Climate Central bills itself as "a think tank with a production studio." This is what they do:
Using both staff experts and an extended blue ribbon network of scientists, Climate Central assesses and synthesizes the latest science, technology, and policy proposals. Our experienced communications team turns that information into creative, easily understood, and graphically rich pieces for print, television and the web.
They’ve got some serious names behind the project, including John Holdren and Jane Lubchenco before they were snapped up by the Obama administration. (Full disclosure: Grist board member Ben Strauss is a member of the CC team.)
CC just got up and running recently — the full site doesn’t debut until Spring — but it’s already turning out some great stuff. The latest is "Iowa: Corn and Climate," a video that recently aired on PBS’s The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. Here it is (starts about a minute in):
The coolest thing, though, is that the video comes with an annotated transcript that takes virtually every sentence and substantiates it with a relevant bit of science, news report, or infographic. You get the public-friendly video and the wonk-friendly reference work, all in one package. Not bad.
CC aims to be an impeccably credible source of information on a highly contested set of subjects. It looks like they’re off to a great start.
