So this brief post arose in response to a blog post on another site entitled “What’s the point of social science?”.  In  this piece the authors’ described their experience attending a conference in France which addressed the topic of  “Confidence, Credibility, and Authority in Climate Sciences and Politics”.

Now I have no idea what the quality of individual papers and presentations at this conference was, but the authors of the blog were clearly unimpressed by the social science contributions. As they noted:

The talks from scientists were generally straightforward, but the social science talks inevitably left us waiting for the punchline. They would get to the end and stop, before reaching any real conclusion. This has been a common impression we have both got from a number of similar events. The speakers tend to be long on historical description and retrospective analysis, and short on anything amounting to overall vision, substantive advice or predictive claims. (There have been notable exceptions to this general impression, but they are rare.)

Continue reading What Use is Social Science in Understanding the Climate Crisis? →