Climate Change Perceptions and Communications

[Jim Hunt]

Just in case there's anybody here from South West England apart from me, a quick announcement that the Climate Outreach and Information Network (COIN for short) is holding a workshop in Taunton on Sunday discussing climate change, the recent floods over here, and possible ways forward.

http://econnexus.org/coin-flooding-workshops-in-totnes-and-taunton/

The event scheduled for Totnes on Saturday has just been postponed until the autumn, due to lack of interest.

[Jim Hunt]

In related news a new open access paper has just been published in "Risk Analysis", entitled:

"Climate Change Beliefs and Perceptions of Weather-Related Changes in the United Kingdom"

The ultimate conclusion is that:

From a climate policy perspective our findings suggest that those seeking to communicate the risks posed by climate change to the public should not limit their focus to the hot-weather-related events that may be implied by the phrase “global warming.” Highlighting other locally salient weather-related events, such as flooding, that are likely to increase in frequency as a consequence of climate change may serve to increase public engagement with the issues surrounding climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Except in Totnes apparently?

[Neven]

Isn't Totnes Transition Town walhalla? They know all about this stuff, I would presume. 

[Jim Hunt]

Isn't Totnes Transition Town walhalla? They know all about this stuff, I would presume.

It is indeed. The first "Transition Town". Begetter of the "Totnes Pound". I gather COIN did far more advertising around Taunton, on the assumption that half of Totnes would turn out via word of mouth. It doesn't seem to have worked out that way however.

Or maybe it's simply that Taunton is much closer to the Somerset Levels, where some homes and farms were underwater for months?

[Jim Hunt]

The Guardian asks:

"Why is climate communication so hard?"

referencing a Yale Project on Climate Change Communication / George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication study entitled:

"What’s In A Name? Global Warming vs Climate Change"

We found that the term "global warming" is associated with greater public understanding, emotional engagement, and support for personal and national action than the term "climate change."

[Jim Hunt]

George Monbiot in the Guardian yesterday:

"Saving the world should be based on promise, not fear"

If we had set out to alienate and antagonise the people we've been trying to reach, we could scarcely have done it better. This is how I feel, looking back on the past few decades of environmental campaigning, including my own.

[Sigmetnow]

Emotional engagement.   In the US, people trust comedian (and highly intelligent) Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" over many TV news outlets.  I've long thought that Fox News attracts folks who simply enjoy being made to feel angry (and who could care less about accuracy, morality, and the like).

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/06/11/trust-jon-stewart/

[Jim Hunt]

We managed to pop in for the very end of the COIN workshop in Taunton on Sunday. Everybody received a copy of this booklet:

http://www.climateoutreach.org.uk/portfolio-item/communicating-climate-change-around-recent-extreme-weather-events/

Around 20 or so local residents from a variety of backgrounds agreed to set up an "action group" of sorts. They anticipate communicating via an email list to start with. I offered to help with setting up a forum or blog, but that sounded like a step to far for most people!

We also ended up giving COIN Executive Director Jamie Clarke a lift to the station afterwards. Amongst other things he mentioned this:

http://talkingclimate.org/about/

[Lynn Shwadchuck]

I finished watching the nine hours of Showtime's Years of Living Dangerously last night. Ten years after An Inconvenient Truth, you would think that the world would be parked in front of their TVs for nine Sunday evenings like it was for the moon shot. At the same time I've been watching Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, which gives viewers a solid foundation in science and the idea that the planet is a self-balancing system. The second last episode (I think) addresses climate change. Then there's Discovery's Earth from Space, a great hour or so that must thrill James Lovelock. Satellite animations demonstrating the validity his Gaia theory, while driving home our responsibility for upsetting the balance.

What more do we need? I was looking to find out when Years would be re-broadcast and the fourth Google hit was WUWT announcing the preview in April and 90 comments by fools and shills.

In the finale of Years Thomas Friedman from the NYT interviews Obama. He pins his hope on grass roots movements electing green politicians. And young people.

[Jim Hunt]

I was looking to find out when Years would be re-broadcast and the fourth Google hit was WUWT announcing the preview in April and 90 comments by fools and shills.

I draw some small comfort from the fact that I just Googled "arctic sea ice watts" and found "Skeptical Science" and my very own "Great White Con" on the first page.

In the finale of Years Thomas Friedman from the NYT interviews Obama. He pins his hope on grass roots movements electing green politicians. And young people.

Here in the UK climate scientists are now saying much the same sort of thing:

http://econnexus.org/transformational-climate-science-at-exeter-university/

However "young people" were conspicuous by their absence from Sunday's COIN flooding workshop.

[Lynn Shwadchuck]

The 'young people' close to me are one who dislikes the request for an angry army of activists and one who's sure we're cooked unless someone invents space elevator (but he's a very green guy).

[skanky]

The Guardian asks:

"Why is climate communication so hard?"

referencing a Yale Project on Climate Change Communication / George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication study entitled:

"What’s In A Name? Global Warming vs Climate Change"

We found that the term "global warming" is associated with greater public understanding, emotional engagement, and support for personal and national action than the term "climate change."

MT has a very good article on the terms: http://planet3.org/2014/06/14/wherefore-art-thou-climate-change/
Just ignore the comments - very low signal to noise after a successful derail. Trust me, you'll want the time back if you do read them.

[Lynn Shwadchuck]

That's a very lucid article on the three terms and his conclusion that "as long as people are confused, moving them on the less-concerned to more-concerned axis is worthless. We are not far enough on the well-informed to poorly-informed axis to even bother" is pretty depressing, since we're speeding along the just-in-time to too-late axis.

[Sigmetnow]

Berkeley, California considers adding warning labels to gas pumps to communicate the danger to the environment.

"Chances are a consumer dismissive of climate change won’t notice the label," Brooks said. "The person concerned about climate change will read the label.... It acts as a reinforcement. I need to change my behaviors. I am part of a large emissions problem now. The label identifies you as part of the problem."

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-berkeley-gas-pump-warnings-20140617-story.html

[Laurent]

A Darker View of the Age of Us – the Anthropocene
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/a-darker-view-of-the-age-of-us-the-anthropocene/?_php=true&_type=blogs&partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

[skanky]

That's a very lucid article on the three terms and his conclusion that "as long as people are confused, moving them on the less-concerned to more-concerned axis is worthless. We are not far enough on the well-informed to poorly-informed axis to even bother" is pretty depressing, since we're speeding along the just-in-time to too-late axis.

It's just a shame that mt allowed it to be hijacked by concern troll whinge-fest.

[Jim Hunt]

That's a very lucid article on the three terms.

A commenter on my first ever article for Skeptical Science suggests that "Anthropogenic Climate Disruption"  (ACD for short) is the most appropriate term, crediting a comment on a 2010 Joe Romm article.

[Sigmetnow]

This brief article highlights a broadcast where a Fox News Anchor Thinks Telling The Facts On Climate Change Is "Unbalanced" -- but it also mentions several newspapers that will no longer publish non-factual or denier responses.  A ray of hope.

http://mediamatters.org/mobile/blog/2014/06/17/fox-news-anchor-thinks-telling-the-facts-on-cli/199754

[Lynn Shwadchuck]

Jim, that's great that you wrote for SS!

I disagree with creating a fourth term. The fools and shills would have a field day with it. The article makes an excellent point that global warming, climate change and climate disruption are not synonyms. People need to learn the distinctions. They just need to be used in the appropriate contexts.

[ghoti]

John Cook's article today points to why we should worry less about fine points of definitions of terms and more about basic recognition of the problem. http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=2577

Personally I think the last rant on Planet 3.0 is a demonstration of why the main Planet 3.0 site has and is going no where while all the associated blogs flourish.

[Sigmetnow]

Some US museums tiptoe around the subject of climate change.  But their polls show visitors look for, and trust, the scientific information presented there.

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-news/20140614-museums-tiptoe-around-climate-change.ece

[Lynn Shwadchuck]

Environmentalists, who should be uniting in their fight against climate change,  are not helping the cause by misrepresenting the progress we're making (failing to make) in lowering emissions.

I'm reading James Hansen's paper, 'Draft Opinion: Renewable Energy, Nuclear Power and Galileo:Do Scientists Have a Duty to Expose Popular Misconceptions?' http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2014/20140221_DraftOpinion.pdf

This bit about the way environmentalists are playing up China's use of renewables:

"China is making a huge effort to develop increased electricity generation with both coal and clean energies. Indeed, China is now leading the world in installation of new hydropower, wind, solar and nuclear electricity generation. However, the energy development situation in China is often reported, in the West, in very misleading ways. For example,a 2014 article 12 “China Roars Ahead with Renewables” in Ecologist magazine reprinted from The Conversation, stated “Reports of China opening a huge new coal-fired power station every week belie the reality – China is the new global powerhouse for renewable modernization and industrialization of the country – is now being powered more by renewables than by fossil fuels.” The article concluded “These results reveal just how strongly China is swinging behind renewables as its primary energy resource..” This distortion of reality, pointed out by Armond Cohen 13 of the Clean Air Task Force, is common and contributes to energy misconceptions discussed below. It is true that China is leading the world in installation of renewable energies. However, a meaningful data presentation for the new energy sources ... shows a rather different picture ... The new fossil fuel energy output in China, mostly coal, exceeded new wind energy by a factor of six and new solar output by a factor of 27.

[Lynn Shwadchuck]

Here's another subtle but important language distinction: abrupt climate impacts, from a presentaion posted by Wili under his thread, " Topic: Scientists Warn about Abrupt Climate Impacts "

youtube.com/watch?v=uh3auNaQbhc

[Jim Hunt]

A new article from COIN:

"Who cares about climate change consensus?"

Bickering over precise figures is pointless until the climate issue resonates with the general public, not just an informed few.

[Lynn Shwadchuck]

There's a glimmer of hope here, with the promise of world religious and cultural leaders speaking about action on climate change as they did about ending the cold war. Richard Sommerville seems to be a big fan of the Dalai Lama.

At 55 minutes, finally, the Dalai Lama does a great job of communicating how short-sightedness and national self-interest are dangerous for humanity and why he himself has taken a strong interest in science for the past thirty years. Before any action, people should be informed about the deeper reality of their situation. Scientists are the ones who plumb the depths of reality.

[Sigmetnow]

John Sutter is blogging his kayak trip down California's dwindling San Joaquin River, America's "most endangered" river.

http://cnnuslive.cnn.com/Event/My_trip_down_the_most_endangered_river_in_America/mobile&sr=tw062414sutterriver130pLivePhoto&Theme=16920

[ritter]

John Sutter is blogging his kayak trip down California's dwindling San Joaquin River, America's "most endangered" river.

http://cnnuslive.cnn.com/Event/My_trip_down_the_most_endangered_river_in_America/mobile&sr=tw062414sutterriver130pLivePhoto&Theme=16920

Cool. I grew up walking distance to the San Joaquin River. We used to play there quite a bit, hunting for frogs (invasive bullfrogs), perch and other unlucky creatures!

[Jim Hunt]

From today's Independent:

Scientists need to become more humble and to completely re-think the way they communicate if the battle to curb climate change is to be won, one of the world's leading climate experts has warned.

Lamenting what he calls a “mismatch” between the state of climate science and the needs of society, Professor Chris Rapley called on his colleagues across the world to throw off the shackles of tradition and engage in a radically different approach to their discipline.

Here's the "Time For Change?" report that the Indy is discussing:

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/public-policy/Policy_Commissions/Communication-climate-science/Communication-climate-science-report

[Lynn Shwadchuck]

I've had a depressing thought. Last night I watched a National Geographic show form 2008 on climate change – pretty dire (but with a storm like Sandy only occurring at 4 degrees above pre-industrial). "Six Degrees Could Change The World." Then a quite recent one, "Earth Under Water" – all about adapting to sea level rise above two degrees. Earth Under Water was very misleading, because it made it seem that sea level rise is the only outcome of three degrees. No mention was made of the accompanying chaos and breakdown.

I'm wondering if there isn't a general idea in business and government that rather than scale back the economy to reduce emissions, just let global warming march on and churn the global economy with (a) mega projects like sea walls that make the Hoover Dam look like a school project and (b) military actions to control climate migrations. 

[Shared Humanity]

I've had a depressing thought. Last night I watched a National Geographic show form 2008 on climate change – pretty dire (but with a storm like Sandy only occurring at 4 degrees above pre-industrial). "Six Degrees Could Change The World." Then a quite recent one, "Earth Under Water" – all about adapting to sea level rise above two degrees. Earth Under Water was very misleading, because it made it seem that sea level rise is the only outcome of three degrees. No mention was made of the accompanying chaos and breakdown.

I'm wondering if there isn't a general idea in business and government that rather than scale back the economy to reduce emissions, just let global warming march on and churn the global economy with (a) mega projects like sea walls that make the Hoover Dam look like a school project and (b) military actions to control climate migrations.

I'm not sure you need to ascribe such a collaborative decision process to the business and  military communities and that they have arrived at this conclusion. BAU will cause us to stumble towards this result without any conscious choices being made. The choices or decisions will be purely reactive. The result will be the same.

In a wealthy nation like the U.S., it will take the form of abandoning coastal regions that cannot be defended, regardless of the cost (Southern Florida) and building massive structures that dwarf anything ever built by man to defend regions we can simply not afford to lose (New York City). The scene will be chaotic and costly while millions of Americans are relocated permanently.

In an area like Bangladesh, there will be no attempt to defend the land and the human misery and death will be spectacular.

[Lynn Shwadchuck]

Yes, that's how it works, you're right. There's no cabal, simply capital. That's why I wrote 'a general idea' rather than a Master Plan.  There  was a heartbreaking pair of clips in one of those shows. The first was these giant multi-billion-dollar sea wall cranking devices on the Thames and elsewhere, like something from The Matrix Revolutions. The next shot was a close-up of Bangaladeshis working in knee-deep water, placing some corrugated metal up against a fence made of wooden poles.

[TerryM]

I fear Ukraine is an example of how Big Business & Big Government react when things don't follow the prefered plan. If reality should happen to intersect with communication it's fortuitous, but certainly not necessary, & perceptions are molded by those with the largest bullhorn.
Terry

[Lynn Shwadchuck]

'Future Weather' – a surprising indie film, fiction, about a 13 year-old girl who's really worried (and very articulate) about global warming. It would be excellent if lots of teachers stirred up students. The movie's not that optimistic about the effect this could have, though.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1701215/

[Sigmetnow]

”Into the Storm," the next big cli-fi movie, hits the big screen in the US August 8, 2014.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2014/07/01/will-into-the-storm-coming-soon-become-the-next-cult-movie-for-weather-fanatics/

The Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang attended an advance screening (no spoilers).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2014/07/11/into-the-storm-sucks-in-capital-weather-gang-at-advanced-screening-photos/

[Sigmetnow]

And meteorologist Eric Holthaus examines the veracity of the "Into the Storm" trailer.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/07/into_the_storm_trailer_all_of_my_weather_pet_peeves_with_steven_quale_s.html

[AbruptSLR]

The linked Smithsonian article discusses how video (games) and be used to show an apathetic public what a climate change devastated world would look like:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/cant-picture-world-devastated-climate-change-these-games-will-do-it-you-180952104/

[morganism]

Ars Tecnica article talking about how the wording of a study, shows folks DO understand AGW
They just aren't convinced.


http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/07/are-the-people-who-refuse-to-accept-climate-change-ill-informed

[Jim Hunt]

From the editorial in the latest issue of Nature Climate Change:

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n9/full/nclimate2368.html

Increasing climate science literacy through clear communication will not be sufficient to maximize public engagement in the climate change debate.

Arguably, there is no field of science where clarity of communication is more important than that of climate change. Scientists need to explain in plain, straightforward language the nature of the evidence that the climate is changing, what the probable causes are and what the consequences for society are likely to be. They also need to be upfront regarding gaps in knowledge about how the climate system works, and how uncertainties affect projections of future climate and the confidence that we can have in them. This is not just because the general public want to know, but also because politicians — often with no or limited scientific training — must have a clear understanding of the issues if they are to formulate and set in place effective policies to tackle climate change and minimize its societal and environmental impacts.

[Tor Bejnar]

A new book: Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change by George Marshall (founder of the [English] Climate Outreach Information Network - visit http://climateconviction.org/).  See Washington Post review at http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/uncertain-forecast-for-the-planet/2014/08/21/da465b9e-0eb4-11e4-b8e5-d0de80767fc2_story.html

My reading the Washington Post review suggests much of the content of George Marshall's book is based on his blog entries at http://climatedenial.org/.  The site is having problems, but you can access old blogs by going to an archive http://climatedenial.org/2014/05/ and scrolling through “Former Postings” and “Archives” linked in the right column.

[Laurent]

Scientists 'must be emotionally charged' about climate change to highlight its dangers, claims expert

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/scientists-must-be-emotionally-charged-about-climate-change-to-highlight-its-dangers-claims-expert-9950692.html

[Anne]

*Bump*
A passionate plea from an unexpected quarter:
The Louvre's closure proves art cannot survive climate change
Jonathan Jones

<snip>It is scarily symbolic to see the Louvre menaced by flooding, as the world’s weather becomes ever less predictable and the signs of climate change impossible to ignore. No other museum so grandly preserves the finest achievements of our species.

<snip>If any museum sums up the best of human creativity through millennia, it is the Louvre. Now that it has been forced to close its doors, to take emergency measures against another of those weather events in which only the most foolhardy or corrupt refuse to see human-induced climate change, we can glimpse how our destructive side will wreck our best hopes if we don’t change.

Some environmentalists, of course, would say the fate of nature matters more than the fate of civilisation: that we humans have proved a pretty nasty little species. That is wrong. The great art that fills the Louvre proves it is wrong.

The most apocalyptic masterpiece in the Louvre is Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa. As they cling to a raft on a savage sea, the last survivors of catastrophe have apparently been driven to cannibalism. Civilisation has died. Bare survival is all they have. Is that enough?

Jonathan Jones's Guardian blog

Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa. Photograph: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images