Innovative communication strategies and tactics are equally available to science and non-science. Indeed one may assume Dr Suter himself is a communication 'media relations' tactic for the issue of climate change, through the simple act of writing about climate change.

The idea that there are four layers of engagement for individuals is a simplistic one. It may be worth considering that the climate change issue itself is the problem, not the communication of the issue.

Interesting article, at least it's a change from the usual hysterics and exaggeration that we've all become hardened to by warmists.

I do take issue though with the current politically inspired fashionable "mea cupla" stance though, that suddenly "Your average scientist is not a good PR person because he wants to get on with his science.”

What rubbish, your average successful scientist is very good at audio/visual presentation skills and media management, that's how the good ones get grants and funding, its how they get ahead.

Now after all the articles from scientists, all the media interviews and exposure we find that a couple of skeptics here and there have brought all that undone, with the huge Climate Change funding available, with almost total media sympathy?

Why is that?

I'd suggest, the author is correct, wrong message - the ramped up disaster scenarios and "scare the children" messages, turn people off and turn them to skepticism, rightly so too.

As one warmist suggested earlier this week, the skeptics have a good purpose, they have at least limited the level of hysteria and exaggeration by scientists and the sympathetic media to at least a reasonable level, by questioning the outrageous statement e.g. mass extinction, 100m sea level rises etc

The current approach by CSIRO is reflective of their realisation that cheerleading for a particular solution rather than being "scientific - just the facts ma'am) that they have been in the Environmentalist camp.

Their defense appeared to have been, well regardless of proof of CO2 being guilty, it's a good idea to pollute less - fine, be an activist, but not from the CSIRO scientific pedestal instead of the usual soapbox.

Talking of messages, calling anyone who disagrees names, like "DENIERS!" is not going to make you friends, but it is fun to be in a group with all like thinkers calling the other mob names isn't it? Clearly you don't want to convince anyone, rather to batter them out of the way - that's going to be more difficult when the whole country is starting to become skeptical, isn't it?

Well done! I think that any contribution to the debate about science communication is welcome. Amicus (comment 2) is wrong in suggesting that someone who can work powerpoint and survive an interview is good at PR - there is a lot more to effective communications than that - and frankly your suggestion is akin to 'I fly in airplanes every week therefore I can pilot a 737' or 'I read newspapers therefore I understand how the media works'.

To my understanding, all national papers in Australia have ditched their full time science reporter(s) and now rely on syndicated stories from wire services.

I think there are some outstanding examples of science communication in Australia including Questacon and its travelling show (which I think is sponsored by Shell) but these communications tactics have a very small public or target audience reach and very little repeatability. Science communications in schools is also heavily dependent on contributions from the private sector through sponsorships and financing of books/films etc.

While entire TV channels are devoted to science communication through Pay TV, again I think that their audience reach is small and in the main, the people who watch are already involved or interested in science. A solution I think will have to involve mainstream media and government funding in order to reach the bulk of the Australian population who are disengaged and not inquisitive. A worthwhile article and a useful contribution to the debate.

I agree with the first post. The problem here is not in communicating science, but in the past exaggeration and scary stuff put out by some scientists, scientific academies, science writers and journalists, and politicians, about human-induced global warming (now rebadged as 'climate change'). In my opinion this process, now twenty years old, has undermined the high status that 'science' used to have. It is not the only cause. Another is the constant repetition on television of 'breakthroughs' in this or that aspect of medical science. A third is the tendency of some scientists (Sir Mark Oliphant was an early example) to speak as though a science background enables the possessor to pontificate on the state of society and its future. I would agree that in many cases scientists do not understand the ways in which news media need and use talking heads. They may see a breakthrough grab on TV as more power to their elbow, but very few of these apparent discoveries seem to result in anything, so they increase scepticism within the community.

In the case of AGW, to use that example, there is an additional problem. Scary stories are news, but stories that say that things are much as they always are rarely news. The current CSIRO/BoM statement is not news in any real sense, since there is no new information, but it says that things are really bad, which is news.

I am afraid that science is going to be out of favour until the AGW bubble bursts. And when will that be, you ask.

I would think that science is now an inverted V.

From a relatively few fields of science, science has now dramatically expanded, and I have seen a list of over 500 fields of science, (and that list is also being continuously added to).

Each field of science would require a lifetime to study and fully appreciate.

However, if someone understands the basics of chemistry, physics and biology, then they should be able to gain at least some understanding of what is occurring in many of the specialised fields of science.

The language of science needs to be taught from a very early age.

Unfortunately, in many schools and universities, science is now considered to be “too male”, and I have heard from someone who teachers the teachers in a teacher’s training college, that most of the teachers had a knowledge of science that would not allow them to pass a grade 10 science exam.

To get science as a part of everyday language, the education system has to have a major transformation (or metamorphisis).

Too late now for communication. Science has been dealt a serious and probably irrevocable blow by the IPCC and many-made climate tricksters. It will be a long time before science will recover; this is a sad thing for both the discipline and the many good scientists whom the warmist goons silenced.