The Rochester Project is an attempt to bridge one of the two critical gaps inherent in our climate change challenge, namely the gap between what climate scientists know and what everyone else knows. In our increasingly polarized world, this gap, combined with the poor outreach skills of “our side”, allows delayers and deniers to slow down and often halt the spread of information from experts to lay people. Given the urgency of our environmental situation, this is an exceedingly dangerous situation.

The primary activity of The Rochester Project will be to couple scientists writing about climate issues for a mainstream audience with presentation experts–writers, artists, and web site and multimedia experts–who can help them greatly increase the accessibility and effectiveness of their work.

The impetus for this project came from a call for input from James Hansen regarding the document he co-authored, “If it’s that warm, how come it’s so damned cold?” [PDF of current version]. This struck me as the clearest example one could imagine of why this second gap, the one between what scientists know and what “the rest of us” know is so large. James Hansen is arguably the top climate scientist in the world, and the document he helped write addressed a very topical and important issue, yet I could not imagine any of my neighbors getting past the first page. It was written in a style that reflects the authors’ narrow and very deep backgrounds, backgrounds which contain a wealth of experience in communicating with their highly trained peers but not nearly enough in working with lay people. It violated the most basic rule of communication: Know your audience.

Even at this very early stage of The Rochester Project, a few fundamental concepts seem to keep coming up in discussions I’ve had with various potential participants:

  • Dumbing down, warping, or spinning the content will not be tolerated. This is not a political campaign in which lies and half-truths, sleazy tricks, character assassination, and who knows what other horrors will be allowed. The sole purpose of joining experts from these two domains–climate science and presentation–is to make it easier for lay people to learn about what scientists know, how they know it, and what it implies for their own future as well as that of their children and all of humanity. Since the earliest days of this site its mission has been to “educate and activate” mainstream consumers and voters. That view applies equally well to this new project.
  • Creating material that does nothing but “preach to the choir” is neither interesting nor useful. We’re awash in books and web sites that do that now, and they haven’t helped nearly enough.
  • Even though each individual project will be a joint effort between real scientists and presentation experts, it’s critical that the boundary between those camps be maintained an respected. Writers don’t get to tell scientists how to do their jobs, and scientists don’t get to tell writers (or multimedia experts, or …) how to do theirs.
  • Scientists will get just be allowed or encouraged to sign off on the final version, it will be an absolute requirement. It would be incredibly easy for a non-scientist to accidentally insert an inaccurate interpretation, some nuance that only a true expert in the field would detect.
  • “Colorful” presentations that use colloquial language and even, dare I say it, a touch of non-offensive humor, will be encouraged, provided the first fundamental concept above (”no dumbing down; accuracy first”) isn’t violated. The modus operandi of this project is to communicate with non-experts in a way that will hold their interest throughout the presentation and then compel them to think about what they’ve experienced. The best example I know of this is Pete Sinclair’s excellent video series Climate Denial Crock of the Week.

The organization of this effort is extremely fluid as I type this. I’m kicking it off, but I have no firm idea what form it will take, how much, if any, funding there will be, what associations we’ll form with other environmentally aware groups and efforts, or even what we’ll call the project once it begins to grow up. Consider this post The Rochester Project’s Big Bang moment.

What I need most right now is to hear from people interested enough to consider participating. We’ll need a wide range of skills, including writers and editors, multimedia and web experts, and even reviewers who can provide feedback on intermediate versions of presentations. Most of all, I need to find people who are sick of inaction on climate issues and are willing to do more than type at each other on a blog or e-mail the occasional article to their brother in law. I need to hear from people willing to get involved.

If you’re interested, send me an e-mail directly at lougrinzo [silly little at-sign] rochester.rr.com. Use the comments on this post for, well, comments, links to relevant resources, etc. And, by all means, if you know anyone who might be interested in participating, send them a link to this post.

We must, we can, and we will communicate better. And it starts here.

For those new to this site and wondering who the hell Lou Grinzo is, here’s my extremely abbreviated resume:

  • BA Economics, King’s College, 1979
  • Software programmer, designer, tester, IBM, 1980-1989
  • Programmer, writer, editor, and consultant, 1989-present
    • Published Zen of Windows 95 Programming
    • Columnist and Contributing Editor, Windows Magazine
    • Columnist, features author, and Reviews Editor, Linux Magazine
    • Editor, LinuxProgramming.com
    • Writer and editor, The Cost of Energy, 2004-present

I talked about the second gap in our situation, but what’s the first? It’s the gap between reality and what scientists know. Humanity is currently operating at an extreme disadvantage in terms of timing, simply because of we managed to burn so much fossil fuel and inject so much CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere before we had as complete an understanding of how the environment works as we would prefer. Climate scientists are scrambling to close that gap, and they’re doing a heroic job, but they need more support, in terms of funding and more environmentally aware elected representatives, to do it better and quicker. That makes communicating with mainstream voters critical for yet another reason.


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