Climate Change.

EESC W4403: Managing and Adapting to Climate Change, Fall 2016Assignment #3: Using the CRED Communication Guide to Evaluate Climate Risk Communication Due: Wednesday, November 9th at 1:00 pm via CourseWorks as a Word document Assignments submitted after Wednesday, November 9th at 1:00 pm will have 10% deducted from the total possible points. Assignments that are submitted after Wednesday, November 9th will have 20% deducted from the total possible points. Assignments that are submitted after Thursday will be accepted only on petition to the instructor. Plagiarism: Students may discuss the assignment with each other, but each student must submit his or her own work, not the work of others. Work that is copied or plagiarized will not be accepted, and the student will receive a grade of 0%. In the case of plagiarism, the instructor will discuss the situation with the dean to arrive at an appropriate response. Goals: This assignment has two goals. 1. To develop your understanding of risk communication 2. To help you use the CRED Communication Guide as a tool to evaluate climate risk communication Introduction: As we have seen in class, experts and the public often differ in their evaluation of risks. Risk assessment by experts rests on the selection and application of explicit methodologies for collecting and weighing data in a rigorous way. Risk perception by the public relies on the excellent, and yet sometimes flawed, capacity of the human mind and of human communities to interpret the flow of experience. Risk perception often reflects heuristics, as Kahneman describes. It is risk communication that seeks to link the two, allowing the public to make more effective use of expert knowledge and, at times, to allow experts to draw on the experience of the public to expand their methodologies. The CRED Communication Guide reviews risk communication in the context of climate. It can serve to communicate climate variability and climate change. It lists eight principles of climate communication. Here, we apply the principles to analyze specific climate risk communication products. Resources: 1. Your participation in and experiences playing the EcoChains (either the Arctic or the Antarctica version) and the Red Cross Paying for Predictions games 2. The CRED Communication Guide (posted in CourseWorks) 3. Wu, J.S. and J.L. Lee. 2015. Climate change games as tools for education and engagement. Nature Climate Change 5:413-418. (posted in CourseWorks) Assignment: Address the following topics for each of the two communication products (EcoChains and Paying for Predictions). Grading: Each component below is worth 20%. An additional 20% is allocated to writing (professional language use, good organization of paragraphs and sentences, correct grammar and spelling, coherency and clarity). Note the possibility of 5 points of extra credit. 1. Write two paragraphs (250-350 words total), for each of the two products. In those paragraphs, indicate the climate information and risks that each product seeks to communicate, the audience that it seeks to reach, and the spatial and temporal scales that it covers. 2. Complete the CRED Communication Guide Tool (explained below on the last two pages of this document) for each product. Use full sentences to explain the value for each principle. Your answer for each principle should be at least two sentences; you can write more if you think it is appropriate, but should not exceed four sentences. Use examples from the product to show how it does, or does not cover the specific principle of communication. Calculate the total score for each product by summing the values (0, 1, 2) for each of the eight principles. 3. Write two to three paragraphs (300 to 400 words total) that compare the two products on the basis of the CRED Communication Guide Tool. Use examples from the products to explain your views. Where possible, suggest what could have been added in any given product to improve its score. Indicate whether you find the final scores of the products to reflect your intuitive sense of the relative value of the two, and provide a short explanation for your response. 4. Pick one of the heuristics listed below (these all appear on the heuristics list that was distributed). Write two paragraphs (250 to 350 words total) that compare the products regarding their use of the heuristic you have selected. 4.1. Dual processing 4.2. Priming 4.3. Neglect of ambiguity 4.4. What You See Is All There Is (WYSIATI) 4.5. Anchoring and adjustments 4.6. Loss aversion 4.7. Decision weights Extra Credit: For up to 5 points of extra credit: Write 1-2 paragraphs describing your observations of yourself and your classmates when playing the two games and describing what you learned from playing the games. Consider points such as perceptions and behaviors on the the part of yourself and others, knowledge gained about ecosystems and species from playing EcoChains, and the interactions between climate change and ecosystems and/or disasters (e.g., impacts, risks). CRED COMMUNICATION GUIDE TOOL For each of the eight principles of climate communication, assign a score of 0 (absent), 1 (weakly present) or 2 (strongly present) for a specific communication product, as follows: Value Diagnostics 0 This principle is completely missing in the climate communication product, or barely detectable 1 A few elements of this principle are present. 2 A larger number of elements of this principle are present, or a few (or more) are highly developed. The communication product can receive a total score of 0 to 16. Here is a list of the eight principles: 1. Know Your Audience 2. Get Your Audience’s Attention 3. Translate Scientific Data into Concrete Experience 4. Beware the Overuse of Emotional Appeals 5. Address Scientific and Climate Uncertainties 6. Tap Into Social Identities and Affiliations 7. Encourage Group Participation 8. Make Behavior Change Easier See the next page for how to present your results.