Communication

Scientists are stereotyped as nerdy people who can't communicate with the rest of the world. This stereotype is well deserved. We had a group of Monash U students come by the facility today to check it out and listen to us science guys say impressive sounding things about science. After two 45 minutes talks on a) trace-gas monitoring and isotopic fractionation and b)development of CSIRO's coupled climate model, I think the students were starting to wish they'd stayed home and written an essay (the alternative assignment if they opted out of the site visit). It's not that the aforementioned talks weren't good - they were quite good. But they were so far over the heads of your average 20 year old college kid. I continue to be shocked by scientists' lack of appreciation for their audience.

As the closing speaker, and one not cursed with lots of knowledge about atmospheric sciences or climatology, I simply offered a 30 minute talk re: how I came to be at CSIRO, and showed a bunch of before and after images from climate impact assessments [kind of like those ads from a few years ago with the egg and the frying pan: "this is drugs," this is your brain on drugs," "any questions"]. And I closed by taking questions, but refused to answer questions on the subject of atmospheric science, due to my own ignorance on the subject. They loved it.