Bishop Hill Diary date: correct messages edition
Mar 14, 2014 Diary dates Media The Environmental Physics group of Institute of Physics has organised a meeting to look at how scientists and journalists can work together to convey "the correct messages". It's on 27 March in London.
The degree to which humans are influencing the physical mechanisms that are causing the Earth’s climate system to warm, remains a controversial subject that has caused passionate and heated debates in the news media.
As the public gather most of their information on these issues from newspapers, TV, radio and the internet, the way that evidence is communicated by scientists to journalists is a crucial factor in the public understanding of climate science.
Through group discussions and a number of keynote talks, the aim of this event is to bring together environmental scientists, journalists and science communicators to discuss the ways in which communications in climate science can be improved, and what each of the stakeholders can do to present their work more effectively.
The event will also cover how scientists work with public engagement officers and journalists to ensure that they are conveying the correct messages.
Details here.
Reader Comments (90)
"The event will also cover how scientists work with public engagement officers and journalists to ensure that they are conveying the correct messages."
Keynote speaker will be Kim Jong-un
A true message would be honest about uncertainties and just plain unknowns. That would be science. A 'correct' message which emphasised hypothesis as truth would convey a degree of certainty in order to push an agenda. That would be PR. Why is the IoP apparently getting into the PR business?
creepy
What issue could anyone have with trying to accurately present the truth? Sounds like a good idea to me.
It *is* possible to actually find stuff out, know it, and then truthfully communicate that, you know :)
Doug
"Correct messages" has totalitarian overtones, hence my tweet about Mao TseTung thought. One heard a lot of this kind of thing when I lived in China.
Given what we know about the IoP, this meeting will not be about truth seeking but about religious conformity.
Amusing to compare the two posts at 11:13 AM. The single-word one rang truest to me. Thanks Martin.
Andrew,
I have a strong suspicion that you are being a *little* paranoid here! In a previous paragraph, it says this:
"the way that evidence is communicated by scientists to journalists is a crucial factor in the public understanding of climate science"
I think that we can all agree that communicating *evidence* effectively is really important?
People will use value judgements to interpret that evidence and then decide what to do, but we should all be able to agree about well understood phenomena at some level.
Otherwise, we'd just end up abandoning everything we've learned since the enlightenment.
"Stakeholders?" Ahh, securing their trough-access.
Hi Doug
better if it had said 'correct science' rather than 'correct message' - no one here would disagree with the former.
Tempted to go along, but real life and work take priority.
Doug: I think the phrase "they've got history" may explain why we read this so negatively.
Doug
Have you read my "Institutional Bias" pamphlet? The IoP goes a long way out of its way to ensure that dissenting voices on climate do not get an airing.
Doug, there is a 'mesasge' and there are error bounds to the message in its transmission via channels of media. This is operational is *all* output from media and affects everything they say. Climate scientists are unique in having a fervent desire to not only formulate 'the message', but also to control its spin. Why?
Andrew,
Ideas that are correct have a funny habit of coming to the fore. If the ideas of dissenters have any merit, they'll get picked up, have no fear. Physicists are a contrary lot, in my experience.
Of course, if those dissenting voices are actually spouting nonsense, they'll get ignored, as they deserve to be.
Doug, is it your contention that your own outfit does in fact truthfully convey the uncertainty of the science? Even when it is off-message? Some of us think the excision of doubt from the message is what makes it 'correct'. Some of us think that there is NO kind of certainty to, say, presenting model output as evidence. Do you disagree?
@Barry Woods
Yeah, good suggestion. I would have changed it to that, but I doubt it was a climate scientist who wrote it?
The web link page doesn't seem to work... www.iopconferences.org/iop Maybe they took the page down?
Ed B, it definitely works. Try a different browser. It's a PDF, so may not work correctly in some configurations of Firefox, for example.
the link to the article pdf works.. not the link within it, how to register a place (ie what Ed B quoted)
Re: Doug,
Here is an example for you.
Correct message: The models are the best we have and match past climate quite well. They project a high climate sensitivity and indicate that we are looking at significant temperature increases in future. Some model runs have a "pause" in them of equivalent length.
Truthful message: The models are all that we have. There are so many tunable parameters to them that we can match any past climate we want to. The models are running hot when compared to observations. Some of the model runs have a "pause" but we must never reveal why they have a "pause" - what random factors within the model aligned to create the pause (eg. successive strong La Ninas), and how other metrics such as clouds and precipitation matched.
They could read this and save on their carbon footprint, (although I always thought that was the province of "Odour Eaters"....)
Global Warming – "The Social Construction Of A Quasi-Reality", http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/social_construction.html.
Original paper at http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/v84152h64m5r36t5/
They might find some inspiration here also: "We Are Thinking The Wrong Thoughts"
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/wrong_thoughts.html
Doug:
Except when science is highly politicised, like Lysenko under Stalin and his successors. And except for continental drift/plate tectonics and a host of other examples. Of course in both those cases the correct (or more correct) view has prevailed by the time we write. The other difference with the climate case is that policies have already been enacted in the name of the science, policies that those of us on this side of the table feel are truly disastrous, from biofuel subsidies onwards. This creates all kinds of vested interests and indeed deep divisions in society. And it adds to the pressure for correct ideas not to be stated with the force they should, including correct statements of uncertainty.
The correct URL is
http://www.iop.org/events/scientific/conferences/
which leads to this and then this. It's a measure of the competence of these people that they can't even get their own web addresses correct.
Both of these web pages include the following slight variation of the "correct message" line:
I hope that Christopher Booker, James Delingpole and David Rose will attend this event and report back after their re-education.
arguably, myself and Andrew are science communicators to some degree..
I've persuade the BBC to correct a few howlers in their articles, for example..
It is very much akin to when a political party fails at an election the leaders will blame "failing to get the message across".
The actual reason for failure is that the voters understood the message far too well - and did not like it, or saw how empty the statements, or the evasion on areas of weakness.
The problem with climate is the similar. People perceive the lack of substance in the science, and the evasions of the policy-makers.
Doug , Barry, the phrase "convey the correct messages" is in the last paragraph of the flyer. The first paragraph asserts that the issue "remains a controversial subject that has caused passionate and heated debates in the news media".
I can recall seeing almost no debate outside off the blogosphere and the MSM appears only to present the argument from authority as evidence. Still it seems that the IOP accepts that the "science" is "controversial" and therefore not "settled". As to the "correct messages" I note that the RS and APS have just published the Authorised Version.
Perhaps adherence to this will provide the same unifying force as "Hymns Ancient and Modern" and the "Book of Common Prayer".
Where have all these "passionate and heated debates in the news media" been? I thought it was the lack of such debates that was the problem, at least in the MSM.
Paul Matthews - Thanks. Seems like they made a bit of an unforced error, putting a wrong weblink in a flyer.
I don't think I will be able to go, but if I were to attend I would encourage the IoP to take a leaf out of the book of the American Physical Society and begin a thorough and transparent process of establishing a policy position on CAGW. Judith Curry posted about this on her blog here http://judithcurry.com/2014/02/19/aps-reviews-its-climate-change-statement/ and and a more detailed description of the process as well as transcripts of the workshop they held in January are on the APS website here: http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/updates/statementreview.cfm
I'd suggest they stop lying and exaggerating.
Looks like ex BBC - Richard Black, is helping to explain about the correct message....
Registration and refreshments
10:30 Professor Averil McDonald - Title to be confirmed
11:00 Mr Richard Black - Title to be confirmed
11:30 Dr Matt Wattson - Title to be confirmed
12:00 Lunch and Networking
13:00 Professor Chris Rapley - Title to be confirmed
13:30 Keep Calm and Carry-On Communicating
Mr Asher Minns, University of East Anglia, UK
14:00 Coffee and refreshment
14:30 Mr Mike Bishop - Title to be confirmed
15:00 Panel discussion
16:00 End of meeting
dennisa: Thanks for those links. I'd not made the connection between you and the Dennis Ambler noted in my wiki since 2010.
Define: 'correct message'...
JamesG, not much chance of that. I looked at the main IOP site and clicked on News. The first item there is the recent claim that heritage sites such the Statue of Liberty "could be lost to rising sea-levels". Anthony Watts has done the sums and ridiculed this, coming up with a time scale of 23,000 years.
Barry: 16:00 End of meeting strikes me as the most even-handed bit.
Paul Matthews:
And why is one of these not speaking, to challenge any lazy assumptions of the others?
First, they need to explain why the Earth's climate system is not warming. Then they should explain why they still have faith in climate models that have never been validated and have outputs that diverge from reality. Then they should explain why they are launching propaganda exercises rather than looking at the physics to find where it has all gone wrong.
Does 'science' automatically have a 'message'. Or is the 'message' a construct of many other things...politics, philosophy. economics, risk, (in)security etc?
If the former, which experiments are crucial to its determination? If the latter, how is the 'correct message' to be determined and/or challenged/falsified?
Discuss.
Talking of excellent yet precise communication of what is known and unknown in science and technology did anyone see 'Miracle on the Hudson' pilot Chesley Sullenberger talking to Emily Maitlis on Newsnight last night about the missing Malaysia Airlines jet MH370? Worth catching.
'the way that evidence is communicated by scientists to journalists is a crucial factor in the public understanding of climate science.'
When they adopt standard IR physics and heat generation that obeys the 2nd Law, it will become a science.
[Snip - O/T]
They told us that CAGW by greenhouse gases was more powerful than any natural forcing. They told us the warming would be relentless. They told us that nothing would stop the warming even if we ceased all emissions immediately.
Then the warming stopped. They don't know why it stopped. They don't know if or when it might start again. They can't rule out that the earth will cool.
That is why people question their science. If they think the solution is to find a way to communicate that what they said before is still 100% true then they are going to feed us propaganda.
I think they are getting worried about their funding.
The real question is what they do about the 'incorrect message' , do they honestly take it on to prove how scientifically its wrong , or just smear and BS
Its AGW sceptics call for what this institute should stand for , good scientific practice based on valid evidenced. It’s the AGW proponents that seem to prefer smoke, mirrors and BS. Let see if their willing to take that on.
Averil seems interesting, a very sensible IOP article, about NOT buying an electric car
http://www.iopblog.org/averil-macdonald-please-dont-buy-an-electric-car/
Doug,
To a first approximation the honest position even when using AR5 as a benchmark for the science (though minus the rather disconnected summary for policy makers), is surely that "we don't know", along with a side of "confidence in catastrophe is low". Will this be the 'correct' messsage communicated? And AR5 itself artfully avoids skeptic emphasis where this has managed to breach editorial bias and make it into the literature. I suspect the narrative communicated will indeed be 'correct' for the continued survival of that very same narrative, i.e. the one we already know, with an emphasis on catastrophe and urgency and sacrifice and certainty.
I am tempted to ask how many more "educational" seminars the various erstwhile scientific (now largely propagandist) bodies are going to run in what look like increasingly desperate attempts to keep the cAGW myth alive.
Doug, please understand that we have heard "the message", we have understood "the message", and we have rejected "the message".
Communication of the climate is — almost inevitably — as chaotic as the climate itself. Why? Because after the "consensus" scientists informed the world at large that "the science is settled" (or words to that effect) other scientists and nature itself have proved that not to be the case. And the more that other scientists and nature itself produce observational evidence that climate models are (largely) crap and the more you (not personally) cling to the fatuous idea that crap models are better than no models and continue down the path of "if models and observations diverge then it's the observations that are wrong" and think up ever more bizarre reasons not to admit that you just might have got it wrong ("the heat is hiding in the oceans all of a sudden" - how does that work in the laws of physics, again? Nobody's explained it yet!!) and all of this on the back of a compliant MSM that until recently has been reluctant to say anything that deviates from the consensus and which until recently has virtually barred any sceptical views from its pages or airwaves, then it's hardly surprising that those of us who have bothered to think for ourselves and do a bit of basic research into the subject are inclined not to believe a word that comes out of these tedious seminars aimed at putting across a "message" which increasingly is looking like bullshit.
Have a nice day!
Another possibility is that this is an effort of climate alarm campaigners to distance themselves somewhat from 'catastrophism'. The snippets of headlines which form the graphic at the top of the page linked to in the post, are all, I think of the vivid doom and gloom style widely presumed to be good for selling papers with. It could also be argued that exactly the same style was good for selling the case for new institutions and new funding in the general area called climate science.
Once established, it would be not out of the question for the new encumbents/beneficiaries to turn around and look down their noses at the kind of scaremongering that could well have got them their jobs or grants in the first place.
If they think the tide of such scaremongering seems to be receding, they will surely see the risk of being left high and dry unless they can find new ways of keeping their boats afloat. That would seem to involve distancing themselves somewhat from 'catastrophism' if they do not have the nerve to up the ante about it, or if they have been convinced that that would be counter-productive with a jaded and/or better-informed public/political class.
Hopefully some free spirits will be able to attend the event and report back to us.
Barry,
Reads like an awards ceremony;
"Title to be confirmed."
Baron, Lord, Dame, Order of the Trough?
Diogenes
As you correctly point out the "correct message" part is in the last paragraph. With caveats in the body of the statements.
I assume you are aware of the recency effect?
I think it is very important that the correct messages from climate scientists are communicated to the media, and suggest these ones for a start:
Source (and many more): Climategate2 emails.
Well said, Mike Jackson! To the point. ;-)
"We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest."
And if you do that, where is the rationale for exciting global policy-making? Suddenly climate 'scientists' metamorphose back into boring little geographers, no longer the confidantes of princes and politicians. And the politicians have to forego a taxing opportunity which had the potential to make solvent again their otherwise bust Ponzi-economies.
No, much better all round to lie, a bit, surely?