Climate scientists have changed their tactics during the UN climate summit. Environmental activists in Sweden have a strong desire to change their behaviours about the environment
The scientists have changed their tactics during the UN climate summit. They are coordinating protests against governments that refuse to rein in greenhouse-gas emissions closer to home, by blocking fossil-fuel operations and appealing to local governments in their own countries.
A group of people who blocked the train were arrested and released shortly after they were charged, according to a scientist.
The scientists will be performing a ‘die in’ in front of the parliament building to show their discontent at the lack of action at the climate summit. They will be calling for a ban on private jets.
Dablander and his colleagues conducted a survey of about 9,200 academics. The researchers found that 51% of scientists agreed or strongly agreed that other scientists should engage more in advocacy — and 36.7% said that they should engage more in legal protests1. The results are not yet peer reviewed, because they were posted on a preprint server.
The survey found that the Swedish environmental activist’s Friday for the Future protests, in which she and others sit at the Swedish Parliament once a week, influenced up to 30% of people in Switzerland to be more concerned about the environment. “It shows that there were some quite important impacts in terms of awareness, and at least the attempt of changing behaviours,” says study co-author Livia Fritz, a social scientist at Aarhus University in Denmark.
Even though trust in science has taken a hit in the past few years, some scientists could help influence the public because of their expertise. According to a survey published last month by the Pew Research Center, a think tank in Washington DC, the percentage of people in the United States who have a large or fair amount of trust in scientists fell by 14 points after the COVID-19 pandemic began, to 73%.
More climate scientists clearly want to do this work. Excellent scientist-communicators are typically motivated and diverse researchers. When I receive messages from early career scientists, undergraduates, and secondary school students, they want to know how my dual role came about and how they could fill it. I struggle to give them advice because there isn’t any clear path.
Communication During the 2020 California Fires: How Do I Communicate with Government, Scientific Institutions and Funders? What Am I able to Do?
The first lightning strikes hit early the morning of 16 August 2020 and were felt in the e-mails and phone calls. Over the course of 3 days, more than 10,000 lightning strikes from dry storms sparked hundreds of fires in California. In the days and weeks that followed, California was besieged by an unprecedented sequence of events. mass evacuees from fires that were the biggest in modern state history. It took a long time for the skies above San Francisco to become orange because of smoke pollution.
That month, I put my research and other responsibilities on hold to engage fully with the crisis. I did more than 100 interviews with outlets like radio and television in a matter of weeks so I could give a voice to the millions who were without power in their homes. Once the short-term emergency had passed, I briefed decision makers at local to national levels on the causes and context of the crisis, and its long-term implications.
There are more roles that need to be filled. This year has seen record-breaking heat and extreme-rainfall events globally, and that’s just a preview of what is likely to come. Already, I often take calls and give media interviews all day and sometimes straight through the night, because there simply isn’t anyone else available. I estimate that I spend more than 1,100 hours each year, the equivalent of more than 6 months of 8-hour working days, on public-facing communication.
I have been fortunate to find support, but it requires continuous justification to institutions and funders and involves cobbling together disparate funding sources. Even as I write this, it’s unclear whether there will be funding to extend my present role beyond the next six months. Many scientist-communicators have encountered the same struggle.