Tag: communication

Mothering Earth: Raising kids in uncertain times

Posted on by janet.crompton
Image credit: Amanda Woodman-Hardy. Copyright.

Did you know women are more likely than men to be affected by climate change? UN figures indicate that 80% of people displaced by climate change are women. And in light of the recent strikes by children across the world, it is clear that it is the most pressing issue for a lot of children around the world. So then, what role do mothers play in guiding and supporting our children in a changing climate? And what is it like to know the dangers of climate change and bring up a child in an uncertain world?

The guilt

You only have to visit forums like Mumsnet to see that climate change is being discussed quite frequently and with anxiety (for those who care) around how it will affect their children’s futures. As highlighted on the Victoria Derbyshire programme, young women across the world are contemplating whether to have kids at all for fear of how climate change will degrade their children’s lives. In fact a new group called BirthStrike has risen up in the belief that it would be unjust to raise children in an increasingly damaged world. Even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, an increasingly popular American politician and activist said in an Instagram livestream “Our planet is going to hit disaster if we don’t turn this ship around … there’s scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult”. So for women today, if you do decide to have children or already have them in this warming world, you do have these feelings of guilt, as well as anxiety and despair for their futures.

When you are a mum working in the environmental sector, it’s really quite tough balancing being a good mum and doing your bit for the planet, even with the best intentions! Whether we like it or not, kids and babies are incredibly wasteful. Whether it is growing quickly out of their clothes that they’ve only worn for the last three months or wasting food by throwing it around or not eating their meals because they are fussy, all the things they break that have to be thrown away and replaced and even all the washing you have to do, so much water and energy is used on a weekly basis. And don’t even get me started on all the plastic tat, balloons and wasteful gifts produced for children’s birthdays…

Image credit: Masum Ibm Musa via Wikimedia Commons

As someone who decided to have a child a couple years ago knowing full well what was happening to the planet because I work for the Cabot Institute for the Environment, it really was a tough decision for me. But I was technically going to be a ‘geriatric mother’ by the time I gave birth and so I decided that I would have a kid before it was too late biologically. I justified it to myself by deciding to buy second hand toys and baby clothes where possible (luckily I’ve had lots of hand me downs!); cut back drastically on consuming animal products; I have a 100% renewable energy tariff and I haven’t flown for three years besides many other things I’m trying my hardest at doing for the sake of the planet.  I also decided that I would raise my kid as best as I could to know what nature was, to respect it, cherish it and protect it and my hope is that he will contribute something positive to the planet as he grows up. Yet still there is that guilt and feelings of hypocrisy that what I am doing is not enough.

How do academic mums feel?

Working at the University of Bristol are many mothers who study the effects of climate change on the atmosphere, land and oceans and on living things such as animals, plants and humans. There are mothers who look at risk, uncertainty and climate related disasters and there are engineers who are dreaming up ways to fix things. So how do these mums feel about knowing what will happen in the near future?  I asked around and here are some responses from my colleagues:

Professor Dani Schmidt

Professor Dani Schmidt

Dani studies the biotic response to climate change, focusing on ocean acidification and its impacts on marine ecosystems. She is a Wolfson Merit Scholar with the Royal Society and sits on the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change Working Group II, Chapter 6 Ocean Systems, AR5. Dani said:

“I think it is important to remember that our children will have the power to change the world. It is in our power to change what the world will look like in which our children will grow; the world they will look after. We need to raise thinkers, scientists, engineers who think differently. The worst we could do for our children is to give up hope and not empower them to come up with ideas. Despair hinders action. There is so much to do, new transportation, new energy efficiency, learning to take the CO2 out of the atmosphere again to name just a few. We need to inspire our children to love nature, as we will protect what we treasure”.

Dr Frances Cooper

Dr Frances Cooper

Frances’ research is focused on understanding the mechanics of large-scale continental deformation and the evolution of orogenic systems. In plain English, her work looks at natural hazards and risk. Frances said:

“My son is nearly 18 months old, which means he will be my age in 2056. If global warming continues at its current rate, it will have breached the 1.5°C recommended by the IPCC by this time, resulting in more severe weather patterns, destruction of ecosystems, and melting of the ice caps. It is, of course, impossible not to dwell on this when I think about his future, but I think it’s important to respond with affirmative action. Although he is too young at the moment to understand climate change, it will be an important part of his education and I want to raise him as someone who is engaged with the issue and proactive about doing something to prevent it. Nurturing his curiosity in nature and the outdoors will be an early stepping stone, getting him excited and interested in the world around him. This way, I hope that he will grow up with an appreciation of how his actions impact the environment and that he has a responsibility to protect it.”

Dr Katharine Baldock

Katherine is a community ecologist whose research focuses on insect pollinators and how processes such as urbanisation affect pollinator communities. She is a NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellow based in the School of Biological Sciences. Kath said:

“The effects of climate change on animals, plants and processes that maintain the earth’s ecosystems are becoming ever more concerning. Unseasonable temperatures and unpredictable weather can impact on natural biological processes. The timing of events such as leaf emergence, insect emergence and flowering can be altered and become uncoupled from species which depend on them, for example flowers may be in bloom before their pollinators have emerged in the spring.

“What effects will these changes have on the natural world that my son grows up to experience? Will polar bears still have a habitat in the wild or will they be confined to only to zoos? Exposing our children to nature from an early age will benefit not only their health and wellbeing but hopefully embed in them a sense of wonder of the natural world and a desire to preserve and protect it. And they need first-hand experience, not just through the wonderful wildlife documentaries on our screens. I have recently started taking my 18 month old son to forest school, a first step on his journey with nature. He is already fascinated by birds and other animals and I hope this will grow into an appreciation for the environment and an understanding of how important his and others’ actions will be to the future of our planet.”

A motherly uprising?

It’s not all doom and gloom and anxiety and guilt though. There are some fantastic female led groups who are rising up to take on the climate change challenge, like 1 Million Women, who are building a global movement of women and empowering them to change their lifestyles. By doing this the many mothers who make up this group are also empowering and changing the lifestyles of their friends and families too. It’s win win. There is a new group of mums called Mothers Rise Up who are sick of feeling helpless about their children’s futures in the face of catastrophic climate breakdown and have announced “We are organising!“. Then there is Mothers Against Climate Change  who say “Women also make ~ 85% of the purchasing decisions and tend to be more empathetic and willing to share what they have learned”. Also Mothers Out Front who are “mobilising for a liveable climate”. Even former Irish President Mary Robinson and comedian Maeve Higgins have created Mothers of Invention – an uplifting new podcast celebrating amazing women doing remarkable things in pursuit of climate justice. Mothers really can, are and will make a huge difference to the way the world will tackle climate change.

Mothers as educators

If you are privileged enough to have access to educational resources on climate change, whether that be books, apps, websites, TV programmes and documentaries, do use them and share them with your child and others. If you don’t have access, visit your local library and ask to borrow some free resources.

If your child has completed a degree but wants to go on to a Masters programme, you could direct them towards the Cabot Institute’s brand new Masters by Research in Global Environmental Challenges. This is a unique one-year research project, supported by an expert supervisor, with access to a bespoke training schedule designed to enhance your child’s career prospects and help them not only to develop an interdisciplinary approach to the most complex environmental challenges of today but also to support them in becoming future leaders in environmental challenges.

The University of Bristol also offers free open online courses as part of Bristol Futures. It helps participants to investigate some of the major opportunities and challenges facing our generation: including Innovation & Enterprise; Global Citizenship and Sustainable Futures. Here at Cabot we’ve also recently partnered with actor Jeff Bridges on his new educational programme aimed at educating school and university students, focusing on issues featured in his recent award winning documentary Living in the Futures Past. Watch Cabot’s contribution to that programme, a short film on emergence  by Tom O’Shea.

And more locally, Bristol mum Traci Lewis set up Catalyse Change CIC, a social enterprise supporting girls and young women to develop sustainability skills and knowledge for ‘healthy, happy and green’ communities, careers and planet. This is a great initiative because ultimately these will be the mother’s of the future and they will continue to share their knowledge as they become mothers and grandmothers and influencers in their careers.

Mothers as communicators

A lot of women like to talk and the best thing you can do is to talk and talk some more with the people around you about climate change.  I’ve made a point to talk lots with my hairdresser about climate change issues, mainly to inform her in the hope that she will talk to her hundreds of customers about the issues too but also that she will think about her own actions.

It is also important that we talk to our children and encourage them to communicate about climate change. Climate communications organisation, Climate Outreach, has shown that young people can be  just as effective crafting a message as they are delivering it. In her recent blog for Climate Outreach, Emilie Holland Baliozian said “Inviting youth into the climate conversation is more than just giving them a voice. It means giving them a seat at the table and listening to what they have to say. Youth-led organizations all around the world, such as Zero Hour, Climates, Youth Climate Leaders, or Young Friends of the Earth, as well as the many youth plaintiffs suing their governments, are stepping up where adults are not. Let’s start listening”. Do visit the Climate Outreach website as they have lots of useful tips for communicating climate change to lots of different groups of people.

Parents are not just carers, cooks, role models, cleaners, nurses and counsellors etc they are also educators. It’s important for mums (and dads) to be supportive of their kids in the quest for knowledge and like Dani said, to ‘inspire’ our children and that can be done by leading by example, so may be consider putting yourself on the Bristol Futures courses or attending a climate strike. Greta Thunberg is organising another international school strike on 15 March 2019. As mothers we could encourage our children to attend, we could also go with them and show our support, even better we could rally up our friends, colleagues and family members to join in too.

I, like my colleagues, am incredibly privileged to have up to date access to the latest research on climate change. If you want to be kept informed too, do sign up to the Cabot Institute newsletter.  I am not only a mother but an educator and I will do all that I can to pass on my knowledge to my child and inspire him in the wonder of nature, that we as humans often forget or don’t realise we are intrinsically part of, so that his generation may just have a brighter future by learning to ‘mother’ their Earth.

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This blog is written by Amanda Woodman-Hardy, Cabot Institute Coordinator at the University of Bristol. You can follow Amanda at @Enviro_Mand on Twitter. Amanda would like to extend her thanks to Dani, Frances and Kath for taking the time out of their incredibly busy schedules to contribute to this blog.

Amanda Woodman-Hardy

 

Participating and coaching at a risk communication ‘pressure cooker’ event

Posted on by janet.crompton

Anna Hicks (British Geological Survey) and BUFI Student (University of Bristol) Jim Whiteley reflect on their experiences as a coach and participant of a NERC-supported risk communication ‘pressure cooker’, held in Mexico City in May.

Jim’s experience….

When the email came around advertising “the Interdisciplinary Pressure Cooker on Risk Communication that will take place during the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR; World Bank) Understanding Risk Forum in May 2018, Mexico City, Mexico” my thoughts went straight to the less studious aspects of the description:

‘Mexico City in May?’ Sounds great!
‘Interdisciplinary risk communication?’ Very à la mode! 
‘The World Bank?’ How prestigious! 
‘Pressure Cooker?’ Curious. Ah well, I thought, I’ll worry about that one later…

As a PhD student using geophysics to monitor landslides at risk of failure, communicating that risk to non-scientists isn’t something I am forced to think about too often. This is paradoxical, as the risk posed by these devastating natural hazards is the raison d’être for my research. As a geologist and geophysicist, I collect numerical data from soil and rocks, and try to work out what this tells us about how, or when, a landslide might move. Making sense of those numbers is difficult enough as it is (three and a half years’ worth of difficult to be precise) but the idea of having to take responsibility for, and explain how my research might actually benefit real people in the real world? Now that’s a daunting prospect to confront.

However, confront that prospect is exactly what I found myself doing at the Interdisciplinary Pressure Cooker on Risk Communication in May this year. The forty-odd group of attendees to the pressure cooker were divided in to teams; our team was made up of people working or studying in a staggeringly wide range of areas: overseas development in Africa, government policy in the US, town and city planning in Mexico and Argentina, disaster risk reduction (DRR) in Colombia, and of course, yours truly, the geophysicist looking at landslides in Yorkshire.

Interdisciplinary? Check.

One hour before the 4am deadline.

The possible issues to be discussed were as broad as overfishing, seasonal storms, population relocation and flooding. My fears were alleviated slightly, when I found that our team was going to be looking at hazards related to ground subsidence and cracking. Easy! I thought smugly. Rocks and cracks, the geologists’ proverbial bread and butter! We’ll have this wrapped up by lunchtime! But what was the task? Develop a risk communication strategy, and devise an effective approach to implementing this strategy, which should be aimed at a vulnerable target group living in the district of Iztapalapa in Mexico City, a district of 1.8 million people. Right.

Risk communication? Check.

It was around this time I realised that I glossed over the most imperative part of the email that had been sent around so many months before: ‘Pressure Cooker’. It meant exactly what it said on the tin; a high-pressure environment in which something, in this case a ‘risk communication strategy’ needed to be cooked-up quickly. Twenty-four hours quickly in fact. There would be a brief break circa 4am when our reports would be submitted, and then presentations were to be made to the judges at 9am the following morning. I checked the time. Ten past nine in the morning. The clock was ticking.

Pressure cooker? Very much check.

Anna’s experience….

What Jim failed to mention up front is it was a BIG DEAL to win a place in this event. 440 people from all over the world applied for one of 35 places. So, great job Jim! I was also really grateful to be invited to be a coach for one of the groups, having only just ‘graduated’ out of the age bracket to be a participant myself! And like Jim, I too had some early thoughts pre-pressure cooker, but mine were a mixture of excitement and apprehension in equal measures:

‘Mexico City in May?’ Here’s yet another opportunity to show up my lack of Spanish-speaking skills…
‘Interdisciplinary risk communication?’ I know how hard this is to do well…
‘The World Bank?’ This isn’t going to be your normal academic conference! 
‘Pressure Cooker?’ How on earth am I going to stay awake, let alone maintain good ‘coaching skills’?!

As an interdisciplinary researcher working mainly in risk communication and disaster risk reduction, I was extremely conscious of the challenges of generating risk communication products – and doing it in 24 hours? Whoa. There is a significant lack of evidence-based research about ‘what works’ in risk communication for DRR, and I knew from my own research that it was important to include the intended audience in the process of generating risk communication ‘products’. I need not have worried though. We had support from in-country experts that knew every inch of the context, so we felt confident we could make our process and product relevant and salient for the intended audience. This in part was also down to the good relationships we quickly formed in our team, crafted from patience, desire and ability to listen to each other, and for an unwavering enthusiasm for the task!

The morning after the night before.

So we worked through the day and night on our ‘product’ – a community based risk communication strategy aimed at women in Iztapalapa with the aim of fostering a community of practice through ‘train the trainer’ workshops and the integration of art and science to identify and monitor ground cracking in the area.

The following morning, after only a few hours’ sleep, the team delivered their presentation to fellow pressure-cooker participants, conference attendees, and importantly, representatives of the community groups and emergency management teams in the geographical areas in which our task was focused. The team did so well and presented their work with confidence, clarity and – bags of the one thing that got us through the whole pressure cooker – good humour.

It was such a pleasure to be part of this fantastic event and meet such inspiring people, but the icing on the cake was being awarded ‘Best Interdisciplinary Team’ at the awards ceremony that evening. ‘Ding’! Dinner served.

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This blog has been reposted with kind permission from James Whiteley.  View the original blog on BGS Geoblogy.   This blog was written by James Whiteley, a geophysicist and geologist at University of Bristol, hosted by British Geological Survey and Anna Hicks from the British Geologial Survey.

Under her eye: Communicating climate change more effectively

Posted on by janet.crompton

My name is Adriana Suárez and I’m a 3rd year PhD Student at the School of Geographical Sciences. I am working on community based water management in rural areas in Chile, where I am from.

I came back from fieldwork two months ago and in a way, I am still getting used to being back in Bristol as it is easy to feel a bit lost when you are swimming in a sea of data.  It was an intense fieldwork experience as I spent five months in Chile doing interviews with different participants, collecting documents and texts, and doing participant observation. The method I am using is called Institutional Ethnography, a method of inquiry developed by feminist sociologist Dorothy Smith and which has not been used yet in natural resources management.

My aim is to learn from rural communities who are involved in water management as a way to explore a form of management that is different to the usual way in which water for human consumption and sanitation is provided in urban areas. For example, in most cities like Santiago and Bristol, water is provided by sanitary companies which capture, purify and deliver water to our households. They also collect waste water and treat it to then return it to rivers so it can be used again in other activities. Usually, sanitary companies are for profit corporations that make a profit out of this service.

However, the way drinking water is organised in rural Chile is very different as in these areas the State works in partnership with the community. In this model, the work is done with a social aim and not as a way to make a profit, as opposed to the work of sanitary companies involved in the provision of water to urban areas. On the one hand the State is in charge of investing in the construction and provision of the infrastructure needed to capture, accumulate and distribute water, such as water tanks and a network of water pipes that distribute water to each household. On the other hand, the community is responsible for managing the system. This work includes repairing any breakages, leaks and charging water tariffs to keep the system running.

Coming back from fieldwork is not an easy task and I felt like I had many questions and concerns I needed to discuss with others. I realised I also needed to engage with my data in as many ways as possible, and that meant not only in academic ways. This is why I have been looking for opportunities to engage in conversation with other PhD students as well as with people who are not doing research or are not involved in academia. The ‘Research without Borders’ festival has offered me an opportunity to do this in a non-academic way, and to think of ways of talking about my research I had not considered before.

I also committed to preparing a stall at a public engagement event in Colston Hall on the 9 May 2018, in which I would develop an activity about my research. Someone had suggested me to use a cut out of James Bond to exemplify the gendered patterns of water management in my research. However I wasn’t entirely convinced I could develop a meaningful activity with a real-size cardboard image of Daniel Craig.

So, as I was getting – or not – ready to present my project in an engaging and fun way, I received an email from the Cabot Institute inviting me to participate in the Under Her Eye fellowship program which involved participating in a conference taking place on 1 June 2018 in London. I quickly went on their website and did a bit of research and I soon realised this was an opportunity I could not miss! This conference is about communicating climate change effectively by encouraging collaboration between scientists and artists. Moreover, Margaret Atwood will be the ambassador of this conference! I applied immediately and was thrilled to hear I had been chosen to participate.

Scarborough. Image credit Adriana Suarez.

Last weekend we met in Scarborough with the Invisible Dust team, who are organising the conference and I met the rest of the participants who were from different universities across the country. It was an incredible experience and it opened my eyes to new ways of collaborations I had not considered before. It was an intense and productive weekend, dedicated to improve our presentation skills, to think about engaging different audiences, about communicating and about how to affect change. It was inspiring and thought provoking, and it was a sharing experience among people I had never seen before, but with whom I shared values, dreams and concerns with.

We were invited to think about an activity we would like to develop during the conference and we came up with an idea to involve the public in a sensory experience that would take them all the way to Chile, to explore how avocado production is competing with a rural community and their human right to access water. I had never thought I had a creative facet, but now I’m starting to think I might not know everything about myself yet, which is quite refreshing. The whole weekend in Scarborough was a discovery, an exploration of our own research and of ways in which to look at it from different angles, from creative approaches and involving others in reflecting about it too, which was an invaluable gift.

I did not realise how meaningful the connections made with the other young women participating in this fellowship would turn out to be. We introduced ourselves with a nice ice-breaking activity in which we started drawing connections that would then help us develop conversations around topics that mattered to us such as climate change, gender, vegetarianism and curry. Our love for chocolate and coffee also came up, together with our concern about the risk of losing them as we found out from Sarah Mander’s presentation. Sarah works @TyndallManc and explained the ways in which the UK is working to meet the commitments it has taken to reduce carbon emissions and help combat climate change. She mentioned that if the global temperature rises to 4C we would be losing chocolate and coffee.

Later, we had Laura Harrington’s presentation which I thought was very personal and generous. She talked about her research in landscapes and her interests in geomorphology, especially in the peat bogs of Cumbria/Northumberland. She showed us a video with different takes on the landscape she was working on and I could feel I was there, almost a part of it.  She was doing art by recording sounds on a wet day, filming the dripping and melting of snow and the drenched soil which made me feel cold. It was interesting to see the amount of patience and endurance she had to have to be able to film these scenes for hours, waiting, looking and absorbing the landscape through all her senses. I was surprised she enjoyed being there as I thought I would have only been able to stay in those conditions for a little while, comforted by the idea of soon going back to a warm and dry place. She put sensors, cameras, and films under the ground to see how they became part of the landscape after some time there, being exposed to these harsh conditions. It felt intimate as she was telling us what went through her head and what she wanted to do with the equipment. I admired Laura’s conviction and the way in which she would not listen to scientists’ advice when telling her “there is nothing to see here”. These suggestions did not prevent her from going to Finland in winter time and experiencing the landscape for herself.

She praised procrastination, as it is a place where imagination and creativity can emerge, which made me think about how much I fear procrastinating, without really valuing the precious gifts that leisure time can offer.

After this intense afternoon, we went for a nice walk into the TEC Campus, a beautiful place where we would get our own room, and space to walk, to meet, a great Canteen and friendly staff who were all the time accommodating to our needs. On the Friday, we worked on different ideas, especially about what makes as curious and thoughts we wanted to develop. We had an interesting talk by Julie Doyle, professor of media and communications at Brighton University. We worked on a critical reflection on media types, and on examples of effective and ineffective ways of communicating climate change. We also discussed the gendered aspects of some media depictions, we saw ways in which irony was used to spark discussions and we talked about different art forms and exhibitions that can reach audience’s attention while entertaining them and also offering a hopeful message. We mentioned the importance of responsibility when communicating climate change impacts, especially when talking to younger generations, so that we avoid making people feel disempowered.

We then had a Skype workshop with Gayle Chong Kwan in which we talked about the changes people can make in food consumption, and how we can all relate to food, which was one of the things that came up in our first ice breaker exercise. This was a great workshop in which we became active participants in the preparation of the Microclimate Banquet taking place at the Conference in June.

Gayle showed us pictures from the late XIX century were ice was brought from Norway to London as customers demanded ice for food preservation, for making ice cream, and for medical use. She also showed pictures of cattle in jails, as a way for us to imagine how meat production and food supply was organised in the past. This was a great prompt for starting a conversation on the impacts we have on the environment by consuming fruits that are grown in faraway lands, or products that travel long distances to get to our tables, like the avocados from Chile.

After lunch, we had the valuable input of Sarah Cartwright who taught us several tips for communicating effectively and present our ideas with confidence. We learned about the importance of breathing, of concentrating in our body and grounding ourselves so that we can be assertive and authoritative. Many of us were impressed with the fact that the content of our presentations is only 7% of what counts to make an impact. The rest of attention is related to our body language, the way we speak, and the tone of our voices. We learned tips for warming our vocal cords, making eye contact and on what to do with our hands. It is surprising that we hardly ever get advice on how to communicate our research, which makes me think of the important challenges that academia faces when researchers try to connect with people located in other spheres of knowledge such as the arts. These so called “soft skills” are generally overlooked and we spent more time working on our content than on the way we deliver it and the impact we make.

After this we split into two groups and we developed in 15 minutes, a 5 minute presentation in which we would use these suggestions to structure our talk. We all received very valuable feedback on our presentation style and were able to see what we were doing well and what things we could improve.

That night we watched the short film ‘Pumzi’ by Kenyan filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu, a sci-fi short film that pushes us to think about alternative futures. We also watched/heard Sabrina Mahfouz’s potent poem on climate refugees ‘‘The Environmental Refugee Holding Centre (ERHC)’.

Under Her Eye group of fellows.

Towards the end of the weekend we worked on learning how to make our ideas happen by applying for funds, doing a proposal pitch and looking for funding sources. This was practical advice on how to concretise our ideas.This weekend has boosted my curiosity and my practice of reflecting on the what, why, how and why of climate change action and communication. Moreover I made 14 new friends who I will be working with in the next six weeks leading up to Under Her Eye. It has been inspiring and a luxury to take time off to explore and celebrate the role of women taking action on climate change, and I appreciate the opportunity to have been part of this experience.

This weekend was a gift, as I could dedicate three full days to pause, reflect, write and share ideas and dreams with like-minded women. This time, when experienced, becomes an avenue for exploring our own abilities but also for creating in collaboration with others possibilities for transformation and hope, which are essential when communicating and engaging audiences in climate change action.
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This blog was written by Cabot Institute member Adriana Suarez, who is a PhD Candidate in Environment, Energy and Resilience at the School of Geographical Sciences. She is exploring community based water management in rural Chile through Institutional Ethnography, a feminist method of inquiry into social relations.

Adriana Suarez

Twitter: Adri_H2o
Email: as15606@bristol.ac.uk

‘Under Her Eye’ is curated and produced by award-winning arts science organisation Invisible Dust and supported by the Wellcome Trust, Euston Town BID, Creative Scotland, Mooncup and Arts Council England.

Dadaism in Disaster Risk Reduction: Reflections against method

Posted on by janet.crompton
Much like Romulus and Remus, we the academic community must take the gift bestowed unto us by the Lupa Capitolina of knowledge and enact progressive change in these uncertain and complex times.

Reflections and introductions: A volta

The volta is a poetic device, closely but not solely, associated with the Shakespearean sonnet, used to enact a dramatic change in thought or emotion. Concomitant with this theme is that March is a month with symbolic links to change and new life. The Romans famously preferred to initiate the most significant socio-political manoeuvres of the empire during the first month of their calendar, mensis Martius. A month that marked the oncoming of spring, the weakening of winter’s grip on the land and a time for new life.

The need for change

Having very recently attended the March UKADR conference, organised by the Cabot Institute here in Bristol, I did so with some hope and anticipation. Hope and anticipation for displays and discussions that conscientiously touched upon this volta, this need for change in how we study the dynamics of natural hazards. The conference itself was very agreeable, it had great sandwiches, with much stimulating discussion taking place and many displays of great skill and ingenuity having been demonstrated. Yet, despite a few instances where this need for change was indirectly touched upon by a handful of speakers and displays, I managed to go the entirety of the conference without getting what I really wanted, an explicit discussion, mention, susurration of the role of emergence in natural disaster and resilience.

Understanding the problem

My interest in this kind of science is essentially motivated by merit of my Ph.D. research, here at the School of Geographical Sciences in Bristol, broadly concentrating on modelling social influence on, and response to, natural perturbations in the physical environment, i.e. urban flooding scenarios. From the moment I began the preliminary work for this project, it has steadily transformed into a much more complex mise-en-abyme of human inter-social dynamics, of understanding how these dynamics determine the systems within which we exist, both social and physical, and then the broader dynamics of these systems when change is enacted from within and upon them externally. A discipline known broadly as Complex Physical and Adaptive Systems, of which a very close theoretical by-product is the concept of emergence.
An enormous preoccupation throughout my research to this point has been in developing ways to communicate the links between these outlying concepts and those that are ad unicum subsidium. Emergence itself is considered a rather left-field concept, essentially because you can’t physically observe it happening around you. Defined, broadly, as a descriptive term whereby “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”, it can be used to describe a system which is characterised by traits beyond those of the individual parts that comprise that system, some examples include a market economy, termite mounds, a rainforest ecosystem, a city and the internet. Applying this concept to human systems affected by natural disasters, to interpret the dynamics therein, is quite simple but due to the vast inter-disciplinary nature of doing so is seen as being a bit of an academic taboo.
A schematic representing the nature of a complex system. Vulnerability, Risk and hazards would co-exist as a supervenient, complex hierarchy.
So then, I remind myself that I shouldn’t feel downhearted, I saw clear evidence that we, the academic community, are certainly asking the right questions now and more often than ever before;
  • “How do we translate new methods for vulnerability and risk assessment into practice?”
  • “Are huge bunches of data, fed through rigid equations and tried and tested methods, really all we need to reduce the impacts of vulnerability and exposure, or do we need to be more dynamic in our methods?”
  • “Are the methods employed in our research producing an output with which the affected communities in vulnerable areas can engage with? If not, then why not and how can this be improved?”

Moving forward

Upon reflection, this pleased me. These questions are an acknowledgement of the complex hazard systems which exist and indicate that we are clearly thinking about the links between ourselves, our personal environment and the natural environment at large. Furthermore, it is clear, from the themes within these questions, that academia is crawling its way towards accepted and mainstream interdisciplinary method and practice. I am pleased, though not satiated, as I witnessed a discussion in the penultimate conference session where “more data and community training” was suggested as a solution to ever-increasing annual losses attributable to natural disasters globally. I am inherently pessimistic, but I am as unconvinced by the idea of Huxleyesque, neo-Pavlovian disaster training for the global masses as I am unmotivated by the value of my research being placed in the amount of data it produces to inform such exercises!
“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson (image is of The Sower, from The Wheat Fields series by Vincent Van Gough, June 1888 – source: Wikipedia.)
Thus, it is as we now enter the month of April, mensis Aprilis, a month that is truly symbolic of Spring and one which embodies a time where new seeds are sewn carefully in the fields, where thorough work can take place and the seeds may be tended after the long wait for the darkness and cold of winter to pass; that we must consider the work that needs to be done in eliciting progressive change. Consider this volta, allow the warmth of the April showers to give life to the fresh seeds of knowledge we sow and may Ēostre assist us in the efficient reaping of the new knowledge we need to answer the most pressing questions in this world. At least before the data is stuck in a biblical excel spreadsheet and used to inform global anti-tsunami foot drills, or some such!
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This blog was written by Cabot Institute member, Thomas O’Shea, a 2nd year Ph.D. Researcher at the School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol. His interests span Complex Systems, Hydrodynamics, Risk and Resilience and Machine Learning.  Please direct any desired correspondence regarding the above to his university email at: t.oshea@bristol.ac.uk.
Thomas O’Shea

Scanning the horizons: Our changing environment

Posted on by janet.crompton
Image credit: BBC

For the evening of 7 June 2016, the Watershed was transformed into vaults of the Horizon programme as Horizon editor Steve Crabtree and University of Bristol Professor Jonathan Bamber took us on an environmentally-flavoured tour of the show’s history.

The Horizon programme is one of the BBC’s longest running series. First broadcast in 1964, it provides a gloriously honest portrayal of both the evolution of television and of science. The event, organised by the British Science Association in partnership with the Festival of Nature and the University of Bristol’s Cabot Institute, meandered through the decades of footage providing a simultaneously amusing and sobering window into the progression of thinking in ecology and climate science.

The evening began with two near-identical snippets of footage; both taken from the bow of an icebreaker crashing through Antarctic sea ice but filmed 50 years apart. The older black and white version, broadcast in 1966, depicted the work of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). The fuzzy monochrome pictures of dramatic Antarctic scenery were accompanied by Phantom of the Opera-style organ music and a narrator with an accent so archaically-British it would put the queen to shame.

The program explored the geology of the Antarctic, walking through the stages of continental drift before ending on the vast coal deposits that can be found in the Antarctic. The thought of coal mining in the world’s last pristine wilderness seems slightly mad by today’s standards but 1966, as Jonathan pointed out, was long before the 1991 environmental protocol was signed protecting the Antarctic from mineral exploration.

The clip was preceded by footage aired earlier this year. Apart from the addition of the swanky new Halley Research Station the only differences between the two were the colour and resolution: The Antarctic has preserved its natural habitat thanks to limited human interaction. The two clips were a great way to kick off the event and provided a stark contrast to the fast-changing world depicted in the rest of the Horizon episodes.

By far my favourite episode was from 1971 entitled ‘Due to lack of interest, tomorrow has been cancelled’. The footage taken at Lake Eerie comprised scenes of environmental devastation set to lively jazz. The combination drew a laugh from the audience and the dated feel was certainly comical in the context of today’s CGI mega-productions that air in the prime-time BBC slots.Despite this, it was surprisingly progressive; even in the 70s the BBC was reporting the long term, global effects of human interactions with the environment with an apocalyptic twist. As someone who grew up in the 90s I felt like the worst effects have only been realised in recent years, yet footage like this reminds me that these issues have been knocking around for decades.

The Horizon clips revealed just how vital the late 60s and early 70s were in the development of the environmental movement- suddenly it was fashionable to be interested in ecology. Jonathan attributed this in part to the 1968 Apollo space mission that took the first photograph of the earth from space. After the mission astronaut William Anders said 

“we travelled all this way to explore the moon but the most important thing is that we discovered the earth”. 

In this era, Jonathan said, we developed a sense of the earth as a single place that we all inhabited; and a place we must look after.

The famous ‘Earthrise’ photo from Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon. The crew entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, 1968. That evening, the astronauts held a live broadcast, showing pictures of the Earth and moon as seen from their spacecraft. Image credit: NASA.

In a further Horizon airing in 1971 ‘Vox pops’ (short interviews with members of the public) filmed on the streets of New York revealed the scale of the environmental movement coupled with footage of marches and protests. So prevalent was this voice that in 1970 President Nixon stated that the “price of goods should be made to include the cost of producing and disposing of them without damage to the environment”. How, I wonder, have we regressed so far from these aspirations of 40 years ago?

The 80s were all about energy production. As the decade progressed, the greenhouse effect was gaining recognition and the Horizon content mirrored this. An episode in 1982 revealed impressively large wind turbines built by Boeing in collaboration with NASA as a clean and sustainable energy solution. Rather comically, Britain’s only wind turbine at this time was a slightly decrepit looking windmill which paled into turbine-insignificance in comparison to the highly engineered US turbines. A further episode later in the decade, provided a snapshot of UK’s sources of carbon emissions immersed in a description of the carbon cycle. Despite humankind being in possession of knowledge of global warming for over a 100 years, public interest grew around this time; something that Jonathan attributed to the formation of the IPCC in 1988.

Wind turbine created by Boeing in 1982 with NASA. Image credit: Boeing.

Moving into the 90s and 00s, the television style underwent the change to digital content. As Steve described, special effects were now in the hands of TV-makers, not just big Hollywood producers. The appearance became more recognisable, although episodes in the early 90s definitely had an aged feel to them. The thinking was more modern, working on the assumption that climate change is already happening rather than convincing the audience of its authenticity. An episode in 2003 discussed not just the scientific implications of a changed planet, but the economic, political and social ones. The film, named ‘The Big Chill’, discussed what might happen if parts of the UK began to freeze. Steve commented that the content of the episodes was sometimes motivated by big Hollywood movies; in this case the blockbuster epic ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ was due for release the following year.

In all, the event was a wonderful glimpse into rarely seen BBC archives. While the evolution of thinking on climate change was what carried the discussions, I particularly enjoyed watching the interviews and narration from an era of television long gone. It made me realise what an invaluable tool it is in documenting past generations and I hope we are able to preserve much of the BBC content from the last five decades. As Steve pointed out, TV viewers in 40 years will probably look back at TV from today and laugh at the styles and fashions. Let’s hope they laugh at us from an even more progressive and sustainable future.  

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Keri McNamara, a PhD student in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol.

How accurate are the media on climate change and extreme weather events?

Posted on by janet.crompton

I’ve always appreciated the environment, but had previously taken on the role of spectator. I credit this magnificent city of ours with inspiring me to change my passive respect of nature to taking an active role in trying to preserve it. The strong sense of community in Bristol and the green-mindedness of its residents is infectious, and is evident in the number of fantastic projects we have which are led by the people and by our local government.

I craved more information about our environment so started attending lectures and events that are regularly held by the Cabot Institute and various departments across the university. As my insight to the issues we face grew, I realised I needed to increase my understanding and hopefully align my career in a way in which I could have a positive impact. I decided to enrol in a masters in Climate Change Science and Policy so I could appreciate the scientific intricacies rather than relying on what I heard, and what I read in the media.

My course enabled me to learn about climate modelling and the difficulties of implementing environmental policies, not just logistically but in terms of ethics and opinion. It is one thing to be passionate about science and research, it is quite another to communicate that to a non-specialist in a way that the magnitude and seriousness of climate change is realised. A warming climate will affect the entire globe and all sectors within it. Bridging the gap in knowledge between climate scientists and policy makers/society is therefore paramount. People often rely on the media as their main source of information and indeed it can successfully act as an education broker between scientists and the public. The seemingly omnipotent power of the media to mould opinion can be beneficial, but do we really know if what we’re reading is the truth?

I was offered the opportunity to explore this question, and it was the Environment Agency (EA) that requested the answers. Specifically, I conducted my dissertation on the accuracy of the UK media in reporting of extreme weather events. It may seem a rather unusual project to be proposed by the EA, so I shall explain. Within the organisation is a climate change branch, a part of which is the ‘Climate Ready Support Service’. Their objective is to provide advice and support to businesses in order to prevent and mitigate the effects of extreme weather events and climate change. The Environment Agency uses recent extreme weather events to exemplify realistic scenarios that could befall a vulnerable business.

The speed, scope and accessibility of the media makes it a valuable tool, during and immediately after a weather event. The fast-paced nature of modern reporting and social media necessitates that to some extent the EA relies on information from news organisations. Additionally, there are vastly more journalists than there are staff in the ‘Climate Ready Support Service’ therefore media reliance is essential. When the EA republishes this information it must be relevant, accurate and consistent, and it was my mission to quantify the reliability of UK media and to assess the confidence that the EA can have in it.

I was not able to analyse all UK media so I studied a selected sample from the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Mirror. I chose them because they contain a mix of broadsheet/tabloid, political affiliations and demographics. I analysed sixty two articles across three extreme weather events: ex-Hurricane Bertha (2014), the spring floods (2012) and the Birmingham tornado (2005). This provided a range of recent short, high impact events and longer-lasting cumulative ones. I conducted content analysis on each article, breaking the text up into study units that could be verified by official sources such as government documentation, academic journals and weather data. Media accuracy is not as straightforward as being right or wrong, not just the objective facts. Subjective inaccuracies also play a part, and can fundamentally alter the final message or mislead the reader from the truth. I categorised these as omission of information, exaggeration/under-exaggeration, personalisation, sensationalism and general confusion.

The results suggest that overall the UK media is 77.9% accurate. The Guardian achieved the highest overall accuracy (83.8%), followed by the Telegraph (76.2%) and the Mirror obtained the lowest accuracy rate (72.5%). Of more consequence to the EA is objective (factual) accuracy as opposed to subjective accuracy, and, the Guardian is the most reliable of the three publications in this respect (94.3%). Even though it is a broadsheet, the Telegraph was less objectively accurate than the Mirror with 85.8% and 87.3% accuracy respectively. Across all three publications, factual inaccuracies such as measurements, geolocations, timings, names etc. were most prevalent with 30%. This was followed by omission/addition as the next most common error (27%). Exaggeration was also significantly evident in the press accounting for 17% of the total inaccuracies.

What does this mean for the EA? This research hopefully clarifies which publications are worth relying on most heavily when obtaining their information. I would still recommend the agency continue to conduct their own internal fact checks because evidently there are still errors. Additionally, it was a one person study, with only one perspective and a limited sample size. As with any research, there’s always more that can be done to validate the findings and as this was the first study to investigate media accuracy of extreme weather events, more is warranted before sweeping conclusions can be made.

What I found interesting was that of the sixty two articles analysed only four of them mentioned climate change within the content. It is the EAs aim to embed climate change messages within all aspects of their organisation, and with the projected increase of such events I would have expected more linkage in the media. After interviewing some journalists a lot of them agreed that climate change should be associated with not just extreme weather stories, but all topics such as education, health and finance. There are practical limitations in achieving this but perhaps in the future, climate change will always be considered in all aspects of our global society. For now we should remain hopeful that we make some significant steps forward after the United Nations Climate Summit in December, and that Bristol continues its European Green Capital ethos into 2016 and beyond.

It was a great experience knowing that my work might have a real world impact and my contacts in the Environment Agency were really helpful throughout the process. I am now working within the Sustainability Department here at the University of Bristol with the aim of reducing our environmental impact by implementing the S-Labs Initiative (Safe, Secure, Sustainable Labs).

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This blog is written by Anna Lewis who recently graduated from the Climate Change Science and Policy MSc at the University of Bristol.  As part of her course she undertook a Cabot Institute pilot project called Community Based Learning which connects postgraduate students with organisations in order to help them solve a real-world problem.  If your organisation would like to get involved in Community Based Learning with the University, please contact cabot-cbl@bristol.ac.uk.

Anna Lewis

Anna now works at the University implementing sustainable laboratories throughout the institution.

How to communicate effectively about climate change uncertainty

Posted on by janet.crompton

Have you ever struggled with the communication of climate change uncertainties? Are you frustrated by climate sceptics using uncertainty – inherent in any area of complex science – as a justification for delaying policy responses? Then the new ‘Uncertainty Handbook’ – a collaboration between the University of Bristol and its Cabot Institute and the Climate Outreach & Information Network (COIN) – is for you.

The handbook was authored by Dr. Adam Corner (COIN), Professor Stephan Lewandowsky (Cabot Institute, University of Bristol), Dr Mary Phillips (University of Bristol) and Olga Roberts (COIN). All have expertise relating to the role of uncertainty in climate change or how best to communicate it.

The Handbook distills the most important research findings and expert advice on communicating uncertainty into a few pages of practical, easy-to-apply techniques, providing scientists, policymakers and campaigners with the tools they need to communicate more effectively around climate change. Download the report here, and check out our 12 principles for more effectively communicating climate change uncertainty:

  1. Manage your audience’s expectations

People expect science to provide definite ‘answers’, whereas in reality it is a method for asking questions about the world. So manage people’s expectations, and use plenty of analogies from ‘everyday life’ so people can see that uncertainties are everywhere – not just in climate science.

  1. Start with what you know, not what you don’t know

Too often, communicators give the caveats before the take-home message. On many fundamental questions — such as ‘are humans causing climate change?’ and ‘will we cause unprecedented changes to our climate if we don’t reduce the amount of carbon that we burn?’— the science is effectively settled.

  1. Be clear about the scientific consensus

Having a clear and consistent message about the scientific consensus is important as it influences whether people see climate change as a problem that requires an urgent societal response. Use clear graphics like a pie-chart, use a ‘messenger’ who is trustworthy to communicate the consensus, and try to find the closest match between the values of your audience and those of the person communicating the consensus message.

  1. Shift from ‘uncertainty’ to ‘risk’

Most people are used to dealing with the idea of ‘risk’. It is the
language of the insurance, health and national security sectors. So for many audiences — politicians, business leaders, or the military — talking about the
risks of climate change is likely to be more effective than talking about the uncertainties.

  1. Be clear about the type of uncertainty you are talking about

A common strategy of sceptics is to intentionally confuse and conflate different types of uncertainty. So, it’s critical to be clear what type of uncertainty you’re talking about – causes, impacts, policies or solutions – and adopt appropriate language for each.

  1. Understand what is driving people’s views about climate change

Uncertainty about climate change is higher among people with right-leaning political values. However, a growing body of research points to ways of communicating
about climate change that do not threaten conservative belief systems, or which use language that better resonates with the values of the centre-right.

  1. The most important question for climate impacts is ‘when’, not ‘if’

Climate change predictions are usually communicated using a standard ‘uncertain outcome’ format. So a statement might say that sea levels will rise by “between 25 and 68cm, with 50cm being the average projection, by 2072”. But flip the statement around — using an ‘uncertain time’ framing — and suddenly it is clear that the
question is when not if sea levels will rise by 50cm: “Sea levels will rise by at least 50 cm, and this will occur at some time between 2060 and 2093”.

8. Communicate through images and stories
Most people understand the world through stories and images, not lists of numbers, probability statements or technical graphs, and so finding ways of translating and interpreting the technical language found in scientific reports into something more engaging is crucial. A visual artist can capture the concept of sea-level rise better than any graph, and still be factually accurate if they use scientific projections to inform their work.

9. Highlight the ‘positives’ of uncertainty

Research has found that uncertainty is not an inevitable barrier to action, provided communicators frame climate change messages in ways that trigger caution in the face of uncertainty. A ‘positive’ framing of uncertain information would indicate that losses might not happen if preventative action was taken.

  1. Communicate effectively about climate impacts

The question ‘is this weather event caused by climate change?’ is misplaced. When someone has a weak immune system, they are more susceptible to a range of diseases, and no one asks whether each illness was ‘caused’ by a weak immune system. The same logic applies to climate change and some extreme weather events: they are made more likely, and more severe, by climate change.

  1. Have a conversation, not an argument

Despite the disproportionate media attention given to ‘sceptics’, most people simply don’t talk or think about climate change all that much. This means that the very act of having a conversation about climate change — not an argument or repeating a ‘one-shot’ slogan — can be a powerful method of public engagement.

12.  Tell a human story not a scientific one

The amount of carbon dioxide that is emitted over the next 50 years will determine the extent to which our climate changes. So what we choose to do — and how quickly we can muster the collective willpower to do it — is an uncertainty that dwarfs all others.

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This blog was written by Adam Corner and reproduced with kind permission from Adam and COIN.  View the original blog.

Dr Adam Corner is COIN’s Research Director, and an Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Psychology, Cardiff University. Adam manages COIN’s research portfolio, oversees the ‘Talking Climate’ project website, and directs COIN’s collaborations with academic partners. He writes regularly for the national media, including The Guardian and New Scientist magazine.

The great climate communication clash

Posted on by janet.crompton

Cultural cognition vs. consensus messaging:

Challenges of climate communication in a polarized world

If anyone attending the Cabot Institute debate between science communication researchers Dan Kahan and Stephan Lewandowsky last Wednesday was hoping for a relaxing, passive glance into the word of climate communication then they were in for a shock.Attending the event, which was moderated by Climate Outreach director Dr Adam Corner, was like being thrown into a politically-fuelled hurricane of communication and miscommunication. The mildly terrifying, albeit engaging, debating style of Dan Kahan meant there was never a dull moment as the two world-leading cognitive scientists locked horns over their opinions on how science should communicate climate change to the public.

The evening was kicked off by Kahan, whose invasive debating style saw him thundering into the audience to deliver his messages, a style which certainly drew attention if not support. The greatest focus of his message seemed to be in addressing the motivations of climate sceptics. Kahan claimed that the climate change consensus delivered by the scientific community is polarising opinion; those who are sceptics are not misinformed, their scepticism is fuelled by how they identify themselves. To put simply, the side of the climate change war they fight is supported more by culture than learning.

If this is the case, then increasing the budget powering the scientific consensus won’t help. Indeed, as Kahan expressed, the expensive climate change communication campaign in the U.S. hasn’t made any difference to the opinions of the public. His message? Stop trying to change who we are and do something proactive with the budget instead.

Next Lewandowsky stepped up to the floor. His argument is pro-consensus, defining the consensus as a few simple facts; that climate change is happening, is caused by humans and is problematic.  His theory is that people respond to education and change their opinions based on the information available to them. This, he claims, is based on testing trials performed in Australia where participants found themselves more concerned about climate change after being exposed to the general consensus. In Lewandowsky’s words “consensus is the gateway to belief’.

Underpinning his argument is the relationship between the layman and the expert. Lewandosky claims that in times of uncertainty, people defer to the expert; “If 97% of engineers delivered a consensus that the bridge was unsafe to cross, would you cross the bridge?”. 97% of climate scientists believe global warming is an issue, so we submit to the opinion of the expert. The idea works in theory but, according to Kahan we aren’t submitting to the expert, in fact, public opinion is unchanged.

So where does the answer lie? Despite lengthy discussions on the climate consensus, no communication consensus was reached. After the discussion was opened up to the audience, the complexities of the task at hand became apparent: while the ‘yes’ versus ‘no’ controversy is clearly polarised, audience members suggested there are degrees of ‘yes’. Is climate change part man made and part natural? Should we be spending more money on adaption rather than mitigation as Kahan suggested? To what extent is politics contributing to the miscommunication; how can we disentangle the issue of left-wing environmentalism as an opponent of capitalism? The list goes on.

My opinion of the outcome was that the path forwards was a hybrid of the opinions present. Yes, we shouldn’t focus on ‘converting’ the minority of sceptics. The consensus should focus on revaluating the options and behaviour of the supporters. How can we make reducing climate change an economic option for free market capitalism, rather than just trying to close it down. Maybe, as Kahan suggests, instead of aggressive PR campaigns that polarise opinion, we should be working on strengthening the knowledge of the ‘believers’. Indeed making the outcome of the consensus more attractive to those who are in support of climate change, to me, seems like a more progressive step forward.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Keri McNamara, a PhD student in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol.

Further reading

Dan Kahan’s blog from this event: Against consensus messaging
Read about Steve Lewandowsky’s paper on how climate science denial affects the scientific community.

AGU 2013: The importance of 400 ppm CO2

Posted on by janet.crompton

On 1 June 2012, a concentration of 400 ppm carbon dioxide was measured in air samples in the Arctic.  On 9 May 2013, Mauna Loa, the longest recording station, measured a daily average of 400 ppm carbon dioxide. Next year we may see the global average concentration reach 400 ppm and the year after that 400 ppm could be measured at the South Pole. The 400 ppm number is arbitrary, but it is a symbol of the anthropogenic climate change that scientists have been talking about for many years.

Here at the University of Bristol, the upcoming 400 ppm epoch prompted the question of what do we know about 400 ppm CO2 climates and how  could it be used to galvanize action on climate change?  But 400 ppm and climate change is a bigger issue than one University can take on, so we took our idea to the American Geosciences Union Fall conference.  With more than 24,000 attendees each year, AGU is the perfect place to talk about what 400 ppm CO2 means in a scientific sense and what we as scientists should do about communicating it.

Two sessions were proposed: one looking at the science of 400 ppm CO2 climates, co-convened with Kerim Nisanciouglu of the University of Bergen, Norway, the other at communicating 400 ppm co-convened with Kent Peacock of University of Lethbridge and Casey Brown of UMass Amherst.

Naomi Oreskes (pictured) asked why scientists
don’t allow themselves to sound alarmed when reporting alarming conclusions from their
research.

The communication session looked at how climate science could be communicated effectively.  First to speak was Naomi Oreskes, who asked why scientists don’t allow ourselves to sound alarmed when we’re reporting alarming conclusions. Citing from neuroscience research, Oreskes argued that when scientists conform to the ‘unemotional scientist’ paradigm they actually risk being less rational and sounding inauthentic.  It was clear that Oreskes’ points struck the audience, as many of them queued up to ask questions.

Myles Allen made a compelling case for sequestered adequate fraction of extracted (SAFE) carbon – i.e. compulsory carbon capture and storage. Allen pointed out that people will always pay to burn carbon and argued that a carbon price is just a way to ‘cook the planet slower’.  Robert Lempert took a less controversial stand and explained how uncertainty can be managed in robust decision making.  Using hydrological examples, Lempert suggested that by starting with the desired outcome and working backwards, uncertainty can be dealt with.  The session finished with James Hansen, talking about the right message, and how the things that people care about needs to be communicated by the best communicators.  Criticising the pursuit of unconventional fossil fuels, Hansen argued the need for a carbon tax which was redistributed back to people.  A lively question and answer session followed, with all the speakers engaging in a strong discussion and the audience contributing pointed questions. No problems with talking without emotion in this session!

The 400 ppm physical science session started by focussing on what information we could draw from climates in the past where CO2 is believed to have been ~400 ppm. The first speaker was Alan Haywood who summarised the work of the PlioMIP project which tries to understand the climate of the Pliocene (~3 million years ago) – what it was like and why.  The Pliocene is the most recent time period in the past when atmospheric CO2 concentrations could have been as high as they are today.  Two more Pliocene presentations followed.  First, Natalie Burls (standing in for Chris Brierley) explained that even with CO2 set to 400 ppm in their climate model simulations they could not match the warm temperatures reconstructed by Pliocene data – suggesting that either the climate models are not sensitive enough to CO2 or that there are other dynamical processes that we do not fully understand yet.  Thomas Chalk gave a comparison between different methods for reconstructing CO2 in the past, and concluded that the Pliocene concentration was indeed at around 400 ppm. The final talk in the palaeoclimate part of the session was given by Dana Royer who presented the most compelling evidence for very different climates in the past with polar forests at 80°N indicating annual mean temperatures in the Arctic that were 30°C warmer than they are today!  Dana presented new CO2 reconstructions demonstrating that the CO2 concentration at the time of the polar forests could have been around 400 ppm, again suggesting that our climate models may not be sensitive enough to CO2.

The next part of the session looked at current CO2 levels with a presentation by Steven Davis about the amount of CO2 that we have already committed to putting into the atmosphere. The energy infrastructure that we have already built amounts to future CO2 emissions of 318Gt, and new global commitments are still increasing. Vaughan Pratt followed with a talk about the reasons for the recent pause in the global warming trend, separating out natural causes and anthropogenic causes using mathematical and statistical analyses. He concludes that the recent pause is of natural origin.

The final part of the session peered through the looking glass into the future.  Andrew Friedman investigates the causes of the temperature asymmetry between the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere and how that asymmetry may alter under the future climate emission scenarios.  He concluded that the asymmetry is set to increase into the next century, with the northern hemisphere warming faster than the southern hemisphere and projects that the tropical rainbelt will shift northwards as a result.

Kirsten Zickfield has found that warming in the next
millenium might amount to 1 degree globally,
concentrated at the Poles.  Sea levels are projected to
rise by 0.8m.

The final talk of the session was given by Kirsten Zickfeld who examined the climate changes we might already be committed to as a result of the CO2 emissions we have already released (under the assumption that atmospheric CO2 stays at 400 ppm). She used a climate model with biogeochemical components to identify how long it would take for the climate to reach equilibrium with the present CO2 concentration of 400 ppm, what the climatic impacts of that equilibrium might be and whether it might be possible to return to CO2 levels below 400 ppm on human timescales by using negative emissions (carbon capture/storage schemes). She found that the already committed warming into the next millennium might amount to 1°C globally, concentrated at the poles. Sea levels are projected to rise by 0.8m due to thermal expansion alone and further increases of 10m due to ice melt are possible over much longer timescales. Committed changes for the ‘other CO2 problem’ – ocean acidification – are relatively small, with a pH drop of only 0.01 projected. She concludes that even if CO2 levels could drop below 400 ppm in the future, whilst air temperatures may stabilise, sea level may continue to rise due to thermal expansion alone.

Both of the sessions were recorded for access after the event and provoked a lot of debate, during the sessions and online.  We hope that in some small way these sessions have helped scientists think differently about what 400 ppm means and what we can do about it.

This blog was written by T Davies-Barnard and Catherine Bradshaw, Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol.

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