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MODERATED SCIENTISTS' FORUM
- open for your contributions
In order to contribute to this moderated FORUM please use the interactive FORUM of ESPERE and let us know, to which part (A, B, C ...) your comment refers or if you would like to bring in a new topic, and please give your name and the institution you work for.
Current discussions:
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A: Steering committe for ESPERE / nomination - last update 31/10/01 |
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B: Evora Event - Proposal of a communication event including other groups than scientists - last update 12/10/01 |
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C: The role of scientists in the society - last update 05/10/01 |
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D: VISIONS for ESPERE / the future role in science, education and outreach - last update 16/10/01 |
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E: What are we going to do, if students don't know about fundamentals? - last update 12/10/01 |
RM = Regular Member, MSAB = Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
A
| NAME / DATE | TOPIC: STEERING COMMITTEE for ESPERE / nomination |
| 31/10/01 Pr. Mairie Doufexopoulou (MSAB) NTU Athens / Greece |
Hello, everybody, I had a look at the opinions in subject A but also at the other topics. According to me it is quite important to keep the number of members of the steering commitee quite small [ 5-7 ]. However such candidates should be voted that represent different "cultures" and "mentalities" over the globe [usually the main studies that a person had, and its local "culture" determine his/her points of view upon any issue. What I argue is an objective neccesity for such worldwide attempts like ESPERE! In practice this means that votes should be distributed 1) according to the geographical continent [ Europe, Asia, America, e. t. c] 2)according to the country [ different environmental "hints"] and 3) according to an acceptable balance between the two sexes [ men-women ]. At least this will be the thread of my logic in voting. |
| 22/10/01 Heleen de Coninck (RM) MPI Mainz / Ger. |
I think that if the steering committee is to make decisions in an effective way, it should better be restricted to a group of at the most 6 members. If for every decision or Newsletter 9 people have to react, it will slow things down considerably. |
| 05/10/01
Philippe Tulkens Belg.Feder.Planning Bureau -Task Force Sustain. Develop. |
If I may give some suggestions, do not worry too much about the size of the steering commitee. The most important aspect is to find motivated poeple that have good contacts in the scientific community and with the EC. A small team with 5 or 6 poeple involved could do the job at the begining. |
| 05/10/01
Marie Monier (RM) University of Clermont Ferrand |
I think it's important to institute several electoral college to be sure that all the contrasts of our international community will be represented in the steering committee. We should have a college for the professor, one for the school teacher and perhaps split the group of members in several college with countries or groupings of countries to be sure that the committee will be also international. As I've no idea of the proportion of countries represented in ESPERE, I'm not able to give precise numbers of representant in each college. As Thierry I would like to be part of the committee. |
| 04/10/01
Thierry Elias (RM) Univ. of Evora |
I agree with the idea of having a steering committee. For the preliminary steering commitee, i have no clear idea of how we should compose it. I would say 9 persons. I would like to be part of it. I can not nominate other persons as I do not know many ESPERE members. |
| 04/10/01
Marie Monier (RM) |
Assume it's not possible to have more than fifteen people (because more you are, slower is the communication between all participants). You can say that 3 places are reserved for the professors, 3 for the teacher and the schools, 9 for the PhD students or members. After you can divide these 9 places in areas in Europe (make proportionnality calculations to share the place). I don't have at this moment any idea of what is the representation of each country but let say 3 places for Germany, one for UK, for France, for Italy, and after make some groupings as Scandinavia, eastern country or what the calculations tell you. And you can organize electoral college with their list and in each college they have to vote for their representant. I hope you've understood my idea. I think it's the most democratic way to represent this so contrasted community. |
| 04/10/01
Elmar Uherek (RM) |
Recommendation concerning the nomination:
It is a usual problem of elections (especially for local ones or when you moved) that your are not very familiar with the candidates. Therefore I would like to suggest, that you have a view on the ESPERE pages, in order to see who cared about what. To nominate candidates does only mean, that they will be asked if they are ready for a candidacy and then they may introduce themselves. So try to make your choice even if you do not know many people. This is my opinion. |
B
| NAME / DATE | TOPIC: EVORA EVENT |
| 09/10/01
Thierry Elias, RM, University of Evora, Portugal |
Elmar, I agree with your preference for a FORUM. Please let me know what everybody thinks of that: I think we should execute this project only if a significant number of ESPERE members are available during 14 and 15 november. The action depends directly on the availability of the ESPERE members. I could recall that it is not needed to give 2 days of your time. It is just a question of keeping an eye on the FORUM during these 2 days and answer to any questions which concern your competencies, if there are any. |
| 04/10/01
Elmar Uherek |
The idae to involve the public during the Evora event is excellent. However I would prefer a FORUM to a chatroom. For several reasons: - in a chatroom all the questions asked and comments given are lost. This means we do not only have to answer the same questions several times, we also loose probably good ideas from the public. A FORUM is not that quick than a chatroom but can also be used nearly online if somebody is available in order to answer. - the questions and the answers remain on the screen. And even if ESPERE members are not always around, the question can stilll be answered the next day and the person who asked will get an answer. Moreover I would like to point to the fact, that the Evora conference takes place the 15+16th of november (Thu, Fri). At the beginning of the week the netdays Europe begin. The discussion could be extended to schools e.g. during the first two days of the next week. This could be announced via diverse media and we would inform schools on an international scale, which is still a problem. The netdays have always some feedback. So my proposal is: |
| 04/10/01
Thierry Elias (RM) |
I would like also to submit an idea: In one month, a conference about the climate change and the application of Kyoto protocol is organised in Evora. The subject will be treated in a scientific way of course, but not in a technical way. This approach should extend the identity of the public to non-specialists. However, there is still the constraint of understanding english, the official language of the conference. Nevertheless we expect to have in the same place people who are all of interest in the perspective of ESPERE project: scientists, NGO, industries, politicians, schools. Therefore, I would like to tempt an experiment: putting in contact via internet the ESPERE members with individuals of the civil society who would have questions concerning climate change. From Evora, I try to make available a few computers with connections to the internet. At the beginning of the conference we distribute a leaflet describing ESPERE and how to use the available internet connections. The public should be able to connect to a chat-room whenever they wish in We have to decide which chat room to use. Can we use the chat-room of the german teachers-online (newsletter of august 2001) ? Do we have to do our proper one ? |
C
| NAME / DATE | TOPIC: The role of scientists in the society |
| 04/10/01
Elmar Uherek |
background: The background of the discussion is the scheme of our society (with respect to climate change) presented during the Torino conference by the European research commissioner Phillippe Busquin:
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| 05/10/01
Marie Monier |
I agree with Thierry about his comments on the scheme, and the fact you shouldn't put together government and university. |
| 04/10/01
Thierry Elias (RM) |
I do not agree with the proposed scheme. I do not see why the government and the university are in the same box. University members are not elected by civilians. And does that mean that a change of government induces a change of university objectives, organisation? For me, the civil society includes everybody, even the scientists, the industry, the justice, ... who all have to respect the duties of civilians. Nevertheless, each has skills related to his job. In our case, we have a way to help finding solutions about global and local problems linked to human influence. Please find attached my vision of such a scheme. (PDF-file) |
D
| NAME / DATE | TOPIC: VISIONS for ESPERE / the future role in science, education and outreach |
| 16/10/01 Heleen de Coninck (RM) MPI Mainz Germany |
Hi Philippe, You are absolutely right that before starting much work on Espere, a clear goal which has no overlap with other educational/awareness-raising projects, should be formulated. However, I took a look on the IPCC, IGBP and UNFCCC pages and I could not find much especially aimed at the public or at schools. If there is information available, it is usually only in English and aimed at a professional public, for instance in the case of the Summaries for Policymakers. By translating the scientific results into many languages, understandable for everybody, I think Espere still contributes in an important way. It's not a bad idea however to contact for instance the secretariat of UNFCCC or IPCC for cooperation. Could the future steering committee pick up this suggestion? |
| 05/10/01
Philippe Tulkens Belg.Feder.Planning Bureau -Task Force Sustain. Develop. |
I was wondering why the IGBP partnership was suggested. I'ts a good idea, but as far as I know the topic, it seems to me that spreading of the IPCC results is the most important task for the moment. Mr Watson insisted several times in conferences on the need for better diffusion of their message. As many initiatives exist on the educational matter in this field, in order to get a clear picture, it would be usefull first to conduct a review of the existing programs, to get in contact with the IPCC and then define the task of ESPERE within the global framework.This integration is fundamental I guess as the present spreading of resources is rather inefficient. Within the UNFCCC (check on the website www.unfccc.de) there are some educational programs also. Belgium (holding the EU presidency for the moment) proposed to enhance education program within the UNFCCC. The next conference in Marrakesh (COP7 and SBSTA) should elaborate on that. |
E
| NAME / DATE | TOPIC: What are we going to do, if students don't know about fundamentals? |
| 13/10/01
Elmar Uherek MPI Mainz |
I agree with Heleens comments and the critisizm in general. However I would like to bring in the reason for the problem: The animations I used include unavoidable simplifications, i.e.: a molecule is half of the size of a satellite or the atmosphere nearly as thick as the Earth itself, since you can't show it in its correct dimension. So the question is: Shall we explain the fundamentals and the correct dimensions or should we risk that the pupils get a wrong idea and wait until the stuff is tought later (What is about a wider public, who likely will never be tought again and forgot a lot?). To my opinion - and this was included in the first proposal - we need a glossary or a link to another site for such cases. It's difficult to explain the greenhouse effect if the reader has no idea of what absorption is. |
| 12/10/01
Heleen de Coninck MPI Mainz |
I would like to point out a problem which I encountered while translating in English one of the texts that Elmar wrote which are to be used for schools. In this text, the behaviour of water in the atmosphere is explained in a comprehensible way for children in the age of about 14. If you want to understand everything about water in the atmosphere, you will have to understand chemical and physical properties, and Elmar therefore starts explaining many basic principles, like the existence and size of molecules and atoms, the "mole"-unit, the cause of air pressure etc. If you ask me, this is not the task of Espere. Espere is a lot of work as it is, and should not take over the educational task of secondary education; there are books that deal with this in a much better way. I would like the opinion of the Espere-members about how to deal with this problem, because there is of course a chance that moles are not treated yet in the education 14-year-olds have received. I think, that before anything is written for schools, we will have to make these things clear: - For which group of pupils are we writing the information? In my view, before this is clear, no piece of information can be written. I talked about this with Elmar and we agreed that I will leave out the part about what a mole is and what atoms are and how big they are and I will just translate the "general" information without difficult physical units and constants. I would plead that in school projects, we deal with the subjects where Espere was founded for, and not with basic scientific knowledge. |
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