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2019 on Twitter: Climate activism awakening

by Hadas Emma Kedar and Fenja De Silva-Schmidt

Shortly before 2020 is over, we will have a look back at 2019 to map the climate change debate as reflected transnationally on Twitter. Compared with the two years prior, 2019 showed a particular abundance of climate-related tweets: While the total tweets count of 2018 grew by 8% from 2017, the total count of 2019 grew by 70%. Then what triggered the climate discourse so much on Twitter that year? Continue reading 2019 on Twitter: Climate activism awakening

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Overstimulated by the news: How to navigate through times of crisis

by Susan Jörges

“Robert-Koch-Institute reports highest daily number of infections”, appears on the screen of my phone. The local newspaper lying on the kitchen table is titled with a similar headline, corona is issue number one in the evening TV-news, and my Instagram feed recommends a livestream of the government´s press conference.

Photo from pexels.com

Continue reading Overstimulated by the news: How to navigate through times of crisis

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How to talk about climate change – a collection of thoughts and helpful input for non-experts

by Fenja De Silva-Schmidt

When did you talk about climate change the last time? And when did you do so with family and friends? Results from our surveys show that on the one hand, the amount of people talking about climate change in their daily lives is rising steadily (see Guenther et al. 2020, in German), but on the other hand, a significant share of people never touch the topic in their conversations. For many, it is a somewhat awkward topic, leading to conversations about guilt and depressing visions for our future.

Rising share of conversations about climate change in daily life, source: Down to Earth data 2015/2019.

rising share of climate change conversations 2015-2019

In this post, I’ll summarize why it is a good idea to talk about climate change, even if you are not a climate expert, and which strategies mostly lead to a constructive conversation. Continue reading How to talk about climate change – a collection of thoughts and helpful input for non-experts

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Addressing the Nation: Pandemic!

How was the Covid-19 pandemic communicated by different leaders in their televised speeches and why does it matter?

by Hadas Emma Kedar

Illustration: screenshots of speeches of world leaders (between 16.-26.03.2020) [different online sources].
Six months have passed since nations of the world have locked-down against the spread of Covid-19. After its classification as a pandemic by the World Health Organization on 11 March 2020, leaders have addressed their nations to declare an emergency. These “addressing the nation” speeches are worth examining, as they deal with the same crisis at the same point of time, and it seems fair to assert that a great deal of a society’s behavior stems from its leader’s public expressions. For example, terms like war, enemy or discipline might encourage anxiety and violence among citizens, while challenge, strength and solidarity might encourage emotional strength and decrease anxiety.

Continue reading Addressing the Nation: Pandemic!

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What is a Climate Model?

by Felix Schaumann

Last August, our blogger Shorouk Elkobros explained what a climate model is in this video. One year later, climate models are still an essential tool for understanding global warming. In order to remind us how climate models work, Felix Schaumann has put together his own explanatory video.

Continue reading What is a Climate Model?

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After Lunch Posts: Talking Climate Change with Hans von Storch

by Michael Brüggemann

One of the many privileges of holding a Professorship at the University of Hamburg and being involved in the Cluster of Excellence, which unites researchers from different disciplines around the issue of climate change (see CLICCS website ), is that you have the opportunity to meet and have lunch with highly inspiring and thought-provoking people such as Hans von Storch.

Hans von Storch captured by Raimond Spekking (via Wikimedia Commons)

Continue reading After Lunch Posts: Talking Climate Change with Hans von Storch

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Why we need airtravel for an accurate weather forecast

by Joana Kollert

Flying is bad for the climate – this is an uncontested fact. However, air traffic is necessary for weather forecasts, as airplanes send live data to weather stations. COVID-19 has caused a massive decline in air travel, hereby affecting the quality of weather forecasts.

Density of meteorological airplane data from AMDAR on 23 March 2020 (Stewart Taylor, EUMETNET)
Density of meteorological airplane data from AMDAR on 2 March 2020 (Stewart Taylor, EUMETNET)

Continue reading Why we need airtravel for an accurate weather forecast

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Let’s focus on the short-term benefits of long-term climate protection!

by Michael Brüggemann

A new study by Samset et al. (2020) in Nature Communcations finds that even under strong and sustained mitigation efforts, it will take the climate system until mid-century to demonstrate a discernible cooling response. Unfortunately, we must accept and live with the frustrating fact that the global climate system is a rather gigantic tanker ship that will change its course only several decades after humanity has decided to pull the emissions steering wheel into another direction. Yet, we should also think about what may motivate immediate action to reduce the risk of climate collapse in the far future. Rather than only fixating on the nebulous, future benefits of present-day climate protection, I would suggest that communicators should focus on highlighting positive short-term side effects of climate protection measures.

Source: Pixabay

Continue reading Let’s focus on the short-term benefits of long-term climate protection!

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Climate and COVID: The structure of two crises

by Felix Schaumann

Author’s own photo

A common explanation for delayed mitigation action concerning the climate crisis cites the fact that the response of climate policies is only visible on a decadal timespan – thereby affecting neither quarterly profits nor parliamentary terms. COVID19 on the other hand only has a knowledge delay of up to 2 weeks, before infection events reveal their effects.

I would like to explore how these different dynamics of action and response play out and what they mean for the politicisation of science.

Continue reading Climate and COVID: The structure of two crises

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A Short Personal Guide to Climate Change Conversations

by Eduardo Alastrué de Asenjo

As natural scientists, we hopefully learn multiple concepts about uncertainty throughout our education and research, and, at some point, the time will come when we need to put them into practice. This post comes from the necessity of a first approach to assemble some of the multiple guidelines and recommendations that we receive regarding climate change communication. I am not referring particularly to the topic of communication in newspapers or TV, but to a much more mundane request. In this case, my goal is to have a structured set of rules or steps that a natural scientist working on climate change can follow when trying to address a day-to-day conversation on the topic.

Picture taken from Pexels. Author: Oleg Magni

Continue reading A Short Personal Guide to Climate Change Conversations