Sir

George Monbiot and the other authors of the Correspondence letter “Time to speak up for climate-change science” (Nature 434, 559; 200510.1038/434559a) call on climate scientists to defend the scientific state of knowledge in public debate.

However, more is needed than just to speak out in the media. To spread scientific knowledge effectively, the science community must engage in a dialogue with policy-makers, federal agencies and the private sector.

For single scientists this task may be too time-consuming, on top of their research and teaching activities. Appropriate structures, closely linked to the science community and enjoying high credibility, are needed to support them in this task.

In Switzerland, such structures have been in existence for more than ten years. ProClim (http://www.proclim.ch), a forum run by the Swiss Academy of Sciences, and the academy's Advisory Body on Climate Change (OcCC) actively follow the public debate, selecting important issues and working with the science community to prepare assessments (see for example, Extreme Events and Climate Change 2003; http://www.occc.ch/reports_e.html). ProClim maintains a valuable database of Swiss climate and global-change experts, which allows it to issue position papers and comments for the public debate, reducing the effort for individual scientists.

The work of ProClim and the OcCC is widely accepted. Swiss ministers and parliamentary committees regularly ask for direct advice and consult scientists contacted through this office. But this service costs money: it is funded through the Swiss Academy of Sciences and by the Swiss government.

Similar organizations exist in some other countries — for example the German Advisory Council for Global Change (http://www.wbgu.de) and the Austrian Climate Portal (http://www.accc.at) — but not everywhere in Europe.

We, and colleagues at other Swiss universities and institutes, consider that such offices, in addition to independent organizations such as http://www.realclimate.org, provide an efficient way for science to enter into a dialogue with the public and policy-makers.