Annenberg Seminar: Climate Change Panel with Michael E. Mann, Marshall Shepherd, Ed Maibach, & Tony Leiserowitz

"Urgency, Agency, and Climate Action: The Role of Communication"

About the Seminar

Annenberg School Dean John L. Jackson, Jr., and Annenberg Public Policy Center Director Kathleen Hall Jamieson invite you to a virtual panel discussion celebrating Professor Michael E. Mann's acceptance of Penn's offer to serve as a Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication and as a distinguished research fellow in the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Annenberg School for Communication. 

The discussion will focus on optimal ways to communicate the urgent need for action and empower audiences to respond effectively. Discussants will address ways to communicate tipping points, irreversibility, and abrupt climate change; convey concepts such as carbon cycle feedback through clarifying, compelling analogies; and overcome uses of uncertainty as an excuse for inaction. The panel will feature Professor Mann and three of the nation's other premier climate science communicators. 

Lunches will be available for Annenberg attendees.

Register Here

Panelists

Michael E. Mann, Ph.D.

Mann is Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State. His research focuses on climate science and climate change. He was selected by Scientific American as one of the 50 leading visionaries in science and technology in 2002, and was awarded the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geophysical Union in 2012.

He made Bloomberg News' list of 50 most influential people in 2013. He has received the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One, the Award for Public Engagement with Science from the AAAS, the Climate Communication Prize from the American Geophysical Union and the Leo Szilard Award of the American Physical Society. He received the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement 2019 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2020. He is a Fellow of the AGU, AMS, GSA, AAAS and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He is co-founder of RealClimate.org, author of more than 200 peer-reviewed and edited publications, numerous op-eds and commentaries, and five books including Dire Predictions, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, The Madhouse Effect, The Tantrum that Saved the World, and The New Climate War.

J. Marshall Shepherd, Ph.D.

Marshall Shepherd is the Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor of Geography and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Georgia and Director of its Atmospheric Sciences Program. Shepherd was the 2013 President of American Meteorological Society (AMS).

Prior to academia, he spent 12 years as a scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and was Deputy Project Scientist of the Global Precipitation Measurement Mission. Shepherd is the host of The Weather Channel’s Weather Geeks Podcast and a senior contributor to Forbes Magazine. In 2021, Shepherd was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The only member of the University of Georgia faculty to ever achieve this trifecta. He has received numerous awards including the 2004 White House PECASE Award, the Captain Planet Foundation Protector of the Earth Award, the 2019 AGU Climate Communication Prize, the 2020 Mani L. Bhaumik Award for Public Engagement with Science and the 2018 AMS Helmut Landsberg Award. He received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in meteorology from Florida State University. He has two TEDx talks on climate science and communication that collectively exceed two million viewers. He is routinely asked to brief the media, Congress, and the White House on weather-climate-science related topics. Shepherd has almost 100 peer-reviewed publications on various topics.

Edward Maibach, Ph.D.

Maibach is a distinguished University Professor and Director of George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication—is a public health communication scientist who focuses on climate change and related public health challenges.

In 2020, he was awarded the Stephen Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication (with Anthony Leiserowitz), and Mason’s top research honor — the Beck Family Presidential Medal of Excellence in Research and Scholarship, and in 2021 he was identified by Thompson Reuters as one of the world’s 10 most influential scientists working on climate change. Maibach previously served as Associate Director of the National Cancer Institute and Worldwide Director of Social Marketing at Porter Novelli, and is currently a Board Member of the Global Climate and Health Alliance.

 

Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D.

Leiserowitz is the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment.

He is an expert on public climate change and environmental beliefs, attitudes, policy preferences, and behavior, and the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape them. He conducts research at the global, national, and local scales, including many surveys of the American public. He conducted the first global study of public values, attitudes, and behaviors regarding sustainable development and has published more than 200 scientific articles, chapters, and reports. He has served as a contributing author, panel member, advisor or consultant to diverse organizations including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (AR6 Report), the National Academy of Sciences (America’s Climate Choices Report), the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Kennedy School, the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, and the World Economic Forum, among others. He is a recipient of the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Mitofsky Innovator Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research, and the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One. He is also the host of Climate Connections, a radio program broadcast each day on more than 680 stations and frequencies nationwide. Twitter: @ecotone2