Communicating Climate Science in BACC

Americans have it harder when communicating climate science to the public. While in Europe we have to cope with a certain level of scientific illiteracy, Americans are also confronted with media phalanx which has no or very limited interest in covering scientific issues, and, secondly, they are confronted with an aggressive campaign of climate change sceptics (and, for that matter, also “evolution sceptics”) with a political agenda which are extremely well trained in communication. Most scientists lack this training.

This is the bottom line of a workshop on “Communicating Climate Science” at the AGU Fall meeting in San Francisco. What does that have to do with BACC? The BACC book was written by scientists for scientists, but also by scientists for stakeholders and decision makers, with the “science or knowledge broker” claim. But did the message really come across for the latter target group? We do not know, but it can be questioned. HELCOM re-wrote part of the BACC material for their own publication, but it is unclear whether this version was better understandable by policy makers, let alone the general public. Maybe we have to get better at that in BACC II. Here is an interesting eye-opener for climate scientists who just cannot understand that anybody in the world does not know what, e.g. “aerosols” really are…

An up-to date compilation of publications on sea level change in the Baltic Sea

The BALTEX publication online database now contains an up-to date compilation of currently available publications on Baltic Sea level change, assembled by Birgit Hünicke (here, keyword “sea level”). She is also the convener of a session on this subject at the 8th Baltic Sea Science Congress to be held in St. Petersburg, Russia, 22-26 August 2011 (link).