Mahmud Farooque

Engage, but don't overlook competence. Personal views.

[Mahmud Farooque @farooquema]

@DrishtiEthics @Rebecca21951651 https://t.co/35CLx25Y45

[Mahmud Farooque @farooquema]

I have been thinking about the recent RCP8.5-related conversation not as a climate denial story or an argument against climate action, but as a case study in how science can sometimes get lost.

Not how science got lost because scientists are corrupt. Not how science got lost because models are useless. Not how science got lost because climate change is not real. Those are not the stories I am interested in.

The story I am interested in is this: how does science get lost when most of the people involved believe they are doing the right thing?

https://t.co/YNuaKwBH5m

[Mahmud Farooque @farooquema]

If you want to see how this plays out over the longer term, I suggest pick a country like Bangladesh, and see what happened in the 1980s onward when donor countries decided to channel their development funds through NGOs and not the military government at that time. I wrote an op-ed about it in mid 1990s. In the long term you end up with an NGO sector that is accountable to foreign donors, not the market or the public. You end up with millions of dollars for HIV research, which wasn’t a national problem, and none for arsenic in groundwater research, which was. Inadvertently you also create a talent flight from the public to the NGO sector from which the civil service never recovers. You are left with incompetent political actors replacing a merit based administration. You also end up with non competitive markets as NGOs start providing services that should be provided by private sectors. You eventually get ranked among the most corrupt countries of the world. And you wonder how did we get here.

[Jane Flegal @JaneAFlegal]

Oof. These are bad reasons to bypass democracy. Philanthropy at this scale is governance without legitimacy or accountability. It determines agendas, resources, legibility of problems, but w no elections, no oversight. And I worry it won’t complement government, but undermine it.

[Mahmud Farooque @farooquema]

University Presidents Who Are Listening https://t.co/14mpxxJfZh

[Mahmud Farooque @farooquema]

University Presidents Who Are Listening

They were not the headliners. I expected the familiar: arrive, deliver remarks, affirm institutional commitments, depart. They did all the familiar, but then they stayed.
https://t.co/f8nR2uRHOn

[Mahmud Farooque @farooquema]

Democratizing Climate Governance: An Inconvenient Necessity? https://t.co/MjqLob0GA3 via @LinkedIn

[Mahmud Farooque @farooquema]

The Next Frontier is Engagement

Two and a half centuries of American history suggest that the tension between knowledge production and knowledge use is unlikely to disappear. The next settlement between science and democracy will depend on whether we can build institutions capable of navigating a world where expertise and democratic engagement evolve together. The endless frontier was discovery; the next frontier is participation.

https://t.co/wlnDLlAT2L

[Mahmud Farooque @farooquema]

Could one hypothesis be a mix of declining role of the NGOs (some of the health and education gains could be attributed to population planning programs), increasing takeovers by inept and politicized public sector, and push for digitization of services? In other words, the removal of the “service delivery people factor” that we’re making the door to door interventions so effective in the first place?

[Mahmud Farooque @farooquema]

Looks like I picked up climate change about the time you were moving on, but looking at its “people” component. Starting with adaptation in 2010ish when I joined @CSPO_ASU (https://t.co/kbfutQNqsi) then community resilience to climate change after Paris Climate accord in 2015 (https://t.co/gC5SMgjsfc), moving on to solar Geoengineering in 2018 (https://t.co/DfTQQ9AVnj), picking up carbon dioxide removal in 2023 (https://t.co/JomYVIiUTw) and now landing on planetary engineering in 2026 (https://t.co/vQ5USyk0gZ). As the scale of the problem gets bigger, the scope of the solutions gets smaller for just climate, meaning solving the conflicts between climate systems, social systems, technological systems and political systems becomes more important.

[Andrew Revkin 🌎 ✍🏼 🪕 ☮️ @Revkin]

When @JaneMayerNYer and I won John Chancellor Awards from the @columbiajourn school in 2008 for sustained journalistic excellence, I was asked (excuse the tux): “Obviously climate change is the biggest story on your plate right now, but looking ahead what do you see?”

I'd written hundreds of climate stories between 1985 and 2007. But I replied: "My coverage has evolved. Climate change is not the story of our time."

A lot of other journalists and orgs like @CoveringClimate have pressed a different case. But I stand by my view and my choice to keep a wide-view perspective. 🧵

[Mahmud Farooque @farooquema]

Engineering our Planet: From Designed Interventions to Interdisciplinary Programs and Participatory Platforms (in person with online options)

Between 2021 and 2024, Public, private, and philanthropic drivers coordinated an unprecedented, multi-sectoral effort to advance engineering at the planetary scale forward through research and development in carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar geoengineering (SG). Like the drive on the technological front, the initiatives at the social front also came to a grinding halt with the change in U.S. administration. In many of these efforts, there was an explicit attempt to engage communities, stakeholders, and the broader public. CSPO was on the front lines, from engaging communities in Vinton, LA, and Vancouver, Canada, to consulting scientists in Barcelona, Spain, and Glasgow, Scotland, to convening policy stakeholders in Washington, DC. This two-part convening will highlight critical results and outcomes of those efforts to stimulate, simulate, and facilitate connections with complementary initiatives to inform current actions and future possibilities.

March 26, 2026, 4:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Engineering Our Planet, Part I: Lessons from the Engagement Frontier
https://t.co/TTftwJKDJH

March 27, 2026, 8:30 am – 1:00 pm
Engineering Our Planet, Part II: Building Platforms for Geoengineering Research and Governance
https://t.co/vQ5USyk0gZ

[Mahmud Farooque @farooquema]

@acerbialberto @danwilliamsphil A truly freed science means faster scientific revolution which in turn will mean perpetual disequilibrium. Expert opinion will be divergent, not convergent. The flaw in both thesis is the maximalist assumption. As the driverless car non revolution tells us, the future is level 3.

[Mahmud Farooque @farooquema]

Arizona State University researchers are empowering communities in efforts to solve the nation’s nuclear waste problem through constructive and speculative approaches to exploring what it means to live near such sites.

https://t.co/y9lHP8gvKE

[Mahmud Farooque @farooquema]

Different approaches to improving mathematics education by leading science orgs in France and the United States: CNRS starts by asking the users (people); National Science Foundation (NSF) begins by asking the providers (experts)
https://t.co/FCb2LEooa7

https://t.co/dwjasBLPJs

[Mahmud Farooque @farooquema]

@atrembath @TheBTI @TedNordhaus Congratulations, Alex! That’s the way to do it. Looking forward.

[Mahmud Farooque @farooquema]

Call for Abstracts: "Participatory technology assessment and the framing challenge“ | TATuP - Zeitschrift für Technikfolgenabschätzung in Theorie und Praxis https://t.co/MoJ6vfBwbM

[Mahmud Farooque @farooquema]

America @250: Redesigning the Scientific Enterprise

ASU center committed to advancing New American University’s model for science funding in US https://t.co/n5Xp5JzjYG

[AEI's Center for Technology, Science, and Energy @AEICTSE]

UPCOMING EVENT

On 11/06, @JohnsHopkins & @AEI will host Bridging Perspectives in COVID’s Wake: Science, Policy, and Public Trust in Crisis Response ft. @RobertDoar, @farooquema, @RogerPielkeJr, @jwalson & many more.

[Mahmud Farooque @farooquema]

Between Data and Feelings https://t.co/dgA88jWxLO