American Chemical Society AMA: I’m Andy Jorgensen, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Environmental Sciences at the University of Toledo. Ask me anything about communicating climate change to non-scientists.

See the source article by following the link below:

ACS

Greetings Reddit r/science community!

I am Andy Jorgensen, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Chemistry and Environmental Sciences at the University of Toledo where I have been on the faculty since 1988. My areas of specialization are physical and analytical chemistry with an emphasis on environmental chemistry, including how students and others learn about the scientific principles in these fields.

For the past several years I have been developing educational materials focused on the phenomenon of climate change and how people can best understand what is happening with our climate, why it is happening, and what can be done to reduce the negative consequences which are expected in the future. As part of this effort I have created an interactive presentation on climate change which I have given more than 150 times to students, teachers, professionals and members of the general public. Using personal response devices those in my audiences express their thoughts about climate change as well as respond to factual questions regarding characterizations of our atmosphere and the changes we have seen in modern times. My aim has been to put the science in a context that is relatable to individual’s lives and experiences using reliable data and analogies. Data collected during these sessions indicates that individuals who are presented with factual information are willing to reconsider previous views, including coming to a more realistic view of climate change.

In terms of background, I earned a BS degree in Chemistry from Quincy University and a PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Subsequently I completed a postdoctoral appointment in chemical education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During sabbatical leaves I served as Washington Fellow of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents and Senior Fellow at the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE). I worked on chemical research at Argonne Labs in Illinois and at Ecole Polytechnique in Francis. Finally, I participated in a faculty exchange with Leuphana University in Germany for the purposes of teaching aspects of environmental chemistry.

I also serve as an ACS Expert on the topics of climate change, energy, chemistry of the atmosphere.

In partnership with others associated with NCSE, I have been supported through educational programs at the National Science Foundation and NASA. One of our products is the website Climate, Adaptation, e-Learning which has over 300 resources for teaching climate change.

Ask me anything about communicating climate change to non-scientists.

I’ll be back at 12 noon ET (9am PT, 5pm UTC) to answer your questions.

">American Chemical Society AMA: I’m Andy Jorgensen, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Environmental Sciences at the University of Toledo. Ask me anything about communicating climate change to non-scientists.