Scientists know more about climate change than ever before. So why isn’t the world moving faster to address it?

That was the question at the heart of a round table I recently moderated at Concordia University, and the answers were more practical and more urgent than many in the room expected.

The session, entitled “Communicating Climate Research to Policy and the Public,” took place on March 10 and featured Concordia professor Damon Matthews, Montréal city councillor Peter McQueen and Dominique Paquin, a climate simulation and analysis supervisor at the climate research organization Ouranos.

Their shared diagnosis: the problem is not a lack of data. It’s a failure of translating that data into a message that resonates.

“We have enormous amounts of information on climate resilience strategies. The challenge is that this information rarely makes it into the rooms where decisions are actually made.”

“We have enormous amounts of information on climate resilience strategies. The challenge is that this information rarely makes it into the rooms where decisions are actually made.”

During the session, participants were split into mixed groups and given a single climate finding. Their task: communicate it to three completely different audiences — policymakers, the general public and those working........

© The Conversation