Month: June 2012

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-06-24

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Four Years in Victoria: List Making

I sense quite a bit of internally directed impatience and judgement. So it is good to take stock.

Four years in Victoria, an incomplete list of firsts…

  1. Joined the board of an organization
  2. Donate(d) to multiple organizations
  3. Made presentations to the city council, school board, public meetings, met MPs, MLAs, councillors, mayors
  4. Facilitated public forums (not fora, which would make me an elitist)
  5. Joined a political party
  6. Went door to door for a political party
  7. Played music in a band for a paying audience
  8. Wrote music
  9. Sang in crowded street corners (with other people) busker style
  10. Grew veggies and greens
  11. Canned, made beer, made wine
  12. Became a property owner and joined the strata board!
  13. Lost my connection with the automobile. Driving, except for road trips, is now a necessary chore.
  14. Started busing to work.
  15. Got a new (lack of )hairstyle
  16. Garlic scapes (How did I miss out on garlic scapes for this long??)
  17. Expect to see Orca every time I get on a boat (I guess getting on a boat regularly is a first too).
  18. Expect to see snow-capped mountains at every turn while wearing a T-shirt and sandals in February

Being visible in public is relatively new to me, always good to remember my past when explaining my present reluctance.

This might be my first ever link less post.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-06-17

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-06-10

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-06-03

Bus Drivers and Climate Change Communication

Bus Drivers and Climate Change Communication

The regular community bus driver (let’s call him Jack) that gets me from downtown Sidney to Industrial Sidney every morning is fantastic. He knows his passengers (it is a community bus, so just a few of us), he knows which bus we come into town on, he even drops us right outside of work instead of at the regular stop. He saves me 10 minutes every day, and does it in style. Thanks! He also gives us five minute talk radio type banter with his friend in the front seat, who I suspect rides the bus just for this purpose. We catch a lot of transit gossip, union gossip, hockey gossip and occasional monologues on the paeans of hard work, family and always speaking up. Somebody should hire this guy, he’s articulate, he’s passionate, he communicates clearly, great radio attributes.

Jack is also a climate denier who has the pleasure of ferrying Andrew Weaver, Victoria’s most famous climate scientist, to work some mornings. I hear one side of his “debate” with Weaver, and I hear Jack reel off all kinds of denier science theories about evaporation, clouds, scientists who can’t predict the weather, etc. His talk show partner chimes in occasionally with similar “sciencey” sentences that make little sense to me. I think Andrew Weaver gets into it, because he takes his role as climate change and science communicator very seriously and according to Jack, it’ a lot of back and forth between the two.

So, as someone who thinks climate change is a serious issue, is it not my responsibility to jump into this debate? Here’s an otherwise stand-up guy who appears to be very misinformed and misled on basic climate change facts, good opportunity to change minds, right?

I am not so sure. Here’s David Roberts of the Grist synthesizing the state of the art on science communication and Dan Kahan’s recent study published in the Nature Climate Change Journal (Free article!).

Once again, with feeling: More science will not cure climate skepticism

The answer might seem to be obvious: ignorance! People just don’t understand the science. <snipped> However intuitively plausible this answer might be, it suffers from one important flaw: It is wrong. Better educated people are not less likely to be skeptics. Greater scientific literacy and reasoning ability do not incline people toward climate realism. Where skepticism exists, additional information and arguments only serve to reinforce it.

Jack is the perfect example. He knows his “facts”, he’s so sure of them that he finds himself “winning” debates with accomplished climate scientists on the strength of those “facts”. His passion and certainty are strengthened by these facts and more facts are only going to reinforce his beliefs. So, what to do? Kahan’s paper has this tentative recommendation:

It does not follow, however, that nothing can be done to promote constructive and informed public deliberations. As citizens understandably tend to conform their beliefs about societal risk to beliefs that predominate among their peers, communicators should endeavor to create a deliberative climate in which accepting the best available science does not threaten any group’s values. Effective strategies include use of culturally diverse communicators, whose affinity with different communities enhances their credibility, and information-framing techniques that invest policy solutions with resonances congenial to diverse groups. Perfecting such techniques through a new science of science communication is a public good of singular importance.

The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks

The answer is better peer-to-peer communication where trust has been built. This is hard, grassroots work.

 Update June 1: David Roberts has a new post that makes some excellent points on winning the climate culture war.