Climate Science and Public Interests: Social Values and Climate Change - Women's Caucus Prize Symposium

Central empirical findings of climate science are beyond reasonable doubt and many climate change impacts are increasingly being observed. Yet, significant proportions of the general public in many countries still resist accepting these findings, or appear to be unaware of their existence. The diagnosis from science studies is that this situation pertains to at least three kinds of problems: the complexity of the issue, a strategic manufacture of doubt, and climate information that is incompatible with decision-making processes. However, it is largely unclear how scientists should behave given the situation. The symposium addresses the broad question of how the practice of science should be modified in the hopes of better engaging and reaching non-scientists. It brings methodological, psychological, and epistemological perspectives together with the aim of elucidating whether there are specific communicative strategies, political behaviors, or methodological choices that would help to ameliorate the current problems. While each paper addresses this central theme differently and some are in disagreement on specific issues, the papers collectively speak to three areas upon which scientists could improve: how they address the spread of misinformation, how they handle dissent, and how they make scientific information more readily available and usable.