Note to NSF: It isn’t the method of communication, it’s the message itself. See the latest Gallup Poll to see how global warming aka climate change has come in dead last for environmental concerns.
From the National Science Foundation
In wake of recent shifts in public opinion, researchers analyze climate change communication
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.
“A major challenge facing climate scientists is explaining to non-specialists the risks and uncertainties surrounding potential” climate change, says a new Perspectives piece published today in the science journal Nature Climate Change.
The article attempts to identify communications strategies needed to improve layman understanding of climate science.
“Few citizens or political leaders understand the underlying science well enough to evaluate climate-related proposals and controversies,” the authors write, at first appearing to support the idea of specialized knowledge–that only climate scientists can understand climate research.
But, author Baruch Fischhoff quickly dispels the notion. “The goal of science communication should be to help people understand the state of the science,” he says, “relevant to the decisions that they face in their private and public lives.”
Fischhoff, a social and decision scientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and Nick Pidgeon, an environmental psychologist at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom wrote the article together, titled, “The role of social and decision sciences in communicating uncertain climate risks.”
Fischhoff and Pidgeon argue that science communication should give the public tools that will allow them to understand the uncertainties and disagreements that often underlie scientific discussion. He says that understanding is more likely to happen when people know something about the process that produces the conflicts they hear about in the press.
“Communications about climate science, or any other science, should embrace the same scientific standards as the science that they are communicating,” says Fischhoff. He says this is crucial to maintaining people’s trust in scientific expertise.
“When people lack expertise, they turn to trusted sources to interpret the evidence for them,” Fischhoff says. “When those trusted sources are wrong, then people are misled.”
Fischhoff and Pidgeon propose a communications strategy that applies “the best available communications science to convey the best available climate science.” The strategy focuses on identifying, disclosing and when necessary reframing climate risks and uncertainties so the lay public can understand them easily.
“All of our climate-related options have uncertainties, regarding health, economics, ecosystems, and international stability, among other things,” says Fischhoff. “It’s important to know what gambles we’re taking if, for example, we ignore climate issues altogether or create strong incentives for making our lives less energy intensive.”
Key to effective communications is what the authors call “strategic organization” and “strategic listening.”
Strategic organization involves working in cross-disciplinary teams that include, at a minimum, climate scientists, decision scientists, social and communications specialists and other experts.
Strategic listening encourages climate scientists, who often have little direct contact with the public, to overcome flawed intuitions of how well they communicate. Strategic listening asks scientists to go beyond intuitive feeling and consider how well they communicate by using systematic feedback and empirical evaluation.
“I think that it is good for scientists to be in contact with the public, so that they can learn about its concerns and see how well, or poorly, they are communicating their knowledge,” says Fischhoff. “That way they can do a better job of producing and conveying the science that people need.”
Fischhoff’s research on science communication is funded by the National Science Foundation’s Decision Risk and Management Sciences program.
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“They contend the evaluation of climate communication should be met with the same rigor [mortis] as climate science itself”
Does that means that they are going to make up and evaluate their own lies and not just rely on the old dead lies from climate scientologists.
If they had told the truth about “uncertainties” fifty years ago, and stuck to it…
…they would not be in this mess right now
Of course, then, neither would we…………………;-)
What a waste of time and money. We need best communication science to convince people about BeSt climate science … how impressive.
“they contend the evaluation of climate communication should be met with the same rigor as climate science itself.”
Mission accomplished! Woo, that was easy, wasn’t it.
This entire article is a simply a large pile of nonsense that translates to “the proles don’t believe us, so obviously we failed to adequately factor in their stupidity when tailoring our message.”
For a glimpse into the actual uncertainty in climate science see:
Judith Curry, Reasoning About Climate Uncertainty – Draft
Don Aitken, An essay on the current state of the climate change debate
See related posts at Climate, Etc.
The warming camp outspend the skeptic camp by 10 to 1. And they are not getting their message out?
Yeah, I read that. It was an interesting piece, acknowledged some of the problems, but again missed the boat completely.
They still think the issue is bad communications … someone ought to explain to them about the credibility problem of the Boy Who Cried Wolf.
Because clearly they think the Boy’s problems would be simply solved by giving him a bigger megaphone and some instruction in speaking methods and framing and better communication strategies …
w.
Good one, Willis….
It’s not a communication problem, but a awful/bad science problem. Repeating constant failures sticks up like a sore thumb and the public increasingly notice the planet not responding to far from reality predictions. Repeating the same mantra with angry and arrogant tone is a sure sign of something not going to plan. Good science speaks for itself, is noticed and is not required to be shoved down peoples throats on a daily basis. When this happens it is a sign of the product not reaching the right qualities, so desperation in sale of the product occurs. The public increasingly catch on to contradictions, bad product and normally when something like this happens the warning signs appear in big scary letters. ‘KEEP AWAY’
‘Few citizens or political leaders understand the underlying science well enough to evaluate climate-related proposals and controversies,” the authors write, at first appearing to support the idea of specialized knowledge–that only climate scientists can understand climate research.’
———————————————————————
What a load of tosh this whole article is. In effect it is saying that people can’t see through BS. Well Baruch Fischhoff and Nick Pidgeon you better learn to understand that people are well versed in seeing through BS – it has been a means of human survival for aeons. Your argument is a bit like the people who profess to have the ONLY hotline to god. So stop wasting your time.
Douglas
“Communicating Uncertain Climate Risks; Like, there’s Certain Climate Risks ??
The essence of risk is uncertainty.
And we do know the level of uncertainty. The IPCC standard fudge factor is 3:1 ; or nominal +/- 50% for those statistically minded, and needing a spread.
In the above post, should be not generally a communication problem. There is one exception and that is the alarmists often calling us deniers and hiding away from the true science that both divides actually disagree with. This prevents progression of science and stagnates debate. We know climate changes, the planet has warmed, but the issue is how much from natural factors, environmental changes and human CO2. Whether these will or will not contribute enough to cause humans serious problems in future.
Or maybe you just can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
Follow the money. As long as funding and research grants are exclusively pro global warming alarmists with no balance for the converse view. The opinions of those who would challenge or question those funded findings will be labeled as Sceptic not understanding the science.
Certainly they aren’t admitting that the IPCC et al. might have misled?
And, am I the only one to suspect that the “risks and uncertainties” are going to lean heavily on the risks and not so much on the uncertainties?
Guess they need someone to read that gibberish scrawled on the wall..
“Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin”
Climate science communications had yet to overcome three major obstacles:
1. The climate science “community” was co-opted by the political left and enviro-greenies as the means to their desired ends. Average folks recognize this and because they really don’t relate well to either the far left or extreme green, they tend to discount the message.
2. The “settled science” tells us that when a gas thats 0.04% of the atmosphere becomes 0.8% of the atmosphere, the world as we know it will end. And the predictions of end of the world are based on computer models built by the group that were dumb enough to be co-opted by the left & greenies. Sorry, but for average folks this is a bridge-too-far.
3. Because they can’t really explain the science and the uncertainties associated therewith, the climate science community spends most of its time and research dollars dreaming up one catastrophe after another. Problem here is that “Chicken Little” and “Boy Calling Wolf” aren’t the best of spokesmen — they’re fairy tales.
And, I forgot….there’s this little thing called Climategate.
I think their communication problem would be helped if people stopped paying attention. Maybe they should just keep quiet for a while.
As many of you know the Australian Government has employed scientists to promote the need for a carbon dioxide tax. They have assessed the need for better communication of the accepted science ie that of the IPCC. It is also imperative that alternative scientific views be banned. That my friends is propaganda.
The only skill required to foist climate propaganda onto people, is the ability to lie with a straight face. They’ve tried celebrities, scholars, and politicians but nobody really believable. For some odd reason, they just can’t make the lies stick. Hmmm, maybe they need to try animals in pathetic situations… No, that didn’t work either. Geez, this is a toughie.
Willis Eschenbach “… someone ought to explain to them about the credibility problem of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. ”
You should read the story. The wolf was real. The boy failed to communicate the need for practice drills.
Paraphrasing someeone else’s tweet.
You know what would improve communication about CAGW, If it was true.
From a British Think Tank
Warm Words :How are we telling the climate story and can we tell it better?
“ behaving as if climate change exists and is real”
“To help address the chaotic nature of the climate change discourse in the UK today, interested agencies now need to treat the argument as having been won, at least for popular communications. This means simply behaving as if climate change exists and is real, and that individual actions are effective. The ‘facts’ need to be treated as being so taken-for-granted that they need not be spoken.”
http://www.ippr.org/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=485
What a wonderful idea. Please do communicate – publish your original data, publish the methods by which it was massaged, publish the code for your computer models, maybe even publish those emails that the original whistle blower either missed or did not have access to. I can assure you that it will be carefully read and widely discussed
“Uncertainty” is an interesting way of putting it, almost implying there is some calculated probability of a bad outcome. But there is no such thing. There are runs of climate models which produce different kinds of garbage depending on what garbage is fed in. The climate models predicted increased AO, but lately it is more negative so they are blaming that on lack of ice. What, the climate models didn’t know about lack of ice?
Genuine uncertainty exists in exogenous factors like volcanoes and solar. But those are things the climate scientists never talk about because they simply don’t care about real uncertainty (that includes cooling), only fake uncertainty from CO2 feedback scenarios like permafrost melting and other century or millennial time scale factors that don’t matter today.
Climate models are completely inadequate. They don’t adequately model weather especially increases in convection (which is not modeled at all). The problem is not uncertainty but that the models are wrong and can’t predict anything with any level of certainty above a coin toss. As a simple example, it is either 100% certain that the world will warm 5C by 2100 or it is completely impossible. There is no uncertainty in the fundamental nature of weather and climate, only very coarse models that can’t explain or predict anything.
Uncertainty is a canard. It is a red herring. It is made from fake probability distributions from model runs, or worse, it is invented from “climate expert” opinion surveys. All those nice gaussian-looking probability distributions for temperature or sensitivity? All fake, not based on any applicable empirical data (paleo data is useless since the transition from dry ice age to wet interglacial is driven by water vapor, not CO2). All the long right tails with 10C of warming? Fake. The 5% “probability” that sensitivity is equal or less than a modest 2C? Fake. There is either 100% certainty of modest warming (apart from exogenous events) or 0%. There is no probability distribution derived from anything other than nonscientific methods.
Four basic problems :
1) You can’t lie about the weather. Everybody experiences it every single day of their lives. If you try and tell them the “world is warming” just after they’ve experienced (as we have in the UK), the coldest December in living memory, they’re going to laugh in your face. Quite right, too.
2) A lack of confidence in long-term forecasting. If you can’t say, with any certainty, what the weather will do next Tuesday or next month, how the heck to you expect people to believe you when you tell them what it will do in 2060. Play the “weather is not climate” card (which is wrong anyway since climate is merely a long-term statistical expression of weather and, by definition, climate cannot change unless the weather does) all you like, but people (sensibly) are simply not going to buy it.
3) Over-hyping the problem. Anybody with a grain of common sense knows that the MSM goes out of its’ way to sensationalise everything. It’s what they do. It’s what they HAVE to do. Most people lead very busy lives and, at best, put aside about 5 or 10 minutes to grab their news through sound-bites and headlines. At this point the MSM has to grab their attention, because without that attention they will wither and die.
The consequence of this is that when any climate scientist speaks to the media, the media tune out all the qualifiers and uncertainties. All they are interested in is the absolute “worst-case scenario” and how many people might conceivably die as a consequence. If they can tell their readership it will all be their own stupid, selfish fault so much the better.
Needless to say, none of these climate-related “horror scenarios” has ever yet come true, but it is the climate scientist, not the media who were merely “reporting what he/she said” who are made to look completely divorced from reality.
4. Given that I don’t give a stuff about polar bears (who would eat me for lunch as soon as look at me) and take the attitude that every thing in nature exists because of its ability to adapt to climate changes far in excess of the trivial warming that has supposedly been bought about by a 40% increase in atmospheric CO2, that my ageing bones react increasingly badly to cold weather and that I am facing an astronomical gas bill for the “luxury” of keeping my house at a temperature of 18C for the last 4 months, why should I embrace the prospect that the globe will continue to warm slightly with anything other than enthusiasm?