Wow. We’re floored. We’re stunned. We’re pinching ourselves, hard (but not TOO hard).

Today, the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University announced that ACE has won their Climate Change Communicator of the Year Award for 2011.

That’s a lot of “climate change” and “communications” to follow, but it essentially means that ACE is earning some serious kudos for explaining climate science in a way that sticks. Here’s the summary:

The Center for Climate Change Communication (4C) at George Mason University believes that excellence deserves acknowledgment. Since 2009, each year 4C conducts an open nomination and democratic voting process to select one person, and one organization, as Climate Change Communicators of the Year. Eight extraordinary individuals and six extraordinary organizations were nominated this year. After a six-week voting process, with thousands of votes cast, Naomi Oreskes and the Alliance for Climate Education emerged as this year’s winners.

And more from ACE’s nomination, from the gracious keyboard of Kelly Blynn at 350.org:

In just two years of existence, ACE has risen quickly to become the nation’s leading climate organization focused on high schoolers. They have managed to take a complex subject and make it compelling to hard-to-reach teens, presenting to over 640,000+ high school students nationwide in less than 2 years. Their unique multimedia, animated presentation, delivered by dynamic, young, performance arts-trained presenters has proven to be able to reach students in a way that sticks. A recent study in the Chicago Public Schools showed that ACE contributed to a 58% improvement in climate science understanding amongst students.

It all circles back to what ACE was founded to do. Poll after poll reports that Americans aren’t worried about climate change–and don’t understand climate science. Check out this recent survey from Yale about American teens’ understanding of climate change (spoiler: they do even worse than adults). It’s hard to care about something you can’t understand. ACE is committed to making climate science clear, interesting and hey–while we’re at it–even fun!

It’s also a testament to the work our educators do in the field every day. Not many people see behind the ACE curtain, but our work is powered by the tireless work of 15-20 remote educators who book assemblies, travel hours each day, deliver six or eight presentations in a row, meet with green clubs after school, write blog posts like this one, enter data into Salesforce, pen emails, and much much more–all from their home, or cafes, without an office or seeing colleagues frequently if ever. It can be a tough gig, and our educators pull it off with considerable panache.

[Semi-subliminal message – why not help out our educators with a matched-grant donation?]

This award is particularly gratifying because we somehow managed to edge out some terrific organizations, including the Union of Concerned Scientists, SkepticalScience.com (which we reference on our website), Climate Change Media Partnership, Sea Grant Climate Network and The Earth Journalism Network. Any one of those organizations is a worthy winner, and we’re honored to be considered alongside them.

Also – congrats to Naomi Oreskes, author of the incredible book Merchants of Doubt, for winning the individual award from George Mason. She sneaked past an impressive field of climate leaders, including Tom Crompton, Jay Gulledge, Susan Joy Hassol, Joe Romm (who said some very nice things about ACE), and the triple threat of John Abraham/Scott Mandia/Ray Weymann.

We’re heading to DC to accept this award on June 8 – we hope to see you there.