Climate science is topic of April 17 lecture

Western Washington University is hosting author and Professor Naomi Oreskes at 4 p.m. on Thursday, April 17 in Western’s Viking Union Multipurpose Room, as part of the Western Reads speaker series.

Oreskes is a Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California at San Diego and also the author of several books, her latest being “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.”

In this book she raises questions about issues in science and if scientific efforts are being used to confuse the public and policy leaders.

A former geologist for a mining company in Australia, Oreskes has become a world renowned expert on the history of science.

For the past 20 years she has studied the process of consensus and dissent in science, focusing on questions such as how do scientists decide when a fact is established? How do they judge how much evidence is sufficient to deem something scientifically demonstrated? And what happens when scientists can’t agree?

Her work on climate science has been widely reviewed in the media and her expertise has been called on by the U.S. Senate, the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board and the California State Senate.

This program is made possible by the support of Western Reads, the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, The Ethics Initiative and the College of Science and Technology.

For more information, contact Dawn Dietrich at western.reads@wwu.edu or visit www.wwu.edu/westernreads/.