@beatricecointe
Solar-powered Science & Technology Studies researcher and IAM ethnographer at CSI - CNRS, Mines Paris-PSL. "Well the world of research has gone berserk, too much paperwork" (Dylan 2006) Soundtrack: t.ly/0V77d
Call for Paper Abstracts and Other Proposals is NOW OPEN: March 3–April 30, 2026
Call for Paper Abstracts, Closed Panels, Making & Doing Sessions, Roundtables, and Meetups: www.4sonline.org/call_for_sub...
Accepted Open Panels: www.4sonline.org/accepted_ope...
Ooh I need to read this!
👇Call for Abstracts for a workshop on 'The Whole and its Sum: The Communication of Energy Knowledge in Contemporary History' at ZZF Potsdam with Rüdiger Graf and Marco Bianchini, 3-4 December 2026
www.hsozkult.de/event/id/eve...
« Je m’assois, dit l’homme, parce que c’est loin. Je ne vous conseillerai jamais de vous abonner à un journal. — Parce que ? dit Jourdan. — Parce que je suis la poste, dit l’homme. Je suis venu à bicyclette jusqu’au bas de la montée. J’ai mis la machine dans les buissons et j’ai pris le raccourci dans la forêt. Une fois ça va bien, mais s’il fallait le faire tous les jours…
(dans Giono, Que ma joie demeure)
as if all these slow, often tedious things were not carefully honed skills, as if they took no crucial part in the production of ideas, as if they didn’t really count.
#thanksfortyping
Meeting notes; interview transcription; finding sources and literature; annotating and summing up; providing a listening ear; polishing up prose; proof-reading; etc.
Starting to notice a pattern that a lot of the tasks that are deemed “ok to use AI for” is invisible labour that used to be delegated to women and (hence? because?) considered of low intellectual added-value:
Also, they don't make conference proceedings like that no more - 880pp with transcripts of the discussions! God bless the stenographers.
[in case anyone feels like writing that paper] [I myself just got side-tracked while trying to write another one, as one does]
pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/59...
Probably there's a paper to be written about Nordhaus at IIASA &/v. DICE Nordhaus
- echoing Antonin Pottier's argument that Nordhaus started with a quite grounded approach to climate change and later moved to a more abstract variety of cost-benefit analysis (ch. 4)
hal.science/tel-01101591/
Problems of Energy Demand Analysis, by PS Tsvetanov adn WD Nordhaus Demand is one of the principal variables linking energy systems with a society. Different indiators, causal factors, and methods currently used in the field of energy demand have been discussed at the IIASA WOrkshop on Energy demand. the following is a brief review of the work being done in IIASA on energy demand.
Title page of "The Demand for Energy: An international Perspective" by William D. Nordhaus, p. 511 of the proceedings
Summary and overview of the workshop, by William D. Nordhaus We have heard a number of very fine papers and I cannot hope to give more than a superficial overview. I would first like to report on what are the substantial conclusions, then on what I perceive as unanswered or controversial questions.
Nordhaus makes three contributions:
1- A review of "Problems of Energy Demand Analysis" co-written wih Tsvetanov
2- A (long, v detailed) "International Perspective" on the demand for energy that concludes that, well, this is all very hard to predict
3- A "summary and overview of the workshop"
Cover of the "Proceedings of the workshop on energy demand, May 22-23, 1975; William D. Nordhaus, Editor". Published by IIASA (CP-76-1)
The Workshop on Energy Demand was held by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) at Schloss Laxenburg, Austria, May 22-23, 1975, as part of the Energy Systems Project. The Energy Project was started in 1973 under the leadership of Professor Wolf Hafele. Professor William D. Nordhaus of IIASA and Yale University (USA) was the overall chairman of the Workshop. The Workshop was devoted to the under- standing and modelling of energy demand, both from an engineering and from a behavioral point of view.
Welcoming Address By Professor W.D. Nordhaus It is a great pleasure to welcome you to IIASA fof what is ou r second Workshop on Energy Systems, this one being on Energy Demand. We are delighted to have available leading experts from many countries , and we are especially delighted to have the chance to bring together the East and the West. There are many conceptual problems I hope we can address in the next two days, and the studies prepared for the Workshop relate to most of the important questions . But I would remind our visitors , especially the holdovers from the Workshop on Energy Resources, that energy demand modelling is not based on rock-like foundations like energy supply and energy technology; rather energy demand is based on preferences and these have a kind of evanescent quality about them. I am convinced that energy demand work is really more an art than a science today.
Oh. Apparently, Nordhaus chaired an international workshop on Energy Demand when he was at IIASA in 1975.
That's interesting! I wonder to what extent this is because it was turned into a clear label, and an acronym on top of that. I know that Callon was very much against stabilising "ANT" into a theory, and actually preferred to call it 'sociology of translation', but it probably helped to establish it.
Anyway, it will be fun to have you visit CSI and have these conversations live! 😄
It's hard to tell from a place where (we like to think that) ANT is what we do, not what we read, but I don't know if I'd fully agree, would need to think about it.
Maybe one key to the different consideration of materials is that ANT is very much an engineer's sociology, as opposed to a physicist's
Mileage does indeed vary, viewed from France it definitely was NOT well-received within sociology (and was v. proud not to be). Probably different now but you still get side-eyed by certain strands of French sociology if you do "ANT" or "Latour".
Next week, I will be giving a talk on the history of market design in Paris
Venez nombreux!
Thursday 19.02.2026 (6:00-8:00 pm)
at the Maison des Sciences Économiques, room S.17, 106-112 bd de l’Hôpital,
To join the seminar via Zoom, please register at framaforms.org/zoom-cee-167...
rehpere.org
You read French, right?
(haven't read so don't know if it's interesting, though)
www.premierparallele.fr/livre/lincon...
I am finalizing a chapter for an edited volume and dealing with a last round of editorial comments. I have to address a comment asking me to unpack cost-optimization and CBA in the context of mitigation and
I thought
I kinda understood
but as I try to explain it I am so very confused 😵💫
I know there are geophysical feedbacks and tipping points that could take us there too
- but my point is that ALL of these RCP and SSP are implausible because they don't factor in impacts. There are very sensible reasons for that and it does not make them worthless, but plausible ?...
Unpopular opinion, but one can argue that RCP8.5 is in fact implausibly *optimistic*, because reaching such high emissions means human activities can withstand quite significant impacts from climate change and continue basically undisturbed.
A few hours after Bad Bunny sings among electrical poles maintainers, our conversation with @dominicboyer.bsky.social and @cymene.bsky.social is out.
Coincidence? I think not.
(Thank you both!)
cenhs.libsyn.com/248-maintena...
This survey of impacts will concentrate primarily upon the United States, because that is where the evidence is most abundant. In reality, most of theU.S. economy has little direct interaction with climate. For example, cardiovascular surgery and parallel supercomputing are undertaken in carefully controlled environments and are unlikely to be directly affected by climate change. More generally, underground mining, most services, communications, and manufacturing are sectors likely to be largely unaffected by climate change—sectors that comprise around 85 percent of GDP.
One of my favorite - read: most "😮-inducing" - Nordhaus point to casually mention in lectures:
(from 1993, Reflections on the economics of climate change, I guess the same paper and section you're discussing in these pages)
A few of us got together for a forum on degrowth in
@envirohistory.bsky.social. Here is my bit: "It's the Economy Stupid." And check out the entries from
@fredrikjonsson.bsky.social, @matthiasschmelzer.bsky.social, and
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
Agir avec les #archives : comment rendre disponible le fonds Bruno Latour ?
Un fonds d’archives est un objet intellectuel unique qu’il faut respecter en tant que tel. La #Lettre revient sur la méthodologie exigée par un tel procédé.
👉 urls.fr/uQYUv_
what do we talk about when we talk about energy? my answer features (among many others) adorno, bogdanov, and the austrian communist wilhelm frank, who experimented with national exergy balances in the 1950s. out april 2026.
Ok, to be fair I have actually heard of most of these, except the newest ones... (maybe I can still skip signing up to eurograd!). there is also one in Switzerland I think. So agree with you about the massification/fragmentation dynamic, with not that much thematic diversity on top of it...
Oh wow I must be out of the loops, only heard of the big one this year. Maybe I'm not doing STS anymore 😵💫 (or maybe I just should sign back into the eurograd mailing list....)
There were at least four last year too, and none annual, so that is likely a few too many indeed...
Since people don't like my "create a financial disincentive for submitting AI to journals", how about a compact of research intensive institutions and academic societies based on the principle of banishing anyone found out to have submitted AI papers without reporting it?
I made this episode all about the song The Greenland Whale Fishery last year just before I fulfilled a lifelong not-even-a-dream-because-its-too-mad and sang it with the Pogues in the 3 Arena. Listen to it at all the usual places (but not Slopify please) and enjoy! X
campsite.bio/firedrawnear
How are scenarios used?
Scenarios are used for contrasting purposes but are often actively interpreted and processed by informed users who are aware of different scenarios’ strengths, limitations and uncertainties.
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
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