Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Conversation author Ryan Weber is worried that efforts to insert a mention of climate change into every remotely weather connected news story might not be as persuasive as he hoped – though he suggests being more sneaky about inserting climate messages might yield better results.
Extreme weather news may not change climate change skeptics’ minds
Ryan Weber Associate Professor of English, University of Alabama in Huntsville
March 27, 2019 9.33pm AEDTThe year 2018 brought particularly devastating natural disasters, including hurricanes, droughts, floods and fires – just the kinds of extreme weather events scientists predict will be exacerbated by climate change.
Amid this destruction, some people see an opportunity to finally quash climate change skepticism. After all, it seems hard to deny the realities of climate change – and object to policies fighting it – while its effects visibly wreck communities, maybe even your own.
…
But a recent study from Ohio State University communications scholars found that news stories connecting climate change to natural disasters actually backfire among skeptics. As someone who also studies scientific communication, I find these results fascinating. It’s easy to assume that presenting factual information will automatically change people’s minds, but messages can have complex, frustrating persuasive effects.
…
It turned out that climate change skeptics – whether politically conservative or liberal – showed more resistance to the stories that mentioned climate change. Climate change themes also made skeptics more likely to downplay the severity of the disasters. At the same time, the same articles made people who accept climate change perceive the hazards as more severe.
…Given this resistance to news, other approaches, such as avoiding fear-inducing and guilt-based messaging, creating targeted messages about free-market solutions, or deploying a kind of “jiu jitsu” persuasion that aligns with pre-existing attitudes, may prove more effective at influencing skeptics. In the meantime, social scientists will continue to investigate ways to combat the stubborn boomerang effect, even as the consequences of climate change intensify all around us.
Read more: https://theconversation.com/extreme-weather-news-may-not-change-climate-change-skeptics-minds-112650
My old English teachers would have understood the problem immediately.
But modern English professors like Ryan Weber appear to be genuinely puzzled when skeptics react negatively to reporters interleaving shaky climate claims with their allegedly objective descriptions of weather disasters.
Because we can always trust the objectivity of weather reporters, right?
Dream on Ryan …
We’re too old for fairy tales , and it’s not Halloween …
Absolutely!
They’ve been lying, faking / hiding data, exaggerating, crying wolf for 30 years.
Now they think some really clever social scientists may come up with a new way to con us ” even as the consequences of climate change intensify all around us.”
Yeah right. Maybe if you just STFU it would work.
But in about 4 days, Its April 1st 😉
April 1st, the one day I will loudly proclaim my absolute belief in CAGW Climate Change!
“Dr. Ryan Weber is an Associate Professor of English and the Director of Business and Technical Communication at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He researches science communication, entrepreneurship rhetoric, and user experience. His articles have appeared in journals such as Science Communication, Technical Communication Quarterly, IEEE: Transactions in Professional Communication, and Journal of Technical Writing and Communication.”
….there’s a word for that Ryan….propaganda
The rule of advertising is that the more it’s advertised, the less worth it actually has. Although I gleaned that from a Penthouse magazine back in the 90’s, it makes absolute sense when watching the most ridiculous claims made about a product that’s advertised incessantly on the idiot box, often twice every ad break.
Likewise Ryan Weber’s advertising efforts to flood the public with constant AGW catchphrases, even surreptitiously. At no time did he or anyone prove his claims. So that would be fraud, or at minimum false advertising possibly leading to unethical claims creating public anxiety for personal benefit or profit.
A long time ago I made the correlation between how hard a new Hollywood movie was being pushed and the quality of the movie. So, now, when I see a new movie being promoted relentlessly, I automatically assume it is going to be a real stinker.
This is why youtube are relentlessly advertising themselves on Where? youtube I’m sorry but I’m not buying IT whatever IT might be.
James Bull
I’m not so sure it’s how much it’s promoted as how it’s promoted.
For example, as soon as they something “This movie is important”, to me that means it’s important for me not to waste my time or money.
“The rule of advertising is that the more it’s advertised, the less worth it actually has.”
My Pillow seems to be counter to that rule.
37% of 7654 reviewers on Amazon give it a one or two star review.
It may be substantially better than the pillow you were previously using, but there seems to be several other pillows that are better, and far less advertised.
GEICO is people’s Exhibit A of this phenomenon.
Yeah but the GEICO gecko is cute.
GEICO does seem to have a knack for good advertising campaigns. The cavemen were funny.
On the other hand the AFLAC duck is just annoying.
He should walk across campus and take classes with Christy and Spencer and learn something.
My thought exactly.
Ryan as a propagandist working across the street from Christy and Spencer analogizes ‘so near, yet so far.’ They’re a conceptual universe away from him. He’ll never see them.
… there’s zero increase in severe weather. Maybe an increase in breathless reporting?
I ran into a video once of a senator (maybe a congressman) talking with a climate scientist. The scientist claimed the weather was becoming more extreme. So the senator pulled out graphs of the actual data. The scientist hemmed and hawed over it for a bit before settling on the answer that it would be more extreme but in a way that wouldn’t show up statistically. I wish I could find the video again.
Ryan can’t understand why people aren’t as gullible as he is.
…he actually looked in the mirror…made himself look like that….and approved of it
What else to you need to know….
— you mean he didn’t take a selfie?
“…he actually looked in the mirror…made himself look like that….and approved of it”
It’s proof of his own theory… were you to point out that acceptance of his message was being hampered by his looking like a clueless wanker and he would likely disagree.. after all :
“It’s easy to assume that presenting factual information will automatically change people’s minds, but messages can have complex, frustrating persuasive effects.”
That’s another common trait among this crowd – they assume everyone else is stupid.
Here you go Ryan “know-nothing”, from another Ryan at the other end of the science knowledge spectrum:
http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Maue-06-06-18-major-hurricanes.png
It’s the data you’re fighting, which should go a long way to explaining why you’re losing.
Its got to the stage on BBC news that everything is ‘climate change’.
Just as in G@S’ If everybody is somebody then nobody is anybody’. The Gondoliers.
If every flood is climate change, then no flood is not, according to ‘Climate Science’,
then this is clearly impossible to believe, so rightly rejected.
What does this scientist expect?
He’s a humanities guy who is trying to shame scientist and engineers into going along with his feelings.
Nice to include the trusting weather reporters video, Eric. Before I write a Reply to Ryan Weber, I wonder if anyone knows for sure, is “crap-weasel” one word or two? Thanks.
Classic. The two teen-aged boys casually strolling by. The intrepid weather reporter leaning into the wi… wait a minute. How do you describe someone who is leaning downwind?
stupid
A light weight?
Eileen, if female
A jackass.
crapweasel is one word. Like dropbear.
In Australia, we love to scare tourists with the dropbear myth. But less appear to believe it these days. Damn!
The Dropbear WHAT?
Sorry Readers, young Wallaby has been out in the sun a bit too long and a few roos unfortunately got a bit loose in his top paddock.
What he REALLY meant to say was the Dropbear Threat. Those little buggers are KILLERS.
Wallaby will be back to his normal self after a few cold ones. Until then take his words with a knowing smile and a grain of salf.
This is what has become of English Departments in higher education? So sad. Get a real job Ryan.
Nowadays, English departments in US and British universities are more concerned with indoctrinating students in Progressivism than actually teaching them anything about the language or its literature.
Exactly!
At least it wasn’t another busted-arse psychology dept groupie this time. Good to get some diversity, sausages ain’t nuthin’ without some spuds and has-beans.
Am I just observing the blindingly obvious. In the video the reporter seems to be having trouble standing erect in the howling wind yet behind him 2 people stroll casually by without effort and without their clothes even flapping around much. Also he looks like he is bracing himself standing into the wind whereas the plants behind him are blowing the other way ie: as though the wind is coming from behind him. Is this the sort of “extreme weather reporting” the skeptics find unconvincing because if so number me amongst them. Or was this video included as a form of /sarc?
It’s sarcasm, but a parable for the time, too.
It´s very local special wind. It whirls like it´s coming from behind, but he is fighting in the right direction. Just like climatechange “science” is doing.
The video was real as is the scorn cast upon it.
“Ryan Weber Associate Professor of English, University of Alabama in Huntsville”
Does this Professor realize that a couple of blocks away the UAH has 2 research professors who run the world’s only trustable global temperature data program. All he has to do is to go talk to John Christy and Roy Spencer who will set him straight and prove to him that there are no more extreme weather events than there ever were and that there is no such thing as CAGW.
Dear Dr Ryan Weber.
Extreme weather news may not change climate change alarmists minds…..even if they are proved beyond any doubt that they are normal. This was illustrated recently by T. Heller in an elegant little video concerning recent flooding. The same can be said for drought, fire and hurricanes.
What will it take to wake people like you up from your sleepy zombie like nightmare state?
I wish Tony had put the Great Flood of 1862 in that video.
When that happens the alarmists will shouting for the death sentence of CO2.
I recorded the 1862 flood on an iPhone
and then dropped it into 17 feet of rushing water.
When it shows up, I’ll have a classic.
It’s sarcasm, but a parable for the time, too.
“…or deploying a kind of “jiu jitsu” persuasion that aligns with pre-existing attitudes, may prove more effective at influencing skeptics…
What would have proven ‘more effective at influencing skeptics’ would have been climate predictions that came true, climate disasters that became reality, model projections that proved to be accurate, etc.
“Climate change themes also made skeptics more likely to downplay the severity of the disasters”.
What is it about these people? Few genuine skeptics I observe downplay anything. The simply look as the historical record and compare. I commonly go look at the NZ record when a new “record is broken!!”. Usually these events are not unprecedented. When pointing this out in the comments on an article in media, less than 50% of my comments get published. For goodness sake, I am only relaying official data. Muffle the messenger.
M
You’ll have more luck if you strictly adhere to Newspeak principles Michael, it will also helps to have a solid working familiarity with Doublethink, especially if commenting on a Public Broadcasting website.
The perfesser, not being a scientist, cannot possibly understand why I became a skeptic toward CAGW. If I explained it to him, he would probably think me mad. To me, however, it was enormous.
Back at the beginning, I accepted the Hockey Stick, accepted the possibility of the “atmosphere as boiling water” analogy, i.e., the warmer it got the more it roiled, and the more storms, accepted the fact that we were pumping out CO2 at a pretty good clip and that might have something to do with it all.
Then Phil Jones said, to someone who asked to see his data, something along the lines of, “Why should I let you have it? I’ve spent 20 years on it, and all you’ll try to do is find something wrong with it.”
To me, that was such a violation of everything about the scientific spirit, the shared goal of advancing humanity’s knowledge, that I immediately knew something was up with climate science. To me, the proper response should have been, “Yes! Take it and see, and marvel at the sophistication of my methods and the brilliance of my conclusions! Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
A person with no scientific background can not understand what a betrayal such a statement by Jones is. Heck, maybe some people with scientific backgrounds might think that a bit overdramatic. But it’s what did it for me.
And no amount of “communication” is going to change that.
To be outraged by such behaviour you have to believe in quaint, old fashioned ideas like falsifiability.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/08/10/claim-climate-science-does-not-have-to-be-falsifiable/
What did it for me was James Hansen conveniently cherry-picking events to fit the global warming narrative. The heatwave and drought in the middle of the US in 1988, during La Niña, was an “obvious” sign of GW, as he testified to Congress. Five years later, during El Niño, opposite pattern with completely opposite results. The massive flooding in 1993 was global warming, you see. Flooding on floodplains, fires in semiarid locations, and hurricanes and typhoons hitting the southeastern sides of continents suddenly became “climate change”, even though it’s been going on since the dawn of man. So I’ve been a skeptic since 1993.
What did it for me was studying the Earth.
Phil Jones’ classic remark about “his” data provided the Damascene moment for a lot of people, myself included.
Don’t piss on me and then tell me it’s raining.
When I’m looking for new and interesting science lectures
I always go to the English Department.
Where do you go?
JFH
I go to the multi-cultural studies department.
Or the Department of Feminist Glaciology.
JustTheFactsPlease
I’m afraid that they will just give you the cold shoulder!
But, seriously, your remark was funnier. The first liar doesn’t have a chance. 🙂
I listen to anyone who ‘believes in science’. /sarc
After all, it is a cult of marxists running for their ‘solution’.
Quote from the perpetrator:
“only to find that skeptics often end up more entrenched after reading attempts to persuade them”
True, so stop trying to persuade me. Instead, keep explaining the /facts/. Like that how much the world has warmed during the panic that started at the 1980’s, how many meters of sea level rise it has caused so far, how near polar bears are to extinction.
Once you get your facts /right/, then I may accept your message; but even then, I won’t accept your policy, i.e. blaming people of white color, calls for socialism, irresponsible headlines, idea that we can fix this using ideas which don’t have engineers backing them.
English majors can’t fix an energy crisis.
Rock Stars are the best and most up to date.
I suppose I’m the type of skeptic the good English professor is trying to influence. I’m an old Republican (82), engineer, and someone who has been reading books, abstracts, and blogs about climate change since the ’90s. I even recall the coming ice age predictions of the 1970s. Also, I’m aware of the multitude of climate disaster predictions that have been made over decades, none of which has proven to be correct. I’m also aware that today’s weather disasters are no worse nor frequent than those of past centuries. Based upon my experience and study, I agree with the professor that I’m turned off by reports using the term “denier,” blaming weather events on climate change, mentioning the 97% consensus, statements by politicians actors — especially Algore, Obama, and Barbra Streisand. Conclusion: The good associate professor is wasting his time analyzing why I’m a skeptic and trying to figure out how to change my mind.
Ditto, Bob. Even down the age and education.
How true…………………
They haven’t yet provided any factual information. They keep conflating weather events that have happened many times in my lifetime with climate change.
Floods:
The state of Louisiana was almost completely under water during a flood in the 20’s, was that “climate change”?
There is a grain elevator on the Mississippi in Alton, Illinois with flood height lines drawn on the side. It looks like that location has seen similar flooding about every 20 years for the last 100 at least. Does the “climate” mysteriously change there every 20 years?
Hurricanes:
I didn’t grow up on the coast, but remember Camille from my childhood. Being a mid-westerner I didn’t understand its impact, but got all sorts of tales of it while stationed in Biloxi, MS while in the Air Force. The damage reports were worse than the ones for Katrina, but the coast was no where near as built up back then. The Katrina problems were due to incompetent leadership in Louisiana who didn’t even get hit with the strong side of the storm.
All the charts of global ACE show declines over the years even with us now being able to track every fish storm.
Tornadoes:
In the mid-west and great plains, these have been a fact of life forever. There is no indication of an increase even with us now able to characterize every breeze with radar.
The good PhD in English needs to present some real data if he wants to change my mind, and quit trying to connect to my emotions. Science doesn’t work with emotions; it works with data, hard collected by field experimentation. Computer games don’t count.
Weather events are datum points that have very little meaning and no context. A graph of CO2 versus that weather type with a strong linear or other trend correlation is called science. We get pictures of datum points only, not real science data. What people see is more weather like they have seen all their lives. Next they will say the sun coming up in the morning is a portend of the End Days. Or maybe for sunsets. Maybe both.
Huntsville, Rocket City, is a great city with more PhDs per 10,000 population than any other city in the country. Obviously not all PhDs are equivalent – certainly not Ryan Weber.
The more critical point though is why do those who are skeptical about the scope and nature of climate change discount extreme weather events. Well any sensible person would approach this question by asking skeptics the reasons for their dismissal of single extreme events as evidence of climate change? I have my answers ready to go with lots of facts, a bunch of statistics and an alternative question – namely why would you look to singular events in a brief time period to prove or disprove a proposition that uses 30 years as its unit of analysis? It makes no sense – which i believe is the simple explanation as to why those skeptical on catastrophic anthropogenic climate change are unperturbed by a hundred year flood in one relatively small region of the country or a few hurricanes after 13 years of hardly any major US hurricanes.
Critical thinking does not seem to be Dr. Ryan Weber’s strong point.
Ryan needs to take a stroll across campus and have a chat with Roy and John.
They took their eyes off the real game to go after Trump. Now the media can renew their campaign against global warming with renewed credibility.
This time it’s for real. Why wouldn’t we believe them?
biggest reason, weather is not climate
“weather is not climate” Neither is a scientific term by origin. Climate consists of patterns of weather. It’s another of those points which make the proponent look foolish.
Ryan wonders while rational people get jaded with constant ‘Climate Change(tm)’ shouts?
It is like when you cry ‘Wolf!’, Ryan. One ‘Wolf!’ is happenstance. Two is coincidence. Three ‘Wolf!’ and we want to see not only the Lupus in question but their Tax File Number, Birth Certificate and their Instragram account or we are going to stop inviting you to parties.
Show us the Canis, Ryan, or shut up about it.
– Yeah.
So Ryan Weber, are you suggesting that when you blame everything – EVERYTHING – on climate change…
“Nice sunrise…” ” – Sunrise??? – CLIMATE CHANGE!!!” “Really love the autumn leaves changing colour…” ” – Leaves changing colour? – CLIMATE CHANGE!!!”
– that people stop believing you? Well, I just never would’ve imagined that; knock me down with a feather. -_-