This briefing will explore public perceptions of climate change,
scientific understanding, and the current political landscape. Our goal
is to identify areas where these three perspectives reinforce each other
and where they diverge in order to: 1) better understand the challenges
and opportunities policy-makers face, 2) identify remaining needs that,
if met, could help society most effectively manage risks, and 3) explore
opportunities to improve communication among policy-makers, scientists,
and the public.
Speakers:
- Norman J. Ornstein, Ph.D. Resident Scholar, American Enterprise
Institute for Public Policy Research
- Michael Oppenheimer, Ph.D. Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences
and International Affairs, Department of Geosciences and Woodrow
Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton
University
- Jon A. Krosnick, Ph.D. Frederic O. Glover Professor in Humanities and
Social Sciences, Department of Communication, Stanford University
Moderator:
- Paul Higgins, Ph.D. Senior Policy Fellow, American Meteorological
Society
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Norman Ornstein is a long-time observer of Congress and politics. He
writes a weekly column for Roll Call and is an election analyst for
CBS News. He serves as codirector of the
AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project and
participates in AEI’s Election Watch series.
He also serves as a senior counselor to the Continuity of Government
Commission. Mr. Ornstein led a working group of scholars and
practitioners that helped shape the law, known as McCain-Feingold, that
reformed the campaign financing system. He was elected as a fellow of
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004. His many books
include The Permanent Campaign and Its Future (AEI Press, 2000); the
coauthored The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to
Get It Back on Track (Oxford University Press, 2006); and, most
recently, Vital Statistics on Congress 2008 (Brookings Institution
Press, 2008), also coauthored.
Michael Oppenheimer is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences
and International Affairs at Princeton University. He is also the
Director of the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy
(STEP) at the Woodrow Wilson School. He joined the Princeton faculty in
2002 after more than two decades with the Environmental Defense Fund, a
non-governmental environmental organization, where he served as chief
scientist and manager of the Climate and Air Program. Oppenheimer is a
long-time participant in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, serving most recently as
a lead author of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment
Report and is now a coordinating lead author of an upcoming
IPCC Special Report covering climate extremes
and disasters. He serves on the US National Academies Board on Energy
and Environmental Systems. He is also a science advisor to the
Environmental Defense Fund. His interests include science and policy of
the atmosphere, particularly climate change and its impacts. Much of his
research aims to understand the potential for “dangerous” outcomes of
increasing levels of greenhouse gases by exploring the effects of global
warming on ecosystems such as coral reefs, on the ice sheets and sea
level, and on patterns of human migration. Oppenheimer is the author of
more than 100 articles published in professional journals and is
co-author (with Robert H. Boyle) of a 1990 book, Dead Heat: The Race
Against The Greenhouse Effect. He received his Ph.D. in chemical physics
from the University of Chicago.
Jon A. Krosnick is Frederic O. Glover Professor in Humanities and Social
Sciences and professor of communication, political science, and
psychology at Stanford University.
A leading international authority on questionnaire design and survey
research methods, Professor Krosnick has taught courses for
professionals on survey methods for 25 years around the world and has
served as a methodology consultant to government agencies, commercial
firms, and academic scholars. His books include “Introduction to Survey
Research, Polling, and Data Analysis” and “The Handbook of Questionnaire
Design” (forthcoming, Oxford University Press), which reviews 100 years
of research on how different ways of asking questions can yield
different answers from survey respondents and on how to design questions
to measure most accurately. His recent research has focused on how other
aspects of survey methodology (e.g., collecting data by interviewing
face-to-face vs. by telephone or on paper questionnaires) can be
optimized to maximize accuracy.
Dr. Krosnick is also a world-recognized expert on the psychology of
attitudes, especially in the area of politics. He is co-principal
investigator of the American National Election Study, the nation’s
preeminent academic research project exploring voter decision-making and
political campaign effects. For 30 years, Dr. Krosnick has studied how
the American public’s political attitudes are formed, change, and shape
thinking and action. His publication explore the causes of people
decisions about whether to vote, for whom to vote, whether to approve of
the President’s performance, whether to take action to influence
government policy-making on a specific issue, and much more.
Dr. Krosnick’s scholarship has been recognized with the Phillip Brickman
Memorial Prize, the Pi Sigma Alpha Award, the Erik Erikson Early Career
Award for Excellence and Creativity, a fellowship at the Center for
Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and membership as a fellow of
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
As an expert witness in court, he has testified evaluating the quality
of surveys presented as evidence by opposing counsel and has conducted
original survey research to inform courts in cases involving
unreimbursed expenses, uncompensated overtime work, exempt/non-exempt
misclassification, patent/trademark violation, health effects of
accidents, consequences of being misinformed about the results of
standardized academic tests, economic valuation of environmental damage,
change of venue motions, and other topics.
At Stanford, Dr. Krosnick directs the Political Psychology Research
Group (PPRG). PPRG is a cross-disciplinary
team of scholars who conduct empirical studies of the psychology of
political behavior and studies seeking to optimize research methodology
for studying political psychology. The group’s studies employ a wide
range of research methods, including surveys, experiments, and content
analysis, and the group often conducts collaborative research studies
with leading news media organizations, including
ABC News, The Associated Press, the Washington
Post, and Time Magazine. Support for the group’s work has come from U.S.
Government agencies (e.g., the National Science Foundation, the Bureau
of Labor Statistics), private foundations (e.g., the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation), and Institutes at
Stanford (e.g., the Woods Institute for the Environment). Dr. Krosnick
also directs the Summer Institute in Political Psychology, an annual
event that brings 60 students and professions from around the world to
Stanford for intensive training in political psychology theory and
methods.
In his spare time, Dr. Krosnick plays drums with a contemporary jazz
group called Charged Particles that has released two CD’s
internationally and tours across the U.S. and abroad
(www.chargedparticles.com).
American Meteorological Society
902 Hart
12/03/2010 at 11:30AM
From 1998 to 2005, ExxonMobil directed
almost