Climate change often receives the most attention in the
media when extreme weather is in the news. It seems that every hurricane,
flood, or heat wave sparks a new round of headlines. The public seem to respond to this effect; a
2014 study found that following personal experience of Hurricanes Sandy and Irene,
students in the north-east of the US showed increased concern about climate
change. Previous negative attitudes towards ‘green’ politicians were even
reversed.
However, it’s less certain that these links are scientifically
accurate. Is climate change actually causing the rate of extreme weather events
to increase?
Over the last few years a number of papers have been
published in which the links between specific extreme weather events and
climate change have been investigated. However, not much has changed in the way
these events are reported in the news. This week a report was published discussing the both the science of extreme weather events and, perhaps even
more interestingly, how this is communicated.
Contrary to my impression, the report found that even when
links were well established, extreme weather events were often discussed without
any mention of climate change- particularly in the US. However, it did note
that climate change reporting is dominated by extreme weather events. This is
doubly concerning, highlighting how under-reported climate change impacts are.
The report also found that prominent public figures played a large role in
influencing public opinion, even if they were unqualified to comment
In light of this, the report makes some recommendations about
how to best communicate scientific understanding of climate change. The main
points are that the reporting should focus on what we do know, rather than what
we don’t, and that pessimism and despair should be avoided as they tend to
prompt inaction. This advice may seem
common sense, but in reality is rarely followed for a number of reasons. For
example, talk of ‘uncertainty’ and ‘error’ is common in science, but these
words have subtly different meanings in everyday usage that tend to confuse the
public.
This advice could be applied to many areas of science, but
is particularly useful for climate change where public understanding and
concern lags far behind the science. Let’s hope that these recommendations are
widely read and followed, and that it’s enough to counteract the new wave of ‘sceptics’
coming into power in 2017.
I agree: we need positive dialogue in the conversation about climate change! Problem is, news outlets tend to thrive only from bad news (catastrophes and the like). It'll be tricky to eliminate this effect on peoples' understanding of climate change.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point Martha, and to be honest I sometimes struggle to be positive about climate change too! I guess the best thing is to always keep in mind what we can do about the problem rather than just how bad it is.
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