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Questions … and answers … on causes and impacts of climate change: no longer primarily the domain of mainstream news organizations.

Wander through The California Academy of Science’s “Altered States: Climate Change in California” exhibit.

View exhibits illustrating potential damages from climate change to local resources like The Sierras AND the California coastline. Consider the potential impacts on eco-tourism.

Take notes, recording your ideas on how to solve the climate challenge. You’ll need them for when you walk over to the museum’s Carbon Café, where you can determine the carbon footprint of any meal you might select.

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These days it seems as if a single hot or cold day is all it takes to inspire a reporter or politician to blame the mercury’s position on global warming, or, alternatively, claim it as proof that global warming doesn’t exist. More extreme events such as hurricanes or floods inspire even more headlines and comments … and political punditry.

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UCS President Kevin Knobloch

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. - After eight years of battling the Bush administration to preserve the integrity of science and inform public policy on environmental and nuclear issues, Union of Concerned Scientists President Kevin Knobloch is not taking a rest. Instead, he’s amplifying efforts to communicate about climate change action, especially in the upcoming legislative effort.

Lisa Palmer caught up with Knobloch at UCS headquarters recently for The Yale Forum to talk about climate, the economy, and getting scientists to understand the media.

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    (Editor’s Note:  This piece was slightly edited on May 6, 2009, to correct the reference to the author of the MIT Knight Science Journalism Tracker posting.) 

Geoengineering - intentionally manipulating the climate to counteract the unplanned manipulation of manmade warming - has always been a controversial idea.

Sometimes called climate engineering, it includes concepts for reducing sunlight, like shooting sulfur particles into the atmosphere and creating seawater sprays. Other methods, like seeding oceans with iron and erecting structures called “artificial trees,” would aim at removing carbon from the air.

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The Anasazi culture of the southwestern United States reached its zenith between 1050 and 1125 A.D. before experiencing a dramatic collapse. Despite their advanced industrial society known for their cliff dwellings and ornate baskets, no authoritative written record adequately explains this phenomenon. Archeologists aren’t even sure what the Anasazi, Navajo for “Ancient Ones,” called themselves.

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With an incoming U.S. President vowing to seriously address climate change, and his cabinet filling with outspoken advocates for such action, the United States, its economy, and its approach to the climate issue are poised to change in profound ways.

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Last summer the head of Harvard University’s Science, Technology and Public Policy program, John Holdren, penned an argument on the subject of climate change sufficiently compelling that The Boston Globe and International Herald Tribune eagerly published it. On the morning of August 4, 2008, however, subscribers opened their newspapers and read in the Opinion pages a different version of Holdren’s original viewpoint, “Climate Change Skeptics are Dangerously Wrong.”

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The glass, aluminum, and stainless steel panels reclined at low angles and basked in the sun as the men in suits and ties, flanked by reporters, took to the West Wing roof to look at what they thought was the future. That day, June 20, 1979, was clear enough for the sun to bring out a bright reflection on the panels, and for shadows of those on the roof to be drawn dark and tight around them.

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If Daniel Nocera’s energy vision prevails globally, each home and business will have its own, entirely sufficient power unit, charged by the Sun.

Industry-produced greenhouse gases will be vestiges of the old order, as solar-based “personal energy” systems power everything from televisions to plug-in electric cars and produce only water as a byproduct.

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A ‘Sea Change’ in Findings from 1,300 Researchers?

Research scientists and journalists may be interacting lots more than generally thought, and the scientists’ experiences, at least, may be “far smoother” than generally thought.

That’s the gist of a new research report based on a survey of more than 1,300 researchers in the U.S., France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom.

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