The role of climate scientists in the post-factual society

The politicization of and societal debate on climate change science has increased over the last decades. Here, the authors argue that the role of climate scientists in our societies needs to adapt in accordance with this development. We share our experiences from the awareness campaign Pole to Paris, which engaged non-academic audiences on climate change issues 10 on the roads from the polar regions to Paris and through conventional and social media. Based on these experiences, as well as those from other science communication initiatives, we suggest a way forward for climate scientists in the post-factual society.


Response to the review by Heidi Roop
Climate change messages and engagement Based on the responses, the manuscript still requires more structure and clarity in regards to the analysis used, as well as more structure to make it clear to the reader how they arrived at some of the specific recommendations made at the end of the manuscript. More initiativespecific information is required to help the reader understand a) how specifically their messages differed from the climate change messages they critique, and b) how specifically they structured their engagements to support dialogue. The effort to build dialogue is a central thesis of the paper, but how this was done in the initiative is not entirely clear. How specifically were the public talks set-up to support dialogue, rather than a deficit-based interaction? Or, was the dialogue developed through those who joined in the cycling and running part of the engagement? If so, can the authors describe who it was that joined in the physical components of the efforts? How many people does that roughly represent from your efforts and how did they learn about the opportunity to participate?
Thank you for pointing out where you find clarity to be missing in the manuscript in light of the changes done to accommodate the reviews of the reviewers. We have done our best to structure the manuscript better and make it clearer.
More than how the climate change messages differed within the Pole to Paris initiative in comparison to most outreach initiatives, the way they were delivered differed more. As we write in the end of Sect. 4, we met our audience in running shoes, on a bicycle or in other informal settings, being accessible and using an appropriate language and format in our society instead of asking our audiences to adapt to our forums, formats and terminology.
We established a two-way interaction by: -Researching about our audience prior to meeting them to formulate our message appropriately. For example, we called the teacher at the upcoming school presentation to know what the students have learned about recently and thus relate to. Similarly, we read local news ahead of open town events to make sure to relate our stories to stories of their own.
-Starting presentations by asking our audience what they already knew about the topic to make sure the information shared was relevant, well paced and detailed and not a repetition of what they already knew. While this took 5 minutes off the given time slot, we found it to be worth the time due to the improved connection with the audience and their enhanced willingness to ask questions throughout our presentations as they already had raised their voices once.
-Using a language that is accessible and appropriate. As we highlight in Sect. 4, the various professional and demographic backgrounds of the Pole to Paris team allowed us to reach a wider audience than if the team members were all male, white, scientists and only speaking English.
-Adopting an attitude that put our audience at ease and encouraged them to participate and ask questions. Essential here was making sure that the audience saw us more as humans with knowledge and passion of the environment rather than scientists from an ivory tower.
-Creating games and activity-based interactions which by nature created a more laidback atmosphere of exchanges and questions. For instance, we would create a game starting with a discussion on solutions to personally act on climate change that participants were aware of. This alone would trigger debate among them and exchanges with us. Eventually, each participant would commit to a specific action that he or she would stick to in order to address climate change at his or her scale.
We used this methods in all our work, but two of our outreach forms stand out in establishing a two-way interaction: 1) events with local partner organisations in open spheres, where most time and focus were on individual or group interaction with the laypeople, and 2) meetings with locals along the ways from Tromsø and Christchurch to Paris -running or cycling with us for parts of the journeys or inviting us into their homes.
The latter were a mix of people, from athletes, who wanted to a stronger meaning to their training, to people of all shapes, who got inspired to leave their houses to run or cycle for a good cause. During the Northern Run, the lead runner always ran with a GPS tracker in his or her backpack, which allowed anyone to follow the journey through a live map on our website and join in the run as he or she ran through their neighbourhood. The awareness of this option was spread through conventional and social media and through our networks.
In total, we estimate that about 500 people ran and cycled with us along parts of the Northern Run and the Southern Cycle, with the majority being during the open town/city events of the latter. By nature, the largest cities with the highest potential of running followers along the Northern Run were towards its end, i.e., London, Brussels and Paris. However, due to the Paris attacks and the following lockdown in Brussels and France, the events planned in these cities, with interest from hundreds of co-runners, either had to be cancelled or strongly downscaled, i.e., without the joining runners.

1) Clearer methods and goal sections
The paper will still benefit from clearer methods and goals sections. For example, Section 2, still needs a clear statement of the intended target audience of the initiative. These goals can then be positioned against the data collected to reflect on the extent to which the stated goals were achieved.
Based on your suggestions, we have rewritten and split the 2nd paragraph in Sect. 2 in two. These read: The Pole to Paris project focused on reshaping the way scientists engage with the public on climate change issues. The nature of the problem -being a long-term process on a planetary scale -makes it difficult for individuals to grasp and engage with. In an attempt to remove this abstractness, we, as scientists, decided to hit the road in order to share climate science knowledge with people on the ground as well as collect their stories of experienced changes to share them through our platforms. This allowed us to target audiences along the way not normally reached by scientific messages, meeting them faceto-face. Instead of inviting them to our universities, using a scientific jargon and sharing scientific information behind paywalls, we met them on their terms -in their home forums, using a familiar language and connecting through accessible formats.
To reach this audience, two journeys from the poles were mapped out: the 10,000km long bicycle ride -the Southern Cycle -from Christchurch (New Zealand) and the 3,000km long run -the Northern Run -from Tromsø (Norway), both finishing in Paris during COP 21 (Fig. 1). These journeys were led by two climate scientists, who left Christchurch and Tromsø shortly after completing their PhDs in Antarctic and Arctic climate change, respectively. 7.5 and 4 months later, respectively, they reached Paris, carrying flags from the melting polar regions and stories from people met along the way. The two were supported by the eight other Pole to Paris team members, whose backgrounds ranged from environmental and political science to web and product design. While all members actively contributed to Pole to Paris by various means from their locations around the world, five of them also joined the main cyclist and runner for part of the journeys. Of the ten team members, only the main cyclist and runner were working full-time on the project (i.e., without getting paid), while the others had studies or jobs to balance simultaneously. Whereas we were all in our 20s, the four female and six male team members represented eight different countries.
2) Reflection on the Pole to Paris experience As noted by the reviewers, the paper needs to include "discussion reflecting more on the experience" of the Pole to Paris effort. Specifically, one reviewer noted "The authors could strengthen this paper by spending more time reflecting on and discussing the content of their climate messages and exploring where those messages sit on a spectrum from objective to advocate." There are several areas where this can still be explicitly included in the manuscript to respond to both reviewers' concerns and suggestions.
Based on your suggestion, we have added a new 4th paragraph in Sect. 3, expanded the 3rd paragraph in Sect. 4 into two paragraphs and adopted the beginning of the 5th paragraph accordingly. These excerpts now read: As environmental scientists, who had tried to engage the people around us on climate change and biodiversity loss prior to Pole to Paris, the authors find the popularity of the climate action videos encouraging. However, this also questions our objectivity as scientists. Through the videos, we advocated for personal and societal action on climate change, as we did in media and our presentations. Hence, we moved beyond our core scientific base and took on roles as the 'science communicator' and 'the honest broker of policy alternatives,' as defined by Rapley and De Meyer (2014). We found this necessary due to the nature of the problem -often seen as something far away in space or time. By sharing stories of climate change our audience could connect to, we made the problem more visible and graspable -to something right here, right now. This established connection also raised a willingness to do something about the problem, which we advocated for through the reduction of personal greenhouse gas emissions, through the investment power of consumers and companies and through bringing the problem into light among family, friends and colleagues. Had we only communicated the threat of climate change without making it relevant and suggesting ways the listener could address the problem, we would have created a maladaptive response (e.g., denial) among our audience, according to Witte (1992).
By being open about the role we played in public, we strove to negotiate the tension between our professional and public credibilities discussed by Nordhagen et al. (2014), in which our goal of stronger climate action on a governmental level was challenged to some degree by the common academic view that researchers should remain detached from public policies. However, as Kotcher et al. (2017) , 11, 415-429, doi:10.1080/17524032.2016.1275736, 2017. 2a) Sharing of climate change stories In section 2, the authors lead with the goal of the project being to share climate knowledge with people on the ground and to "...collect their stories of experienced changes and share them through our platforms". This aspect of the project is not addressed in the manuscript. What were those stories? Are these some of the videos discussed in the analytics? How did the stories and message differ or resonate with the audiences vs. the videos featuring the scientists at the heart of the effort?
Based on your suggestion, we have added a new 5th paragraph in Sect. 4, which reads: For establishing personal connections to climate change among our audiences, we found that sharing personal experiences of climate change from people we met along the way was especially successful. As scientists, we are used to speak in terms like 2°C, 450 ppm and 50 cm, but most people cannot relate to these numbers. Rather, they relate to stories of people like them whose livelihoods are threatened by climate change. Consequently, we listened to stories like those of a Sami, who might not be able to pass the reindeer herding tradition on to her children due to the warming winters; of a Bangladeshi, who might become a climate refugee due to the rising sea; and of a Londoner, who might be protected from the worst consequences in the metropolis but chooses to write about global environmental issues and work with organisations to find solutions. We shared these stories and others from the road through conventional and social media and in presentations on the way to Paris, at a press conference and at the conference centre there and in a documentary and a TEDx talk since. Based on the video analysis alone, it is difficult to say that these messages were most popular, partly because we did not feature them all in videos and partly because they were both more and less popular than the videos featuring the scientists at the heart of the effort. However, based on interaction with journalists and our audiences, we have strong reasons to believe that these personal stories strongly helped in making the climate science relatable.
2b) Dialogues and two-way conversations The authors refer in several instances to "dialogue" and "two-way conversation", but don't provide any specifics about how they took a traditional 'deficit' approach of giving talks in "schools and universities" and made them dialogical in nature and how they reached nonacademic audiences in these engagements. Given this is a central argument of the paper, as a reviewer noted, more attention needs to be paid to this, as it seems these are the key fora in which the authors undertook 'dialogue' and is the supporting evidence for their call that other climate scientists should do more of this work. As noted by a reviewer, the authors still need to consider the addition of Public Engagement with Science literature around dialogue and two-way interaction, given the numerous references to this approach.
Based on your suggestion, we have added a new 6th paragraph in Sect. 2, which reads: Our approach thus differed from the information deficit model, as outlined by Bucchi (2008). In this model, the public is considered passive and ignorant. Its hostility to science can be counteracted by appropriate injection of science communication, which is provided by experts (i.e., scientists) through a linear, one-way process to non-experts (the public) (Bucchi, 2008). However, this top-down approach is no longer appropriate for our current society, where science communication is addressing a wider agenda (Bucchi, 2008). Instead, the need and right of the public to participate in the scientific discussion has led to dialogue and knowledge models through which the involvement of lay people have enhanced the competencies of scientists and specialists (Callon, 1999;Trench, 2006). We found the latter models to be highly rewarding, as we learned a lot from the dialogues ourselves in addition to being better understood as communicators of scientific information.
Based on your suggestion, we also added a sentence to the 2nd paragraph in Sect. 4. This excerpt now reads: Meeting people where they are, in their own communities, communicating with them in their own terms, constantly trying to adapt our language to our audience, undeniably contributed to this. We connected through dialogue. Considering the politicized division of the media themselves (e.g., Brüggemann and Engesser, 2017), this positive experience of direct engagement supports the suggestion by Gauchat et al. (2017)  2c) Targeting the climate messages + Framing of climate messages More context is needed to make it clear how specific parts of the Pole to Paris messaging was made 'relevant', as this is a key suggestion at the end of the article. What specific messages were relevant to your broad audience and do the analytics show this? What were the climate messages you tried and how did you modify messages for the different audiences you described engaged with across international borders, values, and languages? Additionally, the descriptions of the videos don't make it clear how the authors "highlighted the opportunities and inspiration of acting on climate now rather than later". Specifics about how they themselves deployed specific messages and developed their best practices are still needed in order to clearly demonstrate exactly what messaging was used, so that readers can see how their suggestions at the end of the article fit into the context of the work the authors carried out.
Based on your suggestion, we have rewritten and split the previous 3rd paragraph in Sect. 2 in three. These read: The public were invited to get behind the Southern Cycle and Northern Run journeys and actively become engaged in the climate dialogue in real time. This was partly done online through social media, partly at the events through open accessibility and partly on the roads themselves through planned and improvised meetings. To some extent, the latter happened because of GPS tracking on our website (Fig. 2), which allowed for other cyclists and runners to join us for part of the distances, providing an accessible and informal platform for face-to-face dialogues. The adventure component also helped to attract media attention, giving the project a platform to communicate the facts about climate change and the importance of COP 21 to the wider audience by engaging them in the journeys. Crucially, along the way, we held talks in schools, universities and many other public venues. To make our climate messages engaging, we called the teacher and read the local news ahead of the presentations to identify topics our audiences could relate to. The former also allowed for the students to be prepared for our presentations, following us online and learning about relevant material prior to our visit.
The ironic beauty of the climate change problem is that is encompasses the whole society, from health and food to tourism, migration and the economic system. Hence, we could always bring our climate messages into a familiar context for our audiences and thus stimulate their feedback. This was also helped by often starting presentations asking the audience what they already knew about the topic in a humane and positive attitude that set everyone at ease. Similarly, we created games and activity-based interactions, especially for our youngest audiences, which brought the large-scale climate problem down to his or her scale. Even though this took time from our given time slots, we found this to better adopt the pace and detail level of our climate messages while also lowering the threshold for questions and comments from the audience. Altogether, this created a true dialogue, in which we openly engaged the public to hear their perspectives and concerns about climate change before respectively responding to them, as suggested by Leshner (2003).
We collaborated with our partners to create events, and we shared stories from the road through conventional and social media (Fig. 2). This provided a unique opportunity to interact with members of society not usually reached by the scientific discourse. In line with O'Neill and Nicholson-Cole (2009) and Stoknes (2015), we highlighted the opportunities and inspiration of acting on climate change now rather than later. For example, from an economical viewpoint, strong, early climate action considerably outweighs its costs (Stern, 2007). Similarly, from a job market perspective, more jobs are added in the energy industry within renewables than are lost in fossil fuels (Fankhaeser et al., 2008). We still communicated the dangers associated with ongoing and expected consequences of climate change, but in terms of relevant and experienced changes rather than fear rising from their cognitive dissonance following Extended Parallel Processing Model theory (Witte, 1992). This theory suggests that such messaging promotes a protection motivation and thus a willingness to change in accordance with the message for the recipient, in contrast to a defensive motivation and thus a reluctance to change (e.g., denial). 3) Number of audiences reached + Transparency of statistical analysis One reviewer noted that the "the descriptions of the audiences reached through the effort must be more precise" in the analytics section. This still needs to be addressed. Perhaps these numbers are better suited to a table? Further, the analysis of the social media analytics does not appear statistical in nature. If statistical analyses were used, how specifically were the data treated? Also, more information about the post-project evaluation, and some of the approaches used, including who and how their social media campaigns were paid for, and on what platforms, would create more transparency and help readers to understand the nature of the analytics and their approach to data collection. All of this methodological information could be more explicitly stated at the top of the "Direct successes" section. The authors also conducted a post-project online survey and might consider sharing the survey questions in an appendix.
Based on the feedback from the reviewers, we expanded the information about the number of audiences reached from a sentence to an own paragraph at the end of Sect. 2. We are sorry to hear that this still is not sufficient.
The idea of collecting all numbers in a table is attractive. We would have supported this idea if all numbers were of comparable formats. Unfortunately, because of the very different representations of these numbers (e.g., social media channels provide number of people reached for each story while conventional media houses only provide overall number of printed newspapers or TV station availability), we found such a table to be more confusing to the reader than clarifying.
However, in an effort to make our data analysis as transparent as possible, we have added a new Fig. 2 showcasing parts of our website and social media channels, as well as spreadsheets of the publicly available media coverage (discussed in Sect. 2; Table A1) and statistics of Facebook videos (discussed in Sect. 3; Tables A2 and A3) and graphics of the social media survey (discussed in Sect. 3; Fig. A1). This will hopefully clarify the data treatment for the Facebook videos statistics and social media survey, which came from Facebook and SurveyMonkey, respectively.
Based on your suggestions, we have added the new Figs. 2 and A1 and Tables A1-A3 and references to them in relevant excerpts in the 4th, 7th and last paragraphs in Sect. 2 and 1st and 7th paragraphs in Sect. 3. These now read: This was partly done online through social media, partly at the events through open accessibility and partly on the roads themselves through planned and improvised meetings. To some extent, the latter happened because of GPS tracking on our website (Fig. 2), which allowed for other cyclists and runners to join us for part of the distances, providing an informal platform for face-to-face dialogues.
We collaborated with our partners to create events, and we shared stories from the road through conventional and social media (Fig. 2).
A conservative estimation is that more than one million people in 45 countries were reached through conventional and social media, which included about 250 media outlets (Table A1) and almost 500,000 and 250,000 reached per Facebook post and Twitter tweet, respectively.
Data for this analysis was fetched through the export function that Facebook offers for administered pages. In addition to information about the date videos were published, links to them and their titles, this function provides information about unique and total views, organic and paid views, and views after 3 seconds, at least 30 seconds (or to their end if that came first) and at 95 % of the video length (including viewers that skipped to this point). We subjectively categorized the videos by topic and main country(ies). Of the 42 total videos, we focused the analysis on the 32 in the most active period from June to December 2015. Detailed data on these can be found in Tables A2 and A3 in the Appendix.
The survey was set up through the online survey platform SurveyMonkey and asked the anonymous respondents a range of questions (Fig. A1).

4) Shaping scientific questions
In several places the authors argue this type of engagement work "helps to further develop scientific questions", but the authors do not elaborate on that element of their own work in this manuscript or make it clear that was an intended goal or approach of the initiative. If this is true for the authors, please elaborate and reference a greater breadth of literature (e.g. from the field of knowledge co-production/actionable science). If not, these references might be removed as they appear tangential to the central arguments/experiences of the authors and this work. Unfortunately, we were not able to find the statement that engagement work like Pole to Paris "helps to further develop scientific questions". Hence, while being positive in changing the manuscript in line with your suggestions, we find it difficult to address this comment.
In the first paragraph in Sect. 4, we write "Engaging in two-way interaction with a range of audiences [...] provided invaluable insight to our own research questions, as also highlighted by Nisbet (2018)." What we meant by this is that questions and concerns of non-academic members of society often strongly differ from those within academia, as we also write in the sentence following: "Fortunate with these encounters, we faced questions and concerns often far from ours, which opened our eyes and ears and widened our perspectives." In the last paragraph in Sect. 4, we write "While we strongly acknowledge the need for publishing research papers to further develop scientific questions, we emphasize that the findings thereof are incomplete if not shared with the society at large." What we mean by this statement is that publishing research papers should still be part of the scientific role as this is important for bringing scientific understanding further. However, as we see it, the parts of society that gets to thrive on this scientific understanding is limited to academia unless the results of the published papers are shared with the rest of society through accessible means and terms. Witte (1992) The reference to Witte 1992, as suggested by needs to be elaborated on. As currently incorporated, it is unclear how the authors see this theory as part of their approach or work.

5) Reference to
Based on your suggestion, we have included a better explanation on how we made use of the Extended Parallel Processing Model theory by Witte (1992). Hence, the relevant excerpts in the 7th paragraph in Sect. 2 and the 4th paragraph in Sect. 3 now read: We still communicated the dangers associated with ongoing and expected consequences of climate change, but in terms of relevant and experienced changes rather than fear rising from their cognitive dissonance following Extended Parallel Processing Model theory (Witte, 1992). This theory suggests that such messaging promotes a protection motivation and thus a willingness to change in accordance with the message for the recipient, in contrast to a defensive motivation and thus a reluctance to change (e.g., denial).
Had we only communicated the threat of climate change without making it relevant and suggesting ways the listener could address the problem, we would have created a maladaptive response (e.g., denial) among our audience, according to Witte (1992).

6) Reframing of the abstract
The abstract still needs to be adapted to support the main arguments of the paper. Both reviewers suggested a reframing of the abstract, but no edits have been made. Given the significant changes to the manuscript, changes to the abstract are warranted.
Thank you for pointing the missing changes to the abstract following the update of the manuscript.
Based on your suggestions, the abstract now reads: The politicization of and societal debate on climate change science have increased over the last decades. Here, the authors argue that the role of climate scientists in our society needs to adapt in accordance with this development. We share our experiences from the awareness campaign Pole to Paris, which engaged non-academic audiences on climate change issues on the roads from the polar regions to Paris and through conventional and social media. By running and cycling across a third of the globe, the scientists behind the initiative established connections on the audiences' terms. Propitiously for other outreach efforts, the exertions were not in themselves the most attractive; among our social media followers, the messages of climate change science and action were more favourable, as measured by video statistics and a follower survey. Communicating climate action in itself challenges our positions as scientists, and we here discuss the impact such messages have on our credibility as researchers. Based on these reflections, as well as those from other science communication initiatives, we suggest a way forward for climate scientists in the post-factual society, who should be better trained in interaction with non-academic audiences and pseudoscepticism. 7) Renaming of the title Both reviewers suggested a new title. The framing around the 'post-factual' society, while more thorough in this version of the manuscript, still does not seem to be the central thesis of the paper. The last section of the paper "an adapted scientist" might be something the authors consider incorporating into the title.
Based on your suggestion, we have changed the title from "The role of climate scientists in the post-factual society: Reflections from the awareness campaign Pole to Paris" to "Adapted climate scientists to a post-factual society: Reflections from the awareness campaign Pole to Paris." Compared to the original version of the manuscript, including its title "The role of climate scientists in the post-factual society", we have elaborated much more on what is meant by a post-factual society. This is seen in Sect. 1 from a general perspective and Sect. 4 from a Pole to Paris perspective. With the inclusion of the subtitle "Reflections from the awareness campaign Pole to Paris", we specify our viewpoint to be from mostly one awareness campaign. Moreover, by changing "The role of climate scientists" to "Adapted climate scientists", we are -as we see it -moving from a possible interpretation of that all climate scientists need to be this way to that climate scientists could be this way. Finally, by replacing "the post-factual society" by "a post-factual society", we clarify that we mean that not our whole society is post-factual; rather, portions of our society is led by post-factual movements, which value emotions and beliefs over scientific facts and elect leaders thereafter. The latter, with their negligence and denial of climate science, is the key reason why we initiated Pole to Paris in the first place and finally why we wanted to write about our experiences with it in a manuscript.
We hope that we have better clarified the reasons for the title and made sufficient adjustments to it to reflect the messages in the manuscript.

8) Suggestions for an adapted scientist
Along those lines, the suggestions for the adapted scientist seem out of context at the end of the paper. These suggestions, and more explicit examples of how the Pole to Paris effort carried out these suggestions could be better integrated into the manuscript so it is clear how what was done in the initiative led to, or modeled, these suggestions. Further, the authors note in passing that the analysis of the social media analytics occurred well-after the experience, when some data from their social platforms were no longer available. Do the authors have any insights for others regarding data collection, audience segmentation, or documentation that they think would help 'the adapted scientist'? This is noted on page 8 and might be worthwhile incorporating more thoughtfully in their recommendations at the end of the manuscript.
We thank you for stressing the importance of the link between the final suggestions for the adapted scientist and the text leading up to it. Based on your suggestion, we have gone through the manuscript once more to make sure our suggestions for the adapted scientists were rooted in the text. Were we felt they were not, we have rewritten or added text in the relevant paragraphs, as indicated by the green text below.
The importance of relevance is discussed in the following excerpts: • Abstract: By running and cycling across a third of the globe, the scientists behind the initiative established connections on the audiences' terms.
• 1st paragraph in Sect. • 6th paragraph in Sect. 4: Even though the knowledge and interest in science differ between sociodemographic groups, as suggested by Schäfer et al. (2018), we found that all our audiences had a similar interest in learning about practical actions and solutions they could put in place at a personal level.
• 7th paragraph in Sect. 4: The ten languages spoken by the highly international Pole to Paris group members helped in this way by allowing us to personally engage with a wide range of people on the roads from the polar regions to Paris.
• 10th paragraph in Sect. 4: Common for all these initiatives is the eagerness to communicate science in ways that engage the layperson.
• Last paragraph in Sect. 4: Most importantly, by meeting our audiences in running shoes, on a bicycle or over a beer, we connected as humans, which is critical for effective science engagement (Nisbet, 2018).
The importance of listening is discussed in the following excerpts: • 2nd paragraph in Sect. 2: In an attempt to remove this abstractness, we, as scientists, decided to hit the road in order to share climate science knowledge with people on the ground as well as collect their stories of experienced changes to share them through our platforms.
• 7th paragraph in Sect. 2: We collaborated with our partners to create events, and we shared stories from the road through conventional and social media (Fig. 2). This provided a unique opportunity to interact with members of society not usually reached by the scientific discourse.
• 1st paragraph in Sect. 4: Indirectly, the Pole to Paris team members took great value from being able to share climate science with our audiences and listen to their experiences of climate change.
Engaging in two-way interaction with a range of audiences -from farmers to senators, from preschool children to retirees and from Norwegians to Bangladeshisprovided invaluable insight to our own research questions, as also highlighted by Nisbet (2018). Fortunate with these encounters, we faced questions and concerns often far from ours, which opened our eyes and ears and widened our perspectives. As reported by Nisbet (2018) and references therein, we improved our communication and listening skills and extended our professional and social network.  (2015), we highlighted the opportunities and inspiration of acting on climate change now rather than later. For example, from an economical viewpoint, strong, early climate action considerably outweighs its costs (Stern, 2007). Similarly, from a job market perspective, more jobs are added in the energy industry within renewables than are lost in fossil fuels (Fankhaeser et al., 2008). We still communicated the dangers associated with ongoing and expected consequences of climate change, but in terms of relevant and experienced changes rather than fear rising from their cognitive dissonance following Extended Parallel Processing Model theory (Witte, 1992). This theory suggests that such messaging promotes a protection motivation and thus a willingness to change in accordance with the message for the recipient, in contrast to a defensive motivation and thus a reluctance to change (e.g., denial).  Brüggemann and Engesser, 2017), this positive experience of direct engagement supports the suggestion by Gauchat et al. (2017) that science participation and outreach could rebuild the credibility among communities most critical of scientists.
• 9th paragraph in Sect. 4: Furthermore, the authors have been involved in other more or less politically charged outreach projects.
• 10th paragraph in Sect. 4: We could surely also have benefitted from more planning and training before undertaking these journeys, but this might have compromised the journeys themselves.
• Last paragraph in Sect. 4: Similarly, even though we had scientific and professional communication training to start with, we learned a lot by doing.
The importance of passion is discussed in the following excerpts: • 3rd paragraph in Sect. 2: While all members voluntarily and actively contributed to Pole to Paris by various means from their locations around the world, five of them also joined the main cyclist and runner for part of the journeys.
• 4th paragraph in Sect. 4: Spanning the cultural differences within these groups, we tailored the message to the audiences in line with the suggestions by Somerville and Hassol (2011). These included framing climate change as a human and not only an environmental issue, focusing on the now instead of the decades ahead, leading with what we know, using a language adapted to a public discourse, being passionate, and connecting the dots between climate change and the personal experiences of the audience themselves.
• Last paragraph in Sect. 4: Passion united the team and contaminated our various audiences, creating better dialogues in a positive feedback loop (Nisbet, 2018).
To clarify that the suggestions listed at the start of Sect. 5 result from the text before, we have rewritten the sentence leading up to the list and slightly modified the list itself. It now reads: Based on the experiences outlined above, we identified some key components for successful science communication with non-academic audiences: -Relevance Make sure your message is relevant to your audience and engage with them in familiar setting, with a familiar format and through a familiar language.
-Listening Let the audience ask questions and describe their understanding in their own words.
-Positivity Smile and try to focus on the possibilities rather than the doomsday scenarios.
-Perseverance Learn by doing and keep doing it; all experiences are valuable.
-Passion For communicating science, knowledge of the topic is essential, but passion is the key for the audience to absorb it.

9) Proofreading
As noted by the reviewers, a detailed proof-read is required to tighten up the manuscript.
Based on your suggestions, we have gotten a native English speaker to proofread the manuscript. Additionally, we have both proofread the manuscript ourselves. These minor edits are too many to be reproduced here but can be found in the tracked changes version of the manuscript. Abstract. The politicization of and societal debate on climate change science have increased over the last decades. Here, the authors argue that the role of climate scientists in our society needs to adapt in accordance with this development. We share our experiences from the awareness campaign Pole to Paris, which engaged non-academic audiences on climate change issues 10 on the roads from the polar regions to Paris and through conventional and social media. By running and cycling across a third of the globe, the scientists behind the initiative established connections on the audiences' terms. Propitiously for other outreach efforts, the exertions were not in themselves the most attractive; among our social media followers, the messages of climate change science and action were more favourable, as measured by video statistics and a follower survey. Communicating climate action in itself challenges our positions as scientists, and here we discuss the impact such messages have on our 15 credibility as researchers. Based on these reflections, as well as those from other science communication initiatives, we suggest a way forward for climate scientists in the post-factual society, who should be better trained in interaction with non-academic audiences and pseudoscepticism.

Background
The role of climate science in the public sphere has changed significantly since the mid-1980s. Following the formation of the 20 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the U.S. Senate testimony of James Hansen in 1988, climate science has increasingly become a topic of political debate, media coverage and part of the daily discourse in our societies (Bolin, 2007;Ungar, 2016). Simultaneously, the scientific understanding of climate change has been rapidly expanding, with the number of climate change papers published per year growing exponentially (McSweeney, 2015) and the confidence in humans as the main cause of global warming has gone from insufficient to "extremely likely" (as defined by the IPCC First to Fifth 25 Assessment Reports; Houghton et al., 1990;Stocker et al., 2013).
Conventional media can also reinforce filter bubbles by presenting scientific news within pre-existing worldviews of their audiences (Theel et al., 2013;Carmichael et al., 2017). Similar bubbles exist within academia, where scientists are trained to write for an already highly educated and specialized audience (Stiller-Reeve et al., 2016). Scientists are thus often seen as an elite without touch to the rest of society (Townson, 2016). For this reason, it is, more than ever, crucial to establish dialogues 20 with those outside of academia in order to help trigger positive global changes (Leshner, 2007;Barnosky et al., 2016). Doing so, we, as scientists, need to choose our role within society carefully in consideration of the consequences for us individually and as a community (Pielke Jr., 2007;Vraga et al., 2018).
In this manuscript, we argue that the scientific community was not prepared for the intense politicization of climate change 25 science (as defined by Zürn, 2014) that has occurred over the past several decades. However, we also contend that while climate polarization has reached new levels in the last few years (Dunlap et al., 2016), it is not too late for scientists to adapt to the highly charged political environment in which the very science of climate change is often discussed. Rapley and De Meyer (2014) argue that there is a gap between the role of the climate science community and the needs of society. As young environmental scientists having actively tried to bridge this gap, we share our experiences from climate change awareness 30 initiatives, discuss their pros and cons, and discuss possible ways forward for the climate science community in terms of its interaction with society at large.  (Bäckstrand and Lövbrand, 2016;de Moor, 2017). Thus, the Pole to Paris project was purposefully timed leading to COP 21 in an attempt to galvanise support for a new global agreement in our wide society, as public awareness of climate 10 change in a country is positively related to the unconditional climate mitigation targets of that country, as later suggested by Drummond et al. (2018).
The Pole to Paris project focused on reshaping the way scientists engage with the public on climate change issues. The nature of the problem -being a long-term process on a planetary scale -makes it difficult for individuals to grasp and engage with . 15 In an attempt to remove this abstractness, we, as scientists, decided to hit the road in order to share climate science knowledge with people on the ground as well as collect their stories of experienced changes to share through our platforms. This allowed us to target audiences along the way not normally reached by scientific messages, meeting them face-to-face. Instead of inviting them to our universities, using a scientific jargon and sharing scientific information behind paywalls, we met them on their terms -in their home forums, using a familiar language and connecting through accessible formats. 20 To reach this audience, two journeys from the poles were mapped out: the 10,000-km long bicycle ride -the Southern Cycle -from Christchurch (New Zealand) and the 3,000-km long run -the Northern Run -from Tromsø (Norway), both finishing in Paris during COP 21 (Fig. 1). These journeys were led by two climate scientists, who left Christchurch and Tromsø shortly after completing their PhDs in Antarctic and Arctic climate change, respectively. 7.5 and 4 months later, respectively, they 25 reached Paris, carrying flags from the melting polar regions and stories from people met along the way. The two were supported by eight other Pole to Paris team members, whose backgrounds ranged from environmental and political science to web and product design. While all members voluntarily and actively contributed to Pole to Paris by various means from their locations around the world, five of them also joined the main cyclist and runner for part of the journeys. Of the ten team members, only the main cyclist and runner were working full-time on the project (i.e., without getting paid), while the others had studies or 30 jobs to balance simultaneously. We were all in our 20s, with the four female and six male team members representing eight different countries. The public were invited to join the Southern Cycle and Northern Run journeys and actively engage in the climate dialogue in real time. This was partly done online through social media, partly at the events through open accessibility and partly on the roads themselves through planned and improvised meetings. To some extent, the latter happened because of GPS tracking on our website (Fig. 2), which allowed for other cyclists and runners to join us for part of the distances, providing an accessible and informal platform for face-to-face dialogues. The adventure component also helped to attract media attention, giving the 5 project a platform to communicate the facts about climate change and the importance of COP 21 to the wider audience by engaging them in the journeys. Crucially, along the way, we held talks in schools, universities and many other public venues.
To make our climate messages engaging, we called the teacher and read the local news ahead of the presentations to identify topics our audiences could relate to. The former also allowed for the students to be prepared for our presentations, following us online and learning about relevant material prior to our visit. 10 The ironic beauty of the climate change problem is that is encompasses the whole society, from health and food to tourism, migration and the economic system. Hence, we could always bring our climate messages into a familiar context for our audiences and thus stimulate their feedback. This was also helped by often starting presentations asking the audience what they already knew about the topic in a humane and positive attitude that set everyone at ease. Similarly, we created games and 15 activity-based interactions, especially for our youngest audiences, which brought the large-scale climate problem down to his or her scale. Even though this took time from our given time slots, we found this to better adopt the pace and detail level of our climate messages while also lowering the threshold for questions and comments from the audience. Altogether, this created a true dialogue, in which we openly engaged the public to hear their perspectives and concerns about climate change before respectively responding to them, as suggested by Leshner (2003). 20 Our approach thus differed from the information deficit model, as outlined by Bucchi (2008). In this model, the public is considered passive and ignorant. Its hostility to science can be counteracted by appropriate injection of science communication, which is provided by experts (i.e., scientists) through a linear, one-way process to non-experts (the public) (Bucchi, 2008).
However, this top-down approach is no longer appropriate for our current society, where science communication is addressing 25 a wider agenda (Bucchi, 2008). Instead, the need and right of the public to participate in the scientific discussion has led to dialogue and knowledge models through which the involvement of lay people have enhanced the competencies of scientists and specialists (Callon, 1999;Trench, 2006). We found the latter models to be highly rewarding, as we learned a lot from the dialogues ourselves in addition to being better understood as communicators of scientific information. 30 We collaborated with our partners to create events, and we shared stories from the road through conventional and social media (Fig. 2). This provided a unique opportunity to interact with members of society not usually reached by the scientific discourse.
In line with O'Neill and Nicholson-Cole (2009) and Stoknes (2015), we highlighted the opportunities and inspiration of acting on climate change now rather than later. For example, from an economical viewpoint, strong, early climate action considerably slettet: get behind 35 slettet: become engaged slettet: and were joined by other cyclists and runners for part of the distances. This created a two-way communication slettet: . 5 outweighs its costs (Stern, 2007). Similarly, from a job market perspective, more jobs are added in the energy industry within renewables than are lost in fossil fuels (Fankhaeser et al., 2008). We still communicated the dangers associated with ongoing and expected consequences of climate change but in terms of relevant and experienced changes rather than fear rising from their cognitive dissonance following Extended Parallel Processing Model theory (Witte, 1992). This theory suggests that such messaging promotes a protection motivation and thus a willingness to change in accordance with the message for the recipient, 5 in contrast to a defensive motivation and thus a reluctance to change (e.g., denial).
A conservative estimation is that more than one million people in 45 countries were reached through conventional and social media, which included 252 media outlets (thereof 15 blog posts written by us; Table A1) and almost 500,000 and 250,000 reached per Facebook post and Twitter tweet, respectively. While it is probable that some of our followers on Facebook, 10 Twitter and Instagram overlapped, the breadth of conventional media coverage meant that we were able to reach a wider span of the society. For example, our story was featured five times on CNN in English, Spanish and Arabic, while Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation aired us 14 times. None of these are likely to be seen by the average Thai, Chinese or Indonesian, but our appearance in the Thai news channel TNN24, the China News Service or the Indonesian Jawa Pos might. Similarly, where coverage in the English-language news sources The Guardian, HuffPost or The Daily Star plausibly caught the attention 15 of those already aware of human-induced climate change, the more domestic-focused Le Parisien in French, la Repubblica in Italian or Correio Braziliense in Portuguese almost certainly brought climate change into new light among their readers.
Additionally, we gave 80 presentations in five languages along the running route alone.

Direct successes
Looking into the numbers from social media in more detail, the authors in 2018 conducted a statistical analysis on the reach 20 of the videos created by Pole to Paris and shared through Facebook. Data for this analysis was fetched through the export function that Facebook offers for administered pages. In addition to information about the date videos were published, links to them and their titles, this function provides information about unique and total views, organic and paid views, and views after 3 seconds, at least 30 seconds (or to their end if that came first) and at 95 % of the video length (including viewers that skipped to this point). We subjectively categorized the videos by topic and main country(ies). Of the 42 total videos, we 25 focused the analysis on the 32 in the most active period from June to December 2015. Detailed data on these can be found in Tables A2 and A3 in the Appendix.
The 32 analysed videos spanned from 20 seconds to 6 minutes in length and showcased the life on the road from the Poles to Paris (i.e., challenges and joys of the run and bike ride), the various impacts associated with climate change along the way 30 (e.g., coral bleaching in Australia from raising CO2 levels and temperature, air pollution in China from carbon-intensive coal use, and glacial melt in Antarctica, Norway, and the European Alps from shifting precipitation patterns and increasing summer  Figure 3 shows the key results of the statistical analysis. Of the 226 346 total video views after three seconds, 56 130 (25 %) were still there after 30 seconds and 16 703 (7 %) at 95 % of the video length (Fig. 3a). Of these views, 89 % (after three seconds) to 97 % (at 95 % of the video length) were unique (not 5 shown), meaning that almost all videos were watched once. Similarly, the organic viewers (as compared to the ones reached through ads) were more enduring, accounting for 74 % of the views at 95 % video length compared to 58 % after three seconds (Fig. 3a). Sorted by topic, the climate action videos were on average the most popular by far, making up 82-87 % of the watched videos at the three video lengths (Fig. 3b). In comparison, the videos on the effects of climate change became relatively less popular over the length of the videos, comprising 11 % after three seconds and 8 % at their 95 % length. This contrasts 10 the videos on the journeys themselves, which correspondingly rose from 6 % to 11 % of watched videos at the respective times.
The three most popular videos were thus, unsurprisingly, videos that promoted action on climate change through hopeful messages. The by far most popular video (with more than 100,000 views and a reach of nearly 500,000) focused how young 15 inhabitants of Southern Pacific islands feel the effects of climate change through ongoing rising sea levels and get together to fight against it. This positive message of a younger generation working for an act on climate was the common theme for these three videos, which also included a more simply produced video on the motivation for why the main runner and cyclist left their offices in climate research to engage with the society at large (with almost 40,000 views and a reach of nearly 150,000).
Out of our social media followers (more than 6,200 on Facebook, 1,200 on Twitter and 650 on Instagram), most of the 20 Facebook ones were in the age group 25-34. This is perhaps explained by the fact that we were ourselves a team of millennials.
Possibly more interestingly, the second largest group of followers was made of Generation Z (people born in the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s), pointing to the added reach of social media compared to other science communication tools, as also pointed out by Bowman et al. (2015).

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As environmental scientists, who had tried to engage the people around us on climate change and biodiversity loss prior to Pole to Paris, the authors find the popularity of the climate action videos encouraging. However, this also questions our objectivity as scientists. Through the videos, we advocated for personal and societal action on climate change, as we did in media and our presentations. Hence, we moved beyond our core scientific base and took on roles as the 'science communicator' and 'the honest broker of policy alternatives,' as defined by Rapley and De Meyer (2014). We found this necessary due to the 30 nature of the problem -often seen as something far away in space or time. By sharing stories of climate change our audience could connect to, we made the problem more visible and graspable -to something right here, right now. This established connection also raised a willingness to do something about the problem, which we advocated for through the reduction of personal greenhouse gas emissions, through the investment power of consumers and companies and through bringing the problem into light among family, friends and colleagues. Had we only communicated the threat of climate change without making it relevant and suggesting ways the listener could address the problem, we would have created a maladaptive response (e.g., denial) among our audience, according to Witte (1992).
Considering the time span over which the analysed videos were posted, the later videos were generally more popular. This 5 points to the increasing reach of Pole to Paris as the awareness project gained traction with kilometres covered, events held along the way, and mentions in the media. Even when the project reduced its activity after COP 21, the influence was still there, as exemplified by reaches of more than 100,000 on the less frequent Facebook posts in early 2016.
Correspondingly, while not posting regularly anymore, the authors were still able to reach some of Pole to Paris' followers via 10 our still active social media channels with a survey in 2018. The survey was set up through the online survey platform SurveyMonkey and asked the anonymous respondents a range of questions (Fig. A1). These included whether respondents followed Pole to Paris online, whether they learned anything new as a result of Pole to Paris and whether they found Pole to Paris to be a source of inspiration. Interestingly, one of the key findings was that respondents were fairly evenly split on what they considered to be the most interesting aspects of the project. Several of the 37 respondents highlighted more than one 15 aspect, with 14 answers favouring the actual journeys from the Poles to Paris, 16 the same for the physical challenge of running and biking, 18 the scientific message on climate change, and 17 the human face that Pole to Paris put on climate change through stories from the ground.
In line with the statistical analysis of the Facebook videos, the fact that the scientific message was seen more interesting than 20 the journeys themselves, indicates that a project like Pole to Paris can find success in disseminating scientific information to a wider audience. Among other key findings from the survey, 31 out of 37 respondents reported that Pole to Paris inspired them in some way. This is also a strong indicator that unconventional projects in the vein of Pole to Paris can find success in connecting with non-scientific audiences in positive ways. Moreover, more than half (20 out of 37) indicated that they learned something new through Pole to Paris, signalling the potential that scientists have in bridging the gap between academia and 25 the public on fundamental societal issues.
Interpreting these numbers, one should keep in mind that the survey respondents already were followers of the climate awareness project Pole to Paris and thus not necessarily representative of the average population (Zhang et al., 2018). The three-year lag of this feedback to the project compared to its most active period also introduce some uncertainty of 30 remembrance and probably explain why less than 1 % of our social media followers responded to the survey. This small respondent rate meant that the answers did not necessarily represent those of a typical follower. Moreover, the time passed since their publications limited the statistical analysis here to Facebook videos, as other social media data were no longer available. Even so, we believe the numbers presented in this manuscript offer valuable insight on the worthiness of time spent on Pole to Paris and can help the outreach community in learning from our efforts.

Indirect successes
As also mentioned by Barnosky et al. (2014), the direct success of an initiative like Pole to Paris is almost impossible to quantify. Indirectly, the Pole to Paris team members took great value from being able to share climate science with our 5 audiences and listen to their experiences of climate change. Engaging in two-way interaction with a range of audiences -from farmers to senators, from preschool children to retirees and from Norwegians to Bangladeshis -provided invaluable insight to our own research questions, as also highlighted by Nisbet (2018). Fortunate with these encounters, we faced questions and concerns often far from ours, which opened our eyes and ears and widened our perspectives. As reported by Nisbet (2018) and references therein, we improved our communication and listening skills and extended our professional and social network. 10 Both academic and non-academic members of society, especially the younger ones, expressed their enthusiasm regarding the project. Both shared how it inspired them to find the courage needed to make changes in their own lives. The Paris Agreement, of which Pole to Paris was one of numerous initiatives building public support for, was arguably a better outcome of COP21 than the climate science community could have hoped for and, as later suggested by Drummond et al. (2018), might have been influenced by that awareness raised among people. 15 Schmid-Petri (2017) has argued that those in the scientific community who actively attempt to communicate the seriousness of climate change to a wide audience often are met with attempts "to discredit their scientific credibility, or to criticize the studies that are used or their underlying methods and models." As communicators of the scientific consensus, we inevitably experienced these tactics from climate sceptics in online forums. Mostly, the criticisms were from individual citizens and 20 directed at us personally. Out on the roads to Paris, however, fact-based messaging was highly welcomed. Meeting people where they are, in their own communities, communicating with them in their own terms, constantly trying to adapt our language to our audience, undeniably contributed to this. We connected through dialogue. Considering the politicized division of the media themselves (e.g., Brüggemann and Engesser, 2017), this positive experience of direct engagement supports the suggestion by Gauchat et al. (2017) that science participation and outreach could rebuild the credibility among communities 25 most critical of scientists. Moreover, fostering constructive public conversations about science and society can, among others, improve decision-making, promote trust and credibility in scientific findings and strengthen democratic processes (Wooden, 2006;Nisbet, 2018), ultimately counteracting politicization and polarization of science and post-factual movements, respectively.

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Consequently, we worked hard to keep our credibility as researchers (Nordhagen et al., 2014), not partnering with organizations or initiatives on either of the climate advocacy fringes and not favouring one political party over another. Based on the feedback  Nordhagen et al. (2014), we experienced a boost in personal and public credibility, more than outweighing a loss in professional credibility from our publication record hiatus while on the road, thus enhancing our researcher credibility overall. By being open about the role we played in public, we strove to negotiate the tension between our professional and 5 public credibilities discussed by Nordhagen et al. (2014), in which our goal of stronger climate action on a governmental level was challenged to some degree by the common academic view that researchers should remain detached from public policies.
However, as Kotcher et al. (2017) point out, this notion is not supported by empirical evidence. On the contrary, in line with their results, we experienced no direct harm to our public credibility or to that of the scientific community. 10 We saw our role as awareness-raisers, increasing the understanding of climate science within all societal groups. Spanning the cultural differences within these groups, we tailored the message to the audiences in line with the suggestions by Somerville and Hassol (2011). These included framing climate change as a human and not only an environmental issue, focusing on the now instead of the decades ahead, leading with what we know, using a language adapted to a public discourse, being passionate, and connecting the dots between climate change and the personal experiences of the audience themselves. We engaged the 15 audience by illustrating what positive role they could play in averting the climate crisis.
For establishing personal connections to climate change among our audiences, we found that sharing personal experiences of climate change from people we met along the way was especially successful. As scientists, we are used to speak in terms like 2°C, 450 ppm and 50 cm, but most people cannot relate to these numbers. Rather, they relate to stories of people like them 20 whose livelihoods are threatened by climate change. Consequently, we listened to stories like those of a Sami, who might not be able to pass the reindeer herding tradition on to her children due to the warming winters; of a Bangladeshi, who might become a climate refugee due to the rising sea; and of a Londoner, who might be protected from the worst consequences in the metropolis but chooses to write about global environmental issues and work with organisations to find solutions. We shared these stories and others from the road through conventional and social media and in presentations on the way to Paris, at a 25 press conference and at the conference centre there and in a documentary and a TEDx talk since. Based on the video analysis alone, it is difficult to say that these messages were most popular, partly because we did not feature them all in videos and partly because they were both more and less popular than the videos featuring the scientists at the heart of the effort. However, based on interaction with journalists and our audiences, we have strong reasons to believe that these personal stories strongly helped in making the climate science relatable. 30 The nature of the Pole to Paris campaign allowed us to build an audience, which did not necessarily have a high interest in science nor necessarily a belief in climate change. This was purposefully done through several means: being on the road and therefore also meeting people who would not otherwise go to a talk about science on climate change; meeting university and school students of all grades and consequently discussing with students who often had barely heard of the science behind climate change; and finally, running and biking, which invited participants for the physical challenge who would remain for the following talk on climate change and reached by a message they were not initially seeking. This point is also suggested by the number of the social media survey respondents indicating that through Pole to Paris they learned something new and got inspired (20 and 31 out of 37, respectively), which indicate that almost half of our followers were already literate on climate 5 change issues but did not know what to do about it. Even though the knowledge and interest in science differ between sociodemographic groups, as suggested by Schäfer et al. (2018), we found that all our audiences had a similar interest in learning about practical actions and solutions they could put to action at a personal level. The ten languages spoken by the highly international Pole to Paris group members helped in this way by allowing us to 10 personally engage with a wide range of people on the roads from the polar regions to Paris. Besides, these language skills helped spread our messages even further, as suggested by the 62 % followers on Facebook speaking English, 16 % Indonesian, 6 % Norwegian, 4 % French, 3 % Spanish and 2 % German. Similarly, as suggested by Wooden (2006), the collaboration with local partner institutions (e.g., Gateway Antarctica in New Zealand, the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research in Norway, the UK Youth Climate Coalition in the UK and Climate Generation in USA) offered experience for successful ways of science 15 communication within each country. This collaboration also allowed us to organize what we called the Global Voices events with our partner UNDP. These were set up outside the routes of the Northern Run and Southern Cycle (Fig. 1), during which youth came together to learn about climate change and how they could act upon it.
The experiences from Pole to Paris were, however, not unique. Other initiatives have been launched over the last few years to 20 increase climate change awareness and train scientists in more effective science communication. We were some of the 1.07 million people who took part in the March for Science on April 22, 2017. The series of rallies and marches defending the vital role science plays in our everyday lives was a direct result of the opposing direction on science policy taken by the current administration in the White House compared with its predecessor. However, March for Science has also been criticized, as it runs the risk of creating a false picture of scientists being more driven by ideology than evidence (Nature supports the March 25 for Science, 2017).
Furthermore, the authors have been involved in other more or less politically charged outreach projects. For instance, Climate Communication Cologne is an effort launched at the University of Cologne whose main objective is to facilitate science communication to a wide non-academic audience. This takes place in various forms, such as workshops, stand-up comedy or 30 videos, and in various arenas, from schools and universities to pubs and online communities. Another example is Will You Hear Us, a documentary on the tradition of caged birds in Indonesia, which has become unsustainable due to the ever-increasing demand for wild songbirds and poses a huge threat on biodiversity. Both authors are currently also writing comic books on climate change adaptation and mitigation and on biodiversity loss for high-school and elementary school students, respectively. Common for all these initiatives is the eagerness to communicate science in ways that engage the layperson. To help us -and the reader of this manuscript -to learn from our efforts, we ideally would have set up a more standardized feedback scheme for our audiences during the active period of Pole to Paris. The feedback we did receive -in personal conversations and in online commentary forums -were most likely anomalously positive and negative, respectively. We could surely also have 5 benefitted from more planning and training before undertaking these journeys, but this might have compromised the journeys themselves. Being the only two full-time-engaged team members , the two climate scientists of Pole to Paris -the lead cyclist and runner -had just completed their PhDs before taking on the journeys, while the other eight in the team had full time commitments to studies or employers to balance, which did not provide much room for further planning. This, along with the widely varying time zones the team members were based in and frequent lack of internet accessibility out on the Southern 10 Cycle and Northern Run, meant that team meetings were less regular than what would have been ideal for making sure we were all pulling in the same direction.
Passion united the team and was contagious amongst our various audiences, creating better dialogues in a positive feedback loop (Nisbet, 2018). We cycled and ran out with rough plans and adapted along the way as engagement created opportunities 15 (e.g., the Global Voices events and United Nations program partnerships) or disasters imposed limitations (e.g., the Nepal earthquake and Paris terror attacks). Similarly, even though we had scientific and professional communication training to start with, we learned a lot by doing. Most importantly, by meeting our audiences in running shoes, on a bicycle or in other informal settings, we connected as humans, which is critical for effective science engagement (Nisbet, 2018). While we strongly acknowledge the need for publishing research papers to further develop scientific questions, we emphasize that the findings 20 thereof are incomplete if not shared with the society at large.

An adapted scientist
Based on the experiences outlined above, we identified some key components for successful science communication with nonacademic audiences: - Relevance 25 Make sure your message is relevant to your audience and engage with them in familiar setting, with a familiar format and through a familiar language.
-Listening Let the audience ask questions and describe their understanding in their own words.

-Positivity 30
Smile and try to focus on the possibilities rather than doomsday scenarios. For communicating science, knowledge of the topic is essential, but passion is the key for the audience to absorb it.

5
In our current society, we argue that the role of the 'pure scientist' (as defined by Rapley and De Meyer, 2014) is outdated and the need for the 'science communicator' and 'the honest broker of policy alternatives' (as outlined by Pielke Jr., 2007) is rising.
The advancement of science might be of little significance if it is ignored by governments as well as laypeople and not suitably utilised by an educated society. Publishing an academic paper is unfinished business. As Barnosky et al. (2014) argue, it is only the beginning if our aim is to help society solve problems. However, current training of becoming scientists does not fulfil 10 society's current need for clear science communication and policy engagement (Leshner, 2007). Thus, similar to Figueres et al. (2017), we argue that more emphasis should be placed on communication and media, policymaker and pseudoscepticism interaction training, and less on the published record.
For scientists at the beginning of their academic career, we support the notion by Leshner (2007), Brownell et al. (2013), 15 Rauser et al. (2017) and Nisbet (2018) that engagement in outreach activities helps shape the research questions, giving more effective tools for narrowing the widening gap between academia and the rest of society, and eventually providing a more constructive input for policy formulation on climate change. As we see it, this will act to reduce politicization and polarization of climate change, while also depressing the breeding ground for post-factual movements. Within academia, outreach training gives us better tools in teaching, mentoring of younger students and taking part in scientific discussions, as well as contributing 20 to better written research proposals and journal publications (Stiller-Reeve et al., 2016, and references therein).
Whether we like it or not, climate science and scientists have become part of the daily political and media discourse. Now it is up to us to adapt and play our new role objectively while keeping our credibility (as discussed by Nordhagen et al., 2014).
According to Rapley and De Meyer (2014), this has the potential to remove climate science from the direct firing line to leave 25 the authority, responsibility and accountability for decisions transparently with the policymakers and the public. When done carefully, we have the potential, regardless of the audience's political preferences, to provide trustworthy information to the climate change discourse (Leshner, 2003;MacInnis et al., 2015;Hamilton, 2016). To prepare us for such a "wicked" problem (as defined by Lorenzoni et al., 2007), we argue that communication training with actors beyond academia is indispensable.

Author contributions 30
EMK led the design and writing of the manuscript and carried out the statistical analysis. OJdB helped with writing and designed the social media survey.