What you should know about climate change
28 Chwefror 2014
Do you know what climate change is? Are you aware of how it will affect your life and local area? Are there any benefits to a green economy? Now, a series of podcasts produced by a University postgraduate student is helping people answer some of these questions and get to grips with the science behind climate change and its impact on people, resources and ecology.
The project, entitled 'What everyone should know about climate change' was produced by Kate Walker-Springett with help from Sarah Lee, both postgraduate students from the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Cardiff University. The project consists of five podcasts, each covering a different aspect of climate change, summarised with a highlights video capturing the key points from the five podcasts.
Kate said: "Much of the literature surrounding the public perception of climate change indicates that material can be difficult to access or challenging to understand for the public".
"The majority of people are concerned about climate change but it is difficult to make climate change a reality given the time scales involved and a lack of awareness about the likely impacts of climate change on daily life. This is accompanied by a tendency towards a distrust of climate change predictions, in part due to the way climate predictions are phrased, for example the use of the term 'uncertainty'.
"So, we decided to make a set of podcasts that go behind the science, predictions and calls for action to help people better understand climate change. We hope that by making information as accessible as possible we can help overcome some of the barriers related to trust in science and politics, the need for action and awareness of climate change itself."
The podcasts feature short interviews with experts both academia, government and not-for profit organisations and were launched to mark Climate Week 2014; Britain's biggest climate change campaign. They were funded by Cardiff University's Community Engagement Team, the Climate Change Consortium of Wales (C3W) and Cynnal Cymru/Climate Change Commission for Wales.