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Which Climate Questions Are Most Urgent?

Short Bio
Tom Bowman is president of Bowman Design Group and Bowman Global Change, creator of climate exhibitions at the Marian Koshland Science Museum (Washington, DC) of the National Academy of Science and the Birch Aquarium at Scripps (La Jolla, California) and energy exhibitions in the electric utility industry. He is a co-author of “Essential Principles of Climate Sciences” and author of a NOAA-sponsored report assessing research on public attitudes about climate change (NOAA = National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). Tom lives and works in California, USA.

Which Climate Questions Are Most Urgent?
In his post, “Toward a Climate Literate and Energy Aware Society,” Mark McCaffrey asked, “What are the most essential principles relating to climate science and energy solutions that people should understand?” This is an urgent question, yet formal educators and public communication practitioners might arrive at different answers. In fact, a persistent tension between the longer-term goals of formal education and the immediacy with which the public must make decisions about our future tends to mask some important educational priorities.

The results of public surveys in the United States indicate that an overwhelming majority of American adults already knows that the climate is changing, that human activities are at least partly responsible, and that the consequences of climate change will, on the whole, be harmful. But many Americans think that harmful consequences will only be felt in the future and in distant lands, and there is confusion about whether viable solutions are available.

On the one hand, understanding of the basic climate change formula is widespread—that fossil fuel burning and deforestation increase the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which warms the planet and causes the climate to change. On the other hand, the nature of climate risks and scale of effort required for minimizing them, as well as the timetables for effective mitigation, are poorly understood. Most American adults realize that there is a problem, but they are not equipped to make informed decisions about managing the risks and opportunities.

Informed citizens need to know how risks correlate with rising temperatures. For example, what risks are associated with the European Union and G8 decisions to allow warming to 2°C above pre-Industrial temperatures? How do various emissions trajectories correlate with global temperatures and impacts on humanity and other species? Valuable as the answers would be, mining the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments for information and correlating the results are well beyond the capacity of most non-scientists. So, too, is the task of making information about policy mechanisms, costs, and other tradeoffs comprehensible to non-experts.

In the 3 April 2009 issue of Science, a group of climate scientists, communication experts, and I called for a focused initiative to explain where humanity stands on a scale of escalating climate risks and what can be done to manage those risks. In contrast to the comprehensive approaches used in the “Essential Principles of Climate Sciences” and many popular books, a more surgical approach to informing citizens is necessary now.

During the next few years the public will hear a debate about whether to limit rising temperatures and, if so, where and how. During that time, some risk management opportunities will probably slip away. An informed public needs to understand the risks, the various risk management pathways, and the tradeoffs involved in choosing our future. They will need this information very soon. A key question for the formal and informal education communities is how to address these priorities in their programs.

Links:

“Summary Report: A Meeting to Assess Public Attitudes about Climate Change” assessed the state of public attitudes research in April 2008. Participants included principle investigators from the political psychology and advocacy research communities. The report provides a survey and analysis of recent opinion research, plus a bibliography of seminal papers by the principle investigators. http://www.climatechangecommunication.org/resources_reports.cfm

“Creating a Common Climate Language” calls on the science and communication communities to overcome specific barriers to public understanding of climate risks. http://www.bowmanglobalchange.com/writing.php

Posted at 2009-09-23, 18:17 by Claus Berg in Generelt  |  Kommentarer[3]