Fotomontage aus drei Fotos, die in schmalen, leicht diagonal angeschnittenen Streifen Big Ben und das London Eye, die Oper in Sydney und den Central Park in New York (von links) zeigen.

English

Hello, 

this is the website of the science journalist Chris Schrader. I live and work in Hamburg/Germany. My main topics in journalism are climate science, energy technology, the environment and physics. Additionally I focus on climate communications in my writings as a reporter and as a speaker and trainer in talks, workshops and seminars (fast-forward to that section).

Although English is not my first language I speak and write it well enough to research and compose articles or hold talks and seminars. There are some English texts and translations of articles I have written posted here.

Journalism: I have been a member of the freelancer’s cooperative riffreporter.de from the start. It explores new ways for independent journalists to publish their work and make a living. In April 2018 I founded a magazine on the platform devoted to social processes connected to climate change and climate research. It is called KlimaSocial.

I have been in journalism since 1991 when I finished the journalism school Henri-Nannen-Schule. Before that I got a degree („Diplom“) in physics at the University of Hamburg. During my professional life I have been on staff as a science editor at three different print publications. First Geo-Wissen in Hamburg, which published single topic issues dealing with Chaos or Child Development (when I was there 1991 to 1994) and more recently Confidence and Heart Health. Then Facts in Zurich, a weekly Swiss news magazine (1999 to 2000) and finally Sueddeutsche Zeitung in Munich and Berlin, Germany’s leading daily newspaper (2000 to 2015). During my tenure there I wrote my first book which was about creationism, the so-called Intelligent Design and evolution theory (in German). It is out of print.

In February of 2017 I was honoured to receive a AAAS Kavli Prize for Science Journalism (Silver Award in the category Large Newspaper). Here is the press release. The article I had written and submitted (translated) dealt with a German expedition to the depths of the Pacific ocean to study possible consequences of deep sea mining. It had been published in Süddeutsche Zeitung, here is a English translation.

I have spent two years in the US, first as an exchange student at Fremont High School in Sunnyvale/CA (1978/79), then on a Fulbright scholarship at Stony Brook University on Long Island/NY (1984/85). After that and up to the Obama-Years I have traveled to the US almost yearly. Other mentionable trips include Baikonur (in Kasachstan, the Russian launch site for Sojus rockets), Tokyo and Osaka (for the world fair in Nagano 2005), Chernobyl in Ukraine (for the 25th anniversary of the meltdown 2011) and European destinations. Plus holiday trips to Patagonia and Brasil, Peru and Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico, Namibia, South Africa, India, Australia, Canada.

Climate Communications: From 2015 on I have focused on social and communicative aspects of the climate debate. I can hardly imagine it today but during my reporting days at Sueddeutsche Zeitung I was under the impression that I just had to contribute to a critical mass of climate information to make society see the severity of the climate crisis and start acting decidedly to head it off. This I later learned was an illusion that psychology calls the information-deficit hypothesis – and which it has disproved. Missing information is definedly not the dominant reason for the lack of action although people might pretend it was.

From that realisation on my interest was directed at ways to overcome those difficulties. It turned out there is a broad scientific literature coming mainly from English-speaking industrial countries that had to deal with a high degree of desinformation and polarization. I started to study the topic and report about it which finally lead to writing a handbook on the research and results: „Über Klima sprechen„, edited by the platform klimafakten.de.

For a while now I have also taken up trying to educate and train others on the results and methods of effective climate communications. In a nutshell: You need to establish real human contact trying to understand what people feel and value so you can find how to connect that to aspects of the climate crisis and ways to deal with it. This has a much better chance to motivate people to action and change and political support for ambitious climate protection measures.

If you would like to contact me, please write me an email:

csc(at)cschrader(dot)eu