Skeptical Science at EGU 2019 - Friday

As the main post was getting too large and unwieldy quickly, I decided to break it up into one post per day. As each day becomes available, the previous post will link to it at the end.

Friday, April 12 - Wrapping up with posters and short courses

The final day of EGU 2019 started with the poster session for Communication and Education in Geoscience (EOS4.1) which had had a long orals session on Thursday. For the composite picture I selected three contributions which had a climate-angle:

• Sam Illingworth: Climate communication in practice: how are we engaging the UK public on climate change?
• Benoit Tournadre: Where to get visual climate data that suit education and outreach?
• Maria Lorono-Leturiondo: Schedule: Effective Communication of Air Pollution: Researching the Role of Gender

Next, I went to short course SC2.7 about Visualizing Science and found out that I for sure wasn‘t the only one interested in the topic! All the seats - including the ones on the floor - were already taken by the time I arrived. I at least grabbed a spot to stand at the door with a clear view of the presentation so was able to capture and tweet some highlights during the session. Here is the link to one of the threads I contributed to and samples from the presentation:

At 2pm it was time for SC2.8 Science communication on hard mode: risk, uncertainty, disasters and controversies organised by Bárbara Fereira. The four speakers in the session all had stories to tell when things went well and not so well with media interactions. They are all active on Twitter.

• Stephen Hicks (@seismo_steve) from Imperial College London talked about using social media - esp. Twitter - to share information about earthquakes in a timely manner.
• Cathelijne Stoof (@dr_firelady) from Wageningen University often gets calls from media when wildfires lead to death and destruction which obviously can be quite aggrevating to talk about
• Paul Williams (@DrPaulWilliams) from the University of Reading got tricked (I think!) by the organisers of a conference in Barcelona last year when he was asked to give a talk about climate science and then found out two weeks before the event would be Richard Lindzen, a well-known contrarian on the topic of human-caused climate change
• Terri Cook (@GeoTravelTerri), freelance (geo)science journalist from the US shared her experiences as a science writer

To finish off my EGU-week, I joined short course SC3.11 Tales from the IPCC: From research to report at 4:15pm. The session was chaired by Sarah Connors (@connorsSL) and Robin Matthews (@georobin) who both work on the Working Group 1 section of the IPCC reports. Sarah and Robin walked us through the typical process of how IPCC-reports get created and which steps are included. They also encouraged especially the early career scientists to contemplate becoming expert reviewers of the upcoming AR6 reports.

And, with the conclusion of this short course at 6pm, my week at the EGU General Assembly 2019 came to its end and several interesting days with lots of food for thought still need to be fully digested. I hope to find a reason (excuse?) to come back next year!

Recap of Thursday - Main Post

Posted by BaerbelW on Thursday, 11 April, 2019

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