'I finally have an opportunity to help mend a harmful divide.' In this week's ScienceWorkingLife, DrSpeedyDee writes about learning how to talk about climate science with skeptical audiences.
“Sir, I am a climate scientist. Your remarks are unequivocally false.” I listened in admiration as a fellow scientist discredited a climate denier in her audience who had spouted false information during a Q&A session. As a climate scientist who had recently moved to Texas to start a faculty position, I was nervous about having to field similar questions during talks to the general public.
It felt good to step outside academia and share my expertise on issues that were important to me. But at the same time, I sometimes wondered: Am I really making a difference? When I spoke, I was almost always met with knowing nods and immediate moves to action. In Rhode Island, too, where I did my postdoc, my audiences were already on board.
I started by doing what I’d always done in the past—calling local organizations and offering to work with them. But this time, it wasn’t always smooth sailing. I spoke on panels where I was insulted, threatened by elected officials, and talked down to. Unaccustomed to those kinds of attacks, I became flustered and angry, and sometimes it showed.
During a panel discussion a few months later, I was able to call on their advice. When a fellow panelist made erroneous statements, I explained the state of the science and gently but directly corrected falsehoods. Zoom worked to my advantage: I placed figures in the chat to fact-check misstatements. When I sensed the conversation moving in a bad direction, I didn’t become confrontational—I simply spoke when it was my turn and went back to the facts.
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