Nature: The toughest job in the world?—The (IPCC) seeks its first communications chief.

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101224/full/news.2010.692.html

Published online 24 December 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.692

News

The toughest job in the world?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change seeks its first communications chief.

Quirin Schiermeier

In the highly politicized world of climate science, public relations can win or lose battles that shape the Earth's future.

The past year has made that abundantly clear to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body charged with assessing the latest climate science, which has been beleagured by critics of its methods and conclusions.

Now, the IPCC is looking for its very first http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/jobs/172413-IPCC-Communications-and-Media-Relations-Programme-Manager">Communications and Media Relations Programme Manager to help it avoid the pitfalls of the internet media age.

The panel, honoured with the 2007 Nobel peace prize for its work, had a lot of explaining to do after journalists last year exposed errors in its last assessment report, published in 2007. Even IPCC officials admit that the group's crisis management was as egregious as the now-infamous statement that most Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 (see 'http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100119/full/463276a.html">Glacier estimate is on thin ice'). At the time, the IPCC had no full-time professional communications director who could have dealt with the matter in a timely way.

…