Lydia Messling

*I jest. This piece exists only because my co-authors are top notch and tremendously industrious. I did not lift a finger for the past few months. All credit to them!
@samuelfinnerty.bsky.social @maiensachis.bsky.social @colognaviktoria.bsky.social @fdabl.bsky.social @christelvaneck.bsky.social

This is top maternity leave productivity here, if I say so myself* 👇🏻
Our preprint is perfect as a quick recce of the research into scientists’ advocacy and activism - the motivations, barriers, tricky bits, and what different people think is good and not so good, and what we might need next.

Scientists are becoming more visible in public climate debates, but the effects of this engagement are far from straightforward. We often hear strong claims about credibility and trust, yet what does the evidence say? Our new preprint explores this osf.io/preprints/ps...

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Politicians are retreating from net zero because they think the public doesn’t care. But they’re wrong | Rebecca Willis Our research shows people are strongly in favour of measures to tackle the climate crisis. They just need to be listened to, says professor of energy and climate governance Rebecca Willis

Politicians are retreating from net zero because they think the public doesn’t care. But they’re wrong | Rebecca Willis

Politicians are retreating from net zero because they think the public doesn’t care. But they’re wrong | Rebecca Willis Our research shows people are strongly in favour of measures to tackle the climate crisis. They just need to be listened to, says professor of energy and climate governance Rebecca Willis

Politicians are retreating from net zero because they think the public doesn’t care. But they’re wrong, says @bankfieldbecky.bsky.social

- Our research shows people are strongly in favour of measures to tackle the #climatecrisis - they just need to be heard

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

happy to profile our research in The Guardian today

Excited my paper on 'fluid hope' has been published 🙂

Tldr: There are different forms of hope in a climate emergency -- including urgent, slow, and radical hope.

They often support one another, rather than being at odds.

@lydiamessling.bsky.social @climatecitizens.bsky.social

Look! Hope!
The public *actually want and support* climate policies - contrary to whatever apathy may be rumoured.
Stellar analysis of the outputs from citizen assemblies and juries - literally the policies the public have designed themselves and would green light tomorrow.

The public want action on adverts for high-carbon products and services.
And so so many members of the public want this, and MORE.

Fantastic work and stats analysis from @bankfieldbecky.bsky.social and the Climate Citizens research group. 👏 👏 👏

Title, authors’ names, and abstract from a paper about climate scientists views about advocacy

In today’s highly politicized debate about #ClimateChange, what role should scientists take? Should they be #advocates for action & policy? @lydiamessling.bsky.social et al. asked 47 climate scientists & found 4 concerns, e.g,, risk of biased science & need to defend science. doi.org/10.1177/0963...

1️⃣ There’s much debate about the role of scientists in climate advocacy, but we often overlook the core concerns behind their arguments.

In our latest publication 🔍, we map these concerns based on interviews with 47 climate scientists! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

New paper out: Our paper investigating climate scientists’ fundamental concerns about climate advocacy has just been published in Public Understanding of Science. w/ great coauthors @lydiamessling.bsky.social @christelvaneck.bsky.social

Check it out here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Academia can be hard, lonely, and very discouraging. @christelvaneck.bsky.social is not only phenomenally intelligent, she’s kind, encouraging, and incredibly savvy. Writing papers with her and @yuyaolu.bsky.social has helped me find the joy in research again.

I should also say that if it were not for @katharinehayhoe.com tagging me in a random post to @christelvaneck.bsky.social on Twitter, then this paper (and a few others) would never have happened. Huzzah for community!

These interviews took place back in 2018 as part of my PhD research, and OH BOY was it fun. I was bowled over by people’s generosity and thoughtfulness, and will forever be thankful to my interviewees (listed in the supplementary materials).

How can climate scientists engage in policy advocacy and preserve their scientific credibility and independence? Scientists are often wary of engaging in policy advocacy as they fear it may result in the perception of bias in their science or abuse of their position. Whilst advocacy need not always result in bia...

There’s lots of other delicious quotes packed into this paper – views on funding, speaking as a citizen, the differences for early career researchers, science-based policy, silence as advocacy. If that’s your thing, there’s more in my thesis here: www.academia.edu/43798041/How...

Plus different audiences may interpret things differently and take a different view on whether it’s "all acceptable advocacy", or "out of order". All we’re doing in this table is mapping out the main concerns and their (shared) roots.

Caveat – don’t use this table as a binary conceptual tool to classify advocacy actions as being either ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Advocacy actions can be driven by multiple justifications.

A table showing the categorisation of concerns relating to both engaging in climate advocacy or avoiding advocacy.

Bung them in a table (because who doesn’t love a little table?) and it looks like this:

Scientists share the same fundamental concerns: 1) to preserve the integrity and credibility of science, 2) to fulfil the role of a scientist (and citizen) in society. These two main concerns emerged as four main justifications for either being in favour of advocacy or against it.

What did we find? The arguments that scientists gave in favour of advocacy were the same ones that others used in arguing against advocacy. This might help explain why this topic is hotly contested and sometimes feels like we’re talking past each other.

📣NEW PAPER: ‘Advocacy - defending science or destroying it?’ Our interviews with 47 climate scientists provide detailed explanations on all the good things about policy advocacy and the legitimate concerns with threats to the integrity and credibility of science. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

I research how scientists bring all of themselves to their research. Here's something from a survey I did with 50 scientists and few interviews: How scientists think about the relationship between creating excellent scientific evidence and being a person of faith. 👇

Big news! The 'all scientists who do climate' feed now stands at:

🌏 3500 MEMBERS 🌎

...more than it ever had on Twitter!

Huge welcome to #3949, my fav colleague @brasmus.bsky.social, and #3500, @johndparker.bsky.social, who says he’s “not good at social media.” No longer, John!

Pin it here ⬇️

At the COP29 climate summit, Keir Starmer said he wasn't going to tell people how to live their lives.

That's not what people want to hear.

I've written about what he could have said instead.

climatecitizens.org.uk/climate-citi...

New blog post from Rebecca Willis on why Keir Starmer said the wrong thing at COP 29: people want government to speak up, not shut up, on climate change.
climatecitizens.org.uk/climate-citi...

🚨 NEW REPORT:
We summarise our recent research on how the public currently feel about climate change – what action they want and what they find frustrating – and offer three priorities for policy makers that will help achieve better climate action.
climatecitizens.org.uk/new-report-p...
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Keir is out of touch saying "what we're not going to do, is start telling people how to live their lives" as sounds like government is 'hands-off' with climate. All the research points to a very serious desire for government to get involved and deliver the scale change needed to live our lives.

HA. In doing my research on scientists and advocacy, I did a bunch of interviews with scientists and had them full verbatim transcribed. Took me AGES to correct all the 'Vulcanologist's for 'volcanologist' from the transcriber. Probably still a few rogue Vulcans in there...

I'm seeing a lot of free-floating hot takes these days re what scientists "should" and "shouldn't" be doing in today's increasingly anti-science atmosphere.

Philosophers have been discussing this topic for centuries and there is a rich + robust body of scholarship on this topic. As we discuss here.