"So a Frackademic and an Environmentalist Walk into an Error Bar...": Communicating Uncertainty Amidst Controversy

The current worldwide boom in unconventional oil and natural gas development is fraught with scientific uncertainty, particularly when it comes to the environmental impacts of extraction. And that's not all it's fraught with. As environmental scientists rush to answer questions about the air quality, water quality, and public health effects of oil and gas development, they've been running headlong into additional factors that are raising the stakes, the acrimony, and the confusion in the public debate over drilling. Not the least of these is the opacity of the subsurface itself. Sages, soothsayers, and scientists have been trying to demystify the subsurface for thousands of years. In our attempts to fathom hydraulic fracturing, we are but recent collaborators in a longstanding human tradition. Add to this 'underworld factor' a) the challenges posed by deep public skepticism of the results of most any oil- and gas-related research (as expressed through the application of the term 'frackademic'), b) the difficulties of measuring risk and communicating it in terms of probability, c) the intricacies of asking and answering interdisciplinary questions, and d) the perils of fielding public demands for a 'final word' on environmental impacts when one's research is still in progress, and the result might be a overwhelming desire for environmental scientists to turn and run, screaming all the way. Or it might be to wade in. As a former science journalist, erstwhile hydrologist, and research assistant at the Center of the American West, I've opted for the latter, and am now working as a member of the outreach team for an interdisciplinary NSF-funded project that is evaluating the environmental and social trade-offs associated with oil and gas extraction in the Rocky Mountain West (the Air Water Gas Sustainability Research Network). In this session, I will discuss what our team has learned thus far about communicating scientific uncertainty amidst the challenges described above. In striving to separate 'signal' from 'noise' in the public discourse, we have experimented with literary devices (metaphor and narrative), pedagogical tools (the 'what we know, what we don't know, and what we hope to learn' format), journalistic practices (the humanizing profile), and, perhaps most importantly, disarming delivery techniques (humor). In describing these methods, and their effectiveness at addressing scientific uncertainty, the author will be sure to acknowledge the uncertainties inherent therein.