How to Talk to Climate Deniers

Talking to climate deniers can be a difficult experience. And yet, scientists - and the public - must talk to deniers. Well, sometimes. The first step in any interaction with climate deniers is determining whether it is worth the time. Many times it simply is not. Deniers' own willful ignorance can in itself demonstrate to anyone watching the deniers' lack of veracity. For these deniers, which includes your typical internet trolls, interaction is what they crave, no matter how ignorant, obnoxious, and often, downright dishonest, they demonstrate themselves to be. Exploiting any interaction gives these folks the self-validation their psyche demands. They can be ignored.

But sometimes climate deniers spread falsehoods that aren't so easily recognized as such by passing readers or listeners. It is to these deniers that scientist Michael Raupach suggests climate scientists need to speak, though perhaps not in direct "debate." What Raupach really means is that scientists should be correcting the record and ensuring the public gets accurate climate science, not the falsehoods so often repeated by denialist groups. In a speech to the Australian Academy of Science, Raupach "called on his colleagues not to sit on the sidelines of the political debate about global warming and other environmental issues, given the evidence they present asks society to consider fundamental changes."


Invariably, it is the conservatives (or more accurately, the extreme political wing who call themselves conservatives but who are really more of reality-deniers) who ignore the science in favor of their rehearsed talking points. So how does one convince ideologically motivated people to stop denying the science and instead take responsibility for dealing with it?

Dana Nuccitelli, writing in the Guardian, says that "facts can convince conservatives about global warming - sometimes." He notes that in new research led by Sophie Guy, "across the participants as a whole,

People who were knowledgeable about climate change believed more strongly that it is happening, that it is being caused by human activities, and that it has negative consequences than those with less knowledge."

And also,  

"conservatives of a libertarian flavor were more likely to accept that global warming is happening when they had a better understanding of the climate. This indicates that some conservatives are persuadable; that information, evidence, and facts can potentially break through their ideological filter."

And yet, certain conservatives will actually be less persuaded by more information because they convince themselves they know better than actual climate scientists. This is the basis for the concept, "Confidence of the Dumb."

Science writer Chris Mooney notes another study in which the ample us of pie charts - not bar graphs, not data tables, not line charts, but pie charts - may be the best way to convince conservatives that man-made global warming is real and that debate should be focused on which policy options provide the best strategies for dealing with the science. Mooney argues that this technique emphasizes one fo the best ways of communicating anything - "You keep it simple, and you show pretty pictures."

Climate scientists would be wise to take that advice.

[Note: Pie chart from Skeptical Science]

Does Language Influence Climate Denial?

The language of science can sometimes be hard to follow for non-scientists, just as the language of all professionals is unfamiliar to anyone outside those professions. But can language actually influence something like climate denial? Perhaps so.

The latest Ipsos Global Trends Survey asked several questions related to the causes and severity of the ongoing trend in global warming, also called man-made climate change. The results show that "the US leads the world in climate denial," with 52% of Americans agreeing with the statement that “The climate change we are currently seeing is a natural phenomenon that happens from time to time.” In tandem, 32% of Americans disagreed with the statement: “The climate change we are currently seeing is largely the result of human activity.”

This finding is shocking. For both questions the United States was the worst denial of the twenty countries surveyed. And for both questions the United States is absolutely in denial of the nearly unanimous understanding of the world's climate scientists, the world's National Academies of Science, and the world's major scientific organizations. Not to mention basic physics.

How could this be? Supposedly the United States is the most educated country in the world (okay, this point is debatable, but let's assume we're at least generally educated). And yet we deny science that is unequivocal.

Science journalist, and author of several books including Unscientific America (with Sheril Kirshenbaum), suggests that it has something to do with the English language. According to this survey, the worst three man-made climate change denier countries are the US, the UK, and Australia, all English-speaking countries. Canada, with a recently increased denialist government, came in seventh.

Mooney goes on to suggest that perhaps being English-speaking is a secondary characteristic and that the real cause and effect is something else. All of these countries have political systems that reflect highly ideological differences, where reality is simply ignored if it doesn't support your political beliefs and more concordant "factoids" are substituted in its place. Thus, the science is inconvenient for politics, so it is denied.

The presence of Rupert Murdoch's media empire seems also to be a factor. Murdoch owns many media outlets in three of the for worst denier countries. These outlets, like Fox News with its blatant discarding of reality in favor of pure political ideology, push the idea of a grand scientific conspiracy. Rupert's far-reaching ownership essentially allows him to create whatever false reality he wants and be assured that it will metastasize via the paid and unpaid ideological blogosphere. Toss in obscenely  funded "think tanks" (i.e., paid lobbyist organizations posing as non-profit groups), all of whom are well experienced with "messaging," and the denial movement is able to talk over the abilities of scientists to communicate technical information.

So in a way, language most definitely does influence climate denial, though not in the way originally suggested by Chris Mooney. Mooney does nail the language in the final sentence of his article:

In language, we're Anglophones; but in climate science, we're a bunch of Anglophonies.

Climate Scientists Talking to the Public

Graphic courtesy of NASA

One of the more emphatic debates these days is whether scientists should talk more with the public. Traditionally, scientists do their science in the lab or the field, toil for weeks or months (or even years) over analysis, and then write up their findings for publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals to be read only by other scientists.

The public sees none of this. They usually can't access the journals because they don't have a subscription. Not that it matters; scientific writing is generally incomprehensible to anyone outside their field of study, never mind the public. In any case, single papers are only pieces in a very large puzzle, and who outside of a few academics has the time to work on a puzzle that size? Well, no one.

So where does the public get its scientific information? Largely from the news media, who generally, okay, let's be frank, do a lousy job of communicating the science as a whole. Usually a single paper is presented as if it is the entire puzzle, not the one piece. And tomorrow's piece, presented just as breathlessly by a media geared towards sensationalism, may seem to totally contradict yesterday's piece. Add to this the fact, yes, the fact, that there are parties out there who intentionally try to mislead the public. The obvious example are lobbyists paid to protect their benefactor's interests by standing in the way of policy changes that could negatively impact the short-term bottom line. By now I think we all know some blatant examples.

Which leaves scientists. The traditional "do science, let others communicate it" mantra just doesn't work any more. Science is part of everyone's life...every single day. That's a good thing. But with the virtual cesspool of blogs, where anyone can saturate the internet within hours with the most inane non-scientific drivel, the public is inundated with information. As Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum noted in their book, Unscientific America, on the internet "there’s tons of information available, but much of it is crap.” So to counteract that crap, scientists have to step up and communicate the facts of science directly to the public. This isn't a new idea. Carl Sagan did that with his original Cosmos series (recently resurrected with Neil deGrasse Tyson), and the above-mentioned Chris Mooney discussed it in a 2010 Washington Post Op-Ed.

The idea has gotten new legs in recent weeks in an effort to get the facts out about man-made climate change. Penn State climate scientist (and co-author of the "hockey stick" paper) Michael Mann recently wrote a New York Times Op-Ed called "If You See Something, Say Something," a play on the post-9/11 warnings in many of the nation's subway systems. Phys.Org discussed the pluses and minuses in a recent post, saying "Climate scientists want to interact more directly with the public." Others have also tackled the issue.

Let's be blunt -  there clearly is a need for scientists to ensure the public gets an accurate picture of the science behind man-made climate change and other scientific issues. But how to do it? At the very least it's important for scientists to become more accessible to the public. Get a Facebook page to highlight your research, tweet your latest findings, Google Plus your research. Ah, but here's the rub. Do it in a way that isn't going to come off as overblown gibberish readable only by those who have spent years learning the jargon. Drop the "sciency talk." Talk to us in language we use every day. The public doesn't need to have every detail so that they can replicate your research. We just need to understand what is happening (e.g., the planet is definitely getting warmer and we are the main cause) and what it means (e.g., it could make George Strait's song about "Oceanfront Property in Arizona" sound like a good investment opportunity).

In short, scientists need to remember that they are part of the public too. Share your work.

Book Review – Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum

I periodically review books that address the issue of communicating science to the public. As suggested by its title – Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future - this book acknowledges the limits of the public’s understanding of science and how science works. But I felt the book was most powerful because it focuses on the role of scientists in disseminating scientific information.

The first two chapters give a very nice background on the role science has played, from its high funding and close relationships with policy-makers soon after World War II, to its period of low funding and disconnect from policy-makers, to the more recent “war on science” (the topic of Mooney’s previous book).

Much of the main part of the book looks at the intersection of science and other institutions. Individual chapters look at science as it relates to politics, to religion, to its portrayal in Hollywood, and to journalism, all within the subcontext of C.P. Snow’s “two cultures” theme. In short, different ways of thinking, and different needs, affect the interaction of the two institutions in the dyad. For example, whereas the needs of the media are episodic, science is more incremental. So every incremental finding coming from scientific studies can be picked up by the media and presented as if it is a revelation. Except it might suggest the opposite of yesterday’s revelation. No matter that the two studies merely looked at different parts of the picture and support the full knowledge base, the media assume each piece stands on its own. This can be, and usually is, highly confusing to the public. Similar conflicts in the messaging occur between science and religion, scientist depiction in film (usually as a stereotypical caricature), and politics.

One chapter discusses the role of blogs. As newspapers and broadcast media have been eliminating science coverage, at least 1000 science blogs have sprung up. While blogs can help disseminate information broadly, the authors say “[t]he problem with the internet is obvious to anyone who has ever used it; There’s tons of information available, but much of it is crap.” Misinformation thrives, and those who want to manipulate the debate can publish whatever they want, and unfortunately, usually do. Much of it is biased, inaccurate, or outright fabrication. Which is why blogs may be useful for rapidly getting the word out, they cannot be relied upon for an accurate assessment of the science itself. The exception, perhaps, are blogs written by the scientists themselves.

The authors refer repeatedly in the book to Carl Sagan, an astronomer who was also a stellar communicator, but whose popularity was often seen by other scientists as an indignity (i.e., to traditional scientists who preferred to do their science and leave the communication to others). But in the end the authors of Unscientific America, one a journalist and the other a scientist, assert that disseminating the science to the lay public, to the media, and to policy-makers is an “integral part of the job description of scientists themselves.” Essentially, they say that it should be part of every scientist’s responsibility to communicate the science accurately, and to make sure that the science is not misrepresented by those who would misuse it.

The book is eminently readable and surprisingly insightful. The book is definitely worth the read.