Science in the news (Education for a better climate, Part II)

Education of citizens about climate change and the environment is vital for addressing our climate change conundrum, both for their political pulling power and personal practices which impact our environment.  As in my previous entry, UNESCO has offered attention to this task, in addition to the many existent more localized programs in environmental education and outreach.  Some of UNESCO’s “support” efforts are quite vague in the “how” and “by whom” the education will occur, though.  Particularly I am intrigued by one item on UNESCO’s agenda: support to build capacities of journalists so they can serve as the knowledgeable connection to the public. This seems amazingly important, and amazingly difficult to address.  Journalists have a huge role in educating the public about the environment and climate change.  We turn to the news to obtain the truth of current happenings.  If we are smart we can lend an eye of scrutiny to many news outlets, especially from the Internet.  But from ‘legitimate’ news sources, we trust what we read and hear– yet, are these journalists experts?  Specifically to the case of climate change and the many scientific complexities, it is vital that these news journalists, to whom so many citizens turn to know what is going on, are abreast with the foremost knowledge of climate change to prevent the spread of misinformation.

The ‘foremost knowledge of climate change’– that’s tough stuff, and high expectations for journalists.  I am a PhD candidate in ‘Climate Physics and Chemistry’ completely immersed in the climate science field, and I can avow for the intricacies, complications, and rapidly changing knowledge base.  As a scientist I am striving for myself to have this foremost knowledge, and cannot expect journalists to be the same.  If they were, they would be scientists, not journalists.  So what is the role of scientists in climate education?  What is my role, my responsibility?

In this specific topic of educating journalists as the intermediaries between the complex science and citizens, during COP15 I have been involved in an ingenious project connecting the expert scientists to the journalists reporting on COP15, hopefully allowing better informed news about climate change to be reaching the public.  The American Geophysical Union (www.agu.org) is an international Union of scientists in all disciplines related to the Earth, and just about every climate scientist is a member.  I was thrilled when an invitation to participate as a “Climate Science Expert” crossed my inbox.  A brilliant idea: real time education of journalists so that we can help them to report the true science to the public during COP15, a critical time when there will be a plethora of news reports pertaining to climate change.  Climate Science Q&A for Copenhagen (http://sites.google.com/site/agucopenhagen/home)

Through the website in an easy interface, members of the media are extended an invitation:

If you have questions about climate science during the Copenhagen negotiations (12/7-18), we hope that you will take advantage of a service that AGU is piloting during this time period.  We are sponsoring an email service in which 650 PhD-trained climate scientists have signed up to answer your questions about climate science.  The expertise of these scientists spans the spectrum of climate science, from atmospheric chemistry to oceanography to ecology to paleoclimate.

Journalists send email to a central email address.  Participating scientists sign up for 2-hour blocks to view the queue of questions, choose one that they have the expertise to answer, consult with the other scientists & research assistants as needed, send the response to the journalist, and return to the queue for more questions.  An amazing list of 650 scientists signed up to participate!  (and I was in awe of the scientist “celebrities” whose names were alongside mine, and even tried to finagle ways to be in their same time slots so that I might be able to correspond with them about something )

To see this amount of support from the scientists’ side was wonderful—we have that there in this climate science education task.  It is not just me who sees the value in outreach of our science, as easy as it can be to get holed-up in the lab and keep our noses buried in work, out of touch with the world.  There are “social” scientists among us!  And the quality of the responses I saw were good as well, both in the content, but more importantly in the ability to distill the science concepts for journalists’ understanding.

On the other side, though, the utilization of this program by journalists was lower than I would have hoped.  I saw this both from my experience during my shifts and from the organizer who cut back on the number of daily shifts because so many were not needed.  During a 2-hour shift (with only 3 shifts total throughout a day) we got only 1-3 journalist inquiries.  I am sure there were many many many more news reports than this going out internationally, with many holding false, uninformed climate science.  It is a new concept, though, and I am not sure how it was advertised to the media, so it is unclear where to put any blame.

I am curious to hear the follow-up report on the success of this project from AGU.  Mainly to see of the possibility of extending something like this beyond Copenhagen.  Wouldn’t that be wonderful?!?!  Why not?  Constantly linking science experts to those journalists which will be disseminating the information to citizens.  Those citizens who will then drive politicians, vote, make consumer choices, plant a tree.  How lovely that would be…

A couple of resources for communicating climate science which I think are particularly good.  Useful for the full out scientists among us, and also for the informed citizens (who I know you all are) who want to be able to educate those uninformed citizens.  It is your responsibility too

The Psychology of Climate Change Communication, Columbia University, 2009
http://www.cred.columbia.edu/guide/

Podcast interviews with experts in science and communication

http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/communicatingclimatechange/

This entry was posted on Friday, December 18th, 2009 at 2:10 am and is filed under Science & Education, Solutions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.