Commentary calls for new ‘science of climate diversity’
There is cloud hanging over climate science, but one Cornell University expert on communication and environmental issues says he knows how to help clear the air.
In the December issue of Nature Climate Change, Jonathon Schuldt, assistant professor of communication, argues that only by creating a “science of climate diversity” can climate science and the larger climate change movement overcome a crippling lack of ethnic and racial diversity.
“There is an invisible, but very real barrier to climate engagement,” Schuldt said. “We need to engage with all kinds of diverse folks if we’re going to face this challenge. It will be a problem if the perception, and the reality, is that it’s a bunch of white male scientists at the table.”
The commentary, “Facing the diversity crisis on climate science,” was born when Schuldt and co-author Adam Pearson, an assistant professor of psychology at Pomona College, began talking about University of Michigan Professor Dorceta Taylor report, “The State of Diversity in Environmental Organizations.” In the report, Taylor examined non-profits, government agencies and grant-making foundations and found that non-white minorities comprised no more than 16 percent of staff in these institutions, in spite of constituting 29 percent of the U.S. science and engineering workforce and 38 percent of the American population. The report found that this “white Green Insiders club” narrows research and limits public engagement.
Schuldt agrees, but thinks more than just institutional changes are needed.
“What is missing is science-based solutions that focus on the fundamentally social nature of this problem,” the authors state. “Research from social psychology offers insight into factors that can powerfully influence participation.”
Schuldt and Pearson argue that early successes in diversifying other STEM research fields, and expanding the role women play in the environmental movement, point to three immediate and essential steps for climate research and outreach organizations.
First, boosting racial and ethnic diversity in climate research and outreach leadership can have an instant impact – provided this leadership is represented in how institutions present themselves. Put simply, Schuldt said, climate science “needs to present a more diverse face.”
Next, the authors urge all those who communicate around climate science to confront lingering stereotypes about environmentalism and minority engagement. Schuldt said one of the most pernicious fallacies needs to quickly be dismantled: that concern for climate issues is lacking in America’s non-white population. He notes recent work by social science researchers has shown this “underrepresentation by choice” idea to be false, and said climate leaders need to highlight the reality of deep minority community concern.
Lastly, the authors insist organizational messages can help bridge this gap. Among the most destructive ideas that needs to be abandoned, Schuldt said, is that communication around climate science should be “color blind.”
“Color-blind communications are, paradoxically, ineffective,” Schuldt said. “What it implies to minority individuals is that their unique perspectives and experiences don’t matter.”
Instead, Schuldt suggested, messages that highlight diversity while pointing toward a common goal are key: “We are all different, but we’re all in this together.”
The long-range goal, Schuldt and Pearson state, needs to be the creation of a new science of climate diversity. Climate scientists must collaborate with psychology and the social sciences, and these research partnerships need to be supported by academic, public and private institutions alike. Once that is done and a “new nexus of research” begins to form around how climate science and the climate change movement can increase racial and ethnic diversity, those fact-based findings can be used to guide public climate advocacy and policy reform efforts. That, Schuldt said, is the only way a problem as complex and far-reaching as climate change can effectively, and equitably, be addressed.
“Diverse teams are better at solving complex problems, and there’s every reason to believe this is the same, if not more important, when facing climate change,” Schuldt said.
Cornell University has television, ISDN and dedicated Skype/Google+ Hangout studios available for media interviews.
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Ah, Ithaca, NY. Beautiful Finger Lakes and gorges, not far from my neck of the woods.
Ithaca=> 10 square miles of progressive hive mind, surrounded by reality. ;0
Sadly so. A few years back a self-assured Al Gore pretender (a professor) gave a small seminar at Cornell on party-line CAGW that was predictable, highly uninformed, and foolishly presented. Happily, probably half the attendees already knew better and must have disappointed the presenter with their skeptical faces. After the show, a couple of professors were heard (by me) talking with derision about how some folks even analyzing climate using sunspot numbers. Clearly they could have been referring to tea-leaves or chicken-entrails with like disdain. So – no big deal? Actually, the leader of this snide discussion was a person who had a research interest in (ready?) ionospheric physics. One can be an “expert” and not have thought about what anything really MEANS.
Beautiful indeed. I’ve visited Watkins Glen (the little canyon, not the town by the same name), and tried to learn water skiing on Canandaigua. The water ski attempt was unsuccessful. I’ve also boated on the Erie Canal between Newark and Fairport.
On a certain level, I think the author of this study is correct. I’ve noticed the preponderance of white faces in various climate protests, photo ops, etc. Usually mid- to upper-class people who happily use all of the fruits of an advanced, energy consuming society: cars, planes, heated homes, computerized technology, modern clothing, instantaneous communication, etc. Someone above my pay-grade can probably explain why people of color don’t seem to be as easily duped by the CAGW game.
“Someone above my pay-grade can probably explain why people of color don’t seem to be as easily duped by the CAGW game.”
Buyer beware is a lesson learned early in Latin America. Most of the dupe-ees seem to be the New Englander types sporting iPhones and iPads and sitting in at various block parties (Occupy Wall Street comes to mind; same faces seem to be at the various Climate Marches).
I doubt they are duped. It’s just a party.
I smell Cultural Marxism.
Let Merit be the Measure of a person, not skin colour.
When governments mandate quota’s on ethnic diversity in any field of endeavor, they’re admitting that on merit alone, some folks don’t make the grade – that’s every ethnic group by the way.
Communism invented AVERAGE – and has been trying to reduce humanity to the status of indentured peasantry ever since.
Free enterprise invented the MEDIAN – and has been trying to raise it in every field for every ethnic group since the year dot.
Populist as it may be, the U.N did not land men on the Moon, split the Atom or perfect the flushing toilet.
When a team made up of one of every kind of Human finally creates something useful, maybe i’ll cheer diversity – I give it a glacial epoch….
I had to crack a window to clear out the air as soon as I clicked on the link. My “Marxist Jargonese” translator just had a kernel panic, and it was designed specifically to be able to process documents with a large number of examples of the categorical discontinuities that characterize Marxist World-View v. 2.0.
“Diverse teams are better at solving complex problems, and there’s every reason to believe this is the same, if not more important, when facing climate change,” Schuldt said.
No. Good teams are better at solving complex problems. Diversity should be ensuring a team is not made up solely of academics and instead made up of those with different thinking backgrounds or diverse disciplines.
You don’t find the Miss Universe Pageant useful?
Sorry, that was @ur momisugly zenrebok
I think you’ll find that it should be called Mizz Kozmos, feature Men, Wimmin, Shemalez, He-Sheeze, LGBT’s and the undecided.
Winners are decided by simply attending.
Gold star and a Tiara just for showing up.
As for creating something useful…methane?, not good a place to be a mouth breather!
Actually, we do not need any more “outreach” on climate. We need people who actually know stuff to say it as best they can. The exotic tool for this purpose is called English. (The opposite of English is “communication”.)
However, people can’t know much about climate because the bulk of this planet – wet, dry, or mushy – is unvisited. And that’s just what’s on this side of the atmosphere.
So they should just shut up till they actually know something, right?
How about we just fire enough of them to get the racial ratio “right”? Would fix their ‘diversity’ problem and save a load of money… 1/2 /sarc;…
Best suggestion yet and so simple.
Plus saving huge amounts of tax payers hard earned plus letting the poor old abused, misused, misquoted, mis-understood very old but still very vigorous Global Climate finally just get on with what it has always done without the arrogant, ignorant, interfering busy bodies of a self selected section of the Homo sapiens species trying to tell it what it should or should not be doing.
And then they get very upset and abusive when Old Climate goes off and does something different which a lot of other sections of the Homo sapiens species says quite rightly, is a fundamental right of Old Climate to do so if it wishes and we should keep our interfering busy body noses right out of Old Climate’s affairs..
Could they be retrained as phone sanitizers?
Unless I am very much mistaken, a significant amount of climate research effort already takes place in countries other than the USA, for example China, Japan, India… How much “diversity” (and there is no doubt they are seeking skin-colour “diversity”) would be acceptable, I wonder? Maybe this is just a chancer move to attract funding from the Political Correctitude lobby in case Big Climate funding dries up? In essence, this is a thoroughly roguish and insulting piece of rubbish work, to be treated with the utmost contempt.
There’s plenty of climate Diversity on the “warmist” side. Since someone left the door of the asylum open every type of diverse climate activist nutter has come through to get funding from the taxpayer.
What climate science needs is science not more propaganda.
What climate science needs is …
.. an enema.
Or special fronds.
Most great ideas come from a single person whether or not there is a committee of other people around ready to grab credit for it.
I would say ALL great ideas come from a single person. Well often a single person in different places at the same time.
Show me a patent, with more than one claimed inventor, and I will show you how to attack its validity on the basis of fraudulent authorship claims. You have to be the SOLE thinkerupperer of at least one claimed element, of at least one allowed claim, in order to be considered an inventor. (of said invention)
Being the manager of the group doesn’t qualify you to be an inventor.
But kids today are only taught as members of a focus group, in which one kid does all the thinking, and the others copy his/er work and get the same grade.
It’s good for their self esteem, to sit with a smart kid at school, and copy her/is work.
“An Asian man, a black woman, a white transsexual, a Christian and a Muslim walk into a climate conference….. “. Someone else can complete this joke for me.
“…and they ask, “where are all the white male scientists at?”
The white male scientists, unable to properly relate to the Asian man, a black woman, a white transsexual, a Christian and a Muslim, simply point to each other and say, with 97% certainty, “there’s one.”
“…and due to an event oragniser clerical error, they all end up sitting at separate tables.”
event ORGANIZER clerical error – damn post modern Anglesh…
Eye nu exctly whut ewe ment.
“Where’s my diversity-based gubment grant?”
A Black guy, a Marxist, and a Muslim walk into a bar…
the bartender says…
The Climate is completely color blind.
But I guess our communication expert above is not quite smart enough to notice that as he probably spends most of his time in front of a mirror telling his reflection how smart he is.
Interestingly it is the climate communication experts who seem to be racially prejudiced against those of their own pale skin colour.
However as is always the case when climate science or something that possibly resembles science thinks it is associated with climate science, like fleas are associated with dogs, it is ALWAYS some other party who “has to do something”.
It is never the climate science proposer / accuser who actually ever gets around to actually “doing something.”!
We see this again here with this above example.
Climate communication experts are a new and recent breed of potential and trending Lewendowskys who have ALL the answers as to why those deniers and climate apostates out there fail to believe what they themselves firmly believe,
Or at least what they presume to believe while lots of tax payers hard earned moola keeps flowing their way to bolster their beliefs.
No doubt they will prove to be quite flexible about their beliefs if the grants criteria change in the future.
Possibly someone who is a “communication and environmental” expert should expand his background by studying real sciences like physics, chemistry, thermodynamics, heat transfer and fluid mechanics.
this is “university diversity”, all ethnic groups strongly encouraged, but not diversity of opinion.
The large and diverse array of Asians (Koreans, Thais, Chinese, Malaysians, etc) in STEM are basically not “diversity”, and are virtually “white males”.
I exaggerate, but that’s the way they lean.
And their view seems to ignore the scientists of other ethnic groups in other countries, like China, Brazil, India and Uganda (not a huge cohort, but not totally absent either.)
It seems to me, when you force “diversity,” what you get is faux diversity. A thin veneer.
Appearances (like sound bites and headlines) are all that count with some people.
+1
How embarrassing, from my Alma Mater. Then again, Bill Nye is embarrassing too. And Bill Maher, but he’s a comedian on purpose.
If Bill Maher is a comedian, then I am a concert pianist.
Don’t comedians have to be funny; not just loud mouthed and crude ??
Okay – before someone else says it outright: Bill Nye graduated from Cornell. Worse – he was graduated from the engineering school (an ME). His bona fides claim to fame (Wikipedia) is apparently that he took one class from Carl Sagan.
Apparently he did learn from Sagan that once you are seen as an EXPERT, you can never fail to give SOME answer to ANY question. BOTH of them could have better learned from Mark Twain who said:
“I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.”
The absurdity of the lead post confirms that the crucial intellectual debate is on the two opposing views in philosophy about the philosophy of science.
The science views shown in the lead post are the same as climate focused science views used by the IPCC’s main assessment process and both are a false view of science that is called socially subjective science; a subjective science that starts with social goals then sees only data or makes up only data that fits the social goals. It offers no knowledge of reality that exists independent of man’s consciousness.
The cause of that kind of false view of climate focused science is not any political orientation or any social orientation. The cause of that false view of science is an irrational basis for the premises that allow belief in dual reality and consequentially belief in dual kinds of knowledge.
John
and:
diversity is built by steady infiltration + segregation.
once energy and material supply for that process weakens there’s a new landscape, marked by
borders, frontiers.
strategic arranged armies.
confrontation before integration.
glad when told better – Hans
johann wundersamer,
. . . & . . .
Original research has the seeds of intellectual diversity. I don’t care if it is done by zombies or Vulcans or Wookies.
John
Here’s a concept … try diversity of opinion. You know, have real debates about different theories which can be tested, falsified and discarded by observational evidence. Race really does not matter. It is diversity of thought that climate science (in fact all science) desperately needs.
They are pushing indoctrination dressed up as intellectual honesty.
Oh sure! It’s got nothing to do with bad science and fraud for political ends, let’s just blame race for the bad perception of Climate science that’s going round!
When I first read the post title I thought, “This is good. Get back to the science. Discard the hype.”
Then I read the story.
Martin Luther King said something about looking forward to the day when people would be judged on the quality of their character rather than the color of their skin.
It would seem that those who insert quotas…er…diversity into everything (now even climate science) never got the message.
The real missing ‘monitory’ from climate ‘science’ is good and honest scientists has opposed to charlatans and BS artists that make up most of those working in the area . Colour and gender can come after that most important step,
I think this may be just the approach the world needs. Try this:
Many of you I’m sure have read articles about Energy Poverty and The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. If not, please do so. These well-thought out, and I think accurate, themes point out the disproportionate adverse impacts to poor people, especially people of color in third world countries, caused by the current political clamor to restrict conventional energy sources in favor of expensive and unproven alternative and other CO2 reducing energy sources.
By raising the cost and limiting the availability of energy, poor people get whipsawed two ways: one, they must spend a ever-larger portion of their meager income just to pay their energy bills, reducing their ability to afford medicines, clean water, food, and etc.; second, the greatly increased cost of energy, not to mention the huge waste of money to try and fund such uneconomic “solutions” (to a problem that doesn’t exist), depresses the wealth of the entire world. This makes it more difficult for society to find funding to invent or develop new products, medicines, electrical grids that can bring power to backwater villages, improved housing and transportation systems, sewage systems to clean up polluted water sources, and so forth.
Humans have been trying to effectively utilize wind and solar power for many thousands of years, with limited success. It’s no accident that the development of cheap, widely available, and dependable fossil energy systems, beginning about 150 years ago, has lifted billions out of grinding poverty and extended average life expectancies from the 40’s into the 70’s. It’s been the most significant positive achievement in the history of mankind. The warmist frenzy will inevitably turn back that progress and lead to the premature death of millions or even billions of people. We will all be poorer, but if you are already desperately poor, you have no room to maneuver. You will be working longer and harder just to subsist, and many will not succeed. It would truly be a death sentence.
These are the true concerns of poor people, and perhaps their unwillingness to buy into the warmist scaremonger scenario reflects their ability to sense the truth of the matter.
True, but never underestimate the power of money and/or free stuff to get people to “see the light”.
Oh, my … Poor ol’ Pachauri is simply going to have to swallow his pride – if not eat his very own words.
You see, back in the good ‘ol days, during the course of articulating his (July 2009) “vision” for AR5 – when, no doubt, there wasn’t a communication cloud in sight – Pachauri had confidently declared (inter alia):
Amazing, eh?!
“Diverse teams are better at solving complex problems, and there’s every reason to believe this is the same, if not more important, when facing climate change,” Schuldt said.
Is there any evidence that diverse teams are better at solving complex problems? Or is that an axiom that we just have to accept as self-evident? It has been my experience that “too many cooks spoil the broth,” unless they have similar goals, similar backgrounds, and get along well together. When you have individuals come into a project with chips on their shoulders or mistrust of fellow team members, they end up fighting over work assignments, who gets scarce resources, and who gets the credit. Very little gets done.
What exactly is “science of climate diversity” anyway? What does climate science have to do with skin color or ethnic background? Is Jonathon Schuldt one of those conspiracy theorists who believe that Hurricane Katrina intentionally went after minorities in New Orleans?