Economists and statisticians reject contrarian claims about the climate in a blind test

Together with colleagues Tim Ballard, Klaus Oberauer, and Rasmus Benestad, I published an article last week in Global Environmental Change. The basic thrust of the article is readily summarized:

  • We identified representative claims about climatological data made by people who reject the mainstream scientific consensus on climate change.
  • We exchanged the content of those claims, and the labels of the data they were about, into statements about fictitious economic or demographic trends and presented them to expert economists and statisticians to evaluate the accuracy of those claims.
  • In this blind test, the contrarian claims were found to be incompatible with the data and misleading.
  • By contrast, mainstream scientific interpretations of the same data were found to be accurate in the blind test.

In a nutshell, when the political and emotional attributes of climate change are stripped from the data, denialist rhetoric does not pass an expert test whereas the mainstream interpretation of the same data is judged to be accurate.

To illustrate the procedure, our experts would be presented with a claim such as that shown in the figure below:

This claim would be accompanied by a figure with the actual data, shown below:

Readers who are familiar with the climatological literature may recognize the data above as representing the mass balance of glaciers around the world. It is pretty obvious that glaciers worldwide are retreating although there are a few exceptions. It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that the experts judged the contrarian statements to be misleading and incompatible with the actual data, especially in comparison to the mainstream interpretations of the same data, which would of course state the obvious fact that most glaciers are shrinking (in this case, presented as “rural populations shrinking”).

We combined the expert judgments into a “correctness score” for each claim. The figure below compares the overall distribution of scores across all scenarios and participants, separately for the mainstream and denialist statements:

Any positive number indicates expert endorsement of a claim about the data and any negative number represents expert rejection. The data leave little room for ambiguity: the vast majority of judgments endorse mainstream statements and reject the denialist interpretations.

There are some interesting exceptions, which arise because the underlying physics is lost during the translation into economic terms. For instance,  cherry-picking of a very short trend that characterizes much contrarian discourse (“sea levels haven’t risen in 6 weeks!!!”) becomes less recognizable as being misleading when it is applied to the same data labeled as an economic indicator (e.g., balance of trade). When couched in economic terms, the scientifically appropriate emphasis of long-term trends becomes less imperative than with the original climatological context.

At one level, our results are entirely unsurprising: In light of the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, most dissenting opinions are merely political and rhetorical tools aimed at trying to forestall mitigative action. The efficacy of those talking points is measured in political not scientific terms, and no measurable positive scientific contribution has ever arisen out of denial. Indeed, the few peer-reviewed articles that are authored by contrarians are by and large flawed.

Our data do add some important novelty, however: Previous judgments about contrarian attempts to create a parallel interpretation of reality were mainly made by climate scientists, who could be perceived as biased in favor of the dominant view of their discipline. In our present study, in contrast, the same negative judgments were made by experts who were unaware of what data they were considering. This rules out the possibility that the experts participating in our study may have been driven by any extraneous considerations in their adjudication.

One strong implication of our study is that denialist claims do not deserve the same amount of attention as scientific statements. Giving them equal weight in media discourse does the public a disservice by denying it the right to be adequately informed about the risks it is facing. Media “balance”, in other words, can be a pernicious form of bias.

Consensus On Consensus

One of the things about the field of climate science that I find particularly striking is the way rigorous debate about so many diverse issues co-exists with a ubiquitous consensus about the fundamental facts that greenhouse gas emissions from our economic activities are warming the planet. Indeed, of all the silly things that have been said about the climate by political operatives and others who cannot accept the 150-year old physics of greenhouse warming for ideological reasons, perhaps the silliest is the claim that scientists do not agree about those fundamental physics.

Anyone who believes that has obviously never been to a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). I have attended multiple times, and the idea that there is disagreement about greenhouse warming among domain experts is just plainly and completely wrong. There is no kinder way of putting this: the consensus is not a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of fact. And the fact is that I have never heard anyone at an AGU meeting dispute that greenhouse gases are a major contributor to the observed global warming during the last 30-50 years. Nor are there any debates about greenhouse warming during those meetings—as is easily ascertained by perusing the conference program.

Given that recognition of the expert consensus is a gateway belief that determines the public’s attitudes toward climate policies, and given that informing people of the consensus demonstrably shifts their opinions, it is unsurprising that attempts continue to be made to deny the existence of this pervasive expert consensus.

Like other forms of disinformation, this denial of the expert consensus impinges on the public’s right to be adequately informed about the risks it is facing. It is therefore potentially ethically dubious. However, disinformation also provides an opportunity for agnotology—that is, learning from the analysis of mistakes and misrepresentations.

An article appeared today in Environmental Research Letters that takes on the disinformation about the scientific consensus. It is aptly entitled Consensus on Consensus and it is authored by a veritable who-is-who of research on the consensus (myself included).

The essence of the article is encapsulated in the figure below, which shows the expert consensus—measured as the percentage agreement on the fundamental premise that the planet is warming from greenhouse gas emissions—across a large number of studies published during the last decade (for the coding of the observations, refer to the original article).

It is clear that as expertise increases, so does the consensus. And the greater the precision of the data (represented by smaller uncertainty bounds), the higher the consensus.

And if you want to know more, here is a four-minute concise summary of the results of our study:

 

The Uncertainty Handbook: Download and Translations

UHB-EN-ThumbHave you ever struggled with the communication of climate change uncertainties? Are you frustrated by climate sceptics using uncertainty – inherent in any area of complex science – as a justification for delaying policy responses? Then the new ‘Uncertainty Handbook’ – a collaboration between the University of Bristol and Climate Outreach (former COIN) – is for you.

The Handbook distills the most important research findings and expert advice on communicating uncertainty into a few pages of practical, easy-to-apply techniques, providing scientists, policymakers and campaigners with the tools they need to communicate more effectively around climate change. Download the report here, and check out our 12 principles for more effectively communicating climate change uncertainty here.

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Continue reading The Uncertainty Handbook: Download and Translations

Most Christians are definitely not terrorists

Human cognition can be exquisitely attuned to our environment, but it can also be subject to numerous strong biases. To illustrate, consider the following logical puzzles:

Some Christians are terrorists. Therefore all Christians are terrorists.

Some Jews are terrorists. Therefore all Jews are terrorists.

Some Muslims are terrorists. Therefore all Muslims are terrorists.

The answer in all cases is a clear and unambiguous no—the inference is not warranted. Notwithstanding the existence of Timothy McVeigh, the Stern Gang, or Osama bin Laden, the inference that all members of their respective faiths are terrorists is entirely invalid.

Yet, depending on one’s background, worldview, and faith, it may be more or less tempting to endorse or reject one or the other of the above puzzles. There is much evidence that people’s reasoning—especially when it comes to accepting scientific findings—is affected by variables beyond logic, in particular worldview and other motivational variables.

The role of those variables was brought into sharp focus by the recent commentary in Nature, authored by me and Dorothy Bishop. Our commentary sought to stimulate discussion about the boundary conditions of transparency and openness. As committed supporters of openness and transparency, we were particularly concerned with how researchers might be protected from harassment that goes beyond legitimate scrutiny, and how such harassment might be differentiated from the legitimate scrutiny that transparency and openness demand.

We therefore stated:

“Orchestrated and well-funded harassment campaigns against researchers working in climate change and tobacco control are well documented. Some hard-line opponents to other research, such as that on nuclear fallout, vaccination, chronic fatigue syndrome or genetically modified organisms, although less resourced, have employed identical strategies.” [Emphasis added]

The public record, sadly, contains ample evidence that opposition to research in those areas goes beyond robust discussion or intense scrutiny, with death threats being received by researchers measuring the fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster and by medical researchers working in the area of chronic fatigue syndrome, to cite but two examples.

Bafflingly, this accurate statement has led to considerable invective and accusations on Twitter and on various blogs by critics of chronic-fatigue research. Those critics often appeared to be unencumbered by any acquaintance with what we wrote.

To understand why, let’s revisit the puzzles just discussed:

Some Christians are terrorists. Therefore all Christians are terrorists.

Some Jews are terrorists. Therefore all Jews are terrorists.

Some Muslims are terrorists. Therefore all Muslims are terrorists.

Some hard-line opponents of research on chronic fatigue syndrome overstep the bounds of legitimate discussion. Therefore all opponents of research on chronic fatigue syndrome overstep those bounds.

That last inference is as false as the preceding three.

Accusations that I have “slurred patients” akin to a “racist pig” and that I have compared critics of chronic fatigue research to climate deniers are therefore not only invalid—see here for my detailed thoughts on patients’ rights and how they can and should be protected—but counter-productive.

I have no involvement in research on chronic fatigue, nor do I have any research interest in it. However, I have ample experience in studying the symptoms of pseudoscience and recognizing when an agenda or motivated cognition overpowers reasoned argument.

On the basis of that expertise, it has become quite clear that some (note that crucial word again here: some) opponents of chronic-fatigue research are not engaging in reasoned discourse but are exhibiting all the hallmarks of pseudoscience. The evidence for that is on the public record, in broad daylight, and for all to see who care to look for it.

There are two conclusions that do not follow from this: First, it would be illogical to tar all opponents or critics of chronic-fatigue research with the brush of pseudoscience.

Second, it would be illogical to conclude that just because some opposition to chronic-fatigue research relies on pseudoscience and harassment, that research is thereby vindicated and must be beyond reproach. Perhaps there are problems with some research somewhere, notwithstanding how unreasonable some critics are.

However, given how quickly people can jump to conclusions when it serves their purposes, moderate critics of chronic-fatigue research—who exist as surely as there are people of faith who are not terrorists—ought to consider whether it might not be in their best interest to distance themselves from such rhetoric lest it impair their own credibility.

After all, no one benefits if people are jumping to unwarranted conclusions.

Transparency and Scrutiny vs. Harassment and Intimidation: The Triage

A commentary appeared today online in Nature, co-authored by me and Dorothy Bishop, which took up the issue of transparency in science, with a particular emphasis on the “dark” side of transparency and openness. The article is freely available, and in this post I condense our argument into a few words and then offer some additional issues that are likely to arise during discussion.

Both authors of the commentary are strongly committed to open science: Dorothy made some strong arguments in favor of sharing data here, and I am a co-author of a recent paper on openness published in Royal Society Open Science, which introduced the Peer Reviewers Openness initiative or PRO for short.

However, like many good things such as red wine or healthy dieting, openness and transparency, when taken to an extreme, may also have adverse consequences for the conduct of science. Much has been written—including by me—about the harassment of scientists in contested areas by interminable freedom-of-information (FOI) requests, requests for data when those data are already in the public domain, and so on. A collection of testimonials about such harassment, as well as the need to preserve transparency and openness, arose out of a meeting sponsored by the Royal Society that I organized in June last year: a common thread that emerged from that meeting and the testimonials is the need for a system of “triage” that differentiates legitimate scrutiny and healthy debate from problematic research practices or harassment campaigns that masquerade as scientific inquiry.  

Our commentary proposed a set of “red flags” that can be used to approach this triage. They are not definite criteria but we felt they constitute a worthwhile initial contribution to what will surely be an on-going discussion.

The basic principle underlying our commentary is one of symmetry: while scientists ought to disclose all relevant funding and their data, and while their science must be subject to scrutiny, the same rules ought to apply to critics. For example, if researchers are encouraged to preregister their research and their analysis plan, the same should apply to critics who seek to re-analyze data.  If scientists must disclose their conflicts of interest, why should requestors for data not do likewise?

I find the idea of symmetry self-evidently fair and reasonable. However, that does not mean that everybody will agree: after all, fairness and reason may motivate some critics of scientific work but clearly not all of them. Conversely, while many scientists may openly declare their conflicts of interest, not all of them do, and we may therefore encounter continued resistance to openness.

There are a few specific questions that we touched on in the commentary but did not have time or space to do full justice. I therefore provide some additional thoughts here.

Researchers’ control over their (behavioral or medical) data during reanalysis.

In our commentary we note that “Researchers also need control over how data is to be used if it goes beyond what participants agreed to (for example, analysis of ethnic, race or gender differences in data collected for different purposes).”

What does this mean and is it even enforceable? If I make available a multi-dimensional data set with many variables and someone else wants to do some post-hoc analysis of variables that I didn’t consider, should I, as a researcher, have any control over that?

This question may be best examined in a very concrete, if rather stark, hypothetical context: Suppose I have collected data on a specific cognitive task in an experiment that examined the efficacy of a new training regime. To control for potential covariates, the data set includes numerous demographic variables, including race, gender, political affiliation, and religious denomination. The data are convincingly anonymized and participants have given consent that their data will be made publicly available.

So far, so open and transparent.

Now suppose the Ku-Klux-Klan (which, alas, exists) and the Anti-Muslim-Bigotry League (which likely exists in some form if not by that name) demand access to the data for reanalysis along racial and religious lines.

Did my participants really give consent to have their data used in that manner? Would anyone from a minority group ever again give consent to participate in an ostensibly “harmless” experiment to discover better training techniques if those data can be exploited by a clever post-hoc fishing expedition to score a political point?

To my knowledge, this problem has been largely ignored in the open data debate and it urgently requires attention.

By the way, the problem would be manageable, and the original researcher’s control enforceable, if requestors have to preregister analyses in the same way that the original researchers hopefully did in the first place. (And yes, we should move towards a culture in which pre-registration becomes a strong normative expectation, if not a requirement, of research.)

Do the requestor’s motives matter?

This is another tricky and nuanced issue: if I have made available my data from a potentially controversial research project, does it matter if they are being re-analyzed by someone who is opposed to my results for political or ideological reasons?

At first glance, the answer should be a clear “no, motives should not matter.” If a re-analysis is really driven by ideological motives, then its flaws will be readily identifiable and can be corrected by the usual scholarly means (such as peer-reviewed publications).

There is, however, a problem: Many areas of science that are contentious involve a political component in which the public’s opinion matters a great deal. For example, it matters whether the public supports labeling of genetically-modified (GM) foods, it matters whether the public supports non-smoking policies in public places, and so on. Now, as a rule of thumb, it is fair to assume that the public will not demand political action on any such problem while they perceive there to be scientific disagreement. After all, the tobacco industry famously stated that “doubt is our product” because they knew that the appearance of a scientific disagreement—even where there was none—would forestall tobacco control.

This creates a dilemma for open data that, to my knowledge, has not been satisfactorily resolved: In contested arenas, the motives underlying a request for data do matter because an illegitimate re-analysis can have far-reaching flow-on consequences. Is it really ethical to let the tobacco industry cherry-pick public-health data to death, thereby delaying tobacco control legislation at a huge cost of human lives and health? Not surprisingly, public-health researchers are therefore very concerned about who has access to raw data.

There is no easy resolution to this issue but it is worthy of further discussion and examination.

Do the requestor’s abilities matter?

Setting aside motivation, does it matter who requests data? Should there be a competence criterion? Or are all requestors equal under the transparency umbrella?

At first glance, the answer should again be a clear “ability or competence should not matter,” for the reasons already noted.

There is, however, a problem: what if the data contain information that challenges meaningful anonymization? Suppose the research involves some medical condition that has a social stigma attached to it, and as part of the research many medically-relevant items of information are collected (e.g., the name or post code of the participant’s physician, the participant’s income and profession, and so on).

It is a challenge to anonymize data at that level of granularity—especially if the sample is small or limited to a small geographic area—although various solutions exist, for example through “delinking” of identifying information from research-relevant information. (Even de-linking is not an entirely trivial matter because unless the linking key has been destroyed or is held by another institution, data are not considered anonymized under the U.K. data protection act.)

Supposing the challenges to anonymization have been met, for example by irreversible delinking, then sensitivity of data alone need not—indeed should not—preclude sharing of the data with other researchers working in an institutional framework in which ethical strictures apply and non-disclosure agreements are meaningful and enforceable.

However, should such data be released to Mr. Tom D. Harry who hails from Widgiemooltha and runs a Center for Transparency in his dunny?

On this issue, I come down on a clear “no”. Sensitive medical or psychological data whose anonymization is challenging ought not to be released to people whose facility to keep them confidential cannot be reasonably established. The U.K. Medical Research Council’s guidelines explicitly state: “The custodian [of the data] must ensure that the group [receiving the data] accepts a duty of confidence and protects confidentiality through training procedures, etc, to the same standards as the custodian [my emphasis].”

Mr. Tom D. Harry is unlikely to meet those stipulations, and if he does not, then he ought not to receive the data.

Of course, procedures must be put in place that balance transparency and concerns about violations of privacy in those instances. Arguably, this should not be left to the original researchers—who may have their own ulterior motives—but must be resolved by some independent arbitration process.

The institutional response to harassment

As we note in the commentary, universities have complaints processes for good reasons. However, complaints are also a known tool of harassment that are amply documented in the context of tobacco research.

How can institutions respond? Universities—by law—must not tolerate harassment of academics or students based on race or gender. So why should they tolerate harassment of academics based on contentious science? Once the triage has been conducted and harassment has been identified, the university’s duty of care should naturally extend to offering protection.

This can be achieved in a number of ways that deserve further discussion. One technique, briefly identified in our commentary, is a public declaration of support by the university for an academic and, importantly, for the status of the scientific issue that is being attacked.

A relevant precedent involves the Rochester Institute of Technology, which affirmed the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change when one of its academics, philosopher Dr. Lawrence Torcello, became the subject of a hate campaign after he published an opinion piece in an online newspaper.

Dr. Torcello summed up the situation thus in an email to me, which I am citing with permission:

“In fact, RIT didn’t just endorse my academic freedom and the scientific consensus on climate change, the statement published by the institute also acknowledged that my work had been misrepresented by certain media outlets, it encouraged people to read my actual piece, and it provided a link to my piece. Additionally, a motion was raised at academic senate to endorse the university’s statement supporting me, which passed unanimously. The dean of my particular college also sent around an official communication to liberal arts faculty condemning the harassment and making faculty aware that his office is prepared to support any faculty harassed for their research. Finally, a generalized version of the statement issued in my defense was placed permanently on the Provost’s website in order to direct any future harassers to the statement. I was consulted and kept in the loop at every stage of the university’s response.  The dean’s office has also offered to help sponsor a conference on such academic harassment. … I think it makes a pretty good case study of how universities ought to respond in such situations.”

Let the conversation continue, without harassment and with an emphasis on transparency, open data, and full disclosure of potential conflicts of interest.

Putting the pause to a blind expert test

A new paper that just appeared online in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society examines the idea of a “pause” in global warming in novel ways, including a blind expert test. The paper is authored by Stephan Lewandowsky, James Risbey, and Naomi Oreskes. It is open access and can be found here.

The abstract of the paper is as follows:

There has been much recent published research about a putative “pause” or “hiatus” in global warming. We show that there are frequent fluctuations in the rate of warming around a longer-term warming trend, and that there is no evidence that identifies the recent period as unique or particularly unusual. In confirmation, we show that the notion of a “pause” in warming is considered to be misleading in a blind expert test. Nonetheless, the most recent fluctuation about the longer-term trend has been regarded by many as an explanatory challenge that climate science must resolve. This departs from long-standing practice, insofar as scientists have long recognized that the climate fluctuates, that linear increases in CO2 do not produce linear trends in global warming, and that 15-year (or shorter) periods are not diagnostic of long-term trends. We suggest that the repetition of the “warming has paused” message by contrarians was adopted by the scientific community in its problem-solving and answer-seeking role and has led to undue focus on, and mislabeling of, a recent fluctuation. We present an alternative framing that could have avoided inadvertently reinforcing a misleading claim.

 

Restoring Recurrent Fury

A peer-reviewed article appeared in print today in an open-access journal that is likely to stimulate some interest and debate:

Lewandowsky, S., Cook, J., Oberauer, K., Brophy, S., Lloyd, E. A., & Marriott, M. (2015). Recurrent fury: Conspiratorial discourse in the blogosphere triggered by research on the role of conspiracist ideation in climate denial. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 3 (1). doi: 10.5964/jspp.v3i1.443.

The article fits within a fairly large and growing body of evidence that suggests that the rejection of well-established scientific facts, such as the safety and efficacy of vaccinations or the fact that HIV causes AIDS or the fact that CO2 emissions alter our global climate, is often accompanied by conspiracist ideation—that is, the idea that scientists or the government are colluding to create a “hoax”. The “hoax” may involve the link between HIV and AIDS or between smoking and lung cancer or between CO2 emissions and climate change: Denial of scientific propositions involves the same playbook and the same motivated cognition, irrespective of which scientific fact is being targeted.

Our new article reports 3 studies that examined the discourse in the climate-“skeptic” blogosphere in response to an earlier publication in Psychological Science by Lewandowsky, Oberauer, and Gignac (often known as LOG12) which reported a small but significant (and replicable) association between the endorsement of various conspiracy theories and the rejection of climate science. 

Continue reading Restoring Recurrent Fury

Recurrent Fury: Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What is conspiracist ideation?

Conspiracist ideation is a style of thinking, otherwise known as conspiratorial thinking. It refers to a person’s propensity to explain political or social events as a secret plot by powerful individuals or organizations.

Q. How strong is the evidence linking climate science denial with conspiratorial discourse?

A number of studies independently present evidence linking climate science denial with conspiratorial thinking. One well-known paper (Lewandowsky, Oberauer, & Gignac, 2013; referred to as LOG12 from here on) surveyed blog readers, finding a small but statistically significant link between doubts about anthropogenic global warming and conspiratorial thinking. LOG12 inspired the conspiratorial reaction in the blogosphere that is reported in Recurrent Fury.

This result is confirmed by other studies. Another study involved a nationally-representative sample of Americans (Lewandowsky, Gignac & Oberauer, 2013). This analysis replicated the LOG12 finding of an association between climate science denial and conspiratorial thinking. The size of this effect was small when the conspiracy theories being considered were unrelated to scientific propositions–however, the effect was sizable for an item that directly queried whether climate change is a “hoax”: That idea was endorsed by 20% of the sample and it explained 25% of the variance in attitudes towards climate change generally.

An independent study (Smith & Leiserowitz, 2012) found that among people rejecting the findings of climate science, when asked to name the first thing that came to mind regarding climate change, the most common answer was conspiratorial in nature.

 

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Continue reading Recurrent Fury: Frequently Asked Questions

Announcing the Uncertainty Handbook

Have you ever struggled with the communication of climate change uncertainties? Are you frustrated by climate sceptics using uncertainty – inherent in any area of complex science – as a justification for delaying policy responses? Then the new ‘Uncertainty Handbook’ – a collaboration between the University of Bristol and the Climate Outreach & Information Network (COIN) – is for you. The handbook was authored by Dr. Adam Corner (COIN), Professor Stephan Lewandowsky (University of Bristol), Dr Mary Phillips (University of Bristol) and Olga Roberts (COIN)All are experts in their fields and have expertise relating to the role of uncertainty in climate change or how best to communicate it.

The Handbook distills the most important research findings and expert advice on communicating uncertainty into a few pages of practical, easy-to-apply techniques, providing scientists, policymakers and campaigners with the tools they need to communicate more effectively around climate change. Download the report here, and check out our 12 principles for more effectively communicating climate change uncertainty

1. Manage your audience’s expectations

People expect science to provide definite ‘answers’, whereas in reality it is a method for asking questions about the world. So manage people’s expectations, and use plenty of analogies from ‘everyday life’ so people can see that uncertainties are everywhere – not just in climate science.

2. Start with what you know, not what you don’t know

Too often, communicators give the caveats before the take-home message. On many fundamental questions — such as ‘are humans causing climate change?’ and ‘will we cause unprecedented changes to our climate if we don’t reduce the amount of carbon that we burn?’— the science is effectively settled.

3. Be clear about the scientific consensus

Having a clear and consistent message about the scientific consensus is important as it influences whether people see climate change as a problem that requires an urgent societal response. Use clear graphics like a pie-chart, use a ‘messenger’ who is trustworthy to communicate the consensus, and try to find the closest match between the values of your audience and those of the person communicating the consensus message.

4. Shift from ‘uncertainty’ to ‘risk’

Most people are used to dealing with the idea of ‘risk’. It is the language of the insurance, health and national security sectors. So for many audiences — politicians, business leaders, or the military — talking about the risks of climate change is likely to be more effective than talking  about the uncertainties.

5. Be clear about the type of uncertainty you are talking about

A common strategy of sceptics is to intentionally confuse and conflate different types of uncertainty. So, it’s critical to be clear what type of uncertainty you’re talking about – causes, impacts, policies or solutions – and adopt appropriate language for each.

6. Understand what is driving people’s views about climate change

Uncertainty about climate change is higher among people with right-leaning political values. However, a growing body of research points to ways of communicating

about climate change that do not threaten conservative belief systems, or which use language that better resonates with the values of the centre-right.

7. The most important question for climate impacts is ‘when’, not ‘if’

Climate change predictions are usually communicated using a standard ‘uncertain outcome’ format. So a statement might say that sea levels will rise by “between 25 and 68cm, with 50cm being the average projection, by 2072”. But flip the statement around — using an ‘uncertain time’ framing — and suddenly it is clear that the question is when not if sea levels will rise by 50cm: “Sea levels will rise by at least 50 cm, and this will occur at some time between 2060 and 2093”.

8. Communicate through images and stories

Most people understand the world through stories and images, not lists of numbers, probability statements or technical graphs, and so finding ways of translating and interpreting the technical language found in scientific reports into something more engaging is crucial. A visual artist can capture the concept of sea-level rise better than any graph, and still be factually accurate if they use scientific projections to inform their work.

9. Highlight the ‘positives’ of uncertainty

Research has found that uncertainty is not an inevitable barrier to action, provided communicators frame climate change messages in ways that trigger caution in the face of uncertainty. A ‘positive’ framing of uncertain information would indicate that losses might not happen if preventative action was taken.

10. Communicate effectively about climate impacts

The question ‘is this weather event caused by climate change?’ is misplaced. When someone has a weak immune system, they are more susceptible to a range of diseases, and no one asks whether each illness was ‘caused’ by a weak immune system. The same logic applies to climate change and some extreme weather events: they are made more likely, and more severe, by climate change.

11. Have a conversation, not an argument

Despite the disproportionate media attention given to ‘sceptics’, most people simply don’t talk or think about climate change all that much. This means that the very act of having a conversation about climate change — not an argument or repeating a ‘one-shot’ slogan — can be a powerful method of public engagement.

12. Tell a human story not a scientific one

The amount of carbon dioxide that is emitted over the next 50 years will determine the extent to which our climate changes. So what we choose to do — and how quickly we can muster the collective willpower to do it — is an uncertainty that dwarfs all others.

This article was first published by the Climate Outreach and Information Network (COIN)

Review of Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change

I recently reviewed George Marhall’s book “Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change” for the National Centre for Science Education. The full review can be found here.

Here, I reproduce the passages from the review that go beyond the scope of a conventional commentary on a book. I tried to articulate what I consider to be one way in which Marshall’s conclusions can be carried forward. Those are subjective considerations and are obviously subject to debate and refinement:

Marshall’s final key point is that in order to ensure a future of dignity for our planet and its inhabitants, we must create a narrative around climate change that invokes “sacred values.”  Sacred values are at the core of our culture: Defending our children is one such sacred value. Likewise, America’s national parks are considered sacred—it’s difficult to imagine that Yellowstone would ever be offered for sale.

I agree with Marshall that moral and ethical values must take centre stage in the response to climate change: It is a question of values and morality whether it is permissible to let Pacific island nations sink below the rising seas. It will come as little surprise that much of the literature on the ethics of climate change considers cutting emissions to be morally mandated. For example, philosopher John Nolt has likened climate change to slavery and racism because it involves the domination of future generations. Those future generations are innocent of any harm to us and do not have a say in their fate, but they are nonetheless bearing the harm from our collective actions that we are now in the position to recognize as being morally wrong.

However, although Marshall opens the door to a powerful moral argument, I felt that he only took a brief peak at the opportunities afforded by his “sacred values”, in a chapter with a collection of brief ideas about how we might “dig us out of this hole.” The underlying tenor of those recommendations is infused with appeals to diversity, openness, and—at least tacitly—a concern with avoiding further polarization.

In my view, those recommendations do not exploit the full power that is offered by the “sacred value” narrative: If our values mandate action on climate change, then we must also recognize that the political and economic forces that are arrayed against such action are violating those values. Although Marshall is well aware of the existence of denial, he stops short of recognizing its full pragmatic and moral import. Many of the environmental narratives that Marshall identifies as having failed, such as the iconic polar bear campaign launched by Greenpeace, failed not just of their own accord but also because the forces arrayed against acting on climate change did their best to make them fail.

If we accept a moral case for climate action, on which I wholeheartedly agree with Marshall, then we must also accept a moral case to tackle organized denial and to understand it for what it is—namely, an endeavor that may (intentionally or not) lead to the domination of future generations in a way not altogether dissimilar from slavery.

Marshall’s stimulating book provides a platform to chart any number of possible future actions. Putting aside political pragmatics, I would extend his work by focusing on sharpening—rather than attenuating— the inevitable and unbridgeable moral conflict between acting on climate change and denying its existence.

The most revered American of the 20th century is Martin Luther King, Jr.

King is universally remembered for leading a movement that was based on the “sacred values” of human dignity, liberty, and equality. It is less well known that Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was a polarizing figure.

In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”—now a highly anthologized masterpiece—in which he responded to his “moderate” critics’ call for patience, King made it quite clear that polarization around his views was not only inevitable but also necessary to achieve his goals. King’s recognition that “justice too long delayed is justice denied” takes on particular meaning in the context of climate change, where delay (of mitigation) is tantamount to denying not just justice but the very livelihood of millions of people who may be displaced by climate change.

Polarization is unfortunate, uncomfortable, and discomforting. But when a U.S. Senator writes a book that refers to climate change as a “hoax” and a “conspiracy”, then that polarizing act does not call for acquiescence or compromise, but for the recognition that polarization may be an inevitable consequence of a conflict between core human values. The nuances of cultural cognition that Marshall so ably reviews may explain polarization but they cannot overcome it by the niceties of “reframing” and “culturally-appropriate” messengers alone.

Australian Professor of Ethics Clive Hamilton recognized this some time ago when he issued a call for environmental radicalism and noted that the future battle over climate change will not be a place for the faint-hearted. It is indeed difficult to conceive of a solution to the climate challenge that will sidestep polarization and—quite probably increasingly ugly—political and ideological battles. Like the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, those battles may require deep courage rather than nuanced cognition about whether polar bears are a good icon for climate “communication.”

Moral and political courage are not without precedent in American politics: Another one of the most revered Americans of the 20th century is President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In an address at Madison Square Garden in 1936, President Roosevelt noted that “Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me.”

In a highly polarizing gesture Roosevelt famously added: “and I welcome their hatred.”

Perhaps we need to fear the fear of polarization more than polarization itself.