true roots of denial, it can be possible to constructively engage with deliberate attempts to politicize the science and even identify unexpected areas of common ground on which to build bridges rather than deepen existing trenches.”