Communicating the Science, warts and all Prof Bob Hodge, University of Western Sydney

1. Communicating the Science, warts and allProf Bob Hodge, University of Western Sydney A Climate for Change Federal Parliamentary briefing, 21 March 2011

2. Science communication: the dominant model Linear, top-down, one-way flow of knowledge, with feed-back processes only to enhance the precision of insertion Inequality and difference between ‘expert’ (active, rational, disinterested) and citizen, (passive, irrational, uninterested). Communication action not relationship Requiring, expressing, constructing power through monopoly of knowledge. BUT In conditions of high complexity and uncertainty, simple, linear messages can be dangerous and counter-productive

3. Navigating chaos • Zadeh: Principle of incompatibility: • Stated informally, the essence of this principle is that as the complexity of a system increases, our ability to make precise and yet significant statements about its behaviour diminishes until a threshold is reached beyond which precision and significance (or relevance) become almost mutually exclusive characteristics,

4. Contradiction as strategy • Dr Greg Ayers told a Senate estimates hearing last month that the Archbishop of Sydney’s argument against human-induced climate change was heavily based on a book by Ian Plimer.. which had been discredited by scientists. • ‘The contents of the book are simply not scientific. I am concerned that the cardinal has been misled [by its contents]’, the director said. • But Cardinal Pell told the Herald the statements by Dr Ayers, an atmospheric scientist, were themselves unscientific. • ‘Ayers when he spoke to the House was obviously a hot-air specialist. I’ve rarely heard such an unscientific contribution.’… • I regret when a discussion of these things is not based on scientific facts,. Cardinal Pell said. ‘I spend a lot of time studying this stuff.’ SMH 14 March 2011.

5. Science and Uncertainty • Foreword to ‘Science of Climate Change Q & A. Prof Kurt Lambech, President of Australian Academy of Science. August 2010. • It is at the intersection of the disciplines where uncertainty can and will arise, both because of the as yet poorly understood feedbacks between the different components of the climate system, and because of the difficulty of bringing these components together in a single descriptive and predictive model. • (page 2)