date: Fri, 6 Apr 2001 15:02:13 +0100 from: "Trudie Dockerty" subject: spreading the word to: "Mike Hulme" Dear Mike I've been to a few disappointing meetings recently, where I have found it hard to get a hearing for climate change issues. The latest meeting was a series of workshops held by a landscape ecology forum (academics and government agency representatives), which were supposed to consider how future 'whole landscape planning' could be achieved. It failed to do this, with as usual, the natural scientists considering landscape only from an ecological viewpoint, the social scientists having a wider perspective but with no real 'research and practice' agenda materialising. Although I pushed the need to consider climate change along with socio-economic influences on future landscapes, it is very disappointing that the natural scientists in particular, insist on holding on to the uncertainties in climate change projections as a valid reason for not considering the issue. I did put the point however, that what also should be considered is that whilst there is a range of uncertainty there is also good agreement between the projections made by different climate models. It seems there remains a great deal of work in convincing those outside of the climate change community that even if they do not feel confident to go to the stage of policy preparations to mitigate against climate change because of 'uncertainties', that they should now be evaluating the risks and the 'worst case' potential impacts. Is mine a typical experience or an unusual one? I often feel ill-equiped to provide a proper synopsis of the most important issues to get across. Without wishing to instigate a 'climate change evangelical' organisation I'm wondering - could Tyndall host a 'workshop' or lunchtime seminar on the theme of - disseminating climate change information: what should we and what shouldn't we be telling our decision makers and the public? It would be good to have some confidence on what messages to take to the non-climate research community. regards Trudie ********************************* Dr. Trudie Dockerty Senior Research Associate Climate Change Impacts - Landscape Jackson Environment Institute University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK. Tel: +44 (0) 1603 592583 Fax: +44 (0) 1603 593896 Web: http://www.jei.uea.ac.uk *********************************