Summary
The Center for Climate Change Communication (Mason 4C) develops and applies social science insights to help society make informed decisions that will stabilize the earth’s life-sustaining climate, and prevent further harm from climate change.
As a result of human activity – primarily the burning of fossil fuels – the earth’s climate is becoming dangerously disrupted and destabilized. Our mission is to develop and apply social science insights to help society make informed decisions that will stabilize the earth’s life-sustaining climate, and prevent further harm from climate change. To achieve this goal, our center engages in three broad activities: we conduct unbiased communication research; we help government agencies, civic organizations, professional associations, and companies apply social science research to improve their public engagement initiatives; and we train students and professionals with the knowledge and skills necessary to improve public engagement with climate change.
News
The tax incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act are going to deploy a tremendous amount of clean energy in America. Permitting reform is needed to get that clean energy to population centers, and a carbon border adjustment mechanism in needed to achieve worldwide action on climate.
Our clean energy friends on the EcoRight (a balance to the Environmental Left) are to be congratulated on a great success. Much of their agenda has been accomplished in the substantial tax credits contained in the Inflation Reduction Act. Had those tax credits been contained in a free-standing bill, there might have been Republican votes for those provisions. After all, what’s there not to like about reducing overall taxation?
Those of us on the EcoRight who support a carbon tax have set our sights on worldwide action on climate change. We celebrate the deployment of clean energy in America, and we hope that early adoption here might lead to cost reductions that make clean energy technologies affordable around the globe. But we’re aware that American tax incentives only alter the economics of American firms. Foreign firms can’t avail themselves of those credits. Because of that, the clean energy technology that’s going to be deployed here might not be deployed around the world. We’ll have cleaner air, fewer asthma cases, fewer hospitalizations, and longer life expectancies here in prosperous America, but we won’t yet be solving climate change. Alas, the devilish thing about climate change is that carbon pollution anywhere is climate change everywhere.
About
Research
We conduct unbiased social science research to identify opportunities to enhance public understanding of and engagement with climate change. Examples include:
Our Climate Change in the American Mind audience research project (with Yale’s Program on Climate Change Communication) identified six distinct segments of the American public – known as Global Warming’s Six Americas. We’ve developed tools to enable organizations to assess the Six Americas composition of their audience.
Our research on public understanding of the scientific consensus about human-caused climate change yielded an important new answer to the question: What about climate change is most worth knowing? This finding has been used to inform several notable public education initiatives.
Our surveys of TV weathercasters revealed that many of these broadcasters are eager to educate their viewers about the local impacts of climate change in their community, but face challenges in doing so.
Our surveys of several American medical societies found that many physicians are seeing patients’ health being harmed by climate change. We also learned that many physicians feel the medical community should advocate to limit climate change.
Our research on the impact of Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ showed that he has helped many Americans to see climate change in a new light: as a moral issue.
Training
We train undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, and working professionals in climate change communication research and public engagement methods. Examples include:
We have trained well over 100 undergraduates, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows to conduct research and enhance climate change communication public engagement programs. Many of these former students are now playing important roles in public engagement efforts around the nation, including teaching at leading universities.
At Mason, students can get masters and doctoral degrees in a wide range of disciplines – including science communication, public health, environmental science & policy, public policy, and conflict analysis and resolution– while focusing their studies on issues related to climate change communication.
In partnership with the National Park Service and the Urban Ecology Research Learning Alliance, every summer since 2012 we have operated a climate change communication internship program. Over two dozen undergraduate and graduate students have been placed in national parks in the National Capital Region to collaborate with park staff in developing education programs that illustrate the impacts and risks faced by the parks as a result of climate change.
Program on Climate and Health has collaborated with others to train several hundred physicians, nurses and other clinical professionals in how to successfully communicate the health relevance of climate change – including its current health impacts, and the many immediate health benefits of transitioning to clean energy.
Engagement
We develop and test new approaches for enhancing public understanding of and engagement with climate change. We also partner with government agencies, associations, and businesses in developing and testing their public engagement initiatives. Examples include:
Climate Matters is a comprehensive educational resource program for broadcast meteorologists developed in collaboration with Climate Central, American Meteorological Society, NOAA, NASA and the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication.
Our Program on Climate and Health has organized the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health to educate and engage physicians, nurses and other clinical health professionals in responding to climate change.
The Energy and Enterprise Initiative (renamed republicEN in 2015) – led by former six-term Republican Congressman Bob Inglis (4th District, South Carolina) – seeks to facilitate engagement among politically conservative “free-market climate realists.” In 2015, Bob was given the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for his “visionary and courageous” leadership on climate change.
The Climate Communication Consortium of Maryland, established in 2012, is a platform to organize, enhance and test public engagement efforts in Maryland. It has grown to include over 35 organizations in the public, civic and educational sectors.
Members of our team played key roles in the Third National Climate Assessment (2014), a congressionally mandated assessment of current and projected future impacts of climate change in the United States. Ed Maibach served on the federal advisory committee that produced the assessment, and co-chaired the committee’s Engagement & Communication Working Group, and Connie Roser-Renouf served on a National Academy of Science committee that peer-reviewed the report.
We have advised on the development of – and in some cases helped evaluate – public engagement activities conducted by many leading organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Alliance for Climate Education, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, The Climate Museum (New York City), and other museums, zoos and aquaria.
Web Links
Programs
Climate Change In the American Mind
Our Climate Change in the American Mind program – conducted in partnership with the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication – tracks and investigates public understanding of climate change and support for climate policies.
Our findings have provided critical strategic communication insight to myriad organizations in the climate change community, and have been published in hundreds of journal articles, reports and news articles.
Our findings were cited in the charter statement of the US Congressional Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change, and played a role in convincing the Obama White House that the American public is ready for federal action on climate change. They also have been used by the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, the Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis, the Biden Administration, and various federal agencies.
You can find Climate Change in the American Mind program resources here:
Climate Matters
Helping TV weathercasters and journalists report local climate change stories
Our first Climate Change in the American Mind survey revealed that TV weathercasters are highly trusted sources of information about global warming. They also have unparalleled access to the public, and superior science communication skills. These three factors strongly suggested that TV weathercasters could become an important source of climate change education in communities across America.
Since 2009, with funding from the National Science Foundation – in partnership with Climate Central, the American Meteorological Society, NASA, NOAA, and Yale – we have explored and helped develop the potential of TV weathercasters as local climate educators.
Beginning with a single weathercaster in 2010, our Climate Matters partnership now provides localized broadcast quality materials to more than 900 weathercasters nationwide (44 of whom broadcast in Spanish), and is growing rapidly.
Climate Matters reporting materials, which are distributed weekly, are now used by weathercasters in more than 90% of all American media markets at more than 500 stations, and on-air reporting about climate change by TV weathercasters has increased more than 50-fold since 2012.
To get a feel for this program, watch this brief video featuring WLTX (Columbia, SC) Chief Meteorologist Jim Gandy and News Director Marybeth Jacoby, the news team we partnered with to develop Climate Matters.
In 2017, the Climate Matters team partnered with five professional journalism societies to support other journalists interested in reporting local climate change stories. Interested journalists can find the free Climate Matters in the Newsroom reporting resources, and sign up to receive them here.
Program on Climate & Health
Climate change is harming the health of Americans—and people worldwide—yet our research found that most Americans are unaware of these health harms. Through our program on climate and health we collaborate with other organizations to increase awareness of the health harms associated with climate change, air pollution and fossil fuel use, and raise awareness of the health benefits of climate and clean energy solutions.
In partnership with leading American medical societies, we organized and coordinate the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health. Currently composed of 29 medical societies and 53 affiliate organizations, the Consortium works to inform the public and policymakers about the harmful health effects of climate change on Americans, and the immediate and long-term health benefits associated with decreasing greenhouse gas emissions (i.e., heat-trapping pollution) and other preventive and protective measures.
To facilitate the medical community’s awareness-raising efforts, the Consortium brings together associations representing over 600,000 clinical practitioners.
Recognizing that the health impacts of climate change disproportionately impact our most vulnerable populations, the Health and Climate Solutions team is partnering with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to advance health equity through climate solutions. While RWJF is helping to build a Culture of Health, climate change presents threats to any vision of a healthy future. We seek to elevate the stories of communities across the United States that are improving health and addressing climate change in equitable ways. To learn more, visit the Health & Climate Solutions website.
The 4D Project: Countering Misinformation
Misinformation is a multi-faceted problem, influencing society at political, social, technological, and psychological levels. Therefore, effective responses to misinformation require multi-disciplinary approaches. The aim of the 4D Project, led by Dr. John Cook, is to develop the “holy grail of fact-checking”: systems that automatically detect and neutralize misinformation about important science-based topics and issues. This can only be achieved by synthesizing research findings from computer science, political science, philosophy, psychology, and communication.
The 4D Project will synthesize four lines of research: Detection (automatically detecting online misinformation); Deconstruction (identifying the exact nature of the misinformation); Debunking (implementing proven refutation approaches); and Deployment (inoculating and debunking in a variety of social contexts).
Detection
In collaboration with the University of Exeter and Trinity College Dublin, we have constructed a comprehensive taxonomy of climate misinformation arguments and are developing supervised machine learning methods (manually training a machine to detect textual and inferential patterns) to automatically detect and categorize misinformation about climate change. This research will develop and improve machine learning techniques to detect science misinformation.
Deconstruction
Automatically flagged misinformation needs to be assessed, using a combination of scientific fact-checking and critical thinking analysis, in order to identify the exact ways that it misleads. In collaboration with critical thinking philosophers from the University of Queensland, we have developed critical thinking methods to deconstruct and assess misinformation. We continue to apply these methods to different types of misinformation (such as inductive arguments) and explore communication techniques such as parallel argumentation to inoculate people against misleading fallacies.
Debunking
Debunking misinformation is notoriously difficult, given the psychological complexities in correcting misconceptions. So it’s imperative that refutations follow principles informed by experimental research. Part of our work involves providing best-practices guidelines, such as the highly influential Debunking Handbook and Consensus Handbook. We have also published research into the efficacy of inoculation to neutralize misinformation, and continue to advance research into misinformation with a variety of experiments, testing different contexts, types of misinformation, and refutational formats and approaches.
Deployment
In order to achieve meaningful responses to misinformation, research into detection, deconstruction, and debunking of misinformation needs to be deployed at scale in real-world applications. We have published debunkings of climate misinformation through the Skeptical Science website, translated into 24 languages and receiving 3.7 million visitors per year. We developed the Massive Open Online Course, Making Sense of Climate Science Denial, which has received over 40,000 enrolments from 185 countries. In collaboration with the National Center for Science Education and Alliance for Climate Education, we developed high school curriculum that raises climate literacy and boosts critical thinking by countering climate misconceptions. We continue to develop and monitor the effectiveness of these efforts, as well as develop new social media applications.
In 2020, John Cook published Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change, a book countering climate misinformation using critical thinking and cartoons. Following the book launch, Cook produced a series of animated Cranky Uncle videos, ideal for use in classrooms.
Earlier this year, we successfully crowd-funded a campaign to develop the Cranky Uncle app, a smartphone game which teaches resilience against misinformation using cartoons, gamification, and critical thinking. The game will be release later this year.
RepublicEn
republicEn, a grassroots community-building effort to educate Americans about free enterprise solutions to climate change, is managed through George Mason University’s Energy and Enterprise Initiative. republicEn founder Bob Inglis served six terms in Congress representing the state of South Carolina. Once a critic of climate change, Inglis changed his views and began advocating for a carbon tax to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
On September 12, 2016, Inglis and Energy and Enterprise Initiative advisor Katharine Hayhoe, associate professor of Atmospheric Science at Texas Tech University, were ranked number 46 on the Politico 50 for their work on what Politico called “the conservative case for fighting climate change.” The site’s top 50 ranking is described as a “guide to the thinkers, doers, and visionaries transforming American politics in 2016.”
“We’re making progress,” Inglis said. “Conservatives are going to come around on climate. We’re going to realize that we’re all in this together, and the world is going to celebrate American leadership. This is our generation’s moon shot.”
Former U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C., addresses an audience during ceremonies for the 2015 Profile in Courage Award, at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Sunday, May 3, 2015, in Boston. Inglis was awarded the prize for reversing his position on climate change. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
NPS Internship Program
This paid summer internship program was initiated in 2012 by the National Park Service National Capital Region Urban Ecology Research Learning Alliance (UERLA) and Mason 4C. The internship program is designed to create opportunities for students of diverse academic and personal backgrounds to gain skills and experience in the synthesis, interpretation, and development of science communication products while increasing knowledge about climate change and its effects on parks.
Over ten weeks, we train and place undergraduate and graduate interns in National Capital Region national parks to develop materials and programs that communicate the impact of climate change on natural, cultural, historical, and recreational resources in the parks. Our interns have developed a variety of products ranging from park ranger communication toolkits to park-specific webpages. Samples of internship products can be found on this we
UERLA is a Research Learning Center that translates complex research results into readily understandable information—supporting research, education, and technical assistance for 16 parks in the National Capital Region. The center provides science communication outreach to park managers and external audiences via websites, workshops, and publications. UERLA also maintains research and education partnerships with universities, not-for-profit, education, and other federal agencies.
Applying for the Internship
The 4C/NPS Climate Change Communication Internship Program for Summer 2023 is on hiatus as we seek new funding. Please sign up for our mailing list for information on the program.
- We accept applications from upper-level undergraduate and graduate students from all U.S.-accredited institutions.
- We are looking for individuals with diverse backgrounds to form a natural science, social science, and multimedia interdisciplinary team.
Your parks have climate stories! For communication resources from past internship years, including our Ranger toolkits, brochures, and infographics, please visit the new 4C/NPS internship website.
If you have questions or would like additional information, please contact Dan Reed, Associate Director of Mason 4C.
UERLA is a Research Learning Center that translates complex research results into readily understandable information—supporting research, education, and technical assistance for 16 parks in the National Capital Region. The center provides science communication outreach to park managers and external audiences via websites, workshops, and publications. UERLA also maintains research and education partnerships with universities, not-for- profit, education, and other federal agencies. Education activities provided by UERLA include training opportunities for NPS staff and partners, participating in science education programs, and building external partnerships that support science education in parks.
George Mason University’s 4C conducts unbiased public engagement research – and help government agencies, associations, and companies apply the results of social science research – so that collectively, we can stabilize our planet’s life sustaining climate and prevent harm from climate change. The George Mason University Principal Investigator is Dr. Edward Maibach.
People
Edward Maibach
Edward Maibach – a Mason distinguished University Professor – is a communication scientist who is expert in the uses of strategic communication and social marketing to address climate change and related public health challenges. His research – funded by NSF, NASA and private foundations – focuses on public understanding of climate change and clean energy; the psychology underlying public engagement; and cultivating TV weathercasters, health professionals, and climate scientists as effective climate educators.
From 2011 to 2014, Ed co-chaired the Engagement & Communication Working Group for the 3rd National Climate Assessment. He currently advises government agencies, museums, science societies and civic organizations on their climate change public engagement initiatives and serves on the Board of of the Global Climate and Health Alliance.
In 2018, he was appointed a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in 2020 he was awarded Mason’s top research honor—the Beck Family Presidential Medal of Excellence in Research and Scholarship—and the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication (with Anthony Leiserowitz).
In 2021, Ed was identified by Thompson Reuters as one of the world’s 10 most influential scientists working on climate change. Previously, Ed served as an Associate Director of the National Cancer Institute, and as Worldwide Director of Social Marketing at Porter Novelli. Ed earned his PhD in communication science at Stanford University, his MPH at San Diego State University, and his BA in psychology at University of California, San Diego.
Lisa Patel
Dr. Lisa Patel is the Executive Director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, and Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Stanford School of Medicine. She is a former Presidential Management Fellow for the Environmental Protection Agency where she coordinated the US Government’s efforts on clean air and safe drinking water projects in South Asia in collaboration with the World Health Organization and received the Trudy A. Specinar Award for her work.
She is a member of the Executive Committee for the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Environmental Health and Climate Change and a faculty mentor for Stanford Climate and Health. As a mentor, she works with students and residents on projects related to climate-resilient schools, environmental justice, sustainable healthcare, and medical education curriculum reform. She maintains her clinical practice as a pediatric hospitalist caring for premature infants, attending deliveries, and caring for hospitalized children.
Lisa received her Master’s in Environmental Sciences from the Yale School of the Environment, her medical degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and completed her training in pediatrics at UCSF.
Bob Inglis
Bob Inglis was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1992, having never run for office before. He represented Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina, from 1993-1998, unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Senator Fritz Hollings in 1998, and then returned to the practice of commercial real estate law in Greenville, S.C. In 2004, he was re-elected to Congress and served until losing re-election in the South Carolina Republican primary of 2010.
In 2011, Inglis went full-time into promoting free enterprise action on climate change and launched the Energy and Enterprise Initiative (“E&EI”) at George Mason University in July 2012. E&EI is a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt, educational outreach that lives to demonstrate the power of accountable free enterprise. E&EI believes that climate change can be solved by eliminating all subsidies, including the implicit subsidy of the lack of accountability for emissions. E&EI supports an online community of energy optimists and climate realists at republicEn.org. You can say you’re “En” on free enterprise solutions to climate change at republicEn.org.
For his work on climate change Inglis was given the 2015 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. Inglis was a Resident Fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics in 2011, a Visiting Energy Fellow at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment in 2012, and a Resident Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics in 2014.
