Study: Replacing “Global Warming” with “Weather” Engages Climate Skeptics

Essay by Eric Worrall

UT School of Journalism Professor Renita Coleman is lead author of a study which suggest journalists who want to engage climate skeptics should replace the term “Global Warming” with “Weather”.

Want to reach sceptics? Researchers suggest leaving the term ‘climate change’ out of some news coverage

By  Denise-Marie Ordway Thursday June 23, 2022

If newsrooms want climate science sceptics to read and share news about climate change, researcher Renita Coleman recommends they do this: Leave the terms ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’ out of their coverage.

“Research seems to indicate those are trigger words for sceptics,” says Coleman, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “This is what we found would trigger them to stop reading and instantly become hostile, [believing] ‘Oh, that story is biased or that media organisation is biased.’”

Coleman is the lead author of a new paper that investigates strategies to help journalists reach people who distrust science. She and her colleagues conducted an experiment that indicates small changes in how journalists cover climate change have the potential to elicit substantial changes in the way sceptics engage with the news.

In the experiment, after reading a news story that incorporated the three changes below, sceptics said they would likely seek out and share more news about climate change. They also said they would likely take steps to help mitigate its damage.  

Read more: https://www.themandarin.com.au/193130-want-to-reach-sceptics-researchers-suggest-leaving-the-term-climate-change-out-of-some-news-coverage/

The abstract of the study;

Reaching Science Skeptics: How Adaptive Framing of Climate Change Leads to Positive Responses Via Persuasion Knowledge and Perceived Behavioral Control

Renita ColemanEsther ThorsonCinthia JimenezKami Vinton

First Published May 19, 2022 Research Article 

Abstract

This study extends framing theory by identifying two causal mechanisms and one contingent condition for a new type of frame to be used with issues where people dispute scientific claims. This new “adaptive frame” focuses on adapting to climate change impacts without cueing deeply held beliefs by discussing causes. An experiment shows this frame works by reducing persuasion knowledge and increasing perceived behavioral control, resulting in science skeptics being significantly more likely to intend to take action, engage with the news, and agree with the story’s perspective. This effect is moderated by science skepticism, with adaptive frames working significantly better on the very people the news media are not reaching. We contribute to theory with an understanding of how a frame that eliminates references to deep-seated beliefs is more effective than the existing frames of conflict, attribution of responsibility, and possibly others.

Read more (Paywalled): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00936502221084925

Of course, leaving out trigger words like “climate change” and “global warming” might lead to less engagement by climate alarmists. So maybe journalists need to publish two different versions of the same story? Or can they aim to engage different audiences on different weeks?

Here’s a radical thought – perhaps journalists could ease back on the trigger words and other attempts to manipulate the emotions of their audience, and try just presenting the facts.

4.8 19 votes
Article Rating
130 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Drake
June 24, 2022 10:10 am

Just present the facts, you are so funny Eric.

The last news magazine I subscribed to was U.S. News and World Report. When I started subscribing to news magazines in the mid 70s, I also got Time and Newsweek. Within a year I did not renew Time and Newsweek because of their leftward slant. US News pretty much gave you information to let you decide.

Within 5 years, sometime in the early 80s, I ended US News also because they became more and more left leaning, giving opinions, not facts.

Bill Powers
Reply to  Drake
June 25, 2022 6:26 am

In the timeframe of which you refer,Time magazine ran a cover, depicting a runaway glacier with a nail biting report on the coming ice age. I wish I had kept it to show to all my alarmist acquaintances. Oh how soon we forget. Now everywhere i turn a meteor or a sunburst is going to destroy earth or our infrastructure. Chicken Littles everyway and ne’er a bite to eat. Time to fry them up in a pan.

Art
Reply to  Drake
June 25, 2022 11:34 pm

Yeah, my first thought too – if they just present the facts they’ll be presenting the skeptic side!

Cool Tolerance
Reply to  Drake
June 26, 2022 1:45 pm

Same here re Time Magazine. In the mid-1970s, I canceled my subscription. I was very young back then, a fun girl with brains to match, and I questioned much of their stories. Same with my New York Times subscription.

Opus
June 24, 2022 10:11 am

“Bad Storms Caused by Weather”
“Wildfires Caused by Weather”
When I see headlines like that, I think climate change or global warming anyway. She’s late to the party.

Pop Piasa
Reply to  Opus
June 24, 2022 11:48 am

Don’t sweat it, it’s just Orwellian newspeak in action.

Reply to  Opus
June 25, 2022 3:17 am

But the problem is, they are not “caused” by weather!

Bad storms ARE weather. Wildfires ARE bad forest management.

Tom
Reply to  Opus
June 25, 2022 6:19 am

The problem is that the words “climate Change” and “Global Warming” as used in the media don’t mean ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’ as it has historically been. they mean “Catastrophic Anthroponotic Global Warming”. Their use in the media triggers knowledgeable ‘skeptics’ because they are intended to hide the agenda of an activist press.

Ron Long
June 24, 2022 10:18 am

Liberal Professor Renita Coleman’s first essay was probably “how to deceive idiots for fun and profit”, aiming to fool those idiot scientists. How about simply presenting facts, complex as they may be, and let the audience sort it out as best they can.

Pop Piasa
Reply to  Ron Long
June 24, 2022 11:51 am

We’re different here at WUWT because we want to think for ourselves. Most of the masses want to be spoon-fed and have somebody else do the thinking for them. That’s why we’re in the mess we’re in globally.

Bryan A
Reply to  Ron Long
June 24, 2022 12:40 pm

More likely…How to deceive people for fun and prophet

Pop Piasa
Reply to  Bryan A
June 24, 2022 1:00 pm

I think Al Gore published that already…

H.R.
Reply to  Pop Piasa
June 25, 2022 3:43 am

Algore is the Profit of Doom.

SC Joyce
Reply to  Ron Long
June 24, 2022 1:47 pm

“How about simply presenting facts…” Because she wouldn’t know a fact if it bit her in the butt.

AGW is Not Science
Reply to  SC Joyce
June 24, 2022 3:01 pm

Exactly. They continually mistake “hypothetical bullshit” for facts, and have deluded themselves into believing their own hype.

Richard Page
June 24, 2022 10:28 am

Let me get this straight. Alarmists have changed news reports about weather to climate change or global warming in an attempt to push their ideological narrative down the throats of the gullible and easily led for decades. Now they needed a frickin’ study to be done, at some expense no doubt, to tell them that they need to change those words back again to weather if they want people to believe them? Are these idiots really that blinkered and stupid that they need to be led by the nose and spoonfed what to write? Actually, given the behaviour of the various alarmists that turn up on WUWT, I don’t need to answer that question.

mark from the midwest
Reply to  Richard Page
June 24, 2022 11:53 am

Yes, they are that blinkered and stupid. In case you haven’t noticed progressives like to have things both, (or multiple), ways, and have great difficulty accepting the contradictions in their own statements.

Reply to  mark from the midwest
June 24, 2022 12:05 pm

Orwell called it double think.

Reply to  Richard Page
June 24, 2022 9:45 pm

Now we have:
Bad weather is climate change
Good weather is just weather
Anything bad in the world somehow
links to climate change,
from cancer to warts.
It took the leftists decades to learn that !

TBeholder
Reply to  Richard Greene
June 25, 2022 7:00 am

Or: Weather is not climate! Unless it’s a bad weather.

kwinterkorn
Reply to  Richard Page
June 25, 2022 5:05 am

Academics only have words to work with. They don’t actually do anything real. So they like to believe that just changing words is powerful.

The only thing that Mao did in China that I thought made some sense is he forced academics to go out and work on the farms.

Coeur de Lion
June 24, 2022 10:30 am

People who say’carbon’. (nasty black stuff) instead of ‘carbon dioxide’. (beneficial trace gas) are lazy, or have an agenda, or are lying.

Tom Halla
Reply to  Coeur de Lion
June 24, 2022 10:47 am

Or they are just ignorant enough to not have a good idea of the subject. I knew one woman, who did not follow the subject except casually, who sincerely thought the greens were referring to soot.

decnine
Reply to  Coeur de Lion
June 24, 2022 12:14 pm

I will gladly take away carbon from wealthy folk at no charge – provided it’s in the form of diamond.

Pop Piasa
Reply to  decnine
June 24, 2022 12:55 pm

You’d have to apply extreme pressure to their carbon footprint, but it just might work!

Paul Hurley (aka PaulH)
Reply to  Pop Piasa
June 24, 2022 1:19 pm

No pressure, no diamonds! 😁

Reply to  decnine
June 24, 2022 5:37 pm

It has been shown that male carbon subjected to extreme female heat and pressure can produce a diamond. Ask any married man.

Yooper
Reply to  stinkerp
June 25, 2022 7:02 am

That is too good, you get today’s WUWT Truth Award.

Elliot Webber
Reply to  Coeur de Lion
June 24, 2022 12:31 pm

Or plain stupid. A “highly educated” young woman I know sincerely and passionately believes ICE vehicles emit pure carbon dioxide. Which is stupid enough, but she doubled down with further equating carbon dioxide with carbon monoxide. She was in tears of frustration defending her ignorant beliefs.

Mr.
Reply to  Coeur de Lion
June 24, 2022 12:44 pm

Yes, just like using “ocean ACIDIFICATION” instead of saying “reduction in alkalinity”

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Mr.
June 24, 2022 1:03 pm

Yes, just like using “ocean ACIDIFICATION” instead of saying “almost immeasurable reduction in alkalinity””

Fixed!

Reply to  Jeff Alberts
June 24, 2022 1:50 pm

Almost? You should Read what they did. Hint, they didn’t average millions of pH meter readings.

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Robert B
June 24, 2022 4:38 pm

I don’t think it would have been useful if they did. Global average ocean PH is about as useful as global average temp.

Reply to  Jeff Alberts
June 24, 2022 8:59 pm

The probes are not good enough to measure pH changes of sea water that small. They modelled from temperature and salinity readings.

AGW is Not Science
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
June 24, 2022 3:05 pm

Or ” minuscule reduction in pH.”

Reply to  AGW is Not Science
June 25, 2022 3:29 am

Or, if you talk about the real stuff instead of the logarithm of its concentration, an even more minuscule reduction of acidity (or hydrogen ion concentration).

Reply to  Jeff Alberts
June 24, 2022 10:31 pm

Not to mention that sea water is essentially an infinitely buffered alkaline solution anyway.

Reply to  Doonman
June 25, 2022 3:31 am

“Buffer” is a very non-green concept, very difficult to understand by alarmists.

Reply to  Joao Martins
June 25, 2022 7:31 am

The funny think is that a buffer which restores a system to stasis is the ultimate green concept.

Reply to  Philip Mulholland
June 26, 2022 8:38 pm

An ultimate green concept is complete fiction. All of them ‘know’ what the answer should be.
Along with their infinite immutable interchangeable responses using circular logic towards anyone who disagrees.

Reply to  Joao Martins
June 26, 2022 8:34 pm

When you describe one portion of that buffer is tens of thousands of cubic miles of limestone deposits, their eyes glaze over. That mankind is raping Earth’s natural wonders.

Except, for alarmist truly gullibles, they start whining about how Earth’s limestone quarries are running out of stone…

After all, many of them learned that their kitchen and bathroom counters cost more that $100 per square foot. That a color/pattern they especially liked was over $500 a square foot.

‘That mankind is raping Earth’s natural wonders’, that is exactly the type of pseudo aphorism that zealous writers use to infer guilt to humans.

Newminster
Reply to  Mr.
June 25, 2022 4:58 am

That one, as a layman, I can just about forgive. On a seamless scale of 1-14, in non-scientific parlance what is less alkaline is more acidic.
The problem arises when the climate crooks abuse language to plant incorrect ideas into ignorant people’s heads. I’m sure there is a circle of hell reserved for them!

Reply to  Coeur de Lion
June 24, 2022 9:52 pm

I like it when people say “carbon” or anything that identifies them as a climate alarmist. Because then I make up a climate factoid on the spot, and tell them something like:
“Scientists say runaway global warming
will begin in 17.4 years”. And they believe it.
I’ve been doing this for over a decade,
Cheap entertainment.
If they are from Florida:
“Scientists say Miami will be underwater
from sea level rise by 2051.”
Got to start with “Scientists say”.

Reply to  Coeur de Lion
June 25, 2022 3:23 am

’carbon’. (nasty black stuff)

Well, a form of carbon is a girl’s best friend…

MarkW2
June 24, 2022 10:32 am

How do academics get money to do this nonsense? As soon as anyone uses research based on what people “say they will do”, you know it’s rubbish.

There’s very little relationship between how people say they’ll behave and how they actually do.

markl
June 24, 2022 10:35 am

Add “weather” to the list of AGW pseudonyms? Sure, why not, everything else hasn’t received the attention they demand and everyone talks about weather. Maybe this time it will catch on but wouldn’t that defeat their narrative? Stay tuned for a new definition of ‘weather’.

Reply to  markl
June 24, 2022 10:55 am

Weather is non-binary. We do not ask if weather was randomly assigned as hot or cold when it took place. It is our current perception of past weather that matters and only climaphobes oppose or question this approach.

Weather is warming. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

Mason
Reply to  markl
June 24, 2022 2:20 pm

Interesting. I remember when the Global Warming crowd changed their name to Climate Change. At my next speech in NYC, I stated that Climate Change was simply a new word for Wealth Redistribution. Nobody could dispute climate change as it has always happened, so they did not have to prove anything and it could not be changed. Now they have sunk to inflaming the weather. Here we go again…..

June 24, 2022 10:35 am

And here, all along, I was taught that “weather” was a local phenomena whereas “global warming” was, well, global.

I guess it’s back to the drawing boards.

Pop Piasa
Reply to  Gordon A. Dressler
June 24, 2022 12:19 pm

Gordon, if weather is happening locally over the entire planet, scientologists can homogenize it into “global” weather using folks with math PhDs. However, one must take care to prioritize weather over populated areas when weighting one’s calculations on a global scale. If not done properly, the global weather will look quite uninteresting. 😉

hiskorr
Reply to  Pop Piasa
June 24, 2022 1:33 pm

“Global weather” is like “average phone number”; you can do the math, but the results are not very useful.

Pop Piasa
Reply to  hiskorr
June 24, 2022 6:05 pm

That’s a keeper, hiskorr! Thanks!

Trying to Play Nice
Reply to  hiskorr
June 27, 2022 3:39 pm

The “average person” has one testicle and one ovary. I think that describe Griff.

JR Port
June 24, 2022 10:36 am

Obviously, because “climate change” has been ongoing for billions of years, often much more dramatically than the last 150 years of hugely beneficial “global warming” from the coldest and deadliest point of the Holocene.

“This new “adaptive frame” focuses on adapting to climate change impacts without cueing deeply held beliefs by discussing causes.”

Really, adaptation to record food production, longevity and quality of life and record low levels of poverty? The only threats to these fossil fuel powered gains are these leftist zealots and their nonsensical assault on foundation of all life- the marvelous carbon molecule.

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  JR Port
June 24, 2022 1:10 pm

Well then. If they’re going to talk about adapting, then there’s no need for all the “net zero” garbage, or “renewables”, or any of that useless crap. Adaptation is what we do best.

Now, what exactly do we need to adapt to? A couple millimeters per year sea level rise? Easy.

fretslider
June 24, 2022 10:39 am

“If newsrooms want climate science sceptics to read and share news about climate change”

They understand nothing

Reply to  fretslider
June 24, 2022 11:31 am

It might help if those “news” outlets allowed comments AND uncensored comments…

Insufficiently Sensitive
June 24, 2022 10:40 am

Coleman is the lead author of a new paper that investigates strategies to help journalists reach people who distrust science. 

‘Distrust science’??? It’s the mob consensus of journalists that we distrust.

Instead of the skepticism which all scientists direct against unproven new hypotheses (that’s called the scientific method), she apparently hopes for unanimous consent to all the unproven new ‘news’ stories which authoritatively assure us that the world will shortly end, and humanity with it, unless we meekly comply with the latest activist diktats to stop driving cars and eating meat and relying on electricity generated by fossil fuels.

Tom Halla
June 24, 2022 10:44 am

The journalism professor has no idea of what science is. Not agreeing with Richard Feynman’s dictum “science is the belief in the ignorance of experts” would be the mark of a demagogue or other preacher.
People disagree with Fauci or Mann not out of mistrust of science, but the track record of those individuals.

Reply to  Tom Halla
June 24, 2022 10:55 am

Beat me too it. It is not the science I distrust, it is the clueless “journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin.”

Pop Piasa
Reply to  BobM
June 24, 2022 12:02 pm

For any journalist who will lower himself to it, climate doom is the “road to riches”, but only if you present a new angle on it. This explains the extremes to which these folks go regularly now.

June 24, 2022 10:49 am

A study from Reuters, which, of course, has pledged to perpetuate climageddon propaganda.

https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2022

An interesting, and very long, read. The relevant part: people trust the media less and less these days. And in the US, a world-wide low of 26% trust the media. The more balkanized the media in a country, the lower the level of trust.

For the most part, this is a reasonably written piece. But when it comes to climate, the authors wear their religion with pride. An irony in this case. If I were to question the existence of a god, would I go to a church to ask if one existed?

The media has positioned itself in the same place – if one is questioning whether CO2 emissions and cow burps will cause the destruction of the Earth, how can one look to mainstream media to ask those questions? They’re busy hooking up with the Zuckerbergs and Bezoses out there to deny publication of any questioning material.

Obviously, this study is part of the clown show. Might as well write in the church circular whether more people will read about Christianity if Jesus is referred to by his middle name only (kinda like Truman in that it’s just a letter rather than a name).

MarkW
Reply to  Joe Gordon
June 24, 2022 11:35 am

One of the talking heads over at CNN declared over this weekend that the time has come for the media to stop treating Republicans and Democrats evenly. According to him they need to start openly taking the side of Democrats in order to save democracy.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  MarkW
June 24, 2022 11:54 am

The CNN talking head is completely clueless. Republicans and Democrats have never been treated equally by the Media.

Not since the Vietnam war, anyway. After that, it was all leftwing ideology, all the time from the Media. Anyone who thinks differently was living on a different planet.

Richard Page
Reply to  Tom Abbott
June 24, 2022 12:06 pm

When even the Simpsons treat Republicans and Democrats differently you know the bias has become deeply entrenched.

Reply to  Tom Abbott
June 24, 2022 12:38 pm

The narrative of All the President’s Men has always been Woodward and Bernstein bravely following leads, determined to satisfy Ben Bradlee’s stringent requirements so that they’d get a great story.

As these reporters continually befoul themselves in public these days, I’m certain a more accurate narrative would be that Woodward and Bernstein would happily have printed any anonymous Twitter post as fact, but those nasty editors wouldn’t let them.

Somehow, against all odds, they stumbled upon a real story in the Watergate break-in. If not for the heroic efforts of the real journalist in the editor’s office, it would have been lost in the sea of Twitter rants and raves against Republicans they otherwise would have enjoyed printing on a daily basis.

We all knew Walter Cronkite was a lefty, but we also knew he was a serious journalist who understood that his credibility was more important than taking a political shot. Dan Rather did not understand this, and his place in the clown hall of fame is secure.

Vietnam was bad enough to shape politics for a generation. After the Bay of Pigs disaster from Kennedy and Johnson’s ugly racism, it’s a miracle the Democratic Party still exists. But somehow the media these days makes it seem like the Republicans were to blame for all of that, when in fact, Kennedy and Johnson helped usher in what would have been 24 uninterrupted years of Republicans in the Oval Office if not for Nixon’s dishonesty.

czechlist
Reply to  Joe Gordon
June 24, 2022 2:04 pm

If I am not mistaken Ben Bradley said he didnt believe much of Woody”s and Bernie’s reporting and most of what people believe today was made up for the book and movie.

MarkW
Reply to  Joe Gordon
June 24, 2022 6:17 pm

There was plenty of evidence of much worse corruption during the Johnson administration. The media had no interest in pursuing those stories.

Reply to  MarkW
June 24, 2022 1:11 pm

Start?

MarkW
Reply to  Retired_Engineer_Jim
June 24, 2022 6:20 pm

They actually believe that up till now, they have been bending over backwards to give fair coverage to Republicans.

Patrick B
June 24, 2022 10:55 am

Or maybe journalism professors and journalism majors should be required to take, and pass, a hard science course with lab and a statistics course.

H. D. Hoese
Reply to  Patrick B
June 24, 2022 12:28 pm

Quite true, I unsuccessfully fought against non-major courses, some majors with single course science requirements were most interested in biology, common to put freshman biology off until senior year. When I was first told by a sharp senior education major that it was the first substantial course encountered I got suspicious. Some instructors were part of the problem teaching all freshman/sophomores like they were headed to medical, graduate school or even higher. Dumbed down science courses resulted, not sure about the quantity, somebody in sociology may have or should have checked. I’m not talking about relevance which is a separate applied subject, can’t apply something you can’t understand. Too many examples around.

I noticed that among the author’s papers lots of uses of the words moral, ethical, and such. Of course not fair to judge without more analysis; nevertheless, I found this one–The Ethical Context for Public Journalism: As an Ethical Foundation for Public Journalism, Communitarian Philosophy Provides Principles for Practitioners to Apply to Real-World Problems —  https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0196859900024001004
“Public journalism was not viable until now because it lacked a strong, underlying ethical system that communitarianism has provided.” Never heard of “communitarianism ” but it’s in my dictionary just under communism. Author seems like just another advocacy junkie, wonder if she learned about that in a science class?

Reply to  Patrick B
June 24, 2022 1:07 pm

Journalists don’t have the IQ to do a hard Science or Engineering course.

Reply to  Graemethecat
June 24, 2022 10:52 pm

My father was a journalist and taught journalism in a state college. On the first day of classes each year, he would write “The Jouralist’s Equation” in big letters on the blackboard using nonsense summation and integral symbols surrounding third degree polynomials. He would point to it and mention the meaning would become clear during the study course of his class. He said it weeded out the dropouts quickly and efficiently.

Reply to  Patrick B
June 24, 2022 1:14 pm

How about all journalists, and anyone aspiring to public office, elective or appointed?

June 24, 2022 11:05 am

Ms Coleman is a demagogue, see previous story

June 24, 2022 11:08 am

That would reduce the profession by about 90%. I used to work for a newspaper, often there late at night when the copy editors would proof-read and sometimes lay out pages, cutting wire stories to fit.

One guy kept a calculator by his desk. The most complex mathematics he was asked to use consisted of adding single-digit numbers. Because, in your mind, sometimes 2+2 = 5, or 4, or even 3. It is not for you to know.

I asked him why he needed a calculator. He was a good-natured guy and I wasn’t trying to be a jerk about it. His answer was that he had a general idea, but needed to make sure.

I would sometimes ask if I could add a chart or something graphic in a box to accompany a story. The response from editors was that charts were forbidden because there wasn’t anyone around who could check the math.

Saying “learn to code” to a journalist is considered violence in the Twitterverse. Why? Because learning to code would be about as likely for most journalists as learning to fly by flapping our arms would be to the rest of us. It’s simply not what people who can add 2 and 2 choose as a profession.

Barry
Reply to  Joe Gordon
June 24, 2022 4:22 pm

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those who can count and those that can’t!

Bob
June 24, 2022 11:14 am

Professor Coleman should be fired on the spot. Journalists are to provide their readers/listeners with facts and information, in other words to inform. Their job isn’t to convince others to think the way they think. That is propaganda not journalism. If she was to truly do her job she would search out what both sides of an issue have to say and report to her readers what each side said then the reader/listener can make up their own mind. She is a disgrace.

June 24, 2022 11:18 am

Terms used(abused) as part of the marketing scheme to inspire widespread anti science fear in order to eliminate fossil fuels:

Global Warming = Failed
Climate Change = Failed
Climate Disruption = Failed
Climate Emergency = Failed
Climate Weirding = Failed
Environmental Collapse = Failed
Environmental Destruction = Failed
Climate Crisis = Failed

Extreme Weather = They’re working on that one

Other terms used:

Authentic Science = Denier Term
Empirical Data/Evidence/Observations = Denier Terms

Lance Flake
Reply to  Mike Maguire
June 24, 2022 11:25 am

You can add “Study = Wild Ass Guess which will prove Failed”

Reply to  Mike Maguire
June 24, 2022 11:34 am

Yep. “Extreme weather” is a keyword for fake news, based on fake science, just as much as any of the rest.

Mike from Canmore
Reply to  Mike Maguire
June 24, 2022 11:48 am

Can we add ‘Atmospheric River’ and ‘Heat Dome’ to the list to limit usage?

AGW is Not Science
Reply to  Mike from Canmore
June 24, 2022 7:16 pm

Don’t forget “superstorm” (as in, it wasn’t even a tropical storm when it came ashore, so we needed something ‘scary sounding).

Reply to  Mike from Canmore
June 25, 2022 8:35 am

Polar vortex
Naming winter storms

Bryan A
Reply to  Mike Maguire
June 24, 2022 12:42 pm

There you go again, being an Empircalist

gbaikie
June 24, 2022 11:25 am

Global warming is not weather.
Global warming is about the ocean.

Our ocean has 1000 times more heat than our atmosphere.
We are in an Ice Age or ice house global climate because we have a cold ocean.
It is doing to do with a changing sun.
It has nothing to do with trace gases.
It is connected to changes in Earth orbit or what is called the Milankovitch cycles or roughly changes in Earth’s tilt.

The change in Earth’s tilt during year causes season outside the tropics of winter and summer which cause cold conditions and warm conditions and angle of tilt changes over thousands years. And has repeating cycle. And winter and summer are large changes in regional climates.

gbaikie
Reply to  gbaikie
June 24, 2022 12:01 pm

“It is doing to do with a changing sun”. should be:
It has nothing to do with a changing sun.

Our changing sun [which changes a lot] does affect weather.
And if changing sun effect ocean is sense of warming our cold ocean
with it’s average temperature of about 3.5 C, then the sun affects global climate.
But unlikely to be a large effect upon it, or not significant. And could not be significant
over short periods of less than 100 years.
Or ice house climate does not alter even from large events, such as super volcano or 1 km diameter impactor, though such things can have large effect upon the weather. Or “global weather”
Or our ice house global climate has been on going for 33.9 million years, and we had lots of super volcanos and 1 km impactors occurring on Earth.
We have patterms of interglacial and glaciation periods. Interglacial time periods called global warming.
And what causes global warming is the ocean warming.
All past interglacial period had a warmer ocean during their peak warmer period.
During the peak warm period of Eemian the ocean was 4 C or warmer.And if our ocean become 4 C rather than about 3.5 C, we would have “global warming”.
What is being called global warming is about 1/10th of this global warming or + .05 rather
than .5 C.
And it seems to me, what called global warming is mostly a recovery from the Little Ice Age which was small amount of cooling [lower if ocean temperature] as comparing to long time Earth ocean cools from it’s peak warm period of a interglacial period where ocean is 4 C or warmer.
Or we have been cooling for about 5000 years, with up and down global air temperature but the 5000 year trend is cooling ocean. Or over hundreds of years the ocean warms and cools
by small amount as compared 5000 years trend of ocean cooling.
There is no indication that we will become as warm as we were on Holocene period when Sahara desert was mostly grassland, with forest and rivers. Or ie:
“The greening of the Sahara, associated with the African Humid Period (AHP) between ca. 14,500 and 5,000 y ago, is arguably the largest climate-induced environmental change in the Holocene”
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2024898118

June 24, 2022 11:27 am

If newsrooms want climate science sceptics to read and share news about climate change, researcher Renita Coleman recommends they do this: Leave the terms ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’ out of their coverage.

Let’s help them out. “Weather” it self won’t work. No implication of what works such as fossil fuels, nuclear or anything else Man does is causing it.
What other terms that they haven’t already tried in their quest to blame and have an excuse to Control are there?

Geo-gender engineering?
Easy-Bake Ovening?
Weather-Withering of The Planet?

MarkW
June 24, 2022 11:28 am

In other words, in order to communicate better, they need to lie more.

Pop Piasa
Reply to  MarkW
June 24, 2022 6:21 pm

Well, we have been pointing out that they conflate weather and climate, Mark. Maybe we should have expected that they would try to make them synonymous, in order to nullify our observations.

Tom Abbott
June 24, 2022 11:46 am

From the article: “Coleman is the lead author of a new paper that investigates strategies to help journalists reach people who distrust science. She and her colleagues conducted an experiment that indicates small changes in how journalists cover climate change have the potential to elicit substantial changes in the way sceptics engage with the news.”

I see. This is just more tuning of the climate change propaganda message. They are looking for a more refined method of brainwashing people. This is what propagandists do.

I would suggest they try providing evidence of human-caused climate change to attract and keep the attention of skeptics, but there’s no evidence for them to offer on that count so that method is out. They have to resort to nuanced brainwashing.

Mike Smith
June 24, 2022 11:51 am

One would think that a Professor could find something more interesting or substantive to research. But I suppose this is indicative of the state of things in academia (and journalism) today.

n.n
June 24, 2022 11:57 am

Impulse functions.

Call me a skeptic
Reply to  n.n
June 24, 2022 12:15 pm

The whole point of articles promoting climate change is to promote the fear of climate change. Leaving out the phrase climate change or climate emergency defeats the fraudsters ultimate goal…to convert the masses to their way of thinking. So by all means, keep it up and thanks for the assistance.

June 24, 2022 12:46 pm

Renita Coleman should know from her language studies that the words climate and weather are not synonyms. If they have their own concentric circle, the two circles have only a partial overlap but their meaning lies in that part where they do not overlap. Sorry I do not yet have the skill in portraying this visually. Language is actually important when discussing climate, weather, change and warming because there is much confusion and dissimulation.

 

Wade
June 24, 2022 12:46 pm

Alarmists try everything to get people who don’t accept their view to change their mind — except for the one thing that will actually work. We will change our mind when they present verifiable evidence that can survive all attacks against it. Alarmists won’t do that because their belief is weaker than wet toilet paper. Their belief couldn’t survive even the most basic factual assault; our beliefs can survive the most vicious propaganda attacks.

Jeff Alberts
June 24, 2022 1:00 pm

Here’s a radical thought – perhaps journalists could ease back on the trigger words and other attempts to manipulate the emotions of their audience, and try just presenting the facts.”

The problem with that is, no one knows the facts. We’re all guessing.

Reply to  Jeff Alberts
June 24, 2022 4:38 pm

Not true, we know lots of facts, but they don’t support alarmism, therefor they go after the emotions

Citizen Smith
June 24, 2022 1:04 pm

I had a skeptical horse when I was a kid. At first, when I wanted to ride, I used to chase him around the corral with a rope. It didn’t work very well. Then I learned to hold the halter and lead behind my back with one hand and offer a treat with the other. As the horse’s attention became focused on the treat, I could slip the lead around his neck then gentle the halter on. Total control. Much better.

So at least according to the study, climate skeptics are like horses.

June 24, 2022 1:30 pm

Reaching Science Skeptics: How Adaptive Framing of Climate Change Leads to Positive Responses Via Persuasion Knowledge and Perceived Behavioral Control”

Science is based on skepticism.
So what’s a “science skeptic” ?

BTW, what a monty-pythoninan, meaningless word salad !

AGW is Not Science
Reply to  Petit_Barde
June 24, 2022 7:21 pm

“Science skeptic” = anyone skeptical of their propaganda.

Stevek
June 24, 2022 1:50 pm

Or instead of trying to trick readers they could instead tell the other sides views. I might actually read some of their articles if they did that.

rah
June 24, 2022 1:55 pm

They seem to spend as much time and resources on trying to figure out how best to present the lies as they do in fabricating the lies.

June 24, 2022 1:56 pm

I think that she refers to the cynical rather than the sceptical. The former goes on gut feeling.

Pop Piasa
Reply to  Robert B
June 24, 2022 6:28 pm

What if your gut feeling also is backed by unpopular data?

Reply to  Pop Piasa
June 24, 2022 9:02 pm

Then you are sceptical and better science is required to change your mind.

June 24, 2022 2:19 pm

Lefties always think everyone is as shallow and ignorant as they are.

June 24, 2022 3:00 pm

Is this being portrayed as attempts to better engage sceptics when it is merely another step for the alarmists to extract themselves from the very specific corners they had painted themselves into with the terms CAGW, then global warming which morphed into climate change when it has always been about the natural weather cycles and change over time.

Olen
June 24, 2022 3:12 pm

Regardless of the intent calling it weather is a step in the right direction. Also giving credit to the Sun for it’s impact on the Earth and life would be refreshing.

Tom.1
June 24, 2022 4:19 pm

Better watch out, the next thing you know, they’ll be disguising climate change stories as porn.

June 24, 2022 4:35 pm

They could take a lesson from old Yasir Arafat, the speeches in Arabic and English were always completely different

“Death to the Jews” becomes “can’t we just talk”.

I guess it would never occur to a scientologist to just leave the BS at the door

Here in canada on the anniversary of the heat dome we get minute by minute stories on the “over 600 people who died in BC”.
Of course when you dig into it you find they were counting deaths out to mid august as part of that, 6 weeks after it passed.
Because climate can do you in even weeks later.

All BS all the time

goldminor
Reply to  Pat from kerbob
June 24, 2022 7:48 pm

That is similar to the Jan 6th crowd who claim that several cops died because of the Jan 6th riot. They say that it led to several suicides. Then if you look up suicides for police officers for 2021 you find that 160 cops committed suicide in that year. I am surprised that the crazies don’r claim that 160 cops died because of Jan 6th as it is unfortunately an every other day occurrence.

Med Bennett
June 24, 2022 5:10 pm

My suggestion is to replace the phrase “climate change” with “the wrath of God” – it works pretty well too.

John Bell
June 24, 2022 5:44 pm

Should we all expect Renita Coleman to have solar panels on her roof? I bet she does not.

Philip
June 24, 2022 6:16 pm

Further massaging of the corrupted science of “the message”.

June 24, 2022 7:10 pm

Referring to realists as science skeptics is a good measure of the fantasy world these fools are living in. Skepticism is science, and blind belief in unproven theories and unvalidated models is the definition of gullibility.

Reply to  Andy Pattullo
June 25, 2022 9:30 am

Blind belief in untestable incomplete theories is not science. It should be called climate social science.

Rod Evans
June 25, 2022 12:00 am

The other day, I was having one of those Castella moments (metaphorically speaking)
I thought back to the days of my childhood. The news at the time was full of the usual Cold War anxiety, the actual Vietnam war lunacy and of course the imminent extinction of some iconic animal. The whales were always about to disappear, but were saved in the nick of time by fossil fuels replacing whale oil. The polar bear was not long for this world either, but was saved when people stopped shooting them for their warm coats. Seals were similarly given an extension when we stopped clubbing them to death. For some reason, the Polar Bears also benefited when we stopped clubbing seal pups. The food supplies we left in the ocean worked so well there are now too many Bears.
About the same time, a movement of concern was being advanced regarding run away population increase. The world population moved from 2.5 billion back in the 1950s to today’s 8 billion, without too much trouble. Apparently thanks in the main to the endless supply of reliable energy sources we once had and were pleased we could use..
The world population crisis has come and is about to disappear, quickly as the world population crashes over the next two generations of childless humans.
The need for a real crisis remained and was moved forward by the concept of ‘man made climate impact’. The idea being, humans have always done bad things, so we must not expect anything provided by human ingenuity to be good.
The big play was and remains the destruction of capitalism.
By removing capitalism the theory tells us, everyone lives happily ever after….well actually for about 30 years on average, but hey, that’s plenty of time to remember how awful living to around 80 would be.
Anyway, I am just running my rainbow flag up the pole and getting ready for some bashing of pots and pans, I am sure that will change everything for the better. It worked so well the last time, now we have doubled energy prices we can look forward to winter with newly endorsed anxiety….

Newminster
June 25, 2022 4:42 am

Perhaps if the media really want to “reach people who distrust science” they should be aiming their articles at the climate activists whose understanding of basic physics is minimal to say the least and ability to observe anything scientific stops short of their own reflection in their computer screen.
As for any comprehension of history or how to use statistics most climatologists are a lost cause.

June 25, 2022 6:18 am

This study extends framing theory

This isn’t a “Science” paper.

It’s a “Psychology” paper.

a new type of frame to be used with issues where people dispute scientific claims.

Psychologists have no idea whatsoever how to distinguish between “scientific” and “non-scientific” claims.

They need CNN (and MSNBC, and the NYT, and WaPo, and …) to do that task for them.

An experiment shows this frame works by reducing persuasion knowledge and increasing perceived behavioral control, resulting in science skeptics being significantly more likely to intend to take action, engage with the news, and agree with the story’s perspective.

NB : The reason that psychology papers only ever talk about “an” experiment is that those particular “(soft-science) experiments” are non-reproducible.

The paper isn’t about “(climate) science”.

It’s about improving the effectiveness of propaganda techniques (AKA “framing theories”).

TBeholder
June 25, 2022 6:49 am

Likewise, “snake oil” should be replaced with “natural products of reptilian origin⋄” (under which we of course mean “snake oil”).
Huh. How much do you want to be “engaged” by the preachers of quackery?

Editor
June 25, 2022 6:54 am

On the one hand, the story is correct. Many ‘journalists’ in the Main Stream Media take their walking orders from Editors or propaganda groups like Covering Climate Now and try to make every weather story into an alarming climate story — in fact, CCNow insists that every story be about the climate regardless of topic.

So when educated readers see the words “climate change” inappropriately applied to a weather story, or a financial story, or a political story or a health story they know in an instant that the journalist is not doing his/her/its job but instead is writing a propaganda story which can and should be ignored.

When a journalist can cover a weather story without falsely making it into a climate story, then there is a chance the story is at least as true as anything else in the news.

June 25, 2022 8:42 am

“Journalism research” is an oxymoron.

June 25, 2022 9:13 am

Coleman … lead author of a new paper .. investigates strategies to help journalists reach people who distrust science.” i.e., feed them propaganda change the names. We all know climate change is not weather. What we need is REAL science. i.e., formulate falsifiable hypothesis, testing hypothesis, reach defensible conclusions. This is a recipe book for propaganda. 🐱‍🏍

DEllison
June 25, 2022 11:13 am

So, their thinking is that they will change reports that said, “Drought fueled Wild fires in California caused by Climate Change.” to “Drought fueled Wild fires in California caused by weather.” Doesnt sound fear porn enough to get people to read the stupid articles they are pushing out there.

Pushing propaganda on the morons is one thing – trying to get those in the know to believe it is another …

Holger Lundstrom
June 25, 2022 12:59 pm

Finally, we’ve come full circle. They now admit that it’s just weather.

June 26, 2022 7:58 pm

In the experiment, after reading a news story that incorporated the three changes below, sceptics said they would likely seek out and share more news about climate change. They also said they would likely take steps to help mitigate its damage.

“take steps to help mitigate its damage.; aren’t normal responses.

That’s a typical response on a “choose one of the following” from a small list of confirmation bias questions.

It is also likely, the test subjects were paid and volunteer students. Asking whether a rational person is a sceptic, they’d naturally answer “yes”.

Identifying as a general sceptic indicates independence. Anything else suggests a closed mind.

John Endicott
June 27, 2022 3:26 am

It all ways comes back to a belief that it’s not their message that’s the problem but how they word it. If only they can word it right, those darn skeptics will buy into the snake oil they’re selling. Sorry to break it to Ms Coleman, but skeptics aren’t buying the snake oil no matter how you word it because they see thru the BS well enough to know it for the nonsense (and non-science) that it is