Philosophical Question:

1. Philosophical Question: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a noise? a u g u s t 3 0 , 2 0 0 2

2. Corollary: If a man says something in the forest and his wife is not there to hear it, is he still wrong? a u g u s t 3 0 , 2 0 0 2

3. 2nd Corollary: If a scientist says there is global warming and the U.S. Bush Administration refuses to hear it…? a u g u s t 3 0 , 2 0 0 2

4. Herring, David D., 1992: A Study of Stylistic Strategies for Rendering Scientific Texts More Comprehensible. Masters Thesis, East Carolina University a u g u s t 3 0 , 2 0 0 2

5. NASA’s Sometimes Lambertian, Sometimes Anisotropic Communication Signal NASA HQ EOS PSO Earth System Sciences Program office Newspapers News magazines Instrument writers/visual. Instrument writers/visual. EOS IDS PIs Science magazines DAAC writers DAACs EOSDIS TV News TV documentaries NASA SVS’s NASA TV Studios NASA PAOs Web pages NASA Educational Programs Public school system a u g u s t 3 0 , 2 0 0 2

6. Terra versus Hubble Terra • Highly decentralized • No clearly defined “gatekeeper(s)” • No clearly identified % of $ allocated for outreach • Often a “Let’s kill the messenger” mentality toward Earth scientists from public & government • Stories grow stale quickly, require quicker turnaround • Me* (community lacks clearly defined outreach goals—one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing) • Hubble • Highly centralized under HSTSI—largely autonomous & apart from NASA • HSTSI acts as “gatekeeper” to control flow of information b/t PIs & public • HSTSI has ~10% of total budget allocated for outreach • No political fallout from HST’s new discoveries • HSTSI usually sits on stories for up to 1 year before release to public media & it’s still news! • A dozen or so scientists, visualizers, & writers focused on unified outreach goals a u g u s t 3 0 , 2 0 0 2

7. Overview of PR Strategy • Documentation about the Terra and Aqua missions and “in-reach info” • Terra home page (http://terra.nasa.gov) • Aqua home page (http://aqua.nasa.gov) • Provide the EOS & ESE science community a “direct-to-info-consumer” communications gateway • Earth Observatory (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov) • Provide the news media and other communications partners a one-stop shopping resource for publication-quality images & data visualizations • Visible Earth (http://visibleearth.nasa.gov) • Earth Observatory “Natural Hazards” section (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards) • Build communities of interested stakeholders • Image Composite Editor (or ICE, at http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~tomw/ice/examples/) a u g u s t 3 0 , 2 0 0 2

8. Terra & Aqua Home Pages a u g u s t 3 0 , 2 0 0 2

9. “Direct-to-consumer” gateway • Over 27K subscribers • Just under 1 million page views per month worldwide • Content increasingly syndicated by NASA & public sites • An unmediated conduit b/t science community & general public • Let us know when you have a “new science result,” a feature story idea, or an interesting image • Mainstream media get story ideas from our site; &/or use it to research a topic a u g u s t 3 0 , 2 0 0 2

10. Timely, newsworthy images • This new section provides timely, hi-res images over significant Earth events for news media • E-mail “Playlist” near-daily report ongoing to stimulate flow of timely images • Now setting up media database to begin daily e-mail notification of new images a u g u s t 3 0 , 2 0 0 2

11. The Visible Earth • Becoming the one-stop shopping, superset of NASA’s Earth images, animations, & data visualizations for public release • Now harvesting global 8-day & monthly composites at up to 0.1-degree resolution for our communications partners (e.g., museums) • Will seek to combine all image repositories into our fully searchable database • Will provide tool for distributing ingest responsibility a u g u s t 3 0 , 2 0 0 2

12. GeoCosmos in Tokyo Science Museum A roughly 20’ sphere shoing Terra MOPITT carbon monoxide data animated for a ~ 1-year period. Reds show high values, greens are medium- range values & blues are low values a u g u s t 3 0 , 2 0 0 2

13. Image Composite Editor (ICE) • Begin teaching the basics of the art & science of remote sensing • Begin building the Amateur Earth Observation Network (AEON) • Must think about viable ways to subset and serve data sets to non-traditional data user communities a u g u s t 3 0 , 2 0 0 2

14. Our message: “…as only NASA can.” • NASA does Earth science • We are as important as those “other” Enterprises, even more so ! • NASA plays a lead role in extending understanding of our planet • NASA collects, processes, & distributes unique data sets • We share many of these data almost freely • NASA satellites are the best &/or only viable means of collecting our data sets • Supported by intensive surface- and air-based field studies • We develop new technologies, many of which become operational standards &/or spin off commercial products • NASA contributes to commercial, operational, & humanitarian research applications • We help mitigate natural & human-induced disasters • We participate in many partnerships that stimulate R&D • We facilitate development of new products & services for business a u g u s t 3 0 , 2 0 0 2