AGI/AIPG Summer Interns become ‘Policy Wonks’
Abigail Seadler AGI Geoscience Policy Associate
This summer, the three AGI/AIPG Geoscience Policy Interns became fully fledged “Policy Wonks.” Between meet- ing congressional and federal agency staff, attending hearings and briefings on Capitol Hill, and keeping the geoscience community informed about relevant policy issues in the Geoscience Policy Monthly Review, Archie Creech, Jr., Kalev Hantsoo, and Sam Jacobson were able to become experts on three distinct policy issues: science communication, carbon capture and sequestration, and critical minerals. In addition, they contributed considerably to the forthcoming update of the 2012 Critical Needs document, which will help inform presidential and congressional campaigns about the value of the geosciences to society for the 2016 election cycle.
The American Geosciences Institute and the three interns are extremely grateful for the support of the Foundation of the American Institute of Professional Geologists, without which these internships would not be possible. These intern- ships provide a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for young and early-career geoscientists to directly engage with and learn more about science policy.
Below are brief biographies of the three AGI/AIPG summer interns and their articles that showcase the development of their geoscience policy interests over the summer.
Archie Creech is an Environmental Science major at the University of Alabama. Outside of school, Archie works at the Geological Survey of Alabama, where he works in the Hydrologic division as part of the Statewide Groundwater Assessment program. He also worked as an intern for the North River Watershed, a nonprofit that promotes water sus- tainability and environmental awareness in the North River Watershed north of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Archie is interested in water resources, especially quantity, and how humans generally interact with the environment around them. In the future, he hopes to work in environmental policy and law and work to facilitate science communication among the scientific community, policymakers, and the public.
Kalev Hantsoo earned his bachelor’s degree in Geology from the University of Maryland. His undergraduate thesis focused on the feedback effects between ocean chemistry and animal evolution in the early Cambrian Period. The project included field work with a team of paleontologists and geochemists at the official Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary, located on the coast of Newfoundland. During his AGI/AIPG internship, Kalev researched the economic prospects of carbon capture technology and examined how western states are responding to the ongoing drought. Kalev begins graduate work at Penn
State this fall, where he will study carbon cycling and climate change in the geologic past.
Sam Jacobson is a rising junior at Bucknell University majoring in Geology and East Asian Studies. His primary interest lies in economic geology and the consequences of exploiting mineral resources, particularly in regard to Chinese policy. During his AGI/AIPG internship, Sam assisted in the development of the 2016 Critical Needs Document and reported on the state of rare earth elements in the U.S. He is active in his school’s outdoor education department and will be studying abroad in China this fall.
Science Communication: A Case Study of Drought and Public Relations
By Archie Creech Jr.
One of the most pressing issues facing the scientific community is the gap between scientific knowledge and public perception. Contentious issues can quickly become character- ized by politics and lose their con- nection to scientific consensus. For example, a January 2015 poll by the Pew Research Center found that 73 percent of U.S. adults believed that
Earth’s climate is warming, but only 50 percent believed that the warming is human-induced.1 The same poll found that just 57 percent of U.S. adults believed that scientists agree that “the earth is getting warmer due to human activity,” when in reality the number of scientists who agree is closer to 97 percent.2 Statistics such as these highlight the disparity between scientific knowledge and public perception—how can the public trust scientific consensus if they are not aware of its existence in the first place?
Communication, therefore, is critical. When polled, 99 percent of scientists at the American Association for the Advancement of Science said that scientific inaccuracy in public knowledge and media reports is a problem.1 In a world undergoing rapid changes, communicating public safety concerns is critical, and for those scientists who have the knowledge to address these issues, it is a moral imperative to communicate them to the public.3 As a discipline inherently tied to public safety, natural hazards research holds some of the greatest potential for scientists to address this disparity and connect with the public, for although the causes for natural hazards may be politicized, their effects rarely are. Drought
1. Funk, Cary, and Lee Rainie. “Public and Scientists’ Views on Science and Society.” Pew Research Center Internet Science Tech RSS. Pew Research Center.
2. “Global Climate Change: Consensus.” Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. 3. “Guidelines for Ethical Professional Conduct.” AGI Guidelines for Ethical Professional Conduct. American Geosciences Institute.
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