New prize launched to showcase latest climate facts & innovations
Being part of the climate science community for 20 years, I am hugely excited to launch the inaugural Peer Prize for Climate, with generous support from the UNSW Sydney Grand Challenge Program and the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland.
Our objective is to provide a new way to reward the latest discoveries & solutions in the broad field of climate change as chosen by thousands of peers, while being a catalyst to showcase new knowledge and ideas openly to the wider community. There are $10k in prizes and the award is open to researchers, engineers, technologists & social scientists working in the broad area of climate science, impacts & solutions.
Where has all the new climate knowledge gone?
We’ve seen a 10-fold surge in new climate change knowledge coming from academia over the past two decades. Now more than 25,000 peer-reviewed articles are published in climate change across a diverse range of fields covering the earth system (atmosphere, land, oceans, ice) and human components (technology, energy, economics, health, policy). Yet how much of that knowledge reaches people beyond their own specialist sub-fields?
The volume, jargon & assumed knowledge in those 25,000 peer-reviewed articles is so great, researchers resort to engaging only within their own specialist sub-fields. This ‘immobilizes’ new climate knowledge and the impact it can bring for the world.
To test this, I took a step back in time and read the abstract I wrote from my 1st peer-reviewed publication 16 years ago and I am horrified at how poorly it is written. Aside from the ridiculously detailed title, I lost virtually everyone in the first 6 words of the abstract “Increases in the anthropogenic CO2 inventory…”
‘Anthropogenic’ ‘CO2’ or ‘inventory’ means little to most people. Actually it gets way worse. I didn’t even mention any background or aims of the study — I went straight into irrelevant jargon & acronyms like CFC-11 without defining what that means. Only a sprinkling of my oceanography peers could even attempt to understand that abstract!
Like other peers, I want to learn about what is happening across other areas of climate (paleo, clouds, extremes, energy, economics…). But from conferences to publications, the communication barriers are too great to overcome. Like the majority of my colleagues, I revert back to focusing on my specialist climate niche.
Ironically as researchers, we end up with the problem of having digital access to immense volumes of new climate knowledge without the ability to actually use, collaborate or innovate with 99% of it. This stifles innovation towards solving complex grand challenges like climate change.
Aside from multi-disciplinary collaboration, how on earth do the wider public or policy-makers learn about the latest climate knowledge to make informed decisions (PS: the next IPCC will be published in 2022)? Unfortunately, the public resort to reading posts by 3rd parties & opinionators fueled by social media to misrepresent, cherry-pick or exaggerate the facts. Public trust in mass media has reached historic lows (38%). Even if a reporter shares new scientific knowledge in a measured way, the world doesn’t believe most of them anymore. That is a huge problem.
How to Unlock Trusted Climate Knowledge?
Despite the collapse in trust for the mass media, public trust in scientists is still very high at 76%. We as scientists, therefore need to take a break from our labs and invest time in better communicating those 25,000 research articles to a wider audience. If we continue to only share specialist pdfs and jargon to a few peers who can actually understand them, then this trusted climate knowledge will continue to be buried, immobilised for wider impact.
We call on all climate researchers, engineers, technologists & social scientists who have published over the past year to showcase their work to the wider community by applying to the inaugural Peer Prize for Climate.
To enter, researchers are guided to write a non-jargon summary of their paper/innovation and are even encouraged to create a video summary (sometimes called a video abstract). Video really helps wider engagement with the research. To give you a good example, my colleague Erik van Sebille produced a great short video abstract of his ERL research article on modelling ocean garbage patches, helping his article to be downloaded 11,000 times.
We have thousands of other video summary examples within other Thinkable competitions if you need some further inspiration or guidance, otherwise your universities video production units are always a good source for help.
Climate Community of Peers
After an initial screening phase for eligibility, we will be opening up & sharing all of the entries through the site, allowing a wide audience to learn about, debate, discuss and be inspired by the latest climate knowledge & innovations. During a 10-day voting period, we will allow thousands of verified active researchers to vote to award the inaugural winners.
The objective of the Peer Prize for Climate is to be an annual catalyst for wider knowledge exchange of the latest climate research & solutions from around the world, while celebrating the most exciting discoveries & technologies. Think of it like the ‘Academy Awards’ for climate, where the wider community collectively decides on the most important new paper/discovery/innovation for both basic climate science & also climate solutions.
Applications close August 30 and there are $10k in prizes along with a student prize. You can learn more here: https://the-peer-prize-for-climate.thinkable.org/
Thanks everyone — hope you can be part of it and help us better unlock your valuable ‘hidden’ climate knowledge for the world to engage with.
Ben McNeil
