Truth and opinion in climate change discourse: the Gore-Hansen disagreement

In this paper, I discuss the "inconvenient truth" strategy of Al Gore. I argue that Gore's notion of truth upholds a conception of science and policy that narrows our understanding of climate change discourse. In one notable exchange, Gore and NASA scientist, James Hansen, disagreed about whether scientific statements based on Hansen's computer simulations were truth or opinion. This exchange is featured in An Inconvenient Truth, yet the disagreement is edited from the film and presented simply as an instance of Hansen speaking "inconvenient truth". In this article, I compare the filmic representation of Hansen's testimony with the congressional record. I place their exchange in a broader historical perspective on climate change disputation in order to discuss the implications of Gore's perspective on truth.     

Making sense of global warming: Norwegians appropriating knowledge of anthropogenic climate change

This paper studies how people reason about and make sense of human-made global warming, based on ten focus group interviews with Norwegian citizens. It shows that the domestication of climate science knowledge was shaped through five sense-making devices: news media coverage of changes in nature, particularly the weather, the coverage of presumed experts' disagreement about global warming, critical attitudes towards media, observations of political inaction, and considerations with respect to everyday life. These sense-making devices allowed for ambiguous outcomes, and the paper argues four main outcomes with respect to the domestication processes: the acceptors, the tempered acceptors, the uncertain and the sceptics.     

Patterns of polarization: Transnational dynamics in climate change online networks in the US and Switzerland

Research into hyperlink interaction patterns has been particularly interested in whether they integrate the online space or segregate it into “echo chambers.” Concentrating on contentious politics in national settings, the existing studies have mainly examined the relationships between domestic actors, mostly bloggers. This study seeks to expand the focus by including several actor types, allowing their connective actions to reach beyond national borders, and employing a comparative approach that contrasts high- with low-contentious contexts. Analyzing climate change hyperlink networks originating in the US and Switzerland, the results show that their transnational dimension plays a crucial role in polarizing the discourse, regardless of the specific political context. We find similar patterns that segregate climate advocates from skeptics and lead to distinct transnational relationships within the camps. The results demonstrate that countermovement actors in particular are able to forge strong transnational alliances.     

Framing and sources: a study of mass media coverage of climate change in Peru during the V ALCUE

Studies about mass media framing have found divergent levels of influence on public opinion; moreover, the evidence suggests that issue attributes can contribute to this difference. In the case of climate change, studies have focused exclusively on developed countries, suggesting that media influence perceptions about the issue. This study presents one of the first studies of media coverage in a developing country. It examines newspapers' reporting in Peru during the Fifth Latin America, Caribbean and European Union Summit in May 2008. The study focuses on the frames and the sources to provide an initial exploratory assessment of the coverage. The results show that the media relied mostly on government sources, giving limited access to dissenting voices such as environmentalists. Additionally, a prominence of "solutions" and "effects" frames was found, while "policy" and "science" frames were limited. The results could serve as a reference point for more comprehensive studies.     

The local impact of global climate change: reporting on landscape transformation and threatened identity in the English regional newspaper press

This paper contributes to extant understandings of media representations of climate change by examining the role of the English regional newspaper press in the transformation and dissemination of climate change discourse. Unlike previous accounts, this paper contends that such newspapers shape public understandings of climate change in ways that have yet to be adequately charted. With this in mind, this paper examines the ways in which global climate change is translated into a locally relevant phenomenon. That is, it focuses on its "domestication." Although we acknowledge that there are a number of ways in which this process occurs, specific attention is drawn to stories that highlight the destruction of local landscape features, the transformation of important habitats, and the arrival of "alien" species. The broader significance of such stories is considered in relation to long-standing debates concerning the importance of landscape to notions of national and regional identity.     

全球变化研究:一门综合学科发展的历程

20世纪70年代末期以来,人类面临了严峻的资源、环境和发展问题的挑战。问题的产生源自人类为谋求更好的发展而进行的各类活动。这些活动在不同程度上改变和破坏着人类原有的居     

Materiality and sustainability transitions: integrating climate change in transport infrastructure in Ontario,Canada

Infrastructure threatens to lock-in societies to fossil fuels unless something is done now. This is because infrastructure lasts for such a long time, meaning that any infrastructure built or rebuilt now will last well into the twenty-first century – until the end of the century, in some cases. Consequently, there is a need to integrate climate change into infrastructure now or societies will be left with infrastructure designed around unsustainable socio-technical systems (such as combustion engines, roads, and suburbanization). Such change is conceptualized in the literature as a sustainability transition. However, any attempts at such transitions have to address the ‘materialities’ of infrastructure systems (physical form, environmental context, and so on). In this paper, I develop the concept of ‘socio-material systems’ and apply it to transport infrastructure in Ontario, Canada.     

Public understanding of the politics of global warming in the news media: the hostile media approach

This study uses the politics of global warming in the US to investigate an affective mechanism of hostile media perception and the democratic consequences of such perception, in an effort to delineate audience and journalistic barriers to stimulating urgent concern about climate change. The study confirms that partisanship played a significant role in perceptual differences with regard to media bias in an important area of science journalism--climate change. News consumers' anger perception was tested as a mediator in seeking an affective mechanism of hostile media perception. Hostile media perception has important democratic consequences in that it is positively associated with individuals' trust in news coverage of global warming and with selective media use.     

Navigating the impact-innovation double hurdle: The case of a climate change research fund

This paper analyses how the funding for research grants was allocated from a specific research fund which aimed to support innovative research projects with the potential to have research impact by reducing carbon emissions. The fund received a total of 106 proposals, of which 27 were successful at obtaining financial support. Our aims were to test which factors influenced the funding decision and to discover whether or not and to what extent the fund met its intended objectives through the allocation of monies. The allocation process and its outcomes were analysed using correlation, logistical and linear regression to test our research hypotheses. Using this research funding process as a single study, we found that trying to clear the impact-innovation double hurdle in a single funding initiative ultimately compromises both goals. This paper therefore contributes to our understanding of innovation management within the context of carbon emission reduction and explains which factors influenced success in securing research monies through the funding process.     

分析近几年拉萨市空气质量的变化特征及其对气候的影响

本文将根据2000年6月5日～2001年6月4日和2005年6月5日～2006年6月4日的数据进行分析，探讨以上三种首要污染物的变化情况。结果表明：在上述两个时间段里，SO2、NO2、PM10浓度值都有了不同程度的提高，其中SO2浓度值的变化最为明显。虽然现存在的污染物浓度并不是很大，但它的增长速度是不容忽视的，而且污染物浓度的增加在一定程度上既是气候变化的结果，也是导致气候变化的因素之一，保护环境、爱护环境已经刻不容缓了。     

The 'Book of Life' in the press: comparing German and Irish media discourse on human genome research

The essay compares German and Irish media coverage of human genome research in the year 2000, using qualitative and quantitative frame analysis of a print media corpus. Drawing from a media-theoretical account of science communication, the study examines four analytic dimensions: (1) the influence of global and national sources of discourse; (2) the nature of elaboration on important themes; (3) the extent of societal participation in discourse production; (4) the cultural conditions in which the discourse resonates. The analysis shows that a global discursive package, emphasizing claims of scientific achievement and medical progress, dominates media coverage in both countries. However, German coverage is more extensive and elaborate, and includes a wider range of participants. Irish coverage more often incorporates the global package without further elaboration. These finding indicate that the global package is 'localized' differently due to national patterns of interests, German participation in human genome research, traditions of media coverage, and the domestic resonance of the issue.     

全球人工智能科学领域专利信息计量分析及其启示

基于智慧芽专利数据库收录的人工智能领域专利信息,运用专利信息计量方法对专利数据进行全球专利申请趋势、地域分布格局、关键技术领域以及主要专利权人分布统计。中国在人工智能领域专利申请量较多,产品研发技术发展迅速,但基础算法领域相对薄弱,核心竞争力较发达国家仍有一定差距。建议中国在保持现有产品优势的前提下,加大对硬件、算法及芯片等基础层面的研究,同时推动人工智能与其他行业的融合转化,加快推进专利布局和人才引进战略。     

Resolving the patents paradox in the era of COVID-19 and climate change: Towards a patents taxonomy

This paper revisits the patents debate and considers the role of intellectual property rights and their impact on society in the context of inventions designed to protect global common pool resources (CPRs) such as public health and the environment. A review of the theoretical and empirical literature suggests that there has never been a clear consensus among researchers on the benefits of the patent system and intellectual property rights. As Robinson notes, “The patent system introduces some of the greatest of the complexities in the capitalist rules of the game and leads to many anomalies.” We explore these anomalies by specifying a taxonomy of patents for different classes of inventions, including inventions to protect CPRs. This includes vaccines and inventions that reduce externalities, such as, CFC gases and greenhouse gas emissions. In these instances, the effectiveness of innovations depends critically on rapid global diffusion. Our theoretical analysis utilises Ostrom's CPR dilemma to analyse the complexities surrounding innovation and CPRs.We find that the effectiveness of innovations to protect CPRs depends on industrial characteristics and the wider regulatory environment. Empirical evidence is brought to bear on these conclusions via 2 case studies that each embodies a natural experiment; one on vaccines pre- and post-TRIPS and one on environmental technologies to reduce CFC gases and CO₂ emissions with and without an agreed UN Protocol. The insights gained are explored in our policy section. Our analysis suggests the need for a more nuanced approach to patent policy that is embedded in the wider context of innovation systems and takes account of the anomalies raised by CPRs. For CPR protecting innovations subject to positive network externalities, we advocate that policy should prioritise diffusion over private incentives for R&D and use alternative policies to patents to stimulate investment in R&D.     

2004年春季我区持续性降水过程的分析

通过分析亚欧500hpa天气图和从动力机制的分析来看，2004年春季我区持续性降水过程的主要原因是，受南北系统的汇合和低涡切变的影响以及有规律的正涡度，上升运动中心的叠加和发展，促使低涡气旋的发展。     

A field of great promise: soil bacteriology in America, 1900-1925

In the first decades of the 20th century, soil bacteriologists promised to revolutionize farming practice, much in the same way that medical bacteriologists, in the previous century, had transformed pathology, public health and sanitary engineering. Following the isolation of the microorganisms responsible for nitrification and nitrogen fixation, American soil scientists anticipated the time when farmers could 'seed' their crops and lands with these beneficial bacteria. Soil bacteriologists, during the early 20th century, never fulfilled the promise of supplying a biological source of unending soil fertility. However, in their search for productive microbes, these same researchers directed attention to the underappreciated dimensions of bacterial metabolism and microbial ecology.     

Environmental jolts, institutional change, and the creation of entrepreneurial opportunity in the US electric power industry

The relationship between institutional change and entrepreneurship is poorly understood. We build the theory in this area by tracing institutional change in the US electric power industry over a 40-year period. Our analysis shows that environmental jolts mobilize actors to reformulate institutions, resulting in increased entrepreneurial opportunity. When the institutional environment is stable, we find that incumbent organizational forms and embedded logics present formidable obstacles to entrepreneurial activity. Environmental jolts, however, catalyze search processes and motivate the evaluation of current institutional logics. Specifically, in the case of the electric power industry, environments of abundance and regulation resulted in homogeneity of organizational structures and strategies, and few entrepreneurial opportunities. Environments marked by scarcity and crisis, however, witnessed heavy scrutiny of existing institutional arrangements that eroded their taken-for-grantedness and symbolic value, resulting in opportunities for entrepreneurial action.     

Exploring key indicators of social identity in the #MeToo era: Using discourse analysis in UGC

Recent years have been characterized by the ubiquitous use of social networks as a mean of self and social identity, which offers new opportunities for qualitative and quantitative research in social sciences. The dynamics of interactions on social platforms such as Twitter promote the development of social movements around hashtags, such as #MeToo. According to previous research, this movement has set the beginning of an era. The present study aims to determine the key indicators of social identity in the #MeToo movement in Twitter using textual analysis and sentiment analysis of user-generated content. To this end, we use a cognitive pragmatics point of view to study a corpus of 31.305 tweets. Using the methodological approaches of corpus linguistics (CL) and discourse analysis (DA), we identify keywords, topics, frequency, and n-grams or collocations to understand the social identity of the #MeToo movement. The key indicators of the social identity in the #MeToo Era are validated using association statistical measures of Log-Likelihood and Mutual Information (MI). Our results reveal the polarization of sentiments where UGC is associated with both negative and positive topics. The social identity is particularly strongly correlated with women and the workplace. Finally, regardless the industry or area, these results present a holistic approach to the social identity of #MeToo.     

家族企业--一个亟待深入研究的领域

本文从家族企业在经济社会发展中的地位、我国家族企业研究与国外相关研究的现实差距以及我国家族企业存在的独特文化背景不同的角度，阐述了当前研究家族企业的特殊的理论和实践意义，并结合浙江家族企业发展的实际，概括了目前家族企业亟待研究的三个核心问题，即产权问题、治理结构问题和权力的继承问题。     

Vaccine technology transfer in a global health crisis: Actors,capabilities, and institutions

The COVID-19 pandemic, which featured international pharmaceutical firms seeking to build global manufacturing networks to scale-up the supply of vaccines, has generated heightened interest in understanding the role of firm-to-firm technology transfer. While considerable attention has been given to tracking the extent of international vaccine technology transfer, we know little about how partnerships were established and work in practice. Understanding the challenges that such projects face, and how such challenges may be overcome, is crucially important. This paper provides an account of the partnership between the British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, the vaccine developer that has engaged in the most technology transfer and built the widest global manufacturing network, and Bio-Manguinhos, a public laboratory linked to Brazil's Ministry of Health. The case study demonstrates the importance of capabilities and regulatory flexibility. Moreover, the analysis highlights the role of political factors that affect the process of technology transfer, and innovation more broadly. Because of the risks involved and the need to quickly mobilize existing capabilities and build new ones, as well as the imperatives of coordinating among manufacturing and regulatory processes and allocating resources to make such arrangements feasible, technology transfer projects need to be enabled politically. Looking forward, the case study has implications for initiatives to expand technology transfer for broadened production of vaccines in the Global South.