Unsettled Controversies

"Unsettled is a remarkable book—probably the best book on climate change for the intelligent layperson—that achieves the feat of conveying complex information clearly and in depth." —Claremont Review of Books "Surging sea levels are inundating the coasts." "Hurricanes and tornadoes are becoming fiercer and more frequent." "Climate change will be an economic disaster." You've heard all this presented as fact. But according to science, all of these statements are profoundly misleading. When it comes to climate change, the media, politicians, and other prominent voices have declared that "the science is settled." In reality, the long game of telephone from research to reports to the popular media is corrupted by misunderstanding and misinformation. Core questions—about the way the climate is responding to our influence, and what the impacts will be—remain largely unanswered. The climate is changing, but the why and how aren't as clear as you've probably been led to believe. Now, one of America's most distinguished scientists is clearing away the fog to explain what science really says (and doesn't say) about our changing climate. In Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters, Steven Koonin draws upon his decades of experience—including as a top science advisor to the Obama administration—to provide up-to-date insights and expert perspective free from political agendas. Fascinating, clear-headed, and full of surprises, this book gives readers the tools to both understand the climate issue and be savvier consumers of science media in general. Koonin takes readers behind the headlines to the more nuanced science itself, showing us where it comes from and guiding us through the implications of the evidence. He dispels popular myths and unveils little-known truths: despite a dramatic rise in greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures actually decreased from 1940 to 1970. What's more, the models we use to predict the future aren't able to accurately describe the climate of the past, suggesting they are deeply flawed. Koonin also tackles society's response to a changing climate, using data-driven analysis to explain why many proposed "solutions" would be ineffective, and discussing how alternatives like adaptation and, if necessary, geoengineering will ensure humanity continues to prosper. Unsettled is a reality check buoyed by hope, offering the truth about climate science that you aren't getting elsewhere—what we know, what we don't, and what it all means for our future.

From resurgent racisms to longstanding Islamophobia, from settler colonial refusals of First Nations voices to border politics and migration debates, ‘free speech’ has been weaponised to target racialized communities and bolster authoritarian rule. Unsettled Voices identifies the severe limitations and the violent consequences of ‘free speech debates’ typical of contemporary cultural politics, and explores the possibilities to combat racism when liberal values underpin emboldened white supremacy. What kind of everyday racially motivated speech is protected by such an interpretation of liberal ideology? How do everyday forms of social expression that vilify and intimidate find shelter through an inflation of the notion of freedom of speech? Furthermore, how do such forms refuse the idea that language can be a performative act from which harm can be derived? Racialized speech has conjured and shaped the subjectivities of multiple intersecting participants, reproducing new and problematic forms of precarity. These vulnerabilities have been experienced from the sound of rubber bullets in the Occupied Palestinian Territories to UK hate speech legislation, to the spontaneous performace of a First Nations war dance on the Australian Rules football pitch. This book identifies the deep limitations and the violent consequences of the longstanding and constantly developing ‘free speech debates’ typical of so many contexts in the West, and explores the possibilities to combat racism when liberal values are ‘weaponized’ to target racialized communities. This book was originally published as a special issue of Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies.

Research in action engages the researcher who wants to live up to the challenges of contemporary science and to contribute to innovation and social change. This ambition to contribute to change raises many questions. How to define the main target group of the research? What role does this group play in the research? Which methods of data collection are most appropriate? Who are the commissioners of the research and do their interests match with those of the prime target group? How to deal with power relations in research situations? What do these issues mean for the relation of researcher with the people in the researched situation? And, last but not least, what does it all imply for the researcher him- or herself? These questions have to be dealt with in situations in which the design and organization of the research is still open but also in situations where these have already been preformatted through the research proposal or earlier developments. In any case, they have to be framed in the theoretical considerations of what is science. This book aims to assist scholars and practitioners who would want to deal with this kind of research and questions. The book does not offer recipes, nor fixed scenarios. It presents a series of practical research cases and theoretical insights by experienced researchers who themselves struggled with what is probably the most meaningful questions of the science today. The practical examples of research in action are from different disciplines and include themes from health care, policy research, agricultural technology and education, in Northern and Southern context. Four leading themes of research in action are introduced in the first chapter. In the last chapter the editors return to the dilemmas research in action and try to clarify the options and responses that are possible in different situations.

Luigi L. Pasinetti (born 1930) is arguably the most influential of the second generation of the Cambridge Keynesian School of Economics, both because of his achievements and his early involvement with the direct pupils of John Maynard Keynes. This comprehensive intellectual biography traces his research from his early groundbreaking contribution in the field of structural economic dynamics to the ‘Pasinetti Theorem’. With scientific outputs spanning more than six decades (1955–2017), Baranzini and Mirante analyse the impact of his research work and roles at Cambridge, the Catholic University of Milan and at the new University of Lugano. Pasinetti’s whole scientific life has been driven by the desire to provide new frameworks to explain the mechanisms of modern economic systems, and this book assesses how far this has been achieved.