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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)

This Thursday, take-no-prisoners environmental writer George Monbiot of The Guardian steps up to the podium at Second Nature, Nature's archipelago in the virtual world of Second Life, to give a talk on climate change.

In his 2006 book Heat: How We Can Stop the Planet Burning, Monbiot argued for 90% emissions cuts by 2030 to stop dangerous climate change. With the UK and other governments struggling toward a consensus that 80% cuts must be made by 2050, we'll see how he feels about the planet's current prospects.

Monbiot speaks at 17:00 GDT (12:00 EDT). Second Life avatars can attend here.

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 19, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Opinion | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Bali, Indonesia-

A group of scientists from the estimable Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change yesterday presented ministers of more than 180 nations in Bali with the overwhemling evidence on climate change. I caught up with IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri after the event to get his take on the state of play in Bali…and beyond.

Since being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize together with former US vice-president Al Gore for their work on climate change, the IPCC has become something of a household name and Pachauri, or ‘Patchy’ as he is known to friends, has come as close to celebrity as is possible in science. With the recognition comes constant requests ...not least for interviews from pushy journalists, I imagine.

We meet in the lobby of the palatial Aston Bali Resort and Spa, where during our brief meeting, he is stopped and congratulated by vitually every passer by. He humbly reminds his admirers that the winning work was that of the many hundreds of scientists who make up the UN body on climate change.

I query if he ever tires of the praise, but he admits that he’s a sucker for it…and says it’s unlikely to last longer than a few weeks anyhow. If anything, he seems to take from it a renewed vigour for communicating the urgency of global warming, a task at which he is certainly adept.

The IPCC has been assessing the status of climate change for nearly 20 years and this November issued a synthesis report, the result of almost two years work that acts as a primer on the scientific understanding of climate change.

The synthesis is not merely a summary of the three latest reports released by the panel in the first half of 2007, which each give a detailed discourse on the science, impacts and options for dealing with climate change, respectively. In addition, the neat 23-page document clearly sets out the consequences of various courses of action. The IPCC presentation at the plenary session here in Bali brought that work formally into the UN negotiating process.

Notable at this round of UN talks on climate change, the 13th conference of its type, no-one is questioning the science. A few lonely looking sceptics can be seen outside handing out flyers and openly admitting ‘We’re the least popular people here”.

Pachauri believes that winning the Nobel Peace Prize has convinced people of the magnitude of the issue. “It brings home that climate change is an issue that affects the future of humanity and a dimension that people haven’t really thought about previously – if we don’t deal with this in time, it could become an issue of peace and national security”, he says.

Continue reading "Interview: Rajendra Pachauri in Bali " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on December 08, 2007
Categories: Recent contributors, Conferences and Meetings, Olive Heffernan, Opinion, UN Conference on Climate Change, Bali | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

This year marks not only the release of a clarion IPCC report and the convening of an enormous UN climate conference, but also the 50th anniversary of the Keeling curve -- the longest continuous recording of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, revealing a gradually rising carbon dioxide profile that helped trigger early concern about global warming. As part of this week's Earth Observation special (subscription required), Nature has a commentary by Euan Nisbet, atmospheric scientist at Royal Holloway, on the Keeling curve -- which "ranks very high indeed among the achievements of twentieth-century science", he says -- and similar studies in the field of Earth monitoring. Nisbet writes:

Monitoring is science's Cinderella, unloved and poorly paid. Sustaining a long-term, ground-based programme that demands high analytical standards remains challenging. Funding agencies are seduced either by 'pure' notions of basic science as hypothesis-testing, or by the satanic mills of commercial reward. Neither motive fosters 'dull' monitoring because meeting severe analytical demands is not seen as a worthwhile investment. At one stage, Keeling was ordered to guarantee two discoveries per year and today, modern research has become a planned journey through set 'milestones' to deliverable destinations.

What do you think -- how important is this 'Cinderella science' to ongoing climate research and policy, and how could we secure reliable long-term support?

Image credit: Global Warming Art

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on December 05, 2007
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Science, GHG emissions, Opinion | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

How expensive is climate change, what's the cost of stopping it, and should we pay now or pay later? Scientific American gets a three-sided look at these questions in side-by-side interviews with Nicholas Stern, Bjorn Lomborg and Gary Yohe.

Stern and Yohe push raising the price of carbon emissions via caps and taxes, respectively, as insurance to ward off big future risks, with Lomborg taking the contrarian view that we shouldn't mitigate until renewable energy is cheaper -- and shrugging off the risks. (Lomborg thinks that other problems like HIV/AIDS and malaria need money more immediately, an argument Olive Heffernan took on in NRCC's editorial last month.) Interesting discussions of the values assigned to human lives in the present vs. future (Stern, Lomborg), and to lives threatened by asbestos vs. temperature rise, also ensue.

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on November 29, 2007
Categories: Adaptation, Anna Barnett, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Mitigation, Opinion | Permalink | Comments (2) | 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)

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)