The third annual joint NERC – BES Science Policy Interactions workshop (5- 6 May, in London) is now open for applications – but be quick; the closing date is 11th April at 17.00.
The Science Policy Interactions workshop is an opportunity for early-career researchers to find out first hand from policy-makers how they can inform decision-making with scientific evidence. Thirty early-career participants (no more than 12 years since finishing their PhDs – and either members of the BES or NERC-funded researchers) are joined at the workshop by those with experience of working in Government Departments, agencies or Parliament, and a number of peers with experience of informing policy development. Over the course of two days there is ample opportunity to interact with these individuals, through a series of presentations, case-studies and communications exercises.
A networking dinner on the evening of the first day allows participants to get to know one another, and hopefully contribute to another aim of the workshop – to create a cohort of well-informed, enthusiastic and engaged researchers who can help the BES, NERC and one another in engaging decision-makers with scientific advice.
To find out more, visit the BES website or contact the BES Policy Team for information.
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: UK ROYAL SOCIETY/PEOPLE AND PLANET STUDY GROUP
http://newsecuritybeat.blogspot.com/2010/08/uk-royal-society-call-for-submissions.html#comment-form
—–Original Message—–
Sir John Sulston, Chair
People and the Planet Working Group
UK Royal Society
March 31, 2011
Dear Sir John Sulston:
Your recent comments regarding the review of research on the human population and its impact on the planet we inhabit by a high level panel of experts give rise to hope for the future of children everywhere. Thanks for all you, the Planet and the People Working Group and the UK Royal Society are doing to protect biodiversity from massive extirpation, the environment from irreversible degradation and the Earth from wanton dissipation of its finite resources by the human species. I am especially appreciative for two quotes from you,
…… “we’ve got to make sure that population is recognized…. as a multiplier of many others. We’ve got to make sure that population really does peak out when we hope it will.”
…….”what we want to do is to see the issue of population in the open, dispassionately discussed…. and then we’ll see where it goes.”
Inasmuch as you and an esteemed group of professionals with appropriate expertise are examining scientific evidence regarding the unbridled increase of absolute global human population numbers, please note there is research that has been summarily dismissed by many too many of our colleagues regarding human population dynamics and human overpopulation which I would like to bring to your attention. For the past ten years I have been unsuccessfully attempting to draw attention to certain evidence that to date remains both unchallenged and ignored by virtually every top-rank professional. They appear unable to refute the evidence and simultaneously unwilling to believe it. Their unexpected conspiracy of silence has served to conceal certain research by David Pimentel and Russell Hopfenberg. How else can it be that so many established professionals with adequate expertise act as if they are willfully blind, hysterically deaf and electively mute in the face of scientific evidence of human population dynamics and human overpopulation? The conscious denial of what could somehow be real about the growth of the human population in our time is not doing anything that can be construed as somehow right and good for future human wellbeing and environmental health, I suppose. It appears as if we could be witnesses to the most colossal failure of intellectual honesty, moral courage and nerve in human history.
Peer-reviewed professional publications, letters to the editor, slideshow presentations et cetera can be found at the following link, http://www.panearth.org/
Thank you for attending to this request for careful, skillful and rigorous scrutiny of research from two outstanding scientists. Please know I am holding onto a ray of hope that the research of Hopfenberg and Pimentel is fundamentally flawed; that human population dynamics is different from, not essentially similar to, the population dynamics of other species; and that human population numbers are not primarily a function of an available supply of food necessary for human existence. That would be the best news.
Sometime soon, I trust, many scientists will speak up with regard to apparently unforeseen and unfortunately unwelcome science of human population dynamics and human overpopulation the way people in huge numbers in the Mid-East are calling out for democracy now.
Respectfully yours,
Steve Salmony
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
Established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/