>> Thank you everyone.
Hello, thanks for joining us tonight.
This is sort of a synthesized presentation
from a variety of people who I consider to be
giants in the field of Political and social
science who really shaped my thinking and influenced
me a lot as well as some of our own antidotal
feedback and lessons learned by myself and my
team in terms of what has gone into shaping an
audience-focused approach climate communication,
educational and engagement within the product program
office and design involvement of NOAA's
website.
And so, as Bruce mentioned,
I'll be available to answer questions either
through the course of the presentation as well as
subsequently if there are follow up questions.
And this is my e-mail address for folks to reach
out to me and follow-up.
And with that, I want to jump in and move sort of
quickly through some upfront information,
just give you a little bit of a background about our
sciences and services, lessons learned from
social science.
Can we improve public science literacy?
What are the cultural cognition and roots of
denialism?
I'll say a few words about Global Warming 6 Americas,
and then, talk a little bit about how some of the
lessons learned have translated into the course
of me taking.
I'll spend some time also scrolling through the site
just to show you some of the highlights of the site
and how you might be able to take advantage of it in
a way professional development as well as in
your classrooms or other programs with which you
might participate.
As some of you may know, NOAA is mandated by
Congress to deliver climate services to
society.
And I don't expect you to memorize this whole list
but there are lots of different public acts of
Congress that has sort of given us this mandate to
advance understanding of the system,
from the surface of the sand to the depths of the
ocean.
And then, to collect observations from around
the planet to share resulting data and
resulting knowledge with the public in ways that
are intended to help benefit society,
such as the conservation, to help inform decision
making, stimulate commerce and in other words,
benefit society such as through conservation,
research management including business.
And so, the question then is how could NOAA best
meet this mandate?
How shall we best provide these services to society,
especially in a situation that has become as
polarized as say climate has and the sort of
sharply diverging opinions about whether or not
climate change is happening or whether or
not who is a contributor, or whether or not we
should take some sort of policy action to address
the problem.
And so, that's what of course logically leads to
social science.
To give an up-front plug to a book by Theoretical
Physicist at Georgia Mason, University,
Dr. James Trefil.
Some of you may be familiar with his work.
He was a co-author of a book on cultural literacy
and followed that up with a recent publication
called, "Why Science." And so in the book on what is
cultural literacy, it was defined as "the knowledge
that educated people at a given time and place
assume that other people possess." The idea is that
if we are gathered in some sort of commons or talking
to one another over our backyard fence,
we can make certain assumptions,
about what one another knows, understands.
What's a given specialized knowledge,
privileged information.
And we can have an exchange of information.
We can be conversive in one of the issues of the
day.
And so, it is sort of a set of understandings and
knowledge bases that we assume one another has to
be sort of cultural literacy in our country
and the speed on politics or the issues around that.
And so by extension, Dr. Trefil is suggesting
that science, literacy is very similar.
It's the metrics of knowledge to need and
understand much the deal with issues that come
across our horizon, news and elsewhere particularly
in the policy realm.
And so he's sort of arguing in his book that
we're not necessarily set out to make everyone into
rural scientists or to encourage and to teach or
push people to the way scientists do.
What we really do is want them to be just general
understanding of scientific concepts,
understanding of the context and relevance of
science so they can be conversive and participate
in the democratic processes so they can
evaluate pros and cons of policy relevant decisions
and they can let their opinions be known in
voting processes or in other public discourse,
and public forums.
And so, the question is, what is the State of
science literacy today?
And one other interesting point and I think Dr. Jean
Mayer made is that science literacy is not so much a
measure of what you know but it's your ability to
gather information and to discern credible from
non-credible sources.
And so obviously there are standards in science
education.
There are certain requirements that we have
to convey concepts and principles and formulas,
and details that students have to literally have to
be able to get a passing grade to advance up to
higher levels of science and math courses that
ultimately what he is saying is that arguably,
the parting upon on our students and as we enter
into adulthood and move out our colleges and into
our lives and just as members of society,
is that we're also going to have this need to be
able to gather, process information.
And so there are some people who would define
science literacy as whether or not I
understand the constellation of fact.
And John suggests that well,
especially in this day and age,
people can gather information as they need
it and but what is our ability to process this
information and how can we discern credible from
non-credible sources?
And I'm also going to suggest that it is sort of
an ironic situation we find ourselves in today
when we have expeditiously,
greater information at our fingertips,
our smart phones, our laptop computer and PDAs
and so forth.
We can go online and google just about any
trivial question and get information to help us
answer that question in a matter of seconds.
But at the same time, we also have a greater
ability top to publish misinformation or to
publish other types of information such as
propaganda to distract from the factual
information.
And so, one of the things that I observed is and I
began to get concerned is that people might be
losing the ability to discern credible from
non-credible sources.
And so I wanted to include this quote.
And so, the question that arises,
is it possible on a large scale to move the needle
quote, unquote clear of the State of the adult
civic science leader in the United States,
and some of you may be familiar with professor at
Northwestern University, Professor Jon Miller and
he has been doing work for a number of decades now in
the field of political science and social
science.
For a time he author the chapter on Natural science
foundation's indicators.
He would do a chapter on what the state of public
literacy.
And he's continued to measure this by preparing
a questionnaire that ask questions open-ended like
what is a molecule or things of that nature that
would be a general gauge of people's understanding
of scientific concepts.
And so overall, he caused this measure of civil
science literacy.
So sort of good new and bad news about the member
the NOAA has found.
So he's been doing this periodically since 1988 so
if you fast forward over a 20 year span,
if you look at this line here,
what we see and this is the good news whereas that
roughly ten percent of the adult Americans in the
United States are what he would consider
scientifically literate in 1988,
that number has increased by about 19 percent over a
20 year span.
And so, the good news is apparently we can move the
needle and it has increased and is
increasing.
The bad news, is, 's still less than one in three
adult Americans scientifically literate.
And there's a popular idea among a lot of people and
my colleagues that we need to find ways of driving
that number up.
And again, sometimes the rationale is if more
people are scientifically literate,
then they might think like scientists and allow their
conclusions or make decisions based on the way
scientists would which is not necessarily the case.
Incidentally, Jon Mayer has also been conducting a
longitudinal study of American youth.
That's what this acronym stands for,
the Civic Science Literacy so he's been tracking.
He started tracking -- he started tracking middle
schoolers and high schoolers in the late
1980's and has been tracking them all the way
through to adulthood.
So there are two different groups,
one ranging from 37 to 39-year-olds.
And what he's seeing among the I think roughly 5,
000 or so students that he has been tracking through
the longitudinal study, about 44 % are science
literate.
And so, the question though is,
is this going to translate into an improved
likelihood for policy action in polarized
science issues such as say stem cell research,
the use of stem cell or other types of issues like
climate change.
In this case,focus primarily on climate.
I thought I would quote Allan Leshner.
Some of you may be familiar with who he is.
He's the CEO of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science,
and he's the Publisher of Science magazine,
a former journalist and scientist.
And He attended a conference recently by the
national Academy of Sciences and was doing a
presentation and this is one of the statements that
he made: We often can't just educate our way out
of science-society tensions.
It's not just a lack of understanding,
people do understand much of what we're saying and
what they don't like it.
Core value trumps their view of societal benefits.
And so, his point is sort of -- would seem to be at
some level contradictory with what people such as
Jon Miller.
Professor Miller would argue that says perhaps
it's not simply going to be enough to improve
science literacy.
It's something more at stake and play.
We need to be aware of that and in fact,
it is the values that is coming into play.
And so let's have a look at what Americans values
are reflected in the Pew research.
By the way, in each case and the presentation,
I tried to give you pointers to where you can
find this information online if you would like
to go back and rereview some of this information
on your own.
This is according to the Pew Research.
American's priorities are in 2013 as indicated by
what they feel the President and the Congress
should be working on this year.
And so what you can see is how this has changed over
time so the relative percentages have changed
over time and some of these items are there for
a minute but shifted a little bit in terms of the
numbers.
So one of the things that I wanted to suggest is if
we think about them, American values,
according to their values.
Called out what Americans are valuing that do
directly or indirectly relate to the climate so
such as the economy.
Or jobs, improving education which is one of
the things everyone is very interested in and
concerned about.
Healthcare, costs up in the proking thing the
environment so to me, these topics are
opportunities if you will, windows of opportunities
to teachable moments in which to engage Americans
according to their values.
So there are ways that we can talk about the climate
and perhaps introduce win/win strategies for
addressing the problem while also strengthening
the economy or while creating your high tech
jobs that can improve research and development,
things like that or better solar panels,
better energy systems and so forth.
So there are lots of ways to help people begin to
sort of rather than trying to overcome their values
to take advantage of people's value and give
them an opportunity to connect the dots in a
solutions oriented conversation and that has
been the role of the presentation tonight.
So, I want to take a moment to review briefly
what President Obama said in June when he addressed
the nation from the campus of Georgetown University.
And this is sort of my para phrasing and you can
go and find his speech online as well as well as
his climate action plan.
But these are some of the key take aways I gleamed
from his presentation.
He said first of all, as a resulting in climate
changes: it's primarily due to human emission of
heat trapping gases.
There are and have been and will continue to be
harmful consequences.
And so here he is connecting the dots for
the economy, for humman health and welfare and for
the environment which harkens to the same values
we looked at in the Pew Study,
He said the sun is though they are always still
things to learn.
He said 97 percent of our scientists are in
agreement with these statements.
And then he proceeded to explain how he can,
must pursue strategies in which one addresses the
root causes and to be the economy.
He was very emphatic on this point that and we can
rise to this challenge in ways that are helpful and
not always harmful.
And so I think he is challenging one of the key
arguments that I often hear is that it's almost
event that any action we take to address the
problem will only hurt the economy,
will only put people out of work and so,
I think this is an interesting way to
consider talking about this topic.
I just want to go a half step further and in the
interest of full disclosure,
I should say I'm not a democrat or republican.
I'm one of those people who believes you're
outside with one part and in some cases with another
case or other cases, I disagree with both
parties.
So I don't really have a political party sort of
frame, if you will, bent on this topic,
I just was really going with the evidence and
wherever the information takes you.
But I have to say I really admired the President's
speech and I have some very specific reasons for
believing that it's spot on in this case in this
case.
And this I'm drawing from a white paper that was
produced by the Center for and prepared by NASA
headquarters by authored by sen tower cultural
studied and analysis and this is a white paper
actually prepared for NASA headquarters about 12
years called the American perception of space
exploration and lifted out some of the key
recommendation and points that were made for NASA in
this white paper.
And number one, visions must reflect the larger
culture in which they operate.
And when asked to judge between two competing
arguments in which they have little or no
expertise, people will default to the more
compelling vision.
This harkins back to one of the point that
professor Jon Miller was making.
When it comes to literacy, increasingly,
the language is polarized.
The topics are discussed in ways that are so
incomprehensible that people aren't really
giving them much of an opportunity to participate
in the public debate in a way that actually
influences policy.
And so, what I saw the President doing for the
first time and this is one of the things that really
made me applaud what he did,
was he was laying out a very compelling vision and
sort of calling people to action.
And indeed, he deliberately chose
language that even harkened kind of back to
some of the early power days when we were on our
mission to put a man on the moon.
And so he was off on this compelling vision of you
can rise to this challenge.
You can address the problem and you can reduce
the economy.
And so to me, this also met the other conditions
that were described in this white paper.
America has always had a culture that's future
focused and we've always sort of had a strong
belief that the future should be better in the
past, this is part of our cultural identity to
better the lot of the individual and the
individualistic ethic that celebrates and rewards
innovation and entrepreneurship and
invention.
The use of mass media.
It brings this vision to the public and sort of
reinforces it, shows it work,
shows it being successful.
Business interest having an important role play to
bring about this vision brings about a better
world.
Popularizers, people who can promote the vision as
factually achievable or in some impairment,
some driving external force of data that makes
this vision optimal and necessary.
And I thought that you can sort of check all these
boxes who just sort of I think will step up in
accordance with this set of recommendations for
example, although, I don't think he was even aware of
this white paper.
Nevertheless, not everyone heard the same speech I
did or interpreted it the way I did.
So for example, I went out and grabbed just a couple
of people who begged to differ with the president.
They sort of heard him say lots of other things other
than what I heard him say.
This is to make energy more expensive.
He's going to introduce this red tape.
He's going to increase the price of energy and gas.
He's abandoned his campaign promise and so it
went on.
What's going on here?
Is this partisan politics or just a different
cultural cognition at work?
And so, to sort of get at the answer,
I turned to the work of someone I really admire
lately.
You may have heard of Dan Kahan,
at Yale University at the Center for Cultural
cognition.
And he describes just to sort of lay it out,
two ends of the spectrum.
One is specifically hierarchist who is one
that one who values order as emanating from a
descending chain of command or authority.
Egalitarian on the other hand,
someone who believes that all people should have
equal political, economic, social and civil rights.
And then to the right, you have the Communitarians
and to the left, individuals.
Individuals believe people who feel you should be
free to basically do what they want.
More self-control, less Government authoritative
control.
Communitarians, someone who believes we should
balance individual rights and interest of those in
the community or society as a whole.
So Dan looks at a range of issues and perceptions of
low versus high risk.
So things like climate change and nanotechnology
versus gun control.
So people who fall in this category of being
hierarchal individualists who by the way happen to
be predominately white males,
tend to view nanotechnology and guns as
being low risk.
And on the other hand, certain vaccination
programs or gun control are seen as very high
risk.
So you can sort of break down how people will
regard a subject or a given policy proposal as a
function of their worldview and their
cultural identity.
And so, he's done some fascinating work but what
are the key take aways?
I'm going to share a little bit more of his
work, is that successful communications then are
those in which the recipient is predisposed
to accept the core assumption.
And what this means is that people are going to
preferentially seek out information that validates
their worldview.
And they are going to reject information that
seems threatening or risky.
And so I'm imaging that there may be a lot of
folks on the phone right now that are sort of
asking themselves well, where does this leave us
as science teachers unscientific way to go.
Science teaches us that we form hypothesis and then
we go out and we gather evidence and then we
evaluate the hypotheses based on the evidence.
So what am I saying here?
Am I saying that people are doing it precisely in
the reverse?
They are arriving at conclusions and then
selectively seeking evidence in the worldview
and that's precisely what I am suggesting.
So for example in some of Kahan's work,
he asked the question, how much risk do you believe
global warming poses to human health,
safety or prosperity?
Here, you see zero being no risk at all,
7 being very high risk.
You can see how the people who found that worldview
of the hierarchical individualists down here
are extremely low versus pretty much all other
categories, not only white males who are hierarchical
individualists and other minorities sort of
following that very tight cluster up here on a scale
of 7.
And so, this one might be difficult for you to see
but here is list of a variety of different
topics again on the left, just no risk at all versus
very high risk on the right.
And then, sort of teaching high school students about
birth control, vaccination against childhood diseases
and so the web is the white hierarchical male
and the black would be everyone else.
Their answers in black.
And so specifically calling out several
categories and notice where the high risk comes
in view of these individuals.
Environmental regulations, relative much higher risk,
Government restrictions on private gun ownership,
the highest of all these risk propositions,
regulation, private business and then, here,
global warning same risk, low risk.
So it s kind of fascinating result.
And you have to wonder how can that be?
And so, I just been trying to come to grips with what
those indications are for this information.
And one of the key take aways that I have is that
when you are dealing with people who are sort of in
denial who are rejecting evidence,
they're one of the things that we have to come to
grips with that we really are not necessarily in a
conversation about scientific evidence.
We are experiencing a clash of values and I
think this is often what gets confusing in the
conversation.
We need to be careful that what we're actually doing
is people are one-sided, are just kind of reviewing
and advocating the evidence to say here's
what I'm saying and often, those who are in denial or
dismissive of that evidence are really doing
so not on the basis of the evidence but rather on the
basis o their values.
And so that's one of the things that I think is
very important to keep in mind.
And so, there is a popular idea,
a theory that we're dealing with a deficit of
information if only people had more scientific
information, better access to the evidence then their
attitude or perception would change.
And so one of the points that I don't handle is
that scare alone, use is not enough to overcome
this sense of culture identify and this sort of
sensitive infinite group.
So what he is in fact showing is that in some
categories, literacy is not at all an indicator
and in fact, the higher the literacy score,
the more polarized the community has become if
you compare egalitarian versus hierarchal
individuals.
So these are people who would score quite highly
on science and literacy tests.
And yet, the higher they score,
the more divergent are their viewpoints,
if you will, in terms of risk.
Things like global warming or fracking,
that's compared to like legalization of marijuana
or legalization of prostitution.
So again, there is evidence that literacy is
not an indicator or predicter of whether there
will be agreement or ability to agree on,
say a course of policy action.
And so, I wanted to also call attention to the fact
that this sort of points to a little bit of a
background and backdrop of the roots of this
cultural, this kind of approach to sort of the
culture world going on and kind of why this is
happening.
Some of you may be familiar with this term.
There are as a strategy being perpetuated by
special interest groups on fear,
uncertainly and doubt and is very well described in
this scientific American art by David Michaels in
which basically he's talking about the marriage
of marketing and spin tactics to sort of exploit
this worldview and this risk perception of certain
individuals to successfully leverage that
to hinge against policy action that may actually
be in the best interest of the American public or
society.
And so, I want to introduce you to one
person in particular, someone you may have heard
of Frank Luntz.
He's a consultant, a political campaign
strategist who has often served as an analyst and
commentator for Fox News and his self-professed
test is testing and finding roads that help
return public opinion upon the issue of the
candidate.
And he's one of the people who said that 80 percent
of our life is emotional, only about 20 percent is
intellect.
And his stated the purpose is to get audiences to
react based on emotion and to think very carefully
about world choice, to get that sort of short
reactive response that you want to get if you're
trying to sell a product or as the case may be,
to reject or dismiss scientific evidence or
given policy option.
Frank Luntz was credited in saying in a memo to
President George Bush in 2002,
"the scientific debate is closing but not yet
closed.
There is still an opportunity to challenge
the science.
I also believed there is no consensus within the
scientific community." That's my highlight in
there, should the public come to believe that the
scientific issues are settled,
their views about global warning will change
accordingly.
So this points to an important part of the
information setting and the messages that we need
to be careful to deliberately reinforce
which is that within the science community,
there real is a debate about the basics of how
the climate system works or the main underlying
cause for why the climate continues to be global and
warmer.
And so, just again, calling attention to one
of the key points that the President made in his
speech, I have included references to let the
public know if you want refer back to that but
that I think the important thing we need to continue
to reinforce is that climate scientists
recognize and agree with the basic concept that,
the earth is warming.
We understand this from firsthand with lots of
other indicators we have that the earth is warming
and the human emission, human activities,
heat trapping gases are another reason.
But of course scientific information repeats with
this information, And I've already made this point
that people are seeking information about the
truths and then at certain points,
in the absence of truth, people will settle for
truism because again, it's their values,
it's their cultural identities that they are
clinging to and so they would look for something
else.
They would rather have science on their side but
in the absence of truth, they will settle for
truisms.
So just to kind of illustrate the point,
the definition of truism is a body of real things,
events and facts.
A statement that is in accord with factual
evidence and self-evident reality.
A truism is a statement that's obviously true but
says nothing new or interesting.
It's a proposition that states nothing beyond what
is implied by any of its terms.
So here are a couple of examples: Truth is carbon
dioxide is a heat trapping gas.
and humans have increased its abundance in the
atmosphere by about 40 percent.
This is a truism.
And here, I'm quoting John Boehner from Ohio and he
says every time we exhale, he exhale carbon dioxide.
Every cow in the world, when they do what they do,
you've got more carbon dioxide.
We exhale carbon dioxide.
Well, what's his point?
Well, the point is carbon dioxide is natural.
There is no need to panic because cows put it out
there and so it's a way of making an argument that
was based on truism and it's designed to deceive
or to distract or to obfuscate.
So this is something that you must pay particularly
close attention to because those who are in denial or
dismissive care are particularly adrift thanks
to people like Frank Luntz and explaining world
choice.
And cave yachting and they speak in these simple
soundbites that are easy to memorize,
easy to try it out at a cocktail party.
And these are things that we must be very diligent
in sort of addressing in early terms.
Lastly, I want to wrap up briefly in the social
science within the global warming 6 America.
This is an outstanding report series good friend
colleague Tony at Yale and George Mason and I highly
recommended this.
So over time, they been looking at the state's
population and they say that there are in fact six
different prospective, if you will,
ranging from those who are alarmed,
people who believe that climate change is
happening, and it's primarily human cause.
And we need to take action urgently.
And people who are concerned and in the
middle of those are cautious or disengaged,
less certain about it, less certain something
should be done about it to sort of uninterested and
unaware.
Then, towards the right, and you dismiss it.
And as you go through time as Tony and Ed and Connie
has done, updated versions of their studies,
you will notice that the numbers are fairly stable
and yet, we do see a little bit of sort of
waxing and waning sort of increase as high as 16
percent here and dismissive camp down to as
low as 7 or 8 %.
And it's really interesting here as it
calls your attention to the fact that we saw for
example, in the span of time from May 2011 to
September of 2012, an interesting increase in
the percentages that were alarmed and concerned,
and some interesting decrease in those that are
doubtful or dismissive.
And there were a lot of headlines,
scientific information that came up that said
that in fact, it was the warmest year in the United
States, in contiguous United States in recorded
history.
We had a unusual warm spring,
unusual hot summertime and we broke the record by far
in 2012.
To follow that up, not too many months later in the
spring, we had a much cooler than average spring
and looked at what the numbers did.
And so one of the things this tells me is that
people habitually confuse weather and climate.
And as long as you say climate is what you
expect, what you get, you're kind of looking at
the jus position of whether a climate in this
picture, if you think about places like say a
desert in Arizona that's hot and dry but that does
not mean it does not cool off or get rainfall.
And so, this is what you may expect it to be like
but you do sometimes get this.
And so we do need to help our students,
we need to help the public to understand that weather
and climate are not the same thing.
You will have cooler spells.
Some places will get cool and even some years will
be cooler than the preceding year.
Every year is not going to be warmer than the one
preceding it in the global warning scenario.
In the interest of time, I'm going to skip ahead
real quickly to one of the things that Ed and Tony
asked and Connie asked members of the segment.
If you can ask a climate expert one question,
what would it be?
And they were saying, well, on the left,
you can see what would the U.S.
do to reduce global warning?
What harm will it cause and how do you know it's
happening?
So you can sort of get clues as to the mindset
based on the questions they are asking.
This is one of the things that they teach in first
aid, is pay very close attention to the first
responder or early responder situation.
And what is the chief complaint?
What is the chief question?
And make sure that you address that.
And so, that's one of the cues that I take in
dealing with people and thinking about how to
engage and to listen to their question,
listen to their chief complaint or their primary
concern or what is their chief value?
And then see if you can address that first,
because that's the quickest way to gain trust
and if you can gain trust or establish yourself as a
trusted source and then, perhaps you can begin to
introduce additional information.
What are the antidotes?
I want to share with you a quote from Ralph Hall who
is a republican in the house who was chairing the
house subcommittee on science and technology the
summer before last when my former boss,
Dr. Jane Lubchenco was testifying on the house
floor on NOAA's aspiration climate service with no
new money.
And Mr. Hall and other republicans at that time
in the house were criticizing Dr. Lubchenco
in suggesting that she was breaking the law and being
disobedient from very specific congressional
direction with respect to this plan to start up a
climate service.
And then, the fantastic happened.
Out of the blue, seemingly,
he spoke up and he said, the drought forecast
issued by the National Integrated Drought
Information System -- which by the way is sort
of the offshoot of our climate research and
engagement -- are very useful to farmers,
water planners and other state and local officials.
So it was if he was saying this is what works.
This is what we need.
This is what the people in my state value and find
helpful to make decisions based on what our needs
and their value and objectives.
And so we want more things like this from NOAA.
We don't want some silly climate services that we
know is just a disguise to bring about Government
regulations.
What we want is things that are practical and
useful.
And so ironically, that was exactly what
Dr. Lubchenco was arguing, the climate service would
be, is an ability to leverage the science and
provide some sort of innate approach to
converting information into actionable
information that citizens can have.
So it is kind of like he was saying,
we like this branch, we hate the tree it grows on.
So in conclusion, Denialists' modus operandi
was to challenge the information.
Any confrontation with denialists are due to
differences in values rather than differences of
opinion about scientific ideas or data.
I think the best hope in gauging this is to prompt
thoughtful discussion within their value frame
and then work backwards from there into climate.
And so, this is essentially jumping into
some of the rationale for the approach that you're
taking in the design and we have identified four
different public segments, that we're trying to serve
and we have looked at the social science literature.
We spent time interacting with them engagements,
doing surveys to understand what are their
motivations?
What are their wants and need and then to think
about how can we really start now in their frames
of interest and motivation and look backwards into
the complexity of our organizational structure,
our agency at large and even into our climate size
community because all this complexity with what we
want to do sort of make it available and useful and
accessible in a way that's commiserate with the needs
and motivation of these four segments.
So the science push are those who want to be
informed, entertained, good stories and with
fascinating business information.
Educators who are seeking information and data they
can bring into the classrooms or into future
class venues, data users, people doing analysis for
getting maps to bring in the GIS for improved
analysis.
And we keep too as a result information for
policy, for resource management,
business management and so forth.
And so with that amount of truism,
I'll go briefly from the power point,
over to the web site will follow along.
And so, behind each one of these focused tabs is a
virtual team which sort of cuts across the leading
and we're thinking about how to synthesize
information from the science community in
response to what's happening in the world and
in response to new science rewards in presumably a
way that's sort of easy to read and understand,
the visuals that people can download,
teaching your students interesting high
resolution image, presentation and post
format.
And there is sort of a contextual information
that is sort of a popular style to help students
understand.
And the information has been aggravated in
accordance with the claim of policy network taxology
of terms so you or one of your students is
interested in how this climate works or
information about climate change and global warming.
You can find the information sort of
grouped this way or you can click a few and say I
want to see all of the content,
each tag in accordance within that term and then
sort of scroll down through and go back and
view videos, or presentations or other
articles and stories.
So the newly featured section is for topical
both what is happening in the real word and what's
happening in science.
I want to spend a little bit of time sharing with
you teaching about climate session.
This is spearheaded by my good friend,
Fred Luke who works with the Frank Lunz.
He's been working with the climate net group and
there is a collection of resources that have been
tagged according to great range and standards tagged
according to climate literacy and fundamental
concepts and made available.
And so there are different ways.
So if you're interested, again,
the cause of climate change,
and you can see that the corrections found 116
results.
Now, I can parse that according to say middle or
high school or I can filter it for things that
are appropriate for middle school.
I can also parse it according to,
say I give it a literacy test such as say,
energy literacy, physical quantity in that,
just note my results also down to 13 and then,
I can go in and browse and google resource.
And when you go to a particular item,
there is an overview about it,
a way to go to access that material.
There are teaching tips educators should take into
consideration in the classroom,
information about the science,
about the pedagoguery technical details.
And so, now there are over 550 resources in the
teaching climate section that are mapped to the
climate literacy guide to next generation science
and to grant and so you can do a search here.
If you can't search or go straight in through one of
these terms and get information.
And so I'm coming up on the end of my time.
So I want to just open it up to see if there are any
questions.
I have not had a chance to do a full tour of the site
but I want to call your attention to the feature
in the climate section as I thought it might be
relevant to you all, so you can use your own
communications to engage within your classroom or
in a few choices.
So with that, maybe I will open it up if there are
any questions.
>> Thanks David, I really appreciate your offering
the overview and perspective.
If anyone does have any questions that they would
like to offer to David, please expand your control
panel with the orange arrow.
You may write your questions into the
question box on the right hand-side there.
Apparently, you did a really good job explaining
everything David, there are no questions.
>> Well, I threw a tremendous amount of
information.
I apologize for that .
>> well, so we do have some questions coming in.
One is from Vicki Peterson.
She is wondering how many people work behind the
sciences to make climate change possible?
>> That is a great question.
Thank you Vicki.
We have a small core team of seven individuals who
are sort of dedicated to using the web site
contributing developing sections but of course we
sort of have specific circles of participation
where beyond my small portion,
we make fractions we donate,
contributed expertise from personnel,
other offices like the National Ocean Service and
Fisheries, and the satellite program and so
forth.
So we get contributions there as well.
And then, one of the things that we also do as
a portal is in addition to producing some of our own
content based on what is happening in the real
world or with the science community is putting out,
in these other sections such as map and data,
or server section, we also go out and inventory what
already exists.
There are other really outstanding web sites or
reports or data products and decision support tools
and we gather and tag them so they are also findable.
And so, we have in that case,
they were able to draw upon this larger community
across NOAA but even beyond NOAA,
the other fellow agencies as well.
So we try to be way collaborative in that
regard and very inclusive.
So, that way, we sort of think of ourselves as just
a continuum that extends out way beyond our small
core area.
I hope that answers the question.
>> There is a pretty complete answer.
You know, somebody just mentioned they are
interested in having this power point for all
climate stewards of the power point currently
posted and the other presentations too
currently posted in the meeting notes section of
our project review which is located under program
documents.
If anyone has difficulty finding this, then,
please do send me the e-mail.
I do have quite a few individuals who are not
participants in the NOAA climate steward.
If you send me an e-mail, I will send you a copy of
David's webinar.
>> I have just noticed you're speaking also a
question came up, do you have any resources that
would plan thigh species so I just went ahead
called that one quickly and it has to do with
endangered species.
So there might be one that you can check out Nick if
you were to go in and do a search.
I think there are probably also articles.
By the way, I can also look there on the bases.
I think we done some pieces there on the bases
as well.
>> A question and she asks,
where do you see trends going with the sway of
media and science literacy?
Are you hooked on the people searching for more
truth versus more truisms?
>> Yeah, that is a great question.
Well, first of all, I'm very encouraged by what
Jon Miller finds in his research.
I'm going back up this slide that I had showed
you earlier.
I think this is a healthy trend.
I don't think nor do I think you should continue
to invest time and energy in boosting civic science
literacy.
I think we should.
So I'm hopeful that this trend will continue.
By the way, Jon Miller sort of links this trend
to the requirement in the United States and the
rising number of people who have taken science
courses and graduated.
And so, any work that has the high schools,
I ruled that educators can do to encourage students
to take science course work continuing from high
school into college and going to pay dividends.
They better consider that sort of an investment in
our national intellectual 401-K.
I don't if know that will sort of generate immediate
action or engage in policy action,
but I think over the long-term,
it will pay huge dividends.
And then, the thing that I understand Dan to be
calling for, is we need to come up with a model for
engaging with people that sort of starts where their
values are, but then brings them into the
domain so they are not just sitting there poised
to object to the evidence.
That way we can have a meaningful conversation or
win/win strategies that we can support business.
We can boost the economy.
We can protect resources.
And so it's not just sort of perceived as a threat
to them to engage on this subject.
And I think we need more experimentation on models
for engagement and are doing some things in that
regard.
I think I'm out of time.
I can't go into details.
We can talk about some of the models that we been
developing for engagement to try to bypass some of
those biases.
>> Thank you David.
I appreciate that.
I will leave the webinar open for a little while
longer, I do have some announcements.
I hope that folks will stay on for just a few
minutes.
I would like to thank David for offering this
great presentation as I explained,
this will be available online.
We are currently recording this presentation,
a full video archive will be made available to all
participants in the Ocean project later this week.
And if you want to still type in the questions into
the question box while the webinar is still running,
we will make sure that these are -- we have
generously agreed to respond to these within
the next week or two.
So I thank you very much David for that and for
joining us this evening.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks.
>> If I can expand this right now.
Just as a reminder to everyone,
a few announcements Before the end of this webinar.
The NOAA office of Education is currently
running a poll.
We would very much like everyone to go to this
website for a very, very few minutes to a poll to
answer some questions about your experience with
this evening's webinar.
In addition, I would like to let everyone know that
the NOAA book club, next meeting will be on
December 30, at 8:00 p.m.
eastern time.
The book that will be discussed is "Teaching
about climate change" by Tim Grant and Galord
LittleJohn.
If you have questions about NOAA climate change
book club, the book or interested in joining us
for this, please send an email to NOAA.gov or you
can send one to myself.
We will be glad to go back to put you on the mailing
list.
Another mention that I want to put out was the
important role of our regional leaders,
The NOAA Climate Change Education Project.
We have six regional leaders and they have been
working very hard to try and increase
communication, facilitate communication and provide
resources to all participants n the
project.
Certainly, if you have questions that you want to
pose about the project regarding practically
anything at all or you're looking for resources or
have any questions, please make sure to get in touch
with your original leader.
They are often in touch with the other regional
leaders, have an excellent understanding of many of
the other members throughout the entire
program nationally, and really recommend that you
use them for the tremendous resource that
they are.
Just a little shout-out to them and much thanks to
them.
Another note to everyone, that over the next month
or two, there will be some changes in the structural
organization of the NOAA climate steward as WIKI.
These changes have been borne out by
recommendations that have been sent in to the
leadership team directly through you,
the participants as well as through the regional
leaders and the other members of leadership to
facilitate ease of and finding resources and
material.
So these will be brought about.
We will not be making structural changes as to
regional pages or to any one personal page,
just to the larger structure.
So you should have no problems there.
We will let you know as we go through this process.
Finally, I would like to be able to shout out for
climate change the distance learning about
adventures which is being put forward,
being promoted by 7 U.S.
Federal agencies as well as a number of NGOs.
And this is the website.
There is a website.
I don't know why it is not showing on my screen.
It's Climatechanglive.org.
And you will see a big not quite sure why that's
doing that but you will see a big register now on
the right-hand side of the screen.
It is a wonderful site and a wonderful program.
there will be a live interaction with climate
scientists and there is a live Twitter feed which is
being put forth by partners and there are
areas where you can ask climate scientists
questions and get feedback in realtime.
News, teacher testimonials.
There are videos in how your class can help and
the focus of this site is learning more about
climate, climate change and really understanding
what all of us can do to try and mitigate the
effects of climate change.
So, we look forward to participating in this
project and we hope that you will too.
It will be a great opportunity.
And at this time, I have just got a few minutes
over from our time session.
I would like to thank all the attendees this
evening.
We had a really great showing of many people
here this evening.
I saw a lot of familiar names on our roster as
well as some folks I have not seen in a while.
So welcome back.
It is great to have you.
I look forward to everybody having a
terrific year and once again,
go and take the poll.
There is a short URL.
Look forward to getting a great response from
everyone.
We will leave it up for another minute but I hope
that everyone has a wonderful evening and a
great start to the new year and look forward to
being in touch with everyone either directly
or through the original leaders.
Have a great evening, guys.