date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 12:05:50 +0000 from: Mike Hulme subject: January meeting to: acacia_conf To Acacia colleagues, 1. Who are the users? The key target group should really be those people at EU, national, regional or local level who are charged with long-term planning decisions or environmental legislation. Richard mentions coastal and water managers - these functions in most countries are usually split between many different agencies which causes problems. Local authorities, especially those in metropolitan areas, should also be seen as a key target group. As far as influencing Framework V is concerned, we have missed the boat, so additional research managers will need to be targeted. By the way, I'm not convinced by Jan Goudrian's notion of targeting science journalists. There are some really dumb journalists around and although the idea is good to influence and improve the quality of public debate in this area, in the end journalists are about getting or creating a good story and not about the critical process of scientific exploration and reflection. 2. How do we canvass them? This is potentially a huge task and we need to devise some strategy to make it manageable. Inviting voluntary involvement runs into the same problem we faced here in the UK in that only those already convinced of the importance of the issue will get involved. For many other potantial users, they need convincing that there is a real policy issue here, and one that demands their immediate attention. And convincing people of the priority of this issue is not easy - after all, I don't think we really know where climate change impacts should fit in the hierarchy of policy issues, or even in the subset of environmental policy issues. In the proposal we talk about a Workshop for practitioners and users. I suspect we need some form of short questionnaire we can send out to a range of potential European users asking what sort of information about climate change impacts and adaptation options would alter their perception of decisions they take. If this is done sooner rather than later we could use the publicity surrounding the Kyoto process as a way to engage attention. For example, 'The Kyoto outcome reduces estimated global warming by 2100 by 2-3 tenths of a degC (2.38 down to 2.11 under a standard scenario). Does this reduction in global warming have any significance for you and your business or for decisions you are charged with making? What information would you ideally need to have in order for you to make this judgement? (and give some examples)' Workshop I should then follow on from this survey by inviting a small number of key users to discuss with scientists what can be done to improve knowledge. Mike **************************************************************************** ********* Dr Mike Hulme tel: +44 1603 593162 Climatic Research Unit fax: +44 1603 507784 School of Environmental Sciences email: m.hulme@uea.ac.uk University of East Anglia web site: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~mikeh/ Norwich NR4 7TJ **************************************************************************** ********* For the new CRU 1961-90 mean monthly climatology look at: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~markn/carbon/nerc.htm **************************** Mean temp. in C.England during 1997 has been about 1.0deg C above the 1961-90 average. December needs an anomaly of about +3degC for 1997 to break the 1990 'warmest year' record **************************** The global-mean surface air temperature anomaly estimate for 1997 is +0.43deg C above the 1961-90 average, the warmest year yet on record (beating 1995) **************************************************************************** *********