Communicating Climate Change Workshop: The downplaying of climate model data?

Decisions about how to report climate change involve the consideration of a range of inputs including scientific data and models, but also news values; resource and organisational structures within media institutions; public understanding and awareness of the science; audience responses of fear and denial; and the importance and stakes of the issue of climate change itself. It is a complex task involving expertise in a number of areas. This workshop seeks to bring together specialists from some of these areas to discuss how good-quality decision-making can be developed for media reporting on climate change, with specific focus on the following issue: Is there evidence of the downplaying of climate models to satisfy media editors and audience expectations and if so, what are the decisions in play and the implications ?

Our main speaker is  Kevin Anderson, Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester and Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change research

His talk is entitled: "The streaking emperor: how integrated climate & economic models (IAMs) embed political expediency at the cost of scientific integrity"

Professor Anderson is visiting Ireland with support from Dublin City University, and at the invitation of DCU and An Taisce, the National Trust for Ireland. This workshop is coordinated by the EPA-funded Climate Change in Media (CCIM) project with support from the Sustainable Economies and Societies research and enterprise hub and the Societal Impact Platform.

There will be responses from journalists and An Taisce, as well as DCU academics, including Dr. Diarmuid Torney and Dr. Padraig Murphy.

Date: Tuesday 8th March 2016

Location: DCU, Nursing Building

Room: HG07

Time:10.00am-12.30pm

Please RSVP padraig.murphy@dcu.ie