CERN Colloquium

Climate Change: Making the Best Use of Scientific Information

by Thomas Stocker (Climate and Environmental Physics, Institute of Physics, University of Bern, Switzerland)

Europe/Zurich
503/1-001 - Council Chamber (CERN)

503/1-001 - Council Chamber

CERN

162
Show room on map
Description
Climate science regularly makes headlines in the media, usually after an extreme weather event or a disaster, or in the wake of campaigns by think tanks about the science of climate change. In this presentation, I discuss four specific challenges that are posed to climate scientist when communicating with the public: (i) The widening gap between the scientific literacy of the public and the communication literacy of the scientists; (ii), the multiplicity of scientific information conduits; (iii), information of, and under, uncertainty; and (iv), the requirement to be precise without using technical language. It turns out that these challenges are quite generic to science communication. Climate scientists have learned from the regular international assessments they perform under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and have accumulated a collective experience of more than 20 years. In this presentation I discuss the most important lessons learned from this experience and their relevant for other science areas which are also frequently communicating with the media and the public.
Poster
Slides
Video in CDS
Organised by

Ignatios Antoniadis/PH-TH & Traudl Hansl-Kozanecki/PH-UAT......................................Tea and coffee will be served at 16h00