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Sick of fractious climate blogging? MIT researcher Mark Klein and his colleagues are envisioning a souped-up new forum on global warming - described as "simultaneously a kind of Wikipedia for controversial topics, a Sims game for the future of the planet, and an electronic democracy on steroids" - that they say could reshape public discourse.

It's called the Climate Collaboratorium. Here's what it might look like, in part:
(click for larger version, or download the original PDF)

What you see is the heart of the idea, a discussion structure known as an 'argument tree'. Mason Inman*, writing about the project for Nature Network recently, summarized it well:

The structure requires people to present their comments in one of four categories: issues to be addressed, options for resolving those issues, the pros in favor of various options, and the cons against them. In this way, the debate could become self-organized, making it easier for people to see what’s been said, and whether points have been supported or rebutted.

Succinct, logical debate threads instead of arguments spread over dozens of sites... ideas neatly aggregated rather than forgotten with the next news cycle... pardon my nerd-drool.

But will it work? Last December, Klein and two researchers at the University of Naples tried out a prototype on 220 Italian engineering students, asking them to create an argument tree on the question "What is the future of biofuels?" The students seemed to love the forum - their steady 24/7 stream of posts totaled over 5,000 after two weeks - but they weren't particularly good at keeping the discussion on track. The argument trees needed continuous pruning and rearranging by a dedicated group of moderators, who would have to make up 5-10% of the user population in a larger-scale Collaboratorium, the researchers estimated.

Klein is now starting more tests with Swiss and Italian students that will evaluate whether the Collaboratorium produces superior content and better-informed participants compared with ordinary wikis and forums. How to arrange for quality control in the project's next phase, however, is still something of an open question. Climate modeller and RealClimate blogger Gavin Schmidt (who's recently defended climate blogging in Nature Geoscience (subscription) and on RealClimate) told Inman* that generating respect for an open forum on climate "is by far the most challenging aspect of this proposal". Doubtless, many top climate scientists - who may at times volunteer half their workload toward the IPCC reports already - wouldn't get around to participating in the fledgling project. Fortunately, they do have grad students.

The fully realized Collaboratorium, as outlined in this paper by Klein and collaborator Thomas Malone, would be even more ambitious. Their vision relies heavily, for example, on users building their own climate models that are integrally linked to the speculation and debate going on in the argument tree. Above all, though, Malone and Klein stress the need for a more powerful tool to help us get our collective heads around climate change:

Today's on-line discussion forums, blogs, and chat rooms do a good job of encouraging lots of people to express their opinions and share them widely. But these systems are not very good at supporting evidence-based, logical deliberation: the quality of contributions can vary enormously.

Andrew Leonard at Salon has aptly compared this to "saying nuclear bombs do a good job when employed for purposes of mass destruction, but are not so great for handcrafting quality woodwork."

What do you think, climate debaters? Could a more sophisticated approach force out a high-quality product?

Anna Barnett

[UPDATE: Klein also pointed me to this 10-minute video summarizing the Collaboratorium structure and its differences from traditional forums]

Continue reading "Can we solve global warming by reshaping Web 2.0?" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on April 16, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Communicating Climate Change | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

James Hansen and Michael McCracken - two extremely prominent and vocal climate scientists - have rallied behind a US high-school senior who questioned statements in his civics textbook that play up scientific uncertainty on global warming. Now the book's publisher, Houghton Mifflin, is promising to reassess its accuracy (AP, Dot Earth, Grist, Treehugger). From the AP:

Legal scholars and top scientists say the teen's criticism is well-founded. They say "American Government" by conservatives James Wilson and John Dilulio presents a skewed view of topics from global warming to separation of church and state. The publisher now says it will review the book, as will the College Board, which oversees college-level Advanced Placement courses used in high schools.

The student, Matthew LaClair, was already an experienced secondary-ed whistleblower, having taped and exposed religious comments his history teacher made in class last year. He contacted the Center for Inquiry, a pro-science think tank, to point out passages like:

"Science doesn't know whether we are experiencing a dangerous level of global warming or how bad the greenhouse effect is, if it exists at all."

"The earth has become warmer, but is this mostly the result of natural climate changes, or is it heavily influenced by humans putting greenhouse gases into the air?"

Some wording that LaClair highlighted from the 2005 textbook used in his class was toned down in a more recent edition. For example, "Science doesn't know whether we are experiencing a dangerous level of global warming or how bad the greenhouse effect is, if it exists at all," was changed to simply "Science doesn't know how bad the greenhouse effect is." Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth parses this:

As we’ve written many times, the climate system’s response to rapidly rising greenhouse gas concentrations remains laden with uncertainty. A doubling of concentrations from the long-term ceiling of 280 parts per million for carbon dioxide before the industrial revolution would most likely raise global temperatures 3.6 to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit, by the latest I.P.C.C. analysis. So in that legalistic sense, it’s true that science hasn’t defined “how bad” climate change will be.

And that's about the best you can say of these passages, as Revkin, Hansen, McCracken and the Center for Inquiry all make clear in their point-by-point critiques. A response from Houghton Mifflin posted by Revkin falls well short of addressing the problem: the book's authors are describing a climate debate that sounds almost nothing like the IPCC's painstakingly agreed reports. Instead, as Hansen wrote, "these statements are aimed at giving students the mistaken impression that the scientific evidence of global warming is doubtful and uncertain" - a strategy that's familiar to Hansen.

Anna Barnett

Photo: dcJohn

Posted by Anna Barnett on April 11, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Communicating Climate Change, In the News | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

The BBC is facing allegations that it altered a news story about climate at the behest of an activist. A series of emails from BBC reporter Roger Harrabin and activist Jo Abbess were posted on the Campaign Against Climate Change website on April 4th. After a series of back and forths Harrabin writes “Have a look in 10 minutes and tell me you are happier. ... We have changed headline and more”. The original headline - Global Warming ‘dips this year’ – changed to the current Global Temperatures ‘to decrease’. Needless to say as soon as these emails were noticed they were picked up by unhappy sceptic bloggers (here, here and here for example). The BBC told us:

A minor change was made to the "Global temperatures 'to decrease'" piece on our website to better reflect the science. A few people including the report's authors, the world meteorlogical organisation, pointed out to us that the earlier version had been ambiguous.

Harrabin was contacted by Abbess who asks for corrections to it, sometimes in quite a heavy handed fashion, for example:

It would be better if you did not quote the sceptics. Their voice is heard everywhere, on every channel. They are deliberately obstructing the emergence of the truth.

And also:

I am about to send your comments to others for their contribution, unless you request I do not. They are likely to want to post your comments on forums/fora, so please indicate if you do not want this to happen. You may appear in an unfavourable light because it could be said that you have had your head turned by the sceptics.

The News Sniffer site highlights some changes other than the headline*. These were already annoying some sceptics even before the emails surfaced.

Making corrections to an article in response to a complaint is not necessarily wrong.

It’s certainly a bit much to string up Harrabin as a result of this exchange. I’ve certainly gone over things I’ve written and thought “I wish I’d put that differently.”

To my mind there are only two questions to be answered here.

The first of these is should the BBC have flagged the article as having been changed? The answer here is yes if they thought the original version was wrong, and no if they thought they were just altering for readability. As they think the change is minor then there isn’t really a need to flag it**.

The second question is why on earth Abbess put up the email exchange. Anyone could have predicted the response from the sceptics out there...

*

Old version [top three paragraphs]	New version
Global temperatures will drop slightly this year as a result of the cooling effect of the La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said.	Global temperatures for 2008 will be slightly cooler than last year as a result of the cold La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said.
The World Meteorological Organization's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer.	The World Meteorological Organization's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer.
This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory. But experts say we are still clearly in a long-term warming trend - and they forecast a new record high temperature within five years.	But this year's temperatures would still be way above the average - and we would soon exceed the record year of 1998 because of global warming induced by greenhouse gases.

** Here’s an extract from a blog post by a BBC editor from 2006:

When we make a major change or revision to a story we republish it with a new timestamp, indicating it’s a new version of the story. If there’s been a change to a key point in the story we will often point this out in the later version (saying something like "earlier reports had said...").

But lesser changes - including minor factual errors, corrected spellings and reworded paragraphs - go through with no new timestamp because in substance the story has not actually progressed any further. This has led to accusations we are "stealth editing" - a sinister-sounding term that implies we are actively trying to hide what we are doing. We’re not. It’s just that continually updating the timestamp risks making it meaningless, and pages of notes about when and where minor revisions are made do not make for a riveting read

Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond

Posted by Anna Barnett on April 09, 2008
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, Daniel Cressey, In the News | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

With the development of Web 2.0, science communication has entered a new era.

Here at Nature, for example, we now have almost 20 blogs covering various topics in science, we own islands in Second Life where we host lectures, we produce our own podcasts and in the past year, we have launched a range of interactive sites such as Nature Reports.

While all of this enables us to reach our audience in new ways – and to communicate science in a more engaging and rapid manner – the scientific community remains divided on whether Web 2.0 is good for science communication.

That’s one of the topics under discussion in this month’s issue of Nature Geoscience (subscription) which features a pair of Commentaries, one by Gavin Schmidt of NASA GISS and one by Myles Allen of the University of Oxford, giving their respective opinions on whether blogging is a worthwhile means of communicating science, and specifically climate change.

Needless to say, Schmidt, who is an active blogger over on RealClimate, argues that blogs are invaluable and that even if every scientist doesn’t need to have one, every scientific field does. Schmidt points out that scientists have the depth of knowledge and experience to discern true scientific advances in their field from research that provides showy headlines, but lacks substance. Blogging provides a way of communicating this knowledge to those, such as journalists, who want to place the latest papers and headlines in context. He writes:

Blogs provide a rapid, casual, interactive and occasionally authoritative way of commenting on current issues, new papers or old controversies.

Allen, on the other hand, warns of the dangers of communicating science in the rapid, casual and interactive way afforded by Web 2.0 tools such as blogs.

Detailing as an example the blog coverage (and subsequent reporting) of a 2005 Nature paper that he co-authored, Allen makes the case that blogs have the ability to criticise – and even discredit - scientific work without being subjected to the same peer-review process as the original research, thereby creating an uneven playing field. As a result, Allen argues that science communication must maintain both rigor and civility. He advises:

If a science journalist wants to follow a story, there just isn’t an alternative to reading those peer-reviewed papers, and painstakingly interviewing researchers for whom English is a third language. And if a member of the public wants to follow a story, then they are still best off getting it the oldfashioned way, via a science journalist whose reputation depends on getting such stories more-or-less right most of the time. If, as a scientist, you feel you have to communicate non-peer-reviewed opinions to a journalist or member of the public, then stick to communicating one-to-one and make it clear you are speaking off the scientific record. Better still, don’t, even if it might cost you a mention in the papers.

Continue reading "Web 2.0: friend or foe? " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on April 03, 2008
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, Olive Heffernan, Opinion | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

For anyone interested in the consensus on climate change, there’s a very interesting feature by Joseph Romm who blogs over on Climate Progress on Salon today, in which he argues that opinion on the cause of global warming is irrelevant. What is relevant, says Romm, is the overwhelming body of well-tested science and real-word observations.

Romm makes the case that the perpetual use of the word ‘consensus’ by the media, scientific community, and others mistakenly frames climate change as an issue of opinion, rather than one of scientific scrutiny based on data and evidence:

“Science doesn't work by consensus of opinion. Science is in many respects the exact opposite of decision by consensus…One of the most serious results of the overuse of the term "consensus" in the public discussion of global warming is that it creates a simple strategy for doubters to confuse the public, the press and politicians: Simply come up with as long a list as you can of scientists who dispute the theory. After all, such disagreement is prima facie proof that no consensus of opinion exists.

So we end up with the absurd but pointless spectacle of the leading denier in the U.S. Senate, James Inhofe, R-Okla., who recently put out a list of more than 400 names of supposedly "prominent scientists" who supposedly "recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called 'consensus' on man-made global warming."

Opinion polls on the climate consensus crop up from time to time. Coincidentally one such poll came to my attention this week, via email, and is being discussed over on Roger Pielke Sr’s blog.

The posts basically describe the rejection, first by the AGU journal EOS and secondly by Nature Precedings, of a research poll by Pielke Sr, James Annan and Fergus Brown surveying whether there is agreement among climate scientists on the IPCC fourth assessment report.

Pielke Sr. writes:

“It is clear that the AGU EOS and Nature Precedings Editors are using their positions to suppress evidence that there is more diversity of views on climate, and the human role in altering climate, than is represented in the narrowly focused 2007 IPCC report”.

There’s a further post and comment stream over on Brown’s blog.

I’m not privy to the inside information on why their paper was rejected from both EOS and Nature Precedings, but it seems to me that there are (at least) two point to be made here:

Continue reading "Climate consensus: is opinion even relevant? " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on February 27, 2008
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, Features, In the News, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Correction Appended

AAAS, Boston-

One of the most interesting, and popular, sessions I’ve been to so far at AAAS was the panel discussion on how the media communicates climate change.

Though there wasn’t any news in the talks about news by various well known science communicators, the room was packed to the rafters and the lively discussion spilled over into the next session.

Andy Revkin of the New York Times , who recently started the excellent Dot Earth blog, spoke of the tyrannies of news and the difficulty of getting climate-related news on the front page without a peg like Hurricane Katrina. He also pointed out that the more complex a story is (as is so often the case in climate science), the less space it gets.

Matt Nisbet, who runs the Framing Science blog, talked about how sources of information frame people’s perceptions of the issue, with the example that Gore’s ‘climate crises’ gets referred to more frequently by the media than the IPCC, NOAA or NASA.

David Dickson, director of Scidev Net warned that journalism is at risk of losing its independence and becoming a voice for various NGOs, as they become increasingly strategic at media relations. Some NGOs apparently paid for a large contingent of journalists to attend the UN conference on climate change in Bali, with the explicit understanding that they would cover their stories*.

John Holdren, director of the Woods Hole Research Centre, aired his frustration at various aspects of how climate change is reported by the mainstream media, including references by journalists (other than Revkin) at the NYT to “global warming, [which] is caused by humanity, as many scientists believe”.

Holdren has been trying convince journalists to use ‘global climate disruption’ rather than the misrepresentative ‘global warming’. Good luck to him – it would up the word count, and, as we've heard, there just ain’t no space for that.

Yesterday morning, I took part, with a national environment reporter from a popular broadsheet, in an interview on how journalists communicate climate change. The interviewer was a grad student from MIT who is doing her PhD on the topic. She asked me a lot of questions about sources of information - the issue of NGOs came up again and also the question of where to draw the line with quoting scientists on policy recommendations. The differences between us and a national paper were very interesting - I get way less bumf from NGOs, for a start!

Olive Heffernan

*Dickson has since clarified that the agreement was that journalists would cover the conference rather than the activites of the NGO at the conference.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on February 17, 2008
Categories: AAAS, Communicating Climate Change, Conferences and Meetings, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

In what was billed as the largest teach-in ever, over 1,500 universities, colleges, schools, and community organizations across the US held seminars and events on climate change yesterday.

Organized by student volunteers and driven by a project called Focus the Nation, professors of science, economics, engineering and anthropology - among other disciplines - spoke on panels and brought their classes to the discussions. Meanwhile, students staged information fairs and awareness-raising stunts: in Missouri, they stacked up 20 tons of coal to create a 3D graphic of campus energy use, and in Vermont, the fictional protagonist of a one-woman show promoted a boycott on sex as an effective focusing strategy (Focus the Nation, Christian Science Monitor).

I talked to a few of the scientists involved about how the events went at their universities. Ecologist Tom Sherry of Tulane University in New Orleans was brimming with excitement about the sessions there, which were attended by a total of about 750 students and faculty and included a Q&A that carried on for a lively two hours.

Continue reading ""Largest teach-in ever" focuses US on climate change" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 01, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Communicating Climate Change, In the News | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

The American Geophysical Union released a revised statement on climate change on Thursday. The new statement is a bit bolder, strongly linking human activities to global warming and including a call for collaboration with industry and government.

While the previous AGU statement, released in 2003, said human activities contribute to climate change, the new statement decrees a clear causal connection:

The cause of disruptive climate change, unlike ozone depletion, is tied to energy use and runs through modern society.

At a press conference on Thursday, Michael Prather, who chaired the committee that drafted the new statement, said “two major advances,” 21st century data and advanced modeling, have solidified the science in the past 5 years. The new statement is the first in a line of three AGU statements on climate change to call for a reduction of greenhouse gases.

Of particular concern, the statement now says, is the potential of hitting a global temperature rise greater than 2 degrees C above 19th century levels, a threshold the union says would trigger the decline of biodiversity and agricultural productivity and the eventual loss of the Greenland ice sheet, raising sea levels by several meters. To prevent this 2 degree Celsius rise, the AGU says net CO2 emissions much be reduced by more than 50 percent in this century.

Rachel Courtland, Nature Washington bureau

Posted by Olive Heffernan on January 26, 2008
Categories: Communicating Climate Change | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There’s an interesting post on the BBC’s ‘The Editors’ blog today on how the BBC, as a media organisation, should deal with communicating climate change and, in particular, how it should represent “climate sceptics”.

The publicly funded corporation came under fire in September when it cancelled plans to air a Comic-relief style show aimed at raising public awareness of global warming amid concerns that it would breach the corporation's guidelines on impartiality.

The blog post by Steve Herrmann briefly describes the efforts of Richard Black, the BBC’s online environment correspondent, to better understand what “climate sceptics” think and the arguments they use to try to debunk anthropogenic global warming.

It includes a more detailed piece written by Black and Roger Harrabin, BBC News’ environmental analyst, for their in-house magazine Ariel, outlining their views on what the BBC must do to “get it right on climate”.

Black and Harrabin write:

Given the weight of opinion building up around the IPCC it makes sense for us to focus our coverage on the consensus that climate change is happening, is serious, but is manageable if tackled urgently.

We do not need consistently to ‘balance’ the reports of the IPCC. When we broadcast outlying views we should make sure we do not over represent them and we should keep a rough balance of views from either side of the IPCC. If we do not, we will distort the issue and risk misleading or confusing our audience.

We must also be more savvy about the way we treat outlying views – and we should make it clear to our audience when an interviewee holds a minority position.

They also say that vociferous views expressed on blogs etc need to be interpreted with caution...it's worth a read.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 15, 2007
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Olive Heffernan

In this week’s Nature, Jeff Tollefson reports on the claims that a White House science advisor edited a congressional testimony by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the public health impacts of climate change.

First reported last week by the Associated Press, the story has since been picked up by Juliet Eilperin in The Washington Post, in The Boston Globe and in The Wall Street Journal (which takes a different line, reporting that the CDC director says that the testimony wasn’t diluted).

Although White House spokesperson Dana Perino initially denied claims that Julie Gerberding’s testimony had been watered down, it eventually became clear that it had been chopped from 12 to six pages.

Bush’s chief science advisor, John Marburger, said the edits were made in order to align the testimony with the findings of the reports released earlier this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

But concerned scientists and Democrats believe that the White House was suppressing science at odds with its policy positions.

According to Eilperin “White House officials eliminated several successive pages of Gerberding’s testimony” including a statement that the “CDC considers climate change a serious public concern”.

Tollefson reports in Nature that the missing material "focused on a range of potential public- health impacts related to climate change. These included the effects of heat waves, air pollution, extreme weather and infectious diseases.”

Read the whole story in Nature here.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 01, 2007
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, In the News, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross posted from The Great Beyond UPDATED

Al Gore will share this year’s Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They were awarded the prize for “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”.

The prize committee declared Al Gore “one of the world's leading environmentalist politicians” and said the IPCC had “created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming”.

“Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control,” says the committee (press release).

This may take some of the sting out of the UK court ruling Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth movie will have to carry caveats when shown in schools – a ruling based in part on perceived differences between Gore’s stance and the scientific consensus outlined by ... the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (see the updated blog posting on the ruling).

This is not the first time a prize has been won by an institution. In 2005 the International Atomic Energy Agency took half a prize, and other winners include the UN in 2001 and Médecins Sans Frontières in 1999. The real question is who will get the money at the IPCC?

The question for Gore is slightly different. The impressive Fiona Harvey at the FT has a very good piece up already, noting that the prize was perhaps unsurprising but "reinforced his reputation as the world’s foremost champion of environmental issues." It “also added to speculation that Mr Gore would be persuaded to have another attempt at the US presidency”.

UPDATE
“It’s every scientist's dream to win a Nobel Prize, so this is great for myself and the hundreds that worked on their reports over the years. It is perhaps a little deflating though - that one man and his PowerPoint show has as much influence as the decades of dedicated work by so many scientists,” said Piers Forster, of the University of Leeds School of Earth and Environment (via the Science Media Centre).

Cross posted by Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 12, 2007
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, In the News | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross posting from on Nature's news blog The Great Beyond, Daniel Cressey reports:

Schools in the UK should be allowed to show Al Gore 's climate change movie, but only if they give balancing information to pupils, a High Court judge has ruled. The case was brought to court by school governor Stewart Dimmock, who objected to government plans to send copies of An Inconvenient Truth to schools across the country. The judge, Sir Michael Burton, ruled there were nine scientific inaccuracies in the film, which he said had moments of “alarmism and exaggeration” (Guardian, BBC, AFP, Independent).

Errors included claiming that polar bears were drowning as they had to swim further and further to find ice and that sea levels would rise 20 feet as a result of melting Greenland ice in the near future. The Times runs down the nine. Some parts of the blogosphere are reporting eleven errors, taking them from Dimmock’s early statement.

Dimmock, a member of the minor political group the New Party, called the judgement a resounding victory (press release). But he added: “However, as a parent, I find it perplexing that, despite agreeing that that the film was riddled with errors and exaggerations, the Court failed to issue an outright ban on its use in the classroom. Perhaps the Government will now do the honourable thing and bin it.”

This does not seem likely. Children’s Minister Kevin Brennan is on record as saying that the “central argument” of An Inconvenient Truth is supported by the scientific community (BBC). “Nothing in the judge's comments today detract from that.”

Plans to distribute the film to schools in America ran into different problems last year: Keith Vranes had the story.
Image: NASA

Over on Real Climate, they featured a pre-launch review of the film back in May 2006, which described it as "inspiring" and "decidedly non-partisan in its outlook", but also highlighted some of the few scientific inaccuracies. They came to the same conclusion as Brennan, however...for the large part, Gore gets the science right and the "small errors don't detract from Gore's main point", which is ultimately that the scientific evidence for anthropogenic global warming is now overwhelming.

Olive Heffernan

Update: we've updated the original post at The Great Beyond -- Oliver

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 11, 2007
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, In the News, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

Kevin Trenberth

The recent Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit has brought further attention to climate change and what, if anything, to do about it. In spite of the IPCC findings that global warming is “unequivocal”, doubt remains in some quarters about the reality of climate change and the human cause. Issues are continually raised that have no basis, as highlighted by the recent Commentary from Syun-Ichi Akasofu in the Wall Street Journal.

Akasofu immediately starts out on the wrong foot by claiming there are two sides, those of believers and non-believers, but it is not a matter of belief, it is a matter of scientific facts! He further fails to understand the nature of the IPCC process and the extensive reviews in which all comments are addressed rigorously as the report is developed over three years. Contrary to the claim, there is no assumption by IPCC that recent warming was due to the increased greenhouse effect from increasing human produced carbon dioxide. Rather, climate models that run with and without the human-induced changes in atmospheric composition demonstrate that human warming has emerged from natural climate variability since about 1970.

Over the past 500,000 years or so, temperatures, carbon dioxide and methane have gone up and down more or less in tandem through the major ice ages and interglacial periods, as shown in ice cores. As detailed in a Real Climate blog post on this topic, in the absence of human intervention, these changes happen over time, but not at the rate at which CO2 is currently increasing in the atmosphere. Scientists know that carbon dioxide and methane changes follow rather than cause these changes in temperature between glacial periods, but they also know that these changes in greenhouse gases amplify a relatively weak forcing to help drive temperature change. To suggest otherwise, as Akasofu does, is misleading at best.

Akasofu then trots out the mistaken view that the “hockey stick” curve of temperatures over the past 1000 years showing an upward bend at the end has been discredited. In fact, it has been reinforced in the latest IPCC report, although it is given less emphasis as it is now backed up and confirmed by evidence from multiple independent studies.

He further claims that natural climate variations have been forgotten and attributes recent warming to the “rebounding effect from the little ice age”, but fails to realize that natural climate variability also has a cause. While it is true that we do not have the measurements to show what was happening in the ocean during this time, for instance, we have good reason to believe that natural internal variability played a role. To the extent that the "Little Ice Age" and "Medieval Warm Period" can be meaningfully defined, there has been much work showing that the main variations can be explained in terms of the response of the climate system to natural variability in solar and volcanic events that would have influenced surface temperature. And warm periods in the past, such as the warming in the Greenland region in the mid-twentieth century, were not global in contrast to recent warming, which is.

Climate models are not perfect, but they are useful tools for quantifying the effects of various climate processes and drivers of climate change. Akasofu decries the confused state of climatology, but it is he who is really confused, and his article only serves to confuse the general public. It is sad that a once distinguished newspaper published such misleading half-truths without verifying them.

Kevin Trenberth

Posted by Olive Heffernan on September 19, 2007
Categories: Climate Science, Communicating Climate Change, In the News, Kevin Trenberth | Permalink | Comments (39) | TrackBacks (0)

Olive Heffernan

Having been off the airwaves for a while, I’m back with some further musings on climate change surveys, which (unwittingly) seems to be becoming a bit of a pet topic of mine.

Today saw the launch of ‘Future Friendly’, a partnership between four British NGOs, the Energy SavingTrust, Global Cool, Waste Watch and Waterwise and multinational consumer goods giant Protocol and Gamble aimed at helping and inspiring people to live more sustainable lives.

While the initiative, launched this morning in London, sounds laudable, it smells strongly of corporate greenwash.

The idea is that, by using products displaying the Future Friendly logo, shoppers will save energy, water or reduce waste. In tandem with the launch of the ‘Future Friendly’ brand logo, which will appear on certified products as of next week, the partnership announced the results of a survey on citizen’s attitudes towards sustainability and a ‘Future Friendly’ award, given to individuals who are heroes in encouraging sustainability on a local level.

The products that have thus far received the green stamp of approval include Ariel, Lenor, Fairy Liquid, Fairy Active Bursts and Flash, all, interestingly, manufactured by Proctor and Gamble. The criteria on which their green credentials are based seem a little dubious; for instance, Ariel is “asking the nation” to turn the dial down to 30 degrees to save up to 40% of the energy used per load, while Flash All Purpose Cleaner “enables you to do your cleaning with cold water”. So, it seems their sustainability criteria all rely on things that consumers have to do themselves while using the products, rather than the products themselves having ‘greener’ ingredients or packaging or being manufactured in some more efficient way.

Then comes the survey on consumers’ attitudes to sustainable living . Conducted by think tank The Future Laboratory, the results are based on a multiple choice questionnaire issued to 1,000 people in 12 UK counties this autumn. The main finding is that ‘green is the new norm’ and that environmental issues are galvanizing 'a new breed of citizen’ in the UK committed to living a sustainable lifestyle. It’s great to have individuals feeling friendly about the environment and about its future, but as is the case with so many of these surveys, the questions tend to polarize opinion and naturally frame opinion within the context of predefined questions. In relation to climate change, for example, 41% of respondents said individual action was the only way forward in solving the problem. I’d like to know what the alternatives were, but strangely there wasn’t a question relating to climate in the questionnaire, so that one remains a mystery.

Having said all of that, I think we should commend anything that encourages the public to lead more sustainable lives as do the ‘Future friendly’ awards. Developed by the partnership, they grant £10,000 to each of four winners to help fund their efforts to encourage sustainable living. But we should also bear in mind that to live sustainable lives, we’d have to each reduce our emissions by around 90%, something that requires a lot more than using fairy liquid…

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on September 06, 2007
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, In the News, Olive Heffernan, Opinion | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Alex Witze

Everybody’s been reviewing the new book on hurricanes and global warming, and Nature is no exception. We’ve got not one, but two reviews of Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics and the Battle Over Global Warming.

In Nature proper, James Elsner of Florida State provides the academic’s reading. He pulled off a nice metaphor for the lead of the review (calling the book ‘a reconnaissance flight into the turbulent debate over a link between hurricane activity and global warming’), which made me a tad envious. I thought I was being clever with my own lead for a review of the book, which appears online on Nature Reports Climate Change. Unlike Elsner, I chose to riff off the reputation of the book’s author, Chris Mooney, and his recent work on how scientists can best ‘frame’ their results for the public.

Both reviews, though, will tell you the main point of the book: the battle over hurricanes and climate change, with MIT’s Kerry Emanuel and Colorado State’s Bill Gray taking starring roles as antagonists. Storm World is a colorful glimpse into this highly publicized corner of tropical meteorology, with scientists trading barbs at conferences and via media appearances. It’s also a good book to read as hurricane season in several ocean basins nears its peak: at the time of this writing, Hurricane Flossie was bearing down on the Big Island of Hawaii with its category-3 strength winds.

Alex Witze
Nature's chief of correspondents for America

Posted by Olive Heffernan on August 14, 2007
Categories: Alex Witze, Communicating Climate Change | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Hans von Storch and Dennis Bray

In 1996 and 2003 we surveyed the opinions on climate change held by climate scientists. The results of these surveys have been subject to many misuses and erroneous claims. Some have selected individual statements out of context (scroll down to number 5) to bolster their claims, while others have argued that the 2003 part of the survey would be strongly biased by skeptics misusing the online-sampling for multiple submissions.

With respect to the latter – the survey was conducted first in 1996 with a mail-out format, which nobody claimed could be biased and the results were published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The second survey from 2003 was conducted on the internet, a procedure that in principle could have been misused by multiple submissions by those skeptical or alarmist on climate change who shared the password. However, the 2003 results are internally consistent with the 1996 results. In 2003 scientists expressed increased satisfaction and agreement with the IPCC and increased confidence in the tools of the science. In comparison to 1996, no anomalies were found in the response to questions.

On the skeptical side, the survey has often been used to create the impression that most scientists were not in support of anthropogenic causes of ongoing climate change: Specifically, it was noted that “For example more climate scientists ‘strongly disagree’ than ‘strongly agree’ that climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes.” This interpretation is certainly biased.

We had requested responses on a scale from 1-7 to the question “Climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes.” – with 1 representing “strong agreement” and 7 “strong disagreement”. Thus, scales 1-3 signal agreement, 4 an ambivalent position, and 5-7 disagreement. The frequency distribution for the two surveys in 1996 and 2003 are:

Thus, the statement, that more respondents strongly disagree than strongly agree is technically correct (10% vs. 9%), but highly misleading. If we pool the 1-3 positive responses to “agreement”, and 5-7 to disagreement, then the ratio in 1996 was 41:45 in favor of disagreement; in 2003, however, this ratio has become 56:30 in favor of agreement; all scales 1-3 have seen strong increases in frequency, while 5-6, with the notable exception of scale 7, have seen marked reductions.

Continue reading "Climate scientists' views on climate change: a survey" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on August 08, 2007
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, Hans von Storch, In the News, Opinion | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (2)

Olive Heffernan

I've been asked to chair a debate on climate change in Malta in November. The debate, taking place at the Pacem in Maribus XXXII conference on 5-8 November, is being hosted by the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology and is aimed at engaging your marine professionals in climate issues.

So, the debate will be looking at some of the issues surrounding climate change of particular relevance to this community, such as the respective role of engineers and scientists in mitigating and adapating to climate change, the role of the shipping industry in contributing to and in mitigating climate change, and the role of individual action versus government leaders in effecting change.

I'd welcome any comments and suggestions and of course if you're interested in joining us or know of others who would be, check out the programme at the link above or register for the debate.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on July 13, 2007
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, Conferences and Meetings, Olive Heffernan, Opinion | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Olive Heffernan

HSBC announced the results of their international survey on public attitudes to climate change in London this morning.

The survey found a gulf between public opinion on climate change in developed and developing nations, with people in developing economies showing greater concern, commitment and optimism in solving global warming compared with respondents in developed countries. The results challenge the myth of committed developed world countries leading on climate change with reluctant developing nations trailing behind, said Jon Williams, Head of Group Sustainable Development at HSBC, speaking at the event.

Conducted in 9 countries (UK, France, Germany, USA, Mexico, Brazil, China, Hong Kong and India) during April 2007, the internet survey asked 1000 participants in each nation to rank their level of agreement on four statements on a 1-7 scale (with 1 representing strong disagreement and 7 representing strong agreement) as follows:

“Climate change and how we respond to it are among the biggest issues I worry about today”.

“The people and organisations who should be doing something about climate change are doing what is needed”.

“I am personally making a significant effort to help reduce climate change through how I live my life today”.

“I believe we can stop climate change”.

Europeans, it seems, are a bunch of ‘sceptical pessimists’, with the lowest scores overall. While we are reasonably concerned about climate change, we have little confidence, optimism or commitment in solving it. Only 6% of UK respondents agreed with the statement “I believe we can stop climate change” compared with 18% in the US and 45% in India.

UK respondents also showed a surprising lack of belief that they are making a significant effort to reduce their personal carbon footprint, in contrast to 44% of those interviewed in China, 47% in both Brazil and India and 23% in the US. And why would we? It seems, according to the survey, we’re not really that concerned about climate change, being far more freaked out by terrorism. On levels of concern, UK citizens (22%) and Germans (26%) scored lowest.

In contrast, Mexico, Brazil and India make up the ‘committed concerned’, with approx 60% worried about climate change. Almost half are certain they are making the necessary changes to avert a climate catastrophe. Some of the findings are somewhat less surprising – US citizens are ‘sceptical optimists’ – more confident and optimistic than their cynical European counterparts that we will solve the global warming problem. China and Hong Kong, the ‘committed confident’, show the greatest belief that the people and organisations responsible are already doing what they should be doing to tackle the problem.

Continue reading "Developing nations lead on concern for combating climate change, shows survey " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on July 12, 2007
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, Conferences and Meetings, Olive Heffernan, Opinion | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Olive Heffernan

This weekend saw the biggest global media event of all time…and by far the largest climate awareness event in history. Al Gore’s concerts for a climate in crisis were watched by an estimated 2 billion viewers (at the events, on TV and an unprecedented number online) and took place over 24-hours on seven continents (thanks in part to the somewhat lesser known band Nunatak taking a break from field work!)

With bands blaring from Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, Hamburg, London, Johannesburg, New York, Rio de Janeiro and the Antarctic, the aim of Live Earth was to urge people to make a personal commitment to combating climate change by taking a ‘seven point pledge’.

There were also frequent calls asking people to lobby government for change in legislation, but the specifics of this goal were somewhat vaguer. The level of awareness raising at the heart of Satuirday's concerts is urgently needed, as evidenced in the results of recent polls, one of which apparently shows that a majority of Britons and are more concerned by dog poop than global warming and believe that scientists are still questioning climate change (although see John Sauven’s alternative analysis in the Guardian). Another recent survey suggests that half of teenagers are just not that interested and even fewer feel personally empowered to change.

The event and its participants have received no end of criticism for their carbon-intensive ways. One comment on BBC’s Newsnight blog provided the anology “You wouldn’t hold a hog-roast to promote vegetarianism”.

Fair point, but if you want to get people to listen to a call for change, punctuating it with Kasabian, Keane and the Red Hot Chili Peppers is definitely not a bad approach. Yes, the participants lead especially carbon intensive lifestyles (though the Chili's have at least been offsetting for years)…but surely that's part and parcel of the point the event is making….rock concerts happen, people drive SUVs, we have unsustainable lives...and that needs to change.

Whether Live Earth as an event can instigate that change is another question. Without a doubt, the concerts have caught the attention of the public and the media across the globe. As one of 60,000 at the Wembley gig, though, I couldn’t help notice how the enthusiastic roars from the crowd contrasted starkly with the sluggish retorts to calls for action.

While most of the acts chose songs vaguely fitting for the event, such as Duran Duran’s ‘Planet Earth’ and Snow Patrol’s ‘Open your eyes’, it seemed as though the rendition of that revolutionary rock anthem ‘Que sera sera, whatever will be, will be…” by David Gray and Damien Rice (though fantastic) summed up the indifferent feeling from the audience most aptly. As they say ‘recognition is the first step to recovery’. It’s going to take a lot more than a rock concert to change human behaviour, but the mainstream recognition of the problem signified by Live Earth suggests we are at least heading in the right direction.

Olive Heffernan
News Editor
Nature Reports Climate Change

Posted by Olive Heffernan on July 09, 2007
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, In the News, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)