Energy Blog

While I am in no way a climate scientist, I use the occurrence and predictions of more climate change to motivate the study of present and future clean energy sources, conservation, and efficiency improvements.  I also added commentary to our eight NOAA lecture series on climate change for OLLI this year.  These are my ideas on giving interesting lectures to the public on climate science, and blogging about it.

The first thing to realize is that a general audience will not be very conversant with science, math, complicated graphs, certainly not climate science, and certainly not the technical jargon.  As an outsider, I can attest to that, especially the rampant use of abbreviations.  In preparation, avoid abbreviations that have to be memorized, and explain concepts as simply as possible, using pictures and analogs if possible.  Graphs should only be used in large size, with at most one per slide.  The axes should be given with the title in large print, as well as what the labels mean.  Don’t let the x-axis label lie on the bottom of the page, hidden by peoples’ heads.  Define carefully what everything on the slide means, since most people haven’t seen this before, and may not often read graphs.  Avoid complicated graphs.  Avoid graphs when citing a number or two could replace it.  A talk can be much faster and easier that way.  People also like to see pictures of the scientists involved and stories of their trials and tribulations.  Explanatory diagrams, pictures, YouTube videos and iPad apps such as those provided by NASA and NOAA help explanation and keep the audience interested.  A useful app for showing climate change situations is called Fragile Earth.  Also, pay attention that your presentation is loud enough and clearly spoken.  “Chasing Ice” glacier calving by James Balog.

Remember that you may be the only climate scientist that people have heard a full lecture from.  Your influence can be of great import because: you are a well educated scientist; most people trust scientists; you are backed up by an entire scientific community in agreement on the subject; the audience may have only heard one-liners before from non-scientists; and you are giving them the full picture.  You should be prepared to answer the standard top ten one-liner doubter statements listed on www.skepticalscience.com,   If it’s one that you don’t know the answer to, just refer them to the webpage.  An audience will actually get upset with some audience member trying to monopolize the time with arguments, so just say that you have to move on, and continue.  Don’t think that you have to win any argument – just state your case and let people think it over and decide.  Some skeptics will always remain skeptics, and they may be skeptics for other reasons than the subject at hand.  Allowing time for discussion is important, since it gives you a chance to dispel myths that people have that you don’t imagine, and to learn of concerns that you may not know about.  You will also find out what they did not understand that you can elaborate on and improve in future talks.

A lot of the opposition to mediating climate change comes from the costs and disruptions to change from fossil fuel energy to clean energy sources.  It doesn’t hurt to learn about realistic ways that this change can be brought about, including how developing countries can also fit into the changes.  If you look back over the past century, many changes take place in energy even without requiring clean energy.  Maybe its time to give up my horse and buggy and candles.

Talks can range in length, from a half hour to some clubs, to two hours at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.  There are also elevator, interviewer, supermarket, and party encounters of much shorter length.

Blogging and giving public talks is very important, since the climate science professional articles are very complicated and written in very complicated language with multi-fold abbreviations and concepts.  The public needs and deserves to have this important and publicly funded research translated to them in simple terms and concepts.  It is also important for keeping up funding for the science.  Communication and outreach is a requirement for government grants these days.  Even giving comments in the comment sections of news articles that clarify points in the article or discussion are useful.  Occasionally when you spot an error in news coverage, the writers are appreciative if you can correct them.  The release of the final AR5 report on climate science this fall will give a lot of new data, analyses, and new approaches to be communicated to the public.  Recently, there were new government reports on climate science and effects expected in the US, that could also use blogging about.

One dilemma facing climate change communicators is how to discuss the most recent weather or climate disaster, such as droughts, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes.  Since climate change may only have partly enhanced the problem, it would be nice to have good estimates of the energy involved in the phenomena, based on set of appropriate measurements.  Then as oceans warm, scientists could observe whether the total energy of such phenomena was increasing, and blame that part on warming.  The contact time and area of contact with warm water should be related to the total energy of the phenomena, and that could be of predictive value as well.

The nice thing about UCI blogs, is that commenters can only be those with UCI email addresses.  That eliminates those who want to use the website to either air skeptic one-liners, or argue about politics and religion.  However, commenting on sites of major newspapers or popular blogs gives you a lot more coverage.  The peak exposure may be a guest columnist on Huffington Post or a local newspaper.  Since the few remaining science writers are writing on a national or international level, local and state coverage is needed.  The science writers usually only cover the journals Nature and Science, not the other ones used by climate scientists.

Since energy and conservation solutions are often local, and adaptation and climate change damage is local, scientific communications are needed by local and state officials, community groups, and local environmental groups.  I have watched local city council meetings where there was no scientific input, but audience members were allowed to make any claim that they wanted without any rebuttal.  The needs of local and state communities present problems that need separate analyses, and these governments may also be able to provide funding for them.

The local motivators for climate action start with sea level rise, since Balboa Island is facing an $80 million increase in the height of the dikes that hold the ground in place. Another is this years low rainfall in Southern California, about a third of normal, that are leading to an early forest fire season.  Both of these affect expensive properties.  There is the long term effect on our summer and fall water supply in Southern California, which comes from the Sierra snow pack, that will accumulate for shorter times and melt sooner as the climate warms.  We also face less water from the Colorado river.  On the other hand, California scored seven of the fourteen most polluted cities in the US and the Los Angeles area came out number one in particulates.

More general national motivators for climate action are the many ways that the wealthy will be most affected by climate phenomena, since they have the most valuable properties that they have to pay insurance on.  They also own interest in insurance companies, banks, businesses, stocks and bonds that will be most affected by climate changes.  Farmers, including Big Ag and Big Food, and ranchers and investors in these will be most affected by floods and water shortages, by new parasites and crop diseases, and by drought.  Environmentalists are affected by the warming climate causing pine bark beetles and other tree killers to flourish.  Here is a picture of Spruce damage on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska.

There is also a faculty speakers list for the campus and Physical Sciences, although it may not be well used.  Profs. Michael Prather and Charles Zender are listed there from ESS.  There also should be one for student speakers, which students could initiate on a blog or on Facebook.  There are also campus environmental groups to speak to.  In general, personal networking and putting talks or blogs on the web lead to more contacts.

The students are knowledgeable about Facebook, and able to establish climate science communication there.

If you are going to go to the trouble to make up a public talk, make sure that you put it on a blog or Facebook where you can revise or update it as well as keep track of how well it is being accessed.

It is undoubtedly the case that real climate scientists have a different outlook than science writers, and need to be heard from.  Also, young people who have whole careers ahead of them and will face the full consequences of climate change will have a different outlook and audience than more senior lecturers or bloggers.

Local politicians need scientific input about relevant issues and legislation.  Sending emails on their websites is easy.  They also need encouragement to back scientific research, especially in climate science, and to keep it free of political oversight.  Regardless of which party they follow, scientific information could always be useful.

Some of the impediments to scientific communication are the practice of journals keeping the copyrights on their publications (while collecting 35% to 45% profits) on research funded by the public, with publication costs paid for by the public and subscribers.  Trying to use some figures in a talk can cost around $1,000.  The government is forcing them to open publication after a year, but it really should be immediate, with free use of graphs paid for by the taxpayers.

The other frustration in climate science communication, is that the research cited in the IPCC ARs must be submitted to journals a year before the report is final and available for public consumption and reference to.

Another constraint on climate scientists is that they may feel that their public communications require scientific accuracy and full credit attribution.  Plain science writers don’t have such restrictions.  On the other hand, bloggers don’t have to pay publication fees, get delayed by editors and having to argue with reviewers, wait for publication, and then wait a year before there is open use of their graphics.