Improving How Scientists Communicate About Climate Change

Abstract

Science meets policy in the most important challenge of our time: global warming. Yet even the most basic facts of this issue (e.g., that the world is warming and that human activity is the dominant cause) are obscure to some decision makers who need to understand them. How can climate scientists be more effective at communicating what they know, how they know it, and how sure they are of it? The need for scientists to communicate more effectively about climate change is urgent. For people to take climate change seriously and support appropriate responses, they need to feel sure it is happening and is caused primarily by humans. But while the rise in global temperature is a fact (see, e.g., Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [2007], which calls the warming “unequivocal”), 56% of Americans believe there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether global warming is even occurring. And while every authoritative scientific body attributes most of the warming of the past 50 years to human activity [see, e.g., IPCC, 2007; American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2006], only 41% of Americans believe that humanity is the dominant cause (42% believe it is due about equally to natural and human causes), according to an April 2007 poll by ABC News, The Washington Post, and Stanford University.

Capacity for teaching climate change adaptation in the university faculties of agriculture in south east Nigeria

“…According to Ozor (2010) the thrust should be towards building a cadre of academics and researchers with appropriate knowledge and skills on the key issues affecting society and be in a position to advise policy makers, educational establishments and practitioners on climate change. Besides, it is in line with the assertion that if education is going to make a contribution to the current challenge of climate change, there should be institutional innovations and changes to ensure that graduates produced from the tertiary agricultural institutions are abreast with the climate change issues including mitigation and adaptation strategies 2008. Table 2 shows that the climate change issues covered in courses taught in the universities were vulnerability to climate (27.7%), adaptation (25.5%), mitigation (23.2%), indigenous strategies to agricultural adaptation to climate change (22.5%), climate change and rural development (5.8%), gender issues in climate change and others.…”

“…Moreover, report suggests that a large segments of the society still remain unconvinced that climate change is real (Kohut et al, 2009). Consequently, as Hassol (2008) pointed out there is an acute and demonstrable need to educate and inform decision-makers and citizens in general( producers in particular) on the most basic facts of climate change and adaptation responses and options.…”

Imagining the Future at the Global and National Scale: A Comparative Study of British and Dutch Press Coverage of Rio 1992 and Rio 2012

“…Metaphor and frame analysis is a qualitative text analysis method that has been used for several case studies on for example genetics and genomics (Nerlich & Hellsten, 2004), but also climate change coverage (Hassol, 2008;Nerlich, 2010;Nerlich & Koteyko, 2009;Ungar, 1992). The authors adopted the following coding procedures.…”

Tragedia de los recursos de uso común y ética ambiental individual responsable frente al calentamiento global

“…El caso del cambio climático global y el calentamiento del planeta es paradigmático en ello. Sin embargo, como lo ha expresado la Premio Nobel en Ciencias Económicas 2009, Elinor Ostrom, en relación con el calentamiento global en el planeta: "Es improbable que políticas individuales adoptadas solo a escala global generen suficiente confianza entre los ciudadanos y las compañías (negocios), de modo que se produzcan acciones colectivas de una forma integrada y transparente, y que efectivamente signifiquen una reducción del calentamiento global" (19) tema, sino de trasmitir los conocimientos en forma simple (20,21); los segundos, de comunicarlos en forma responsable (22).…”