Communicating Climate Science in a Changing Media Landscape

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit today about just this issue of how do we talk about climate change and, you know, Sally alluded to the fact that I was at NCAR, I was a research scientist for a while and in many respects it wasn't of my own doing but I had this opportunity to kind of cross over and shift from being a research scientist to the on-camera climate expert at the Weather Channel. You know, I got a call out of the blue and I was asked to come and interview for this position and, you know, it was interesting because I was just like your classic research scientist. I didn't watch a lot of television and it, you know, it was sort of walking into a new world for me and I used to joke that, you know, I got a PhD in science and then I went and I, you know, kind of tried to study television a little bit and in the process I think I've become a real TV junkie. I watch probably way too much television now but it's a medium that it's really, it's come to fascinate me perhaps as much as the natural world and I think maybe that intersection is kind of where I'd like to spend some time today. You know, and the title of the talk is Communicating Climate Science in a Changing Media Landscape and I was just meeting with, you know, God, I was just so overwhelmed by all of the incredible people I've had the chance to talk to today. Stanford is a really, really special place but to the folks who are in the night program and in the Leopold Fellows program, we spent a lot of time talking about the fact that the media landscape is changing so much. And it's one of these things where, you know, we all love to try to think about what it's going to look like. But, you know, obviously anyone who tells you if, you know, what it's going to look like doesn't know what they're talking about. Because none of us know how it's going to change. We just know that it's changing dramatically. But I want to think specifically about climate and climate change and how it fits into this rapidly evolving world. You know, and maybe to start and frame it, right now when you poll most Americans and you ask them for the image that comes into their minds when you mention global warming or climate change, the image that comes into their mind is melting ice. You know, and anyone who works in television will tell you that melting ice is not a very dramatic image. It's not necessarily a very sexy image. It's not something that, you know, motivates or sort of raises a lot of red flags. And, you know, the question is how do we get people to have more than just that fairly stagnant image in their heads? And what I want to kind of walk through today is just ways to sort of help people come up with different mental images for what climate change really is. I mean, it is melting ice, you know, that's for sure. But it's so much more than that. And I think Climate Central is trying to help figure out how to give people more images that they can connect with so that it feels more tangible and real and immediate. So with that said, you know, I always love to start with this quote by Rob Sokolow, a professor at Princeton. And it comes from a very well-known statement made by Winston Churchill after World War II on the Royal British Air Force. And he rewrote it slightly with his wife. And he rewrote it to say, never has the work of so few, in this case, so few climate scientists, led to so much being asked of so many. And as sort of hard as it is to say that, without stumbling over the wording, I think it's a really huge statement. You know, I really do think that for the most part, climate scientists found something out, namely that a fossil fuel infrastructure was not necessarily the best choice we could have made, you know, 50 to 100 to 200 years ago. And as a result, we're now saying, you know what, let's, let's reinvent this. Let's, let's just swap out our energy infrastructure to a certain extent, and, and let's make it better and more resilient and more sustainable. It's a really big thing to ask. And it requires a lot of, a lot of different things on the part of the folks that we're asking that to. So with that in mind, you know, to sort of put the other side of the coin to this, scientists are asking a lot, and are we, are we asking it in the right way? Are we explaining it properly? And this is, I don't know if, if, if you guys follow the, the blogs much, but this is a great blog, climateprogress.org by Joe Rome, who actually was in the State Department, I think for a while, and is now an independent blogger. And, you know, Joe is not someone who mints his words. And in this statement here, he basically says that scientists are failing miserably at communicating the issue of climate change. I think that we're really too hard on climate scientists, having, you know, come from the academic community myself, and having struggled, you know, in the first couple of years that I was at the Weather Channel, and I was asked to do climate reporting. I mean, this was basically six, seven years ago. You know, it was kind of like, for me, it was like reinventing the wheel. Like, how do you talk about this issue? How do you, how do you communicate with the public? And, you know, I have to say that, for me, I think one of the things that, that's so great about what Stanford is doing, and, and very much along the lines of what Climate Central is trying to do, is to kind of create these hybrid scientists. I mean, some folks call them amphibians, you know, scientists that can kind of swim in different waters and, and help people understand the science and connect to it. Because, you know, maybe we haven't done a good job up to now, and we've got a lot of work cut out for us. So, with that, these are the sections that I kind of want to walk through. I'm going to start with just an overview of the media, public perception, where we're at right now, and then sort of talk about this issue of seeing. Because I think for me, having probably spent way too much time thinking about this issue of just how do you help people see this very intangible thing? I mean, all of the words we even have to describe are hard. Global warming, climate change, what are these things really? How do you help people see them? I want to just walk through different ways that we can talk about that. So, to start out with, I just want to go through different polls. And, you know, John Krosnick is, is someone who I turn to a lot to just help understand where the public stands on this issue. And to me, this, this sums it up, I think, in terms of public perception. The single strongest predictor of concern about global warming is the belief that it's caused by human activity. And if you don't believe that global warming or climate change is a result of burning fossil fuels, then it's very difficult to get, you know, too upset about it. But John goes on in his, in his poll, this was an August 2008 poll, to say the concern is also predicted by trust in what scientists say, belief that scientists agree, and the level of attention people are paying to global warming. And I think those three things, we all know that they fluctuate in time. Those three things are, are, are really at the core of, of how you communicate the message. And I think, you know, a lot of what's been happening over the past two weeks, if folks have been following the University of East Anglia thing, it really gets to this first issue, trust in what climate scientists say. I'd say the healthcare debate, the war in Afghanistan, and the global economic recession have definitely affected the level of attention. So that wasn't really needed to have much focus put on it. And, you know, there's always been this issue of consensus among the scientific community. So that, that pillar right there, I think was, was really the natural thing to focus on. Because the public actually really, really trusts scientists. This was a, a survey that was done. It was, it was actually more focused on prestige. And I, I always like this graphic, because firefighters are first. And don't let anyone tell you differently. There is nobody better in this world than a firefighter. But scientists are second, which I think we can all be very proud of. And oddly enough, journalists and actors fall at the bottom. And if you read the fine detail of this survey, you'd find out that investment bankers and real estate agents were at the very bottom of the list. So it does get worse. Right, right. So, you know, there is an inherent trust there, um, that, that I think is, is very hopeful and very meaningful. Um, this is a poll that was done by Tony Leiserowitz at, at Yale. And, you know, it gets to the issue of who do you want to be telling you about climate change? And again, you know, it, it's, it's scientists. And we were talking before about the role that, that celebrities and actors play. And, and, you know, don't get me wrong. They have the ability to reach like, like no one else can. But in terms of, of who you actually trust, um, you know, scientists were in, in the very, very upper echelon of that. Now, as far as scientists are concerned, this is really all you need to know about climate change to a certain extent. Global warming is this large scale trend. It's warmed 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century. The cause of that is, is the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation. And, you know, to a certain extent, it's, it's, you know, that's the scientific case. It's, it's, and it's a very, very compelling case that we've been working on for more than a century. Um, we'll talk about this graphic a little bit more, specifically that little outlier there and, and how things like that can, can be tricky. But so, global warming is a trend. That's really all you need to know. The problem is media coverage is a cycle. And we are unfortunately right now, I mean, I think as bad as 2008 looks, I think 2009 is, is probably even worse. Um, you know, this, this period right here, so inconvenient truth kind of led, um, an upsurge in coverage, um, you know, is, is a movie that, that, um, was widely distributed. It had a fairly significant marketing budget. So a lot of people knew about it. Um, IPCC report was also released at this time. So climate change was very much in the news. So that, according to, to John Krosnick's three pillars, you know, that, that made it an issue in it. And so climate change rose to the top of a lot of people's lists of concerns during that period. Now, a lot of things have happened, uh, since that surge of coverage. Um, one of them is that, you know, somewhat in tandem, it was happening all along, but somewhat in tandem with the economic recession, the media landscape has kind of gone through its own meltdown of sorts. And, you know, it, it comes down to money and the ability to cover different stories, but it also just comes down to technology and the fact that, you know, how long have we known about Twitter? You know, it hasn't been around for very long. And I, I, you know, I like to show this, despite, oh, my red dot works. Um, I, I really like this tweet. It's possibly my favorite tweet in the world. And this is a tweet by, um, Sabin Russell, who was, um, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter, uh, for those of you who read his work. And after he was laid off, like so many science journalists over the past year or two, um, he became a freelancer and his first tweet was, this is the way my career ends, not with a bang, but with a Twitter. Um, and I, you know, I think that right now so many of us that, that are storytellers, um, and journalists and, and try to educate the general public about science are kind of in this, you know, strange world where we're, we're stepping in between these different mediums and, and we're also stepping in between different kinds of organizations. And you know, these are all very recent, um, stories that have, that have been published. One, just about the demise of science journalism. And I mean, when you look at the statistics, I think it, for every five hours of news coverage right now, one minute is devoted to science. For those of us who love science, that's a very, very tough thing to swallow. Um, you know, the number of layoffs at the cable networks for science coverage, Miles O'Brien is gone. Um, there's been numerous examples of folks being let go. The science journalism departments were some of the first to get cut. Um, but at the same time, we have the rise of, of new groups. Uh, and for a lot of folks, I mean, this was an op-ed piece about how, you know, journalism should be like a university. Uh, it should be endowed. And there's a lot of debate, uh, about how new journalism should look. I mean, should it be endowed by the public? I mean, should it be like a university? Should it be non-profit? What does that mean? If it is non-profit, it changes things dramatically. Um, you know, I, I show this because there's a group that I, I love tremendously called ProPublica. It's also a non-profit journalism, uh, group. It's, it's somewhat like the Center for Investigative Reporting, based out here. And it is a, a group that I think Climate Central is trying to model itself after in the sense that, you know, we are this hybrid group of scientists and journalists, um, that, that want to tell science journalism stories and do it with a great deal of integrity and do it at this local level. You know, and ProPublica, for example, on their website, they've got a little section that's called Steal Our Stories. Um, only a non-profit can do that. And what it allows any, um, newspaper to do is, is to take and republish that story, so long as you keep the byline and don't change the words in any way, you can actually take that, that content, um, that has been diligently reported. And that's something that Climate Central is trying to do as well. What, what we, um, as an organization are trying to do is just build our, our distribution network and just generate partnerships with different media outlets and then provide those outlets with, um, with well-researched, well-reported stories. And, and some of our, um, partners at this point include the, the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, which actually, the News Hour is going through a rebranding right now. And actually, the night of COP15, they're going to launch their new, uh, their new show. It's going to have a new look and a new format. And it's just called, I think, the PBS News Hour now. So it's got a different name. Uh, and we've also partnered with groups like Time.com and Newsweek and Scientific American, the Weather Channel. And I think for, for, for us, um, a real sweet spot and a, and a, and a place that we really want to be is actually at the local level, at the local television news market level. And I'll, I'll talk more about that as we move forward. But that's a place that, um, science coverage is, is very much lacking. So just a quick overview. 80% of, of folks in 2008 said that they thought global warming is probably happening, that people were the main cause came in at 63%. This, this notion of disagreement has always been a problem. There's always been this notion that scientists aren't in agreement. Um, that was 2008, 2009. The recession hit, um, global warming went down in the list once again, in terms of people's level of concern and priorities. And, uh, recent Pew poll that came out just back in October, you know, basically painted a, a fairly poor picture of, of the way public perception had changed. And, uh, you know, for some of the sociologists and psychologists that I talked to, basically, you know, said it, it boils down to that standard issue of, you know, is it being covered much? Um, do we trust scientists? And, uh, do we think there's a, a consensus? And, and with health care and the war in Afghanistan and Iraq and, and all of these different issues competing for people's concerns, it's just, it's really fallen down the list. And I think what worried a lot of people, um, in terms of, of what science really means, uh, this fact that there's such a skew among political affiliation is, is troubling. Um, because technically, you know, science is not political. Um, so I mentioned that Climate Central is really interested in this local strategy. And, you know, for the most part, I think it's actually a really fascinating fact that 70% of Americans get their news, not from the broadcast networks, but from local television news. And if you watch much local TV, you'll see that there's not a whole lot of science coverage per se. Um, and I think that Climate Central saw that as just, you know, that that's a huge hole. And, and if we can reach out to Americans, um, and provide strong science coverage at the local level, then, you know, really providing a service to, to a place that needs it. And, you know, local TV news markets have been hit just as badly as, as other places. Uh, and to a certain extent, their ad sales drive, their ad sales are generated, um, predominantly by, uh, car dealerships. And, you know, needless to say, with the fall of, of, you know, Ford and, and Chevy, and the, the big three automakers, that really affected ad sales. So the local TV markets are, are, you know, suffering for a variety of specific reasons. Um, and another interesting thing, we've, we've been working with, um, two sort of old, old school, um, folks who come out of local TV news who've been helping us just begin a dialogue with local television news directors. And one of the surveys that, that they shared with us when we first began working with them was that when you, when you poll Americans on local television news versus the national broadcast network. So, you know, ABC World News Tonight, um, NBC Nightly News, and CBS versus the local television affiliates, the, I want to say 60 to 70% of Americans basically felt that while they thought that broadcast network news coverage was biased, they did not feel like their local television news affiliate was biased, which I think is a, is a very interesting and important takeaway. I mean, we've seen, and this is part of the whole new media landscape, that as all of these different channels have, have come online, we've seen a large increase in the amount of sort of, um, opinion journalism that's, that's proliferated. And, you know, when you, when you talk to folks in the news business, they'll basically say that, you know, their, their network news is the front section of the newspaper and their cable, you know, the MSNBC, the Fox, that's the, um, that's the op-ed pages, per se. So there's a, there's a definite distinction between what you'll watch on the cable versus the broadcast networks. But for the average American, local affiliates are seen as, as less biased. So I think that's another reason why there's, there's a really, um, important reason to, to focus on that. And, you know, so I, when I talk about local news, obviously that, that's a, that's a very specific group that we're targeting. Um, and this is a poll that was done by folks at, um, George Mason University. And what it found was that there was basically six Americas when it came to climate change. Uh, there's the alarmed group, which, which is at the far, my left. Um, and then there's the dismissive group at the, at the extremes. But then inside, you have this sort of large majority that's kind of fluctuating between, you know, being disengaged and being concerned. And, you know, and I think that for us, you know, focusing on, on folks who don't know that much about the science of the issue, don't really understand what it means to them at the local level. You know, those are the folks that we'd really like to reach. So with that said, you know, how do you, how do you do this? Um, I say seeing climate in the sense that I, I guess I'm a strong believer that this is gonna take a long time. Um, and I think that there's a lot of literacy that needs to be, to be brought into the discussion. And, you know, when I first got to the Weather Channel, I, I came to realize that the U.S. has a really, really high weather literacy. And it's thanks in part to, to places like the Weather Channel and your local television news outlet where the, the, the weather segment is by far the most popular segment of the local television news broadcast. And the average American knows their highs and their lows. They know their fronts. They know what a nor'easter is. I mean, there's, there's a really high weather literacy in the U.S. And there's also, I think, a really strong belief for the most part in the forecast. And we all make fun of a forecast that busts to a certain extent, but I think it arises from the fact that we have great faith in this, this ability to forecast. And to me, that's really, really interesting and really, really important. So the question is to raise people's climate literacy to the same level that, that we have of weather literacy right now. What do you need to do? Well, I like to start my general talks about climate by trying to just give people this image of what climate looks like. And, you know, there's nothing better than using a piece of artwork to, to convey a scientific concept. But to me, this is what climate looks like. And I specifically pick a Jackson Pollock painting because this was a conversation, I'm not making this up, that I had in graduate school with my advisor, Mark Kane. And so the interesting thing about Pollock was the way he made his paintings. And that was, he actually took steps and he painted them on the floor. And so, technically, if you did a Fourier transform of a Pollock painting, you would get climate variability, right? And so, you know, you can call it an orchestra with all of these different instruments playing, or you can call it a Jackson Pollock painting, whatever works. But, you know, I have to say that as this member of the climate community, a community that I love dearly, I feel like one mistake that we made was that we jumped to the trend before we even started with the variability. It's like we skipped all the way to F before we went through the basics. And so what happens when you do that is that, that people aren't, aren't with you when, when things don't look exactly the way they're supposed to look. So that requires sort of helping people understand what change looks like. You know, we know that there's natural variability within the system, and we know that there's this long-term trend. And so it's almost like, you know, part of this climate literacy issue is stepping back and giving people this big sweeping picture. And, you know, I, having studied the Holocene as part of my Ph.D. thesis, I think it's this fascinating period to contrast. So you can basically explain to people, look, you know, for the longest time, for 10,000 years, we've lived in this very stable climate regime. That's when, you know, civilizations came into being. It's, it sort of implies that complexity requires this certain amount of climatic stability. And then when you, when you go through periods where there's large sweeping change or variability, you know, bad things happen to civilizations. And you can read Jared Diamond's book and learn about that, which, you know, people were fascinated by that book, right? So if you can be fascinated by those issues, then you can be fascinated by climate change. They're not that different. So, like I said, you get into trouble if you don't talk about variability before you get to the trend, right? Because this happens and you go through, you know, a period where there's a small decrease because of El Nino, for example, because of this natural climate phenomenon that caused the spike in 98, suddenly, you know, the skeptic community could kind of seize upon something and say, well, wait a second, you know, that's, that doesn't fit your paradigm. So, you know, surely this can't be correct. Well, needless to say, you know, this is, this can be easily explained if you, if you bring natural climate variability into the discussion and the fact that, you know, global warming by its nature is a statistical definition. We don't expect it to be warming everywhere equally, nor do we expect every year to be warmer than the previous. So, you know, those are things that we really feel like we need to, to just teach people about that because it's really interesting when you start to talk about it. And I, you know, I, I've been so fascinated by the summer and the fall because it's, it's just almost been, um, a cruel joke. I'll just say it that way in the sense that, um, if you looked at June through August or June through September, it was the same. Um, the October numbers just came in recently, so I used them. October 2009 in the U.S., third coldest October on record. So, clearly, you know, all of these discussions about, you know, a return to colder conditions and the fact that climate change can't exist were, you know, third coldest October on record. Well, and needless to say, when you give the picture context and, and show people the global perspective, you can see that, you know, the U.S. happened to be quite cold, but, you know, the rest of the globe was actually quite warm. Is this, it was the sixth warmest October on record since 1895. So, you know, kind of giving people these, these moments where they can actually take the data in. Um, I'm a big believer in just showing people what our observations are, um, and then letting them kind of take it in, I think is really, really useful. And these are all things that I feel like you can do very nicely at the local level. Um, I, I always show this just because I, I think for me this is, in a way, what, what can really help people understand what global warming, um, or climate change looks like in the sense that climate change is something you really see in the wintertime. The signal in winter is, is very, very strong. And, you know, obviously you can make the joke that there's not a single, you know, blue state on the map. Um, it's, it's all, you know, essentially red. And that, that, you know, people, people know this, you know, I don't even need to show it to them. They know that the winters have gotten milder. Uh, and I, I think it's, it's, um, when you just show the data, I think it's really, really powerful. And, and on a slightly different level, I have to say, I, I've become somewhat of a satellite junkie. And I, I think some of these satellites are just beautiful stories about science in and of themselves. My favorite one at the moment is the GRACE mission. Um, and for those of you who aren't familiar with the GRACE mission, GRACE is, um, one of the scientists that I interviewed actually described it as kind of like a big spring scale. He's like, imagine you caught a fish, but you didn't have a scale and you wanted to weigh it, and you just hooked it up to a spring on a piece of wood. That's what the GRACE mission is, essentially. It's these two, um, two big satellites linked together by a laser beam. And what they measure is local gravity. And the GRACE mission is actually what allows us to say that Arctic sea ice has receded so dramatically. Um, and it also tells us very interesting other things that I, I think, you know, when you just talk about it in this very observationally based way and explain, you know, how do we know this? Well, we know this from this satellite information. It kind of helps people understand where this information comes from. And, and to me, just stepping back from climate change and, and just to the issue of climate itself, which I actually think is really, really important in how we discuss, um, climate literacy in general, is, you know, the GRACE satellite, because it measures gravity, it also can, can tell us a lot about groundwater. So, for example, the GRACE mission showed that in, in northern India, levels of groundwater have been decreasing by about a foot per year because of human drawdown. And to me, in terms of, well, for example, national security risk issues, any, anything linked to this kind of information, it's, it's really, really powerful. Um, and, and you, you know, climate change aside, just the realization that, that, for example, groundwater levels are decreasing. And that, that is, I think, something that, that, you know, if this was happening in California, we had data to show it, it would just help people feel more connected to, to things that these satellites are measuring and seeing. You know, and, and I think because I, I spent so much time at an operational weather, um, center, I, I think that, you know, for the average person, weather is what we connect to. Um, you know, when you ask someone what, most people don't know what climate is. I mean, you can, you can help them with this definition, climate is what you expect, weather is what you get. But for the most part, it's really hard to have an image of what climate is, because by definition, it's the lack of weather, right? So it's, it's, it's really important to kind of help them understand climate and climate change in the context of the weather they're experiencing. And this was actually something, and, and because, and I say that in the context of the fact that because we know that in a warming world, weather extremes will increase, you know, and one of the things that John Krosnick did in his polls was he actually looked at people's, um, thoughts about the stability, so to speak, of weather. Uh, this is, again, this is this 2008 poll, and, you know, 43 percent of Americans said that weather patterns are more unstable. It was actually higher the previous year, because Katrina had happened in that period. So, you know, regardless of, of attribution, um, extreme weather events, I think, do give people this glimpse into the future, so to speak. Um, and, you know, and there's a 50, 60 percent of Americans at that point felt that global warming was making weather events like droughts and storms more frequent. You know, I think, to me, those are areas where you can really help build and educate the public. Uh, and then Krosnick basically just said that, uh, the fact that the weather patterns had actually died down led to the drop, and needless to say, the October numbers that I showed you, you know, probably further, um, fueled that, that drop in people's level of concern. So, I think, for me, the other aspect of, of how we help people think about climate is to help them see the future. Like, like I said before, I think the fact that, that we all have this inherent belief and understanding of a five-day weather forecast, it means that we can get out 50 years. It means that we can help people understand these longer-term forecasts, but we have to explain them because they're fundamentally different, right? And, and the sort of classic thing that, that folks will say is, well, you know, you can't actually, you know, get a good seven-day forecast, so how can we get a good 50-year forecast? And I think that's sort of, it's a huge moment to help educate people about the difference between climate and weather, and the fact that, you know, I guess the way I've come to think about climate projections, or climate forecasts, is that, in a sense, they're, they're anti-forecasts, in the sense that, you know, I look at an event like the Red River flooding that, that occurred, and how, you know, a community will completely mobilize in advance around this forecast, and, you know, sandbag a city, and, you know, just really come together as a community. I mean, to me, that's a, it's a huge moment, essentially. How do you do that with climate? Um, well, I think the tricky thing about climate and a climate projection or forecast is the fact that it's not something that you would completely respond to in a, in a totally reactive way. It's, it's got a proactive component built into it because it's based on scenarios, and it's based on human choices over the next 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. So there's this built-in component of, well, the forecast doesn't exactly have to come true. It doesn't have to look like that. What we're saying is, if we keep doing what we're doing, it will look like that. And I think helping people understand that that's, that's not the pathway you want to follow is, is kind of how we differentiate climate and weather. You know, and, and to, to quote Professor Roland, "What's the use of having developed science if we make predictions and then just, you know, wait around for them to come true?" Which I think is another big, you know, big component to this. So, you know, this is, this is what, as scientists, we see this and, and we look out to the end of the century and we think, "Oh my goodness, this is not something that we can allow to happen." But, you know, how do you translate this into something more real and something more tangible? As, you know, as important as that is. And I, and I think, you know, for me, what we need to help people do is, is it kind of getting back to this variability and, and trend issue, is to help people think on longer and longer time scales. And I, you know, I think about El Nino is just this perfect opportunity to help people understand that we can actually look out three to six months in the future and then just build upon this, this looking out into the future, um, aspect of, of science. And I, you know, this is, this is from the CIMIP-5 runs that are coming out and just the fact that you have the longer term CO2 related warming, but then you have what CO2 and the sort of global warming aspect, how that overlays and how that plays on natural climate variability on the interannual to decadal time scale. And, and, you know, these are things that it's, it's a moving system and it's going to go up and down and it's a tough thing to see. And, you know, a lot of the ways in which the science is moving right now, it's to help people also differentiate between what happens if we mitigate and what happens if we don't. And these are some model runs that just show, uh, sea ice concentration in, in different scenarios, February, March, April, in a non-mitigation scenario versus a mitigation scenario. And, you know, I have to say, I was, I was at an international security conference recently and one of the panel discussions was about the Arctic and there was a guy from Maersk shipping on the panel. And it was, you know, it was a really fascinating discussion about Arctic sea ice and needless to say what that means for shipping. And, you know, his, his large interest was the fact that Yokohama to New York, going through the Northwest Passage is 2,200 miles shorter, Yokohama to Rotterdam going through the Northeast Passage is 4,000 miles shorter. But for him, it wasn't the savings of distance as much, it was the savings of time. So what he wanted to know was when is, when is the ice actually gone? Because unless I can get my ship through at a minimum speed, I'm not going to be using the Northwest or Northeast Passage. And so as, you know, as sort of clinical as that is, as an example, there's a great deal of interest in just understanding what the future will look like and how to prepare for it. The other interesting thing that I learned was that a Navy ship takes 270,000 gallons of fuel every three days. So, you know, the discussion, the intersection of climate and energy becomes very, very interesting to folks. So, you know, this notion of connecting climate to weather is, I think it's a really important one. And, you know, one of the things that we've been trying to do is to work with local TV meteorologists to help them make these connections and to help them bring climate into their, into their forecasts. And that requires, you know, helping folks see what the future will look like on the local level. And I, you know, starting with just the peer reviewed science literature, I mean, to me, this was a fascinating study that looked at, you know, what would, what would the heat wave in Europe look like as we move out in time, you know, and these sort of fingerprinting analyses studies that you can do. And for those of you who know this already, I'm sorry, but, um, you know, the fact that if you include, um, greenhouse gas emissions out into the future, by the middle of the century, roughly, the 2003 type summer will be happening every other year. And as you, as you begin to move in that direction, I think things, examples like this really help people understand what the future will look like. So one of the, the products that, um, that we pulled together at Climate Central was, uh, let me see if I can actually make this run. It's got audio, [00:35:44] Speaker 2: but it's the audio part itself, isn't that, isn't that, um, for cities around the country, this map shows [00:35:50] Speaker 1: the number of August days topping 95 degrees in the average year. Scientists project that by the 2050s, global warming could make such hot days much more common. So that's just a really general overview, but what we did was essentially help people understand what their city could look like in the future. So you, you could take in Atlanta and just using the statistics of extreme events, just help them look at the number of 90 degree or 95 or 100 degree days and how that, that maps out in the future. And then if you offer that up to a local TV meteorologist, you know, he might not use it in his, his nightly forecast. I mean, he might actually use it during a heat wave to say, okay, well, you know, think about today's heat wave. Well, in the year 2050, if we, if we continue business as usual, this is what it will look like. But these are, these are things that could actually live on their website. And, and it, there's, there's just a way to enrich the content that they're doing. This was actually a segment that I did when I was at the weather channel, where we looked at a forecast for the middle of the century, and then talked about why the models project this kind of a pattern and, and sort of help people again, think on these longer time scales. And, you know, to kind of get at this issue of the media, it's funny. Like I said, no one really knows what it's going to look like, per se, in the future. But a lot of, a lot of the stories that I've heard in terms of how people describe the way the media is working is that, you know, you have these different grid moments, so to speak. You've got your big grid moment, which, you know, you can use the Michael Jackson funeral as an example of this moment where so much media attention was, was devoted to one event. And you were watching it on every size screen imaginable. But for the most part, the media now is kind of being parsed into different size screens, depending upon what kind of information it is. You know, you've got sort of these big, these big grid moments that focus the nation's attention for, you know, a set amount of time. But you've got, you know, your, your mobile phone, you've got all of these different devices that you're getting different types of information from. And it's, it's almost a question now of trying to figure out which type of information is most suited to which size screen to a certain extent. And I, and I think in that sense, climate information has, has relevancy on, on all of these different size screens. And, you know, to kind of wrap up with this notion of how do you help people see solutions? You know, needless to say, we, we, we do need to help people think about the connection between climate and energy, and the connection between how we, how we reinvent this, this energy infrastructure, per se, and kind of get across the fact that there is no one single silver bullet. And with the, the folks that we're working with in the local television markets, we're trying to offer up products that are locally derived. So, you know, looking at, at the statistics of, of hot days in the future for different local markets is one example. But I, I'd also love to see the weather forecast just, in a sense, blown up in, in, literally, so that we can begin to look at this bigger picture, because weather is, is fundamentally interconnected with everything else, but also broaden it to include climate and energy. To a certain extent, I think it would be fascinating if, you know, not on a regular basis, but every now and then you throw up a map of, you know, here's atmospheric CO2. This is what it looked like today. You can actually animate this and show the dynamics of it. I think it's fascinating. The Vulcan project is one that you can actually download and look at, but you can also look at the carbon footprints of different cities. You know, and this, again, it sort of takes, it takes climate out of the standard place you would see it, which for the most part, climate was always, you know, part of the news or part of the political coverage, and it sort of moves it into a different realm. And that allows you to talk about it in a different way. But even with something like a carbon footprint, it allows you to do some basic education and say that, well, interestingly enough, a city like, you know, Indianapolis has the carbon footprint that it does because it gets a majority of its energy from coal, whereas, you know, LA or Seattle has a smaller carbon footprint because of things like hydro and nuclear. It gives you this opportunity to educate about electricity supply in, you know, hopefully a, just a more neutral format. The other thing that I guess I could experience is at the Weather Channel. Everybody knew where Tornado Alley was. Everybody knew where, you know, Hurricane Alley was. But, you know, how many people actually understand where the wind belt is and why? You know, and these are maps that we can very nicely do, and these are things that we can actually very nicely bring into a forecast mode where you can help people understand these kinds of natural resources. You know, one thing we could do is give solar forecasts, and that's something that we've been working on. This is data that comes from the University of Wisconsin, and you can, you know, on a daily basis show this and project it out. Now, we need to, we're working on just converting it into something obviously more useful than kilowatts per meter squared. We've been focusing to a large extent on wind forecasts. This was actually a very early pilot phase that we've been doing with AWS, a company in Seattle, that literally takes the Wharf model, for those of you who are familiar with the weather forecasting models. They do some proprietary additional tweaking to it because they've got ground-based wind stations, but you can actually offer up a wind forecast. And then what we did was just based on the amount of wind turbines in a given state, we could calculate what percent of average household electricity usage could be generated by that state on a given day. So, you know, it was a good day for folks in Montana. And it was not quite such a good day in Texas, despite the fact that it has the best installed capacity in the U.S. So, I think there's interesting ways to connect weather and climate and energy and kind of show people that weather -- I guess from my experience, we've always focused on the negative side of the weather spectrum, the natural disasters associated with extreme weather events like tornadoes and hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, that kind of thing. But this kind of allows you to focus on the positive side of weather and make that connection between weather and energy. So, this is another product that we're testing out. I'm going to just wrap it up there and wrap it up specifically with an op-ed piece that I liked a lot. It was written by Tom Wolfe during the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. And he explained the whole race to the moon. And he described it as, you know, the U.S. kind of entered into this single combat mission with Russia, who was going to get to the moon first. And he basically says it was sort of a -- it was a mistake, in the sense that there was never a plan about what to do after we got to the moon. So, you know, we won the race, we got to the moon, and then it was like, okay, now what do we do? And, you know, he ended the piece by saying, you know, how could such a thing happen? You know, in hindsight, the answer is obvious. NASA had neglected to recruit a core of philosophers. And I think that, you know, maybe there's a lesson to be learned in the sense that, you know, when we talk about climate and its connection with energy and just all of the issues that come down to infrastructure and sort of reinventing the path forward, they're, you know, it's important to make it very multidisciplinary. And that's why I think what you guys are doing at the Wood School is so important. But I think that's a useful thing to keep in mind. Now, if I've gone completely over in time, we can stop it there. No, we actually have another 10 minutes. Okay, so with that in mind, I just thought that I would show you a video that we did for the NewsHour. And I think, you know, for me, having kind of come from being a scientist to trying to tell stories about scientists, I, you know, I think that as someone who cares tremendously about people's understanding of the issue of climate change, I also feel like it's so important that we don't lose sight of the fact that people have to fall in love with the subject to a certain extent. I mean, and, you know, the moon landing, I think, is a perfect example of what inspired us. I mean, for most of us in the room, I'm sure this had a, you know, had a pretty hefty reason associated with why some of us became scientists. And whether it was Jacques Cousteau or the astronauts or, you know, there's, you know, there's, there's an emotional connection. I think that's maybe one of the things that I learned in the transition from, from science to, to covering science is that, you know, Andy Revkin always says it, you know, to tell a story, you need heat and you need light. The light is the science, but the heat is what makes you care. And I think at the end of the day, when it comes to climate change and climate issues on, in and of themselves, you know, we have to make it very clear that this is an ongoing science and there's still so much to learn. And there's still, you know, people trying to find out very basic fundamental things. And with that, I'm going to skip to the next one. This is the report that we did for the news hour. Far in the north of Greenland, a team of climate scientists from 14 nations, including the U.S., has just completed its first season of drilling a 1.6 mile core of solid ice. What you see here is [00:45:04] Speaker 3: a piece of ice from the climate chain between the last vessel and the present climate. It's about 11,000 years old, and it contains a lot of tiny little bubbles of the ancient atmosphere. J.P. Stephenson is the [00:45:17] Speaker 2: field operations manager for the North Greenland Enean Ice Drilling Project, or NEAM. The project's ultimate goal, to unlock the climate history trapped inside those tiny bubbles. The beautiful thing [00:45:30] Speaker 4: about an ice core is that it's got all of these different indicators, atmospheric composition, temperature, mean ocean temperature, dust, all these kinds of indicators are on exactly the same time [00:45:43] Speaker 1: scale. Jeff Severnhaus, a scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, is working with new [00:45:49] Speaker 2: scientists to reconstruct all those indicators in the hope of learning more about a period in climate history known as the Enean. The Enean period started about 130,000 years ago, and we know it lasted about 15,000 years before the Earth plunged back into an ice age. NEAM is really trying to get the [00:46:09] Speaker 4: record of the last time that the Earth was warmer than today. So it's an analog for what our future [00:46:15] Speaker 1: looks like under global warming. During the evening, temperatures were somewhere between 5 and 9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than today, a scenario that climate models suggest could happen again by the end of the [00:46:27] Speaker 4: century if present trends continue. It's a very, very realistic scenario from what we may experience in the next 100 to 200 years. [00:46:40] Speaker 5: We're getting older and older with every meter we're melting, we're getting back to the future. [00:46:46] Speaker 2: 30 feet below the surface in this huge trench carved from the snow is where this ice core research begins. [00:46:53] Speaker 3: The newest thing we have now that nobody else has tried is a very sophisticated analytical system. It's called continuous flow analysis, where actually in the field you cut the slab of the ice core, a thin rod of ice following the length of the ice, and you tilt that vertically and you melt it on the hot plate on one end, and then as it melts you do the analysis, millimeter by millimeter. [00:47:16] Speaker 6: You can hear the bubbles coming out of the ice. The samples are also cut, bagged, and boxed up, [00:47:26] Speaker 2: and then shipped to research centers around the world. [00:47:32] Speaker 3: We call it the post office? [00:47:35] Speaker 2: The logistics of ice core drilling are far from simple. [00:47:38] Speaker 3: It's just complicated, and I hate complications. I like to run smoothly. [00:47:43] Speaker 2: The operation starts in a small town of Kanger Luswai on Greenland's west coast. [00:47:49] Speaker 3: My first season was in 1980, so that's 29 years ago, and that was a marriage for life. [00:47:58] Speaker 2: Keeping the operation running smoothly is his wife and fellow scientist, Doorte Dahl Jensen, Neil's project leader. [00:48:05] Speaker 7: The airplanes come courtesy of the 109 airlift wing of the New York Air Force National Guard. [00:48:20] Speaker 2: And pilots by George Austin. [00:48:22] Speaker 6: But we're the only unit in the world that flies the specialized LC-130 aircraft, so C-130-owned skis, which allows us to support the scientific chapters and take these large airplanes and land and palm skis. [00:48:34] Speaker 2: But getting to the ice drilling camp is just part of the challenge. [00:48:38] Speaker 5: It's always light, so when you first get here, it may be a little hard to sleep. It takes a couple of nights to get used to it, but then you get so tired from work and from not sleeping the nights before that it no longer becomes a problem. [00:48:52] Speaker 2: Vassily Petrenko is a scientist at the University of Colorado. [00:48:56] Speaker 5: It's a very simple life. It's kind of like a frontier outpost. We sleep in mostly in those red structures that you see behind me. They're called weather ports. [00:49:06] Speaker 2: While the neat field camp may look like a frontier outpost on the surface, Petrenko and others are engaged in very sophisticated scientific research underground. [00:49:16] Speaker 5: One of the things that we see in the ice cores is a strong correlation between carbon dioxide levels and temperatures. So at times of warm temperatures, carbon dioxide is high. At times of cold temperatures, carbon dioxide is low, which reinforces what science has been showing recently that carbon dioxide does cause warming. [00:49:36] Speaker 1: And that warming leads to melting. The Greenland Ice Sheet contains enough ice to raise global sea level by 23 feet, [00:49:44] Speaker 2: a worst-case scenario associated with global warming. Satellite data from the NASA GRACE mission show that Greenland's reservoir of ice has plummeted in recent years, [00:49:53] Speaker 1: about 340 billion tons of ice melt in 2007 alone, about the same as San Francisco Bay, [00:50:01] Speaker 2: draining completely every week for a year. The scientists hope his new ice score will tell them how much of Greenland's ice melted during the Indian period, when global sea level was 13 to 20 feet higher. [00:50:13] Speaker 1: A finding that could be crucial in determining how much and how quickly sea level could rise over the next several centuries. [00:50:21] Speaker 7: We know from all the other ice scores and drillers, we find ice from the England in the ice scores. And of course, this immediately tells us that even though it was warmer in the England, it wasn't warm enough for the whole Greenland Ice Sheet to disintegrate. And that's something that's debated a lot. How much more people will need in the future, before the Green Ice Sheet will totally disappear, before we go beyond the tipping parts. [00:50:43] Speaker 2: Now that this drill season has come to an end, the scientists are heading home, where they will continue working to unlock the climate history, trapped inside those tiny but telling bubbles. [00:50:59] Speaker ?: All right, anybody has anything to come up here? [00:51:09] Speaker 8: Okay, I'm sure we have some kind of questions, so [00:51:13] Speaker 1: the question was, if any folks have followed, for the past week now, there's been a, it's been, in the press, it's been called ClimateGate. There's emails that were hacked from the University of East Anglia, over the past several years, showing exchanges between scientists and, you know, what, what I think. Um, you know, my, my sense is that it, it was very much, uh, an, you know, an intentional, um, attack on our level of trust in scientists. I think that's really unfortunate. But fundamentally, I think, I think it, it, um, will be short-lived. Uh, I think it'll mobilize, you know, that, that group that is, is very much entrenched. Um, and, and will not, for any reasons, trust the science. I think that, uh, I think that, you know, it's not anything, not, nothing that was found can challenge the notion that climate change is caused by human activity. I mean, there wasn't a single exchange that could, that could prevent that knowledge from standing very firm. Um, but, uh, you know, I, I think it's a, it's an unfortunate attack on, you know, the integrity of, of the scientific community. Okay, all right, uh, let's see. [00:52:42] Speaker ?: How about there, and then we'll go there, and then over there. [00:52:44] Speaker 9: Um, I have a blog called Climate Change Update, and I write about science, and policy, and legislation, and business. Uh, one of the most recent science article is, uh, the Arctic crisis. So I was gratified to see your story in Greenland there. Um, to what extent do you think, uh, the issue of the Arctic, and what's happened to the, uh, climate, uh, in Arctic regions, and the permafrost, and methane emissions, to what extent do you think that needs to, to, uh, have a bigger role in discussions about climate science? And I'm particularly interested, not just in the Arctic regions, but issue of methane emissions. Um, we all hear about carbon dioxide. That's what everybody talks about, proponents talk about, and, and skeptics as well. They all talk about carbon dioxide. Even Al Gore talks only about carbon dioxide. Nobody talks about methane, which, of course, as you know, has a much higher global warming potential than carbon dioxide. So, where do you see that going, and to what extent should people be focusing on those issues? [00:53:55] Speaker 1: Is Chris Field here? I, I think this notion of, of these feedbacks, and actually Phil, who I work with at Climate Central, can, can speak to this as well. I, I think, I think that there's an educational aspect of helping people become acquainted with what methane is. You know, I, I think it's a question of, of level and audience. I think for the most part, you know, we have to sort of focus and help people get along with just understanding some of the basics. And I, but I do think that this notion of these additional feedbacks coming in and, and really pushing us even further along this course of warming is, it's, it's a huge, and it's a really scary element to the story. So, I, I think there's, I think it needs to be told, um, but it needs to be told probably gradually. And yeah, but it's, I mean, it's, it's a really big one. I think it was there, and then we'll go over it to you. [00:54:47] Speaker 6: Um, David, there's been an anti-intellectualist, and I was wondering what you think about what part that plays in this whole thing? [00:55:01] Speaker 1: You know, it, it's funny, one of my favorite sort of science quotes, and I won't get it completely right, but it, it's the whole Copernicus, uh, Darwin and Freud thing that, you know, Copernicus showed us that the, uh, Earth rotates around the sun, and then, you know, Darwin and Freud ultimately showing us we're not even in control of our own emotions, essentially, and that, that each scientific, each huge scientific finding is tough. You know, it, it's hard to kind of take this stuff in, and I, on a certain level, I might almost say that, you know, climate change might be the fourth thing, you know, whether it's Smonte Oradius or Charles Keeling, you know, showing us that, that humans are altering the environment. Um, the only difference being that, in this case, we can actually do something about it. I mean, you know, we can spend our lives on the couch and hope that, you know, maybe that changes our relationship to our, you know, emotional state, but, you know, I think that it, it, it, it is one of these really big sort of ground shaking things, and that's why there is, you know, to be expected this kind of backlash, um, on a certain level. So I think it, it comes with the territory of finding something out that's really hard to digest, uh, and that's, I think, why it takes time to, kind of, bring people to where we'd all like to be. [00:56:14] Speaker 6: It seems like the scientists have changed something, uh, [00:56:17] Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and I, well, and I, that's why I guess I feel that, that there, there is a, such an important role for scientists to play. You know, and I think there's a statistic, like, the average, you know, the, only one out of ten people knows a scientist personally. It's, it's a very small number that, you know, to a certain extent, you know, there is this ivory tower issue where we just don't get out there enough, um, and so I, I strongly believe that it's, it's, it's part of the job description now to, just to get out and, and sort of help people come along and, and understand why we're [00:56:56] Speaker 10: saying what we're saying, because it's a big thing to swallow. Over there. Um, I don't, coming from an active, yeah. Oh, sorry. Yeah, whatever. Okay. Um, so you touched on this before a little bit, uh, what is, you think is the role of, like, the local TV meteorologist? Because, I studied meteorologist as an undergrad, and I know that you don't really have to know much about climate, per se, to be like a weatherman. So, I don't know how you think if they're really important, because everyone can relate to their local TV weatherman, or? [00:57:25] Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, in fact, you know, I think one of the statistics basically shows that your local television meteorologist is most people's, uh, relationship with a, a scientist. You know, that, that's sort of, you know, this, this one really important pathway to science. And so I guess the way I see it is, you know, for those, for those TV meteorologists who want to talk about climate, and, you know, as, as part of what Climate Central is doing is we're reaching out to local news stations and, and, and actually working with local TV TV meteorologists. There was, for example, Dan Satterfield, um, Huntsville, Alabama TV meteorologist, cares deeply about climate change, has been to the Arctic, is going to the Antarctic, wants to learn more about how to communicate about climate change. Through the AMS now you can, you can learn more as well. Um, but that said, I think there's only so much that, that you can, you can ask of a television meteorologist to do. First of all, you've got to ask them what they want and what they need. But in a three minute segment, in a three minute forecast where you've got to get through, you know, the basics, um, there's only so much climate you can bring in. But I, I think that there's, there's ways to bring climate in on a regular basis. And just, you know, help people understand that there is a relevancy to this kind of climate information. I think there's only so much that you can ask of a television meteorologist to do. First of all, you've got to ask them what they want and what they need. But in a three-minute segment, in a three-minute forecast where you've got to get through the basics, there's only so much climate you can bring in. But I think that there's ways to bring climate in on a regular basis and just help people understand that there is a relevancy to this kind of climate information. And for me, these big, what I'll call big-grid weather events, whether it's the Red River flood, Hurricane Katrina, these moments, I mean, the big flood event that you guys had out here last month or six weeks ago, these are these moments where we're all tuning in to get the forecast. And if you can get one statement that's accurate to help people make the connection to the bigger picture, oh, my goodness, what a great achievement that would be. [00:59:03] Speaker 8: And how about you? [00:59:05] Speaker 6: Kind of on a similar vein, how do you take coming from media, [00:59:09] Speaker ?: there's so much media out there that, especially in country, you know, cable news, particularly, that almost seems to be deliberately out there to this important profile, all exciting, trying to change the campus. [00:59:22] Speaker 8: How do you combat that? Because how many people get their information from those sources and those sources alone? [00:59:26] Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I wish there was an answer to that. Like, I don't think you can combat it. I mean, I think that the way the media is going, you know, the days of Walter Cronkite are over. The one thing that I do think is true and will play out over time is that, you know, in the end, integrity and trust will still be what makes people come back to you. I mean, it is far more fragmented. I mean, people are gravitating more towards shared voices, I mean, voices that they have a common belief in. But, you know, that said, I think, you know, honest, accurate information will prevail. But there's a huge fragmentation issue. And that's why I think using these big grid events, so to speak, where everyone is focused on this one subject where you can kind of get more information out there, that's helpful. But I think it's hard. And I don't know that it's going to be easy to combat that, per se, because the landscape has just changed so much. [01:00:27] Speaker 8: I think we're going to take two more questions. I wonder if we go to you over there. I hear you talking about mass media and local weather channels, and I want to get even more local than that. I was at Eastside Prep Private High School in East Palo Alto this morning and saw a presentation by Alliance for Climate Education. Very effective. Our high school in Los Altos had two scientists from Stanford, both of whom have spoken to your audience here. Well, they were terrific. The kids were very responsive. Their message was accepted immediately. And when I see statistics on polls for what Americans believe about climate change, I realize they're talking about a different part of America, a different age group of America than the youth of America. And I'd love to see some statistics for them. And certainly, I would encourage all scientists to have, you said very few people know a scientist personally. There are opportunities for scientists to appear, especially during birth week, at lots of local venues in the Bay Area. I would encourage them to go out and speak to this. [01:01:42] Speaker 1: Yeah, the Rotary Club, the Lions Club, any opportunity that you have to put yourself out there, it does make a huge difference. I really believe that. For more, please visit us at stanford.edu.