Amanda TriplettSarah Ott spent years believing climate change was a hoax, influenced by friends at church in the US south and a popular right-wing radio host. Here she shares her journey from being a climate sceptic to becoming an advocate for clean energy, with a passion for teaching teenage school students the science of climate change. She features on this year’s BBC 100 Women list.I spent years doubting the science of climate change and spending time with people who didn’t believe in the science either.When I realised I was wrong, I felt really embarrassed.To move away from those people meant leaving behind an entire community at a time when I didn’t have many friends.I went through a really difficult time. But the truth matters.I’m the granddaughter of coal miners in Pennsylvania and my family moved to Florida when I was young.We have a Polish Catholic background and we attended church regularly, but at the same time we were very connected to science because my mum was a nurse and my dad sold microscopes and other scientific equipment.As a little girl, I loved nature and spent a lot of time outside. For community service, I would always pick up litter in my neighbourhood.Sarah OttI remember the first time I ever encountered the term “climate change”.I was in middle school in the late 1990s and I read an article about rising temperatures. I remember thinking, “This is really gonna suck”. But it also felt like it was so far in the future that it wasn’t going to affect me.I went on to study zoology at university and became a science teacher.Later my husband and I moved to the state of Georgia, where we still live now with our two daughters.BBC 100 Women names 100 inspiring and influential women around the world every year – Michelle Obama and Amal Clooney are on this year’s list, while Melinda French Gates was listed in 2021Meet this year’s 100 Women hereMy husband didn’t get home from work until late, so I would have four or five hours at home by myself every day, always with the kitchen radio on, tuned to conservative stations.We listened to Rush Limbaugh, a radio host known for his controversial opinions on topics such as race, LGBT rights and women, and I would hear him every day for two hours.He would talk about how climate change was just a hoax.Up to that point, I had been exposed to a lot of misinformation about evolution in my church groups, but I had studied the theory of evolution at university, so I was equipped to spot it.But I didn’t have that same skill set for climate change.My conviction that climate change was a hoax solidified when I heard Limbaugh talk about Climategate. It was a controversy involving research from the University of East Anglia. Only much later did I learn that the material was twisted and taken out of context.When I first heard of Climategate, I remember feeling really betrayed and thinking that scientists had lied to me, because I really cared about the environmental movement.What was Climategate?In 2009, hackers stole thousands of emails and documents from the University of East Anglia (UEA)’s Climatic Research Unit in Norwich.Sceptics picked up on a small number of emails that seemed to suggest scientists had been deliberately manipulating data to exaggerate evidence of climate change.The material was distributed online and for years it served as fuel for climate-change deniers – including senior US politicians. It was used to support allegations that scientists were twisting the facts.UEA claimed that the leaked data was cherry-picked and used to derail COP15, the UN climate change …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnAmanda TriplettSarah Ott spent years believing climate change was a hoax, influenced by friends at church in the US south and a popular right-wing radio host. Here she shares her journey from being a climate sceptic to becoming an advocate for clean energy, with a passion for teaching teenage school students the science of climate change. She features on this year’s BBC 100 Women list.I spent years doubting the science of climate change and spending time with people who didn’t believe in the science either.When I realised I was wrong, I felt really embarrassed.To move away from those people meant leaving behind an entire community at a time when I didn’t have many friends.I went through a really difficult time. But the truth matters.I’m the granddaughter of coal miners in Pennsylvania and my family moved to Florida when I was young.We have a Polish Catholic background and we attended church regularly, but at the same time we were very connected to science because my mum was a nurse and my dad sold microscopes and other scientific equipment.As a little girl, I loved nature and spent a lot of time outside. For community service, I would always pick up litter in my neighbourhood.Sarah OttI remember the first time I ever encountered the term “climate change”.I was in middle school in the late 1990s and I read an article about rising temperatures. I remember thinking, “This is really gonna suck”. But it also felt like it was so far in the future that it wasn’t going to affect me.I went on to study zoology at university and became a science teacher.Later my husband and I moved to the state of Georgia, where we still live now with our two daughters.BBC 100 Women names 100 inspiring and influential women around the world every year – Michelle Obama and Amal Clooney are on this year’s list, while Melinda French Gates was listed in 2021Meet this year’s 100 Women hereMy husband didn’t get home from work until late, so I would have four or five hours at home by myself every day, always with the kitchen radio on, tuned to conservative stations.We listened to Rush Limbaugh, a radio host known for his controversial opinions on topics such as race, LGBT rights and women, and I would hear him every day for two hours.He would talk about how climate change was just a hoax.Up to that point, I had been exposed to a lot of misinformation about evolution in my church groups, but I had studied the theory of evolution at university, so I was equipped to spot it.But I didn’t have that same skill set for climate change.My conviction that climate change was a hoax solidified when I heard Limbaugh talk about Climategate. It was a controversy involving research from the University of East Anglia. Only much later did I learn that the material was twisted and taken out of context.When I first heard of Climategate, I remember feeling really betrayed and thinking that scientists had lied to me, because I really cared about the environmental movement.What was Climategate?In 2009, hackers stole thousands of emails and documents from the University of East Anglia (UEA)’s Climatic Research Unit in Norwich.Sceptics picked up on a small number of emails that seemed to suggest scientists had been deliberately manipulating data to exaggerate evidence of climate change.The material was distributed online and for years it served as fuel for climate-change deniers – including senior US politicians. It was used to support allegations that scientists were twisting the facts.UEA claimed that the leaked data was cherry-picked and used to derail COP15, the UN climate change …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
