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11 - Across the great divide: supporting scientists as effective messengers in the public sphere

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 August 2009

Nancy Cole
Affiliation:
Union of Concerned Scientists
Susanne C. Moser
Affiliation:
National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder
Lisa Dilling
Affiliation:
University of Colorado, Boulder
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Summary

Is it enough for a scientist simply to publish a paper? Isn't it a responsibility of scientists, if you believe that you have found something that can affect the environment, isn't it your responsibility to actually do something about it, enough so that action actually takes place?

Mario Molina (2000)

Most breaking science stories have a news lifespan of a few days before they retire, relegated to the pages of arcane journals. But there was one science story in 2004 with a far longer – and wider – news cycle than many. In the world of climate science, this story broke ground in several areas: it delivered a range of the latest climate model simulations, compared higher- and lower-emissions scenarios, and calculated the resulting impacts for a specific region.

On August 16, 2004, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published a report on the possible future of California's climate (Hayhoe et al., 2004). Authored by a team of 19 scientists, the report highlighted two sets of scenarios representing higher and lower pathways for future emissions. The study's authors found that, under the higher-emissions scenario, California's average summer temperatures could warm by between 9 and 18 °F – twice as much as in the lower scenario – by the end of the twenty-first century. In this higher-emissions scenario, Californians could expect up to eight times as many heatwave days, with heat-related mortality rising significantly.

Type
Chapter
Information
Creating a Climate for Change
Communicating Climate Change and Facilitating Social Change
, pp. 180 - 199
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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References

Blockstein, D. E. (2002). How to lose your political virginity while keeping your scientific credibility. BioScience, 52, 1, 91–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Field, C. B., Daily, G. C., Davis, F. W., et al. (1999). Confronting Climate Change in California: Ecological Impacts on the Golden State. Cambridge, MA: Union of Concerned Scientists and Washington, DC: Ecological Society of America. Available online at: http://www.ucsusa.org/; accessed January 19, 2006.Google Scholar
Hall, C. T. (2004). CALIFORNIA – Global warming clouds the future but experts say it's not too late to cut harmful emissions. San Francisco Chronicle, August 17, available at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/08/17/BAGTI896B91.DTL&hw=climate+change&sn=001&sc=1000; accessed January 19, 2006.
Hayhoe, K., Cayan, D., Field, C. B., et al. (2004). Emissions pathways, climate change, and impacts on California. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101, 34, 12422–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nichols, M. (2002). Letter of August 15 to Kevin Knobloch, then UCS's Executive Director (now the organization's President), Union of Concerned Scientists.
Redefining Progress (2004). Climate in California: Health, Economic and Equity Impacts. Oakland, CA: Redefining Progress.
Wagner, F. H. (1999). Analysis and/or advocacy: What role(s) for ecologists? EcoEssay Series No. 3. Santa Barbara, CA: National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. Available at: http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/nceas-web/resources/ecoessay/wagner/; accessed January 19, 2006.

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