WEBVTT

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I'm a meteorologist by degree,

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I have a bachelor's,
master's and PhD in physical meteorology,

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so I'm a meteorologist, card carrying.

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And so with that comes
four questions, always.

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This is one prediction
I will always get right.

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(Laughter)

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And those questions are,

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"Marshall, what channel are you on?"

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(Laughter)

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"Doctor Shepherd, what's the weather
going to be tomorrow?"

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(Laughter)

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And oh, I love this one:

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"My daughter is getting married
next September, it's an outdoor wedding.

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Is it going to rain?"

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(Laughter)

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Not kidding, I get those,
and I don't know the answer to that,

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the science isn't there.

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But the one I get a lot these days is,

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"Doctor Shepherd, do you believe
in climate change?"

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"Do you believe in global warming?"

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Now, I have to gather myself
every time I get that question.

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Because it's an ill-posed question --

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science isn't a belief system.

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My son, he's 10 --
he believes in the tooth fairy.

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And he needs to get over that,
because I'm losing dollars, fast.

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(Laughter)

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But he believes in the tooth fairy.

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But consider this.

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Bank of America building,
there, in Atlanta.

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You never hear anyone say,

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"Do you believe, if you go
to the top of that building

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and throw a ball off, it's going to fall?"

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You never hear that,
because gravity is a thing.

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So why don't we hear the question,

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"Do you believe in gravity?"

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But of course, we hear the question,

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"Do you believe in global warming?"

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Well, consider these facts.

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The American Association
for the Advancement of Science, AAAS,

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one of the leading
organizations in science,

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queried scientists and the public
on different science topics.

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Here are some of them:

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genetically modified food,
animal research, human evolution.

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And look at what the scientists
say about those,

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the people that actually
study those topics, in red,

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versus the gray, what the public thinks.

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How did we get there?

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How did we get there?

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That scientists and the public
are so far apart on these science issues.

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Well, I'll come a little bit
closer to home for me,

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climate change.

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Eighty-seven percent of scientists

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believe that humans are contributing
to climate change.

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But only 50 percent of the public?

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How did we get there?

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So it begs the question,

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what shapes perceptions about science?

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It's an interesting question,

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and one that I've been
thinking about quite a bit.

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I think that one thing that shapes
perceptions in the public, about science,

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is belief systems and biases.

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Belief systems and biases.

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Go with me for a moment.

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Because I want to talk
about three elements of that:

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confirmation bias, Dunning-Kruger effect

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and cognitive dissonance.

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Now, these sound like big, fancy,
academic terms, and they are.

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But when I describe them,
you're going to be like, "Oh!

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I recognize that, I even know
somebody that does that."

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Confirmation bias.

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Finding evidence that supports
what we already believe.

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Now, we're probably all
a little bit guilty of that at times.

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Take a look at this.

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I'm on Twitter.

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And often, when it snows,

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I'll get this tweet back to me.

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(Laughter)

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"Hey, Doctor Shepherd, I have 20 inches
of Global Warming in my yard,

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what are you guys
talking about, climate change?"

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I get that tweet a lot, actually.

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It's a cute tweet,
it makes me chuckle as well.

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But it's oh, so fundamentally
scientifically flawed.

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Because it illustrates

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that the person tweeting
doesn't understand

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the difference
between weather and climate.

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I often say, weather is your mood

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and climate is your personality.

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Think about that.

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Weather is your mood,
climate is your personality.

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Your mood today doesn't necessarily
tell me anything about your personality.

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Nor does a cold day tell me anything
about climate change,

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or a hot day, for that matter.

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Dunning-Kruger.

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Two scholars from Cornell
came up with the Dunning-Kruger effect.

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If you go look up
the peer-reviewed paper for this,

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you will see all kinds
of fancy terminology:

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it's an illusory superiority complex,
thinking we know things.

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In other words, people think
they know more than they do.

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Or they underestimate
what they don't know.

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And then, there's cognitive dissonance.

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Cognitive dissonance is interesting.

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We just recently had Groundhog Day, right?

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Now, there's no better definition
of cognitive dissonance

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than intelligent people asking me
if a rodent's forecast is accurate.

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(Laughter)

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But I get that, all of the time.

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(Laughter)

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But I also hear
about the Farmer's Almanac.

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We grew up on the Farmer's Almanac,
people are familiar with it.

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The problem is, it's only
about 37 percent accurate,

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according to studies
at Penn State University.

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But we're in an era of science

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where we actually
can forecast the weather.

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And believe it or not, and I know
some of you are like, "Yeah, right,"

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we're about 90 percent accurate, or more,
with weather forecast.

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You just tend to remember
the occasional miss, you do.

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(Laughter)

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So confirmation bias,
Dunning-Kruger and cognitive dissonance.

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I think those shape biases and perceptions
that people have about science.

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But then, there's literacy
and misinformation

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that keep us boxed in, as well.

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During the hurricane season of 2017,

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media outlets had to actually
assign reporters

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to dismiss fake information
about the weather forecast.

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That's the era that we're in.

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I deal with this all the time
in social media.

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Someone will tweet a forecast --

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that's a forecast for Hurricane Irma,
but here's the problem:

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it didn't come from the Hurricane Center.

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But people were tweeting
and sharing this; it went viral.

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It didn't come from
the National Hurricane Center at all.

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So I spent 12 years of my career at NASA

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before coming
to the University of Georgia,

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and I chair their Earth Science
Advisory Committee,

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I was just up there last week in DC.

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And I saw some really interesting things.

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Here's a NASA model
and science data from satellite

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showing the 2017 hurricane season.

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You see Hurricane Harvey there?

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Look at all the dust coming off of Africa.

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Look at the wildfires up in northwest US
and in western Canada.

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There comes Hurricane Irma.

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This is fascinating to me.

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But admittedly, I'm a weather geek.

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But more importantly, it illustrates
that we have the technology

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to not only observe the weather
and climate system,

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but predict it.

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There's scientific understanding,

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so there's no need for some
of those perceptions and biases

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that we've been talking about.

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We have knowledge.

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But think about this ...

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This is Houston, Texas,
after Hurricane Harvey.

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Now, I write a contribution
for "Forbes" magazine periodically

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and I wrote an article a week before
Hurricane Harvey made landfall, saying,

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"There's probably going to be
40 to 50 inches of rainfall."

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I wrote that a week before it happened.

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But yet, when you talk
to people in Houston,

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people are saying, "We had no idea
it was going to be this bad."

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I'm just...

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(Sigh)

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(Laughter)

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A week before.

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But --

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I know, it's amusing, but the reality is,

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we all struggle with perceiving something
outside of our experience level.

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People in Houston
get rain all of the time,

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they flood all of the time.

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But they've never experienced that.

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Houston gets about 34 inches of rainfall
for the entire year.

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They got 50 inches in three days.

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That's an anomaly event,
that's outside of the normal.

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So belief systems and biases,
literacy and misinformation.

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How do we step out of the boxes
that are cornering our perceptions?

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Well we don't even have to go to Houston,
we can come very close to home.

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(Laughter)

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Remember "Snowpocalypse?"

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(Laughter)

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Snowmageddon?

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Snowzilla?

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Whatever you want to call it.

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All two inches of it.

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(Laughter)

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Two inches of snow
shut the city of Atlanta down.

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(Laughter)

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But the reality is,
we were in a winter storm watch,

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we went to a winter weather advisory,

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and a lot of people perceived that
as being a downgrade,

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"Oh, it's not going to be as bad."

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When in fact, the perception
was that it was not going to be as bad,

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but it was actually an upgrade.

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Things were getting worse
as the models were coming in.

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So that's an example of how we get
boxed in by our perceptions.

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So, the question becomes,

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how do we expand our radius?

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The area of a circle is "pi r squared".

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We increase the radius,
we increase the area.

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How do we expand our radius
of understanding about science?

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Here are my thoughts.

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You take inventory of your own biases.

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And I'm challenging you all to do that.

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Take an inventory of your own biases.

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Where do they come from?

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Your upbringing, your political
perspective, your faith --

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what shapes your own biases?

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Then, evaluate your sources --

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where do you get
your information on science?

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What do you read, what do you listen to,

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to consume your information on science?

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And then, it's important to speak out.

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Talk about how you evaluated your biases
and evaluated your sources.

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I want you to listen to this
little 40-second clip

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from one of the top
TV meteorologists in the US, Greg Fishel,

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in the Raleigh, Durham area.

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He's revered in that region.

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But he was a climate skeptic.

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But listen to what he says
about speaking out.

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(Video) Greg Fishel:
The mistake I was making

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and didn't realize until recently

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was that I was only looking
for information

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to support what I already thought,

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and was not interested
in listening to anything contrary.

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And so I woke up one morning,

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and there was this question in my mind,

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"Greg, are you engaging
in confirmation bias?

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Are you only looking for information
to support what you already think?"

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And if I was honest with myself,
and I try to be,

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I admitted that was going on.

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And so the more I talked to scientists,

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and read peer-reviewed literature

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and tried to conduct myself the way
I've been taught to conduct myself

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at Penn State when I was a student,

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it became very difficult for me
to make the argument

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that we weren't at least
having some effect.

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Maybe there was still a doubt
as to how much,

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but to say "nothing" was not
a responsible thing for me to do

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as a scientist or a person.

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Greg Fishel just talked
about expanding his radius

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of understanding of science.

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And when we expand our radius,

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it's not about making a better future,

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but it's about preserving
life as we know it.

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So as we think about expanding
our own radius in understanding science,

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it's critical for Athens, Georgia,
for Atlanta, Georgia,

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for the state of Georgia,
and for the world.

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So expand your radius.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)