*Pic: Thomas Cole, Course of Empire …
Fear, anxiety and exasperation are some of the worrying feelings being expressed by Australia’s leading climate researchers in a new science communication project by Australian National University (ANU), Masters Student Joe Duggan.
Studying at the Australian National Centre for The Public Awareness of Science, Mr Duggan has designed a novel project geared at engaging people with climate change. Entitled ‘Is This How You Feel?’ the project is a collection of hand written letters from Australia’s leading climate researchers. The letters are showcased on the website isthishowyoufeel.weebly.com
Researchers included in the project include high profile climate scientists such as Andy Pitman, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, and Climate Council members Will Steffen and Lesley Hughes. The scientists write with passion and heartfelt emotion.
Associate Professor Katrin Meissner from the University of New South Wales voices the need for action. “I see a group of people sitting in a boat, happily waving, taking pictures on the way, not knowing that this boat is floating right into a powerful and deadly waterfall. It is still time to pull out of the stream. We might lose some boat equipment but we might be able to save the people in the boat. But no one acts.
“Time is running out.”
Associate Professor Anthony J. Richardson from The University of Queensland is more direct. “I am angry. Angry that vested interests bias the debate. I am infuriated. Infuriated we are destroying our planet. But most of all I am apprehensive. Apprehensive about our children’s future.”
Mr Duggan believes that this project will be a way for the apathetic to connect to climate change. “I wanted to give scientists the chance to step away from the dry data and clinical prose that laypeople find so hard to engage with. If people can’t connect with the statistics and data, maybe they can connect with someone that understands that data.”
The project has already started to gain attention on internet blogs such as Mother Jones and Grist and has a growing following on social media. A selection of the letters will be on display in an exhibition at ANU’s Photospace gallery on August 26 and 27.
“This is not the only way to communicate climate change, but it is one way. We need to kill apathy through death by a thousand cuts. Maybe this can be one cut.“ said Mr Duggan.
• Chris Sharples, in Comments: Yep too! That’s how I feel. Appalled at the inane simple-mindedness of most climate change denier arguments: their instinctive use of cherry-picking (seeing only the evidence that they think supports their denial); repeating refuted arguments so often that most people forget they have been refuted (“no warming for 17 years” etc); imagining that with no background in climate science at all they can easily spot fallacies in the painstakingly studied evidence of thousands of scientists who have spent their professional lives studying the climate; resorting to absurd theories of a global conspiracy amongst climate scientists (to explain the fact that an overwhelming majority of those scientists agree anthropogenic climate change is real), etc, etc. Frustrated by the huge irony that the “success” of climate change denial campaigns and the resulting political and public complacency only means that things are going to get much worse than they would have if we had acted smart enough soon enough. Saddened …
