Making Science Public

Tag: uncertainty communication

  • Improving climate change communications: moving beyond scientific certainty

    Improving climate change communications: moving beyond scientific certainty

    This is a co-authored post with Gregory Hollin. It is based upon our new paper in Nature Climate Change, which is the first piece of original research from science and technology studies (STS) published in the journal. In the last 25 years scientists have become increasingly certain that humans are responsible for changes to the…

  • Just one number: has the IPCC changed its supply of evidence?

    Just one number: has the IPCC changed its supply of evidence?

    As I have researched online climate scepticism over the last year, its become clear that climate sensitivity has been one of the biggest topics for discussion. This is perhaps one of the easier parts of climate science to understand. Put simply, sensitivity measures the amount by which the Earth’s temperature increases when atmospheric carbon dioxide…

  • Families of climate scepticism I: faulty science?

    Families of climate scepticism I: faulty science?

    At last week’s British Sociological Association conference, I presented some initial observations from my research on climate change scepticism. My starting point was that climate change scepticism – or as it is often inaccurately described, denial – is not monolithic. Those people typically labelled as sceptics vary in their arguments. Sometimes may employ many different arguments, some may focus on…

  • Short circuiting the language of Sandy – how to balance literalism and lucidity?

    Short circuiting the language of Sandy – how to balance literalism and lucidity?

    My previous post here at MSP reflected on comments in the BBC’s Climategate Revisited programme, suggesting that uncertainties in climate science have come to the fore in the years following the  publication of scientists’ emails. By being more open about such uncertainties, there may be a hope that some of the public trust lost after…

  • Languages of uncertainty

    Languages of uncertainty

    Communicating scientific uncertainty There has recently been a lot of discussion about communicating uncertainty in science in general and climate change/climate science in particular. Many scientists, including Sir Robert May and Sir John Beddington have talked about how uncertainty is intrinsic to science and have advocated being more open about uncertainty, with the latter stressing…

  • Climate communication conundrums

    Climate communication conundrums

    After climategate in 2009 I was reflecting on what this episode (which sort of opened the ‘door’ for the current climate ‘wars’) may mean for climate change communication. One thing struck me at the time: that climategate can be used to rhetorically flip previous (contrarian) discourses around climate change and climate science on their heads.…