Are we really communicating uncertain climate risks?

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/articles/are-we-really-communicating-uncertain-climate-risks-6536.html

http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/articles/are-we-really-communicating-uncertain-climate-risks-6536.html

31 March 2011

Explaining climate change risk to non-scientists – citizens and politicians - has not been as effective as it should be, according to a new collaborative research paper published by School of Psychology Professor, Nick Pidgeon in the journal Nature Climate Change this week.

Despite much research that demonstrates potential dangers from climate change, public concern has not been increasing. One theory is that this is because the public is not intimately familiar with the nature of the climate uncertainties being discussed, and as such it does little to support decision-making and change behaviour.

…

"The temptation, in the face of rising climate scepticism, has been to simply emphasise the communication of scientific facts. But we need to move on from a sterile debate about whether global warming is happening or not, to recognise that climate change poses fundamental questions of decision making and risk," said Professor Pidgeon.

Key to effective communications is what the authors call "strategic organisation" and "strategic listening."

…

http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1080

[guardian]

1. maybe the problem

is the message and not the messenger. The real problem is not that people don't understand, but rather, have heard and rejected the message.

[phantom power]

2. I agree with you. People reject it.

Or at any rate, around 50% of them. I also doubt any amount of message-massaging is going to alter that situation much.

Where, I differ, of course, is that I'm a member of that other group who don't reject it. But I don't think we are having a failure to communicate.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. There clearly is a communications aspect here

http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1080

…

Figures at a glance
1. Figure 1: Shifting public opinion.

Opinion polling in America shows how people became more sure that climate scientists believed in global warming over the period 1998–2006. But more recently views are less certain, a phenomenon also seen in Britain and Europe. The reasons for this recent trend are complex and probably include a response to politicization of climate policy, as well as the impacts of the East Anglia e-mails controversy. The question asked which one of the following statements do you think is most accurate — most scientists believe that global warming is occurring, most scientists believe that global warming is not occurring, or most scientists are unsure about whether global warming is occurring or not? Data from Gallup.

…

[guardian]

6. Agreed

The two sides are pretty entrenched by this point. Over the last couple of decades pretty much everyone has been exposed to the message (from both sides). I don't think re-wording or re-framing the issue is going to sway any significant percentage of the population.

[wtmusic]

7. Perhaps if scientific consensus had a proportional amount of coverage

the public would be better served, regardless of how it's framed.

Deniers have a lot more to lose than researchers.

[guardian]

9. Wow

and I thought denial was just a river in Egypt.

1. The pro-AGW message represents about 95% of the coverage in the media.
2. Researchers will lose their grant money as well as their raison d'etre.

total FAIL on your part

[wtmusic]

10. I didn't know there were two sides to the issue.

If you're saying there is no AGW, you're wrong. You might as well say the earth is flat.

No researcher survives upon grant money for AGW - that's nonsense, and you know it. Do you really think that James Hansen's grant money is his "raison d'etre", or do you just not know what the term means?

However, the petroleum industry has $billions to lose from a carbon tax. James Inhofe is a senator from which state, again? :shrug:

[NickB79]

8. Indeed. Just as a large percentage of Americans have rejected evolution in favor of creationism

That doesn't make evolution any less scientific, it just demonstrates a good portion of the population are fucking morons.

[Nihil]

13. +1 (n/t)

[TheWraith]

11. I think it's much more likely that people don't CARE.

Most people are concerned with how they're going to pay the bills, are their kids alright, what do they make for dinner, is their job going to be around in a week, etcetera. When talking in terms of a four degree rise in temperatures forty years from now, it hardly seems important to them.

[GliderGuider]

14. We all have an emotional "discount function"

Concrete, immediate problems consume our attention because they have a strong emotional impact. Abstract, remote problems are apprehended intellectually. As a result, even if they are much bigger issues they have much less emotional impact on us and are therefore much easier to ignore. Which is just another way of saying what you just said.

It's all related to the operation of our evolved triune brain:

[pscot]

4. There's quite a lot of room for misunderstanding

around the subject. The science is both complicated and speculative. The consequences are uncertain. It doesn't take much pushback to create doubt in the public mind, especially since large numbers of religious folks are already predisposed to mistrust science. Add in those whose living depends on not believing or who just resent the inconvenince belief would create. Top all that off with an expensive propaganda campaign and the result is predictable: widespread denial and skepticism.

[Nederland]

5. Interesting advice

"The temptation, in the face of rising climate scepticism, has been to simply emphasise the communication of scientific facts. But we need to move on..."

Of course you need to move on. If you keep the discussion limited to the facts, the most prominent of which is that we have seen far, far less warming in the last 10 years than was predicted, of course people will fail to be concerned. The last thing anyone seeking to increase public concern with global warming wants to do is limit the discussion to the facts.

[kristopher]

12. Can you think of any instance where human belief ...

caused a radical change in cultural infrastructure ("means of production"} successfully?

Infrastructure determines beliefs far, far more often than beliefs determine infrastructure.

Or so goes one major theory in cultural anthropology.