Warning: Please put your head in a vise before reading further.
Andy Revkin has just written the most illogical climate post on Earth. Or maybe he’s written the most logical climate post on the Bizarro World Htrae.
Improving How Scientists Communicate About Climate Change
The need is urgent for climate scientists to communicate more effectively to policymakers and the public. This article details some of the problems with how climate scientists communicate and offers practical suggestions for improvement. For example, scientists can improve their effectiveness by avoiding jargon as well as words that mean different things to scientists than to non-scientists. They can use appropriate metaphors and re-frame poorly framed questions. As policymakers grapple with the climate challenge, scientists should take the opportunity and responsibility of clearly communicating what the wider world needs to know about this issue.
Saying scientists are not doing a terribly good job communicating climate science is like saying the status quo media are not doing a terribly good job communicating climate science. But then the media doesn’t suffer the consequences of that failure. At least not more than, say, the American pika….
Our guest blogger is Susan Joy Hassol, an expert in climate communication. She was lead author of “Impacts of A Warming Arctic,” the synthesis report of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, and helped author or edit many major climate reports in the past decade. In 2008, she wrote “Improving How Scientists Communicate About Climate Change,” which is reprinted below with her permission:
Rep. Tom Perriello tells ˜spineless Senate to get ˜its head out of its rear end and confront climate crisis
Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA) is “sick” of the “insider baseball crap” dominating the Senate debate over global warming and energy reform. In an interview with Grist, the first-term congressman stated in no uncertain terms that the country is at risk from global warming and our economy is at risk of losing the clean energy race. Like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Perriello has not one lick of sympathy for those in the Senate who deny these threats:
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
