(Ep. 1) Critical Thinking Revealed: Prof. Alex Hall of UCLA on the Climate Crisis

In the first episode of our new podcast, "Critical Thinking Revealed," Dr. Linda Elder interviews Prof. Alex Hall of UCLA's Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Department. As Prof. Hall explains his research in the area of human impact on earth's climate, Dr. Elder explicates the critical thinking moves in his work and reasoning. Alex Hall is a Professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, Director of the Center for Climate Science at UCLA and Interim Director of UCLA’s Sustainable LA Grand Challenge. His research is focused on reducing climate change uncertainty at both regional and global scales. At the regional scale, he has been active in the development of downscaling techniques to understand climate change at the scales most relevant to people and ecosystems. Prof. Hall and his team at the Center for Climate Science use these techniques to create neighborhood-scale projections of future climate. They have recently completed downscaling studies over the Los Angeles region and the Sierra Nevada, and projects are currently under way to investigate the future of extreme precipitation and fire in California. Prof. Hall was a Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 5th Assessment Report’s chapter on regional climate change and a Contributing Author to its chapter on climate model evaluation. He was also Coordinating Lead Author of the Los Angeles Region Report, part of California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment. In 2016, he received the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Atmospheric Sciences Ascent Award, and in 2019, he was awarded the AGU’s Future Horizons in Climate Science: Turco Lectureship. In the "Critical Thinking Revealed" podcast, we interview those who have shown exceptional reasoning in a given area and explicitly illuminate the examples of critical thinking therein. These videos will use terminology from critical thinking theory; while these terms all exist in natural, everyday English, we encourage you to look up anything you don't understand by any or all of the following means: 1) Searching this channel. 2) Exploring the articles available at our public library:https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/index-of-articles/1021/ 3) Subscribing the The Center for Critical Thinking Community Online (the world’s largest digital library of critical thinking articles, guides, books, videos, interactive exercises, and more): https://community.criticalthinking.org/ 4) Reading in our released publications: https://www.criticalthinking.org/store/ For over 40 years, the Foundation for Critical Thinking – along with its sister organization, the Center for Critical Thinking – have worked toward the advancement of critical societies. The Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that seeks to promote essential change throughout education and society by cultivating fairminded critical thinking. We are releasing educational videos on YouTube to supply the mainstream internet with substantial content on critical thinking; you can help our channel by subscribing to it, and by liking and commenting on our videos. To see and register for upcoming events, courses, study groups, and so on, visit us at: https://www.criticalthinking.org We hope you will also become a member of The Center for Critical Thinking Community Join our Community Online: www.criticalthinkingcommunity.org We invite you to donate to our mission at: https://www.criticalthinking.org/donate.php Join us on social media: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CriticalThinkingFoundation/ Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/foundation-for-critical-thinking-a99b1455/ YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@CriticalThinkingOrg