From the University of Missouri:
Public Acceptance of Climate Change Affected by Word Usage, Says MU Anthropologist
Better science communication could lead to a more informed American public.
Public acceptance of climate change’s reality may have been influenced by the rate at which words moved from scientific journals into the mainstream, according to anthropologist Michael O’Brien, dean of the College of Arts and Science at the University of Missouri. A recent study of word usage in popular literature by O’Brien and his colleagues documented how the usage of certain words related to climate change has risen and fallen over the past two centuries. Understanding how word usage affects public acceptance of science could lead to better science communication and a more informed public.
“Scientists can learn from this study that the general public shouldn’t be expected to understand technical terms or be convinced by journal papers written in technical jargon,” O’Brien said. “Journalists must explain scientific terms in ways people can understand and thereby ease the movement of those terms into general speech. That can be a slow process. Several words related to climate change diffused into the popular vocabulary over a 30-50 year timeline.”
O’Brien’s study found that, by 2008, several important terms in the discussion of climate change had entered popular literature from technical obscurity in the early 1900s. These terms included:
- Biodiversity – the degree of variation in life forms within a given area
- Holocene – the current era of the Earth’s history, which started at the end of the last ice age
- Paleoclimate –the prehistoric climate, often deduced from ice cores, tree rings and pollen trapped in sediments
- Phenology – the study of how climate and other environmental factors influence the timing of events in organisms’ life cycles
Not every term was adopted at the same rate or achieved the same degree of popularity. Biodiversity, for example, came into popular use quickly in only a few years in the late 80s and early 90s. Other terms, like Holocene or phenology, have taken decades and are still relatively uncommon.
“The adoption of words into the popular vocabulary is like the evolution of species,” O’Brien said. “A complex process governs why certain terms are successful and adopted into everyday speech, while others fail. For example, the term ‘meme’ has entered the vernacular, as opposed to the term ‘culturgen,’ although both refer to a discrete unit of culture, such as a saying transferred from person to person.”
To observe the movement of words into popular literature, O’Brien and his colleagues searched the database of 7 million books created by Google. They used the “Ngram” feature of the database to track the number of appearances of climate change keywords in literature since 1800. The usage rate of those climate change terms was compared to the usage of “the,” which is the most common word in the English language. Statistical analysis of usage rates was calculated in part by co-author William Brock, a new member of MU’s Department of Economics and member of the National Academy of Sciences.
The study, “Word Diffusion and Climate Science” was published in the journal PLOS ONE and can be viewed here (in full): http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0047966. Co-authors also included R. Alexander Bentley of the University of Bristol Phillip Garnett of Durham University.
-30-
EDITOR’S NOTE: A portion of O’Brien’s experiment can be repeated using any computer with internet access.
- 1. Go to http://books.google.com/ngrams
- 2. Enter terms such as “climate change,” “global warming,” or “anthropogenic” and note how they have changed in usage over the past century.
Story Contact(s):
Timothy Wall, walltj@missouri.edu
The banner is wrong – it’s Global Weirding now.
“3-percenter”! The perfect term for us guys. It’s fewer words to type than “contrarian.” (Although, in Word, I’ve set up Autocorrect to change “crn” to “contrarian.”)
Let’s see.
“Global Warming”
Ah, that stopped in 1998, so we can’t use that Bogeyman!
“Climate Change”
Yep, climate changes, ah, climate’s always changed hasn’t it. Hmm, what else can we use?
“Climate Disruption”
Errr, what does that mean exactly?
“Extreme Weather”
Ooooh, that’s a goody! Hot, cold, drought, flooding, snow, windy lovely, that’ll do!
[snip . . Goodwins law and site rules . . mod]
Heed the words of F Luntz….?!
“Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly.
“Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.”
The phrase “global warming” should be abandoned in favour of “climate change”, Mr Luntz says, and the party should describe its policies as “conservationist” instead of “environmentalist”, because “most people” think environmentalists are “extremists” who indulge in “some pretty bizarre behaviour… that turns off many voters”.
From the published paper: (my bold)
They try to investigate word diffusion from scientic publishing to the mainstream, yet they apply a filter that will discriminate against literature containing scientific terms?
Also, according to Wikipedia, Google books includes magazines such as New York Magazine and Ebony-not exactly technical publications.
What we have here is failure to communicate. Funny how tough it can be to cram an ideology down people’s throats. They just don’t get it. It isn’t the words themselves. They can dumb it down as much as they like, and it won’t matter. You don’t have to be a science whiz to know when you are being sold a load of horsepoo being labeled as “science”.
The never ending marketing efforts to find a way to “communicate” AGW hysteria is a great way to know it is a marketing effort looking for suckers.
Perhaps the term “democrat voter” should be abandoned in favor of the more descriptive term “sheeple”
Why was this study even done? Are they now using scientific studies are marketing research to sell more climate change snake oil to the masses?
There is more.
Reference 36:
I guess what confuses me the most, is the intelligent people in places of power don’t think for themselves. Things like wind power and solar that we know are just not economically feesable at this time, are still being pushed. Our esteemed governor (MOM) here in Maryland is pushing for off shore wind power that will have to be subsidized to the tune of $1.50 a month per customer. Now you say $1.50 isn’t much, until you realize that there are over 2 million residental units in Maryland which would account for over $3.5 Million dollars a month. This doesn’t even take into account the businesses. I don’t know I guess I just look at things in to a practical matter using common sense.
Also as a side note, back in December when it was unseasonable warm, it was “climate” now that it’s 20 degrees at 9:24 AM, it’s weather! How convienent!
I am a stoopit member of the general public. I guess these anthropologists are studying my(the general public’s) lexicon. They’re trying to help me. They are so smart.
I know what a tautology is. I also know prevarication and propaganda.
Them are big words.
In lieu of, “Word Diffusion and Climate Science,” I’d go with, “Modeling the Success of Propaganda at Sustaining our Progress Toward the Utopia of a Governance Structure Controlled by the More Knowledgeable “
“From the EPA’s Klimate Kids guide for elementary school teachers glossary”
I had to double-check that the official government site really said such, as, even after all I’m used to seeing by now, that was an amazingly blatant attempt at emotional manipulation against the dominant fertilizer of plant life on earth. Well, checking http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/kids/glossary.html , while they didn’t have a puppies reference, they do present its natural sources as if just from decay of dead animals and plants (a small fraction of the total but misleadingly emphasized to emotionally associate with death) rather than mentioning greater natural sources including respiration while living. The full quote:
“Carbon dioxide: A colorless, odorless greenhouse gas. It is produced naturally when dead animals or plants decay, and it is used by plants during photosynthesis. People are adding carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, mostly by burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas. This extra carbon dioxide is the main cause of climate change.”
The EPA is the kind of institution that activists flock to join, but how they can poorly even pretend to be other than biased propagandists is illustrative of how far it is from what it should be, an unbiased scientific body. Close to unbiased regulation might only occur if the people in charge of making the environmental regulations were pulled not from those regularly seeking that power but from elsewhere. What could really be best on average would be to have engineers at the top (and not the ones who would ordinarily want the position or those who were focused on environmentalism in prior resume background but rather individuals pulled in by offers of high pay almost alone instead of ideology), then consulting scientists underneath them. Engineers are more reliably mathematical literate than ecologists and most others, including better able to understand quantitative cost versus benefit analysis, on average likely to be more neutral (or relatively pro-technology as is well justified) than to have anti-producer, anti-industry, and/or anti-human biases. Engineering also encourages being true scientists and appliers of honest science, by a need to ensure analysis matches reality and actually works; climatologists don’t have to have what they make (model predictions) actually work in contrast. It is too bad that won’t happen.
I still prefer………CICS
Chimerical Irritable Climate Syndrome
You can dress up a duck as a peacock and it’s still a duck. Qwack, qwack. Or is that a dead parrot? 🙂
“extreme weather” is unfortunately a better catch-all. At any given time on the planet there is something going on that someone can claim subjectively is “extreme”. Too little rain, too much rain, too cold, too hot, too windy, too calm. Take Philadelphia temps last night for example,. After several weeks of very moderate temperatures we went down into single digit Farenheit last night. I’d say that’s a very extreme swing in temperatures. Who cares if it’s in the wrong direction of global warming, it’s EXTREME!!!!!
SSDD…… they can’t dress up the crap science in any manner they wish, it’s still going to be crap…… and then there’s this….
It irks me to no end when I see this. For one, us poor dumb laymen have been reading through and understanding their idiocy for years. And, for two, our journalists have to know something about science before they can explain anything, they don’t. The journalists’ idiocy and sophistry renders them incapable of doing anything other than parroting hyperbole.
Tory Aardvark says:
He should have added sustainable to that list.
Probably “renewable” too.
Let’s get a study funded so we can learn to better communicate the fact that computer models don’t output data and consensus isn’t part of the scientific method to social scientists, journalists and politicians.
A second study along the same lines could instead target climate scientists and climatologists. In addition to the above, this study would add how to communicate “what is the scientific method?”
Anybody have a template for creating a grant proposal?
On the line of never wrestle with a pig, there is a certain level of stupidity that can not be safely coexisted with.
The merely dumb, one can explain the error of their ways to.
The truly stupid must be driven away before they cause you extreme harm.
Every one reading here, can think of their own experience with the dangerously stupid.
The in-house stupidity of academia and government is a natural consequence of allowing the dangerously stupid to gather together and retain the delusion that they be wise.
But our stupidity, in allowing these loons to hold the reins of power, will not go unpunished.
The beatings will continue until moral improves.
I can’t fix stupid, but I will not give him the keys to my truck. No matter what authority he claims.
In defense of the “D” word, the more they cry “denialist”, the harder the sky will fall on their heads when global warming is shown wrong by the upcoming cooler trend. The lesson of faux science must be seen by all — don’t let them hide it like they did with margarine (as Chiefio so aptly recounted).
Henry Clark says: at 6:51 am:
“What could really be best on average would be to have engineers at the top…….then consulting scientists underneath them.”
As the son of an engineer, I had the same inclination. When things fall down, you blame the engineer. Alas, a look at the top of the EPA and we find: Lisa P. Jackson, with an (earned) MSc in Chemical Engineering, inspired by Rachel Carson, who advises paying school fees with the savings from Chinese $40 light bulbs:
“Buying school supplies every year can get expensive. A good way to save money is to conserve energy use around the house. Energy Star products – from lightbulbs and laptops to televisions and air conditioners – are more energy efficient, which means you’ll pay less in utility bills every month. In 2011, the use of Energy Star products helped Americans save $23 billion on their utility bills, and prevented more than 210 million metric tons of green house gas emissions”