Climate Change Information Service for Journalists Announced

Published on: 2010/12/07 - in Science & Tech

According to Queen’s University geography professor Harry McCaughey, about 700 scientists around the globe have joined an email service that provides scientific answers to reporters’ climate change questions.

The goal for these scientists is to get out the message that climate change is real and governments need to be doing more to combat it.

“We finally have a group of scientists trying to make the message clear about climate change,” said professor McCaughey. “It’s a truly dangerous situation and there is so little happening at the government policy level. That’s very disturbing.”

Dr. McCaughey sits on the American Geophysical Union Publicity Committee that promotes this service, and he is also a member of the Queen’s Sustainability Advisory Committee.

The professor stated that the media tends to try and provide a balanced view for every story, but that frustrates scientists like Dr. McCaughey because their research has revealed overwhelming evidence of climate change.

“About 98 per cent of scientists say climate change is real and two per cent say it isn’t, yet the two per cent is always part of the conversation. That’s the nature of media reporting,” says Dr. McCaughey.

He believes researchers need to do a better job communicating the effects and dangers of climate-change because they are being drowned out by climate change deniers.

The Q&A service, designed as a fact checking service for reporters – not as a service to re-write their articles, consists of volunteer climate scientists who will respond to messages using a shared email account. Shifts comprised of as many as 10 scientists at a time will answer questions from Monday to Friday (11 am to 7 pm).

Communication professionals and journalists with climate change questions can send emails to questions@agu.emailcenterpro.com.

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Image source: Wikipedia