Adapting to climate change, in the real world

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by Simon Donner

The world needs to adapt to climate change. Regardless of the level of effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, some adaptation will be necessary.

The adaptation challenge is thought to be greatest in the developing world, especially “least developed countries”, which are in the unfair position of being the least prepared to respond to a problem they did not create. In response, developed countries and international institutions like the World Bank are increasingly directing aid towards climate change adaptation. Under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the developed world has agreed to mobilize $100 billion per year by the year 2020 to help the developing world respond to climate change.

New sea wall in Tarawa, Kiribati, with author for reference (2012)

How will this work on the ground? How will adaptation decisions be made, given that the future is uncertain and countries are relying on the highly imperfect international development apparatus for resources and expertise?

There is a lot of terrific theoretical work on the “coulds” and “shoulds” of adaptation, but less forensic analysis of how it happens on the ground.

A new paper by Sophie Webber and I in Sustainability Science attempts to fill that gap, using a case study of preparing for sea level rise in Kiribati. As home to the World Bank’s first climate change adaptation project, Kiribati is an ideal place to learn about the challenges of adaptation on the ground (close to the ocean as that ground may be!).

The paper builds on interviews conducted over the years of field work in Kiribati. We try to trace the many forces influencing decisions,  including the uncertainty about future sea level, the trade-offs between different adaptation options (e.g. sea walls, mangrove planting) and the local cultural, political and economic context. Along the way, we identify some useful lessons from the Kiribati experience, like the value of short planning horizons to reduce trade-offs and scientific uncertainty. The story of the sea wall in that photo helps illustrate what adaptation is often like in the real world: complicated, messy and expensive, no matter how pure the intentions. From the conclusion:

 Visitors to Tarawa can see the office of the Kiribati Adaptation Project, public notices and signs, new seawalls, equipment for the mid-lagoon dredging project, mangrove saplings planted alongside several causeways, new water tanks in certain villages, and construction of new water pipes for the reticulation system. Like all first steps, these initial actions towards adapting to an uncertain future are cautious, unsure and sometimes backwards.

What is the fate of future Winter Games?

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by Meghan Beamish

The Winter Olympics have started again. Four years ago, we hosted them here in Vancouver, and it was one of the mildest winters on record. They had to helicopter in snow for many of the events. This week in Sochi, the forecast is warm, but they have been making and storing snow to prepare for the event.

Which begs the question: with a warming climate, what is the fate of future Winter Olympics?  Nature just published an article with this awesome graphic showing the “Downhill forecast” for future winter games. Click on the image for more details!

 

Tips on Science Communication, from CBC Meteorologist Claire Martin

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by Meghan Beamish

Science communication is like sex: at first, when you don’t know what you’re doing, it can be pretty terrible for both parties. But, as you do it more and more, you get better and better at it.

This was the slightly risque, but fairly apt metaphor that Claire Martin left us with at a seminar organized by TerreWEB, a program here at UBC that trains graduate students in communicating their studies to a wider audience. Claire is an on-air meteorologist for CBC, but she is no ordinary meteorologist. She has won numerous awards and recognition for her engaging and successful exploits in the world of science communication. Last Friday, she shared with us “How to communicate science and not bore your audience to death.”

Bore us she did not. Claire presented some very useful things to think about when we are communicating science — to any audience.

Something that really stood out to me from the beginning was that “really good communication doesn’t come perfectly packaged.” That is to say, there is no one best way to communicate. It varies from person to person and audience to audience. But there are key components to successful science communication.

Throughout the talk, Claire referred to an imaginary mind map which shows the key components of science communication. It looked a little like this:

The science component is self-explanatory, but absolutely essential. You must know your stuff. She opened with this phrase,  so that if any of us fell asleep or walked out, we still knew that we need to know our science. If you stop reading this post here, remember: know what you are talking about, and know it well! And for those times that you are wrong (and we all have them) own up to it. It makes you personable and keeps you reputable.

The second most important thing that Claire emphasized is to know your audience. This falls under that Social Science bubble. How we engage with an audience – the way we talk, the questions that we ask, the angle from which we approach the topic – should vary from audience to audience. Claire “profiled” us as she was presenting, and from the number of smiles and nods, I’d say that she was pretty dead on. Whenever you are preparing to present, take a minute and think about your audience. Where are they coming from?  Start with a broad sketch and then narrow it down.

And, like Claire emphasized in her closing metaphor, the more thoughtfully you profile, the better and easier engaging with different audiences will become. She talked about the importance of talking to challenging audiences, including places where you and your views may not be wanted.  This really resonated with me.  If we keep communicating within our comfort zones, then it will be impossible to share important messages about science outside our tribe. It is often those people outside your tribe who are most important to reach.

Along those lines, Claire provided some good advice for talking to people who don’t really want to listen to you: Listen to them. Tell them that you understand where they are coming from and engage in a real two-way conversation. And, most importantly, know the arguments that you are – and are not – going to win. I hesitate to even use the word argument here, for arguing is not a sign of effective and constructive communication. So, I’ll rephrase: know which subject can be communicated effectively in that situation, and which ones cannot.

Going back to the idea that there is no one style of effective science communication, Claire ended her presentation by showing us two videos. The first was produced by The Weather Network and the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Science (now the Canadian Climate Forum). The vignette was about climate and the Arctic, and it seamlessly jumped from researcher interview clip to panning across the Arctic tundra. It was sleek, carefully edited, polished, engaging and effective. I couldn’t find the video online, which may be a comment on how well it actually engaged people.

I’ll leave you with the other video, from school teacher Greg Craven. It is not sleek, carefully edited, or polished, but it is brilliantly engaging and effective.

 

 

Engaging the Public Without Disengaging from Science

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by Simon Donner; this is a re-post from the old site, in light of some discussions, rational and not, that followed Michael Mann’s recent op-ed “If you see something, say something” on scientists’ responsibility to speak up about the impacts of climate change:

A few years ago, I found myself at a retreat with a group of highly accomplished scientists from around the continent. Why, I don’t know. I suspect my invitation came much as it would to a team’s equipment person, who are still needed during practice drills on the road to fetch all the loose balls.

On the penultimate evening, the discussion turned to the challenge of balancing science and outreach. The very unscientific activities of the retreat had wore down the competitive academic armour that most successful scientists wear like second skin, and revealed a surprising vulnerability among the group. Most everyone held an existential fear of this mysterious force, which most often went by the moniker “they”.

You see, this “they” held ultimate power over careers and was adamantly opposed to scientists spending time on outreach, rather than research. At the time, I thought that young scientists starting out their careers should be afraid to do outreach because of judgement by people like those at the retreat. Yet here were some tenured faculty, people with, arguably, the safest jobs in the world, themselves feeling they did not have the freedom to do outreach. It was eye-opening.

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Older, wiser and better at accumulating carbon?

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by Meghan Beamish

The other morning, while listening to NPR, I came across this story: “An Old Tree Doesn’t Get Taller, But Bulks Up Like a Bodybuilder.” It highlights a recent Nature paper that was published last week by U.S. Geologic Survey forest ecologist Nate Stephenson. The paper addresses some blank spots in our knowledge of how tree growth rates change with age, and it concludes (after a global analysis of about 400 temperate and tropical tree species) that a tree’s growth rate actually increases with age. This means that large trees increase the amount of carbon they store each year; in an extreme case, a single large tree can add as much carbon into the forest in a single year as is contained in an entire mid-sized tree, trunk, branches and all!

This new study has some pretty interesting implications for how we think about the forest carbon cycle, and how we use trees as resources (for wood and carbon sequestration).