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TV Weathercasters as Climate Educators: Making the Global Local

Feb 19, 2015, 11:00am - 12:00pm

The OSU School of Communication, the Byrd Polar & Climate Research Center, and the Behavioral Decision-Making Initiative are sponsoring a campus talk on climate change communcation. This will be held February 19th, 2015 - 11am in Rm 360 in the Journalism Building.

Dr. Edward Maibach, Director of the Center for Climate Change Communication (4C) at George Mason University will give a talk entitled "TV Weathercasters as Climate Educators: Making the Climate Local." American adults trust TV weathercasters as a source of information about climate change. Upon learning this factoid, a senior TV meteorologist working in the Washington DC media market phoned the lead investigator at Mason with a proposition: let's work together to test the proposition that TV weathercasters can be effective climate educators.

That call, eventually, led to three NSF grants (and philanthropic funding), and to a partnership involving universities (Mason, Yale, and Cornell), non-profit organizations (Climate Central), professional societies (American Meteorological Society and National Weather Association), and government agencies (NOAA and NASA), and to considerable evidence that supports the proposition that America's TV weathercasters can indeed play an important role in educating the public about the local consequences of a global challenge.

About the speaker: Edward Maibach MPH, PhD (Communication, Stanford, 1990) is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Climate Change
Communication (4C) at George Mason University.  He is widely considered the foremost expert on climate change communication in the
United States. Ed conducts research on public engagement in climate change, and co-chaired the Engagement & Communication Working Group
for the 3rd National Climate Assessment. He previously served as Associate Director of the National Cancer Institute, Worldwide
Director of Social Marketing at Porter Novelli, and Chairman of the Board for Kidsave International.